I found this interview/documentary with Mayne talking about 41 Cooper Square. I've been to the building a few times and it commands a serious presence in the East Village. In writing a review of this building NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF writes the following,
"One of the most overlooked strengths of Mr. Mayne’s designs is his feel for material. He is not a finicky designer; you don’t look to his work for refined details. He tends instead to extract beauty from the crudest industrial materials: raw concrete, steel I-beams, metal screens. The connections between materials are always clearly expressed, never smoothed over, so that you can feel the memory of the workers’ hands. It is what makes his buildings — like the Diamond Ranch High School in Pomona, Calif. — so approachable."
I was thinking about SFMOMA's new addition and debating with myself over the five candidates. I like all of them quite a bit. I'm particularly happy about Snohetta being in the runnings. I love what Diller and Scofidio have been up to lately though. The last two spaces they've worked on in New York are amazing. I've been to both the Highline and Alice Tully quite a bit and I think what makes them so great for me is how wonderfully they engage with sidewalk. In front of Alice Tully is a large stepped gathering space which is always being used. Sometimes I wish that it faced towards the street instead of Alice Tully though. It could be a wonderful place for some type of outdoor concert.
Found this interview with Baunetz of them talking about these, and some other, spaces.
INTERVIEW
30 years of Diller + Scofidio. You started out in 1979 not as a classic architecture studio but at the interface between art and architecture. How do you see the relationship between these two disciplines?
In the art scene we are regarded as architects, among architects we claim to be perceived as artists as well. We are confronted with the division of both disciplines every day, but in our work we don’t differentiate between them. When Ricardo and I set up our studio we initially devoted ourselves to performance art, the theater and visual art. But our interest extended far beyond just these fields and there any number of topics that attracted us: communication between people, how cultural conventions emerge, and the influence of private and public space on people. Architecture und art are both part of our world, part of the cultural sphere in which we experiment. We display the results of our research in art installations, and sometimes in architecture installations as well – that doesn’t matter, makes no difference to us, the boundaries are frequently blurred. The projects are far more dependent on external circumstances, from the size of the budget, from a too narrow, then again sufficient timeframe the client gives us.
(Vice and Virtue, 1997)
Does it make any difference to you that whereas previously you were involved with art projects you now primarily plan buildings for art?
Just as architecture is part of art and culture we see architects as a partner for cultural institutions. Our approach doesn’t involve shaping a building into a sculpture as Frank Gehry, for example, does. He sees the protagonist in architecture, whereas art is subordinate to it. For me this is not an artistic way of designing. Architecture needs to be very precise in its response to a building’s content and function. What is this edifice meant to represent? For whom is it being designed? How will it become part of the performance, how is it to become active? Every new project raises the same questions. The only thing that can be exchanged is the material, the components. We use media, employ pixels, build with bricks and glass. The difficulty is finding suitable individual parts for the big picture.
(Institute of Contemporary Art, 2006, Boston)
How did you get involved with architecture?
I never once thought about becoming an architect. I did choose to study it, but saw it as a good education and at the same time as an experiment. I became interested in art very early on, and after high school I wanted to work with cinema. When I went to Cooper Union in the 1980s I was impressed by the then Dean of Architecture John Hejduk and his lectures. For him architecture meant more than just building, he described it as an intellectual and cultural investigation of the world and people. That won me over.
What do you see as the tasks facing current and future architects, after all you are teaching the next generation?
The majority of those practicing see architecture as a service to society. Of course it is more than that. Their most important task is to question and to clarify: traditions, customs, things that are out of date, illogical. Architects should reveal our cultural world, examine it – I call this evolution. Our aim is to give answers. This also involves constructive but critical analysis of society. I see the role of the architect as finding new ways of and bases for working together in our human networks. This is the only way we can bring about changes in the world.
How do you demonstrate this concern in your projects?
We often address conventions and question them: Why are circumstances, things, the way they are, how do they come about, what happens on a more unconscious level and is not even noticed. We encourage people to question the circumstances of our everyday life: Look closely, read between the lines, take a different view. Don’t shut yourself off to the fundamentals. One of our research topics is space and it's boundaries in our culture. We research the influence architecture has on our social behavior.
(Highline , NYC)
Even before there was an extreme rise in the need for security in 2001 – not just in New York –Diller & Scofidio were among the first artists to use the new media in their works and in a playful manner make the surveillance of people a theme of their art installations. Where did you get the inspiration for this?
We always aim to be a step ahead of others with our work. We are interested in new technologies, new media and how they impact and influence our life. In our investigations we aim to remain objective while at the same time not foregoing a critical view. From this standpoint topics emerge that take one down different paths. We normally conduct our research work over a number of years, this is what makes our work stand out and distinguishes us from many architects.
