'We’ve been into Hans Hollein for about a year and a half,' says Julio Kowalenko, of the recent fascination with Austrian post-modernist architect he has shared with Rodrigo Armas, partner and co-founder of Atelier Caracas. As Kowalenko continues, it’s clear that when he says ‘into’ he means ‘really into’. Since 2015, this refreshingly boyish (but not boisterous) architect duo have been working at their joint studio in the complex and multilayered Venezuelan capital that gave them its name.
A Caracas banking office by Hans Hollein reimagined
Tackling tough surroundings in which to do a tough job has informed their architectural research and references. At times these become obsessive, says Kawalenko: 'We became fixated on Hollein’s early work, on the Retti candle shop in particular.' How and why this small, Viennese shop interior designed in 1966 influenced the complete refit of corporate offices atop a twenty story tower in Caracas’ financial district in 2023, helps explain the process and vision of this up-and-coming, young pair.
'We thought, wow, these [Hollein’s projects] are tiny, but they were so, so good,' continues Kowalenko, making his appreciation of the Austrian architect’s mania for, often very symbolic, detailing. Referring to another of Hollein’s smaller commercial projects, his brilliant 1979 travel agency interior, again in Vienna, Kowalenko illustrates how the relationship between the parameters of scale and vision can be blurred. 'Although as a young graduate architect the impulse might drive you to design an opera house,' he explains, 'in reality, you’ll be lucky to design a shoe shop.'
With a compact, self-contained sphere of potential intervention, something that characterises most of Atelier Caracas’ briefs, the ability to maximise architectural expression through every element is pivotal. 'In Venezuela we have this attitude: fuck the world, I want to be a power ranger not an architect!' laughs Kawalenko alluding to the playful rigour that both they and Hollein share.
In his 1968 manifesto, Hollein called for an ‘absolute architecture’, one which represents a 'ritualistic expression of pure elemental will and of sublime purposelessness.' For Kolawenko and Armas this offers up a radical practicality, and Hans Hollein is the toolbox which helps them construct this encapsulated vision.
The material choices also express this inventive streak and this project, the reception lobby of a high status financial services company, the architects wanted to emit a feeling of luxury in an unorthodox way. 'Stainless steel has been a fantastic material for us,' says Armas, 'and so has Continental rubber tubing made for pumping up tyres.'
Yes, the impact might feel at times industrial, but every element, from the steel and glass security entrance to the leather-covered, cigar-like benches, is a one-off for this project. At once artisanal and slick; 'We were thinking of Patrick Bateman in American Psycho.'
A sublime bunker of sorts, this is space where Atelier Caracas has been allowed to run free with their own flair for obsessive precision. 'What is luxury?' Kawalenko asks himself. 'Luxury is the perfection of detail.'
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