tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-86737170488715997652024-03-24T16:31:41.608-07:00architectural interviewsshares interviews of different architects, persons/artists/designers related to architecture as well as some interviews of notable thinkers. includes star architects like rem koolhaas, libeskind, zaha hadid, lious kahn, renzo piano and many more. part of architectural series blog.simulacrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01025844469103673248noreply@blogger.comBlogger77125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8673717048871599765.post-5782787860367544972010-01-14T13:38:00.000-08:002010-01-14T13:49:49.226-08:00Frank Lloyd Wright: the Mike Wallace Interview<span style="color: #666666;">architect/artist:<b> Frank Lloyd Wright</b><br />
interview title:<b>Frank Lloyd Wright: the Mike Wallace Interview</b><br />
interviews compilation no: <b>T-61,V-14</b><br />
interview format: <b>Text, Video</b><br />
date: <b>9/01/57 and 9/28/57</b><br />
appeared in: <b>PBS and Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation</b><br />
interviewer: <b>Mike Wallace</b><br />
photo by:<br />
<br />
courtesy: <i><b>www.franklloydwright.org<br />
http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/multimedia/video/2008/wallace/wright_frank_lloyd.html</b></i></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666;"><i><b> http://www.pbs.org/flw/buildings/wallace.html <br />
</b></i></span><br />
<br />
<b>Interview Details:</b><br />
<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">(click the "read more" below)</span></i><br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<br />
<i>This interview was recorded in two parts. Frank Lloyd Wright, one of the greatest architects of the 20th century, talks to Wallace about religion, war, mercy killing, art, critics, his mile-high skyscraper, America's youth, sex, morality, politics, nature, and death.</i><br />
<i><br />
</i><br />
<i>For more than 70 years, Frank Lloyd Wright showed his countrymen new ways to build their homes and see the world around them. He created some of the most monumental, and some of the most intimate spaces in America. He designed everything: banks and resorts, office buildings and churches, a filling station and a synagogue, a beer garden and an art museum. From his first house to his final masterpiece, follow Frank Lloyd Wright’s extraordinary career, his life, and 20th century American architecture.</i><br />
<hr /><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Interview</b></span><br />
<hr />On Criticism<br />
MW: What do you think of these people who either don’t understand or don’t care?<br />
FLW: I don’t think they matter, as far as I’m concerned. I don’t think they’re for me and why should I be for them? <br />
<br />
On The Common Man<br />
MW: I understand that last week, in all seriousness, you said: “If I had another 15 years to work, I could rebuild this entire country. I could change the nation.”<br />
Flw: I did say it and it’s true. Having had now the experience building (going on) 769 buildings, it’s quite easy for me to shake them out of my sleeve. It’s amazing what I could do for this country. <br />
<br />
On Calling Himself The World’s Greatest Architect<br />
FLW: I’ve been accused of saying I was was the greatest architect in the world and if I had said so, I don’t think it would be very arrogant, because I don’t believe there are many [great architects]—if any. For 500 years what we call architecture has been phony. <br />
<br />
On Marilyn Monroe As An Example Of Architecture<br />
FLW: I think Ms. Monroe as architecture is extremely good architecture. <br />
<br />
On St. Patrick’s Cathedral<br />
MW: You feel nothing when you go into St. Patrick’s?<br />
FLW: Regret...because it isn’t the thing that really represents the spirit of independence and the sovereignty of the individual which I feel should be represented in our edifices devoted to culture. <br />
<br />
On Nature<br />
MW: When you go out into a big forest with towering pines and [experience] almost a feeling of awe that frequently you do get in the presence of nature...do you not feel insignificant? Do you not feel small?<br />
FLW: On the contrary, I feel large. I feel enlarged and encouraged. Intensified. More powerful. <br />
<br />
On Growing Old<br />
MW: Do you think that you are any less rebellious—less of a radical—in your art and life than you were a quarter-century ago?<br />
FLW: Rather more so...only more quiet about it. <br />
<br />
On Organic Architecture<br />
FLW: I would like to have a free architecture. Architecture that belonged where you see it standing—and is a grace to the landscape instead of a disgrace. <br />
<br />
On Being Called An Intellectual<br />
FLW: I don’t like intellectuals...They are from the top down, not from the ground up. I’ve always thought of myself—of what I represented—as from the ground up.<br />
<hr /><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Mike Wallace’s interviews with Frank Lloyd Wright<br />
have been re-released by Archetype Associates.<br />
To order, please call (212)777-9080.</i></span><br />
<hr /><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Video interview:</b></span><br />
<br />
to watch the video please click <a href="http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/multimedia/video/2008/wallace/wright_frank_lloyd.html"><b>HERE</b></a> or <a href="http://www.pbs.org/flw/buildings/wallace.html"><b>HERE</b></a><br />
<br />
<hr />simulacrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01025844469103673248noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8673717048871599765.post-14232536932914327592010-01-11T14:23:00.000-08:002010-01-11T14:24:38.046-08:00Interview with Rafael Moneo: speaks about own understanding with CCCP student<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJQa0WhlhVMCG2avVABw5NQxCWSx6HElRlpbuMI-JLwDnfeWx7ygo-pwJZttnFXOB3Gbq5Y-9zuHOMj2MswkoB_dqbJ3optbTUfLbyD3hrcupRYMsoJfjABcMPap-G8WeMUAzgfH_oa8Tb/s1600-h/rafael+moneo+interview.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJQa0WhlhVMCG2avVABw5NQxCWSx6HElRlpbuMI-JLwDnfeWx7ygo-pwJZttnFXOB3Gbq5Y-9zuHOMj2MswkoB_dqbJ3optbTUfLbyD3hrcupRYMsoJfjABcMPap-G8WeMUAzgfH_oa8Tb/s320/rafael+moneo+interview.jpg" /></a><br />
</div><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">architect/artist:<b> Rafael Moneo</b><br />
interview title:<b> Interview with Rafael Moneo</b></span><span style="color: #666666;"><br />
interviews compilation no: <b>V-13</b><br />
interview format: <b>Video</b><br />
date: <b>30 September 2009</b><br />
appeared in: <b>You Tube</b><br />
interviewer: </span><span style="color: #666666;"><b>Tong Tong (CCCP student)</b></span><span style="color: #666666;"><br />
photo by:<br />
<br />
courtesy:<i><b> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTo6z9G7IUc&feature=related</b></i></span><br />
<br />
<b>Interview Details:</b><br />
<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">(click the "read more" below)</span></i><br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<br />
<br />
Interview with Rafael Moneo. The interview was conducted on September 30,2009 by 1rst year CCCP student Tong Tong in Avery Hall. <br />
<hr /><object height="340" width="460"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/oTo6z9G7IUc&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/oTo6z9G7IUc&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="460" height="340"></embed></object><br />
<hr />simulacrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01025844469103673248noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8673717048871599765.post-65958649228916707792010-01-11T14:14:00.000-08:002010-01-11T14:14:45.765-08:00Nicholas Grimshaw interview with Architectural Record<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeJI_c3hHqJ4n0esu3uXLg4jCZ-2AhDLKk27oBqBYCTo8RgXqZ1U1akfM9C4TCFixR8k2lYZcRZmJ0Qg-yADvuwiJcSqY8cjBlmP9Nm5DyT1MwN_DauJa4Zom3mdAn61YUCV2qd-22FaLc/s1600-h/grimshaw+architectural+record+interview.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeJI_c3hHqJ4n0esu3uXLg4jCZ-2AhDLKk27oBqBYCTo8RgXqZ1U1akfM9C4TCFixR8k2lYZcRZmJ0Qg-yADvuwiJcSqY8cjBlmP9Nm5DyT1MwN_DauJa4Zom3mdAn61YUCV2qd-22FaLc/s320/grimshaw+architectural+record+interview.jpg" /></a><br />
</div><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">architect/artist:<b> Nicholas Grimshaw</b><br />
interview title:<b> </b></span><span style="color: #666666;"><b>Nicholas Grimshaw interview</b></span><span style="color: #666666;"><br />
interviews compilation no: <b>V-12</b><br />
interview format: <b>Video</b><br />
date: <br />
appeared in: <b>Architectural Record</b><br />
interviewer: </span><span style="color: #666666;"><b>Architectural Record</b></span><span style="color: #666666;"><br />
photo by:<br />
<br />
courtesy:<i><b> http://video.construction.com/</b></i></span><br />
<br />
<b>Interview Details:</b><br />
<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">(click the "read more" below)</span></i><br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
Sir Nicholas Grimshaw, founder & chairman of Grimshaw Architects, has gained recognition for his seamless integration of complex technological systems into striking, modernist structures.<br />
<br />
video:<br />
<hr /><iframe frameborder="0" height="306" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://video.construction.com/linking/index.jsp?skin=oneclip&ehv=http://construction.com/video/&fr_story=FRdamp277481&rf=ev&hl=true" width="402"></iframe><br />
<hr />simulacrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01025844469103673248noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8673717048871599765.post-42258988099982370682010-01-08T11:14:00.000-08:002010-01-08T11:14:40.775-08:00Studio Banana TV features the Canal Theater, video interview Juan Navarro Baldeweg<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhz5S_MVoVenxJ2ETph0cyexNH4nIdbXjHoYPYUqEwIobKNbik6_5WczQEe0jaBEkDAVaGcVUcautyiRkasBiyrNi1Qk3iEUjgTGcbblNOCdrdUvvfFhnsaIh-AgB959RQMPoqwxv2lKYXP/s1600-h/juan+baldweg+StudioBanana.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhz5S_MVoVenxJ2ETph0cyexNH4nIdbXjHoYPYUqEwIobKNbik6_5WczQEe0jaBEkDAVaGcVUcautyiRkasBiyrNi1Qk3iEUjgTGcbblNOCdrdUvvfFhnsaIh-AgB959RQMPoqwxv2lKYXP/s320/juan+baldweg+StudioBanana.jpg" /></a><br />
</div><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">architect/artist:<b>Juan Navarro Baldeweg</b><br />
interview title:<b> Studio Banana TV features the Canal Theater, Juan Navarro Baldeweg </b><br />
interviews compilation no: <b>V-11</b><br />
interview format: <b>Video</b><br />
date:<br />
appeared in: <b>Studio Banana TV</b><br />
interviewer: <b>Studio Banana TV</b><br />
photo by:<br />
<br />
courtesy:<i><b> http://studiobanana.tv/2009/12/08/studio-banana-tv-feature-the-canal-theater-juan-navarro-baldeweg/</b></i></span><br />
<br />
<b>Interview Details:</b><br />
<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">(click the "read more" below)</span></i><br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<i><br />
Studio Banana TV features the Canal Theater building in Madrid with explanations by its author, Spanish architect Juan Navarro Baldeweg.<br />
<br />
Many requests converge in the theater Canal in Madrid. First, the intrinsic nature of its program calls for the creation of an illusionary space, a fantasy world, that is, for the imaginary as the substance of the project. Second, the exceptional nature of the characteristic function of a building that invokes that imaginary world and is located in a somewhat nondescript and neglected urban area, demands a bold and formally rich response, whose intrinsic vitality will breathe life into the intersection of Bravo Murillo and Cea Bermúdez Streets, making it stand out. Third, the theater activity requires both integration and segregation simultaneously. Urban life should be attracted to it, but there must also be a separation, a discontinuity to protect the core of the virtual world created within, which by its very nature is unconnected to the surrounding urban reality. The latter dual and divergent demand translates into an integration and continuity of the street on the ground floor level and a segregation achieved by elevating the rest of the program to the top floor, placing the theater and dance halls above the entrance halls on the lower floor. The ground floors, with large entrance halls, the store and the cafeteria, are transparent and visible from the street, thus incorporating their activity into the city and inviting participation.<br />
<br />
.<br />
Juan Navarro Baldeweg (Santander, 1939) is a Spanish architect, painter and sculptor. Navarro Baldeweg has provided a novel look at the constructive practices, in which the work is understood as the subject of an existing physical context activation. He has been guest lecturer at many international universities and is a professor in the Department of Architectural Design of ETSAM. He is author, among other works, of the National Museum of Altamira, the Canal Theatres in Madrid, the National Museum of Human Evolution in Burgos, the Salamanca Congress Centre, the Institute of Archeology and Architecture Awareness in Amersfoort, the Netherlands, or the extension to the School of Music at Princeton University.<br />
<br />
Special thanks to the Canal Theatre and to Juan Navarro Baldeweg Architects.<br />
<br />
Interview and translation by Studio Banana TV </i><br />
<hr /><br />
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>video interview:</b></span><br />
<br />
<embed allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" height="232" src="http://blip.tv/play/g%2BpXgbPDXQI" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="480"></embed><br />
<br />
please wait for the player to start. if it takes to much time or can't see the video, click <a href="http://blip.tv/play/g%2BpXgbPDXQI">HERE</a> <br />
