Excerpt from an interview conducted on site by Felix Arranz.

Félix Arranz: You work now as you did at that workshop [Javier Carvajal Experimental Group]?
Juan Coll-Barreu: Probably the work in the studio has to do with that experience. It is a dynamic work and dialogue among us all, very connected with the outside, with all disciplines, with the constraints of each problem and the conditions of our present.

FA: What is more transmitted between partners of the study: knowledge or ways of doing?
J: More than a transmission, is a sum. Hence out the projects.

FA: Do you establish a relationship between what happens in the studio and what happens in school?
J: I think the training in projects should perhaps be largely self-taught, and that the teacher must exercise more as companion than as watchdog in the experiment. I also think that company of the teacher, to be honest and inspiring, can not be separated from their professional practice.
Once the studies are finished, such training is less self-taught and is more traditional, it has more to do with the support of others, other architects at the beginning, then of  co-workers, in any case many people from whom one can learn.

FA: Let's talk about City of Jaca Hockey Arena (Huesca), which is scheduled to open this winter. How this project started from the point of view of the work process?
J: We started working with models of the place, fitting spatially the program, we work with different configurations of tracks and the morphological connection to the plot, the slope and the city. We attended the recent growth of Jaca and building opportunities for improvement. Keep in mind that we are in a rather unique setting, for the jump that is generated between the historic town and the sports city.
We also work a certain dreaminess of the concepts of winter sport, its technification ... From the clarity and clean air, silence common in winter sports ... It is often what motivates skiing. Transparency may be one of the paradigms of our study, understood, especially as no need to close, to put doors, or to put up walls.
At the end, it comes a time that, when processing all, the project changes and comes up the form of the membrane, which was proved capable of incorporating any functional aspect of the program. It meant a gesture in the landscape from which we fell in love. All subsequent decisions were a logical consequence of that membrane.
We work hard on defining the structure, make membrane structure and facilities were consolidated. We had a very close relationship throughout the process with our consultants, we wanted each specialty unit was aware of the problem.
We also had to raise a building which cuold be built in a race against the clock, almost no coating, no construction details, we should look for the minimum.

FA: There are many projects that respond accurately to the description so the word that the title –pavilion, for example- matches the shape of the building. In your case, it seems a result rather than a starting point ...
J: We named "drop" to this membrane when working the contest. We felt like a drop of water has the advantage that it can enclose the largest continent with the least possible structure or even in the absence of it. Just a surface for a water drop is deposited, and it is enough that surface structure to contain the entire volume. There is no container.
In turn, was an element that did not provide directional facades any point in its environment, which we understood to be positive in the yard. To access the building is not necessary to deal with any front but just pass through, as you can go through a natural membrane or a water curtain.
The fact of escape from trabeated structures, truss ... we felt it as a value that the form itself was the structural support.

FA: descriptive geometry as a technique of grapg-mathematical representation that currently has delegated to the CAD software, is it possible to dispense with the old technique today?
J: No, because it can solve everything. The geometry is the mathematical description of the architect. Holds architecture allows all the freedom that provides knowledge of the topography and space.
Today, computers allow us to travel faster throught descriptive geometry, use it better. The computer does not replace anything, but allows for a wider range of variants in the same time. The computer allows us to be more accurate, faster, more efficient in our encounter with geometry.

FA: In the firm, are you interested in architectures that have to do with geometry?
J: Our vision of architecture is as pragmatic as ambitious. The two issues that seem most important of the architecture are, first, their actual work with the future, ie their ability to change this and improve it. This immediately requires a social commitment. Furthermore, the architecture exists precisely to become a reality, to create, to be. The architecture has an infinite thirst for completion. So obviously, we do not seem close to architecture those illusions which in themselves are not willing to realization. This does not mean that Architecture should be constructible in the sense of laws and regulations adapted to the current constructive possibilities. Quite the contrary. It means that just because it has a transformer willing of the present, it must have sufficient capacity to expand the possibilities of this. The constructibility is a necessity and, therefore, not an imposition to be obeyed, but an added difficulty to work with. It is necessary to modify, improve, the conditions established in society and industry.

FA: And this, what compels you in project process in relation to industrial suppliers?
J: We should be obliged to go ahead of what we can be offered.
Not win the battle that is not maintained. We always try, though supposed to multiply our efforts, and we get sometimes. In general, very difficult to involve the industry suppliers.
The first work is done with the consultants (structures, installations, traffic ...). We intend for the multidisciplinary work is guided by the architect, the consultant tried to enter into the dynamic of the project.

FA: Has the economy  a role in your project or just at the end?
J: Unfortunately for us and luckily for the project, it appears at first. We organize the project from an outline budget. We incorporate the budget from the outset in the decision process. When we design, we measured continuously, add and multiply continuously.

FA: How do you get to make the economy a structural element and work amid the madness of the market?
J: Within this context, we tried that the value is above the price. The buildings and those who use them are those who say if it is so.
For us the foundation is that there can be no opposition to the project. It means it’s not possible that something is not embedded in it. The project may require all, and the project must respond to everything. If something escapes, is that the project is not right.

FA: What do you think about the graphic representation in the design process?
J: In the study we always try to have a great internal sincerity and project development can be translated as it is. We fled to the devices, immediate metaphors. We try to represent a project in all its reality.

FA: What about the materials? For you, are too restrictive construction techniques such as, let’s say, the concrete formwork?
J: I guess your question relates to some works in Bilbao. It is true that in the Basque Country, where the aggregates and the processes are somewhat different, we treat differently the concrete. The concrete is about, much more than we think, with where you are going to rise it.
In Bilbao we are completing a building for a sports center, swimming pools and parking where we use prefabricated coloured concrete. Somehow, we plan to use concrete as something almost transparent, as if the front did not exist. We are using in other projects underway locals, doing almost precast concrete curtain walls, with great possibilities of nuance between the interior and exterior ...

FA: Where is the ornament?
J: Its whether or not it’s never been a problem for us. The way of working of our study is perhaps more direct and in that sense, the logic of the elements provide the solution.
In general, the way we work is similar to that of someone who puts something over another or one thing beside another, with the logic to support a book on a table or place the cup on the plate. No arguments or complex compositional organizations in space: there is no recreation or the form or the elevation, which is often lacking. No tricks. We never have self-imposed a form or a place to go.

FA: By the way, how do you calculate the price of a membrane?
J: (Smiles) is modeled, tested, research, improved solutions are asked a lot of people have pretty small and very large compared, checked, prior experiences help, for example, special façades, in complex circumstances access ... We try to project the future reality.