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STUDIO ANNE HOLTROP

Anne Holtrop (b.1977 the Netherlands), principal at Studio Anne Holtrop
in conversation with Adrian Labaut, founder of PFAALL Magazine.

Art Institute, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Ongoing (due Dec, 2025).

(AL) Is there a conceptual work or theme that underlies your work?

(AH) I believe there are a few driving forces behind my work. Firstly, it’s often more like an attitude than a specific goal. When we work on something, we don’t want to know its outcome. So, we start with open-ended projects, avoiding preconceived ideas and knowledge. This “knowing” is so open that it can take many forms, which I find crucial because my work is a research and an experiment. It’s not just about producing an outcome; that’s what drives us.
Another force is what I call a “material gesture.” It’s the materiality of the space we work with. How we approach new ways of working, sourcing, and processing materials leads us to discover new spatial conditions that we can propose. Then, I add more elements to the project because this process always deals with a specific site. It’s not just the site where we build but also the sites where we source our materials, process them, and where material travels. All of these factors inform the work and, consequently, the spatial outcome.

(AL) And if I can ask, how does that connect with the specificities of a commission? You are normally asked to do something very specific, but instead of a plan, it seems that you probably start from the other side, which is more artistic, like casting, experimenting. So how do these things come together at the end?

(AH) It’s a chicken-and-egg question, really. I continuously work on a body of work that’s growing and has become a critical mass, pushing me constantly forward. It’s a weight you constantly try to escape, but you always respond to it. That’s one reason why comparisons emerge with other artistic disciplines.

The other part is dealing with commissions. How can you specifically relate to them from that position? Because that’s the best you can give – it’s not just about solving the commission or being solved as a puzzle. It’s about finding a clear connection and giving something meaningful through that commission.
That’s how I work. The body of work is the most pressing because if you want to work without preconceived ideas, you can’t reproduce your work, even if it’s successful. You constantly need to escape it and question your work. But in that sense, you’re always in dialogue with your past work.

Now, if you just graduate from architecture school, you have nothing. You’re completely light and free, which is the most beautiful situation to be in. But the moment you start doing things, you build up that weight. And now, my graduation was over 20 years ago, so there’s more weight there.
It also makes it so that the things can gain more depth, but the challenge for myself is always how to escape it.

Customs House (Manama Central Post Office), Manama, Bahrain, 2019.
photo © Anne Holtrop

Pearling Exhibition, Muharraq, Bahrain, 2018.
photo © Anne Holtrop

(AL) Yeah. I follow your work and you can see how it seems to get more weight. I think you see it in many other professions, like art, or music, as a spectator you wait for the next project by this or that artist, because it will contain something else, and you may not like it or it may surprise you, but that’s the interesting thing about it.

(AH) Yes, there are things that I’m interested in that we’re still developing and trying to figure out. In general, this revolves around the relationship between the site, its materiality, and the ways in which we can alter and form it.

However, about form, I see a lot in architecture, and I think people probably think I must be crazy about it. But form is something we hardly ever work on directly. If I draw a form or shape the material directly into one, I feel very uncomfortable with it. So, for me, it has to come out of a process. It’s much more related to an engagement with it. That takes time, and in that time, something alters in a state that eventually stabilizes, and that’s the real outcome. The form is more consequential as an outcome rather than me insisting on that form, and that’s key to me.

I think people might misunderstand this.

(AL) I totally share that. For me, it's very exciting what you're saying about engaging with a certain process and experimenting inside it, like finding ways in which you can change a bit and tweak the process, and the end form will be totally justified exactly because of that engagement, and maybe something unexpected comes of it.

(AH) Yeah, form for itself is not something that is actually exciting. You see that also in artist practices, like for instance in the work of Hans Arp. You have a very beautiful work in the sense that it has these beautiful forms, but the process behind this is that he did not cut this form himself out of the wood. He would give a description to a carpenter and explain in words what he was looking for, and let the carpenters follow their own process. The translation the carpenter came up with, the execution of this instruction, would become something to be confronted with, something that he had described but not seen.

Museum Fort Vechten. Bunnik, The Netherlands, 2015.
photo © Bas Princen

Pavilion 2024: Change, London, United Kingdom, 2023.

