How Erick Maass creates space by being unlimited
Happyplaces Stories (video)
I met Erick in Portugal while working on a project. Phillipa and Johnny invited us for a delicious lunch on their beautiful quinta in the middle of the Alentejo countryside, a region known for its countless cork trees. During lunch, Erick and I discussed space in all versions and variants. We decided to continue that conversation when I returned to Portugal, but I already knew I would be there again a month later. So we agreed. We met at Praia da Costa De Santo André, a nature reserve where the lagoon flows into the sea, home to many flamingos and Erick and his wife, Adriana.
Erick Maass is an architect and urbanist with almost thirty years of experience specializing in master planning and urban design. He studied at the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City, with postgraduate studies in Urbanism at the ETSAM in Madrid. Erick worked for several years at Richard Rogers Partnership, leading large-scale mixed-use projects and collaborating with other important offices such as Norman Foster, Lamela or FREE. During the last few years, Erick has devoted his work to regenerative developments, a subject he has lectured on frequently. He has developed important projects in Spain, Italy, and, more recently, Portugal, where he co-led the office with his partner Derek.
We continued our conversation about his endeavours, recorded a short hour of his thoughts and ideas about space, had some amazing Mexican food, and lost track of time.
Thanks, Xander, for the introduction! 😘
This transcript has been edited for clarity and length.
The Game
First of all, welcome home. It’s great to welcome people to this beautiful spot in Portugal. My name is Eric Maass. I am Mexican of origin. I was born in Mexico City. My family has a mixture of cultures. Quite a huge variety of origins, mostly Dutch and Irish. There’s a beautiful story from my mother’s side. My grandmother was born in a mine. Her family was commissioned to exploit a silver mine in an Indian area southwest of Mexico. My father’s history is different. There’s a huge contrast between the two families. That has always been a very important part of my life when dealing with completely different approaches to life.
My father’s side has a more urban origin. He became my role model as an architect. I was always impressed and excited about going to the construction sites with him and the sounds and smells of these construction sites since I was a young kid. So yeah, I preferred that to sports or anything else when I was a kid. I just loved going to construction sites.
There was always a custom or habit on my father’s side of the family: all cousins had to choose where in the world they wanted to spend a year when they were 18 or 19 years old, right after finishing high school. We called it ‘the game’ because it had some specific rules. The main rule was that you had to be out and alone for one year. It was an intense moment in such a close family as we were. You were not allowed to come back home within that year. Another rule was that you could not encounter another player, like a brother or a cousin. You only had a certain amount of money. You weren’t allowed to work. You had to devote your time to studying. As a result, you have to learn how to handle your money, space, and time.
Silence and limits
This experience means so much to me because it was my first contact with silence. We’ll return to this subject later, but it has been one of the most important discoveries of my life. For me, silence, for many reasons, was very closely related to space. At the time, I couldn’t explain why. I researched why this idea of space was so important and so much related to my inner space. I was always looking for a place where there were not too many people and where I was surrounded by nature. I always had that in my life. I decided to go to Florence in Italy because I wanted to be an architect like my dad, but I didn’t know how to draw, and Florence seemed to be the best place to learn that.
My mother’s side of the family was very rural. Very low profile, with a humble way of looking at and approaching life. From my father’s side, it was completely different. Being on my own for that year allowed me to contrast and combine these two worlds.
What was very important to me when I started architecture school was that I was not too fond of the idea of the building as an object. I was more interested in the idea of the city. We did have some urbanism lessons at architecture school, but they did not answer all my questions. For me, how the city is built, how the city is constructed, and all the layers that make the city happen were exactly what attracted me. So, I diverted in that direction.
If you go to the origins of urbanism, it’s related to ways of controlling. Urbanism was born to control the growth of the cities, for example. This idea of ‘limit’ was also very important for my inner growth and personal space of silence. I have always tried to discover why this idea of limits is so important.
My first encounter with this idea of limit was when I returned from ‘the game’, my year in Florence. I needed some space for myself. It was very beautiful because my father asked me: ‘What would you like to do now that you are returning from the game?’ I had it very clear what I wanted to do. There was a moment when my former girlfriend decided to leave after a six-year relationship. That coincided with me coming back from the game; I needed to decide what I wanted to do. She was not there anymore. I told myself I needed to go out; I needed to go to a place far away. I decided to go to India.
