Congratulations on winning this year’s Mies Awards. Why do you think your project convinced the jury?

Jan De Vylder: I think what unites both of our projects is a rejection of the current mantra known as “adaptive reuse”. Reuse has become an uncritically revered template. As soon as someone says something is “reused”, people automatically nod in agreement that it’s great. But that’s not enough. Contemporary architecture has forgotten about time, even though time is just as important to architecture as space. The history of architecture is, in fact, a history of constantly rebuilding, transforming, and reinterpreting what already exists. Today, we tend to constantly repeat the prefix “re-” just to sound progressive. In my opinion, the jury understood that this debate needed to be taken to another level—one where we aren’t afraid to simply say the word “architecture”. None of us sits at the drawing board and says, “Okay, now let’s do a textbook example of reuse.” Those are just academic labels.

Jure Grohar: Exactly. In our case, it was important that we didn’t design the building as a final state, but as one phase in the life of a given place. Architecture doesn’t always have to be permanent. A building can disappear or transform over time without leaving behind a mountain of waste. In my view, that’s the way to deal with transience responsibly. After all, Jože Plečnik thought along similar lines. Today, we retroactively describe his work using terms like “adaptive reuse” or “urban mining”, but he himself never needed them. He simply worked with what was available and sought out its architectural potential. And that is precisely why his work has not aged to this day.

What do you think the Mies Awards jury is looking for in architecture today, and what would it have overlooked 20 or 30 years ago?

Jan De Vylder: Economics and working with limited resources have come into play on a massive scale. We can no longer judge architecture solely by exceptional buildings that are completely detached from financial reality. Thirty years ago, no one cared that a house cost three times the budget; people just shrugged it off because “well, it was architecture, after all”. Today we understand that we have to talk about processes and negotiation. We can no longer approach architecture as a bottomless well of materials and money.

Jure Grohar: This shift is fundamental. When we completed our project, some conservative architects in Slovenia claimed that “this isn’t architecture after all,” because it was created in a completely different way. I think it’s precisely this way of thinking that is gradually changing today.

Jan De Vylder: I actually like that criticism. The statement “this isn’t architecture” gets right to the heart of the matter. Is architecture the art of unlimited resources, or, on the contrary, the art of working with limitations? People enjoy spending time in both Jure’s building and mine. And if this is “non-architecture”, then to me that’s actually a compliment.

Don’t you feel that we talk about some topics far too much, while completely ignoring others?

Jan De Vylder: Today we discuss energy savings endlessly, but it never occurs to anyone to have an equally passionate debate about building foundations. Yet both are technical disciplines. They’re important, but they’re still just means to an end. The same goes for sustainability, energy efficiency, or recycling. They’re essential, but they don’t constitute architecture on their own. You don’t actually need an architect to make a building energy-efficient—an engineer can calculate that. Dozens of specialists are involved in a project today, and each brings their own expertise. But the architect has the unique ability to transform all these inputs into a single whole. We mustn’t just be coordinators of the process. We must have the courage to be, as I like to say, a bit like magicians. I often feel that architects have started speaking the language of other specialists. When they present a project, I hear an energy consultant, a sociologist, or a community manager. I hear the architect much less often.

Jan, your Palais des Expositions project is based on subtraction and reduction. At what point during the design process did you realize there was nothing left to take away?

Jan De Vylder: We recently published a book on this called Add Away, Take On. The whole point is that at a certain moment, you intervene in the building in such a way that you yourself no longer know exactly what was there originally, what has disappeared, and what you’ve introduced that’s new. Looking back at that project, I realize that we actually forgot to list the original architect, Joseph André, as a member of our team. What we did was essentially a new interpretation of his work. We simply swapped out the mirrors, changed the scenery and the angles of view, but it’s still his work. Working with reduction isn’t just a rational strategy; it’s a very precise composition. The architects’ role lies in how well they can interpret a place’s history and what they decide to reveal.

In the Czech Republic, the debate over demolition versus preservation of buildings is a huge issue. Is it harder to justify demolition in Europe today?

Jan De Vylder: The moment you turn this topic into a rigid political slogan like “stop demolishing altogether”, it stops working. Architecture is threatened by the tendency to reduce complex issues to simple slogans. In our project in Charleroi, we intentionally removed certain parts of the building precisely to liberate others. This suddenly opened up the dark central space and allowed it to breathe. People come there today and think we built that atrium from scratch. No, it was always there—it just wasn’t visible. Architects must decide these matters based on the specific context, not politicians or activists relying on blanket guidelines. We must not be dogmatic.

Jure, you were designing a theater knowing it was temporary. How did that influence your thinking about the project?

Jure Grohar: Psychologically speaking, it frees you up. It allows you to think in a completely different way. We told ourselves that if the building is temporary, we have to reflect that transience in its appearance, even though parameters like acoustics had to meet the top-tier standards of a permanent venue. But what was absolutely decisive for us was the extreme time pressure. We had exactly ten months from the signing of the contract to the premiere. The absolute lack of time forced us to make immediate, instinctive decisions. You don’t overthink things then, which, paradoxically, opens the door to much greater creativity.

How did the actors, staff, and audience react to the move to the temporary space? And did the audience itself change as a result?

Jure Grohar: The original National Theater is housed in a century-old building right in the historic center of Ljubljana. The fact that it had to move just three kilometers from the center was viewed by some actors as a banishment to Mordor. They panicked that no one would come to the new location. After two years, it turned out that the theater is consistently sold out, but the audience demographics have changed. We’ve attracted a large number of people from all over Slovenia, for whom the theater is now much closer thanks to its accessibility by car near the highway ring road. In addition, we designed a spacious foyer in the temporary theater. A month ago, an Ibsen play was performed there: during intermission, four hundred people spilled out into the lobby, and the director began the second act right in the middle of them. The temporary nature of the building inspired people to start using the space in a much more modern way.

To wrap up, I have a more personal question. Is there anything you firmly believed in at the start of your career that you no longer believe in today?

Jan De Vylder: I don’t think I’ve lost any ideals. Rather, I’ve never built up any strong dogmas. For me, architecture is a way of responding to a specific time, place, and set of circumstances. If you stay a bit on the periphery and apart from the main trends, you gain perspective and freedom. And perhaps you’re better able to avoid dogmatism.

Jure Grohar: For a long time, I doubted whether architectural ideas could actually be realized. After school, during the economic crisis, we mainly worked on small projects and taught at the faculty. When you design apartments or cafés, a lot of things remain just theory. It wasn’t until we worked on larger projects that we realized it really works—that constraints, budgets, or complications don’t have to be obstacles, but can become part of the design.

And to flatter Jan a little—he may say he’s on the periphery, but when we were finishing school, the “Belgian New Wave” was just beginning. And suddenly, firms like Jan’s turned Belgium into the absolute epicenter of contemporary architecture. So from our perspective, Jan, you’re definitely not on any periphery.