-What is the first step?

-We need to listen to the site and the future dwellers. We need to observe, forage and harvest all the pre-existences in order to give a proper diagnose later on and understand what is necessary. But now we just observe and collect. And we don’t leave anything out. This is what we call data gathering. It is the food that we will digest afterwards.

-So now is it more about listening than about talking?

-In the dialogue which is to make architecture, we first must listen. First we read and digest. Then we write, but just if it’s necessary.

-Where to go?

-We must become experts in the dwellers and the site’s physical, climatic and social environment. We listen to the needs of the dwellers and the site in order to fulfill or challenge them. We must visit the site under different climatic conditions. What is obvious on our first visit can sometimes lead to misleading deductions. It is important to go back, to learn more, to ask more questions, to get closer yet keep a critical distance. Direct experience will allow for an understanding to arise and develop within our body.

-Where to look at?

-It is fundamental to access and select very carefully the data and knowledge we will make use of. Always go to the sources, which are often not immediately available through Google, on blogs or pinterest. You go to the immediate sources (people involved in the process, the site, the material) and also the mediated ones (tacit or explicit about building culture and traditions, local and universal habitation cultures, books, drawings).

-We also need to know the material and skills availability. The tacit knowledge of the builders we know, or looking for those we don’t know yet.

-It could seem that this first step can be done by anyone, it’s just to regard and to note. But it isn’t so. A specific training is needed, which should start not later than the first year at an architecture school, although it should be taught at the elementary schools: to understand a place, to understand people. A training that is not really inclusive, diverse and polytechnic becomes useless in the long term. We should help our children to learn to think, and to question and understand the natural principles of things and processes.

-Which are the preexistences?

-The commission, the future dwellers, the climate, the topography, geology, ecosystems, history, local culture, techniques and material availability, are important parts of the existences. Some are from out of the site, others come from far, the others are implied or explicit in the brief. We need to integrate all the data related with the how (resources, techniques) in this stadium. This starting point is dynamic, not static.

-What documents do we produce here?

-In this phase we don’t imagine anything yet, nor we draw. The result of this process is a list with multiple relations. It doesn’t necessarily have to follow any order, we must register every data that we gather, either from direct or indirect observation. The more intensity we can devote to this step, the better. The way we think, the way we see -the way we are- will always determine the elements on this list. However, it is important to do a thorough research so we don’t miss any important factor. This step is not necessarily time consuming, but it is crucial to keep our eyes open and embrace facts or unexpected events that might rise when we are way into the process.

-We keep all the digital data in a folder on our computer, the physical data like material samples, books, either on our desk or a wall nearby, and the experiential data we nurture and revisit on a daily basis to make it grow in us.