Architect David Chipperfield: ‘We used to know what

He’s renowned for big-budget museums and galleries. But the architect’s long-term project in Galicia, northern Spain is all about fundamental, low-key ways to change communities for the better

“We find ourselves doing workshops on seaweed growth,” says David Chipperfield, the much-honoured and acclaimed British architect, and “there are moments when you’re thinking: ‘Remind me, what has this got to do with architecture? What am I doing here?’” This unlikeliness, though, is part of the point of Fundación RIA, the seven-year-old organisation that Chipperfield set up in the north-western Spanish region of Galicia, which aims to help revive its towns and villages, often depopulated and fractured by poor planning decisions. The endeavour involves environmental and economic issues as well as design, hence the excursions into marine biology.

It is a case of thinking global and acting local. Fundación RIA (which is named after the rias or inlets of the Galician coast) proceeds by consultation, talking to local people and businesses, to politicians and officials at various levels of government, and using contacts built up by Chipperfield’s international practice. “You find yourself at a meeting with old people on Tuesday nights,” he says, “talking about speed limits.” At other times they bring in experts from the London School of Economics and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the technologically advanced Swiss timber company Blumer-Lehmann. Next month the foundation will open Casa RIA, a converted sanatorium in Santiago de Compostela, where spaces for exhibitions and discussions are intended to create “a place of exchange and application of knowledge”.