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- Bouman, Ole, et al.
(author)
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A life to machine in : on the work of Elisabeth Diller & Ricardo Bofill
- 1994
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In: The invisible in architecture. - London : Academy Editions, Ernst & Sohn. - 1854902857 ; , s. 172-179
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Book chapter (peer-reviewed)abstract
- In the Slow House in North Haven on Long Island, designed by Elisabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio, everything revolves around the panorama. Not a 'magnificent' panorama, but a corrupted, tormented, twisted one. It is not their intention that an observer should be able to look out from the living room, which is reached via a tortuous and deliberately frustrating promenade architecturale, and casually enjoy the sight of the beautiful Noyack Bay. On the contrary, the point is that the visiter is made conscious of the socio-historical conditions that have induced us to call such panoramas 'magnificent'; and of why that is no longer possible... The project is a manifesto of doubt about the dominant visual and cultural codes. It operates through a mechanism of postponed need-satisfying towards an experience of having pleasure in confusion. Simply enjoyment is kitsch. One must have pleasure at the correct intellectual level - the level at which uncertainties dance. The most striking means the architects have employed to this end is the video monitor mounted above the living room fireplace. Using a video camera (supplied), the inhabitants can 'correct' the real view of the ocean to that of any desired season, for example by replaying a recording from six months earlier. The absolute autonomy of both seasons and climate is thereby annulled in one blow. Alternatively they may prefer to play a videotape by artist Jan Dibbets, showing a crackling open fire for hours at a stretch. In this way not only would the panorama be ridiculed, but also the experience of the interior. First the concept of the vista and then the cliches of intimacy and security are reduced toa game of codes. The provocative approach to design taken by this New York duo of architect/artists who also make environments, installations and performances is heavily inspired by Marcel Duchamp. Since Duchamp all art has been conceptual. Diller and Scofidio set themselves up as perpetuating the halting tradition that Duchamp inaugurated, namely the decoding and deflation of 'civilised' experience. The Slow House itself makes an indirect reference to Duchamp's Bicycle Wheel, the first ready-made in the history of art. This wheel, a utilitarian object from the street unexpectedly promoted to art object, acquired its new status through the very act of displacement. (This stratagem was, of course, meant to undermine the idea of artistic status itself.) Duchamp, meanwhile, setting the wheel spinning in his studio, thought he could see in it... a flickering fire. 'It was a pleasure for me to look at, just as I enjoyed looking at the dancing flames in the hearth.' This subtle interweaving of banality and the sublime, of refuse and spirituality, ushered in modern art with a vengeance.What the bicycle wheel was to Duchamp, the video is to Diller and Scofidio. On the one hand, the sublime experience of landscape is mocked in its own setting; and on the other hand, the sanctuary of the hearth and domesticated natural beauty are definitively relocated to the T.V. screen. It is conceptualism at its apogee. Although our sensibilities appear to be challenged by the prescribed scenario of experience in this house, everything is in fact attuned to a strictly cerebral programme in which countless notions from literature, philosophy and art vie for our attention. It is not for nothing that this architectural work has been the subject of several solid, highly erudite critiques, each more hermetic than the other.
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| 3. |
- Bouman, Ole, et al.
(author)
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About the anti-semitism of a wall : on the work of Daniel Libeskind
- 1994
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In: The invisible in architecture. - London : Academy Editions, Ernst & Sohn. - 1854902857 ; , s. 348-355
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Book chapter (peer-reviewed)abstract
- This is an impossible story. It is the story of an architect who has to recognise his own failure at the point of transition from idea to building. Elsewhere in this book, Herman Hertzberger explains that he finds architectural theorising practically worthless if its author has never seen anything of his own realised in bricks and mortar. This idea played a role for Hertzberger when he was on the competition jury for the extension of the Berlin Museum with a Jewish Museum, and he recommended Libeskind as the winner (1989). Libeskind had excelled only in building medels and installations in which countless literary, historical and philosophical notions have been interwoven in exceedingly complex networks. Although he was seen in architectural circles and promoted himself as a designer with pretensions of realising his plans, Libeskind remained primarily a thinker. The laurels of the Berlin Museum competition gave him the chance to prove himself as a doer too. For Hertzberger it was in any case an excellent opportunity to put all Libeskind's fine words to the test against what he is so good at himself, namely architectural handicraft. Libeskind had to behave like a realist for once - then we would soon find out how well all those beautiful ideas stood up in practice.The ideas remained beautiful; the design proved feasible and is being built, although with countless worrying delays. Hertzberger has at least had his way. But along with the building of Libeskind's first major work, it is very much the question whether the architect himself is at all happy about it. He is now doing justice to his qualification as an architect in practice, but it is becoming clearer and clearer that there is a strange tension between Libeskind's Symbolbedrüftigkeit, his urge to metaphor, and the realisation of an architectural product. What is more, that tension is actually a paradox in which the architect becomes embroiled. Success looks like failure. Or worse still, it is failure masquerading as success. How did this come about?
