Baak Studio

In our contemporary world, it is enough to know that construction in cities is decided through technocratic procedures, in offices and on plans, without taking into account, in the least, the way in which human beings are related to things – by their history, by their carnal body – to understand the malaise of our cities and our architectures. And nothing shows it, moreover, better than a reflection on the house and its way of being built. Heidegger rightly objected to the proponents of the Athens Charter that the house is not “a simple container in which to live”. Today, we are seeing this technical dream of the machine-house come back to life through the ecological habitat, which we think of in a systemic way as a place for the circulation of energies: a well-calculated solution to environmental problems. However, a dwelling can indeed be a very successful living machine, it can be a sophisticated and very comfortable shelter, without however being a real house. In short, for us, an architecture, which is a container, is also a place of exchange and above all a language to reveal the world. It gives the space its dynamic; it gives the world its visibility. It also serves to introduce human beings into the world, to inscribe them in it. It gives us to understand how man is humanized. This relationship of man to the things of life makes us aware that a building is not designed for a single function, a single environment and a single era. This results in the importance of the dimension of time that architecture carries within it. This would amount to considering the architectural work as a work in the process of continual adaptation according to social and technological changes. To put it in simple words, stripped of all frills, we are here, architects to transmit to our clients the energy of transformation, the energy of a liberated work.