<hr />simulacrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01025844469103673248noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8673717048871599765.post-81701994988565845272010-01-08T10:49:00.000-08:002010-01-08T11:21:48.949-08:00Studio Banana interviews Toyo Ito<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWRxOMxslYPqxMSB1HJ2Y812Tjt7utoFui7H6SPsrr-snlqWGTz_KZ0NDM6M-LlysWNIJe5wzLoWZVrpCxWMLzhPWsQRMnGkZp1YQ3wNXANSrgYELHkfQPb02lZAeLIPuSx71xlSouN3Fk/s1600-h/STUDIOBANANA+ToyoIto.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWRxOMxslYPqxMSB1HJ2Y812Tjt7utoFui7H6SPsrr-snlqWGTz_KZ0NDM6M-LlysWNIJe5wzLoWZVrpCxWMLzhPWsQRMnGkZp1YQ3wNXANSrgYELHkfQPb02lZAeLIPuSx71xlSouN3Fk/s320/STUDIOBANANA+ToyoIto.jpg" /></a><br />
</div><span style="color: #666666;"><br />
architect/artist:<b>Toyo Ito</b><br />
interview title:<b> Studio Banana interviews Toyo Ito</b><br />
interviews compilation no: <b>V-10</b><br />
interview format: <b>Video</b><br />
date:<b></b><br />
appeared in: <b>Studio Banana TV</b><br />
interviewer: <b>Cornelia Tapparelli Translation by Yayoi Kawamura.</b><br />
photo by:<br />
<br />
courtesy:<i><b> http://architecturalscholar.blogspot.com/2009/12/studio-banana-tv-interviews-toyo-ito.html</b></i></span><br />
<br />
<b>Interview Details:</b><br />
<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">(click the "read more" below)</span></i><br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<i>Studio Banana TV interviews Japanese architect Toyo Ito on the occasion of his lecture at the European University of Madrid. Toyo Ito is one of the world’s most innovative and influential architects. Ito is known for creating extreme concept buildings, in which he seeks to fuse the physical and virtual worlds. Interview realised with the sponsorship of the European University of Madrid.</i><br />
<i><br />
</i><br />
<i>Toyo Ito is a Japanese architect born in 1941. He graduated from Tokyo University’s Department of Architecture in 1965. His office Toyo Ito & Associates is a world leading exponent of architecture that addresses the contemporary notion of a “simulated” ciy, and has been called “one of the world’s most innovative and influential architects.”</i><br />
<i><br />
</i><br />
<i>After a brief stint in the Metabolist studio of Kiyonori Kikutake, in 1971 he started his own studio in Tokyo, named Urbot (”Urban Robot”). In 1979, the studio name was changed to Toyo Ito & Associates. Throughout his early career Ito constructed numerous private house projects that expressed aspects of urban life in Japan. His early experiments include the Tower of Winds, the Egg of Winds and the Pao House for nomad women. Later projects include the Yatsushiro Municipal Museum and the Shimosuwa Municipal Museum. More recently he has built the Sendai Mediatheque (2001), the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion in London (2002), TOD’s Omotesando Building in Tokyo (2004), the World Games Stadium in Kaohsiung, Taiwan (2008) or the Torre Fira BCN Building in Barcelona (2009).</i><br />
<i><br />
</i><br />
<i>Ito has defined architecture as “clothing” for urban dwellers, particularly in the contemporary Japanese metropolis. This theme revolves around the equilibrium between the private life and the metropolitan “public” life of an individual. The current architecture of Toyo Ito expands on his work produced during the postmodern period, aggressively exploring the potentials of new forms. In doing so, he seeks to find new spatial conditions that manifest the philosophy of borderless beings.</i><br />
<i><br />
</i><br />
<i>Special thanks to Eriko Kinoshita from Toyo Ito & Associates, Architects</i><br />
<i><br />
</i><br />
<i>Interview by Cornelia Tapparelli. Translation by Yayoi Kawamura.</i><br />
<hr />Video Interview:<br />
<br />
<embed allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" height="232" src="http://blip.tv/play/g%2BpXgbfJcAI" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="480"></embed> <br />
<br />
please wait for the player to start. if it takes to much time or can't see the video, click <a href="http://blip.tv/play/g%2BpXgbfJcAI">HERE</a><br />
<hr />simulacrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01025844469103673248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8673717048871599765.post-33295194573735312692010-01-06T14:23:00.000-08:002010-01-06T14:23:05.121-08:00Cameron Sinclair, Open Architecture Network: interview with inhabitat.com<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3V82NGseZsSw0wdPbJCgw2mH1nd033ZY9sqJvz-R3TTl6yn3AeIDU4KMpdVk4uRFbGDW1A7fRpd3mw7yanv7I4hr_espKuBsEeHSdCM3x0b39eZyZEufO0wicLgGQLSpdrlpgC1AciTDm/s1600-h/cameron+sinclair+inhabitat+interview.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3V82NGseZsSw0wdPbJCgw2mH1nd033ZY9sqJvz-R3TTl6yn3AeIDU4KMpdVk4uRFbGDW1A7fRpd3mw7yanv7I4hr_espKuBsEeHSdCM3x0b39eZyZEufO0wicLgGQLSpdrlpgC1AciTDm/s320/cameron+sinclair+inhabitat+interview.jpg" /></a><br />
</div><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">architect/artist: </span><b style="color: #666666;">Cameron Sinclair</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">interview title:</span><b style="color: #666666;"> </b><b style="color: #666666;">Cameron Sinclair, Open Architecture Network<br />
</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">interviews compilation no: </span><b style="color: #666666;">T-60 <br />
</b> <span style="color: #666666;">interview format: </span><b style="color: #666666;">Text</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">date:<b> </b></span><b style="color: #666666;">03/12/07</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">appeared in: <b>inhabitat.com</b></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">interviewer: </span><b style="color: #666666;">Emily Pilloton</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">photo by: </span><span style="color: #666666;"></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #666666;">courtesy:<i><b> http://www.inhabitat.com/2007/03/12/open-architecture-network-cameron-sinclair/</b></i></span><br />
<br />
<b>Interview Details:</b><br />
<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">click the "read more" below</span></i><br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<hr /><i>A few weeks ago, I sat down with Cameron Sinclair to talk about his recently-launched Open Architecture Network. He describes it as a “gift to the design community” with a simple mission: “to generate design opportunities that will improve living standards for all” by providing an open-source platform through which ANYone can view, post, share, and adapt sustainable, humanitarian-based, scalable solutions. The idea that designs and all associated documents can and should be shared within the decidedly proprietary architectural industry is truly innovative, and could very well aid in the reshaping of the entire architectural profession into a more socially-focused and responsible vocation. Read on for a full transcription of the interview and a video of Cameron at last year’s TED conference.</i><br />
<hr /><i></i><br />
<br />
Emily: You won the TED prize, and the Open Architecture Network was your “wish.” How did the idea come about? Down the line how do you think it’s going to change the existing system?<br />
<br />
Cameron: The whole idea of the Network came from our frustration. It was really the frustration of working on projects in different locations with different architects and not being able to share ideas and knowledge. For instance, we’d have an architect in Sri Lanka, and she’d have to drive for a day to get to a place where she could upload information, and it would take her 4 hours to upload something. And then we would get it, we’d print it out, and it meant that a decision would take two weeks. Whereas if we can have a system where all that information’s up online and people can comment on it- all these great tools, then you can make on-the-ground decisions a lot quicker.<br />
<br />
We can also have the clients and the funders involved in the process, which is very important to us, because two of the schools we did in Sri Lanka, were funded by high schools in Atlanta, Georgia. And the kids got to see the whole process happen. And I went and did a school assembly there. I flew down to Atlanta and I showed them the school. And it was like being a rock star, and I was like “this is your school, you built it.” And if we could allow them to be more engaged in that process, it will make them feel like they’re really making a difference. They may not have brought the design in, but they brought the funding in. So it’s really about sharing information and sharing best practices.<br />
<br />
And this hit home to me in Sri Lanka- I met a bunch of non-profits and we started talking about the work we were doing. And everyone had the same problem and was making the same mistakes. Because we’re living in a donor-based culture, none of the non-profits are willing to admit that they make any mistakes. So millions of dollars to go to waste because no one’s willing to share best practices and worst practices. So let’s create a forum where you can do that, where people are not wasting money. Because my end goal is not to say look, so-and-so did a bad job. Instead, let’s learn from our mistakes, so we can build more housing and more schools and be more cost effective.<br />
<br />
How much money went missing down on the Gulf Coast? A billion dollars? Do you know how much housing we could build with that? And there’s the problem. And we’re just talking about natural disasters. What about post-conflict resolution? 12 billion went missing in Iraq. So if you had a way where you could come up with localized solutions and could hire people locally to do the building, then you wouldn’t have such a problem with insurgencies. I’m not saying we can end civil war, but these things can make a difference.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9dCEa7MVSnPUdiXuv1RU9CgXhtuZWJibAHRUO_ZfE9yBj8Of764j-hAFrzjz5x45FKIyq2iM7h2uTuypoy7OA8-cohbt3NwRhZuJenrViMKkg3D9PKuUedXCVC_ElLhNb_BTmZ2NFRrOV/s1600-h/cameron+sinclair+inhabitat+interview1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9dCEa7MVSnPUdiXuv1RU9CgXhtuZWJibAHRUO_ZfE9yBj8Of764j-hAFrzjz5x45FKIyq2iM7h2uTuypoy7OA8-cohbt3NwRhZuJenrViMKkg3D9PKuUedXCVC_ElLhNb_BTmZ2NFRrOV/s400/cameron+sinclair+inhabitat+interview1.jpg" /></a><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrBmQZon0Vz9EoG9jlACF7fMKczQonJDU8QRIU9ZyWkXrEPFLrUzSOXjpoBtR9l1D0zrVKScA0WdzFWC0S2flkEG2cnTsMXTWtchM49xw5dBF9TVQe-RyV7Rh3mm5rNbVtPD7mNfdOH9aM/s1600-h/cameron+sinclair+inhabitat+interview2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrBmQZon0Vz9EoG9jlACF7fMKczQonJDU8QRIU9ZyWkXrEPFLrUzSOXjpoBtR9l1D0zrVKScA0WdzFWC0S2flkEG2cnTsMXTWtchM49xw5dBF9TVQe-RyV7Rh3mm5rNbVtPD7mNfdOH9aM/s400/cameron+sinclair+inhabitat+interview2.jpg" /></a><br />
</div><br />
<br />
Emily: And the site itself could support a lot of these ideas and opportunities… And it is completely open source, so anyone can look at it, it’s not specific to architects?<br />
<br />
Cameron: It’s open to anybody, anybody can contribute, and then anyone has the right to decide what the copyright control on their design is. If you only want people to look at your design, that’s fine. We’re not going to stop you. You want to say no derivatives? That’s fine too. There are 8 different types of Creative Commons licenses, and that’s what we’ve got right now. What Architecture For Humanity does is that we have a developing nations license, so that anyone from the developing world can take our ideas, basically download and copy them, and replicate those buildings.<br />
<br />
Emily: The initial launch will be at the TED conference, March 8th, and then will you be adding features to the site down the road as well?<br />
<br />
Cameron: We’ll be adding features throughout the year. And not only is the system open source, but so is the network itself. So any computer person can add. So if someone invents something that will make the job easier, they can add it to the network. Like if someone develops an application that allows you to see something in 3-d and spin it around, and wants to give it away to us, we’ll put it up. We’ll give you attribution for it, so it’s not just the physical but also the IT/computer/architectural stuff.<br />
<br />
Emily: This open-source model has really never been implemented within the creative community, which can be fairly proprietary, right?<br />
<br />
Cameron: Yes, but the Network I think can change that. When the main focus is not financial gain but social gain, what’s the benefit in keeping all the information to yourself? We want to be able to distribute that information and allow there to be new innovation.<br />
<br />
<hr />video of Cameron Sinclair in Ted conference 2006<br />
<object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/PdcqEjmuxjA&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/PdcqEjmuxjA&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br />
<br />
<hr />simulacrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01025844469103673248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8673717048871599765.post-10816653948908146412010-01-06T14:04:00.000-08:002010-01-06T14:04:15.062-08:00Architecture for Humanity: interview with Cameron Sinclair by Artkrush<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgho9abGH__5qNkJ_AD_yoaIHmwIbZeQdtIdbL0f9lk4676_lhgwJuqwzOXIrEKqvgJy_HCHXEc1UbLLZt9gUMAWDH5U1AoQOmDxdvR9eIeXqc21uvDSeZ5rVKPtCeeHv-W5Xf4aJLyM42o/s1600-h/artkrush+cameron+sinclair.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgho9abGH__5qNkJ_AD_yoaIHmwIbZeQdtIdbL0f9lk4676_lhgwJuqwzOXIrEKqvgJy_HCHXEc1UbLLZt9gUMAWDH5U1AoQOmDxdvR9eIeXqc21uvDSeZ5rVKPtCeeHv-W5Xf4aJLyM42o/s320/artkrush+cameron+sinclair.jpg" /></a><br />
</div><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">architect/artist: </span><b style="color: #666666;">Cameron Sinclair</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">interview title:</span><b style="color: #666666;"> </b><b style="color: #666666;">Architecture for Humanity</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">interviews compilation no: </span><b style="color: #666666;">T-59 <br />
</b> <span style="color: #666666;">interview format: </span><b style="color: #666666;">Text</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">date:<b> </b></span><b style="color: #666666;">March 7, 2007<br />
