Courtesy of KnitKnot Architecture.

KnitKnot Architecture is an international collective born out of a competition entry. The team of architects, urban planners, artists and thinkers operate on a role-based structure, constantly adapting to meet the specificities of a given project. 

Though spread across the globe, the group recently moved their offices into the GSAPP Incubator at NEW INC, Columbia University's launchpad for entrepreneurship and expanded modes of practice. Beyond serving as the physical office for its members in New York, the group hopes the new digs will bring about new ways of rethinking their practice. Here, the team talks about how they met, the recent move, and their unique working methodology.

How many people are a part of the practice?

We are currently six members. Diana Cristobal Olave, Alfonso Simelio and Gonzalo Lopez, based in New York, Maria Esnaola, in Los Angeles, Tania Oramas in London, and Alicia Hernanz in Paris.

What motivated everyone to come together and form KnitKnot?

We started working together in 2013 when we formed a team to enter the Europan 12 competition in Germany, although most of our members already knew each other from college. After this competition we decided to continue working together. Prioritizing the use of digital information and communication systems, our practice challenged traditional organizational structures within architecture studios. We formed a collective structure and developed a wide range of projects together: from academic research to architectural competitions, and from non-profit schemes to building commissions.

As a collective, please talk about how everyone operates together in terms of projects and workflow.

We follow a role-based structure that changes and adapts depending on the specificities of every project. When a member is interested in a project, receives a proposal or wants to do a competition, they proposes it to the group and form a team. The size of the team depends on the type of commission or competition, and the interest that it generates within the group. The part of the team that decides not to take part on the project takes up the task of support and design criticism. The possibility to have a certain number of members working on a specific task while the others are focused on something else provides the collective with great flexibility. This flexibility also allows for the individual members to manage their concurrent occupations, which include teaching for some and studying for others. We are constantly searching for ways that give us the chance to dedicate efforts to what is really interesting to each member.

How does this format work differently than a more traditional studio?

The collective structure provides a framework that enables members to pursue different professional interests (i.e. architectural practice, urbanism, research, teaching, etc.). It also provides a methodological structure that facilitates people living in different cities to work together—it is based on the idea that, in a time marked by people’s hyper-mobility and hyper-connectivity, new ways of professional association that are no longer bounded to a ‘physical space’ are possible. This working methodology has enabled us to share knowledge, mobilize skills, cooperate with each other and take initiatives in a non-hierarchical, dynamic and flexible manner.

What have been some of the obstacles?

Living in different cities is definitely a challenge in terms of workflow and communication. Also, being a group that was formed around personal connections and not necessarily an aesthetic or theoretical preference can prove difficult when developing a design. These difficulties, however, have defined our work and have allowed us to develop work strategies that we believe are invaluable for any group of professionals working together.

The most important element that allows us to work this way is that we all have enormous trust

Being far away has forced us to have a very flexible approach to design, in which one or two members will take the leadership in a project while the others lend their support. This approach gives us a kind of organic hierarchy in which the roles flow naturally depending on each member’s connection to the project. The most important element that allows us to work this way, however, is that we all have enormous trust in everyone’s abilities as designers.

What is a project that you think is exemplary of this approach and why?

El Jicarito School in Nicaragua, is a project that represents our interests with collective modes of working. With a minimum budget, we developed an earth-based construction building technique that was both respectful with the surrounding ecosystem, and that also reinforced the local community.

The aim of the project was to explore new construction systems—such as the earth bag or hyper adobe—that could take into account the complex internal dynamics of the communities in which the project was implemented. In other words, this project is to be understood not only as a building, but as a piece of infrastructure that takes into account technical developments and socio-economic contextual realities, and allows us to work with and implement transdisciplinary collective strategies.

Can you talk about your graphic representations and how they relate to your design process?

We think the images we produce influence the types of spaces we design

The choice of specific visual representations is very intentional in our work. Throughout all our work, we use different graphic techniques—mainly textural collages and 2D line planimetries—to emphasize and communicate different concepts. Our projects share some commonalities in terms of their graphic representation, but we decide on specific techniques depending upon the nature and the audience of the project. We think the images we produce influence the types of spaces we design, so these documents do not only serve to show our work—the play an active role in the design process. In some cases, drawings unconsciously lead us to explore certain types of ideas; in other cases, they test certain intuitions or help us translate abstract ideas into figurative proposals. In any case, representation is never neutral for us; the way in which we draw is directly related to our spatial explorations and our interests.

You just moved into a new office space—did you design the space together?

We just moved into Columbia’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation Incubator at the NEW INC, on Bowery St in New York. It is our first office space, and it serves as a physical office for our members in New York, from where we connect with the rest of members via internet calls and meetings. We share it with the rest of the Incubator’s community, which we hope will bring new ways of rethinking our practice, by sharing a physical space with other professionals.

What is next for KnitKnot and where might you see this going?

The GSAPP Incubator opens up a new way to face our practice, providing a physical space to facilitate the development of our joint projects. Our goal is to further define our collective model in order to become a steady practice model, so we are centering our efforts on that front. In terms of projects, besides continuing the work to finish El Jicarito School, we will be involved during the following year in a series of projects, from small scale interventions to big scale competitions.