Right now you are working on two very different projects in New York: the High Line Park in Chelsea and the Lincoln Center of Performing Arts. A few months ago, part of the Center, namely the Alice Tully Hall, was completed. What method of working do you have to adopt when tackling projects of this magnitude?
It goes without saying that a project as important as the Lincoln Center – the very first and today still the largest art and cultural center worldwide – is particularly appealing to us. The main task involved as regards conversion work was to ensure due urban integration of the entire building complex into its surroundings. The Lincoln Center was intended to become part of the city’s public space again. The original 1960s plans envisaged a self-contained art campus, with which in building terms the cultural institution set itself apart from city life. For our plans the whole entrance had to be completely revised. Previously you could only get to the concert hall, the Alice Tully Hall from the road, through a small entrance, and access to the school on the storey above it was totally concealed; a giant pedestrian bridge over the road led to it. With our design we recreated the relationship between the cultural institution and the public in the city. With our plans the entire complex opens out onto the road and is accessible through several entrances.
(Alice Tully Hall, NYC)
With both the Lincoln Center in New York and the ICA in Boston you place great value on the rapport between the building and public space. How important is the relationship between these two areas?
Creating a transition from a city’s public space and the private space of a building is always a challenge. Architects have responsibility to the people that are going to be using their building. Cultural facilities are always social places, where there is communication and life. With our architecture we influence the way passers-by perceive thnigs. By way of example: For the design of the Alice Tully Hall we asked ourselves how we could bring the mood on the inside of the building closer to those passing. We designed the ground floor as a lobby flooded with light and featuring bars and restaurants. In front of the building there is a plaza, where it is pleasant to linger, and which forges the link between the building’s interior, clearly visible through the glass, and the public space outside, and which invites passers-by to explore the building.
(Institute of Contemporary Art, 2006, Boston)
What is the greatest skill in major public projects such as these?
I think it’s the compromises that are made. There are constant negotiations, in which all those involved air criticism from the point of view of their own discipline and bring in their own subjective standpoint. Whenever I give one of my lectures, with some 50 images, about 40 minutes long, it’s a short summary of the history of our studio and presents our projects, I notice that I express myself differently depending on the listeners. If I’m giving the lecture to architecture students at a university, I primarily emphasize the architectural or spatial aspect. Lecturing to developers or clients I use other terminology. During the negotiations for the Lincoln Center I gave my lecture six times with the same text and the same images. Each time, however, it was as if I were communicating in a different language, as I was always addressing a different audience – with representatives of the city, the local authority, with officials from the Listed Buildings Bureau, academic groups, and artists’ groups. I’m not being cynical here, but just want to make the point. It’s about finding a creative process, about how to liaise between a vast range of groups in this network, how to guarantee collaboration that functions well, in order to ultimately create something great that still reflects the idea behind the design and all those involved.
(Institute of Contemporary Art, 2006, Boston)
And the challenge in designing?
I personally wish there were fewer restrictions, more room for research. The main task in the renovation of the old Alice Tully Hall building was to improve the acoustics in the concert hall. What was interesting here was the emotional effects architecture can trigger. During the project we investigated psychoacoustics. We learned that if you can see better and feel better, you hear better as well. Listening to a concert Creating a transition from a city’s public space and the private space of a building is always a challenge. activates different senses and together these create the musical experience. As an example, if you use material with plastic in it for the acoustics in a music hall, from a technical point of view it might well be a better choice than a wooden ceiling. However, a hall fitted with wood completely changes the feel of the interior, such that people feel more comfortable and enjoy the entire listening experience in a far more positive way.
SFMOMA has recently been gifted an incredible collection from the Fishers. They have decided to expand three fold due to this and are currently in the process of selecting an architect. Whose on the ballot? David Adjaye, Norman Foster, Diller and Scofidio and Snohetta. SFMOMA's existing building was built by Mario Botta, it will be interesting to see how the selected firm interacts with his monumental creation. This is a video of each of the architects talking about their concerns and ideas regarding the project.
(SFMOMA's existing building by Mario Botta built in 1995)
Whenever I go home I always make a point of stopping by the Bloch Building...This is a little video of Holl talking about the Bloch Building and the Linked Hybrid.
Let’s start with Louis Kahn’s childhood. What was his family life like, early education, etc.?
As a child, Louis I. Kahn had pretty much everything going against him. He was born as Leiser-Itze Schmuilowsky in 1901 into a poor Jewish family in Russian-controlled Estonia. At age 3, he was badly burned on his face, and he carried the scars with him for the rest of his life. His father thought he would have been better-off had he died from the accident. When he came to the United States, in 1906, he lived in Philadelphia’s Jewish ghetto, and at times the family had barely enough to eat. Anti-Semitism may have played a role in his father’s decision to change the family name to the more German-sounding Kahn. Despite the problems, Kahn seems to have enjoyed his early years, especially the hurly-burly of city life. I think his experience playing on the streets of Philadelphia had a lot to do with his later designs, many of which were so welcoming to ordinary people. Despite his disadvantages, Kahn was picked out early by several public-school teachers who moved him along, and he eventually entered the University of Pennsylvania to study architecture. His most influential teacher was a French-educated master named Paul Cret, who gave Kahn a firm foundation in the Beaux-Arts principles of civic monuments and urban design.
