Ole Scheeren. Image © ZKM | Zentrum für Kunst und Medien. Photo: Felix Grünschloß

For the past 30 years, Ole Scheeren has built a career defined by an internationalist outlook. The German architect has lived in 10 countries, and worked in 25, always guided by a philosophy that recognizes "the power of bringing people, cultures, and practices closer together." 

Nowhere is Scheeren's philosophy better encapsulated than through Büro Ole Scheeren; the firm that Scheeren founded in 2010 having previously served as a Partner and Director at OMA. Today, his 100-person-strong studio operates offices across Hong Kong, Beijing, Bangkok, New York, London, and Berlin, designing and delivering schemes throughout Asia, Europe, and the Americas. Despite their varying typologies and geographies, the projects are united by Scheeren's belief that architecture can instill an emotional anticipation of narratives and stories.

In December 2022, Archinect’s Niall Patrick Walsh sat down with Scheeren at the 2022 World Architecture Festival in Lisbon, Portugal for a wide-ranging discussion encompassing the festival, Scheeren's firm, architecture in Asia, and the role of fiction in design. The conversation, edited slightly for clarity, is published below.

Niall Patrick Walsh: Let’s begin by discussing where we are, at the 2022 World Architecture Festival in Lisbon, Portugal. What have your overall thoughts been on this edition of WAF?

Ole Scheeren: There is a long history between me and the festival, and I’ve presented here many times over the years. It is a really interesting platform to bring people together, and through the diverse categories of awards, to give many younger offices the opportunity to appear for the first time.

I was walking through the festival yesterday, and a person came up to me and shook my hand. He was from Saudi Arabia. He told me that when I was on the jury for a past edition of WAF, he had presented his project to me and had won the category. He wanted to thank me for changing his life. After that award, his practice grew, and he has since done some highly interesting work. It was a moment that showed the impact such events can have on people and their careers. In that way, I believe the festival makes an important contribution.

How important is the physical nature of the event? During the pandemic, organizers sought to create many of these events digitally, to varying degrees of success. What is the value of being in a physical, geographic place for these events?

As an architect myself, and as architects collectively, we should believe in the importance of physical space, encounter, and exchange. The physical nature of things remains absolutely crucial. For me, this year’s festival is maybe a great example of the conundrum of what happens when the physical tries to merge with the digital. This year, there are many people, events, stalls, etc, but not much architecture. The physical display of work has been erased and condemned to touch screens; something that could have been easily experienced at home or in the office. As you walk through the space, there is little presence of architecture, or the work, or the ugliness or beauty of it. For me, that is a problem.

You want to use the digital where it is useful, but you may not want to defer everything to it. ― Ole Scheeren

In previous iterations of WAF, it was more of a giant exhibition of architecture. You walked through things, and you were drawn to certain elements. You could see a piece of architecture at the other end of the arena, and it became an invitation to explore. Now you have to click yourself through a screen; something I can do on my iPad in an airport. Somehow, I think this shows the problem of the digital replacing too much of physical reality.

This is a good point. One thing I also observed on the festival floor was how a single side of the hall was taken up by Le Corbusier models. However, they seemed to be surrounded by stalls of manufacturers or products; people trying to sell.

Yes. It makes everything appear extremely commercial, and the touch screen itself becomes a very commercial device. It is a question I would raise for future iterations: could the display of work be done more beautifully, more excitingly, and just as crucial, more accessibly? It’s not just about visual beauty. It is also about finding intuitive ways of making things accessible. That is a big issue for me.

It is also an important issue to consider when much of the conversation in technology today is ‘how do we replicate what is great about the physical in the digital.’ As you point out, it seems as if we haven’t mastered how to get the best out of the physical yet. 

Maybe the answer is you don’t even want to do that. You want to use the digital where it is useful, but you may not want to defer everything to it. This brings us back to the lesson of the past three years. We have managed a lot of things shockingly well in the digital realm. But we can’t do everything there. I do not believe this is ever entirely replaceable.

Moving on to Büro Ole Scheeren, could you give us a snapshot of your office as it stands in 2022?

We are an office of approximately 100 people. Interestingly, we actually grew in size during the pandemic. After a difficult period at the beginning of 2020 where basically everything and everybody stopped, things got quite busy for us. Part of our resilience was due to the fact that I had built my office very intentionally as a global team over the years. Today, we have offices in Hong Kong, Beijing, Berlin, and London, as well as collaborators in Bangkok, New York, and across the world. It’s not an office where studios operate independently. It is instead one where teams collaborate across the offices. We can have someone sitting in Berlin who is good at facades working with the London and Hong Kong offices on projects together. This global network of collaboration proved very successful during the pandemic.

