Antonio Maciá is the director at WOHA architecture (World of Holistic Architecture),which has succeeded in creating a ground-breaking concept: Identity Architecture.

Here he talks to ‘SPEND IN MAGAZINE’ about how the project came about and why it has become essential.

WOHA - IDENTITY ARCHITECTURE

Throughout a professional career there are a multitude of influences and experiences that shape the work of the fascinating and complex world of architecture. There have been several influencing factors during these twenty years

of experience but there are three that made the biggest impact on the production of WOHA architecture: people, teaching and research, and learning through nature.

Architecture is a complex task. A complexity associated with many conditioning factors of a social, economic or cultural nature and that evolve at the same pace as technology. And there is one common factor affecting all of these transformations:

people and societies. Cities, buildings, certain objects, -ultimately, everything related to architecture- is closely linked to people. In the case of housing, for example, it becomes evident how each person, couple, family or group has different points of view and needs that are reflected in their way of life.

On the other hand, being immersed in the field of teaching and research in architecture, undoubtedly leads to continuous architectural progression and, above all, allows certain works to reach beyond their limits, providing interesting results in the field of the architecture.

Finally, nature as a source of knowledge for architectural design has been the object of research by architects, biologists, and mathematicians, among others. The result of this investigation is applied as important references in our projects.

The work we have carried out in recent years has always taken these three aspects very much into account, so that each project ends up being a project with its own identity rather than being based on fashions or styles. Architecture that always begins by focusing on those who will inhabit the space and who seek that identity between themselves and the building, space or object designed. As is often the case, once the project gets underway, it is computer applications that serve as tools to elaborate it. However, this process, repeated over and over again, made us consider rethinking it, inverting it. That meant starting a project that had no clients yet, devising a tool that would serve to plan ahead in order to make homes intimately related to the people who will live there, to design identity-focused architecture linked to housing. The Identity Architecture computer tool project lasted a total of nine months, and it is currently in the final stages of processing to obtain a patent.

The procedure is simple. During a two-hour conversation between architect and client/s, the application shows, in real time, how the geometry of the project is born, grows, modifies and evolves until it is completed. During the onversation the client is asked many questions, some related to the program, others about their way of life and about more personal data concerning the lives of the people who in a few

months will be occupying their home. From the answers to these last questions a series of numbers that form a numerical string are extracted, considered the «DNA» of those people. This string of number is introduced into the tool along with the data from the remaining questions, and a geometry appears that defines the perimeter and interior division of the different areas in the house. Once that first

embryo has been subjected to filters, regulations and simplification of its construction, the house is defined in 3D. Then it can be customised on a material level. These are therefore unique homes that cannot be duplicated, because their shape and volume is obtained from numerical data related to the lives of the clients themselves. While in the home, a formal and emotional relationship with its inhabitants is established. Currently, following the construction of a wooden housing prototype, the first identity house is already being built in Polop de la Marina and another eight are in the process of being developed.

This computer tool project arose from the need to place the customer at the focal point of architecture. It requires research to develop it and is based on naturebased growth patterns, in this case, the Delaunay triangulations and Voronoi

polygons present, for example, on the wings of dragonflies. It is a project to be planned according to the three aspects that influence the WOHA architecture (World of Holistic Architecture).