Is there a common thread to his work as an architect? What do you think he was trying to achieve?
I think the most powerful common thread running through Kahn’s work was his humanity. He seems to have believed deeply in the idea that humankind is perfectible, and that architecture could play a role in that. You can see this in the inclusion of the study towers for scholars at the Salk Institute. The scientists were not much interested in the idea of individual studies; they were happy to spend their time in their labs. But Kahn and Jonas Salk, who saw the world much as Kahn did, felt that great thoughts would flow more freely from a monastic setting that allowed the thinkers to ponder the great questions of life in solitude, and with a great view of the ocean! You can also see Kahn’s humanistic impulse expressed in the way he insisted on treating his materials without any cosmetic improvements. For instance, he made sure the scratches produced in fabricating the metal handrails at Salk were not ground down. And he was quite content to accept imperfections in his concrete at the British Art Center if they revealed the way the material was poured. He even selected flawed bricks for the exterior of the Exeter Library to use as subtle touches of ornamentation.
Why should we consider him one of the great architects of the 20th century?
Surely his greatest contribution was to create architecture that was entirely of its day, but also had a timeless quality. Kahn was an astute student of architectural history, and in the course of his career he traveled in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and the Indian Subcontinent. He seemed to be able to absorb fundamental lessons from every source, and then integrate them into forms that were uniquely his own. Some scholars have argued that Kahn got his inspiration for the Richards Medical Research Building at the University of Pennsylvania from the Italian hill-town of San Gimignano, or for the Kimbell Art Museum from the ruins of ancient Rome. Surely those sources contributed to the process, but it diminishes Kahn to suggest that he was basing his designs on them. It would be more accurate to say that he was extracting enduring messages from everything he saw and reinterpreting them for his own use. There is a simple test for this: I suspect most people with even a passing interest in modern architecture can date a building by Mies van der Rohe or Frank Lloyd Wright at a glance. You can’t do that with Kahn’s buildings. They look as if they have always been there, and as if they will always be there. That’s why I subtitled my book, “Beyond Time and Style.”
(Kimbell Art Museum)
From the pictures, much of Kahn’s work seems oppressively Brutalist, with its massive concrete forms. Is this ever a feeling one has when viewing or walking through his buildings?
The sense of mass in Kahn’s buildings is deliberately deceptive. For example, the Exeter Library at first looks like a solid brick cube. But if you look at the corners, you will see that the walls do not meet, and you can see that they are actually thin screens. Something similar is true of the Kimbell Art Museum. It appears to be made of heavy, vaulted forms. But if you examine the joints where the roof meets the walls, you will see a remarkably delicate composition of recesses and glass strips that create a sense that the building is hovering on its supports. Even in Bangladesh, the monumental first impact of the Assembly building gives way to a series of layers that both shade the office windows and lighten the visual weight of the overall form.
(Exeter Library)
For those of us from Philadelphia, it’s fascinating to think what the city would be like if Kahn’s city planning ideas had been enacted. Would you tell us about those and how successful you believe they would have been?
Most of Kahn’s city planning ideas were naïve, if not nutty. But there is a reason for this. When he graduated from architecture school, in 1924, the grandiose schemes developed by the Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier for tearing down most of central Paris and building enormous skyscrapers were the hot topic of discussion. Within a few years, the Great Depression, and then World War Two, put most architects, including Kahn, out of work. In response, many of them indulged in all sorts of Le Corbusier-based fantasies that could not be tested by building them. So we got Kahn’s drawings for gargantuan parking towers and high-rises that looked as if they had been made from Tinker Toys. They never could have been built, and they would have been awful if they had been. But the important thing to remember is that, unlike Le Corbusier, Kahn had a fundamental love for the messiness of urban life, and all of his plans were directed at preserving that. Indeed, he wanted to make sure that the cars were all parked at the edges of the city so that the pedestrian coming-and-going he so loved would be protected at the center.
One of the most moving things in the documentary My Architect, by Kahn’s son Nathaniel, was the reverence that Bangladeshis had for the man who built their National Assembly Building. Louis Kahn is viewed as a highly evolved spiritual being. I’m wondering if you, as a Western architecture critic, ever see a spiritual dimension to the works you evaluate or the people who create them.
