Paulo Mendes da Rocha

Having studied and presented the work of Paulo Mendes da Rocha in the Biennale Architettura 2012, Common Ground, we invited him to make a drawing for FREESPACE. His description of Venice as being “the capital of the imagined world” is forever in our minds as we get to know this city better; as we are continually renewed and challenged by its beauty, and as we travel over and back while curating the 16th International Architecture Exhibition.
Paulo Mendes da Rocha says that we do not own our work and that the work of architects is to be shared. He shared his work with us by giving us complete freedom with regard to how we interpreted it and how we presented it. He made no restrictions, no comments and no criticisms.
We were strangers from the other side of the world whom he had never met. His generosity and openness was a revelation and a lesson to us. He clearly sees the culture of architecture as a freespace, where architects can freely wander, search, discover and learn from each other. His architecture has that same feeling of openness and generosity, always welcoming the outside world into the interior, always connecting with the bigger territory, always reaching for the big horizon.
YF+SMcN.