Interviewe mat IMO Architecture

I'm a licensed architect in Spain. I studied at the San Sebastián School of Architecture (ETSASS), where I received the Premio Extraordinario, awarded each year to the 2 best final degree projects, and spent an exchange period at the Madrid School of Architecture (ETSAM). I also spent a year at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture (KARCH), in Copenhagen.

In the schoolyard, a classmate asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I said an architect. He pointed at the buildings across the street: "To make buildings like those?" I told him: "I don't know yet what my buildings will be like, but I know they won't be like those. They're too ordinary."

My father was an interior designer, and as a child I loved watching him draw. Over time I realized he was very limited by the architecture he had to work within. If, instead of designing the contents, I could design the container, the room to create would grow enormously. And if I could also design public spaces, what I could contribute to society would multiply. At 13, those reasons convinced me I would become an architect.

I chose it, at 13, and never looked back.

We mainly design residential and commercial buildings, but also other types: a civic center, a weather station and calibration center, or a yoga ashram on a mountaintop.

As for what we'd like to do more of, it's less a type of project than a type of client. The least interesting project, with a good client, can become something extraordinary, and vice versa. So what we look for are clients open to exploring possibilities beyond the standard.

I'm certainly not a legend. But one piece of advice I can give is not to be afraid to ask when you're not sure about something. Since I started working, I've asked questions of all kinds of people: administrative staff, carpenters, site managers, assistants, architects. Those answers have gradually built up a kind of experience that's hard to find in books.

Coming up with a great design is more common than you might think. Being a great designer means seeing it through to the end. That can mean going to the site to oversee the details, explaining the idea to the tradespeople yourself, or spending hours on the phone looking for suppliers and contractors who care as much as you do about getting the project right. On the Taipei Weather Station, for example, the formwork crew didn't want to adjust the curve of the formwork because they thought it was already good enough. It wasn't, so I adjusted it myself so that the roof would flow perfectly. The determination to do things right is contagious, and it sets the tone for the rest of the project.

Once a project gives the client what they want, it's very easy to become complacent and not put in more effort than necessary. That's why it's worth asking: What does this project do beyond what was asked of it? What can the building do beyond what we had imagined? When a project has a good answer to those questions, you can usually see it on the client's face: there's a "wow" moment.

Good design improves people's lives, and it also creates value you can measure. In The Embrace of Light, a residential building, the landowner was torn between keeping 2 units or none; after seeing the design, the landowner kept 8. The rest of the units sold in 2 days, at the highest price in the area.

Designing a building is an exchange of time between the architect and the client. What you end up building is a reading of that person: their concerns, the way they see the world, their dreams. So if I had the time, I'd like to design for someone I could learn from. Marc Márquez, for example: he's a genius on a motorbike, but what impresses me most is his mental strength and his ability to overcome setbacks. Designing a home or a training center for him would be the best way to get to know him beyond what you see on TV.

Rather than a dream project still waiting to happen, I think we're very fortunate at IMO, with the projects we do and the clients we work with.

Teamwork, and not giving up.

Several people have influenced my career. Three excellent architects and professors shaped my education and the way I understand architecture: Mario Sangalli, Andrés Perea and Andrés Jaque (who supervised my final degree project, which received the Premio Extraordinario). And the philosopher Bruno Latour, whose way of thinking about the relationships between people and objects transformed how I see the role of buildings.

The Diocesan Priests' House in Plasencia, by Andrés Jaque. It made a strong impression on me because of its use of unconventional colors and forms for an institution as traditional as the Catholic Church.

Designs are like children: each one is different, and you love them all. But if we're talking about the one that has been most recognized, it's the Xiafu Activity Center. It was our first building, on a very tight budget, and it went on to win international awards and appear on the cover of The World's Best Architecture. I think it worked because, instead of competing with the neighboring Taoist temple, it learned from it.

A professor once told me: "Architecture isn't a 100-meter sprint, it's a marathon." Since then, my anxiety about getting immediate results has eased. I try to get a little better every day and to enjoy the journey.

