“I think architecture has a power many people cannot see. I was trained in a school of architecture that was mostly focused on style and beauty, understood as something that was autonomous. But I think now we’re seeing that architecture has the great potential to deeply intervene with the structures by which we constitute ourselves as a collective. And that, for me, it’s a very different way of doing architecture.”

“The name of our office, Office for Political Innovation, is very intentional. First, because it is claiming that architectural practices are political practices. For me, this is crucial. The type of politics we talk about is not the politics of political parties. It’s something that is divisive, that is disputed, that is distributed, that is evolving in time, and that can only be managed through political tools. So for me, claiming that architecture is a political activity is claiming that its mission is to create, let’s say, alliances between actors and entities that are very heterogeneous and that otherwise would never be able to collaborate or to gain solidarity.”

“Well, now there are two ways of imagining the future and how architects and architecture will contribute to it. One is thinking of, for instance, the culture of sustainability. Sustainability is something that is allowing us to keep doing business as usual, but changing a few things so that our emissions, our consumptions are adapted to the limits that we’re facing. I think that’s not enough. I think we have to be much more clever in understanding that the crises that we’re experiencing now are the result of intersecting paradigms, the intersecting paradigms of carbonization, colonization, racialization, anthropocentrism, technocracy, and patriarchy. We have to understand that all of them work together. So, I think we have to acknowledge that the crisis we are experiencing now and facing now is basically the evidence that all these layers of reality are cracking. They’re very thin. They’re not something that, let’s say, is even possible to imagine that will perpetuate. But what is very interesting is that in the cracks are many beautiful things that are growing.”

Andrés Jaque founded the Office for Political Innovation in 2003. He has brought a trans-sectional approach to architectural design, practicing architecture as the intervention on complex composites of relationships, where its agency is negotiated with the agency unfolded by other entities. Jaque is a Professor and the Dean of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation. He has also been the director of the Advanced Architectural Design Program at GSAPP and a visiting professor at Princeton University and The Cooper Union. He received his PhD in architecture from the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid, where he also received his M. Arch. He has been an Alfred Toepfer Stiftung’s Tessenow Stipendiat and Graham Foundation grantee. In 2018, he co-curated Manifesta 12 in Palermo and is the Chief Curator of the 13^th Shanghai Biennale, Bodies of Water.

His books include Superpowers of Scale (2020), Mies y la gata Niebla: Ensayos sobre arquitectura y cosmopolítica (2019), More-Than-Human (with Marina Otero and Lucia Pietroiusti) (2020), Transmaterial Politics (2017), Calculable (2016) PHANTOM. Mies as Rendered Society (2013), Different Kinds of Water Pouring into a Swimming Pool (2013), Dulces Arenas Cotidianas (2013), Everyday Politics (2011), and Melnikov. 1000 Autos Garage in Paris 1929 (2004). His research work has been included in publications like Perspecta, Log, Thresholds, and Volume.

Office for Political Innovation (OFFPOLINN) is an international architectural practice based in New York and Madrid. It works at the intersection of design, research, and critical environmental practices. The office develops projects that transition across scales and mediums, intended to bring inclusivity into the built environment.

In 2016, OFFPOLINN received the Frederick Kiesler Prize for Architecture and the Arts from the City of Vienna. The office was also awarded the SILVER LION for Best Research Project at the 14th Venice Biennale and the Dionisio Hernández Gil Award.

OFFPOLINN’s work is part of the collections of MoMA and the Art Institute of Chicago, among many others. It has been the object of solo exhibitions at MoMA, MoMA PS1, MAK Vienna, Princeton University, RED CAT Cal Arts Contemporary Art Center in Los Angeles, the Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine de Paris, and Tabacalera in Madrid. It has also been exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago, Zentrum für Kunst und Medien ZKM (Karlsruhe), London Design Museum, Whitechapel Gallery (London), Z33 (Hasselt), the Schweizerisches Architektur Museum (Basel), Lisbon and Oslo Architecture Triennale, and the Venice, Chicago, Gwanju, São Paulo, Santiago de Chile, and Seoul architecture biennales.

OFFPOLINN’s work has been published in the most important architectural design outlets, including A+U, Bauwelt, Domus, El Croquis, The Architectural Review, Abittare, and Arquitectura Viva, as well as in publications like the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, the Guardian, and El País.

Andrés Jaque was interviewed by Marc-Christoph Wagner in April 2024. The recording took place in connection with a lecture given by Andrés Jaque at the Royal Danish Academy in Copenhagen.

Camera: Jarl Therkelsen Kaldan

Edited by: Jarl Therkelsen Kaldan

Produced by: Marc-Christoph Wagner

Copyright: Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2024

Louisiana Channel is supported by Den A.P. Møllerske Støttefond, Ny Carlsbergfondet, and C.L. Davids Fond og Samling. This film is supported by Dreyersfond and Fritz Hansen.