In Mexico, until recently, unknown to many, an architectural project has been slowly revealing itself to society. The Environmental Sciences Museum (MCA for its Spanish acronym) of the University of Guadalajara in the state of Jalisco is one of the most ambitious architectural projects in Western Mexico. Not only because of its unusual architecture but also because of how it seeks to communicate the mission of a natural history museum, one that can hardly be called traditional.
The building was designed by Snøhetta; the Global Architecture firm that has been at the forefront of international design for the past thirty years. The office was recently selected as second on the list of the World’s 50 Most Innovative Companies by the Wall Street Journal and Fast Company magazine. In 2020, it won the Cooper Hewitt’s National Design Award for Architecture, while previously, Snøhetta had received the Aga Kahn Award for Architecture, Wan Sustainable Building Award, the European Mies van der Rohe Award and the Mexican Mario Pani Architectural Award.
We interviewed Craig Dykers, the firm’s co-founding partner, to learn how the building design process of the MCA differed from that of other buildings designed by Snøhetta, like the Oslo Opera House, the National September 11 Memorial Museum, or the SFMoMA expansion, among others.
Eduardo Santana Hernández (ESH): Thank you for being here with us today Craig. I would like to divide this interview into two parts. First, some personal questions about your professional history and then some questions about Snøhetta and the museum.
Craig Dykers (CD): Thank you and muchas gracias.
ESH: We know that combining disciplines is important not only in architecture, but also in other fields for creating new knowledge. Besides architecture, what are the main complementary subjects that you like to study and how do you combine them with design?
CD: Architecture and design must capture many characteristics of living. They cannot focus solely on one component of life over another. They need to embrace the very complex nature of what it means to be alive and to exist on a planet surrounded by other creatures and other humans. So, it is very important, I believe, that you understand, or at least be aware of, all the things around you that control or modify your life: Politics, social conditions, psychology, and so on. Of course, as an architect you need to understand gravity, daylight, acoustics and the science of materials and use of energy as a quality of your design. History is also very important. Knowing the invisible components of a society, the things that brought you to where you are today. What of those things are good? What of those things are bad? Finally, in the end, so much has to do with us as people that it is important that you understand what a human body is and how it functions, and what things it needs to have a healthy life.
ESH: Architecture is complex. How does the kind of building you are designing, define the kinds of disciplines that you need to take into account?
CD: Sometimes I say you need to think of architecture as if you are an author of a great fiction book. If language is all you understand then you will not make a great author, you will only make a good writer. You must tell a story about life; you must allow people to see new perspectives; to expand their knowledge and their mind. That is what makes a great work of fiction. And the same is true in architecture, you need to have had a life that allows the architecture to grow as it comes from your hands or the hands of those people around you.
ESH: What are the one or two biggest influences on the way you think and go about designing?
CD: Well, there are so many influences it is hard to think of one or two. Our company works with landscape and interior architecture in a very closely overlapping way. I am not a landscape architect or an interior architect, but I have had to learn and have been influenced by those worlds in my profession over several decades. We strive to understand how humans build societies and why they build them the way they do. Human behavior is interesting to me. I am also very much influenced by the natural world, the world that somehow exists with a different set of intellectual capabilities than those we have built in the human world. It is vital to connect those two worlds. Which is why the project in Guadalajara is especially important to me.
ESH: That is beautiful thought. How has your thinking evolved over time? Have you gone through a radical paradigm shift at any moment?
CD: The answer is a little more nuanced. Probably not. In some ways, I am an old horse and I don't learn new tricks; you are who you have been your entire life, which for me has been built up on a series of events that I have existed within; so, I do not think I have radically shifted. On the other hand, I am changing every day, but just with smaller adjustments in my thinking. And I have certainly learned to appreciate a wider perspective of understanding than when I was younger. I think that comes with age, that you are able to broaden your horizons and be comfortable in places that you don't normally go. So, I learned how to be comfortable, or more comfortable, in unusual or unfamiliar places. I have always loved the Chinese language, for example. I love Spanish too, and I wish I spoke more Spanish. But Chinese as a particular language I have always been fascinated by and the learning of that language helped change my perspective of things, because the way they build language in China is very different than we build it in the Latin and Romance world. Finally, I would say that all my life I have liked to go out into the landscape alone. I'm a reasonably accomplished solitary hiker, which you should never do if you're not experienced, and even if you are experienced it's not recommended, but I'm careful and I don't take any real risks. Seeing the landscape through its own story always changes my perspective.