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| 4. |
- Bouman, Ole, et al.
(author)
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Architecture of king client : a conversation with Denise Scott Brown
- 1994
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In: The invisible architecture. - London : Academy Editions, Ernst & Sohn. - 1854902857 ; , s. 116-127
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Book chapter (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Strangely enough, she did not share in the 1991 Pritzker Prize; it was awarded just to Robert Venturi. But anyone who is really familiar with the architectural work of their design office in Philadelphia knows that the name of Denise Scott Brown is not on the letterhead for nothing. The profession, and in particular the prize-giving bodies, aimed as they are at unique artistic achievements of 'brilliant' individuals, generally have little interest in the social dimensions of design, and so Scott Brown's speciality, the converting of historical and sociological research into concrete design strategies and developing the methodology of that research in the direction of practice, is destined to remain in the background. The same goes even more so for her work in urban planning and development. Scott Brown has published numerous studies about morphology and American city planning. She is interested in the mutual relationships between the various material and social ingredients of the design process. The professional world, concentrated as it is on matchless projects, finds it difficult to perceive these connections, however much Scott Brown, in her own words a 'philosopher of action', wants to apply her sociological knowledge practically in concrete cases.
Scott Brown's speciality is crucial to the way the studio approaches the design process, where what comes first is to pay attention to the effect that forms have for various segments of the public. It is also vital for the worldwide intellectual significance attributed to the bureau since their triumphal progress began with the publication of Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (1966) and Learning from Las Vegas (1972). Denise Scott Brown sees her work as strictly belonging to the domain of the visible, but her involvement with the social research that has for many years been part of this prompted us, as editors of The Invisible in Architecture, to set out for her office in Philadelphia, situated (how could it be otherwise?) on Main Street. Not surprisingly, the conversation was completely 'almost all right'.
On a number of fronts Denise Scott's work reveals a strongly affirmative attitude and the acceptance of today's faits accomplis. The titles of several of her essays contain the phrase 'learning from'. She is always concerned with empirical research, fuelled by Popperian 'conjectures and refutations', into provisional hypotheses. In this respect she belongs to a rich Anglo-Saxon scientific tradition. Her empiricism is well expressed, for example, in her numerous studies and designs regarding the reorganisation of the urban landscape. Averse to planning abstractions, she works at the level of urban design, directly connected with concrete experience at street level. That explains too her ever-increasing interest in the symbolic dimension of designing that stands out so emphatically precisely at that level. Her field of activity is formed by the facades, the street furniture, the pavement, in short the empire of signs of daily life. This leads straightaway to her great social involvement, for without an active concern for the actual people who will make use of the executed design, and will be able to identify with the symbolic order, such research has no meaning.
Ultimately, however, her work betrays something even more fundamental, something that, for Europeans in general and poets and thinkers in particular, gives her work such an elusive character. ('No one loves the truth and the good, unless he abhors the multitude.') It is the typically American way of working she prides herself upon:
'One should not merely understand the way a society operates but should try to work with its forces, to the extent that one can without too far compromising goals. I think it's called 'American pragmatism'. It is also an effort to develop a green thumb for cities. (...) We try to talk about important things in an easy, straightforward way; speaking American, not translated French, German or Italian. We have an old fashioned belief in being understandable to others and even to ourselves, so, don't hold us suspect if you find you understand us.'
To want to be understandable, or to think that you automatically are so, and leaving it at that; it does make rather a difference. About the same difference as between rhetoric and an ordinary conversation. To want to practise rhetoric is in fact something that we are not always willing to understand. But who's going to fight against this now, seeing as every culture has the right to avow its own identity? Now that the 'Other' in culture is attracting such a great deal of attention, we ought to summon respect for the 'American Dream' too of course, even if this has transpired only very partially and/or for the few. But there exists an intrinsic and problematic relationship between the globalisation of American culture and the threat to regional and cultural identity. Should we see the American way of life as a way like any other, or has its universal success perhaps placed it on a level where it should be evaluated with something other than anthropologically-based relativism? In any event, the vision of 'all you need is a dollar and a dream' (used as well to promote the New York lottery) seems insufficient for a critical attitude with an eye to the future. Perhaps 'the action of philosophy' can offer solace?