Although Kahn was Jewish, he was never religiously observant. Nevertheless, he seemed to have a deep sense of the spiritual. You can sense it in the courtyard at Salk, which engages the sky and the ocean with an almost pagan power; it’s like a Stonehenge for science. And you can sense it in the Exeter Library, which reportedly has a cathedral-like impact on visitors, and the Assembly building in Dhaka, where the government chamber is no less a “sanctuary” than the central spaces at the First Unitarian Church in Rochester or the little synagogue Kahn did in Chappaqua, New York. David Rinehart, an architect who worked in Kahn’s office, told me that, “for Lou, every building was a temple. Salk was a temple for science. Dhaka was a temple for government. Exeter was a temple for learning.” I have never felt such a feeling of pantheistic reverence in the work of any other modern architect, except, perhaps, in Le Corbusier’s pilgrimage church at Ronchamp. Beyond that, you have to go back to the Greeks, Hagia Sophia, and the builders of Chartres to match it.
(Dhaka Parliament)
Louis Kahn had a complicated personal life. Would you tell us about that? Do you have any thought on the psychological reasons behind it?
To say that Kahn had a “complicated personal life” is to understate the case. Although he was married to the same woman for 44 years, he was almost obsessively unfaithful to her. Former members of his staff have told me that Kahn would frequently take attractive women home from parties. Two of his lovers, Anne Tyng and Harriet Pattison, bore him children. (Harriet’s son, Nathaniel, made the wonderful film about Kahn, “My Architect.”) To be sure, he only seemed to stray with women who were both physically attractive and intensely intelligent, but the hurt to those around him was no less for that. No one seemed to fully understand his behavior. Sue Ann Kahn, Kahn’s daughter by his wife Esther, told me that her father was actually something of a prude; he would criticize her for wearing lipstick at what he thought was too young an age. Balkrishna Doshi, one of Kahn’s collaborators in India, told me he thought Kahn was simply sharing different parts of himself with women who could appreciate each one of them. But an architect who worked in the Kahn office for many years was less charitable. He said, “Lou was a homely little Jewish man. I think the women were his way of saying, ‘Maybe so, but I’m still OK.’”
You selected eight of Kahn’s buildings to focus on in this book. I’m going to put you on the spot and ask you to name the ten greatest architectural works of the 20th Century.
Of course, I’m biased, especially as an American. Perhaps I can stay out of trouble by listing ten of my favorites. These are in chronological order, not necessarily in order of importance.
* The Robie House (1910), by Frank Lloyd Wright, remains a no-less-powerful building nearly a century after it created the architect’s signature look and helped launch the modern movement in Europe.
* I love the Philadelphia Saving Fund Society (1932), by William Lescaze and George Howe, who was a close friend and partner of Kahn’s. PSFS was the building that introduced modernist skyscrapers to this country, but did it in a distinctly American way.
* Wright’s Fallingwater (1937) embodies the architect’s genius for design with his love of the American landscape.
* I would argue that New York’s Rockefeller Center (1940), whose main design architect was Raymond Hood, is the best urban complex of the century.
* I wouldn’t want to live in the Farnsworth House (1951) by Mies van der Rohe, but I think it took an abstract view of domestic life to a level of near-perfection.
* Le Corbusier’s church at Ronchamp (1955) skirts the melodramatic, but it is still the finest combination of sculptural virtuosity and religious sincerity I have seen.
* Mies’s Seagram Building (1958) did the same thing for highrises that Farnsworth did for houses.
* Although Kahn’s Salk Institute (1965) is only a fragment of the original plan, it is an icon of architectural mystery.
* I think his library for the Phillips Exeter Academy (1972) is the purest distillation of the idea of what a library should be.
* I. M. Pei’s renovation of the Louvre (1989) makes my list not only because of the elegant and historically evocative glass pyramid, but also because of the thoroughly intelligent reorganization of such a complex institution.
* That’s ten, but I have to add Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao (1998). Like Wright’s Guggenheim in New York, Bilbao is no friend to the art that is exhibited there, but as architecture and as a piece of urban sculpture that happened in the right place at the right time for both architect and architecture, it may become Gehry’s most enduring work. But Gehry is very much of his time, and Kahn is for the ages.
Thanks to www.Baunetz.de for pointing me to their interviews...here is a great one with Jurgen Mayer.
An architect who designs buildings and furniture, and who on top is also an artist represented by a renowned Berlin gallery. How do all these disparate strands fit together?
For me they are all very closely related. What is particularly interesting is to consider everyday life, which is articulated in several criteria. In architecture the procedures are more complex, simply because there are more people involved. With regard to smaller dimensions, on the other hand, it is easy to find out what one actually wants to say, to search for different formulations, it is far simpler to experiment. The themes are actually almost always the same.
So what can transcend the boundaries of a particular genre?