I don't know. I never considered anything else… although maybe a carpenter.

I'd define architectural design as something that works, that lasts, and that inspires people.

Without a doubt, my family, who have always supported me. And many professors, not only in design. I was lucky to be born in Spain, where architectural education is, in my view, among the best in the world. It teaches not only design, but the many other areas of architecture: structural engineering, building services, construction, economics, composition, history, law, and more. And it lets you study abroad to gain other perspectives, as I did in Copenhagen. It's a remarkably complete degree, and I'm very grateful to all the professors who guided me through it.

Rather than one great designer, we're a great team that works very well together: each person's weaknesses are balanced by someone else's strengths.

Obstacles never go away: every project has its own. On the Taipei Weather Station, for example, the facade quotes came in at between 25% and 32% of the total construction cost. At those figures, a design is usually abandoned. It took us more than 2 years to find the solution: we spoke to 20 manufacturers until we found one that worked the steel differently, and the facade went from 30% to 5% of the budget. The building was completed according to the original idea.

With the listener in mind. Developers, site managers and juries in Spain, Taiwan or the United States don't want to hear the same things. Even from one client to the next, what people expect varies enormously. Presenting well is, above all, knowing how to adapt.

We have several projects underway. One of them is GSV 29, an office building in Neihu, Taipei, which is now under construction. Its site had been on the market for more than 2 years; with our design, the entire building sold in 2 months, before construction had even begun.

That the people who use our buildings live better because of them.

Our clients expect each project to live up to the last one, or improve on it. That pressure is a good thing: it keeps us from getting comfortable.

My grandfather used to say: "Today we live better than the rich used to." Just compare an ordinary home today with one from a century ago: hot water, a fridge, heating, an elevator. Each of those advances, like many others, began as a problem that design has helped to solve.

Right now we have more work than ever, with some very exciting projects. For example, an 84-meter residential tower in the heart of Taipei, built around the concept of "Super Health," for the building and for the people who live in it; a yoga resort on a mountaintop; and an office building in Neihu, one of Taipei's main technology hubs.

Rather than any one project, I think it's about the day-to-day: going into the studio with the same enthusiasm as always, wanting to find solutions to the challenges of each project, and doing it with a team you learn from and are proud to belong to.

Architecture, like many other industries, is governed by supply and demand. Over the last few decades, in many developed countries, the number of architects has grown much faster than demand. That imbalance has led to job insecurity and pushed many architects to leave the profession for better-paid ones.

I hope that, over time, the responsibility architects take on will be properly paid for, and that the number of places to study architecture will be adjusted to what is actually needed, so that training resources go where they're most useful.

Architecture tends to adapt slowly to new trends. It depends on the construction industry's ability to take on new technologies, and on each country's building regulations. Climate makes it harder too: what works in one country doesn't always work in another, so construction solutions don't travel easily. That said, new regulations to cut carbon emissions will lead to more and more sustainable solutions being adopted.

An architectural project, from conception to completion of construction, usually takes between 3 and 10 years.

Before doing anything, it's important to understand the project as well as possible. A visit to the site reveals many things that a plan or a photograph can't convey. But it's just as important to understand the climate, the client, and the product they want to build. A detailed analysis lets us make the decisions that will shape the building throughout its long lifespan.

"Create and Inspire."

At IMO, the site, the climate and the client's expectations carry more weight than any trend. A building is a long-term investment, and it has to age well over the next 100 years. Trends come and go; buildings stay.

Designing a building today relies on many different technologies, each one helping us push the result beyond what was possible 10 or 20 years ago. Sun and wind studies, for example, can now be done much faster and more accurately, so we can fine-tune openings, environmental performance and comfort. During the design phase, visualization software such as D5, combined with modeling tools, lets us see our buildings in realistic lighting instantly. Just 10 years ago, a single image of that quality could take a whole day.

We develop our projects with digital tools and don't build physical models: visualization software lets us test materials, planting, viewpoints and people with far more precision than a model can. But pen and paper are always at hand, because in the early stages they get an idea across much faster than a computer.