Felt Pavilion, Rotterdam, The Netherlands, 2013.
photo © Bas Princen

Studio Amarat Fahkro, Muharraq, Bahrain, 2023.
photo © Anne Holtrop

Office of Ryue Nishizawa, Garden & House, Tokyo, Japan,
2006 - 2011.
Photo © Iwan Baan

(AL) And now that you talk about art, is there a specific architect or artist that you go back to from time to time to take inspiration from?

(AH) I very much admire Ryue Nishizawa's practice. I always think of him to keep myself at ease. I know for him it's a very hard work, of course, but there is something in it that feels very much at ease. And I think that is a great achievement. That's not something that is automatically there, you know; that requires actually a lot of concentration and hard work. But then things achieve this kind of state that I find very beautiful.

Another work that still puzzles me is the work of Luis Barragán. A few years ago, while working in the gardens of his house, I visited most of his projects. I still find the intensity of his work incredibly beautiful, a purity that shines through when you see how the architect responded to the light conditions. The space is defined, yet almost not defined, almost non-existent, yet with these very clear elements, it creates a truly special condition. I still don’t fully understand how this works, but what I find truly captivating is the absence of form in his work.

I find form problematic because it becomes so object-oriented, neglecting the spatial condition and focusing solely on the object itself. That aspect of form is not something I’m particularly interested in. In contrast, I find Barragán’s work to be so exceptional that it surpasses the form.

Luis Barragán, Capuchin Convent Chapel, Tlalpan, Mexico City, 1954–1963. View of the freestanding cross and the quilla.
Photo © Armando Salas Portugal

(AL) Getting to the 2nd part of the interview: We seem to be like anesthetized with respect to things that happen in the world, and we are somehow constrained by the same discourse and terminology we have been using for a long time. We seem to be unable to connect with different realities and different situations, which may be people in need of some kind, catastrophe, war, forced displacement, etc.

We hardly talk about that. For example, when you talk about something like a home, there are many people for whom the situation of home is totally different, and the concept of home can become something different in circumstances as described before. I don’t mean that these questions should concern you directly, but I think it is important to open a dialogue about whether these pressing issues concern practitioners, and you as a practicing architect, and whether you think you have a responsibility to address them.

I know it's a difficult question, but whatever you can say about that would be fine.

(AH) I think I can answer this personally. Over a decade ago, I moved continents when I met my wife. She was living in Bahrain, so I moved here with her. This meant I really dislocated myself from something I grew up in and knew as my home. But I was so happy to move because I wanted to reconnect with the world, not from the comfort of my place, but to be challenged in what my connection with the world is. I did this peacefully and on my own terms, so I feel privileged in that sense.

Another part of it is that I’m very concerned with people who have to live in occupied or expelled conditions, such as in Palestine. For people who live in occupied Palestine, they have all the restrictions that don’t allow them to live freely and don’t give them the same rights. In that situation, home really becomes challenged and becomes a question of identity, of who you are and how you can express yourself.

It’s a topic that concerns me a lot, but I find it a difficult topic to give a clear answer on. I’m really disgusted by people who don’t allow other people to have their freedom, especially because you take away the fundamentals, the sense of home, of belonging, of identity, and so on. I find incredibly powerful how Palestinians still hold on to their identity and insist on their right to live, given the horrible conditions they face.

(AL) The answer you're giving is honest and it's great because it’s a difficult topic to address.

(AH) This is a question that concerns our discipline, architecture, and that’s why we should bring it in, discuss, study, and work on it. It’s incredibly difficult in a profession where we want to make, build, and construct to work with places that are deconstructed and bombarded.
One of the things I did was to bring all my students from ETH Zurich to Palestine in spring 2023. We connected with the culture, crafts, people working there, and the materiality of the place. I thought, “That’s our engagement; that’s where we can change things because our profession allows us to work with it and change.” Through this engagement, we learned about the place and its problems and challenges, and we could work with them.

Rorschach Pavilion, Kapellen,Belgium, 2016.

Single Hide Furniture for Kollektive, Dongen, The Netherlands, 2022.
Photo © Anne Holtrop

A Tower for Chicago, Chicago, United States, 2018.

