Ideologies of Care: Redefining Architecture as a Tool for Social, Programmatic, and Environmental Celebration with Anna Heringer
Ideologies of Care: Interview with Anna Heringer by Alma Castellanos and Carlos Cepeda Gomez
This interview took place at the Yacademy campus in Bologna on Thursday, October 17th, 2024, following a presentation by architect Anna Heringer for the Vernacular Architecture class. The interview was conducted by Alma Castellanos and Carlos Cepeda Gomez, recent graduates from the Politecnico di Milano in Italy and Washington University in St. Louis in the USA, respectively.
The short interview explored topics of radical care, environmental sustainability, and community building and how architecture can champion these issues. The 12-minute conversation started talking about issues of authenticity and the application of feminist theory and culminated in talking about care and ways of measuring success within architecture. The questions of the interview were crafted together by Castellanos and Cepeda Gomez and followed a logic that started the conversation from cultural comparison, Anna Heringer’s innovative approach to architecture, and how this new methodology can be understood and contrasted with existing assessments of contemporary practice.
Castellanos: “From seeing your work, we noticed that your role as an architect transcends “architecture” into community building, strengthening identity, and fostering inclusivity from young and old. This of course is a huge departure from the silos and divisions of Western conceptions of architecture. How do you catalyze non-eurocentric architecture to create changes in spatial and social Western mindsets? How can we introduce this building processes while avoiding trivializing it?”
Heringer: “I think trivializing architecture is what happens when you take an ornament and cast it without consideration for its original context. That's what I saw in LA. There is a building almost like an ornament and I felt that it was scary and spooky because the soul was missing. When you do an ornament or craft it by hand and you put time into it, there is this sort of playfulness, you feel that... When it is recasted you are just taking the object outside of the shell, there is no soul behind it, I think we perceive that. Once we are part of the project—of the process—you take the authentic, local materials from the place and you have your hands in it, you feel the authenticity. There is no way that you don't feel the authenticity.
It's just… when people are copying the Meti school (1) and making it with concrete or bricks or whatever, then it is a fake thing and you can feel it. If people are taking the same material, it will always look authentic, it is something that is inherent to it. What I have learned in places like Africa, for example, is that you have empty objects and then you have charged objects—they call them charged—an object that [is charged] has a power: a stool, a stick, you know… an umbrella. There are so many things that are charged, for example, when we go through old towns you feel and think, these are old places and old materials. They have a feeling, they have a character, they have a soul. You just have the feeling that nothing is really empty. I think this is because of all the stories that happened there, the life that happened inside but also the construction process…the power of authenticity that we are lacking in contemporary modern architecture.
Now everything is on a screen, it is casted by a 3D plotter and that is scary for me, there is no soul inside. But I think once we have actual people in the process and the actual material from the site you never get a trivialized feeling. That is why I wanted to test this process, the same kind of process that I have seen in Bangladesh, and appreciated both in the Bangladeshi and the European context. It just works in the same way everywhere because, in the end, we are all just humans and we all have the same needs. That is the thing, just checking the needs, we have these needs to belong to a bigger society or a bigger group, and we share the same instinct—it is an essential need. It's a feeling of protection, and so, the more we react and have these needs then the stronger architecture becomes and it never has this artificial quality after realization.”
Cepeda Gomez: “In one of your talks, you emphasized the importance of empowering women and embracing the feminine qualities in both men and women to create better architecture. Could you define femininity and masculinity in this context and explain how leaning into the feminine qualities contributes to more democratic and healthier architectural practices?”
Heringer: “I think it is the caring aspects… We always talk a lot in this feminist debate (2) about these nourishing and caring elements that are underpaid, not getting enough attention, and so on. It is exactly these qualities that we have to focus on, especially on how to get to the end product and not just to get the end product; that is the most important thing. Just checking that everyone is okay, that you are not taking more resources just because you can. This thing of going more into your intuition rather than into control. This is another thing, we are always learning to debate, learning to argue, learning to navigate through information to analyze things, but, we do not learn to trust our intuition.