</b> <span style="color: #666666;">appeared in: <b>Artkrush</b></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">interviewer: </span><span style="color: #666666;"><b>Paul Laster</b></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">photo by: </span><span style="color: #666666;"></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #666666;">courtesy:<i><b> http://artkrush.com/mailer/issue53/#interview</b></i></span><br />
<br />
<b>Interview Details:</b><br />
<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">click the "read more" below</span></i><br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<hr /><div style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>image info: Al Hidaya Transitional School, 2005-06</i></span><br />
</div><div style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Al Hidaya Vidyalyam, Sri Lanka</i></span><br />
</div><div style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Courtesy Architecture for Humanity, Sausalito, CA</i></span><br />
</div><div style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>All Rights Reserved</i></span><br />
</div><hr /><i>Architecture for Humanity was founded in 1999 as a charitable organization promoting architectural and design solutions for global, social, and humanitarian crises. Through competitions, workshops, educational forums, partnerships with aid organizations, and other activities, AFH creates opportunities for architects and designers from around the world to help communities in need. Artkrush editor Paul Laster talks to AFH co-founder and director Cameron Sinclair about the organization's history and current projects.</i><br />
<br />
<hr /><br />
AK: What was your motivation for co-founding Architecture for Humanity?<br />
<br />
CS: The idea for Architecture for Humanity came when I was watching refugees returning to Kosovo after the war. I was struck by the living conditions they faced; winter was coming, and their homes were in rubble. It was a situation that demanded a better building solution, yet architects weren't responding. At first I thought of responding myself, but as an architect based in New York with primarily commercial experience, I felt that others — particularly those in the region — would probably have better solutions, so I launched a competition. There was a huge response — some 350 to 400 entries. And, in fact, a couple of Serbian architects entered the competition with a very nice note that said, "It is not us who are doing this, it is our leaders . . ." We still have that note.<br />
<br />
AK: What was the outcome of the competition?<br />
<br />
CS: We received entries from more than 220 design teams from 30 countries. We also gained funding by charging a small entry fee and through an appeal in the UK's Guardian newspaper. Buoyed by the fact that we had not only several feasible designs but also funding, we tried to negotiate building a number of housing units in Kosovo.<br />
<br />
It ended up being our first confrontation with the brutal realities of providing international aid. In order to get building materials through customs, secure a site, get work permits, and facilitate other aspects of a housing program, we needed approval from the interim Kosovo government. However, the interim government, which was seeking aid from the international community, wanted 20,000 homes or none at all; we could build fewer than a dozen. The nonprofit War Child, which had given us direction early on, negotiated with local officials to no avail; the project ground to a halt. Short of building the structures in Albania and smuggling them across the border by helicopter — a possibility we briefly considered — we could find no way to get the shelters to those who needed them. In the end, War Child used the funds to provide immediate aid to the returning refugees and later to rebuild schools and medical facilities. However, the competition did raise awareness regarding the need for temporary, transitional shelters, and when we did work following the Indian Ocean Tsunami in 2004, we found that many nongovernmental organizations were building transitional shelters rather than providing tents or waiting to build permanent housing.<br />
<br />
AK: Since 2004, AFH has been involved in designing AIDS information and treatment centers in Africa. What AIDS-related projects do you currently have underway, and how do they assist their communities?<br />
<br />
CS: Our first project combining AIDS information and treatment was a 2002 design competition where design teams were asked to develop schemes for a mobile medical unit that could provide basic healthcare as well as HIV/AIDS testing, prevention, treatment, and education to underserved populations in the region. Teams from 51 countries answered the call, and four were selected for further development.<br />
<br />
During 2004, we partnered with the Africa Centre for Health and Population Studies to hold a design charrette in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, an area with one of the highest AIDS rates in the world. The four finalist teams from the mobile HIV/AIDS competition attended and worked one-on-one with healthcare professionals, facilities managers, and others to refine their designs. The teams also visited a range of clinics in the area, allowing them to see firsthand the needs of healthcare professionals battling the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Currently, a local partner has taken this on, so we'll see what happens.<br />
<br />
We also challenged designers to create the perfect "pitch" in Somkhele in KwaZulu-Natal. This facility, to be run by medical professionals from the Africa Centre for Health and Population Studies, will serve as a gathering place for youth between the ages of 9 and 14 and as the home for the first-ever girl's football league in the area. The pitch will also act as a place to disseminate information on HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment and eventually act as a service point for mobile healthcare, tying in with that project and built, with any luck, on the same site.<br />
<br />
AK: In 2005, AFH was involved in supporting the use of Global Village Shelter — paper housing designed by Ferrara Design, Inc. and featured in the Safe exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art — as temporary homes on Grenada, which had been hit by Hurricane Emily. How important are inexpensive, portable structures — such as this one and Shigeru Ban's Paper Loghouse, which has been used as transitional shelter for earthquake victims in Turkey and India — to the recovery and reconstruction of areas that have suffered natural disasters?<br />
<br />
CS: It really depends on the situation. Temporary paper shelters were very important in Grenada because the island had been hit twice in a row and was in the process of rebuilding when the second storm destroyed what was left of their housing stock. They were also used successfully in Sri Lanka after the tsunami. They were very important in Pakistan, where there was no time to build permanent shelters before the onslaught of winter and where very little alternate housing (repurposed schools, government buildings, and other facilities) existed, because they had also been destroyed.<br />
<br />
They were not as useful in New Orleans, where most people were simply relocated, or on the rest of the Gulf Coast, where people were housed further inland while they rebuilt their own homes. There, the transitional housing of choice was the trailer, and even then people only lived in them if they had to work in the area or had some other compelling reason to be there. Other kinds of transitional housing were shunned by residents who preferred just staying in a hotel — even if that meant paying.<br />
<br />
So, the transitional structure really needs to suit the environment and the need — and frankly, sometimes there are other easier, better solutions.<br />
<br />
AK: What's the design history and basic philosophy conveyed in Design Like You Give a Damn, which was edited by AFH and published by Metropolis Books in 2006?<br />
<br />
CS: Our publication is a compendium of innovative projects from around the world that demonstrate the power of design to improve lives. These aren't necessarily Architecture for Humanity projects — in fact, most aren't. They are simply projects that show the myriad ways that design can improve lives.<br />
<br />
Designers have long been interested in this area, but it doesn't get a lot of press. Kate Stohr, Architecture for Humanity's co-founder and the editor of the book, wrote a 100-year history of the movement toward socially conscious design, and it shows that there has been a lot of effort over the years. We're not the first to approach humanitarian problems from a design perspective.<br />
<br />
AK: Could you have developed so quickly without the Internet? How has the AFH website helped spread the word and get people involved, and how do you foresee your upcoming online project, the Open Architecture Network, effecting community design?<br />
<br />
CS: Our website is our lifeline — we absolutely could not have grown like we have without it. Last year we won the TED Prize and that enabled us — with additional support from Sun Microsystems, AMD's 50x15 Initiative, Hot Studio, Creative Commons, and others — to build the Open Architecture Network. It's the first site to allow users to share CAD files and blueprints online. The site grew out of our frustration in trying to share files and manage projects in places where there wasn't always a great network or computer setup (we can almost always find an Internet connection, though). The Open Architecture Network allows designers to share files, comment on files, rate projects, and manage projects — it's going to be a great tool. This new site will allow us — and the entire design community — to work remotely much more easily, which will hopefully translate into more projects and more communities benefiting from the work of designers around the world.<br />
<br />
<hr /><br />
<i>Architecture for Humanity's work is on view in Design Life Now: National Design Triennial 2006 at the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York through July 29 and the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston from September 8 to January 6, 2008.</i><br />
<hr /><i></i>simulacrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01025844469103673248noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8673717048871599765.post-89377252408113719082010-01-06T10:36:00.000-08:002010-01-06T10:36:47.383-08:00Urban studies legend Jane Jacobs on gentrification, the New Urbanism, and her legacy: interview with Reason magazine<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiC1G-F2N11mQHIddCMS70MSLQivLtYoC8dEGYeU1CeLjmSuneKp-Lmiqg3PljCFi3HsFk6lsvDY93_EBMGMcp5yu9mBXG3UOb9WkdLVmWQTSnW0zjjn7EntR6ZpQvQui5QyS4HDvhyphenhyphengQ_E/s1600-h/jane+jacobs+interview.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiC1G-F2N11mQHIddCMS70MSLQivLtYoC8dEGYeU1CeLjmSuneKp-Lmiqg3PljCFi3HsFk6lsvDY93_EBMGMcp5yu9mBXG3UOb9WkdLVmWQTSnW0zjjn7EntR6ZpQvQui5QyS4HDvhyphenhyphengQ_E/s320/jane+jacobs+interview.jpg" /></a><br />
</div><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">architect/artist: </span><b style="color: #666666;">Jane Jacobs</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">interview title:</span><b style="color: #666666;"> </b><b style="color: #666666;">Urban studies legend Jane Jacobs on gentrification, the New Urbanism, and her legacy.</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">interviews compilation no: </span><b style="color: #666666;">T-58 <br />
</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">interview format: </span><b style="color: #666666;">Text</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">date:<b> </b></span><b style="color: #666666;">June, 2001<br />
</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">appeared in: <b>Reason</b></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">interviewer: </span><span style="color: #666666;"><b>Bill Steigerwald</b></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">photo by: </span><span style="color: #666666;"></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #666666;">courtesy:<i><b> http://reason.com/archives/2001/06/01/city-views</b></i></span><br />
<br />
<b>Interview Details:</b><br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<br />
<hr /><i><br />
</i><i>Today, Jane Jacobs is revered as North America's great expert on cities and the way they work. But 40 years ago, when her masterpiece The Death and Life of Great American Cities was first published, she was assaulting -- and shattering -- the fundamental tenets of urban planning.</i><br />
<i>That book was part literature, part journalism, and part sociology; it looked at cities from the sidewalks and street-corners up, not from the Ivory Tower down. Healthy cities, Jacobs argued, are organic, messy, spontaneous, and serendipitous. They thrive on economic, architectural, and human diversity, on dense populations and mixed land uses -- not on orderly redevelopment plans that replaced whole neighborhoods with concrete office parks and plazas in the name of slum clearance or city beautification.</i><br />
<i>Jacobs has no professional training and only a high school diploma. But in the years since Death and Life was published, her "radical" ideas about what makes cities livable have become popular -- in some quarters, near gospel. To some extent, this was driven by Jacobs' own civic activism, fighting to protect her New York neighborhood against the city planners' designs.</i><br />
<i>Jacobs' subsequent books have been just as revolutionary, if not always as widely read. The Economy of Cities (1969) and Cities and the Wealth of Nations (1984) laid out new ideas about urban economics, stressing the importance of dynamic, open-ended growth. Systems of Survival (1992) delved into political philosophy, while last year's The Nature of Economies showed some of the ways economics follows the same principles that govern nature. She has also written a children's book and a book on Quebeçois separatism, and has edited the memoirs of her great-aunt, a schoolteacher in early 20th century Alaska.</i><br />
