The 30 Best Architect Interviews Published in Archidea Between 1990 - 2012

by Edzard Mik

Charles Vandenhove, 1990 --
Thom Mayne, 1990 --
O.M. Ungers, 1991 --
Carel Weeber, 1992 --
Gae Aulenti, 1993 --
Paul Andreu, 1995 --
Alessandro Mendini, 1995 --
Jacques Herzog, 1997 --
Rafael Moneo, 1999 --
Philip Cox, 2000 --
Bob van Reeth, 2001 --
Jo Noero, 2002 --
Mario Botta, 2002 --
Snøhetta, 2003 --
Gert Wingårdh, 2004 --
Hani Rashid, 2004 --
Toyo Ito, 2005 --
Ben van Berkel, 2006 --
Qingyun Ma, 2007 --
FXFOWLE Architects, 2008 --
Ken Yeang, 2008 --
Mario Cucinella, 2008 --
Sir Nicholas Grimshaw, 2009 --
Jean Mah, 2009 --
David Page, 2009 --
Steven Holl, 2010 --
Concrete, 2011 --
Fuksas, 2011 --
Sybarite, 2011 --
Charles Renfro, 2012.

207 pages, Hardcover

About the author

Edzard Mik (1960) werd geboren in Groningen, waar hij rechten studeerde. In Maastricht was hij vervolgens werkzaam als advocaat, in Utrecht doceerde hij aan de School voor Journalistiek, en thans woont hij met vrouw en kinderen in Amsterdam. Voor Vrij Nederland en NRC Handelsblad schrijft hij beschouwingen over beeldende kunst, architectuur, literatuur en theater. Daarnaast is hij redacteur voor De Gids.
Mik schreef korte verhalen, filmscenario’s voor de VPRO en libretto’s. Goede tijden is zijn zevende roman.

Reviews

[Milo Bitters]

This was very good to read! All these architects think they are the chosen one. And in that way always think their ideas are like exclusively theirs and nobody else thinks similarly to them. At least they are all hopeful thinkers. Just ought to all practice humility. Well... I suppose they are very humble towards construction and users. Not so much towards other architects. While it may be true, they repeat that "the client doesn't know what they need" far too often...
The formatting and transcription of these interviews was terrible though. There were sections where the editor (whether accidentally or not) copied-and-pasted three-question chunks of text over again, so you'd read the same questions and answers twice in a row if you weren't paying attention. Maybe it was on purpose though....
Good photos, need more drawings.
Edzard Mik asks important questions in these interviews. He also has an interesting Instagram account.