I think primarily output with what I would call functional and material potential. What opportunities does a particular material offer? What happens if I remove it from its usual context and place it in another? How can I deliberately emply material "wrongly" ? How can familiar ways of familiar ways of viewing things be questioned, consciously trigger confusion? These are topics that I find exciting and my addressing them is one explanation for why, for example, the polyurethane cover used for the refectory in Karlsruhe actually comes from the field of roofing, or why with regard to the Bisazza furniture lots of people like the fact that something soft emerges from what are actually hard materials.
(Bisazza Collection, "Full House")
Do not precisely these two cases illustrate a difference between the two criteria? With regard to furniture, which perhaps has something of mini-pieces of architecture about it, anything goes. As far as a building, which stands on a campus like a piece of furniture, is concerned, you are quickly accused of infringing strict principles relating to the just use of materials.
The just use of materials and innovation with materials – where is the borderline here? And who is to say what is better or more valuable? We aimed to create an elastic space with continuous surfaces; that was the basic idea behind the design, which we initially pursued without actually making a final decision on a specific material. Keeping to the budget we were given would have meant a box with a few windows, so we had to be ruthless in our calculations. Concrete and steel were ruled out, which is why it was a wooden structure. An economical and highly progressive system involving pre-fabricated elements: Hollow cases, panels of laminated timber planks and particularly sturdy plywood, all of which is then coated with that layer of plastic. We got the maximum out of the materials so as to create the space and atmosphere we wanted with them. We met our targets in terms of construction costs and time, and it’s easy to look after as well, which in the Baden-Württemberg region can be of greater significance than elsewhere.
(ada 1)
This stretching, the “extending” of surfaces, the creation of confusion – these are themes you have been addressing for a long time now.
Yes, and several others as well. Whenever I look back at the last ten years of “production”, certain things keep coming up and networking with something new. Something we perhaps researched at a totally different time, and under quite different conditions, produces the answer to a question relating to a quite different project. And it’s right: I believe there has to be more to architecture than just looking at it once, there has to be something to discover, that we as observers should find be addressed on several levels. I at least aim to produce architecture that cries out to be looked at a second time.
...like the municipal building in Ostfildern, which at first sight you don’t realize tilts a few degrees...
Exactly, or our buildings for Danfoss Universe, which are not to do with ballooning, like in current free shapes, but with precisely the opposite, with a vacuum, with shrinking and condensing. For me it is an expression of quality if architecture has various levels of accessibility, if its appearance seduces, but on a deeper level there is also “material for discourse”, in other words matter for theoretical, intellectual discussion.
(Stadthaus in Ostfildern)
You have been searching for and promoting intellectual discourse for years now as a teacher. Your company is becoming bigger and bigger and New York is not exactly the closest of places. Nonetheless since 2004, each fall, you have been teaching at Columbia University, and prior to that you were visiting professor in Harvard and at the AA in London. What do you get from it, apart from it looking good on your CV, and lots of flight miles?
The time I spend in New York is always at the cost of the company, there’s no doubt about that. The pressure really builds up then and it’s becoming increasingly difficult to organize everything. On the other hand it is enjoyable and valuable ‘input’ for me personally to discuss certain questions a group and really get to the bottom of them. You only get that in a college, not in everyday office life. It’s fascinating to see how the students develop and discuss their ideas with them, as a teacher it’s of enormous benefit. Which is why all the effort is worthwhile.
A glance at the Columbia events calendar is enough to turn you green with envy. In just a single week there is discussion between Mark Wigley and Charles Jencks and three lectures by ‘Foreign Office Architects’. In the following week the picture is much the same.
It really is a luxury I’ll admit. Since Mark Wigley has been Dean there things have been really hotting up, there’s a lot going on right now.
“the expanded architect – away from it’s default settings” is the motto that appears in large letters on the start page.
In the USA too architecture has become more complicated. Here too there is the issue of changing professions, of new opportunities in architecture and the question of what constitutes the right training. The renowned schools of architecture are always at pains to have a clear profile and are very much in competition with each other. Of course Columbia too is placing ever more importance on computer and parametric design. As far as teaching is concerned my major interest is developing and imparting a critically productive stance towards certain cultural phenomena – in conjunction, of course, with the question of its impact on architectural output. I once got my students to work on the color beige for an entire semester. Or on those remarkable 45 degree angles you got in the ‘70s, which in my opinion paved the way for the flowing transitions between floor, wall, and ceiling that are so matter of course today. Last fall we took a look at the inflation of “future”.
On the Internet I discovered the sentence: “Jürgen Mayer H. designs suburban railroad carriages, collects preprints and designs bed linen”. Two of these activities are pretty accurate, but the one in the middle is a bit perplexing: What in the world would prompt anyone to collect preprints? What are they anyway?
They are data security patterns, in other words the sort of multi-leaf forms that courier services use. When somebody sends us something they have to declare its value on the front, where the address is. This information, however, is not meant to be seen by everyone. How expensive the thing was is of no concern to the person delivering it. These forms have several layers and on the various copies the patterns, which are always a jumble of figures or letters, can conceal certain information.
