Architecture & Design

Architecture & Design | 15 What first drew you to architecture, and what continues to inspire you today? I grew up in Valletta, in an environment of extraordinary richness and brought up within a family and a community that was at once both passionate and in awe of its surroundings. These were not abstractions but living backdrops to daily life, and I think they instilled in me a conviction that the spaces we inhabit profoundly shape who we are. Moreover, I was fortunate to spend time studying architecture at Virginia Tech under the mentorship of Olivio Ferrari. He was Professor of Architecture in the College of Architecture and Urban Studies there and taught the history of the Modern Movement. He had crafted the core foundation of the architecture programme, one of the most highly ranked of its kind, and initiated the Inner College for Environmental Design, an innovative design laboratory that continues to serve as a model for design education. Ferrari was an extraordinary and gifted teacher - generations of students in architecture and design recognised him as the single greatest influence on their education, as I did. I remember missing other lectures so I could repeatedly attend his lectures, and I credit him with introducing me to the drawings of Piranesi and Boullee and the writings of Laugier. Architecture is not a profession in the narrow sense; it is a discipline that demands you engage simultaneously with beauty and utility, with memory and imagination, with the individual and the collective. It is the expression of the demand for social change and urban transformation. What were some of the defining moments that shaped your professional philosophy as an architect? In the late eighties I worked at Renzo Piano's studio in Paris, on the project for the new City Gate, on guidelines for the regeneration of Valletta and a competition for a new airport in Osaka, Japan. There I learnt the value of collective work, of self-criticism and how at the basis of every project is research that makes the platform from which new ideas will evolve, looking backwards to move forwards. Piano had consciously structured his practice after the medieval and Renaissance craftsman's workshop, where master and apprentice work side by side on projects. Young architects participate in the full arc of a project. Piano's workshop taught me the importance of being present and to engage with younger members of the team, treating the studio as a place of ongoing dialogue. This led to the beginning of AP, where working with like- minded people in the early years of practice, was still a learning process and helped form our instincts, which was formative in itself. This intellectual discipline was a result of having a truly creative team, made up of people who challenge your assumptions without abandoning shared values. Valletta is central to this reasoning. It is an important and successful example of the architect's role in designing the 'Ideal City' – a city of lasting beauty and functionality, to be enjoyed by all. Our duty as architects – especially for us as architects working from the city, but also of all architects for whom Valletta is a reference point – is to persevere in this endeavour to rethink our built environment as a model of urban culture for the future and where Valletta is a laboratory of new ideas. There was also the more gradual, harder-won realisation that sustainability, as the profession too often speaks of it, misses the point. True environmental responsibility is not about adding a layer of green technology to buildings designed on the same exhausted model. It requires a fundamental rethinking…of materials, of time, of circularity and, above all, of an evolving philosophy. That shift in thinking has shaped AP Valletta's research and practice ever since. What was your and Konrad Buhagiar's original vision for AP Valletta, as co-founders of the practice, and how has that vision evolved over the years? From the outset, we were clear that we did not want to establish a conventional architectural office. We wanted a practice rooted in place — specifically in Valletta and in Malta — but engaged with the widest possible intellectual and professional world. The name itself, first Architecture Project and then AP Valletta, reflects that dual identity: anchored here, open to everywhere. Our team's vision was shaped by a shared belief that architecture requires a fusion of research and application and an interest in inter-disciplinarity, not merely technical competence. We were committed to adaptive reuse and heritage conservation not as specialist niches but as a way of thinking about all design, a method rather than a market segment. What has evolved is the practice itself. In 2025, AP Valletta welcomed seven new leaders, each with a long history with the firm and each bringing distinct strengths. The practice has grown into something more complex and more layered than we could have imagined, a collective with a genuinely plural intelligence. But the founding conviction remains: that architecture must be rigorous, resolute, and in constant dialogue with the human condition. In declaring its intent through a manifesto, launched in parallel with the new leadership, AP described this process as a ceaseless exercise, and more akin to an evolving sketch than a completed work. This document gives a snapshot of that sketch at this point in time. It presented AP's 'mandate for the future', outlining a nuanced problem and exploring thought process its research, people, and projects. Today I find particular inspiration in the idea of the notion that going back, carefully and intelligently, is often the most radical thing an architect can do. A study published in Cognition in 2019 showed that the simple movement of walking backwards, whether done physically or just imagined, improves our ability to retrieve information. Apparently, our brain organises experiences along a "subjective timeline," where the past is behind us and the future ahead. By moving backwards, we unconsciously activate this connection with our memories. A small step back for a big leap forward. I call this process 'Involution', as opposed to evolution. Whereas our current economic models entail accumulation, with involution an economy lives off its own assets by funnelling resources from production to exchange. This is an important reframing. It is the grounding of embodied memory research to an economic philosophy of place. It links the mnemonic time-travel effect to theories of heritage-based economic development and urban regeneration. The argument that moving back through existing assets — physically, economically, cognitively — activates a different and more sustainable relationship with the built environment, brings together cognitive science, economic theory, and architectural practice. " Architecture is not a profession in the narrow sense; it is a discipline that demands you engage simultaneously with beauty and utility, with memory and imagination, with the individual and the collective. It is the expression of the demand for social change and urban transformation.

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