August 10, 2021

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Peter Zuroweste engaged in a debate with Mariano Gomez-Luque as part of Di Tella Arquitectura's ¿Water or Whisky? series, organized by the Center for Contemporary Architecture Studies. Text from event flyer below:

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‍Water or Whiskey?
Water or Whiskey? organizes micro-debates in which two architects talk about architecture during a short, light and intense period, not only aimed at deciding on one thing or another, but also at discovering and / or building, in a speculative and productive escalation of twists and turns, a particular taste, perpetually doubtful, irretrievably unsolvable, radically extreme, coincidentally joint, or irreversibly differentiated. Pure or intoxicating, architecture has the ability to embody both trends by integrating them into a project at the natural and explosive time that, without diluting or mixing them, differentiates them. Feeling like in their own homes, sitting in an armchair in their homes, glass and / or glass in hand, he proposes a conversation that runs openly while building his axis.

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Soft discipline
Cartoon Urbanism or Dark High-Rise? Prouvé or Fuller? Subdivision or Aggregation? Consistency or Mechanisms? Novelty or Clarity? Diagrams or Matrices? Algorithms or Charts? Negative Dialectic or Creative Evolution? There are so many intrinsically disciplinary questions that, due to their tradition, naturalization and convention, and because of their lightness, particularity and apparent futility, they go unnoticed, but they condition the practice of architecture, yesterday, today and forever. Its presence is simultaneously hard and soft, persistent and vaporous, inescapable and elusive. In this double quality, disciplined and soft , are the most serious and profound architectural problems, and the most graceful and superficial. Discipline Soft seeks to enter the intimacy of the architect when thinking about architecture, his disciplinary feeling-at-home, through brief conversations that operate as an open duel aimed at conveying architectural thought into the discipline, and projecting it further.

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Cartoon Urbanism or Dark High-Rise?
Eternal Arcadia or Permanent Revolution? Noble Savage or Homo Homini Lupus ? The closed Eden or the stacked circles of hell? Green Archipelago or Manhattanism ? State of nature or war of all against all? Plural diversity or elitist difference? Ground shaking or mountainous singularities? Organizing machine or inductive monolith? Regime of happiness or anarchic rejoicing? Public space or common ground? What is more beautiful? What is your genealogy? What is your current status? What is your future? How do you criticize each other?

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Peter Zuroweste is an architect, M.Arch 2 with distinction from Harvard GSD , where he was awarded the Clifford Wong Prize, and previously studied at the University of Kansas, FH Potsdam, and The Cooper Union. He is a researcher, educator, founding director of ZA Zuroweste Architecture, and professor of Project VI at the School of Architecture and Urban Studies of the Torcuato Di Tella University. His research has been featured by the Boston Society of Architects, Harvard GSD , EPA, and The Cooper Union, and has been published by Routledge, Thames and Hudson, Actar, and Lars Müller. He has taught Design Discovery studies at Harvard GSD , and has been a visiting critic at UTDT , Syracuse University, and Northeastern University. Previously he collaborated in offices in Kansas City, New York, Boston, Rotterdam, Berlin and Chicago, notably in the MVRDV urban planning department and in Studio Gang, where he was Project Leader for the Spelman College's Center for Innovation and the Arts.

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Mariano Gomez-Luque is an architect, Doctor of Design and Master of Architecture from the Harvard Graduate School of Design. He is editor of the Harvard GSD magazine New Geographies , director of the general architecture studio FORMA , based in Córdoba, and professor of Project VI at the School of Architecture and Urban Studies of the Torcuato Di Tella University. His research explores the intersections between the disciplines of design and critical theory, with an emphasis on the status of architectural form under conditions of planetary urbanization.