ESH: That is very interesting. Language is the way we understand the world around us and the way we create our reality. Even our personality changes according to the language we use. So it is understandable that by learning a language as different as Chinese you have gained another perspective into the world.
CD: Yes, I was born in Germany, and I spoke German and English as a child. I learned Spanish too. So, I spoke all three during the day. I use to have dreams in English, with a Spanish accent.
ESH: That is so interesting. What are your strategies for creating new knowledge in an ever-changing world? How do you strive to generate designs that are relevant to people's daily lives?
CD: Well, most of the design that we work with is dedicated to human activity, even if it must involve the life and habitat of other creatures. Following the activity of humans always provides new knowledge, because people are changing all the time, and changing how they interact and how they move or exist in public spaces. So, I am always observing the people around me and how they interact with each other. I like to read a lot too. So, I try to read things that are outside of architecture: math, science, astronomy, history. Also anthropology, archaeology, even geology and biology. These disciplines all contribute to form the way I see architecture. So, I have learned different aspects of each of those things as I move through life, and they alter my perspective.
ESH: How does Snøhetta decide to accept or reject projects to which you are invited?
CD: Well, we tend to not judge by project type. We just would not do some project types. Jails we wouldn't do. No one has ever come to us and asked us to design a jail, so we have never had to take that decision. Deep down inside one wants to make a better, healthier jail. But I think jails are, no matter how nice you make them, often problematic because of the fact that people are detained in them. I would say a more direct answer to your question is we judge the clients before we judge the project type. If it is an office building, for example, a commercial building, we might say no, if we felt the client was not dedicated to the building´s neighborhood. But if they were, and they wanted to create something that adds value to the street, value to the people that live across the street or nearby, as well as those people in the building, then we would take it. We consider its value to society; political or other otherwise, like in terms of sustainable thinking that promotes a healthier way of building. But there's often a cultural component in every project we do, even if it’s private or commercial. So, it is not the project type, it is the client’s view of life and where they would like to go. And as a result, we will do very small projects as well as very large projects. We have done projects as small as a dollhouse or a bird’s nest and on up to projects that are extremely large like the redevelopment of the Ford research and engineering campus in Michigan.
ESH: You have mentioned that your family roots have links to Mexico. What is that relation and does that family history make the MCA project in Mexico somehow special to you?
CD: Yes, I am American, and our company is Norwegian and “American.” I use the word “American” as a term that covers North and South America. I have never personally divided North and South America. I find that is a political division, rather than a geographic one. It makes no sense to me. I find the societies in North, South and Central America so closely related that dividing them is a kind of racist thing; and I don't like it. So, I prefer to talk about America as both north, south, and middle. My father was born in the Chihuahua desert, on the edge of the border of Mexico and New Mexico. He was born at a time when there was no border. His family came from both sides of the border, and many people along the frontera have family on both sides too. My father is one of those people. So, we have roots that go back to the 15th century in Mexico, both Europeans and Indigenous. I am also comfortable in the desert. I go to the desert as much as I can. My father's side of the family cooks meals that are more natural to Mexico and to the tribal communities along the border. Not Mexican or American culture, but rather Indian culture, which, of course, is a large part of the cultural history of these areas. It is a beautiful history that goes back thousands of years. The powerful history that most of the Anglo-speaking world just kind of breezes over. You were talking about language before and how your culture adapts partially through the language that it uses. Spanish is an incredibly intellectual and unusual language, because the basics of it are very simple, but when you get to the conjugations of verbs, it gets complicated. It takes a great intellect to speak it fluently. And I think that is one of the reasons you find so many great authors and thinkers in Spanish. There is a beautiful cultural feeling to me when I'm in Mexico. It's a natural sort of spirituality. That is another reason why this project is interesting to me. It gave me the opportunity to design a building in Mexico. This really is a significant project in Guadalajara. I hope that the building will represent that feeling of natural spiritual connection to the world around it and not feel overwhelming; but still be interesting and intriguing.
ESH: How did you enter the MCA competition and what made you decide to accept the invitation on this project?
