"10 Questions to..." is a series of short interviews with architects and female architects, to whom we address the same pool of questions. In the next installment of the mini-interview, Karolina Częczek of the Only If studio in New York answered our ten questions.
Karolina Częczek - architect, graduate of the Faculty of Architecture at the Cracow University of Technology and the Yale School of Architecture, founder of Only If Architecture office based in New York, and since 2020 also in Poland. She has taught at the Department of Urban and Landscape Planning at the University of Pennsylvania and the Department of Architecture at Yale University. She gained her professional experience at the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) in Rotterdam and in Hong Kong. In 2020, Domus magazine selected the Only If studio as one of the 50 most interesting young architectural offices in the world.
1. architecture in three words...?
a. Openness.
b. Clarity.
c. Timelessness.
2. the three most important buildings for you...?
a. Neue Nationalgalerie, pro: Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Berlin, Germany - for universality of form and functional capacity.
b. Il Bagno di Bellinzona, proj.: Aurelio Galfetti, Bellinzona, Switzerland - for its territorial approach to the design problem and synchronization of architecture and landscape.
c. Nordic Pavilion, proj.: Sverre Fehn, Venice, Italy - for genius of construction, minimum means and maximum effect.
3. the most important book about architecture...?
"The History of Two Squares," El Lissitzky, 1920. - For graphic composition, typography, avant-garde thinking about space, and for simultaneously using the book as a medium of words and an object of design.
4. most inspiring city and why...?
Warsaw and New York - for its multi-layeredness and controlled chaos.
5. Architect you would like to design something with and why...?
Piet Oudolf - to complement my own designs with plants and gardens.
6. hand drawing or computer drawing?
Computer drawing because of the precision.
7. mockup or 3D model?
Study mock-up as a working tool in the conceptual phase. 3D model as a coordination tool.
8. modernism or postmodernism?
Modernism.
9. working after hours or sports?
Sports in the morning, working after hours in the evening.
10. architecture or business?
Architecture + understanding business for design purposes.
Be sure to listen to Karolina Częczek's conversation with Lukasz Harat in the series Awakenings, in which the architect talks about, among other things, her college days and her experience in Rem Koolhaas' studio.
