Stunning buildings made from raw, imperfect materials

What would it take to reimagine the limits of architecture? Débora Mesa Molina offers some answers in this breathtaking, visual tour of her work, showing how structures can be made with overlooked materials and unconventional methods -- or even extracted from the guts of the earth. "The world around us is an infinite source of inspiration if we are curious enough to see beneath the surface of things," she says.

Architecture is a profession
with many rules,

some written, some not,

some relevant and others not.

As architects,
we're constantly gravitating

between following these rules by the book

or making a space for imagination --

for experimentation.

This is a difficult balance.

Especially through architecture,

you're trying to challenge preconceptions
and push boundaries and innovate,

even if just using what we have around
and we overlook all the time.

And this is what I've been doing
along with my team,

Ensamble Studio,

and from our very early works

that happened
in strict historic contexts,

like the city of Santiago de Compostela.

Here we built the General Society
of Authors and Editors,

a cultural building.

And on top of all the regulations,

we had to use stone by code

and our experience was limited,

but we had incredible
references to learn from,

some coming from the city itself

or from nearby landscapes

or other remote places

that had impacted
our education as architects,

and maybe you recognize here.

But somehow the finished products
that industry made available

for us as architects
to use in our buildings

seemed to have lost their soul.

And so we decided to go
to the nearby quarries

to better understand the process
that transforms a mountain

into a perfectly square tile
that you buy from a supplier.

And we were taken by the monumental
scale of the material

and the actions to extract it.

And looking carefully,

we noticed hundreds of irregular
blocks piling up everywhere.

They are the leftovers
of an extraction sequence:

the ugly parts that nobody wants.

But we wanted them.

We were inspired.

And it was a win-win situation

where we could get this residual
material of great quality,

doomed to be crushed,

at a very low cost.

Now, we had to convince our clients
that this was a good idea;

but foremost, we had to come up
with a design process

to reuse these randomly shaped rocks,

and we had not done this before.

Today everything would be much easier

because we would go to the quarry

with our smartphones
equipped with 3-D scanners

and we would document each rock,

turn that into a digital model --

highly engineer the whole process.

But more than a decade ago,

we had to embrace uncertainty

and put on our boots, roll up our sleeves

and move to the quarry
for a hands-on experience.

And we also had to become the contractors

because we failed at finding somebody
willing to share the risk with us.

Now, luckily, we convinced the quarry team
to help us build a few prototypes

to resolve some of the technical details.

And we agreed on a few mock-ups,

but we got excited,

and one stone led to another

until we succeeded to build

an 18-meter-long
by eight-meter-high structure

that recycled all the amorphous
material of the quarry,

just supported by gravity --

no mortar and no ties.

And once built and tested,

moving it to the final site
in the city center

to unite it with the rest of the building

was a piece of cake,

because by having isolated uncertainty

and managed risk in the controlled
environment of the quarry,

we were able to complete
the whole building in time

and on budget,

even if using nonconventional
means and methods.

And I still get goosebumps

when I see this big chunk
of the industrial landscape

in the city,

in a building,

experienced by the visitors
and the neighbors.

This building gave us
quite a few headaches,

and so it could have well been
an exception in our work,

but instead it started to inform
a modus operandi

where every project
becomes this opportunity

to test the limits of a discipline
we believe has to be urgently reimagined.

So what you see here are four homes

that we have designed,
built and inhabited.

Four manifestos where
we are using the small scale

to ask ourselves big questions.

And we are trying to discover
the architectures

that result from unconventional
applications of pretty mundane materials

and technologies,

like concrete in different forms
in the top row,

or steel and foam in the bottom row.

Take, for instance,
these precast concrete beams.

You have probably seen them

building bridges, highways,
water channels --

we found them on one of our visits
to a precast concrete factory.

And they might not seem
especially homey or beautiful,

but we decided to use them
to build our first house.

And this was an incredible moment

because we got to be architects as always,

builders once more

and, for the first time,
we could be our own clients.

So, here we are trying to figure out
how we can take these huge catalogue beams

of about 20 tons each

and stack them progressively
around a courtyard space ...

the heart of the house.

