Having both grown up in Buenos Aires, Leonardo Militello and Fernando Hitzig became fast friends when they both were living in Spain. Those long walks and talks through the streets of Madrid led the two architects to move back to their home country and launch their own firm Estudio hma in 2006. “We immediately realized that we had a great architecture empathy,” says Hitzig. Since then, the pair have been behind projects that are sensorial and opulent, like Carbon restaurant in Riyadh and the geometric and visceral Mamba Bar in Buenos Aires. Here, they meditate on architecture’s lasting influence.
When did you know you wanted to be a designer?
Leonardo Militello: Since I was a kid, I knew I could become an architect due my fascination playing with Lego. I used to create fantastic landscapes and buildings by myself. I’ve always love the idea of generating my own universe without using the typical standard pieces of the game. My game was intuition.
Fernando Hitzig: I enjoyed destroying my toys, trying to understand their internal mechanisms. Drawing was one of my hobbies since childhood, so technical curiosity and art were both very present as well. As a teenager, architecture seemed to fit perfectly in my imaginary lifestyle as a grownup.
What are some of your earliest design memories?
LM: Drawing at the age of 6 from the balcony of my house, waiting for my father to come back from work. In those years I was already drawing with perspective—of course the kind of perspective typical of a 6-year-old boy.
FH: My father influenced me as a kid to love art in all of its expressions: paintings, objects, furniture. I remember at 10 years old listening to the conversations of my father with an architect who was explaining the renovation of my parents’ house. Those were quite big discussions about design and aesthetic concepts. This was the first time I began thinking about the power of design.
What is one of your recent projects and what are the design details?
LM: Mamba in Buenos AIres has especially interesting details in its dinning areas. The construction complexity of their abstract shapes was a challenge from the design by using specific tools in 3D to figure out the best way to build it.
FH: Ualá headquarters in Buenos Aires office is a young technology company. Its owner shares a very interesting vision of how the employees should feel about the company. It was a great opportunity for our office to create their workspace and environment. It is very gratifying as an architect when we can perceive the improvement in daily life for so many people who make use of a customized space.
What is one of your most challenging projects?
LM: We were commissioned for a project [Carbon] in Riyadh. This was a challenge not only because of the use of diverse materials, but also because the leisure spaces were unlimited depending on each culture. It is very interesting how different cultures can perceive and use space.
What is the best piece of advice you’ve received?
LM: Persevere in an idea and demonstrate that it is possible to develop it, regardless of the difficulty and demand of the client, who often only has a limited vision of the idea.
FH: Work hard, but as if you were playing.
What are the most challenging and exciting aspects of your job?
FH: There’s not one day similar to the previous or the next one. In our office, we develop different kinds of projects—homes, restaurants, nightclubs, offices—which makes us think constantly in different kind of clients, scales, and typologies. I find this “mental gym” very exciting, together with the daily exercise of balancing creativity and technical aspects.
How would you describe your design language?
LM: We carry out a practice as architects and not only as designers. We are the difference between building an interior and decorating it. We are interested in enforcing the duty to build the decoration and not to decorate the construction. In each project there is a meta-message external to its forms, images, words, and elements of our contemporary culture, and we translate it. Having worked with creative agencies, artists, and designers, it allowed us to understand architecture as a sensorial, cultural, and visual experience that shape the universe that defines our works.
FH: We conceive architecture as a living experience. All in all, our language is always pursuing contemporaneity and honesty in spaces and materials.
Is there an architect or designer you most admire? Why?
LM: Bjarke Ingels because he managed to incorporate sustainability, politics, idealism, and culture into his concepts. And [he’s able to] translate it into a practical language outside the precepts of modern architecture.
FH: Portuguese architect Alvaro Siza. I had the opportunity to visit many of his works and always felt emotionally mobilized by the poetry of his spaces, his shapes, and details.
What would be your dream project and why?
FH: A kindergarten school, and provide through architecture the possibilities for kids to explore their imagination and creativity. This would be a project with absolutely no preconceptions of space. Providing a quality space for children would be my humble share of sand for a better future world.
If you could have dinner with anyone, living or dead, who would it be?
LM: David Lynch. He has managed to create his own language through meditative experiences, those that connect one with their essence.
FH: David Bowie. I’ve always found his creative process fascinating, the eclecticism of sounds in each of his works. I can find many analogies between his music and architecture, rhythms, textures, space, language. I always admired that Bowie is in a continual state of evolution.
Where would you eat and what would you be having?
LM: We would go back to 1969 and eat sausages and drink sangria at El Quixote, a bar and restaurant adjacent to the Chelsea Hotel in New York.
FH: Any British street market, eating whatever he recommends.
If you weren’t a designer, what would you be?
LM: Filmmaker. I think it’s a discipline where there are many more tools to express experiences, build sensory worlds, and play with the significance of time.
FH: A part-time librarian, cook, and gardener.