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| 5. |
- Bouman, Ole, et al.
(author)
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Ark-itecture : on the work of Julia Bolles & Peter Wilson
- 1994
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In: The invisible in architecture. - London : Academy Editions, Ernst & Sohn. - 1854902857 ; , s. 236-243
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Book chapter (peer-reviewed)abstract
- 'Man is at the same time subject to two movements: one of terror, which rejects, and one of attraction, which commands fascinated respect. lnterdiction and transgression correspond to these two contradictory movements.' This statement by Georges Bataille is eminently applicable to the ideas and work of Architekturbüro Bolles Wilson. The firm's architecture has a Janus head. Sometimes the buildings and drawings seem to evince an attempt to repel the waves of modernity; and at other times they seem to accept these waves as a fait accompli and even to take pleasure in them. The work is simultaneously rejecting and attracting. It commands respect for the built object, yet at the same time it blends effortlessly into the metropolitan flux that has rendered helpless everything of value. Until now, Julia Bolles, Peter Wilson and their partner Eberhard Kleffner have had to realise their ambitions in small or unexecuted projects. Many of their ideas have reached us in word and seductive image without having had to pass the test of feasibility. But the building of the New City Library, Monster, makes it possible for us to measure the extraordinary ideas underlying this work on and at an appropriate scale, against the built reality. This reality refuses, however, to conform to any univalent criterion and takes a variety of forms. Their work is a protean insertion into an existing context.
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| 7. |
- Bouman, Ole, et al.
(author)
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Born to be wild : on the work of Frank Gehry
- 1994
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In: The invisible in architecture. - London : Academy Editions, Ernst & Sohn. - 1854902857 ; , s. 44-51
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Book chapter (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Los Angeles Vice might be a good name for Frank Gehry's brand of architecture. His work flouts so many conventions that at first sight it looks like sheer materialised malefaction. Using all the discipline's autonomous resources, Gehry tries to shake established architecture out of ils slumber and offer it an invigorating cold shower, ultimately to its own good. First catharsis, and then ... everything is allowed. Frank Gehry was once likened to his fellow Californian Clint Eastwood as the notorious Dirty Harry, the cop who spurns all the stultifying legal niceties and meets crime head on with his Magnum 44. The powers that be at first want to strip him of his badge, but in the end they are visibly pleased with the lone combatant who takes the law into his own hands. At last, the city can breathe easy... Perhaps the analogy looks a bit far fetched: Eastwood's neo-reactionary Harry seldom yields as much as a grudging smile, whereas Frank Gehry's playful avant-garde is closer lo a Dionysian guffaw. But there is also an overriding similarity. In both cases, the nomadic wilfulness and provocative methods are widely enjoyed. And in both cases, too, this is really because whether intentionally or not, their wayward behaviour perpetuates a conventional morality.
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| 9. |
- Bouman, Ole, et al.
(author)
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Consolation or exorcism; a healthy mind in a healty building : on the works of Ton Alberts & Max van Huut
- 1994
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In: The invisible in architecture. - London : Academy Editions, ernst & Sohn. - 1854902857 ; , s. 332-339
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Book chapter (peer-reviewed)abstract
- In Amsterdam's Bijlmermeer, the functionalist high-rise district of the sixties whose subsequent deterioration and bad reputation caused it to be euphemistically renamed 'Amsterdam South-East', there stands one of the most intriguing products of contemporary architecture. It is the headquarters of the transnational ING Bank designed by Ton Alberts and Max van Huut. This building is a clear case of architecture autre. The bank, known locally by the irreverent name of the 'monkey rock', has none of the technocratic clarity of the honeycomb tower-block flats in its vicinity. Nor does it bear any relation to the later low-rise additions, which were intended as a counterweight and a means of 'revitalisation'. The bank is a relic from the tradition of organic building that we identify with the 1910s and 20s with movements such as the Gläserne Kette and names like Hugo Häring, Bruno Taut and Hans Scharoun. It calls to mind the architecture of forced optimism whose products sprouted here and there like defiant weeds from the ruins of a shattered Europe alter the First World War. Sixty or more years later, with our knowledge of the totalitarian temptations of this kind of architecture, and in the context of Western Europe's economic prosperity, we may sense a dated quality about this building. Yet at the same time it is like a breath of fresh air. It is not enough to dismiss this miniature city of social and monetary traffic as yet another formal variant of proliferating Post-Modernism. This building is intendedly the product of a social programme, of a well thought-out standpoint on the moral content of contemporary architecture. Ton Alberts and Max van Huut are architects who do not eagerly bow to the overpowering restrictions of the market which force architecture to become a veneer for commerce and speculation. They aspire to create buildings that are salutary, a prescription of hallowed space and purified material to cure mankind of his soulless condition - a remarkable objective, seeing that the architectural discipline has long consigned the building principle of the perfectibility of society to the waste-paper bin.
