THE PHYSICS OF CULTURE

The migration of people to cities will mainly happen in between the tropics, in developing countries. So, the places we create to host those urban dwellers will have to deal with heat and scarcity of means.
Grafton architects have been known for some time now, having recovered a certain civic quality while working mainly for educational institutions. Such buildings, seen with one eye, are an abstract composition of pieces and volumes; seen with the other eye, they are a very familiar and direct constructive arrangement of walls and windows. Perhaps this is why Grafton’s architecture is simultaneously timeless and contemporary.
While moving on to work in Peru, these architectural qualities were maintained, they just introduced some distance in between the volumes and pieces. And by doing so, they transformed the intermediate spaces, which in principle are nothing but air, into new shaded, double-, triple-, or quadruple-height outdoor gathering spaces.
They introduced a civic scale into spaces that are normally just leftovers outside formal, air-conditioned rooms. They expanded the range of inhabitable places in hot climates by acknowledging the fact that the spaces in between are a luxury that cold countries cannot afford, with the advantage that these only partially defined places can be achieved at a fraction of the cost of conventional rooms.