Love
I was already in architecture school then, which made that decision very tough for my father. I told him I was leaving school and needed to go to this faraway place. This was the second opportunity for me to be in silence. The second opportunity to be in that space gave me many hints about my inner research. My father’s reaction was very tough because I was already studying architecture. And he asked me — and I will never forget that question — why are you going to India? Why are you leaving school? Why are you just leaving everything? I told him: ‘I don’t know. I believe that love means something more important than just a relationship with my girlfriend. Somehow, it’s not that I don’t miss her, but the idea of loving her gives me a different idea. My intuition tells me that love needs to mean something way bigger than that. I just needed to leave.’ Then he asked me, I will never forget that question: ‘What do you know about love if you’re only 22?’ That made me immediately decide to leave. Even though I was only 22 years old, I felt that love was definitely not related to age, studying architecture, or doing whatever. It was something way bigger.
It was the realisation that I am not this body. (…) This first huge reflection on myself gave me the first idea of limits. Somehow, I realised that the body was not a limit anymore. I was not identifying myself with the body.
So, I left for India without a return ticket. I lived in India for a year. This was the second huge opportunity for me to be in silence. I did find a higher meaning of love, but I found something even more intimate. I found a certainty. A very important first certainty. It was the realisation that I am not this body. By then, I was 22 years old, and it was a tough inner moment. But I had that certainty. When I returned after a year, I had very clear what I was not, and I was still determining what I was. But that was 30 years ago. This first huge reflection on myself gave me the first idea of limits. Somehow, I realised that the body was not a limit anymore. I was not identifying myself with the body. This huge thing stuck with me when I returned from India. And I finished my career because I promised my dad I would finish it. It was a huge year. It was a very important year that cut my life and broke it in two.
Interconnectedness
When I started dealing with urbanism, I realised that this idea of limit was also there. Modern urbanism was born from controlling cities’ growth in the 19th century. Dealing with this idea of limit happened simultaneously in my inner process and architectural development. I realised that nature never works with the idea of limit. Limits are an artificial superposition of a methodology to control what urbanism did and created what we understand as master planning. Master planning was this methodology in terms of layers, how the city was constructed in terms of layers of the social layer, the cultural layer, the physical layer, and the infrastructure layers. All those layers were put there to control. It was clear to me that this idea of controlling was not natural to me. I understood that all the variables I was dealing with created a complex system that is, by definition, uncontrollable and unpredictable. You cannot design a city with these parameters because it doesn’t work like that; it doesn’t work by layers. My intuition told me that it was more related to connections. More of a systemic approach or the way nature relates, the way the patterns of nature and how they work as connections or hubs made me understand it better. It revealed to me how important interconnectedness is, especially in the past ten years.
This idea of not having limits in between drove me to a very specific question: could it be that we were not only equals? Talking about our relationship with people, we are not only equals, but are we the same thing? The idea of not limiting my identity to this body and time somehow opened me to the option of us, and everything being the same thing.
So, not having the limit of the body is liberating. In India, it was beautiful to understand and see how people were not limited by what they saw. People don’t judge someone on their outer appearance when they get to know you or talk to you. They would never focus on your body. They would never limit their impression of you or reality by only looking at it, focusing on it, or limiting it. It was completely different. So, not being restricted by having sight only as a limit but learning from these people to perceive more from the full canvas of the skin was also an essential way to remove the limits for me. Having removed these two limits automatically allowed me to have encounters with people. It allowed me to have an ‘automatic’ or intuitive connection with people, space, and nature. This idea of not having limits in between drove me to a very specific question: could it be that we were not only equals? Talking about our relationship with people, we are not only equals, but are we the same thing? The idea of not limiting my identity to this body and time somehow opened me to the option of us, and everything being the same thing.