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| 10. |
- Bouman, Ole, et al.
(author)
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Desperately seeking Siza : a conversation with Alvaro Siza
- 1994
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In: The invisible in architecture. - London : Academy Editions, Ernst & Sohn. - 1854902857 ; , s. 204-213
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Book chapter (other academic/artistic)abstract
- There is not much that is definitivos about Alvaro Siza except for his favourite brand of Portuguese cigarettes. After a career to date of four decades of unbroken activity, he is now among the select group of most acclaimed master builders of our time; yet he has always remained remarkably modest both in his pronouncements about architecture and in the claims he makes for himself. While nobody would deny his extraordinary professional skill and while the ease he displays in projects of every scale is universally admired, Siza remains someone who does not put on airs about how unique he is. On the contrary, in his numerous interviews he continues to define his role emphatically as being that of someone who does no more than transform something that already exists. To quote his own words, 'Architects don't invent anything; they transform reality. They work continuously with models which they transform in response to the problems which they encounter'. The critical role in international architectural practice that is attributed to him is not expressed in any stated programme; his appeal lies more in his subtle approach to the trade, to his materials and to the social context of his work. One feature that is always present is a notion of frozen conflict. In practice this means a process in which all the elements, architectural and otherwise, are allotted their place in all their integrity, almost always in 'innocent' white or in the natural colour of the surrounding environment. This is true of the Bouça dwellings in Oporto where the little aisle that is so typical of the normal working class housing in Oporto is preserved with its proportions unchanged while at the same time a transformation has been introduced that makes the flats a pleasure to live in. The same goes for the apartment building that Siza designed in the Kreuzberg neighbourhood in Berlin where a typical gloomy tenement block has been turned into a once-off statement by the foreign 'author' and is imbued with his charisma. No matter what the project, Siza concentrates both on ensuring that the paradoxes inherent in the commission are given free play, while at the same time highlighting the frozen semblance of a consensus based on the local conventions he is confronted with. When these conventions suit him so, as for instance in the Punt en Komma project in The Hague, the result is small-scale context-based works that always seem to say 'yes' to the conditions that gave rise to them. In Berlin, however, the context and the point of departure have a negative historical content: here Siza's architecture would seem to say 'no', however much as a designer he would rather not admit it. Modernism functions here as a mask to express an infinite sadness, something that graffiti artists have in fact immortalised in the facade: bonjour tristesse.
Those who have not had the chance to visit any of Siza's buildings, or who have only seen a few of them, will have to make do with Siza the critic if they want to come to a proper assessment of his critical approach. Siza himself will in any case not be of much help, concerned as he is with seeing that fine craftsmanship gets maximum play. Concern about what people think of his work has no place here. To put it concretely, Siza's concrete architecture is all that Siza cares about; Siza's echo is the domain of his admirers. If you want the architect, you'll come across him in the endearing interiors of the prospective occupants of his buildings, sometimes caught off his guard as he draws a Corbusier-type sketch; or else you'll see him travelling somewhere between here and eternity. But you'll rarely, if ever, see him in the frontline of his own exegesis.
All the same, we cannot say that Siza refuses to have anything at all to do with his fans. He has already given many interviews; in the lounge of a Maastricht hotel, enveloped in a cloud of schlager music, he was pleased to pass the time of night with us and to talk about the work of the architect and the role of criticism. We did not understand how so pragmatic a person as Siza, who takes the world as he sees it, could at the same time be such a great artist. He reminds one of Picasso who once said with apparent nonchalance, 'I don't seek, I find'. In the meantime he continues to astonish his public with these apparently random works. Right from the start we have to admit it: we are still none the wiser.
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