CD: Well, there are very few projects in the world like this. It may seem like an ordinary museum where they to learn about basic science and evolution, but it's not that kind of museum. And the name of the Museum in Spanish -- “Ciencias Ambientales” --it is just perfect; you can't translate that as well into English, it goes beyond s “Natural Sciences.”. But if you sort of twist the translation and use the words in a different way, “Ciencias Ambientales” could be the “Ambient Sciences”. “Ambient” in English, meaning they are everywhere; they exist in everything as a whole. That flows through you as much as around you. Most science museums are about looking at science from afar, like there's science over there, and there's some science over here. But, in “Ciencias Ambientales,” in this particular museum you're a part of the science. You are the science; you're an integrated piece of everything. The Museum is a very special place, and I think that comes in large part from the director´s view. The director, Eduardo Santana-Castellón, has been hugely influential in changing my thinking about how to see the world of nature around us, and I think you will feel that in this building too.
ESH: I think it is beautiful the way you conceptualize the purpose of this building and of this museum. Let me read a description of the museum from the Guadalajara team to help put your words in context for the readers:
As the University of Guadalajara institutional and programmatic design team has stressed, the socio-ecological and museographic narratives of this museum are a bit strange for a natural history museum. They analyzed the global, Mexican and Jalisco socio-ecological trends that led them to define the mission of the museum in unusual terms: “Understanding the city and inspiring the conservation of nature that sustains it”. The traditional content organization of natural history museums are by taxonomic categories (plant and animal kingdoms, vertebrates and invertebrates, mammals, reptiles and birds, etc.), or by biomes shown in dioramas (according to latitude, temperature, rainfall, evapotranspiration, vegetation, etc.) or ecosystems (defined by energy flow and biogeochemical cycles). Those definitions are independent of people. Humans could be absent. The University of Guadalajara team decided to use landscapes, which by definition are inherently created by the cultural use of the land superimposed on a “natural” geographic matrix. It is as much human as it is “natural” [if by “natural” we mean non-human, which is actually problematic]. It is also very unusual that, considering Mexico is one of the five megadiversity countries in the world, the museum decided to center on the world´s most artificial habitat: the modern city.
How did this museum concept merge with the practices that Snohetta had been developing over time? What were your inspirations and how do they link to your personal design philosophy?
CD:
Well, that is a great paragraph that you just read! And it really does characterize the value of this museum. I will point out that you just will not find that kind of thinking in other science or natural history museums. This is much more interconnected with life than you will find in other vision statements. For us that was very important to hear and learn about as we decided to move forward with the competition. Our company is a very unusual type of design company. We are not only architects, but we are also landscape architects as well, working side by side in the same space. Sharing understandings, this is not normal for most architecture practices that tend to segregate and separate different groups of people. And the architect tries to find a place where the she or he is seen as the most powerful person in the room. We don't work that way. We try to step back from this position of supposed inherent power. But we step back from it and allow other ways of thinking, especially landscape architecture, even interior architecture, to move the design in a direction that we as architects might not have seen. For us, that statement that you read, talks about how you are getting rid of the borders between things. I like to say, and not to be too political, but I don't like borders. I don't like border controls. I don't like passport controls. There should be no borders in my world. The reality is that borders just divide people and they divide thinking; and the same is true with knowledge. So, if you place a border between, say biology and physics both suffer. So then, you must remove the borders between all these worlds of understanding, these categories of knowledge. These categories only developed in the last few centuries of human history. The categories are useful to say- “I am a mathematician,” ”I am a doctor.” They help you, but if you are not careful, they hurt you, because you are not able to dive into the overlap. We were inspired by that mission at Snøhetta, where we work by taking away borders. For the Museum, we were inspired by the natural landscape around the city of Guadalajara, and by the contextual architecture that we found in the city, and by the indigenous groups that lived there before the Europeans arrived. And by those beautiful works of architecture that came with those that colonized Mexico later. We thought, how could we possibly put these worlds together? Is it even possible? Somehow, we thought deep down inside there has to be a relationship, even if it is not obvious, a relationship between the natural terrain of the landscape and the physical objects that were made by those people that lived in this region over time. What is that relationship? And the thing that we came across after being in the deep valleys, along the rivers, or in some of the places within the mountainous landscape, is that you feel you're in a spatially defined place. Similarly, if you visit some of the colonial architecture in Guadalajara, you find courtyards that do a similar thing, but with architectural features. They define a space, even the columns can sort of feel like the trees that you find in the forests. They provide microclimates in the courtyards, which you also find in the valleys and in the forests. We thought. What would happen if you brought these two worlds together? And so, we developed an idea of merging the courtyard and the canyons. It looks like a valley; it also could be a series of courtyards interlocking.
