Lucia Tahan
In a digital reality
Berlin, DE

Lucía Tahan is an architecture practice based in Berlin that deploys human experience design in spatial and digital systems. Since its founding in 2017, the studio has produced work across a wide range of scales, from software to construction to critical writing, while developing architecture projects and exhibitions as speculative political tools.

 

Gaining international recognition

The studio was founded in Jerusalem and took off after being selected as one of the year’s 20 emerging practices in 2017. Winning commissions to exhibit at Fondazione MAXXI, as well as being featured twice at the Venice Biennale helped it move forward. Now, the studio has been exhibited in dozens of architecture festivals and biennials, and has won research grants in the US and Europe.

 

A proposal to break conventions

Fresh out of school, at the age of 25, we received our first commission to build a house with my two colleagues Irene Iglesias and Andrea Lusquiños. We pitched an idea to the client directly and were able to convince them. We were full of energy. The house was in a beautiful whitewashed village in Spain. We introduced aesthetics and techniques that were very new to the builders, such as exposing the structural elements in the interior, and building a pool indoors. It broke the established conventions in many ways.

 

The age of the bed office

During the novel coronavirus quarantine at home, the studio headquarters has morphed to hyperconnected beds. Quoting Beatriz Colomina already before the quarantine: “Millions of dispersed beds are taking over from concentrated office buildings. The boudoir is defeating the tower. Networked electronic technologies have removed any limit to what can be done in bed.” In the tradition of Hugh Hefner, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, and Richard Neutra —all pioneers of bed productivity— the studio has become literally horizontal.

 

Multiple studio spaces in a digital reality

The studio is truly a nomadic office and as such it has had its base in many cities and exciting spaces. One was NEW INC, the New Museum incubator in New York, a world-class hub for architecture, AR/VR tech and digital art. It is adjacent to the New Museum’s Sanaa building and is currently under refurbishment by OMA. From there we co-founded Tools for Show, a 3D software to visit museums online and create exhibitions. For the past year our space was at Renzo Piano’s Atrium Tower in Berlin, a postmodernist wonder of ceramic and glass located in Potsdamer Platz with a view all over the city. 

 

Bringing together housing and augmented reality

The studio has the purpose of exploring the intersection of software design and architectural design. We have developed works that are on either side of that spectrum, from houses to apps. But the in-between is the studio’s true focus. Our last work, Cloud Housing, proposed the idea of housing as a platform for digital content, and was developed as an Augmented Reality installation. In it, it was a pleasure to have architects and curators such as Rahul Mehrotra, James taylor-Foster, Pippo Ciorra or Mark Wigley discussing our work and helping incorporate it into the broader architectural contemporary discourse.

 

Contributing to relevant discourses

It is our conviction that AR/VR, spatial computing and spatial interfaces are a pioneering field that will reshape the way we live in the future. And right now the coronavirus pandemic has brought about an acceleration of the already ongoing process of the virtualization of communication and space. Designers such as Alice Rawsthorne and Paola Antonelli with Design Emergency, Andres Jaque, or Space Popular are currently generating interesting discourses around the coronavirus emergency and its transformational power. From our studio we want to contribute to that zeitgeist with meaningful work that will be foundational to the virtual worlds of the future.



Lucia Tahan at MAXXI Credit Giovanni Stella Courtesy of MAXXI Lucia TahanPhotography Giovannu Stella, courtesy of MAXXI

Lucia Tahan with Rahul Mehrotra at Cloud Housing exhibition Photo Camille Brown Lucia TahanPhotography Camille Brown

Lucia Tahan in bed with Beatriz Colomina Mark Wigley Pippo Ciorra James Taylor Foster Simone Niquille Certain Measures Dasha Tsapenko Photo Camille Brown Lucia TahanPhotography Camille Brown

Lucia Tahan Cloud Housing augmented reality app Image Lucia Tahan Lucia TahanImage Lucia Tahan

House in Spain Photo Lucia Tahan Lucia TahanImage Lucia Tahan

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