The pair were doing freelance work for architect Kohn Pedersen Fox when the news came through on Brisac’s mobile phone. “The first thing you want to do is jump and scream,” says Gonzalez. “But we were in another architect’s office, so we couldn’t. We had to keep quiet until the official press announcement two weeks later.” Brisac adds: “We still haven’t celebrated, because the project started immediately.” The jury for the competition, which picked Brisac Gonzalez Architecture’s design out of 227 entrants, said it was “like a large sculpture, or a rock thrown by a giant”.
The practice, now eight-strong, moved into offices in Soho’s Poland Street last month. Since then, it has been all systems go. Brisac is loath to interrupt a brainstorming session with structural engineer YRM Anthony Hunt Associates to keep an appointment with Building, and reschedules the interview. The next day, Gonzalez explains: “I thought it was going to be a two-hour meeting but we spent seven hours talking. A series of problems, through talking to [YRM Anthony Hunt director] Les Postawa, just became beautiful solutions. It was invigorating.” This fervent dedication to the job is no doubt instrumental to the success of the practice. The married couple live and breathe architecture. Since setting up practice in 1995, they have worked on seven competition submissions by night while freelancing by day, Brisac for Ian Ritchie Architects, Gonzalez for Rick Mather Architects and both for Kohn Pedersen Fox.
“You develop a pretty intense work ethic, working half the day for someone else and the rest of the day and half the night for yourself,” says Brisac. “Now that we are working all day and half the night for ourselves, we can’t complain. It’s what you strive for.” Do they drive each other mad, living and working in such close proximity? “We drive each other up the wall whether we are working or not,” jokes Gonzalez. Brisac says: “We are both very demanding. So, we disagree, then we discuss and things move forward.” The pair met in London in 1988 when Frenchwoman Brisac was studying at the Architecture Association. Cuban-born US citizen Gonzalez, who had learned his trade at the University of Florida and New York’s Columbia University, stayed in London to be with Brisac. And why did she stay? “She hated French food,” quips Gonzalez.
Gonzalez worked for Zaha Hadid from 1988 to 1990, then again in 1993, on projects including the second-stage entry for the notorious Cardiff Bay Opera House competition. “It was a fantastic learning experience,” he says. “There is no other place where I have worked where it is as intense. Her office is a bit like a laboratory where things are constantly being tested. And it shows – her work is rich and it comes out of a hard process. It does not fall out of the sky.” Between 1990 and 1992, the pair worked in Paris, Brisac for Franc Hammoutène and Gonzalez for Agence Jean Michel Wilmotte.
You develop a pretty intense work ethic, working half the day for someone else and the rest for yourself. Now that we are working for ourselves, we can’t complain
After Brisac graduated from the AA in 1995, they formed Brisac Gonzalez Architecture. While freelancing, they won a competition run by Europan, a European Union body with the aims of promoting young architects and regenerating brownfield sites across Europe. Although Brisac Gonzalez’s design, a 20 000 m2 mixed-use scheme for a contaminated site outside Zürich, was not built, the practice subsequently won two feasibility studies for mixed-use schemes in Switzerland. The pair spent a year in Florida in 1996 – Gonzalez as visiting professor of architecture at Florida International University and Brisac remodelling a 2000 m2 art deco Palm Beach mansion. But the Museum of World Culture is going to keep them in London for the foreseeable future.
It will be built on a steep hillside opposite Sweden’s most visited tourist attraction, the Liseburg Amusement Park. Brisac says that the main challenge was to place the building within its compact site. “The typical diagram of a building on a hill looks down, but that would face a street of uninteresting buildings. So, we turned the idea around. We pushed the mass of the building, including the galleries that don’t require daylight, to the street edge and ended up with the atrium and spaces for cultural activities looking up the hill, into the wooded landscape.
“That way, the museum reveals itself to the visitors to the amusement park at the top of the hill. It’s designed to be open and inclusive,” adds Gonzalez. It will house an auditorium, research centre, library and restaurant, and will be a forum for international and local events.