Regenerative attitude to life
When I developed this idea, I had this beautiful contact with the regenerative and regenerative movements in Portugal. This was at the same time when we decided to move to Portugal after many years in Spain. For the last few years, the encounter with regenerative design and regenerative approach in general, not only as a practice approach but also as an attitude towards life, has been incredibly important. It is exactly what regenerative master planning means to me now; it’s not building the city or not building a village by imposing the aforementioned layers in the territory. It’s essential to make contact with the territory, allowing nature to play the protagonist’s role. That’s where you start defining or identifying patterns place that are essential to the final result of what I would call now master planning. Master planning a city or a village is directly linked to scale. I decided to change from doing big projects and big developments for big companies, which I have been doing for many years, to moving to a smaller scale. The decision to move to Portugal and go to another scale helped me to understand this essential connection to my inner process and the place itself. This completely changed my ideas and my approach to my work now.
Let’s say, ten years ago, architects and urbanists would be the first ones deciding where to build. Today, with regenerative master planning and this essential approach, it’s completely different. Now, regenerative land designers, sociologists, artists, and local handcrafting people have become a group and allow us to understand the place completely differently, with a wider approach. We don’t impose layers anymore. We now listen a lot and put together teams that spend hundreds of hours on-site before designing anything. This level of connection makes good sense because we do not care, for example, about performance indicators. Urbanism used to be measured by the performance of the city or the village in many different ways. You always had data and targets to measure the project’s impact. Now, it’s completely different. Now, value indicators drive the measurement or our impact measurement. For example, now, instead of independent layers, we focus on connections and interdependence. We can measure the connections the project imposes in the system’s territory. Our main goal is not to have a fully performing city or a village. Now, we intend to be able to deliver a more connected and better-connected system. So, instead of having different layers parallel to themselves, the main thing is to prove by measuring the impact of these new values, providing or delivering a way better and more connected systems. We can perfectly measure all the layers, social, cultural, business case, knowledge sharing, and regional scale of a project. We are also developing tools to measure how these systems will be better connected after the project is imposed into the territory. Now, it’s easier for us to calibrate and decide with these graphic tools how the system improves by having these new connections.
I relate myself to a more unlimited version of what I am. I now understand how this is related to the way nature works.
To conclude, it has been a very intimate and important process for me to play on these two levels, but they are very related. The idea of removing these limits within my identity helps me understand how nature works. And how the territory has historically informed the way human activities work. And how these human activities shape the economic level. How does this economic level actually create or inform culture and society? By bringing back the territorial nature to a protagonist role, this shaping of layers could be done in an essential way. I relate myself to a more unlimited version of what I am. I now understand how this is related to the way nature works.
Reality is what remains when you have removed all limits. (…) Because it means that if you can position yourself with the right attitude, with the loving attitude, at every stage, in front of every scene, then all the limits are gone. Then limits do not exist.
I want to finish with a beautiful quote by Rupert Spira, one of my great masters. Someone asked him about truth. He said: ‘I think truth does not exist, but reality does.’ For a few seconds, there was silence during that session. And then someone asked him: ‘Can you then please define what reality is?’ He said,’ Well, reality is what remains when you have removed all limits.’ That was a very important moment for me. I then realised how important it was. Because it means that if you can position yourself with the right attitude, with the loving attitude, at every stage, in front of every scene, then all the limits are gone. Then limits do not exist. Then, you are in front of reality itself. Suppose you surrender yourself at every moment with no limits on your identity. This is also why I left for India. This is directly linked to design and to regenerative design because that’s exactly what it is.
Regenerative design is returning to nature to understand or find clues to creating a world for a fully interconnected identity. I am fully convinced that it is related to love. I remember a beautiful quote by my uncle, Santos Balmori, a great painter of the 1960s. When he was 19 years old in the 1920s, he wrote, ‘Love, and wherever you turn or look, you will find truth.’ This was one of the sentences that came with me to India. And now I realise why, now I understand why. This idea of unlimited connection with ourselves, with others, and with nature can really bring an essential way to create or bring to our day-to-day activities. And somehow, having unlimited or no limited identity happens to be incredibly essential. It is as basic as day-to-day. It’s as basic as really waking up every single day.
This was not a short resume but a path or a walk around my experience with space, silence, non-limit, and identity.