That gave us an inspiration for this very unusual series of valleys. It is as if a river runs through it. So, it is not a square courtyard like you would find in a colonial design, and it's not a linear valley like you might find in a river. It is both of those things. It is a square in form with an organic valley going through it. We also learned when we looked at the plan that the location of the museum was not very positive for attracting visitors. So, we shifted the museum ever so slightly and made it so that the main walkway through this part of the campus could go through the building, connecting the Library to the Auditorium. This way, people in their daily life can walk through the Museum. You don't have to buy a ticket; you don't have to be interested in science. You can just walk through. And hopefully on that passage of walking through, you will stop for a moment and say “Oh, I wonder what this is” and want to learn more. There are natural exhibitions on the outside of the building that are part of the learning process. Again, you don't have to go inside to be a part of it, it's integrated into the urban and natural condition of the site, which fits once again back to this basic premise of the museum vision. Again, I would say, you do not see that very often.
Earlier you mentioned about the diverse landscapes in Mexico. Mexico is a miracle. It has so many natural and cultural resources. A population that is incredibly diverse, artistic, and creative. Whenever I visit Guadalajara, I love to walk the streets and just see all the different types of people and places. And if you look at the design of the building you can see how it eliminates borders. Things flow into other things. It's not as if I you go to one place and learned about one thing and then go to another and learn something new. Everything is connected. One of the original designs, before we got into the final one, was split into four quadrants situated in a central gathering space with each quadrant dealing with the four primary missions of the program at that time. It also had a quality of an ancient pyramid of sorts. If you compare that to the final design, you can see the final design is more integrated, more fluid, lacking discrete categorization, you do not know where one thing starts and where the other one ends. You can see that in the building design itself.
ESH: Life is just like that too.
CD: Yes, it is true, I mean we were always trying to find a space where we are stable, but if we find a place where we are too stable, then we want to get out of it and be intuitive. I always say that the human condition is the spectrum between predictability and chaos. If we have too much predictability, we strive for a little unpredictable chaos. Too much chaos, we want more predictability. We are always in this balance between these worlds and that is because our mind is literally divided. So, it is symmetrical and it has two different components that are looking at two different ways of understanding the world. We are the product of our mind, and our body is at once quite agile, but also very fragile. We are fragile and agile, at the same time.
ESH: With these confrontations, we learn and grow as individuals and as a species. But, going back to the design, you are describing something unusual, as if the building itself is a landscape that has been eroded by water.
CD: Yes. Eroded by water. Yes… or by people.
ESH: This new “museum” is also disruptive by breaking out of traditional categories. According to the UdeG team, it might be the first natural history museum modeled after the Mexican modality of biosphere reserves. They say it is a public park/garden requested by neighbors, a community development center, a formal adolescent educational center with classrooms and labs, and a research institution on sustainable city-nature relations. The museum component hybridizes three traditional categories: natural history museum, anthropology/history museum and interactive science center. The competition instructions requested that the building help to create a “socially permeable” space and I think that is what you managed to design.
CD: There is one other thing, and this also came from Eduardo, the director of the museum. Very early on, he said something that I repeat all the time in nearly every project. He said- “This project will be most successful if it can attract people from within about 15 minutes away walking or riding a bicycle.” In other words, people from really close, not those who have to drive in to see it.- “And if those people within a roughly 15-minute distance from the museum love it, then people will come from all over the world to see it.” You see it does not work the other way around. If you make it interesting to an international audience first, then the local population will feel alienated. It only works in one direction, if the local population loves it then the rest of the world will know it's authentic, it's real and it's valuable, and they will be attracted to the local character of it. This was an incredibly important lesson for me, and I continue to think of it to this day. I think this project will work like that; it will have the kinds of things that will attract a person who knows or cares very little about science and it will have something new for those that are specialists, who really dig deep into all the characteristics of the natural world that we live within. It's porous, you can come from different directions and get into it. You can go on the roof and oversee the city in a special way that normally only the privileged get to enjoy.