Color, materials and ambience are tools for creating experiences, and they're the most visible part of architecture. With materials, we look for honesty: what you touch and see should be real. But there are less visible elements, such as structural design or building services, that have to be resolved first. With the complexity and specialization of architecture today, a large part of the work is coordinating so that each element plays its part.

I hope people enjoy the experience of the building more than they ask about it.

It's different every time, but I love discovering good design, because it lets me learn from it.

None of IMO's designs would have been possible if a single person had conceived them. It's the different perspectives and sensibilities that make a project richer.

Beyond the team at the office, which is exceptional, the engineers and collaborators we work with are first-rate. Their solutions don't just make the design possible: they make it better. A 20 cm roof instead of 30, 15 cm columns instead of 23, or a facade that costs a sixth as much are no small matter: they're the difference between an ordinary building and one that stands out.

Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory, by Bruno Latour.

First, by working with other architects and professionals. Second, by reading publications, in print and online. And third, by visiting architecture, both our own buildings and other people's. That's where you learn what a photograph can't show: the three-dimensional experience, the interaction with the surroundings, how people use the space, and the effect of time.

Ya he tenido la suerte de hacerlo. En 2026 pasé varios días con Ramon Vilalta, uno de los tres socios de RCR Arquitectes, Premio Pritzker en 2017. Su humildad, y la forma en que vive y transmite la arquitectura, hicieron de aquellos días una experiencia muy gratificante. Recomiendo a cualquier arquitecto que pase tiempo con los maestros, porque se aprende de todo lo que hacen.

We've received more than 20 architecture and design awards, and they help us attract better clients and projects. The good thing is that it doesn't reach the general public, so we enjoy the same privacy as anyone else.

•Color: the sky on a sunny day, at seven in the morning.

•Place: Blue Karma in Ubud, Bali, to relax and switch off.

•Food: eggs Benedict with avocado toast and vegetables.

•Season: summer in Navarra and fall in Taiwan.

•Thing: the table, as a place to share.

•Brand: impossible to choose; there are too many good ones.

The first building IMO completed in Taiwan was a civic center in a village, next to a temple. We loved the design, but the government warned us: it would be feasible to build in Europe, but very difficult in Taiwan. In their experience, it would be hard to find a contractor willing to take it on, and we would most likely have to change the design.

Faced with such unpromising odds, we made a list of every contractor in the area: 384 of them. We called them one by one to persuade them to bid. Of those 384, 6 agreed to meet and talk about the project, and only one committed to bidding. The project was saved: one contractor was enough.

To make sure everything would go well, 3 days before the tender I called the head of the company to remind him of the date. I couldn't believe what he told me. He had gone to the temple next to the site to ask the god whether he should build it. The consultation involves throwing two pieces of wood on the ground several times; depending on how they land, the answer is yes or no. To my dismay, the god's answer was no.

That meant more than six months of work would be for nothing, and that we wouldn't be paid for any of it. But on the day of the tender, I got an unexpected call: a contractor we had never contacted had submitted a bid. Someone in the government who believed in the project had persuaded them.

Five years later, the building was winning international awards, going viral on Instagram and appearing on the cover of The World's Best Architecture, the first project from Taiwan to do so. It was being studied at universities, and our studio was taking off.

My morning routine is essential: drinking water, running, yoga and meditation, in that order.

Of course not.

I hope the problems humanity faces today will have been solved, and that a thousand years from now people can say, like my grandfather, that they live better than today's rich.

Keep believing and keep working: opportunities appear when you're ready.

As a child I watched my father, an interior designer, draw for hours. Over time I realised his work was limited by the building he had to work within: he designed the contents, and I wanted to design the container as well. By 13 I knew I would be an architect, and I didn't change my mind. I studied at the San Sebastián and Madrid schools of architecture (ETSASS and ETSAM) in Spain, and at the Royal Danish Academy (KARCH) in Copenhagen.

