Ricardo Bak Gordon on Architecture, Mentors, and Urban Challenges

Portuguese architect Ricardo Bak Gordon, leading Bak Gordon Arquitectos in Lisbon since 2002, reflects on his formative years and design philosophy in an interview for the Past Present Future series curated by Itinerant Office. Initially rejected by the University of Lisbon's architecture faculty, he studied at the School of Architecture of Porto, which he calls the best school he could imagine, where he encountered figures like Fernando Távora and Álvaro Siza. He credits Porto with teaching him to approach projects with sensitivity to site and continuity rather than reinventing the world daily. During an Erasmus period at Politecnico di Milano, he saw architects such as Tadao Ando and Rem Koolhaas lecture weekly. Bak Gordon emphasizes that there is no predefined answer for any project; each becomes like a first project, developed collaboratively with his team and consultants from start to finish. In the interview, conducted during a period of unprecedented international tourism expansion, he warned that cities must prepare for coexistence between visitors, transient nomads, and residents to avoid erasing local identities, a process he saw already underway in Lisbon. He identified density as a crucial theme for contemporary architecture, a topic that later became dramatically relevant during the pandemic. His advice to young architects is to observe the world, understand what questions it poses, and participate enthusiastically without seeking a definitive invention.