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don’t identify a hundred percent with their
own works. It’s also true that in this case
there’s an orchestra and a conductor who
make their own interpretations.
ACB: Likewise in architecture, many
projects end up beyond you. It happened
to me with the Caja de Granada.
BLH: I have good memories of Juhani
Pallasmaa’s book The Eyes of the Skin.
When I first read it, I was much taken
by it because it dealt with the relation-
ship between architecture and the senses. I
found it to be an absolutely revealing text.
It spoke to themes like the senses, feelings,
and even emotions. Things which a priori
are not part of the architectural experience.
In architecture one referred to emotion, but
not the emotion of the actual completed
building. Rather, precisely the emotion that
comes with the capacity to dream which you
mentioned before. The building that sings
well, that has poetry, and that bears a new
life. That’s why you architects are creators,
which is something that definitely cannot
be said of everyone.
ACB: Indeed there is no doubt that music
and architecture have a lot in common.
BLH: No doubt. For example, we have
now started to plan a project, precisely
to try to understand how sound worked in
historical buildings, how music could ring
in them. We were going to do this in the
Royal Palace, to know how the music of
that period sounded in its own terms, in
its own time, with the original instruments.
That is, to try to grasp how period music
sounded in its corresponding physical but
also historical context.
ACB: What you’re saying reminds me
that it’s also highly alarming that music
is not taught more in schools. Just like
it’s unbelievable that philosophy has been
pulled out of the curriculum of basic educa-
tion, it’s hard to understand why music is
taught so poorly.
BLH: History is now taught starting in
the year1812. That’s terrible – the disap-
pearance of philosophy and the reduction
of music. These are key subjects, indispens-
able in any program to educate citizens for
the future.
ACB: I’ve always thought that to be
a good architect, one has to be cultured.
Without question, a cultivated person
makes a better architect. To be sure, I own
more poetry books than architecture books.
I enjoy them more. But we’ve talked enough
about philosophy and music. Let’s leave
poetry for the next time…