This is not part of architecture education usually, you always have someone that tells you if something is good… I realized, you know, after university and winning all those awards, I was still waiting for someone looking over my shoulder to tell me if this is good or bad. I could feel it myself ‘I have to lean into that intuition.’ This is something that I had to completely unlearn because we always have a critic… we just have to listen to ourselves and lean into our intuition. That is an important thing to know and learn about in education.”
Castellanos: “Following up on this idea of care…Throughout your interviews, it seems like you work with a framework of communal care. How does your architecture reflect this philosophy of care and how does it translate into climate and social sustainability and resilience at small and large scales?”
Heringer: “I think that it comes very naturally. We had this situation in this workshop in Spain, with students that were coming and taking the material from the soil, from the field; we were building an oven with rammed earth and we ended up having leftovers. Then, they asked me ‘What do we do with the leftovers?’ I told them ‘Put it back on the field.’ These are simple things but normally when people have leftovers at a construction site people go ‘Ugh, where do I put the paint? Where do I put the foam? Where do I put…?’ You have waste, a really huge waste that is often toxic and you cannot just dump it in a bin. With these natural materials, you can rinse off and feel good.
Sometimes you have this machinery that is aggressive, however, when you are moving the soil even the acoustics are different. We do not have big machinery in these sites, and everything is much more in harmony in a way and it becomes so weird when you have it the other way, it becomes unnatural. You very much feel that what is good for the planet is good for us as human beings. Nowadays, when you talk with politicians in discussions, it is the social versus the ecological. I say ‘No, no, no. This is one unit.’ We are one unit and very often the social part gets played against the ecological part saying that people cannot afford it… Well, if we don’t have a planet, we cannot afford anything anymore. So I think I had the good fortune to experience this feeling of yearning—and this is what I try to transmit to other students and teammates I am working with when we are on-site. Once you feel it—it gets stuck with you.”
Cepeda Gomez: “You might be familiar with the Gross National Happiness Index (3) used by Bhutan as a metric of success for the Bhutanese society. This unorthodox metric echoes creativity but also a change in the data points used to measure success at a societal level. In architecture, indexes like LEED (4) have become literal plates of how sustainable a building is—often regarding the most hermetic or air-tight buildings as the best. What is your metric for architecture’s success?”
Heringer: “Well, I'm trying to multiply all my design decisions by 8 billion people. So when I'm designing, it is constant decision-making. I am taking this material, using that process, occupying that much space, so it is always a decision. And the decision, you know, might be 10 liters of paint but if everyone is taking this decision I multiply it by 8 billion. For water, this would be a disaster for example. If 8 billion people are taking a little bit more steel than needed, a little bit more cement, or whatever, then this is creating the problem. For me, whenever I am deciding I multiply it times 8 billion, and if it feels good, if I'm not harming the planet and contributing to social injustice, then it is good and then I am going that way. This is my orientation. It is not LEED or whatever because then again, you have the materials that are standardized that can deliver you with the figures and the facts that natural materials, for example, cannot. So I am going more with common sense logic.”
(1)The METI School (Modern Education and Training Institute) was Anna Heringer’s thesis project and her first built project. Made in 2006 in Rudrapur, Bangladesh the building was an investigation of mud, bamboo, and straw using traditional Bangladeshi techniques.
(2) Anna has repeatedly defined herself as a feminist in talks, conferences, and events throughout the years as well as during her talk at YACademy on October 17th, 2024.
(3) LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) is a U.S. certification program for sustainable building practices that evaluates energy efficiency and resource use. Projects are classified from Certified to Platinum, depending on efficiency, reduced carbon footprints, and improved occupant health.
(4) The Gross National Happiness Index (GNH) is Bhutan's framework for measuring citizen well-being, focusing on happiness over economic growth. It encompasses nine domains, including mental well-being and environmental sustainability, guiding national policies.