IMO Architecture + Design was founded in Taipei and Barcelona in 2013 around one idea: to create and inspire through architecture. Today we are a team of architects and designers working in Taiwan and Spain, mainly on residential and commercial buildings for developers. The studio has received more than twenty architecture and design awards.

Giving a need an answer that works, lasts, and delights.

The least interesting project, with a good client, can become something extraordinary and vice versa. So what interests us is less a type of project than a type of client: one open to exploring possibilities beyond the standard.

Like people, every project is unique, with its own challenges and its own solutions.

The first project we developed at IMO was a public competition to design a civic center located in a remote town in northern Taiwan. The civic center was situated next to a Taoist temple, and the challenge lay in how a contemporary building could coexist with a structure representing a deeply traditional culture.

Today you find plastic planks pretending to be wood, ceramic pretending to be stone, paint pretending to be concrete. I value honesty in materials: what you touch and see should be real. When we use more modern materials, such as acrylics, we try to bring out their nature rather than make them look like something they're not.

In the morning, when I have the most energy, and even more so after exercise, yoga and meditation.

Architecture today is highly specialized: structure, building services, facade, interiors and landscape may each be handled by a different team, and it is often hard to make every piece fit as if it came from a single idea. So we focus on two moments: conceiving the idea, and carrying it through to the end. The second demands a great deal of coordination, so that every technical or budget decision strengthens the original idea rather than diluting it.

One of the best moments is when you are so focused on what you're doing that you stop thinking: you just act, and lose track of time.

A building doesn't stir just one emotion. It changes with the time of day, the time of year, the room, whether you are inside or out. Once it's built, we usually go back several times to experience it, and sometimes it surprises us with emotions no computer screen could have anticipated. I remember sitting on the cantilevered roof of the Taipei Weather Station one summer afternoon. I could feel the breeze and watch the trees move, and everything was silent. That afternoon it felt like peace. A few days earlier, in the middle of a storm, it had felt like safety.

A design succeeds when it has value, and that value isn't decided by the architect: it's decided by the client and the people who use it. The more value it has in their eyes, the more successful it is.

As a baseline, a building has to be safe, useful and pleasing to the eye. Beyond that, what interests me is how it can help people do things they didn't do before. In The Embrace of Light, a residential building, we put planters on some of the balconies, and today some residents have started looking after them and even adding plants of their own choosing. For me, that's a sign the design decision adds value. The same test can apply at larger scales: to shared spaces, or to the role a building plays in its surroundings.

The environment we live in, and will live in, is a reflection of our society, not only of its architects. It is governments that set the regulations, and developers who decide how and where to invest their money. Our responsibility is to propose solutions and advise on which are the most appropriate.

On the last project we completed, the client told us: "The building looks exactly like the render!" Real-time visualization tools help a great deal in testing and refining ideas before they're built. Construction is changing too, with new materials and fabrication methods. What doesn't change is what matters most: the experience of the people inside the building.

Our most recent exhibition was the A' Design Award Winners' Exhibition in Como, Italy, in 2026. The next will be at Open House Taipei, a weekend each November when spaces usually closed to the public open their doors. We'll open our studio to show our work, and we'd be delighted to welcome you.

No two places are alike, and every building has to respond to its context. Each person on the team also reads that context in their own way, and when they share what they've seen, a diversity emerges that often becomes the seed of the project. Images, feelings, personal experiences and, sometimes, daring ideas, shared in our design meetings, gradually shape what will one day become built reality.

Rather than a style, we have a set of values about how to make architecture, and what a building looks like follows from them. For example, we believe that however brilliant someone is, they won't always have the best ideas. So we work to make sure ideas carry more weight than the rank of the person who puts them forward. As a result, junior designers can propose and discuss ideas with senior designers on an equal footing. That way of deciding ends up shaping the design of the buildings.

A friend once told me: "When you arrive in a country, on the first day you can write a book; after a month, a chapter; after a year, a page; and after ten years, a sentence." I've been here seventeen years, so I'm down to the sentence. Even so, being a Spanish architect working in Taipei lets me notice aspects of the surroundings that locals pay less attention to, because they're used to them. At the Xiafu Activity Center, for example, we adapted the language of the neighboring Taoist temple and made it the building's main source of identity. That gesture earned the building numerous international awards, despite its low budget.

