2                       INTERVIEW

I thought we could start by talking about how your cultural heritage informs how you see architecture and your own work right now.
Heritage in terms of, I guess, family background?I don’t have cultural belongings that are shared with many people that I can really get a grip on easily. The effect on me has been somewhat nebulous. I think in terms of creative work I would say  it’s  had  a  positive impact, because it’s made me who I am. Growing up in London was probably the savior of myself, just because it was a city that—as you know—welcomes everybody.  You’re  not really judged quite so quickly in the way that you are in other places. So, I could take part     in multiple subcultural communities.
I find the word ‘community’ quite problematic, though. ‘Scenes’ is probably better, where I met really amazing people. I participated in the expression of difference in manifold ways. That was amazing, as a kid who grew up with parents from very different places to where I was living, from very different backgrounds.

Is your mother from Argentina?
My father is from a small town in north Argentina, my mother was brought up in Japan. She’s half-Japanese. Her father was a refugee, escaping from the Nazis in the 1930s. He made it to Japan, where he met a lady and got her pregnant. And, they spent the war in    the mountains directly north of Tokyo, which is where my mum is from and was brought up. My parents met in Israel and then they moved to London, where they had their kids.

Aesthetics are an extremely important way to preserve your identity. I saw that in my mother and my grandmother—who are people that thought they never belonged anywhere—, and I think this is quite common with a lot of immigrant families that I know.

You either preserve your identity or create an identity you’re comfortable with, because frankly you weren’t really welcome wherever you lived anyway.

So, the creation of a comparable, meaningfully different place that you own, is a way to expresses yourself—through objects, clothes, and space. It’s extremely important, particularly for my mother and my grandmother, but of course my father  also  participated in this, being somebody who never quite belonged. And that was passed on to me. My parents, becoming successful business people, they really wanted me to go to a good school and to speak good English—proper British English. I went to a posh public school, which in England means the opposite in America—it’s like an old-fashioned private school—and I didn’t get on. I wasn’t really welcomed by the British kids, who could be quite awful. But, it was a school in North London and there were a lot of other kids from similarly different backgrounds, Iranians, Pakistanis… You know, that’s great. You didn’t need the British kids.

That was a way of experiencing identity that—from a very early age—already related to objects, spaces, representations, things which in an academic discourse—in a traditional way—are normally considered kitsch, rubbish, superficial, all that. It was all completely not allowed. But, it was all the stuff that informed who I was. Actually, that literally made my identity and were the things that grounded me. You know, when I came out, I was bullied at school and soI embedded myself in London, especially the  London queer scene, the punk scene, the cyber scene. You’re then part of a group, and that group is defined by what you wear, the things that you design, and the way you speak. It was not meaningless at all.

This was very often aligned with political views. These were places to hang out and to have fun, but they were also very embedded with an ideology. Then I went to architecture school and, oh God, all of that—everything that was meaningful to me—they were like, “No”. I remember the very first project I did, they literally humiliated me in front of the class. “This is kitsch, rubbish.” So, that pretty much defines the rest of my experience with the architecture world. Everything that was important to me, everything I valued was considered superficial and decorative, because it’s not engaging politically with real action. I sort of got lost somewhere in the middle. My background was really important for the particular way I approach design in relation to my identity,  a  constant construction through elements like objects.

That’s so relatable to me too. I think that what I’m like now and what I value in terms of architecture, is very much informed by my relationship with my grandmother, by my upbringing, and her particular aesthetic and how  she  made her home. I wrote this short essay about her house, and the other day one of my cousins read it to her which was really sweet. I think it was nice to know that she understands just how important her presence in my life is now to me as  a  researcher, as an architectural thinker. I’ve read in other interviews you’ve done,  that you reference your childhood a lot, as a kid. YOU mentioned that you didn’t fit in, you talked about being dyslexic as well.
Are you as well?