48|PROTAGONISTA who worked with me on this project, were a big help. Some aspects had to be dropped because the place had its one technicians, with their habits and set ways, but we won many battles. As a matter of fact, a large attractive of the station, that continues to win prizes, is the lighting, although it has other values too. For example: it won the prize for best subterranean work in the world. When you run into limitations, such as impossibility to place special light sources or having to control the pollution of the stations, you have a complicated project on your hands. There were many factors that determined our actions but at the end we were able to create a good lighting in it. You have completed projects in many countries around the world, places like Japan, France, Germany and Italy. Is light understood differently at a cultural level? If so, how does this influence your work when illuminating a space in a particular country? I have done things outside of Spain, but not many. Today, these local differences are practically extinct. We all have the same product catalogues, here or in Japan. The only thing is that some products and luminaries are so expensive that we are not allowed to use them on some projects. There still are some cultural differences such as the tribute to shadow that you see in Japan; or in the United States, where I am always surprised by the low light there is in the restaurants in New York. In Spain this has recently changed with the new cuisine but, when I was young, Spanish restaurants had a tremendous excess of light, with many fluorescents on the ceiling. So when you went to a restaurant in New York, with such low lights and so many sparkling people, you were impressed. To be sure, you can err and go too dark, people need enough light to read the menu but in my opinion, in a restaurant, light should be controlled. A restaurant is one of the most exciting projects for an architect because it is a place of celebration. They are not places you visit every day so when you go it has to be magic. Light is fundamental to achieve this. I agree, food is paramount in a restaurant but next come sound and light. In a noisy an inadequately illuminated place nobody can have a good time. Ultimately and in response to your question, today, information travels so fast that certain characteristics fly from one part of the world to another in a week. For example, substituting the light of candles is very difficult. There is something about candle light, especially if you place it in the middle of a table, which creates a luminous and poetic space, a vibration and a warmth that is not easy to duplicate. That is why, regardless of how many technological advances turn up, it is appropriate to place candles in certain places, just as it is done today in many countries. Light technologies are moving forward and every day there are more studios that specialize in lighting. How do you see the future of this sector? In my opinion, the world in general and particularly the world of construction evolves slowly. Today, construction is worse than in the XVIII century. I am a firm believer of this. There is more construction, no doubt, but a good bourgeois house built in Paris in the XVIII has a thermal inertia, a thickness of facade and the capacity to withstand time that none of the modern constructions have. In general, in the last decades we have experienced two fundamental advances: the birth of computing - with considerable savings in paper - in my sector, for example, the way we save blueprints has completely changed, and communications. Now, I can work with an architect who is kilometers away from here. These two aspects are a huge step. Lighting has advanced fast too, and keeps on changing every year which is why we cannot imagine how Antonio Gaudí would have illuminated the “Sagrada Familia”. When I reinforced the lighting in the interior of the “Palau de la Musica Catalana” I had to think how Doménechi Montaner would have done it. He left me a clue. Basically, it consists on placing many spots of low intensity light. I complied with this rule even though the modern materials and products are very different to the ones of his time. Do you think that, with time, architects will have more professionals specialized in lighting to work with them? I am sure that, more and more, we will work with lighting professionals and everyday there will be more architects specializing in lighting. For example, when I graduated there weren’t many architects specialized in landscaping; now there are many. It’s a very good specialization for an architect. Lighting is not purely engineering calculation - actually, those can be done by a computer program today – it is a matter of imagination and projection. It is an architectural project. While natural light has been considered since ancient times, as in the wonderful Roman Parthenon, artificial light, on the other hand, is a recent profession. I remember one time in a Congress, a well-known architect from Madrid explained to us one of his projects: a school for children. After we analyzed various architectural aspects, I dared asked him about the luminaries; I thought they were shameful. They were these screens hanging from the ceiling, with some ill-fitting lightbulbs. It looked like nobody had given any thought to the topic. On another occasion, my partner Luis Clotet and I were with some architects in Seville looking at the project of a library. When we saw it we had to ask: “How will you illuminate the reading rooms?”, and they answered: “You Catalans are so particular with these topics!” (Laughs) The light in a library, which is one of those magic things, is of paramount importance. The lighting of the reading space as well as the lighting of the shelves have to be considered. They are fundamental to a place dedicated to reading and these people had not given it a thought before we brought it up. Yet another time, when