<i>Jacobs, who turns 85 this year, is as sharp as ever. She has lived in Toronto's bustling Annex neighborhood since 1968, when she and her late husband moved there from New York City so their sons wouldn't be drafted during the Vietnam War. She's a Canadian citizen, but she was born in the hard-coal town of Scranton, Pennsylvania. Bill Steigerwald, an associate editor and columnist for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, interviewed her in mid-March by phone.</i><br />
<hr /><br />
<b>Reason:</b> What should a city be like?<br />
<b>Jane Jacobs: </b>It should be like itself. Every city has differences, from its history, from its site, and so on. These are important. One of the most dismal things is when you go to a city and it's like 12 others you've seen. That's not interesting, and it's not really truthful.<br />
<br />
<b>Reason:</b> Unlike American cities, Canadian cities have not been destroyed by the experts and the planners, have they?<br />
<b>Jacobs:</b> Well, they've had some bad things happen to them. They had some terrible housing projects built in Toronto, although we learned later how to do it right.<br />
That's mostly true about Canadian cities, but it's not all peaches and cream. It's really surprising how few creative, important cities Canada has for its size, its population, and its great human potential and attributes. There's a whole region of Canada, the Atlantic Provinces, that has a lot of pleasant little places but doesn't have one single really significant creative city. And the whole area is very poor as a consequence. It would be like a Third World country, that whole area, if it wasn't getting transfer payments and grants of various kinds from the rest of Canada.<br />
<br />
<b>Reason: </b>But Canada didn't have the urban renewal problem that America did?<br />
<b>Jacobs: </b>It had a little of it. It also had what Marshall McLuhan called "an early warning system." Urban renewal came to America earlier, so Canada had the advantage of seeing what the mistakes were and could be cautious. Canada had an urban renewal agency for a while, and it did just as badly as the one in the U.S. But it didn't last long, because as soon as the Canadian government saw what a mess it was making, how many fights it was causing, and how much opposition was arising, it just demolished the whole department.<br />
That was the difference. All these troubles were becoming recognized in the U.S., but the government there didn't seem to be able to think, "This is a mistake. Out with it."<br />
<br />
<b>Reason: </b>I know some businesspeople begged you to come to Pittsburgh and help fight a big City Hall redevelopment project that would have wiped out two city streets downtown. [See "Death by Wrecking Ball," June 2000.] The huge project has ended, so it's sort of a happy ending. But I'm wondering if, in a general sense, you think the people who control cities have learned the lessons of the '60s?<br />
<b>Jacobs:</b> In that case, they certainly hadn't. That attitude -- that you can sacrifice small things, young things, and a diversity of things for some great big success -- is sad. That's the kind of attitude that killed Pittsburgh as an innovator.<br />
<br />
<b>Reason: </b>And it comes from people who either have the power or the money or both to have their way?<br />
<b>Jacobs: </b>Well, they have their way with the powers of eminent domain, government powers that were intended for things like schools and roads and public things, and are used instead for the benefit of private organizations and individuals.<br />
That's one of the worst things about urban renewal. It introduced that idea that you could use those government powers to benefit private organizations. The courts never have given the kind of overview to this that they should. The time it went to the Supreme Court, back in the 1950s, the decision was that to make a place beautiful or more orderly or helpful, government could do what it pleased with eminent domain. That just left the door open. As one New York state official said at the time, "If Macy's wants to condemn Gimbel's, it can do it if Moses gives the word."<br />
<br />
<b>Reason:</b> Robert Moses, the New York City planner and infamous power broker.<br />
<b>Jacobs: </b>Yes. He's an extreme example, but in effect that's what the shift in eminent domain law did. But even before that, it was being done unofficially when what had grown big and successful was used to eat up, or wipe away, or starve what was not. You might as well have no birth rate and then wonder why there aren't people. If you don't have an entrepreneurial birth rate, you don't have new industries and new chances for other successes.<br />
<br />
<b>Reason: </b>It seems virtually impossible for the biggest, clumsiest, most unenlightened government to squelch innovation and new growth. It might not come up in the middle of downtown Pittsburgh, but it will come up somewhere else, whether they like it or not.<br />
<b>Jacobs: </b>Sure. Look at the big automobile companies in America and how they didn't make smaller cars, more economical ones that would run farther on gasoline. It took Japanese cars coming in, and German cars coming in. There was a market for them. But they were not being produced and designed by the big, rich, much more successful American companies. Then, when they saw what competition they had, the U.S. auto makers began to produce compact cars. But it sure was innovation from a long way off.<br />
<br />
<b>Reason:</b> Do you think that the people who run American cities have learned what to do and what not to do?<br />
<b>Jacobs:</b> I think some of them have learned a lot. There are quite a few cities that are more vigorous and more attractive than they were 10 or 20 years ago. A lot of good things are being done, but it's not universal.<br />
<br />
<b>Reason: </b>Can you give me an example?<br />
<b>Jacobs: </b>In Portland, a lot of good things are being done. Same with Seattle. San Francisco has done many attractive things.<br />
<br />
<b>Reason: </b>What is it that you like about Portland?<br />
<b>Jacobs:</b> People in Portland love Portland. That's the most important thing. They really like to see it improved. The waterfront is getting improved, and not with a lot of gimmicks, but with good, intelligent reuses of the old buildings. They're good at rehabilitation. As far as their parks are concerned, they've got some wonderful parks with water flows in them. It's fascinating. People enjoy it and paddle in it. They're unusual parks. The amount of space they take and what they deliver is just terrific.<br />
They're pretty good on their transit too. It's not any one splashy thing. It's the ensemble that I think is so pleasant.<br />
<br />
<b>Reason: </b>You are against regional planning and metropolitanism, yet isn't an important part of what's going on in Portland the pretty strong powers given to a regional planning authority?<br />
<b>Jacobs:</b> I don't know. You're probably better informed than I am on that. I'm talking about the city of Portland itself.<br />
<br />
<b>Reason:</b> The criticisms of Portland are these: By fixing boundaries and limiting growth by government fiat, they are guaranteeing that prices of housing will go up higher within the boundaries of Portland and that traffic will get worse. And this has happened.<br />
<b>Jacobs: </b>Well, my goodness. Portland is not a dense city and never was. Whoever made that prediction, that densifying the city itself would have all those bad consequences, they don't know anything about it.<br />
<br />
<b>Reason: </b>I lived in Los Angeles for 12 years. When I moved there in 1977, I just loved it immediately. It was so open and free and full of life and vitality. Not only the people, but there seemed to be a lot fewer rules and regulations about what you could do and couldn't do. Peter Hall says in Cities in Civilization that L.A. was built on freedom, and when I read that, I thought, "That makes sense to me."<br />
<b>Jacobs: </b>Well, it does if you are able to drive a car and have enough money. But only in those cases.<br />
<br />
<b>Reason: </b>Los Angeles wasn't too bad for money. My daughter is a lawyer and she had to leave San Francisco because she couldn't afford living there.<br />
<b>Jacobs:</b> It's gotten so popular....<br />
<br />
<b>Reason: </b>I remember interviewing the head of regional planning in Los Angeles. He shocked me, because I had grown up thinking Los Angeles was the best example of bad city planning. That it was sprawled all over the place, and it was just a mess, and nobody was in charge or anything. This was 1984, and this guy told me, "Now I have people coming from around the world to Los Angeles to see how we did it, how we established a city that had so many city centers -- and not just two or three big centers, but 18." The answer was that no one planned it, obviously. It just happened that way and there is not any way to arrange it to happen in this way.<br />
<b>Jacobs: </b>That's what I say: Every city is different. But don't think that because Los Angeles can do that, and it turned out that way, that every city can be a Los Angeles.<br />
<br />
<b>Reason:</b> Some people say cities are destined to become workplaces by day and entertainment centers by night and weekend. Do you think that's true?<br />
<b>Jacobs: </b>To a certain extent. Cities have al-ways had a lot of leisure things that people use after work hours. But there are a lot of people who don't work during the day. Children have short working hours, you might say. There are seniors who don't have a lot of work during the day. I think it's important that there be recreational places during the day, too. Places where people can swim. Community centers. Places where they can bicycle.<br />
<br />
<b>Reason: </b>In the city center area?<br />
<b>Jacobs:</b> All over the city. The idea of this strict segregation of hours is fairly ridiculous. There are also more and more people who are working at night. Especially people who work at home.<br />
<br />
<b>Reason:</b> A couple of years ago, Jesse Walker, an associate editor of REASON, wrote that your ideas are being seized by the sustainability crowd and are being abused. He wrote, "To the extent that they have digested Jacobs, they have romanticized her vision, bastardizing her empirical observations of how cities work into a formula they want to impose not just on cities but on suburbs and small towns as well."<br />
<b>Jacobs:</b> I think there's a lot of truth to that. For example, the New Urbanists want to have lively centers in the places that they develop, where people run into each other doing errands and that sort of thing. And yet, from what I've seen of their plans and the places they have built, they don't seem to have a sense of the anatomy of these hearts, these centers. They've placed them as if they were shopping centers. They don't connect. In a real city or a real town, the lively heart always has two or more well-used pedestrian thoroughfares that meet. In traditional towns, often it's a triangular piece of land. Sometimes it's made into a park.<br />
<br />
<b>Reason: </b>What kind of traditional towns?<br />
<b>Jacobs: </b>You can see it in old Irish towns. You can also see it in towns in Illinois. The reason for it is that the action so often was where three well-traveled routes came together and made a Y. There are also T-intersections and also X-intersections. But they're always intersections that are well-traveled on foot. People speak about the local hangout, the corner bar. The important word there is corner.<br />
<br />
<b>Reason: </b>Corner store, corner bar. They're illegal in most places today -- certainly in the suburbs.<br />
<b>Jacobs: </b>Yes. The corner is important. It's of all different scales. For instance, big cities have a lot of main squares where the action is, and which will be the most valuable for stores and that kind of thing. They're often good places for a public building -- a landmark. But they're always where there's a crossing or a convergence. You can't stop a hub from developing in such a place. You can't make it develop if you don't have such a place. And I don't think the New Urbanists understand this kind of thing. They think you just put it where you want.<br />
<br />
<b>Reason:</b> And that people will go there, as opposed to what's really happening -- that people are already going there? You're just giving them a place to stop and congregate?<br />
<b>Jacobs:</b> That's right. It occurs naturally. Now it also has the advantage that it can expand or contract without destroying the rest of the place. Because the natural place for such a heart to expand is along those well-used thoroughfares.<br />
<br />
<b>Reason:</b> What do the people who run cities have to do now to make their cities into more livable, more interesting places? Is it to remove some of the things they've done in the last 50 years, or just keep their hands off completely?<br />
<b>Jacobs:</b> It's much less a matter of removing things than adding things, I think. For instance, here in Toronto there were two areas of the downtown that were dying. They were in very good locations but they were old industrial buildings that were becoming vacant. Manufacturing was moving out to where they had more room and where it wasn't as expensive. There were a lot of small developers who saw that these nice old buildings were just ideal for converting into apartments. They were lofts, mostly, and you know how popular they've become. But they were blocked from doing anything about it because of use zoning that said it should be industrial. So you can change that use zoning and allow residential.<br />
<br />
<b>Reason: </b>But aren't you then just removing an impediment? Some people say zoning is the big problem.<br />
