Vili-Valtteri Welroos
Vili is an RIBA/ARB registered architect working in London. His career notably started at Foster+Partners between 2017 until 2022, where he honed his passion for hospitality, facade & interiors projects. In 2023 he joined WATG ; 'the preeminent leader in integrated luxury hospitality design'.
Ethos:
Passionate about contemporary manufacture, patterns, abstract art, representation, prototyping and design, which inform his personal ethos towards architectural practice. Inspired by flora, patterns, foliage, Owen Jones and William Morris, and abstract architecturally structural configurations, analog, yet digital in nature. Using the latest contemporary tools with a critical eye on the history of Arts and Crafts, Art Nouveau and Abstraction.
Contemporary tools allow for a record of every digital brush-stroke to be recorded when working – it truly makes the artist consider every single line and its meaning. But the work must escape the digital realm onto canvas, which then can subsequently be enhanced by physical substances such as acrylics, gouache, watercolour and especially with consideration of the type of surface. Laser-cutting, layering, SLS 3d-printing and CNC milling are potential methods for my ethos to shine.
This same principle of Digital to Physical applies to my architectural practice.
January 2024
Variation, Hierarchy, Structure, Depth, Time and Elaboration.
July 2019
My current artworks build upon the Thesis I developed in architecture school. Variation, Colour, Structure, Hierarchy, Time, Elaboration, Texture and Symmetry are further developed into repetitive, complex compositions.
July 2017
My MArch design thesis "Origin" explored Matter through Digital Prototyping. It highlighted the Bespoke Configurational Potentials of digitally produced building components and artistic artefacts. 'Proto' emphasised an 'Origin', a starting point, while 'Type' highlighted a particular characteristic or quality of matter. The thesis explored how a variety of initial characteristics can be returned to architecture through digital methods as a means for seeking beauty within the field. Subsequently these explorations proposed a Digital Ceramics Laboratory for Newcastle, inhabiting three In-house Resident Designers juxtaposed with an existing, 'traditional' Arts Centre.
In architectural production ProtoTyping may take multiple forms, but it is always a test of sorts performed prior to the finished product. "Whether the prototype actually works is not the issue: prototyping is the revelatory process through which a designer gains insight into how well their experiment is proceeding. Failure offers important information, which, when fed back into the creative process, increases the chances of a more successful outcome." (Burry & Burry, p.12)
Digitally produced ceramic components offer contemporary designers and artists an opportunity for Bespoke Customisation with the possibility of designing for Specific Performance. An analysis of the characteristics of natural and crafted ornament offers a definition for the desirable characteristics of digitally crafted artefacts: Variation, Hierarchy, Structure, Depth, Time and Elaboration.
With these qualities in mind, the thesis aimed to answer how our contemporary digital tools might inform the production of an ornamental architecture. And, perhaps offer more eloquent definitions of ornament beyond the merely decorative.
Vili presenting to Norman Foster, 2018.
