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Domestic Monument

Mauricio Pezo and Sofia von Ellrichshausen reflect on the Amancio Williams archive

This text is the transcription of an interview that took place during Pezo von Ellrichshausen’s residency at the CCA. Their reading of the Amancio Williams archive is presented in our Octagonal gallery from 22 February until 12 May 2024.

Amancio Williams, Perspective drawing of Casa sobre el arroyo [House over the brook], Mar del Plata, Argentina, ca. 1943–1945. Ink on paper. ARCH287413. Amancio Williams fonds, CCA. Gift of the children of Amancio Williams © CCA

MP
When we began looking in the archive, we had the intuition that we wanted to work with the domestic scale of Amancio Williams’s production, mainly due to the fact that the Casa sobre el arroyo [House over the brook] was one of the few projects that he managed to build. But it was also because we could relate that scale and the intimacy of domesticity with our own work, with degrees of proximity, degrees of interiority, degrees of seclusion. We came with the idea that we were going to unveil different domestic projects in different contexts. And in the end, given the disparity of the cases, we have ended up observing in depth mostly the Casa sobre el arroyo and a couple of other houses that feature the umbrella-like structures often central to Amancio’s projects.
SvE
We’ve been looking at a trajectory of work, through the lens of a domestic scale. Already that selection was an enormous number of boxes of different sizes and rolls with large amounts of drawings. Some of the plans we first encountered in the archive were very large and extremely precious. They are on paper that is delaminating, so they have to be handled with a lot of care. We started going through that material as meticulously as we could, and there was something quite impressive about being able to be so embedded in someone else’s thought processes. Some projects that we looked at have been repeated over and over through time, and even across projects we could see that there was a continuity of certain ideas or building blocks. Every single drawing seems to have been kept. There are initial scribbles that then were repeated and repeated over again, popping up in different roles, in different moments, in different formats. That was very impressive to see.
MP
The archive is, in a way, a panoramic overview of that production that includes not only different phases of the project, going from an idea to the execution, but also the intermediate phase in which there are some drawings that are preparations for other drawings. There are rolls of hundreds of drawings that were used to inform not only construction, but also presentation drawings. The collection includes that diverse range of possibilities. Preliminary drawings, intermediate stage drawings, final drawings. It allows you to see the mental process of this architect thinking through drawing, thinking through making. And that somehow tedious translation of one scale to another, or from one project to another, or from one detail within the same building into another detail. It’s a very complete exercise.
SvE
There is a consistency throughout the works we’ve seen, where the way projects are conceived and thought about is atemporal and the obsessions are transversal—and I say obsessions in the best sense of the word. There is clearly an interest in a certain way of “solving” a project that you can see throughout. For instance, sometimes we would peek into a corner of a roll thinking it was a particular project: say, for example, the Casa sobre el arroyo. But as we unfolded it, we realized it was another house, or the detail of a bathroom that was repeated in several projects.
MP
It’s like being able to read into a complete personal story, with the transition from one scale to another, or from one drawing to another that seems to be the same, yet has subtle variations. It is the way in which certain ideas appear in a moment and persist over time. It’s an example of a practice that insists on trying to be loyal to those early ideas. It is also a process of reinvention, with decisions that are so subtle and so diverse. It’s a huge production, because every single case becomes a variation of a theme. It becomes the expression of singularity within an overall proposition.
SvE
But I think of that as very valuable, because many times, architects are expected to constantly think of new ideas. Amancio achieved a lot of recognition for the Casa sobre el arroyo very early in his career, so maybe that also gave him either the confidence or the anxiety to pursue a career that was based on those initial ideas. In looking at drawings, there is the process material, and there is the very finished or more technical material, but there is also some highly abstract material. It’s almost like he used the aesthetic of a logo to synthesize his gestures that then he could apply into many different projects. It could go from the scale of the domestic to the scale of a hospital, or a gas station, or a supermarket.
MP
The very nature of the techniques that he was using, which were often traditional techniques like drawing with ink on paper—most of the material is the transition from one type of line drawing into another type of line drawing—allows the evolution of the production of ideas to be more explicit. Even buildings that seem to be extremely simple and refined need to go through a process of struggle and drama. There is something more dirty and confusing, which is very relevant for the collection to maintain. All the drawings of the different versions of an elevation, or a column, or the struggles to solve a plan, reveal or unveil the very practice of architecture. This seems to be oversimplified nowadays with digital drawings and the speed of production. Everything seems to be easy and edited, but in this case, there is a clear collection of doubts, attempts, and even mistakes. That process of thinking through the making of a drawing is what I find so fascinating.
SvE
Exactly. I think there are two stages: to think about the project itself, and then to think about the communication of the project. How to communicate the project to a builder, to a developer, to a client. You can also see those differences throughout the material we have looked at. In some cases there is a clarity to everything that is being produced, and in others you can tell it’s harder. We have been focusing on technical drawings where we are marvelled by the beauty of the drawings themselves, and the way the information is presented. Of course, one walks into an archive trying not to have a preconceived idea of what you want to find. You do bring very loose filters, by which you have to look at the information. I think what surprised us at the beginning was to realize that the different projects we saw had also very differing levels of development. So for some projects there’s a lot of material, very complete, every single drawing, and for others you might find five, ten pages to illustrate it. In that sense it makes any comparison or trying to put them in equivalent terms unfair.
MP
Despite the fact that some of his projects are very well known, we have been surprised to see the sheer amount of drawings. The amount of drawings to try to make a wall, to try to make a column, or to inform a detail of furniture was really unusual in my view. Everything was not only handmade but also custom made. And that is something that nowadays is clearly different. Maybe not for us, but in general for the production of architecture everywhere. I couldn’t relate any of these drawings with a catalogue or with a product, with a brand.
SvE
Another thing that I think comes through when looking at the information is that there is somehow a sense of forgetting about the program and having these larger constructive elements that give identity to a project. Because we were confronted to the specificity of the building blocks, it really feels like there is an erosion of the preconceived idea of what a domestic space has to be like.
MP
We’re interested in connecting that playful dimension of architecture, the figures that exceed the merely functional aspect of a house, by selecting what we could call poetic images of the bridge and the umbrella. They become elements that speak of a polarized dimension, something that perhaps might be read as a memory or a mental image of something we know very well from childhood, but also as a piece of infrastructure that has a scale of monumentality.
SvE
It’s interesting to see all the steps in between—sometime thirty to forty years of steps in between—to end up with very technical proposals. There’s a persistence, there’s a discipline, and there’s a very conscious process of translation that occurs to build the work. There is an absolute optimism in many of his drawings, especially those that are more preliminary. But it then of course needs to become this very tight mesh of rebar and the logics of how to take the water out.
MP
We’re also interested in reading these images—the floating clouds, or the colourful umbrellas, or the very schematic gesture of crossing a little stream of water—not only in their formal or aesthetic dimension, but also in their symbolic one, and how they might transfer to a very functionalist architecture. It brings another potential quality of experience for the families who are meant to live in these places, to be able to open their minds and to see beyond the everyday, beyond what they know. To in a way turn architecture into a myth-making machine that would allow the inhabitants to dream.
SvE
At the domestic scale, there are all of these subtleties that are very beautiful to observe, but then unified by something like, for example, the floor. His thinking is no longer at the scale of the infrastructure. It is the same thing with the bridge and the umbrella, in that there are projects that can exist without detail. You could strip them from the type of window or strip them from the module of the floor and they would still remain in our memories the same way.
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