<b>Jacobs: </b>Wait a minute, I haven't finished. It didn't help to change that use because, again, there were so many impediments that went with it. There were rules and regulations about dwellings -- especially parking places. And the ground coverage in these areas was high, and you couldn't make basements under these nice old buildings. You couldn't satisfy the parking requirements without fairly well destroying what was really nice about the areas and also making it just too expensive. So no matter what happened, they were blocked.<br />
We had a very intelligent mayor at that time, and she listened to what they were saying. And she wanted to remove those impediments. She talked to everybody who had an interest in the area and they agreed that these buildings should be put to the additional use. But they were all so stymied in their thinking about, How do you make it practical?<br />
Well, you're smart. You've already jumped to the conclusion of what makes it practical -- you remove the impediments. The mayor's hardest job was re-educating the planning department, but she did it. They added one new rule, and you might not like this. But it was a very important rule to add: None of the sound old buildings could be destroyed. That was to prevent environmental and aesthetic waste. Otherwise, except for the safety and fire codes, which apply to all the buildings, just about all the old regulations were removed.<br />
<br />
<b>Reason:</b> And what happened?<br />
<b>Jacobs:</b> It's magical, it's wondrous, how fast those areas have been blossoming and coming to life again.<br />
It wasn't just removing impediments. It was a use that was missing in the mixture. It didn't replace all the working places. A lot of the working places hadn't disappeared yet, and new ones have come in and been allowed to be added. Also, there are other things that the people who now live there, in combination with the people who work there, can support. The main thing missing in the mixture was added. The same principle you can apply to languishing bedroom communities. What's missing there is workplaces. Here's why I don't like segregation into night things and day things: You don't get the additional things that the workers and the people living there support jointly.<br />
<br />
<b>Reason:</b> Such as?<br />
<b>Jacobs:</b> Parking is one of them. No parking lot was built for the big baseball stadium here in Toronto, the one with the retractable roof, because it was figured that there were enough parking places for workers that weren't being used while the games were on. So why build more parking places?<br />
<br />
<b>Reason:</b> You would agree that that is a smart way to do it?<br />
<b>Jacobs: </b>Yes. The same thing applies to eating places. People who want to eat out in the evening can use the same places as working people who eat at lunchtime.<br />
<br />
<b>Reason:</b> People complain that suburbanites are too dependent on cars. Yet the newest suburbs -- the car suburbs, not the trolley suburbs -- are so heavily zoned and so carefully laid out. The uses are segregated so much -- you live here, you work there, you shop here, you play there, you go to school over here. If you didn't have a car, you couldn't possibly live in the suburbs -- because of the way they're laid out.<br />
<b>Jacobs:</b> That's right. Your children couldn't get to school. And they couldn't get to their dancing lessons or whatever else they do. You're absolutely dependent on a car. It's very expensive for people, especially if they need a couple of cars. It's a terrific burden. It costs about -- somebody figured it out fairly recently -- it costs about $7,000 a year for one car. That's a lot of money, you know.<br />
<br />
<b>Reason: </b>I'm a five-minute drive from all the shopping I need, but I couldn't walk it.<br />
<b>Jacobs:</b> Sure, you want to defend the car in those cases. It's a lifeline. It's as important as your water tap.<br />
<br />
<b>Reason:</b> You aren't anti-car, are you?<br />
<b>Jacobs:</b> No. I do think that we need to have a lot more public transit. But you can't have public transit in the situation you're talking about.<br />
<br />
<b>Reason: </b>You don't literally mean publicly owned transit?<br />
<b>Jacobs: </b>No. All forms of transit. It can be taxis, privately run jitneys, whatever. Things that people don't have to own themselves and can pay a fare for.<br />
<br />
<b>Reason:</b> You're not an enemy of free-market transportation.<br />
<b>Jacobs: </b>No. I wish we had more of it. I wish we didn't have the notion that you had to have monopoly franchise transit. I wish it were competitive -- in the kinds of vehicles that it uses, in the fares that it charges, in the routes that it goes, in the times of day that it goes. I've seen this on poor little Caribbean islands. They have good jitney service, because it's dictated by the users.<br />
I wish we could do more of that. But we have so much history against it, and so many institutional things already in place against it. The idea that you have to use great big behemoths of vehicles, when the service actually would be better in station-wagon size. It shows how unnatural and foolish monopolies are. The only thing that saves the situation is when illegal things begin to break the monopoly.<br />
<br />
<b>Reason:</b> You've said it's a fallacy that jobs are coming out to the suburbs. What about the edge cities that Joel Garreau talks about? Hasn't it changed somewhat?<br />
<b>Jacobs:</b> It has, but it's very uneven as to where the people live who go to that work. The old Garden City idea was that the jobs would be there in the suburbs, in the Garden City. That very seldom happened. For one thing, if you have two breadwinners or more in the same family, they aren't likely to work in the same place. People change their jobs in the course of their life. If they're confined geographically to just the selection there is in their little town, it's tough. It's one reason people move to cities or move to suburbs where they can commute into cities.<br />
It's a fallacy to think that you can eliminate travel by putting people close to their work. In a few cases, they will be. But all the accounts I've ever seen, especially after a lapse of time, they aren't working and living in the same place.<br />
<br />
<b>Reason:</b> I remember reading that the hub-and-spoke kind of movement of commuters is not as common in cities. People live in one suburb and work in another, not downtown.<br />
<b>Jacobs:</b> That's right, they can work in another suburb. Exactly.<br />
<br />
<b>Reason:</b> Is it a straw man to say that if you live in a suburb, you should work in that suburb? Is that what they really wanted people to do?<br />
<b>Jacobs:</b> That's how they were justified, often, especially the ones that were considered model towns. You really can cut down the need to travel and the dependency on a car, or on public transit, in suburbs. But it's not by trying to hope, much less dictate, that people will work close to where they live. It's by their errands. There's an awful lot of unnecessary travel. If people want to get a quart of milk, they have to get in the car and get it. This is especially hard on children, too, who don't have freedom, even when they are old enough to go on foot to this place and that. It could easily be arranged that you could do almost all your errands on foot. But not so, if -- again the question of monopoly comes up -- you have to have these monopolies called shopping malls.<br />
<br />
<b>Reason: </b>And they are monopolies that are protected by zoning in many cases, right?<br />
<b>Jacobs:</b> Yes, and also at the behest of their developers.<br />
<br />
<b>Reason: </b>The fix is in between the developers and the local government?<br />
<b>Jacobs: </b>Yeah, and people have gotten afraid to have commerce get outside of these monopoly prisons.<br />
<br />
<b>Reason:</b> Do you think suburbs will evolve into cities?<br />
<b>Jacobs:</b> They'll evolve into something, but I don't know what you'll call them and I don't know exactly how they'll resolve. But they'll thicken up, get denser.<br />
<br />
<b>Reason:</b> That solves a lot of problems, I guess.<br />
<br />
<b>Jacobs:</b> Sure it does. And that's why those people are crazy when they said what would happen to Portland. It was an argument. They were trying to stop it and they said any kind of baloney.<br />
<br />
<b>Reason: </b>There are suburbs in Pittsburgh where the people who run the township, the zoning officers, despise commerce. It's virtually 100 percent residential use -- big homes, mostly. And of course there are no granny flats, no corner stores, no duplexes. I don't know if people want to change that. People are happy to be living there. They are some of the wealthiest people in Pittsburgh.<br />
<b>Jacobs: </b>Yes, but now consider what happens with the change of generations. Remember how people despised Victorian buildings earlier in this century? They were just ruthless with them. They were just thought to be automatically ugly and disgusting. Many wonderful, wonderful buildings were destroyed. Well, that was a big rejection of Victorianism. Not just the buildings. There was the feeling that it was stuffy, it was repressive.<br />
There'll come a time when the standard suburbs that you're talking about -- even the wealthiest ones -- will change. Look at what has happened to very wealthy areas within cities where great mansions turned into funeral parlors, and so on. It'll happen. Just when, I don't know. I'm very suspicious of prophesizing, because life is full of surprises, but I think we are seeing the precursors of the very beginning of the change in the suburbs.<br />
<br />
<b>Reason: </b>My parents are still in a 1950s suburban tract home. When we were growing up, we didn't want to live in an old house. Now you'd have to pay me to live in my parents' house, which is just a suburban box.<br />
<b>Jacobs:</b> Exactly. And when this happens, people get absolutely ruthless with the old stuff. Too ruthless, I think, because I don't like waste, and I don't like thoughtlessness.<br />
<br />
<b>Reason:</b> When the change comes, if it is an incremental, slowly evolving, uncontrolled sort of natural change, it's easy for society to accommodate that, isn't it?<br />
<b>Jacobs: </b>Yes it is. But if all that zoning is kept, that can't happen.<br />
<br />
<b>Reason: </b>This is why I'm one of the few people you've met who likes Houston, because it has no zoning.<br />
<b>Jacobs:</b> It has no zoning. But all the same, it looks like all the places that do have zoning. Because the same developers and bankers who deal with places that do have zoning carry their same ideas when they finance or build something in Houston.<br />
<br />
<b>Reason:</b> There are not enough Houstons to change the way things are built or developed?<br />
<b>Jacobs: </b>Right. In fact, places where change does happen are where people face it and really start to overhaul and rethink these things. That's what holds back change -- when people don't overhaul and rethink. People are awfully scared of changes in zoning, because they think the neighborhood will go to the dogs and it will ruin their property values.<br />
I mentioned before about this anatomy of the streets, and how if you have the streets that are good pedestrian thoroughfares as part of the anatomy of the heart, those are the logical places to convert from residences, say, to businesses. If the place is really an economic success, that's going to happen. That's not a bad thing to happen, the expansion of the commerce and the working places.<br />
<br />
<b>Reason:</b> It's a good sign, right?<br />
<b>Jacobs:</b> It's a very good sign. But you see, if it's in places where that hasn't been thought of, the commerce begins to intrude on the parts of the community that were just meant for residences. Sometimes these conversions are very charming, but usually not. They are ugly and they are like a smear that begins to spread. People look at it and say the neighborhood is going to the dogs. And they're scared of this. But actually, if you have these busy streets that have the kind of buildings on them that can easily be converted back and forth to different uses...the place doesn't go to the dogs.<br />
<br />
<b>Reason: </b>The problem is when you lock yourself into one use and never allow it to change, or make it so impossible to change that it'll never happen.<br />
<b>Jacobs:</b> Yes, or that it'll just be an ugly smear if it does happen. I don't think the New Urbanists are thinking of those things.<br />
<br />
<b>Reason: </b>Have you been to any of these new towns they're building, like Disney's Celebration in Florida?<br />
<b>Jacobs: </b>I've been to one outside Toronto.<br />
<br />
<b>Reason: </b>What did you think?<br />
<b>Jacobs:</b> I was disappointed. The town center is very much a constricted thing unto itself, located as if it were a shopping center. It doesn't have this anatomy. Instead of having parking lots around it, it has a good-sized park, but all the residential streets that impinge upon it are very residential and not at all part of the anatomy of the center.<br />
<br />
<b>Reason:</b> The perfect towns we think of, the kind of towns that New Urbanists are trying to reproduce from on high, were developed 100 years ago all across America with very little official kind of planning. How is it people seemed to be more sensible about how towns were not made, but allowed to grow, 100 or 150 years ago, then lost it? What is the secret they knew then that we have forgotten? Or am I romanticizing?<br />
<b>Jacobs:</b> No, that's a very interesting question. They weren't being as ruthless, for one thing. A lot of these towns were ruined, you know. You can see these just awful strip developments.<br />
<br />
<b>Reason: </b>I don't know if you think of yourself in these terms, but when they list the 100 most important American intellectuals of this century, your name is on that list.<br />
<b>Jacobs:</b> (Laughs.) It's a little early to say. Usually those things don't mean much until a couple centuries have passed.<br />
<br />
<b>Reason:</b> What do you think you'll be remembered for most? You were the one who stood up to the federal bulldozers and the urban renewal people and said they were destroying the lifeblood of these cities. Is that what it will be?<br />