How do you collect something like that? And why?
I keep preprints like that whenever I get them and have actually specifically gone out in search of them. I now have over 300 different types. I contacted printers and the German Museum of Technology, and did a lot of research finding something out about how the principle came about. But hardly anyone really knows anything about it. The patterns are of interest to me as “strategic ornamentation”.
What does that mean? The patterns can be seen on your website, on bed linen and in an installation for the MoMA in San Francisco. But it can’t just be about decoration, about an alternative to floral and checked patterns?
No, the exciting thing about these patterns is that though they came about through pure expediency they are full of background symbolism: It’s to do with data monitoring, the appearance and disappearance of something. At an exhibition ten years ago in Chicago I designed a guest book that had data storage patterns, and treated them with temperature-sensitive print. Anything anybody wrote in it was initially invisible, but through the effect of heat, for example the body heat of a hand, emerged from the patterns and became legible. If you let go of the page, the writing disappeared again – appropriate for the coming and going of the guests in the gallery.
You live in Berlin, build houses in Spain and Denmark, commute to New York and come originally from Winnenden near Stuttgart. You can switch from English and High German to perfect Swabian, your local dialect, just like that. Does the term “home” mean anything to you?
Previously my first thought would have been ‘restriction’. Nowadays I see it less drastically, but I still have mixed feelings; I would say primarily the word stands for ‘loss’. Winnenden is small and close-knit; I always knew I wouldn’t stay there for ever and certainly wouldn’t be going back, apart from to visit of course. Nowadays I do feel a certain sense of gratitude, because it was certainly a good place in which to grow up.
We become less critical as we get older...
Of course. When you are young you think you have to rebel against such like – against Swabia, and its small and medium-sized enterprises, which I would lovingly have swapped for the highly intellectual environment of an academic family in an exciting big city. Fortunately, however, at some stage you realize why you became who you are. How much support you actually got at home or precisely the liberation from what seems to be a preordained destiny, makes you particularly strong. Nowadays I appreciate all of that and admire my parents’ openness and ability to learn. They come to my exhibitions, look at my architecture and address things that initially are totally new. They always say that being “confronted” with things like that are an enrichment for them. Actually it just occurs to me that when I was a student I did Winnenden a huge favor.
You did? What was it? An early building?
No. far better, I’m actually quite proud of it: I wrote a very forward letter and saved the town’s old freight station from being demolished; nowadays it houses the Firefighters Museum. A few years ago though there were plans to build a new bus station for which the beautiful, but dilapidated wooden station would have had to make way. At the time I was studying in Stuttgart, heard about the plans and protested, as the building was a typical example of the development of infrastructure. And the Lord Mayor responded, saying I shouldn’t just complain; he wanted to see proof from me, that there could actually be a bus station on the site if the old buildings were left standing. So I drew up the plans. I never received any money for them, but at the time I wasn’t bothered about that. Any anyway, ultimately something completely different was built. But the old building was left standing. Nowadays whenever I arrive by suburban railroad I always think: That really was a good deed for the town.
Text: Katrin VoermanekPhotos: David Franck, Torsten Seidel, Torchondo
Vladimir Paperny: How did the whole idea of those futuristic projects come about? What did it mean to you?
Wolf Prix: It was in the early 60-s. I was a student, and I had a very good teacher who exposed us to the utopian world of architecture. At that time, as you know, architecture was a very rational thing, and that’s how they taught us. My father was an architect, so I knew this rational aspect of architecture really well. But, as young students, we thought there should be more to architecture than its economic aspect. In 1964 in Vienna there were already people like Hans Hollein and Günther Feuerstein, so we had role models. Especially Feuerstein, he gave us lectures on modern architecture, really contemporary architecture. He showed us all those visionary things from Corbu to Archigram. We were young and we thought we had to change architecture radically — now and on a big scale. Looking back, it was an overestimation of the willingness of politicians and the society to change. When we started we wanted to be rich and famous like Beatles or Rolling Stones. There was a lot of influence of music on our architecture. Even the name Himmelblau sounded more like a name of a rock group. Himmelblau (Blue Sky) refers to our desire to make architecture changeable like clouds.
VP: When did you add the parentheses to the name — Himmelb(l)au?
WP: When we started to build, the name changed from the Blue Sky to Building the Sky.
VP: Did you see your visionary projects as shockers? Did you take them seriously?
WP: Very seriously. Bob Dylan did not want to shock with his songs. We thought this was the way architecture should be — flexible like the clouds, reacting to the needs of the people, not rigid and cast in concrete. We were influenced more by music and utopian philosophy, than by architecture.
VP: Some of your early projects seem to refer to Tatlin’s Monument. Were you consciously making this reference?
WP: No. We were looking for role models in architecture as well as in other fields, and, of course, Russian revolutionary architecture was influencing my generation of architects, people like Zaha, Tsumi, Rem.