"Material gesture", photo © Anne Holtrop

(AL) And now that you've said that, as you are teaching, do you think there is a limit to the impact that your teaching can have on your students with regard to that? I mean, is there a limit to this sort of activism, or where is the limit of what students can actually do to engage with these situations?

(AH) I don’t work directly from activism; I work from my profession. I believe one of the key things that drives my work is our human desire for beauty – things that can make us happy, feel special, and draw us to something. So, while I’m not directly working on activism in that way, I genuinely believe that engaging in it allows us to connect and shape our beliefs and ideals from our workplace, which informs us.

However, the question remains: what do you actually believe in and how are you going to bring that forward? How are you going to shape your beliefs in your work? And I think this applies to other places. I find it more challenging to shape my beliefs in the conditions where I work, which isn’t just restricted to Bahrain. We also have work in Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Palestine. This region is the one I feel most connected to, and it shapes my beliefs about the world. I hope I can contribute to it. We work globally, but my commitment is here, and we work from here.

Qaysariyah Suq, Muharraq, Bahrain, 2020.
Photo © Anne Holtrop

Adhari Galleries, Adhari, Bahrain, 2020.

(AL) Maybe you realized that I'm asking you these things also because I want to learn and share ideas, not only about your practice, but about how to better generate a dialogue and engage with these issues, so thank you for the answer.

(AH) You have to find your way into it. I have a deep respect and admiration for Eyal Weizman of Forensic Architecture. I find it incredible that he can still manage to do that work with such devotion.

After seeing my work, he wrote to me. He said he sees the horrors of human activity every day and that he was looking at my work and thought I was one of the rare people who gives him still faith in architecture. It was very touching to read that, but it also made me realise that you can work on the same thing from very different sides.

(AL) That´s a great compliment from Eyal Weizman.

(AL) Getting to the end of the interview, a question we are asking all the practices because of the fast-paced context we live in, is their relationship to Ai. Do you relate anyhow to artificial intelligence in your practice? Do you use it somehow or see a practical application for it?

(AH) No, we don’t use it much. I use it for my writing because I’m not a great writer. So, I see all the different ways I can construct a sentence and then make up my mind and write my own. Then again, I’m also not a native English speaker, so I only use it for that.

We use digital means a lot; we use a lot of 3D scanning devices because I’m interested in matter-to-matter relationships and how one material forms another. Sometimes, we use 3D scanning to translate or bring these things into contact. But I’m still a very analog person because I want to use all my senses. I want to understand the smell and texture, and how the material responds to the weather conditions, how it responds to air, water, and so on. I’m also above average sensitive for these things, so this is also what I try to link myself to.

Kunstmuseum Bern, Bern, Switzerland, 2022.

ATHR Gallery, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Ongoing (due 2026)

The Museum of Jesus' Baptism, Bethany, Jordan Ongoing

(AL) And finally, do you have any question that you wish people would ask more about your work and is not often asked?

(AH) I’ve mentioned this before in interviews, but I think my work, characterised by its open-endedness and focus on the process and research, is intertwined with an overwhelming sense of doubt. It’s the antithesis of certainty; I’m genuinely uncertain about everything. Consequently, I’m constantly questioning what we create in the studio.

I laugh now, but it’s actually a profoundly painful process every time. At its best, the pain is manageable, allowing me to endure the day, but at its worst, it’s debilitating.

People might perceive me as clear-headed and knowing what I want in my work, but that’s far from the truth. It’s a painful process. I often wish I could be like Tadao Ando, working solely with concrete and creating minimalist, powerful buildings. Then again,I suspect that doubt must also be a part of that process, making it appear clear. However, I believe doubt is an inherent aspect of the artistic journey that we can’t escape. In my approach, I actively challenge it on all levels, and I’ve come to accept that this is simply how it is.

(AL) Amazing. I have many more questions, but I will not ask any because I want 2 minutes to finish calmly and not take any more of your time. This has been amazing and super inspiring, and I prefer to keep it short; Thank you for the time, for your work, and the generosity to take your time and share your ideas with us.

Anne Holtrop (b.1977 the Netherlands), principal at Studio Anne Holtrop
in conversation with Adrian Labaut, founder of PFAALL Magazine.

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