Reculer pour Mieux Sauter? : On the work of Jacques Herzog & Pierre de Meuron

• The buildings of Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron do not have the kind of looks you immediately fall in love with. They are too stodgy, impersonal, too Kafkaesque for that. Especially in their residential designs, these architects have devoted themselves to a formal typology that is more reminiscent of utility architecture, barracks perhaps, than of the fresh-faced stock-in-trade of today's prefab merchants. The overall image, at least as it reaches the world in printed reproduction, is monochromatic and repetiThe buildings of Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron do not have the kind of looks you immediately fall in love with. They are too stodgy, impersonal, too Kafkaesque for that. Especially in their residential designs, these architects have devoted themselves to a formal typology that is more reminiscent of utility architecture, barracks perhaps, than of the fresh-faced stock-in-trade of today's prefab merchants. The overall image, at least as it reaches the world in printed reproduction, is monochromatic and repeti­tious. Still, il we persist in looking a little beyond the first impression, an expressiva tex­ture begins lo emerge. These designers know perfectly well what the real meaning of form and material can be. The emphatically tactile quality of their architecture makes it immediately clear that the attribution of meaning is no mere accident. On the contrary, tactility, which is usually meant to reach the observer's brain stem directly through the sense of touch, here makes a detour via the most sophisticated regions of the intelli­gence. The tactilism has become an artistic form of representation. tious. Still, if we persist in looking a little beyond the first impression, an expressive tex­ture begins lo emerge. These designers know perfectly well what the real meaning of form and material can be. The emphatically tactile quality of their architecture makes it immediately clear that the attribution of meaning is no mere accident. On the contrary, tactility, which is usually meant to reach the observer's brain stem directly through the sense of touch, here makes a detour via the most sophisticated regions of the intelli­gence. The tactilism has become an artistic form of representation. 

Ämnesord

HUMANIORA  -- Konst -- Arkitektur (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Arts -- Architecture (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

The Invisible in Architecture

Jacques Herzog

Pierre de Meuron

Publikations- och innehållstyp

ref (ämneskategori)

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