was born in paris in 1961. although roche originally trained
and worked as a mathematician, he later graduated from
the school of architecture of versaille in 1987. he founded
R&Sie(n) architecture studio in 1989 along with fellow
french architects stephanie lavaux and jean navarro.
roche continues to lead the paris based studio which
regularly changes its name every few years. after more
than 15 years, the studio has built a name for themselves
with their investigative approach to architecture.
they are currently focusing on developing technological
experiments, from which they can create architectural
'scenarios'. these experiments are designed as forms of
cartographic distortion or territorial mutations, transforming
nature into a dynamic element of the design. this organic
approach is concerned with linking the context with the
building and human relations. R&Sie(n) has exhibited their
work at institutions around the world, including the
tate modern,london columbia university, new york
the pompidou center, paris modern art museum and
MIT's medialab, massachusetts.
R&Sie(n) also exhibited for france at the 1990, 1996
and 2000 venice architectural biennale and were also
featured in the 2000, 2004 international selection.
francois roche has been a guest lecturer and professor
at a number of prestigious universities and is currently
teaching at the advanced research studio at new york's
columbia university.

http://www.new-territories.com

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we met francois roche in milan on january 10, 2008.
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what is the best moment of the day?
whenever you discover what is behind reality.
if you can find a way to open a door, the right door,
you see what is inside reality. I really love that.

what kind of music do you listen to at the moment?
the last album from radiohead. I always listen to richard james'
aphex twin. in electronic music, aphex twin is really important
for me. I like the warp label in england. I also listen to a lot of
concrète and dodecaphonic music from the 20th century.
I lived near the ircam (institut de recherche et coordination acoustique/musique),paris, so I profited a lot from pierre boulez'
experiments. györgy ligeti, I also love. I lalso ike the noise music
like merzbow.

do you listen to the radio?
no, I hate radio. the advertising all the time, I hate radio.

what books do you have on your bedside table?
just now, I'm re-reading 'lost paradise' by john milton
and 'sacher-masoch' by gilles deleuze. it's not such a
well-known book about masochism. before his work with
félix guattari and l'anti-oedipe, he wrote a book about
sacher-masoch; the writers' developing the contract,
the protocol of masochism. in it deleuze analyzed the
differences between sadism and masochism, very,
very sharply.

do you read design / architecture / fashion magazines?
no, never, I hate them. fashion magazines are for those
with a feminine addiction. I hate that.

where do you get news from?
I watch TV, with a lot of zapping. I also read newspapers
- and like everybody I suspect the news to be wrong or to
be orientated. honestly, if I really want to know something,
I google. google is king.

I assume you notice how women dress.
do you have any preferences?
it's a very sexual question. honestly, I never think about this
kind of thing; never, never. of course I care, but I never focus
on something like this, but I love to be surprised, I love to feel
that something could be vulgar. I love this kind of vulgarity,
a negotiation with the grotesque and vulgarity.

what kind of clothes do you avoid wearing?
nothing, honestly. stretch t-shirts, because I am becoming fat.
so stretch t-shirts are a no. I'm 45 and have become a little bit
too terrifying in the mirror.

do you have any pets?
I have two little red fish and I had dogs and cats in the past.
but no snake, no lions, no elephant, no nothing, just red fish
in an aquarium. actually, the red fish are swimming inside a
casserole dish - not really a fishbowl!

when you were a child,
did you want to become an architect?
of course not, it's not a vocation. I hate that.

where do you work on your designs and projects?
I work day after day at the studio, it's like I do obsessional work,
without any genius. just repeating the work, repeating and
repeating, day and after day. it's the only way.

do you discuss your work with other designers?
yes of course. with my friends, we share a lot.
we discuss the notion of sense, notions of tactics, notions of
strategy,notions of the reason for what we are doing,
from where weare using territories,to justify what we are
doing and for who. it's a post-lacanian edict.

describe your style, like a good friend of yours would
describe it
I think style is a very interesting notion; for a writer. the style
of flaubert is fantastic, it's something like a research.
it's a research to find and to develop behind the style,
something more important than the style itself. so style is
a vector. in architecture, I'm afraid of people using style,
just to be recognized by their pattern and to brand themselves.
so I hope to avoid being stylish and just to define and answer
something specific. in my work, each project develops its
own specific answer. I hate style. for example, we change
the name of our studio every two years to desacrilize the
brand name of the studio, its the same for style.

please describe an evolution in your work,
from your first projects to the present day.
in the beginning, we were thinking to integrate nature as
a substance and now we integrate nature as a protocol,
as an algorithm. protocols and scripting protocols.
so we re-discovered mathematics, because I was
a mathematician before. I stopped mathematics to become
an architect. I hated maths for the ten years I did it.
I rediscovered that we could define some scripting for the
evolution of plants, to understand the growing system
behind the geometry of the plants. so it's interesting now,
because at the beginning we used nature to mimic its
substances and now we are trying to understand what
kind of geometry, what kind of unpredictable geometry,
we could develop from it. so it's an evolution, for sure.

what project has given you the most satisfaction?
any project where I can tell a story.

who would you like to design something for?
no there is no-one. I don't know, I can't answer this question
clearly because it is very naive to wait for your perfect
clients. it's very romantic in a way; I'm already romantic
enough. I couldn't stoop to this level.

is there any designer and/or architect from the past,
you appreciate a lot?
villard de honnecourt, he was an architect of cathedrals.
he never fully designed a cathedral before construction
began. so he just drafted and sketched, like the sagrada
familia of gaudi. he is an architect of the middle ages,
from the gothic period where everything was shared with
the hand workers. they never knew exactly which point they
were going to construct; they accepted these kind of
experiments of the process. so the design of the architect
was a process design, not an achievement design like
brunelleschi did with the status of the architect on the
santa maria del fiore in florence. so it was before the notion
of the architect.

and those still working / contemporaries?
yes, I love (kazuo) shinohara, but he died several years ago.
shinohara in japan, was using the concept of 'zero-degree'
shape. he was the first architect, for me, that was trying to
escape from post-modernism. trying to escape from the idea
of citation, the pleasure of the citation from something you
know. he worked a lot to eviscerate the references and
to produce something that you can't imagine where it comes
from. I love this. he was the first one trying to escape from
this addiction of citation, which is very important now.

do you believe in ethics in architecture?
ethics, it is very strange. in the spinoza sense, yes. the ethics
of spinoza, not ethics in the way we use ethics now: just to
avoid using morals. this is because ethics became a kind of
fake brother of morals. the ethics of spinoza is something
about the rewriting of freewill, recomposing the freewill.
I think we have to be very, very suspicious about the notion
of freewill in the ethical way.

what advice would you give to the young?
to take time and to prepare themselves for a kind of
resistance. a sweet resistance, because life is unique.
a very kind resistance.

what are you afraid of regarding the future?
looking at the past. looking at the past, form the future;
I'm afraid of that. because the past defines the future,
the future cannot be. so we have to avoid that. the 'future'
is a vintage notion. the 'future' is like when you say modern,
modern is a period and 'future' is a period. just remember
that the 'future' has been designed in the sixties. so when
you talk about the 'future', it's the sixties. so we have to
create a new word to define the future, because you cannot
be modern now, you cannot use the 'future' as a key to
develop and define the future.