Matter gives a project its soul. The rest, the volumes, the plans, organises; but it is matter that makes you feel.
There is old stone, already lived-in, that we gather and set into a contemporary project. It was seen, touched, worn before us; by placing it in the new, we are not just placing a material, we are placing a story, and that story becomes the depth of the place. A project earns its soul at this price: accepting that matter speaks of a time that is not our own.
Then comes execution. I design the way a material will be diverted, cut, patinated, folded, taken out of its use to serve another, and I entrust that gesture to the artisan, whose craft gives the idea its body. Reinventing a material is not applying what you already know: it is seeing the potential buried in a surface and deciding to bring it up. An ordinary material can then become a work, born of an intention, carried by a hand.
But matter is never chosen alone. In front of a marble, I already see the timber that will answer its veining, the tapware that will extend its tone. There are always colours, textures, lights to tune, a marriage to anticipate. Exploring materials is, for me, an endless pleasure: searching, rediscovering, patiently building a material library where each sample waits for the project that will reveal it.
Because the point is not to find the beautiful material. It is to assemble it rightly, in a precise project, with everything that surrounds it. As Herzog & de Meuron put it, we look for materials « as intelligent and complex as natural phenomena, materials that appeal to all our senses ». Rightness is not in the object. It is in the accord.
