FROM THE INSIDE OUTWARD. This approach is at the heart of my practice as an architect. I was introduced to this mode of working during the studio The House Without a Form, conducted by Peter Zumthor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design in the spring of 1999. We searched for the sequence of rooms in our memory, intuitively, thinking about materials and sounds and smells and light, about what our hands touch and what our feet walk on. We worked, step by step, and by hand, from what we already knew about the materiality, the user(s), and the site, to find what we did not yet know. For the first time I felt truly at home in the design process and I have stayed there since, at first while working at Atelier Peter Zumthor and in my own practice thereafter.

IN SEARCH OF AUTHENTICITY. I follow Peter Blundell Jones in the belief that architectural authenticity is grounded in a “unity of use, construction, and image that is self-evident”. (The Architects’ Journal, January 1992.) This leads to questions such as: How can this sense of self-evidence, and thus authenticity, be attained in architectural practice? How does authentic architecture look and feel? I address these questions through the research project Fjárhús: Lessons in authenticity, which I initiated, lead, and develop in collaboration with a multidisciplinary team. By studying Icelandic sheep houses, one by one and together as a typology, we seek insights to questions of global significance. What can we learn from these buildings about self-evidence, ergo architectural authenticity?

{ ( SELF-EVIDENCE => AUTHENTICITY => BEAUTY ) => SUSTAINABILITY } Based on this principle, which I formulated, I embrace the ambition of the New European Bauhaus “to imagine and build together a sustainable and inclusive future that is beautiful for our eyes, minds, and souls” by adopting a qualitative and holistic perspective. As Prince Myshkin asserts in Dostoevsky's The Idiot, “I believe the world will be saved by beauty”. I believe so too.

EVERYTHING IS ALWAYS IN RELATION TO SOMETHING ELSE. As Louis Kahn wrote atop his well-known drawing of a domed chamber where two persons sit by a window with a view, "architecture comes from the making of a room". In this room the interior relates to an outside, the chairs relate to the window, the bodies relate to the chairs, and so on. To make a room is to set in motion a set of precise yet open spatial relations that can be perpetually renewed – from moment to moment, from user to user, from light to light. When the binary opposition of interior/exterior and space/object is dissolved, an expanded and fluid field emerges.

MAKING TO FIND OUT. Hands-on experimentation is central in my work. Alongside drawing and model-making, I use writing and photographing as tools. My understanding of practice follows the Aristotelian sense of the term: free, self-conscious, and authentic activity in the realm of the contingent – the conditional and unforeseeable – yielding knowledge aimed at further action. A cumulative and regenerative process, where each project expresses a worldview and every new project offers an opportunity to revise and hone it.

WRITING AS A DESIGN TOOL. When I joined the faculty at the Bergen School of Architecture in 2019, I developed a series of workshops under the self-explanatory title Writing as a design tool. Aimed primarily at diploma students, the workshops employ different modes of writing to clarify and fertilise the projects underway. The ability to step back, to observe with a sharp and curious eye, and then reflect with a critical mind is, I believe, an indispensable component of the design process and a key element in the education of architects/artists.

INTUITION AND PRECISION. Through my practice-based PhD project, I learned to alternate effectively between doing and reflecting, weaving professional practice, teaching, and research into a continuum. In the essay Practicing Research: Towards a Mathesis Singularis I discuss the transactional relationship between instinct and intellect and its relevance to artistic practice. The insights that arise through this exchange move each project – gradually and unpredictably – towards increasing clarity and precision. Learning-by-doing is, in fact, learning-by-reflecting-on-the-done. This way of working – anchored in intuition and evolving through critical reflection – unites the different spheres of my practice.

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BIO

Pavlina Lucas (b.1970, Cyprus) studied Architecture at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard (MArch 2000) and Journalism (concentration in Photojournalism and minor in Art History) at Boston University (BSc 1993). She completed the artistic PhD project The Photographic Absolute: An Architectural Beginning at Oslo School of Architecture in 2014.

Lucas joined the atelier of Swiss architect Peter Zumthor in 2000 and was project architect for a number of projects, including Walter De Maria´s 360° I Ching Gallery at Dia:Beacon, Bruder Klaus Feldkapelle in Germany, JP Williams House in Bedford NY, Hotel Therme Vals renovation, and team leader for the invited competitions Kunstgalerie Hinter dem Giesshaus 1 in Berlin and Cornell University New School of Architecture in Ithaca NY.

She established her own atelier in 2004 with projects in Cyprus, such as the award-winning Yiorkadjis House and House for a Weaver, while collaborating on a freelance basis with Atelier Peter Zumthor on projects such as Allmannajuvet Zinc Mine Museum in Norway, the House of Seven Gardens in Doha, and the new Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA).

Based in Oslo since 2008, Lucas has developed a practice that includes architecture and furniture design projects, as well as writing, photographing, and performance art. Anchored in a phenomenological approach, her work emerges through hands-on experimentation with composition and materiality. She creates rooms - physical and emotional - that explore our sense of presence and time.

Lucas has taught and lectured in various schools, including the Oslo School of Architecture, Bergen School of Architecture, Accademia di Architettura in Mendrisio, Aarhus School of Architecture, Tromsø Academy of Landscape and Territorial Studies, and Einar Granum Kunstfagskole. Currently, she is Professor and Head of the Interior Architecture and Furniture Design Bachelor's programme at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts.

Link to CV
Link to work 1993-2010

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Munkedamsveien 82A
NO-0270 Oslo
+47 91243785
mail@pavlinalucas.com
Org.nr. 916161336MVA

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To apply for an internship please send your CV and portfolio by email

PAST INTERNS
Jörn Muenkel . RWTH Aachen
Lucie Vittor and Lucien Millet . École Nationale Supérieure d'Architecture de Paris-Belleville
Sylvain Lisch and Victor Demer . Université Toulouse III Paul Sabatier
Alice Rougale-Royer . ENSAT Toulouse

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