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Scalar Architecture: Urban scale, small world |
Julio Salcedo, principal of architecture firm Scalar Architecture, is taking back the word generic. He uses the word freely, and too him, especially when coupled with the term generative, it doesn’t mean bland and personalityfree. “I see it as a mode of design that seeks to create many combinations and manipulations from a few simple elements and forms.” Salcedo, whose four-person practice is based in both New York City and Barcelona, says that finding the sparks necessary to ignite the right combinations between those elements is the key. “The Dutch have built many good examples with this idea,” says Salcedo. “And it’s one of the two poles in the continuum that I’ve been trying to work within — the other being a very specific, tailored design that cannot be duplicated.
Casa Lasso, Trasierra, Spain, 2004
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Creating a practice that revolves around two poles is literal as well as philosophical for Salcedo, who works as much in his native Madrid as he does in the U.S., his adopted country. After graduating from Rice University and Harvard’s GSD, Salcedo went to work for SOM in New York. “There are a lot of opportunities for a young architect at such a large firm,” he says, “but after awhile I wanted to be responsible for more — for things like construction administration, for example.” Leaving SOM, he went to work for smaller and smaller firms. “I went from an office of 400 to one of 25, then four people, then out on my own.” He worked solo on a project in Spain, then got offered a teaching position at Harvard, which brought him back to the U.S. and led him to start Scalar in 2001, a firm that, he says, “starts with architecture as a base, but can cross-pollinate with all kinds of collaborators.”
To that end, Salcedo calls Scalar an “interdisciplinary” firm and is excited to be working both in the U.S. and Europe with urban designers, landscape designers, and others in related fields. “In the U.S., your firm’s success is based on your ‘track record,’ ” he says, “while in Europe, every public project becomes a competition that young firms can possibly win.Creating a track record can take 20 or 25 years here, so I’m lucky that my biographical information gives me those European connections.”
And those connections are proving valuable. Scalar has several projects on the boards, both “specific” and “generic/generative.” Salcedo’s vision for part of Madrid’s bid for the 2016 Summer Olympics is on a short list of 15. (Madrid is one of four cities in the running.) Working with urban designer Mark Brossa, Scalar is designing a railway to connect a city center with an isolated suburb in Norway, to be completed in 2012. And back home in New York City, the firm is renovating a town house for a researcher that will include a vivarium to house a turtle and amphibian collection along with a study, library, and residence.
“We’re hungry for work,” says Salcedo, “and as such a small firm, we don’t have the luxury of not being completely involved in every project we take on. It’s refreshing and exciting.”
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