I had built my office very intentionally as a global team over the years. ― Ole Scheeren

For the past 30 years, my life and practice have both been dedicated to a global mission. I have lived in 10 different countries, and I have worked in 25. I believe in the power of bringing people, cultures, and practices closer together. We have engaged in a heavy workload throughout the Asian continent, but we are now also busy in Europe, North America, and other parts of the world. We find that some of the learning outcomes in our part of the world can be used to tackle challenges or projects in other regions. This is really the basis of how our practice operates.

You mentioned your involvement in many projects across the world. You also operate across many different typologies; you have recently designed both a condo tower in Vancouver and an art center in Beijing, for example. What are the consistent principles or design ethos that you believe unites these different projects across typologies and geographies?

During my talk at WAF this year, I spoke about the idea of the user experience being both the core aim of our architecture, and also the tool we use to create it. It is an anticipation of narratives and stories, as well as the question: What experiences can a building bring to people’s lives? What emotional qualities can architecture have? Of course, architecture has functional, programmatic, aesthetic, and cultural considerations, but we deliver them through a fictional environment. Every piece of architecture is first a work of fiction; it is created before it exists, and it anticipates many different futures. I believe that the way we anticipate things is absolutely critical. We need to imagine what architecture can do to us as users and as onlookers. I believe that this focus is what ties the diversity of typologies and projects in our practice together.

Every piece of architecture is first a work of fiction; it is created before it exists, and it anticipates many different futures. ― Ole Scheeren

I think everybody that comes to work for us is somehow part of that idea. It is an important basis for our collaboration. Of course, it is also interesting that not all offices are exactly the same. They exist in different cultures and contexts. It is exactly that difference in diversity that informs our body of work globally. This is where the aspect of working together is so important; making each office continuously and acutely aware of the fact that they are part of a larger structure and family. That is very important to the nature of the work.

Maintaining direct and concrete involvement is important to me. ― Ole Scheeren

Where do you personally sit within the firm that you created? Have your roles or responsibilities changed from when you started the practice to where you are now? I recently asked Ma Yansong the same question and was surprised to hear that his role is very similar to what it was when MAD Architects was founded, despite the large growth in the firm’s size. Are you similar to him, or have you transitioned to a different role as your studio has grown over the years?

Of course, there are structural changes when you go from a singular location to multiple locations, or when your team and projects grow in numbers. Some things change, but others stay the same because you don’t want them to change. I’m still involved in every detail of every project. I have an intense schedule of collaboration across the offices, including virtually. On a day-to-day basis, I collaborate with many offices on both a design and strategic level, as well as at ‘bigger picture’ levels. Maintaining that direct and concrete involvement is important to me. It is crucial for maintaining a clear vision of the practice, as well as for me to play my own part in a big collaborative system and structure. This system is the ultimate strength of the practice.

Does the fact that you are still deeply involved in so many projects serve as a safeguard to stop you from expanding too rapidly?

It was never my plan to create an office with hundreds of people. At that point, the consequences to the business would be substantial and fundamental. When I started the office 12 years ago, we could have probably grown to 200 or 300 people in the first two years because of the many opportunities in China and Southeast Asia. I resisted that. I felt that in order to build a clear vision or position for the practice, you have to be focused. Focus is a necessary foundation of our work if we want to execute it responsibly. To maintain focus, you must also stay within certain parameters, or develop an entirely parallel business structure that allows you to move beyond those parameters. There are limits to everything. It is about maneuvering within the field of these limits.

For example, 20 years ago I worked on the CCTV building in Beijing and was responsible for a team of 400 people. Even though it was just a single project, I was dealing with an incredibly large number of people. I had to develop a technique in order to be able to deal with that multiplicity of heads, thoughts, and ideas. It is possible but it all depends on how you do it.

We’ve mentioned China a few times. You have a heavy engagement with the country, and even just this year won two competitions there. Geopolitically, we see tension between China and the West, and yet in the architecture profession, we see a heavy cross-pollination between the regions; Western architects working in China, and vice versa. That barrier that you see in the political context doesn’t seem to manifest.

Architecture was probably one of the frontiers of globalization. I was part of a generation where there was a global mission to move beyond the Cold War world, where everything seemed eternally divided and polarized. We were part of a mission of exploring the positive potential of coming closer together and interacting with each other. I think many of us haven’t given up on that belief. I certainly haven’t.

However, we clearly live in a world that has become more polarized and defensive, and is undoing and unraveling a number of advances that we had all jointly accomplished. I think this is the conflict of our time, but one that we do not have to succumb to. We can still pursue our beliefs of being with each other rather than being hostile to each other.

We were part of a mission of exploring the positive potential of coming closer together and interacting with each other. I think many of us haven’t given up on that belief. I certainly haven’t. ― Ole Scheeren

Do you find much of a difference between delivering a project in China versus Europe or America? We sometimes hear perceptions that the Chinese system contains more bureaucracy and political influence, but on the other hand, many contemporary projects you see in Chinese cities could, aesthetically at least, be placed anywhere in the world.

