The thrill of starting over: Interview with Javier San Juan (Lado Blanco)
They connect places and people, and once they're done, they repeat what makes them really happy: take another blank piece of paper and start again. Find out how they work and what inspires them in this interview.
Javier San Juan was never afraid of pencil and blank paper. We would say that, in fact, it was quite the opposite. He created, together with Mar, white side (@lado_blanco on Instagram), his emotional architecture studio, in a constant ode to beginnings, to the creativity that starts a project and to dreams to be realised.
Tell us about yourself and your work. Where did your vocation start? Any first memories?
In the afternoons when I came home from school, I would see my father drawing with his square and bevel and his PILOT markers, plans and construction details for the works he was involved in. I also spent many afternoons building with him the models of the school work... we even made the model of my final year together! I think this is where my vocation was born. I thought it was wonderful to think about something and then see it built, and to do it together with my father.
What do you find most satisfying about your work, and any that you are particularly proud of?
Building dreams. I like to listen and try to capture my clients' dreams on paper, which is what we call emotional architecture. Each project is a new challenge to solve... Thinking about how a three-year-old child lives in a space and building a nursery school with them and their caregivers in mind, on two scales. Understanding how the family we work for lives together in a project and fitting out the spaces for them. Making a research building and creating meeting places for scientists to increase their productivity and happiness. I don't think I can choose just one project...
What is your creative process like, what are your sources of inspiration, any particular music while working?
The name lado blanco arquitectos is the origin of our creative process, a blank piece of paper and a pencil. To start a project we work with an initial test with our clients and a small letter with questions about their dreams and small visualisation exercises of how they imagine their new home, office, premises, workspace... or whatever it may be. This is the germ of the project: observing, listening and reading their wishes. Music accompanies us in the process, each project has its own soundtrack for us and in the presentations of the first ideas it forms an inseparable part of them. They sit in the studio with us, we play the music, we visualise the finished project and we transmit to them everything that has made us dream of their project. The experience is unforgettable!
Favourite colour, book, film and record - in that order! ;D
Blue.
Firminby Sam Savage.
Interstellarby Christopher Nolan.
Cuban styleby Orishas.
Is your home a reflection of who you are? Tell us what it smells like, your favourite corner, your favourite decorative object or piece of furniture, if you treasure a collection... And if you have a pet, introduce it to us!
No, not really. They say that a blacksmith's house is a blacksmith's knife... my mirror house is yet to come. But where I live I have an old armchair where I like to sit and chat, with a glass of wine and some candles lit in two candlesticks that I rescued from one of my first works.
A great plan at home always includes...
Good wine, good food with friends and music.
Do you have a signature dish?
Rice with stuff, you can't call it paella... so as not to upset my Valencian friends 😉.
Where is your favourite place in your city and abroad?
In Madrid, the Parque del Oeste, it reminds me of my childhood and has one of the best sunsets in the city. And abroad, Rome, getting lost in the streets of the city and discovering...
Anything you want to tell us that we haven't asked you, speak now or forever hold your peace!
It is a great personal satisfaction to have found our path in architecture, building dreams, making emotional architecture, with quality and rigour. I like to see that the models I used to build with love with my father are now becoming reality and places to live, work, rest and share.