ESH: The rooftop is a public space. You conceived it that way.
CD: Yes, and normally as an ordinary person, you only get to see a city at street level. If you are very wealthy, you might have a very high terrace or even live in a tower where you can see from above. But that is only for the very wealthy. For those that are not very wealthy, they never get to see the city from slightly higher up. In this building, you will be able to go up, see the city around you and experience the natural terrain that we have recreated on the roof of the building. It is not just like a big desert terrace, where you just have a party. Although you can have a party. But it's also a place with natural landscapes built into it.
ESH: I understand that this will be the most biodiverse public rooftop in Latin America.
CD: It would not surprise me. It's quite sizable and people who really know what they are doing designed it: which means not architects. Landscape architects, biologists and botanists designed it. So it is not forced into an architectural form.
ESH: One final question. What is next for Craig Dykers and Snøhetta?
CD: Going to the opening of this museum is certainly on my agenda. We must get this thing built, because it will be an incredibly important building once completed. It is not because it is our building that I am saying this. I do not feel like it is ours, to be honest. It belongs to the people that are programming it and who will use it, more so than us. I wanted to see it built because I think the value of it to society is so big, and because I believe it will have tremendous impact in Mexico. So, that's definitely high on the list.
In the meantime, we are working on other projects that are not dissimilar to the direction that this project gives. We are building a library for President Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th president of the United States. It will be the first time that a library is made for a dead or deceased President. All the others have been built while the Presidents were still alive. It has been an interesting project because it is situated in an area in North Dakota near the Canadian border called the Badlands. Now, you may recall earlier in this discussion, I said that my father was from the Chihuahua desert. The arid prairies where the Badlands are found are sort of an extension of the Chihuahua desert. When you walk through the Badlands of North Dakota, only 100 or maybe 200 kilometers from the border of Canada, you find the Prickly Pear cactus, which is spectacular. Most people do not recognize that. You find similar species to those you find in the Chihuahua desert. They are just smaller. They do not grow as much. It is a similar bioclimate that runs almost all the way up to the tundra in the northernmost areas of Canada. So, we are looking at this site and its relationship to climate. Habitat, which is a big part of what this Museum in Guadalajara is about, is a big part of our thinking. We explore how we can create more habitat for animals and plants.
We tend only to think about ourselves when we are creating buildings and iconic structures; but other things like animals and plants are affected by the things we make, even beyond the use of natural resources. We're also displacing birds, insects and mammals, as we build everywhere around the world. So, we're rebuilding habitat as we build these new buildings, which is partly what we're doing in Guadalajara and I think that's really where it started for us.
We were mainly thinking in terms of traditional approaches to sustainability before the Guadalajara project, but are thinking differently about it now. And of course, with the new challenge of COVID 19, we recognize the value of outdoor habitats in our lives; on many, many levels. Protecting habitat for animals, like bats, that can harbor novel viruses and taking away stress from those animal communities will help decrease the chances of us catching diseases from those creatures. We need to create outdoor spaces where we can breathe fresh air and get natural light. All of those things are on our horizon, as we move into a new decade.
At the Ford Motor Company building, we are constructing a huge outdoor habitat, which will balance the large buildings for the research and engineering departments, for example. It signals a shift in perspective for industry to respect habitat, especially in seeing the mobility industry make such a change. So anybody who thinks that we do not need to think about those things are going to fall behind. Really soon they are going to be standing all alone. Because everyone is thinking about this stuff now.
ESH: Well, thank you very much Craig for your time for your beautiful words and for letting us know your insights on this project. I hope that the Museum will open soon. We hope will see you here, in Guadalajara, soon.
CD: I would love that. It would just be a complete joy. This project is very important to us, and we know that it will have a significant impact on the community, so we are hoping for a positive future.
Interview and photography by Eduardo Santana Hernández, Depto. de Artes Visuales, Universidad de Guadalajara-CUAAD. This article is an abridged version of a video interview conducted on 23 Sept 2021 at the University of Guadalajara´s TV Channel 44.
A previous version was published in Spanish in Arquine Magazine, Mexico City (3 January 2022 ).