VP: So, you were aware of Tatlin’s Monument?
WP: Of course, and of Lenin’s Tribune by Lissitzky. The Russian contribution was fascinating.
(Lissitzky's Lenin Tribute)
VP: Did it mean you were a revolutionary yourself — a Marxist, a Trotskyist, a Maoist?
WP: Not in terms of membership in a party but we were very much concerned with the development of the society. We were very critical of the capitalist world (and still are) as well as of totalitarian Communism.
VP: When my friend and I were involved in futuristic design in the 1960s, as you can see in this book, politically we were coming from the opposite side. We were very much right of center. Marx was an oppressive figure for us. We were dreaming of capitalism and a free market. The shapes we used were similar to yours. What we thought these shapes represented was the opposite.
WP: It is really interesting. These days I am involved in a discussion of political meaning of architectural shapes. We ask if columns and stone represent fascism in architecture. Some say yes, some say no. But isn’t it curious that authoritarian systems always use the same shapes? Look at Stalin and Hitler — axis, monumentality, stone, eternity — same as the Romans, who were very authoritarian. So, when you used these shapes to fight the oppressive Communism and we used them to fight the dictatorship of money, there was no contradiction.
VP: But look at Pierre-Charles L'Enfant who planned Washington, DC. The same axis, scale, monumentality, and he thought he was expressing openness and democracy.
WP: He thought, but subconsciously he expressed something else.
VP: How did your transition from dreaming to building occur?
WP (pointing to the project of 1968): We wanted to build things like this. It did not happen because the society was against it, because of the political and economic realities. We were looking for the weakest point of architecture where we could make the first step. If we do that we can change the vocabulary of architecture. There is philosophy behind it. The German word for design (or sketch) is "entwurf", which literary means throwing something outside. The first part of the word (ent-) represents the subconscious. So design is letting the subconscious out. Working along these lines we developed our own language, which is described as deconstructivist architectural language.
(The Himmelblau as published in "The Future of Dwelling." Moscow, 1972.)
VP: Did you have to make sacrifices, to give up something, in order to start building,
WP: I don’t see it in these terms. For me, radical architecture is not only thinking radically but also making it happen, building it.
VP: You want your objects to respond to changing human needs. Is there any physical movement in your buildings? Are they actually transformable?
WP: No. It’s still too early but it will come.
VP: Why do you hate columns?
WP: The dream of every architect is to overcome gravity. Since the Gothic times, the structure is trying to get rid of the gravity, shaping the dynamic forces into space.
VP: I don’t think every architect would agree with you. Ricardo Legorreta would say he loves the weight of the wall.
WP: He is still conservative. As I said, it’s too early.
VP: Do you mean the wing of your Akron museum will actually fly some day?
WP (laughing): Maybe.
(Akron Art Museum via www.topboxdesign.com)
VP: You once said that the idea of liquid space comes from Le Corbusier. Could you elaborate?
WP: Overcoming gravity. Do you know his chair? Do you know that the person in this chair takes exactly the same position as the astronaut during a takeoff?
VP: I did not know that.
WP: You see. If Corbu or Buckminster Fuller had the possibilities that computers give us today, their building would fly like ours. They would have eliminated columns. The Greek Doric temple in Paestum needs 36 columns to hold the roof covering 1400 sq. meters. In our BMW project we have 10 timed the size of the roof and we only need 11 columns. Technical possibilities challenge architects to get rid of gravity. Legorreta is driving a Ferrari at 5 km per hour.
VP: You can hardly drive faster in Mexico City.
WP: I like him and his architecture but his is not the only way.
VP: Maybe his approach is appropriate in Mexico where life is connected to traditions on so many levels.
WP: It’s the same in Vienna.
VP: Yes, but Mexican traditions are so much older.
WP: Yes, but it’s so cruel — if you think of all those sacrifices at the pyramids.
VP: The mural in the Akron museum was painted by Sol LeWitt. He belongs to the American Minimalism. Compared to your work, it’s a very conservative movement. What’s your relationship with it?
WP: It creates tension. Donald Judd moved into a military camp. His museum is an example of how not to deal with the military in architecture.
VP: If Michelangelo was alive today would you commission him to paint a mural in your building?
WP: Yes, but only if he would do it with computers, print it on plastic and apply to the wall. Or with projection.
VP: He would probably use the computers to recreate his traditional images?
WP: I hope not.
VP: Finish the sentence: form follows...
WP: Our approach is not form follows function or function follows form. What we are trying to achieve, and we have achieved it in some projects, is the synergy between the program and form. It’s a constant feedback. We do not just slap it together; it is developed in a complex process.
(Cool sketchup animation of Falkestrasse Project)
(Falkestrasse, Vienna)
VP: If form does not come from function it must come from another source. What is the other source in your case?