<b>Jacobs:</b> No. If I were to be remembered as a really important thinker of the century, the most important thing I've contributed is my discussion of what makes economic expansion happen. This is something that has puzzled people always. I think I've figured out what it is.<br />
Expansion and development are two different things. Development is differentiation of what already existed. Practically every new thing that happens is a differentiation of a previous thing, from a new shoe sole to changes in legal codes. Expansion is an actual growth in size or volume of activity. That is a different thing.<br />
I've gone at it two different ways. Way back when I wrote The Economy of Cities, I wrote about import replacing and how that expands, not just the economy of the place where it occurs, but economic life altogether. As a city replaces imports, it shifts its imports. It doesn't import less. And yet it has everything it had before.<br />
<br />
<b>Reason:</b> It's not a zero-sum game. It's a bigger, growing pie.<br />
<b>Jacobs:</b> That's the actual mechanism of it. The theory of it is what I explain in The Nature of Economies. I equate it to what happens with biomass, the sum total of all flora and fauna in an area. The energy, the material that's involved in this, doesn't just escape the community as an export. It continues being used in a community, just as in a rainforest the waste from certain organisms and various plants and animals gets used by other ones in the place.<br />
<br />
<b>Reason:</b> It becomes denser and more diverse.<br />
<b>Jacobs:</b> That's right, and it is linked with new development, because the new kinds of things that are being contrived are able to feed off of each other. The trouble is, people have always been trying to put development and expansion together as one thing. They're very closely related. They need each other. But they aren't the same thing and they aren't caused by the same thing. I think that's the most important thing I've worked out. And if I am thought of as a great thinker, that will be why.<br />
<hr />simulacrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01025844469103673248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8673717048871599765.post-72703912470305445182010-01-01T04:02:00.000-08:002010-01-01T12:18:06.761-08:00Jan Kaplický, An Interview by Hans Ulrich Obrist, appeared in Abitare.it<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicA_3CDqfFMLH5iPAPoTUsk6oPcW5vDKHhIboUtcirs1AUihtGaYwwB0LMAFTJrt1vE7MYu18bgGc_o14u1XiaQon5Eo0GDBzyDBlS2vKEwXXgC_qmN1hYZjMytKtGvhMZTIxfZqNgnbdb/s1600-h/kaplicky+abitare.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicA_3CDqfFMLH5iPAPoTUsk6oPcW5vDKHhIboUtcirs1AUihtGaYwwB0LMAFTJrt1vE7MYu18bgGc_o14u1XiaQon5Eo0GDBzyDBlS2vKEwXXgC_qmN1hYZjMytKtGvhMZTIxfZqNgnbdb/s320/kaplicky+abitare.jpg" /></a><br />
</div><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">architect/artist: </span><b style="color: #666666;">Jan Kaplický, Future System</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">interview title:</span><b style="color: #666666;"> </b><b style="color: #666666;">Jan Kaplický, </b><b style="color: #666666;">An Interview by Hans Ulrich Obrist</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">interviews compilation no: </span><b style="color: #666666;">T-57 </b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">interview format: </span><b style="color: #666666;">Text</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">date:<b> </b></span><b style="color: #666666;">01.16.2009</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">appeared in: <b>Abitare.it</b></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">interviewer: </span><span style="color: #666666;"><b>Hans Ulrich Obrist</b></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">photo by: </span><span style="color: #666666;"></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #666666;">courtesy:<i><b> http://www.abitare.it/featured/jan-kaplicky-1937-2009/</b></i></span><br />
<br />
<b>Interview Details:</b><br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<br />
<i>Jan Kaplicky, founding member of the architecture studio Future Systems deceased in Prague. He was an advocate of innovation, a vibrant polemist and a great designer. Several obituaries have appeared in the international press. (to read Jan Kaplicky obituaries click <u><a href="http://architecturalobituaries.blogspot.com/search/label/Jan%20Kaplicky">HERE</a>)</u><br />
As an hommage to his figure, Abitare publish a long interview of Hans Ulrich Obrist with him.</i><br />
<br />
<hr /><br />
<b>Hans Ulrich Obrist interview with Jan Kaplicky</b><br />
<br />
<hr /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiKKg8jMO8iP0fALYY_KRzpLhah0H0Cj9hkOeg4X8gcTqOkbML3RNDjucAQbOw6mcD4w7buVIjn9VBFKqfkE3TAR8KIyP74QODfrVW8tOtVYPD8wnBkh5kaKEnNPq-9sFQNCrN6ij8nxuo/s1600-h/kaplicky+abitare+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiKKg8jMO8iP0fALYY_KRzpLhah0H0Cj9hkOeg4X8gcTqOkbML3RNDjucAQbOw6mcD4w7buVIjn9VBFKqfkE3TAR8KIyP74QODfrVW8tOtVYPD8wnBkh5kaKEnNPq-9sFQNCrN6ij8nxuo/s320/kaplicky+abitare+1.jpg" /></a><br />
</div><br />
<br />
HUO I am very happy we can record this second interview. If one looks at your work from the very beginning, drawing plays a big role. There is a very regular practice of drawing already in the forties. There is a sketch here from 1944. Afterwards in the architectural practice there is drawing. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about drawing, if it’s a daily practice.<br />
<br />
JK It is daily practice and you can see it in those two books , a certain number of sketches. That is actually the first one and the last one is by my son, so there has been a certain continuation there. But it is daily routine. I write diaries which are full of scribbles and the first thinking is definitely there totally. Nobody ever sees that but the first scribble is always there and is very important.<br />
<br />
HUO Are you sure you don’t want tea or coffee?<br />
<br />
JK No, I’m perfectly fine.<br />
<br />
HUO Maybe we can shut the door.<br />
<br />
JK Then I do this sort of A4, anything that comes, and there are always many of those for every project. It shows the sweat that a lot of architects don’t like to show. You don’t need to mention names, it just comes out like that. That’s nonsense. There are a couple of geniuses who can do one scribble but they are very, very few. I try to explain things there and then it is relatively easy, you can use it. But you must know what it is and you have to consider everything, almost, the material and the colour, the whole story. And then it was possible to start doing the drawings and the real drawings are done now, of course, on the computer. That value of the sketches doesn’t decrease as the use of the computer increases; three-dimensional thinking is faster in a way and more easy to do as a little sketch than to do it on a machine because that is too certain. You are losing a certain freedom with the machine; it doesn’t matter on a piece of paper. People expect everything perfect from the computer. That is not true either, because at the beginning of any building or design object you can’t think straightforwardly. Yes, there is a line if you are lucky, but I don’t like too much going to the left and right. I don’t believe in having three alternatives for the thing; I far more prefer if there is one. You can change it and there are changes as the project grows and grows in size or whatever. Also it has to be visually rich. There is a certain story about the glue tin inside out, which is important as well. A lot of architects don’t care about this, they don’t absorb too much from outside. I have subscriptions for many magazines and there is always television but that’s a little bit dead in a way.<br />
<br />
HUO That’s a very important point.<br />
<br />
JK Of course.<br />
<br />
HUO It’s the point of where the influence comes from outside into your work. You have published For Inspiration Only (1996) and More for Inspiration Only (1999) and Czech Inspiration (2005) and one can see from the very beginning if it’s design, if it’s free magazines, if it’s airline magazines, if it’s records, there are all kinds of sources, so one can say you are very open to these outside influences.<br />
<br />
JK Yes. It’s frightening when people start to say, ‘There’s nothing happening there’; they live in Los Angeles and they say, ‘Nothing is happening here’. That’s very worrying. It’s not true. There is always something happening somewhere, it’s just to find it, to be informed, to be with it somehow. It’s easy dismissal of any situation around the world, in Los Angeles or wherever, Milan. Of course there are masses of things happening in Milan. I don’t know, maybe they have a new tram which would be important in the way of what you see. Also I think the relationship to the last day of your life, to your previous history, to the people who influence you, is important. I can’t stand people who come for an interview and when I ask them, ‘Who is your hero?’ they have no answer. One doesn’t come to life and there is nothing before. That’s rubbish. There is always Le Corbusier and Oscar Niemeyer and whoever you mention. And it varies sometimes, of course. You have personal discoveries. Very early on I discovered some houses of Frank Lloyd Wright and it was an amazing discovery. It was only from 1956 and it disappeared. And there are others. I bought recently a book on Oscar Niemeyer’s houses.<br />
<br />
HUO I bought the same book.<br />
<br />
JK The biggest discovery was that he designed two classicist houses. There were sort of colonial columns, Roman or Greek columns. His strength is he can afford it; if someone else does it it is a disaster but he can in his endless production.<br />
<br />
HUO That’s very interesting because it leads to a question I wanted to ask you. I am very interested in the issue of heroes, which I think is very important and is also to do with what Eric Hobsbawm says, that you need a protest against forgetting.<br />
<br />
JK Yes.<br />
<br />
HUO There is a big amnesia in the world. You already mentioned Frank Lloyd Wright. I am curious if you could tell me a little bit more about your heroes.<br />
<br />
JK Le Corbusier was always there in the strengths of his work and some of his writing is unbelievable. A little bit later the Niemeyer came; he disappeared a little bit but now it’s very high, particularly his writings; some of his memoirs are very strong. Those two. There’s always Charles Eames and others on the side, there are a few people from the design world. There are people you don’t know the names of but they exist or they existed; there’s Keisler and Zaha.<br />
<br />
HUO Friedrich Kiesler?.<br />
<br />
JK Yes. I always appreciate this person who almost didn’t so-called succeed but he did because a few of his things are absolutely fantastic. The smaller production is sometimes very important, you know. Charles Eames built two houses: one of them is definitely totally revolutionary, one maybe a tiny bit less. Sometimes to discover a so-called small guy doing – or the ladies, Eileen Gray, Charlotte Perriand when you realise she was doing the best pieces of furniture at the age of twenty-five or twenty-seven, it’s unbelievable, unbelievable. People don’t know and don’t want to know and things like that but it’s too late for me. It was probably slightly different then than it is now. People design an aeroplane or design a car and the question of discovery and to really change something. You will never find out who designed a trench coat or a pair of jeans but they are an absolute discovery, they are revolutionary things. That process interests me very much. The third book of the series.<br />
<br />
HUO Of the Inspiration series.<br />
<br />
JK Yes. There is a Czech Inspiration now; that is one I will send you as well. It’s a small country that produced quite a lot and of course it is unknown because it doesn’t come from the big world. I would love to do the British. You always have to have some inspiration. I was always telling students to look around; if they were on a bus at what the details are or at the airport and aeroplanes, but people don’t want to listen sometimes, they are blind, visually blind. Unfortunately that is a disease of many architects.<br />
<br />
HUO This is fascinating because you mentioned the Czech influence. I was wondering what would have been some heroes of yours in the fifties and sixties in terms of Czech modernity. In Poland there was Oskar Hansen.<br />
<br />
JK Yes.<br />
<br />
HUO You knew about Hansen?<br />
<br />
JK No. Usually these cross-references between two countries like that are very poor indeed. They always try to say, ‘We are better’. But I know about the Polish and there is also Hungary, for instance. But certainly the Czech Constructivism was somewhere, but there were no books. Things were falling to pieces, so it was not easy. Also you don’t realise what it means how people see it from outside. They see it only from inside; that’s what so fascinating, what survives from your small country looking at it from here. That fascinates me because very few think, and it’s a particularly Anglo-American disease, that there’s nothing beyond even Germany, which is an unknown country; they maybe know Volkswagen but that’s about it.<br />
<br />
HUO And what in terms of Czech Constructivism were your main inspirations?<br />
<br />
JK There was one pavilion by Jaroslav Polika and Jaromir Krejcar in 1937 in Paris.. It was opposite the British pavilion which was what we would now call hi-tech, but for the time was quite extraordinary. A few villas. There was always the Adolf Loos Villa, which I lived next to; I was born 150 metres from Müller’s House. I used to go there as a little child. That was an amazing inspiration. My parents knew the Müllers. So that makes life very different. But every tower is inspirational. The blocks that are there are still very.<br />
<br />
HUO Very frugal.<br />
<br />
