Carla Ferrando Costansa and Pablo Garrido Arnaiz, architects and co-founders of Parabase, have significantly shaped the architectural and urbanism landscape. Their firm, founded in 2021, has offices in Basel, Switzerland, Mexico City, Mexico, and Barcelona, Spain.
Architect Carla Ferrando Costansa, a graduate of ETSAV, Barcelona, and the Technical Universiteit Eindhoven, has collaborated with prominent firms such as Diener & Diener and Herzog & de Meuron. In academia, architect Ferrando Costansa serves as a research and teaching assistant at the Bern University of Architecture, where she plays a pivotal role in shaping architectural education.
Architect Garrido Arnaiz completed his architectural studies at the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Barcelona and the Accademia di Architettura di Mendrisio. His professional experience at Miller & Maranta, Foster & Partners and Herzog & de Meuron complements his editorial role at Cartha Magazine and his teaching commitments at the Accademia di Architettura di Mendrisio, and he has contributed significantly to international architectural discourses and exhibitions.
Parabase, under the guidance of Architects Ferrando Costansa and Garrido Arnaiz, has been recognized with numerous awards, including finalist positions at the Swiss Art Awards and accolades at the Venice Biennale. The firm’s commitment to sustainable design is evident in its innovative material reuse strategies, which have become a signature aspect of its work.
What inspires you?
We can find inspiration in literally everything. We try to look at the world around us with naïve eyes, establishing no differentiation between pre-established categories: high, low, beautiful, ugly, new, old, heavy, light, expensive, cheap, popular, refined… everything is susceptible to being appropriated, digested, and transformed into architecture. According to Michel Serres, “If you go anywhere, you have the chance to meet the contemporary.”
What inspired you to become an architect?
Some years ago in Spain, it had a sort of social prestige. At the same time, we were interested in both math and languages, drawing and natural sciences… architecture combines it all. Becoming an architect also felt like not growing up and being able to continue playing, just more seriously.
How would you describe your design philosophy?
We start by gathering information and imposing rules and constraints that guide the entire design process. In parallel, our journey explores the limits of architecture, something we understood while reading Eugenio Trías. We try to be extremely technical and scientific while including ideas from contemporary art. We quantify and measure every decision but sometimes allow for approximation. We tend to move between pure rigor and control and extreme randomness.
What is your favorite project?
Probably Córdoba’s Mosque. It has it all, literally.
What is your favorite architectural detail?
Any detail as long as it is appropriate according to Lucius Burkhardt’s definition*. We believe the detail we developed for the Permanently Temporary Pavilion with our friends from Kosmos follows that condition. In this case, there’s a sort of absence of detail, as Koolhaas would pose it. We felt that in this specific context, the simplicity of creating an entrance by wrapping the textile envelope around the head of the ReUse statue was the right thing to do. At the same time, for us, it transformed the old stone statue into a kind of ready-made caryatid, reverberating with the caryatids of Erechtheion and those of Lubetkin in Highpoint II (beautifully described by Quetglas and later by Radic).
*Editors Note.
Lucius Burkhardt conceptualized a detail as a condensed articulation of the whole, where the microcosm reflects the macrocosm. In his view, a detail is not merely a component of construction but a critical moment of design intent—an intersection where material, function, and meaning converge to reveal the underlying logic of the structure.
In the architectural sense, the detail becomes a narrative fragment, encapsulating the ethos of the design while influencing perception and experience. It is a lens through which the integrity, contradictions, or aspirations of the architecture are magnified, bridging the tangible and the conceptual within the broader spatial order.
Do you have a favorite material?
No. We make no distinctions between materials. We like them all.
What is your process for starting a new project?
Regardless of scale or context, our projects develop through the selection and self-imposition of constraints, usually technical and almost always quantifiable. We generally rely on copying, metaphor, and displacement—both figurative and literal—to conceive our projects.
How do you balance function and creativity in your designs?
Creativity without constraints doesn’t really interest us much. The most violent overflows need dams to be activated. And function (or a context, or a client, or a material, or the lack of money, or a construction technique) provides the perfect dam.
How does the environment influence your work?
The environment, even the lack of it, is crucial to our work. The question is how you get to know and read this environment. For us, it doesn’t have to involve physical or cultural proximity. There are many ways of reading and understanding a specific context: religion, politics, climate, economy, statistics of all sorts, Google Street View… What we find determinant is approaching it without preconceptions. Many times, proximity and personal feelings make this task more difficult.
How do you collaborate with clients to achieve their vision?
From the very beginning, we try to establish an honest dialogue that helps us agree on a framework in which we can operate. A contractual frame, but also one that articulates and hierarchizes their desires, if needed. We see ourselves as mediators between those desires, economy, regulations, and physical laws. In any case, good architecture is only possible with good clients.
What inspired Permanently Temporary Pavilion?
To generate no waste, reduce CO2 emissions, reduce the budget, and minimize human labor involved in the construction while leaving no physical trace after the Model Festival. At the same time, the pavilion aimed to display the hidden resources cities possess while advocating for the implementation of circular strategies not only in architecture but also in other fields of life.
How did materiality shape the design and sustainability of the Permanently Temporary Pavilion?
The shape of the pavilion was determined by the findings of unused construction components in various municipal storages. In this case, the Form follows Availability. We acted mainly as explorers and curators. If we were to build the pavilion now, the result would likely be different because the findings would be different. Architecture then becomes the contingent result of all the occasions that exist.
What advice would you give to young architects?
We can’t really give any advice. However, Fischli Weiss once created a manifesto titled “How to Work Better”* which we fully endorse.
**Editors Note.
Peter Fischli and David Weiss’s “How to Work Better” is a ten-point manifesto offering practical wisdom for mindfulness, collaboration, and simplicity in work and life. Originating from a Thai ceramic factory sign, it reflects their ethos of finding beauty in the everyday.
Peter Fischli and David Weiss’s “How to Work Better” principles are:
- Do one thing at a time
- Know the problem
- Learn to listen
- Learn to ask questions
- Distinguish sense from nonsense
- Accept change as inevitable
- Admit mistakes
- Say it simple
- Be calm
- Smile