WP: Shapes look around, these are all shapes.
VP: But does a shape come to you as a divine revelation or there is some scientific process of arriving at the right shape?
WP: Feedback.
VP: From what?
WP: From looking at the shapes of Brancusi, of Le Corbusier, from listening to the Cliff Richard’s guitar playing, and developing a very personal approach to form.
VP: So, it is connected to Modern Art in a broad sense.
WP: No. Not connected. It’s the same influence as from philosophy. It’s subconscious development.
VP: Frank Gehry says that he comes from art, he is an architect by accident, that his thinking is that of an artist.
WP: That’s the American way of explaining very complex things in a simple way. If it were that easy there would have been more Frank Gehrys. It’s a very complex interaction between many levels.
VP: He said: “I come from the Italian Renaissance. Look at this Madonna with Child. Big volume, small volume. I do the same: big volume, small volume.” I thought it was a joke.
WP: No, it was not. He was explaining it the way Le Corbusier was explaining his shapes — how light and shadow interact with sculptural forms. The objective is always the same: to make buildings readable, identifiable in the anonymous fabric of our cites. You need something that you can describe and memorize. It doesn’t mean that every building had to be like that, only some. In older times these were churches and palaces, now we are more democratic, so we have to find democratic shapes serving the same purpose.
VP: Do you want to change the world with your buildings?
WP: I said it once, but I am old enough now to see that it’s not that easy. By changing the aesthetic paradigm you are influencing the visual world, which in turn is influencing our lives. We are not preachers of a new society, who are dangerous because they can easily become authoritarian. But we can make contributions on certain issues. Greg Lynn is creating new aesthetics based on the computer (whether he knows it or not). He is a young architect living in Los Angeles and teaching at my school in Vienna. He makes remarkable proposals for a new kind of architecture.
VP: There is a subject of “truth in architecture” — some say architecture must be truthful to the material, to the function, to the tectonic forces, to the way of life, etc. Is there such concept in your work?
WP: Everybody who is talking about truth is lying. There is no truth. It would have been too easy if there was truth — just follow it. What we are saying is “everybody is right but nothing is correct.”
VP: So, when Calatrava is making fake structural elements, is it a lie or truth?
WP: Both. I have nothing against lying and pretending. It’s a show. I don’t know if he is contributing to the new aesthetics, sometimes he is moving in the direction of kitsch, but that’s OK.
VP: Even kitsch is OK?
WP: Why not?
VP: Denise Scott Brown said to me once that while looking at factory buildings of the 19th century with applied ornaments she realized the this was a more honest approach to architecture than that of Paul Rudolph, for example, who turned the whole building into ornament. She would probably say the same thing about your work. How would you respond?
WP: Some architects are getting into the trap of economic issues by applying ornaments to barns. Basically it’s decaf architecture. The most perverse thing I’ve seen in America is “double decaf espresso”. I prefer the real thing. Creating public space has absolutely nothing to do with economic issues. You have to think on a larger scale. She and Venturi were talking about learning from Las Vegas, but they missed the main things there — cheap thrills, sex and money. Why should I learn from it?
VP: There are architects who use the same “aggressive” shapes as you do — at least some critics may see it this way. How would you describe the difference between your approach and that of Daniel Libeskind, Frank Gehry, Thom Mayne, Zaha Hadid and Rem Koolhaas?
WP: This is a very interesting question. All these people are connected to their cultural backgrounds. Look at Koolhaas and the other Dutch guys, they are Calvinists. Their approach is completely different from my Jewish friend like Gehry and Libeskind who are more cabalistic. I am from Vienna. We are dealing the Baroque attitude meaning creating space, crazy sometimes. If you look at the Baroque churches, they were building those huge domes and then painting them away with heavens. Crazy! Another example, Frederick Kiesler, a Viennese architect, I cannot imagine him building in Amsterdam. On the other hand, Rem Koolhaas is not possible in Vienna. Thom Mayne is American, he is related to the Calvinist tradition, but he is open enough, and that’s why I like him so much, to be open to the Jewish culture.
VP: Can you name a few architects that you feel are close to your vision of architecture?
WP: Zaha Hadid (her architecture is Arabic calligraphy, very interesting), Thom Mayne, Eric Moss, Greg Lynn, Frank Gehry, Daniel Libeskind. The generation that is working on liberating space.
VP: The last two questions I ask every architect. Imagine a global catastrophe that demolishes all buildings on Earth, and you have the power to save three of them. What would you choose?
WP: Wright’s Guggenheim, my BMW and Hagia-Sophia.
VP: Now, if you had to demolish three buildings, what would you start with?
WP (laughing): Only three? Not enough. All prisons, all military camps and all nuclear power plants.
VP: I think that after demolishing prisons you don't have to worry about other destructions.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010 at 4:40PM 