JK Yes. Totally in my mind was the possibility of composition. Of course, you don’t see it like that as a child but constructing something with wood, and then making your own models, drawings, a fourteen or fifteen year old, not constructed by some kit, but to construct a boat that goes on the lake is something. That was a very strong influence as well because you start to think how you would make it. To go and buy a plastic kit is easy but to make everything yourself to precision and draw the drawing is an amazing advantage. But even to gain experience once or twice with a motor car engine in pieces. I see guys now who don’t even know how to insert a screw or use the screwdriver. Not everybody needs to do that but it’s the physical reality which, particularly with the presence of computers, is, amazingly, disappearing.<br />
<br />
HUO One other influence you mentioned in the early sixties was Konrad Wachsmann. What about Wachsmann’s influence?<br />
<br />
JK Wachsmann. Well we were heavily after some systems.<br />
<br />
HUO That’s the beginning of the systems.<br />
<br />
JK Yes, yes. I remember I found somewhere he had just published a book, Wendepunkte im Bauen (1961), and somebody bought it. We couldn’t get any books, you must realise that, or any magazines, so somebody sent this book which was totally revolutionary in terms of what a man like that – you can say he didn’t achieve much, it doesn’t matter. In this commercial world why don’t you find an article on Konrad Wachsmann? I am sure ninety per cent of architects who read the Architect’s Journal would not know the name. I am almost certain – ninety-five per cent. It’s not because he’s forgotten, the influence is there. It’s like saying Brunelleschi doesn’t have any influence, it’s all gone. Rubbish.<br />
<br />
HUO It’s always there.<br />
<br />
JK It’s always there.<br />
<br />
HUO That also leads us to the Architecture without Architects influence. Archigram was one of your key influences.<br />
<br />
JK It was absolutely purely by accident. It was in a modern art exhibition. I went there twice. It was my first visit abroad and that was it, in a museum of modern art. It was an extraordinary installation by Paul Rudolph. I found two photographs from TELO and suddenly saw a connection that somebody would look at that sort of thing as a part of modern movement. It was an amazing thing. The photography of the exhibition before Family of man, drawings for some time and a few other things. Then somebody sent me a copy of Archigram and that opened the gates dramatically.<br />
<br />
HUO So Archigram was a trigger.<br />
<br />
JK Yes and no. But as an interest from left to right, yes, because nobody in those days was interested in this sort of thing; people didn’t openly talk about something called inspiration, which was normally used and copied now by others. That didn’t exist. You couldn’t put on your drawings some piece of shell which inspired you. Le Corbusier had done it but in a different way; it was not so direct. They had seen architecture in something which nobody else did.<br />
<br />
HUO Maybe a last hero to point out is Craig Ellwood. Could you talk about Craig Ellwood and his importance?<br />
<br />
JK Yes. I wrote him a letter, even, saying how wonderful I thought his work was.<br />
<br />
HUO He’s alive, isn’t he?<br />
<br />
JK He’s dead (he died in 1992). That was another thing. It was never announced in the architecture press. He finished with architecture and we shouldn’t talk about that. There is a new book, a Spanish book, about his houses which are fifty years old (Alfonso Pere-Mendez, Craig Ellwood: In the Spirit of the Time, 2003). For the first time they have been published in colour and they are beautiful photographs. It’s unbelievable. They didn’t change; he was not an architect, he was a builder and had a problem to be accepted by the AIA or whatever. He changed the missing image to something, introducing some colour in certain things. Extraordinary! Hodat school, that was his study houses and discovery of the “Arts and architecture”. Purely by accident the copy used to come to the Czech Technical Library and if it hadn’t I wouldn’t know, but the influence was incredible. You see every so often another case study house that didn’t exist. There was nothing here.<br />
<br />
HUO In 1968, which is the year I was born, you arrived in London.<br />
<br />
JK Yes.<br />
<br />
HUO And immediately you started then to work with Richard Rogers. Could you talk a little bit about that ’68 moment, how you felt in ’68 in London?<br />
<br />
JK Well, you’re running away so that’s your first problem. You see the tanks and there’s no defence. You simpley have to go. You simplyhave to go.<br />
<br />
HUO Were you in touch with other artists who went into exile? I knew Kolar, for example, quite well. Was he a friend?<br />
<br />
JK Yes, I did the design of one of his last exhibitions in Prague.<br />
<br />
HUO In the sixties.<br />
<br />
JK In 1968. It was still there when the Russians arrived. I remember that.<br />
<br />
HUO So you had links to the art scene as well.<br />
<br />
JK Yes. Because of my parents, particularly my father, things like that. In the early days you travelled to get a job, that’s the first thing. You have absolutely no financial background; because money wasn’t convertible, you arrive as a humble tourist and that was it. I couldn’t ring my mother for another hundred, two hundred, so that limits you. You had to take a job that wasn’t particularly wonderful. But purely by accident I went to see Rogers, somebody had organised something, and the first time he realised that something is going on; I had a couple of jobs photographed and he was very impressed. But I didn’t have much more. There were about six people. So I was doing the biggest job in the office, which was a roof extension in Aybrook Street. That was before the Centre Pompidou.<br />
<br />
HUO A very exciting moment.<br />
<br />
JK Very exciting.<br />
<br />
HUO And did you do your own work at that time? Before you founded Future Systems in the late seventies, did you do sketches of your own work in the seventies? How did your own ideas develop?<br />
<br />
JK There is a huge gap when I arrived; I simply didn’t have a space and the mind; it was totally interrupted. I desperately tried. There are some of those diaries from the period but nothing else. Then it starts about ’75; I started to do drawings, but only for myself. That’s quite interesting; they were very technological, influenced by the space stations and things like that … When I went to Norman Foster they had an amazing influence there and also wanted you to contribute and I did contribute. They were changing. That was my school, yes, but I did contribute, particularly on the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank.<br />
<br />
HUO So your school was basically the Rogers office and the Foster office and they are obviously two great offices of the sixties and seventies in London, besides, of course, Cedric Price’s work.<br />
<br />
JK Yes.<br />
<br />
HUO So I wondered how it was for you to connect to the incredible English context of these years, and the AA, and Rogers and Foster, and how you felt about that.<br />
<br />
JK It came once I started to know all the Archigram people, but not by the AA. The AA came much later, in the eighties. I taught for about seven years with Ron Herron, which was interesting, more than interesting. This sort of thing; you absorb more and more. Cedric Price, of course I knew him, I met him many times, but wasn’t somehow strongly on the list.<br />
<br />
HUO But Rogers and Foster.<br />
<br />
JK Yes, particularly – there’s no doubt that Centre Pompidou is a highly, highly innovative building of its time. I was sitting next to Renzo Piano, who was doing the main content. There was nothing more and it happened in London. That is very important. Suddenly Paris was fading away and the US started what was the beginning of post-modernism.<br />
<br />
HUO So you felt it was really with the Pompidou building that London came on the map in some funny way.<br />
<br />
JK Absolutely, absolutely. No doubt.<br />
<br />
HUO For the first time it became clear that London could be the centre.<br />
<br />
JK With that building, London became capital of architecture. No doubt. I am sure that is supported by many others. I’ve no doubt about that. Plus the story was more complicated but I think they were also unknown until the Sainsbury Centre and the breakthrough came through the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank. But the winning of the competition from six or seven hundred entries in Paris by an office which consisted of six people, that is an achievement. There were no strong links. It was judged by Jean Prouvé, Oscar Niemeyer, Philip Johnson and God knows who else, and these guys couldn’t believe when they saw us, you know, long hair, seven people arriving in Paris in a little Mini and things like that, with a couple of photographs.<br />
<br />
HUO So it was a miracle.<br />
<br />
JK Totally. A miracle which will probably never be repeated again. I don’t think six young guys winning an international competition in the middle of Paris or Berlin or London will happen again. When they open the envelope they will find out there are six of them and they will dismiss them. Also the jury was interesting. Three of those names represent very different points of view and the potential of that building was recognised. They saw six hundred entries, each of them was only a very small sheet of paper. Of course then we were in shows and it was very heady. It’s amazing how some of the openings appeared and we knew something was happening, no doubt about that.<br />
<br />
HUO And before we move on to the opening of your own office, I was wondering about the Foster office. Was there anything you learnt from there which was particularly –useful? You obviously shared the Buckminster Fuller link somehow. Another thing I think is so fascinating is that architecture was still very difficult as an economy and Fuller invented an economy in some kind of way.<br />
<br />
JK You mean an economy in architecture.<br />
<br />
HUO Yes.<br />
<br />
JK I would agree with that.<br />
<br />
HUO How many people worked with Foster when you were there in the seventies and eighties? Fifty?<br />
<br />
JK No. Less. Thirty, maybe thirty-five. We were part of finding the new – I don’t want to call it material – but developments which were interesting. There is the whole tragedy of the guy who is twenty-five now or twenty-seven who doesn’t search for something new that can be done. You certainly had a feeling you were in the centre of Europe somehow, in both offices. Fuller and Robens invented that, the feeling was that. That brings you an amazing background. You can do something on Saturday night or Sunday night and show the drawings; they just came out. Lots of drawings for Foster as well.<br />
<br />
HUO That leads us to Future Systems and one of the things I was very fascinated about is the beginnings in a Deleuzian way. Beginnings are always interesting moments. In the late seventies you came up with this idea of Future Systems with your colleague David Nixon. I wondered what gave you the idea of the name and how Future Systems came into existence.<br />
<br />
JK In those days not everybody was using their names. It’s more complicated now; a lot of people around the world are called different names, not their personal names. But we were looking for a name which could be extended and new people could come.<br />
<br />
HUO It was more like a brand.<br />
<br />
JK Yes.<br />
<br />
HUO Now architecture and branding is much more common but that was the beginning of that one could say.<br />
<br />
JK The beginning. There was also a law that you had to register the company and it had to be the one and only company of that name. We were totally amazed that nobody in this country had the name Future Systems. So we registered it under that name and that was it. It characterised the future is still there, the systems are less important. Then it proved to be important that when one partner disappeared and another partner came in there was a certain flexibility and nobody knows who is actually doing what.<br />
<br />
HUO So does it also mean that the office could still continue in fifty or a hundred years with other people?<br />
<br />
JK Yes. SOM now means SOM. It doesn’t mean Skidmore, Owings and Merrill. I am sure there are plenty of people who still have original names and it has a certain strength. On the other hand it brings disappointment because people don’t relate things to you. There is a certain setback: it’s too abstract for many people.<br />
As you know the beginnings are always very complicated and there is obviously nothing to do. Then I was fired from Foster’s and things started to move. I had to earn a living and it wasn’t easy to do and my partner left for the US and wanted to do more outer space things, NASA stuff. I wanted to do buildings. So we tried to carry on but it is always a big problem if you start to do commercial work very early on and you were never directly related to the short-list of some commercial practices. And that is still, quite frankly, a problem. You start to carry on and you have a small studio and then a bigger studio and it’s the beginning. You have to have enthusiasm and to believe that what you are doing is actually the right thing. You are endlessly criticised behind the scenes and directly, which doesn’t help, and finally some people start to understand. Somebody who understood for a long time was Rogers, who was very encouraging. He helped us several times. It was amazing. That almost doesn’t exist either now, that somebody is helping others.<br />
<br />
HUO Very early on many of the elements are there if one looks at something like the Future Systems ‘Blob’ in London in 1985; even then it could have been a building of today.<br />
<br />
JK Yes.<br />
<br />
HUO It just wasn’t built at that time there was post-Modernism around. I wanted to ask you about your Brighton Marina project from 1976, which is published a lot. I was wondering if there is a link to Japanese Metabolism. I interviewed all the Japanese Metabolists and obviously there are a lot of marina projects.<br />
