Speaker: Michelle Howard, Principal Construct Concept, Berlin Professor of Architecture Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna "Architecture starts when you carefully put two bricks together. There it begins." This sentence used by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, in an interview with the New York Herald Tribune on the 28th of June 1959, has preoccupied me for many years. In a career which, for the first fifteen years was marked by intense collaboration with two of the most significant living architects, Renzo Piano and Rem Koolhaas, on extremely complex projects, I have continually sought the simplicity expressed in that sentence.

In this latest project, a two family house called Stacked House, this preoccupation is finally clearly manifested. Materials are carefully put together in their most elemental form, elements are placed on rather than in, coatings are thin and rather than covering reveal even more clearly their support. Just as the materials, the spaces are carefully put together, stacked so that the boundary of each house slides to accommodate particular spatial qualities. The making is celebrated - even the unforeseen.