We work mainly with developers of residential and commercial buildings. We prefer commissions where we design the architecture, facade, lighting, landscape and interiors, because they give us more control over the experience of the people who use the building.

The most important thing is that both sides are clear about what the company wants and what the designer can bring. Inviting the designer to visit the developer's most recent building, for example, gives them a much better sense of how the developer thinks, what reasoning lay behind their decisions and what their finished product is really like. You learn far more than from photographs, and it helps prevent problems later on.

It all starts with a visit to the site, because there are things no plan or photograph can convey. From there we analyze sunlight, heat gain, wind and orientation, which shape the building's comfort over its whole lifespan. Then each of us shares what we've seen and experienced, and we start proposing ideas and testing them. Sometimes we develop several directions at once, because it's still too early to know which will work best. Once the main direction is chosen, we refine the details and bring in specialists so the building meets every requirement.

•A white Yamaha piano: in a house without a TV, it's what brings the family together.

•A MUJI bed: no springs, comfortable, firm and natural.

•A Dyson vacuum cleaner: practical and powerful.

•A mustard-yellow IKEA chair: an essential touch of color.

•MUJI cutlery: Japanese beauty in the details.

I get up between six and seven to run, do yoga and meditate. I cycle to the studio and drop my daughter off at school on the way. I keep mornings for the work that needs the most focus: the most important questions, or the ones that call for the most creativity. In the afternoon I usually schedule meetings and handle the studio's routine tasks. Around seven I head home, and the last hours of the day are for my family.

Don't get too personally attached to a design. It can stop you from seeing a better option when one appears, and it can make criticism feel like a personal attack, when it's more useful to stay objective and look for the value in other points of view. Design isn't static: it keeps evolving, and letting it evolve almost always makes it better. And don't be in a hurry: architecture is a profession for the long haul.

The best part is the feeling of bringing something new and tangible into the world: something people move through, live in, touch and experience. The downside is that what an architect is paid isn't proportional to the responsibility they take on: an architect can end up in prison because of a worker's mistake.

It has to inspire, whether that's the person who lives in it, the neighbor who walks past it every day, or the next architect who studies it.

Beyond knowing how to use design software, what matters is being able to communicate. Architecture is a multidisciplinary job: working with clients, consultants, colleagues and suppliers, and knowing what to say, how and when, is one of the keys to success.

We develop our projects with digital tools and don't build physical models: visualization software lets us test materials, planting, viewpoints and people with far more precision than a model can. But pen and paper are always at hand, because in the early stages they get an idea across much faster than a computer.

Every week starts with a full team meeting on Monday, where we plan the tasks ahead. We use project management tools to set goals for each day, week and month, decide priorities, and keep track of tasks and who is responsible for each one. Being efficient and clear about what needs doing helps us keep to our "no overtime" policy: overtime should be the exception, not the rule.

An architectural project usually takes between 3 and 10 years to go from the first idea to the finished building.

"How much will it cost to build?"

I usually give an estimate based on similar buildings, but the final cost depends on materials, labor and inflation, which can change a great deal over a period of up to 10 years.

My early projects, because that's where you learn the most. To give two examples: the Kaohsiung Pop Music Center taught me a great deal about putting together a winning proposal and working internationally. The Taipei Weather Station taught me not to give up: we spoke to 20 manufacturers before the facade went from 30% to 5% of the construction budget.

We have worked mainly with residential and office developers in Taiwan, such as Puyong Archiland and Baopu Development; with engineering firms such as AECOM; and with public institutions and private clients.

Architecture, because few things shape people's lives as much as the buildings they spend most of their time in.

We're streamlining the way we work so we can spend more time on the creative side and less on repetitive tasks.

Always as a team.

We can't go into detail yet, but we have more projects underway than ever, and we're very excited about what's coming.

Through our website, imocreations.com, or on Instagram at @imo.creations.