Benedetta Tagliabue

Tagliabue was born in Milan and studied in Venice and director of EMBT firm in Barcelona which she started with her husband Enric Miralles. She shot to fame when she completed the Scottish Parliament building in Edinburgh after the sudden death of Miralles. Her perseverance won her the 2005 RIBA Stirling Prize despite being vastly over budget and late. She has since shown her strengths with a spectacular mosaic roof for the Santa Caterina Market, Barcelona and the remarkable Gas office building also in Barcelona. EMBT was invited to design the Spanish Pavilion for the Shanghai Expo and her vast undulating, semi-anthropomorphic design covered in willow-weaved panels was chosen as the 'People's Choice'. Her office is now expanding in China where they now have three projects.

We speak at last! Let's first introduce that remarkable armadillio-esque pavilion in Shanghai. Even though you've lived and worked in Spain for many years, you are an Italian architect, did the idea of representing Spanish architecture ever seem a problem?
It was very courageous on the side of the Spanish client, which is of course the government to accept an architect who is not Spanish. They said 'she is Italian, she works with us, she works in Spain and we're very happy that she represents us'. In a way we are thinking they are fantastic. It's really fantastic so say that nations are now mixing with more people and maybe the very important things to be a Spanish architect to me, is that even if I'm Italian, spain gave me the possibility to develop myself as an architect. It was a country generous with young people we made a lot of competitions which made very much grow the capacity of young people. I think in Spain there are many good architects because Spain was a very generous country in this sense. Accepting me as the architect of the Spanish pavilion was a very generous act I would like to underline and it's part of their manifesto of how a nation should be. Very open and attracting people.

How did the idea for using the material evolve and become quite so spectacular?
When we thought about how to express Spain we thought about how to express a very dynamic country which is able to put modernity with accepting the tradition and traditions are very beautiful ones like flamenco, the bullfighting in a round piazza or the flowers. We had to communicate good climate and living in the outside and this kind of things. We did a scheme which is very dynamic. We thought it would be very important to bring about a material which would make everybody think about sustainability or the need to look at traditions or some traditions and to make the future something more near. Spanish tradition. The skin is a kind of very traditional thing re-invented. This was our proposal. We spent all our time working out how to make the idea a reality.

How complex was the construction process? Did you mobilise a Chinese workforce? Local weavers?
When we described the project to our Chinese partners – we said there might be a problem because we have a panel which is very natural. They looked at us and said 'this is so easy'. They have been building bamboo buildings until very little time ago so we have this very strong tradition here. It was just a question to develop a prototype in Spain we were thinking about how to hang it on the structure, but when we had the prototype we just sent it there and they produced it with no problem at all. In Spain we are kind of at the point of losing this tradition so it's a nice moment to talk about it. in China they are still very in used these hand made things are very much the present.

How did people interact with the pavilion from outside and inside? The inside is relatively quite restrained.
I think you have the same skin outside and inside and so the light inside is very special. When you are inside you have this feeling of being inside a basket. When the sun is shining it feels like you are inside a wood, the light is coming inside the wicker thing. It's very special, very nice. On the outside it looks like a strange animal because the light is acting in another way then you see the special skin.
For the outside we wanted the skin to be three-dimensional and we made a big effort to make this happen. It looks like a kind of an animal with different colours and different spots. The spots actually correspond to gigantic Chinese characters wishing good will. It's like these mantras that are written into the sand – the idea is that the natural elements read the mantra, so in a way we put the big Chinese writing and the natural elements will read this big writing so we hope this will be diffused in the sky. This is the idea! Nobody understands it but never mind!

What happens to the pavilion after the Expo?
We're not sure. The Spanish government are talking to Chinese to see if they would assume the possibility to leave it there, if that is not possible then it will be sold. Many pavilions are bought by different Chinese cities and put there as part of a reminder of the Expo.

What did you think of the Expo as a participant? Did it seem like a success or was it a bit strange and indulgent?
Everybody was questioning if it was important to have an Expo nowadays. Everybody has internet and the communication is on other levels now and we have the fantastic possibility of communicating virtually. But truly the physical things are still very important.
In this case we are opening up in a country that was closed until recently. It's a fantastic way of meeting and you see a lot of curiosity – truly a lot of Chinese people looking and trying to learn. There are a lot of people from other countries coming to learn. I don't know much about the big cities in China or their way of living so this Expo it's a really working like the Expo of 100 years ago. It's normal to say there's no reason for an Expo nowadays but for me this one has a real reason.

You have a number of projects in China now, what did you learn about how things operate there
We now have something like three new projects in China and we are looking for more because we had to open up an office and it's incredible how easy and possible and it is to work between Spain and China.
One project is a park and garden in Xian. It's a small park like a nice labyrinth with a lot of wicker also, many natural materials I think it will be very nice. We are also doing a museum that I'm very much in love with. It's a museum for a Chinese painter, Zhang Daqian, who met Pablo Picasso, he was the same age as him. He's one of the big personalities of the Chinese culture of the last century. It's fantastic to be able to do a small museum in Sichuan to memorialise him in the town where he was born. Now we are also doing a tower in Shenzhen.

You described your studio as a kind of artisan structure – is it difficult to maintain that ideology in this difficult climate, or easier?
Until now we are lucky because the clients ask us to do creative things. There's always a need through architecture to make tactile in towns and places. This is a very contemporary. It was always like this and people said architecture will be forgotten because we have other ways of communicating. But architecture is a very strong way of communicating and many places need to determin themselves and they need a character and they ene dto be recognisable and they need special architecture. This means a better way of living for the people. We are in apposition where we need to be creative and we try to invent better places for the people.
The recession was terrible of course a lot of people out of work. But, I don't know, in a way I think Spain has reached the crisis with a lot of things done. Whenever I arrive at the airport of Barcelona I say to myself 'wow I'm so happy that we have a big crisis but we have all this done! We spent well!' It's nice to say there's a crisis now, we can use what's it's done before. We can be proud of having done something very nice when we could.