And due to the dimensions
and their material quality,

these big parts are the structure
that carry the loads to the ground,

but they are much more than that.

They are the swimming pool;

they are the walls that divide
interior from exterior;

they are the windows that frame the views;

they are the finishes;

they are the very spirit of this house.

A house that is for us a laboratory

where we are testing how we can use
standard elements in nonstandard ways.

And we are observing
that the results are intriguing.

And we are learning by doing

that prefabrication
can be much more than stacking boxes

or that heavy parts
can be airy and transparent.

And on top of designing
and building this house,

we get invaluable feedback,

sharing it with our family
and our friends

because this is our life

and our work in progress.

The lessons that we learn here
get translated into other projects

and other programs

and other scales as well,

and they inspire new work.

Here again we are looking
at very standard products:

galvanized steel studs
that can be easily cut and screwed,

insulating foams, cement boards --

all materials that you can find
hidden in partition walls

and that we are exposing;

and we are using them to build
a very lightweight construction system

that can be built almost by anyone.

And we are doing it ourselves
with our hands in our shop,

and we are architects.
We're not professional builders

but we want to make sure it's possible.

And it's so nice that Antón
can move it with his hands

and Javier can put it in a container,

and we can ship it

like you would ship your belongings
if you were moving abroad ...

which is what we did five years ago.

We moved our gravity center from Madrid

and the house of the concrete
beams to Brookline.

And we found the ugly duckling
of a very nice neighborhood:

a one-story garage
and the only thing we could afford.

But it was OK because we wanted
to transform it into a swan,

installing on top
our just-delivered kit of parts,

once more becoming the scientists
and the guinea pigs.

So this is a house
that uses some of the cheapest

and most normal materials
that you can find in the market

that applies the ubiquitous
four-by-eight modulation

that governs the construction industry.

And yet a different
organization of the spaces

and a different assembly of the parts

is able to transform
an economically built home

into a luxurious space.

And now, we're dreaming and we're
actively working with developers,

with builders,

with communities

to try to make this a reality
for many more homes

and many more families.

And you see, the world around us
is an infinite source of inspiration

if we are curious enough
to see beneath the surface of things.

Now I'm going to take you
to the other side of the moon:

to the sublime landscape of Montana,

where a few years ago
we joined Cathy and Peter Halstead

to imagine Tippet Rise Art Center
on a 10,000-acre working ranch.

And when we first visited the site,

we realized that all we knew
about what an art center is

was absolutely pointless for that client,

for that community, for that landscape.

The kind of white-box museum type
had no fit here.

So we decided to explode the center
into a constellation of fragments,

of spaces spread
across the vast territory

that would immerse the visitors
into the wilderness of this amazing place.

So back in the office,
we are thinking through making,

using the land both as support
and as material,

learning from its geological processes
of sedimentation, erosion,

fragmentation, crystallization --

explosion --

to discover architectures
that are born from the land,

that are visceral extensions
of the landscape,

like this bridge
that crosses Murphy Canyon.

Or this fountain.

Like this space topping a hill ...

or this theatre that brings to us
the space of the mountains

and its sound.

And in order to realize this idea,

construction cannot be perfectly planned.

We need to embrace the drastic weather
and the local craft.

We need to control
just those aspects that are critical,

like the structural, the thermal,

the acoustical properties
embedded in the form.

But otherwise, improvisation
is welcome and is provoked.

And the moment of construction
is still a moment of design

and a moment of celebration

where different hands, hearts, minds
come together to perform a final dance.

And the result then cannot be anticipated.

It comes as a surprise.

And we unwrap architecture
like you would unwrap a birthday gift.

Architecture isn't uncovered:

it's discovered.

It's extracted from the guts
of the earth to build a shelter,

one of the most basic human needs.

Architecture, art, landscape,

archaeology, geology -- all made one.

And by using the resources
at our disposal in radical ways,

by making a space for experimentation,

we are able to bring to light
architectures that find the beauty latent

in the raw and imperfect
things that surround us,

that elevate them

and let them speak their own language.

Thank you.

(Applause)