Three Interviews: Emmanuel Petit

In October 2014 the AE Foundation invited three guests to Venice to give talks related to the buildings we showcased in the Scotland + Venice newspaper devoted to the north-east of Scotland entitled Outsiders. Our case study buildings were designed by James Stirling, Alison + Peter Smithson and Michael Shewan - a devotee of Mies van der Rohe. Emmanuel Petit, Dirk van den Heuvel and Sven-Olov Wallenstein were asked to talk about Stirling, The Smithson’s and Mies. Before the Outsiders event we sat down to discuss these architects and the context in which they worked. In the following interview with Emmanuel Petit, Cameron McEwan discusses Koolhaas' Venice Biennale, Petit's book Irony, or, The Self-Critical Opacity of Postmodern Architecture (2013), James Stirling's "double view" and architecture as a critical discipline. This interview was published as part of the AE Foundation contribution to the Scotland+Venice Project “Building Scotland” curated by Neil Gillespie, Director of Reiach and Hall Architects, for the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale by Rem Koolhaas