I think that to some extent, architecture suffers similar challenges around the world. But the different contexts can shift the focus of the challenges. For me, two aspects of working in China, and Asia more broadly, have been highly valuable over the past two decades.

One is speed; the fact that things can happen at an accelerated rate in China. Architecture is one of the slowest businesses on the planet, and if you work at the scale of the buildings that I deliver, it is typical for a project to take ten years. When you think about how many ten-year intervals you have in your life, you start to understand the severity of what that means. At the same time, if a project like CCTV is completed in ten years in China, it probably would have taken 20 or 30 years in the West. That shows you what can be achieved in a particular timeframe.

The other aspect, which feeds in the same direction, is the fact that Asia is an environment that is productively interested in making things happen. You are correct that the process in Asia is anything but simple; there are many opinions to navigate and maneuver. There are enormous amounts of regulations. In the early days, architects had a perception that you could build whatever you wanted in China, but of course, this is not true. In some ways, the regulations are much more stringent than they are in Western societies. When you build housing in China, you have strict daylight requirements for each apartment unit for each time of day and year. You could actually look at this as an incredible benefit for inhabitants, and ask why more Western countries aren’t adopting such intricate controls on spatial qualities.

There is an elusive difference between how Asian countries such as China think, versus Western counterparts. ― Ole Scheeren

Even with these requirements, certain projects I have worked on including CCTV in Beijing or The Interlace in Singapore show that Asian countries are willing to look at new possibilities, and are willing to seriously investigate them. Of course, none of this is served on a silver platter; you are always confronted with harsh and serious questions of how it could actually work. But there is an openness to entertain the possibilities. Because of this, we were able to realize things that could not have been realized in any Western country at that point in time.

I have never quite understood how those two qualities of speed and regulation can reconcile in the Asian context. A common refrain among AEC professionals today is that ‘if you reduced regulation, we could build quicker.’ Yet, Asian countries such as China also operate a heavy regulatory system, but can still deliver projects at a much faster pace than what is often seen in the West. Do you have thoughts on why this is? Do Asian countries simply devote more resources to their planning and regulatory systems?

For me, that is only part of the picture. There is an elusive difference between how Asian countries such as China think, versus Western counterparts. An exercise of interest to me as I worked in Asia over the decades was trying to understand how our extremely dialectic Western thinking also creates many blockages; it becomes difficult to resolve an issue that has two differing extremes, and the process grinds to a halt. China doesn’t stop here, but finds space in between the extremes to move forward, and finds a different path to reach what is, in the end, a shared goal. This is not an easy thing to comprehend, and is not something that you can perfectly analyze; it seems to elude rationale and logic in the Western sense. But there is a degree of flexibility and inventiveness in this condition; the ability to explore an in-between space that still gets you closer to where you want to go. For me, this is a fundamental quality. It is not about simply throwing 100 extra people at a problem. It is about not stopping, not getting stuck, and not insisting on a status quo. It makes a huge difference.

To end on a different topic, I know that you have a major interest in film and narrative spaces. I’m curious about what impact this has on your architecture?

It very much has an impact. I believe that ‘form follows fiction’ more than ‘form follows function.’ Fiction is an important quality in both the architecture we want to achieve, as well as how we want to achieve it. When I talk about ‘fiction’ here, I don’t necessarily mean ‘unreal’ or ‘unattainable.’ I am talking about a hypothesis of reality. In some ways, it is its own opposite; I say ‘fiction’ but I actually mean ‘the reality of the narratives, stories, and lives of the people in those buildings.’ Of course, we partly script it in a fictional way to anticipate things that may manifest differently later, but we nonetheless use them as a device or a tool to create a more imaginative form of architecture. 

Fiction is an important quality in both the architecture we want to achieve, as well as how we want to achieve it. ― Ole Scheeren

I am not as interested in the formal representation of architecture, but instead in the experiential and emotional qualities of the spaces we create; spaces that make people feel a certain way, that may inspire them to do certain things. It is not about a linear, prescriptive approach; it is exactly the opposite. It is an open, notional approach to what is possible. This is essential to both the theory and practice of my work.

I believe that ‘form follows fiction’ more than ‘form follows function.’ ― Ole Scheeren

Through June 4th, 2023, we have a large exhibition at the ZKM | Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, Germany, titled ole scheeren : spaces of life. There, we present and explore our work precisely under that idea: What are the experiences and qualities that we hope to achieve in our work? How does architecture exist as an object, as a process, and also as an experience? How does the domain of media influence architecture? 

Architecture is heavily intertwined with media. It is projective; it has to anticipate a future. It has to be represented through media, whether it be a physical drawing or a digital animation. I enjoy this exploration of the role of media in architecture, the consumption of architecture through media, and this whole new domain that has taken on its own life.