<br />
JK If I am absolutely honest with you, no. I knew about it and of course one has amazing admiration and they were first in a certain way but it was always a little bit distant. I think far more the Brighton Marina was related to the ships, boats, aeroplanes, NASA and technology. I know it and acknowledged it. The technology generally was the big word which has somehow disappeared now from my list of big words. That scheme in the middle of Tokyo Bay and things like that are absolutely in my mind all the time. The gesture of it is unbelievable but I don’t know. Japanese culture in the past was something different, but when you go there you realise it is possible because the real Japan of today is more related to Metabolism than the old Japan of two centuries ago.<br />
<br />
HUO How would you describe the philosophy behind Future Systems? What was driving the car?<br />
<br />
JK I wrote some seven points recently.<br />
<br />
HUO Like a manifesto.<br />
<br />
JK Maybe we could go through it.<br />
<br />
HUO Yes, that would be good.<br />
<br />
JK But to answer that question, you must realise that at that time the post-modern movement had just started 1980. And we won that. It was a classic battle. What’s built there is classicist buildings. There was a huge opposition. With this on the paper was showing certain things like small windows, for example; it was hated and people used to laugh when I showed that slide. Of course they do not laugh now; we are reaching some of that now, I understand after 20 years.<br />
So shall I go through some of this?<br />
<br />
HUO Yes, it would be good to hear the points.<br />
<br />
JK I can leave it with you, of course. First of all the inspiration; we went forward with that, inspiration from man and nature and technology, always looking at all this with respect to the past. We talked about that as well. One doesn’t arrive just one day. Always search for new forms. Beauty of the leading element. We didn’t talk about that, which interests me enormously and how very few times you hear about beauty.<br />
<br />
HUO Yes. Beauty is not a very fashionable topic. Maybe it would be interesting to talk about beauty.<br />
<br />
JK Well I would love to publish some book called ‘Beauty’, which is not easy because obviously on certain things people would agree, but I don’t care; you can’t have a hundred per cent agreement on something like that. There is no technology, maybe, in the book; maybe one more to come on an aeroplane. But there are so many classic things which are, I don’t know, some sea, pebbles, a plant, an animal, a composition or some textile, which are so ignored, so neglected. We are so scared of using the word, not just in architecture but in art of course. That’s the photomontage but Kolar sent it to me.<br />
<br />
HUO Kolar was in touch with you?<br />
<br />
JK Oh yes. That was a New Year card. I met him several times, many times. He used to come to some openings.<br />
Freedom: freedom of creativity, which is very important for me because for many years I didn’t have that. I don’t think people who have always lived in a democracy understand. That is a very important aspect that nobody will tell you. You have other restrictions, other barriers, but not if you want to show your design or paint something blue. Nobody from the Conservative Party will tell you blue is only for their party.<br />
Colour is an integral part of creative activity. Many architects completely ignore it, pushing that aside.<br />
<br />
HUO What is your favourite colour?<br />
<br />
JK Blue is certainly very strong, purple, some anodised colours. But there’s black, white, anything. We are working on a black building, which I have wanted to do for some time.<br />
The last one is the smallest object is and must be an important piece of architecture because I don’t see any difference between pieces of design and the building. We do a lot of design now and the smallest piece is equally as important to me as the building. I think to divide that between design and architecture is sheer nonsense.<br />
<br />
HUO Is that the idea of the Gesamtkunstwerk?<br />
<br />
JK In a way, yes.<br />
<br />
HUO The palace of the maharajah in India, that kind of idea of the Gesamtkunstwerk?<br />
<br />
JK Maybe there are some little stories from Bauhaus or whatever as well. A lot of architects fail a hell of a lot to design the door handles; the chair is one of the most typical ones, or anything you touch. If you don’t do the work on that you are failing. It’s more obvious than the building by itself. So we went through the seven points. Do you want that list?<br />
<br />
HUO We will have to film it as a manifesto.<br />
<br />
JK Right. Actually it’s a very interesting point that architects don’t do manifestos, do they, any more?<br />
<br />
HUO That is one of the things I wanted to ask you. The thing which is interesting is that in the sixties there were still manifestos but manifestos have disappeared from architecture. How would you explain that?<br />
<br />
JK Do you know why? Because they are scared to show that in front of their clients or future clients. I think that is seventy-five per cent of it. They are scared of the client, they are scared of how the brand they set out will be bad for them.<br />
<br />
HUO When was your breakthrough moment? How would you describe the way there and the moment when what you experienced in ’68 in Roger’s office happened to your office, that sort of quantum leap? Which project triggered the quantum leap?<br />
<br />
JK It is always one person in family houses but even the biggest project should have one person. In Selfridges there was an Italian guy who was the prime factor and it was so easy to communicate with him and he made the main decisions. The major decisions were done in five minutes or less.<br />
<br />
HUO So it was Selfridges.<br />
<br />
JK It was Selfridges. Funnily enough, on the Lord’s Media Centre there was a committee and that is always more complicated but the time I would spend designing the toilets! Nobody criticised the main enclosure, that was fine. We have another project in Italy which is becoming a little bit more complicated because there is no very strong personality behind that somewhere. But it will be alright and it will take some time. In the family house it is absolutely straightforward; you have to have some dialogue. It can’t be a monologue if there are two people and their kids. Behind Alessi is Mr. Alessi, who has a fantastic, amazing wide spectrum of interests as a human being, you hardly meet people like him anymore.<br />
<br />
HUO So the clients are human beings. Can you talk a bit more about the Media Centre? The Media Centre is really the building which made your practice globally known, I would say.<br />
<br />
JK Yes. There was a competition. There was an architect they hired and he did understand our point of view and did recommend that eventually. They have a nice building now, it’s very practical. That’s it, basically. That’s another person; there were other people trying to complicate things but they finally calmed down. They were obviously worried about money, that’s the first thing. But if the money is spent in the right place you are doing well; if you start to spend money in the wrong places then you are in trouble. That applies to the smallest thing and to the largest. It’s very complicated sometimes, you know, these meetings; there are endless meetings and very few decisions are taken. But possibly some people are very happy to sit down and not make decisions. But then it’s drawing board; you have to go back and you have to do it. Client meetings can only indicate things, you have to deliver and that’s the moment which I cherish. I like that very much. You have to deliver. You have to study. Also the ignorance about cricket in that case; or even the shopping in the Selfridges’ case. It is certainly an advantage if you have an expert who can help you and there was an expert in both cases. I think that’s important to have that; you can’t study the problem entirely on your own. That’s not the role of an architect. Maybe I sound a very practical person, but I’m not.<br />
<br />
HUO It would be interesting to hear more about these buildings. The influence of digital technology on these buildings has been discussed<br />
but you drew these buildings before digital technology was invented.<br />
<br />
JK Some of them.<br />
<br />
HUO So I actually don’t have the feeling that is has anything to do with digital technology.<br />
<br />
JK No.<br />
<br />
HUO I have interviewed Zaha Hadid several times and in Zaha’s work the whole idea of digital technology plays a big role, but I was wondering what the role of the computer is within your practice. Has the computer changed the way you work?<br />
<br />
JK Yes and no. The basic shape of the Media Centre is based on the knowledge of how they make boats and the boats are made a little bit different in this country due to technology, but not much different from a hundred years ago. Yes, there is; you can bend a sheet of metal in three dimensions directly from the computer and that’s fine, but the basic technology – welding is welding. If you have computer technology or not, the welder has to go and make a waterproof seam like a hundred years ago. That didn’t change much. It’s a basic myth. Every time I finish a lecture people ask me if we are using new technologies. I say, ‘No, we are not’. Using aluminium is hundreds of years old, plaster, we are using earth, pieces of steel. That’s not new technology; it depends how you use it. I still haven’t built a house which is based on aircraft technology. It would be my dream to use that sort of thing but maybe it’s not necessary. The house as a form is more important than technology. Selfridges certainly did not depend on digital technology; it’s an extremely primitive building, very primitive building. But that was the trick because everything went in the right place; we used money in the right places.<br />
<br />
HUO Primitive in what way?<br />
<br />
JK Well, the skeleton is still a steel skeleton, even a bad one, influenced by a certain firm. Then there is the spraying of concrete creating the shape, that is technology which Corbusier used. There is nothing new about that. And the disc is possible to manufacture for many people around the world; spinning is not new technology. The only improvement I think I would say, and it was absolutely critical, is the tolerance because the system of disc, you don’t need to worry about the tolerance between two pieces and you can cover any shape you like.<br />
<br />
HUO And that made it possible.<br />
<br />
JK And cheaply. I was never criticised spending money on that elevation; the elevation is cheaper than the standard elevation.. Then you are gaining power because I lost only one thing but that’s a different story.<br />
<br />
HUO What is this?<br />
<br />
JK The roof garden But only because I was not told in the right time I could manage to do it in. It was not a financial problem.<br />
<br />
HUO So the roof garden was the unrealised part of a realised project. I was wondering in terms of your many decades of practice, what would be your favourite yet-unrealised project. What would be the percentage of the unbuilt Future Systems in relation to the built?<br />
<br />
JK A museum. More like an art gallery than a museum library.<br />
<br />
HUO Have you had library projects?<br />
<br />
JK Yes. Library. We are being considered. We were very close in Paris but that was a long time ago now; this is not for public knowledge yet but there is a competition in Prague, a lovely project to do. Something like that would be fine. We are building two more houses; one is in this country, one is in Prague.<br />
<br />
HUO Any dreams?<br />
<br />
JK Well maybe the art gallery will be a dream or something which would be a piece of design which will survive maybe fifty years, it will still be manufactured, or thirty-five even would be lucky. Something like that.<br />
<br />
HUO And how do you imagine the art gallery of the future, what is the Future System of the art gallery?<br />
<br />
JK Well you provide the universal space, which can be adapted. It’s not an architectural statement to start from the inside not the outside and there are not many public buildings like that; amazing use of daylight; we are studying that all the time. And how do you provide an innocent background for the objects you are exhibiting when they are powerful things? We are doing that at the Maserati Museum.<br />
<br />
HUO That has been built, right?<br />
<br />
JK We finished all the drawings this month and then we start building. The opening date is ’09. In that we are learning quite a lot because their cars are almost like pieces of art, so they are elevated above the floor. It’s a new type of car museum. It is certainly not a garage. That’s part of the dream and that will be built and I am very happy.. I always envy – I mentioned when they photographed the Craig Ellwood and Marcel Breuer houses that they still looked modern in many respects, untouched.<br />
<br />
HUO How well they age.<br />
<br />
JK Unbelievable, unbelievable. They look actually better in a way than the first photographs two weeks after they were completed.<br />
<br />
HUO And what do you think is the quality? That obviously also relates to art. Gerhard Richter officially writes about that same quality, that decades after they have been made they look fresher today than ever. What would you say was the feature that makes architecture have that timelessness? It’s maybe not timelessness but the ability to re-vamp itself according to different times. What is the quality which leads to that?<br />
<br />
JK There should be always one element which is a little bit ahead of its time.<br />
<br />
HUO Slightly before its time?<br />
<br />
JK Yes. At least, something unusual, something innovative. Innovative in construction may be sometimes hidden but even the door handle can be better than the others. And the spaces should survive. If you have a nice space inside it is very difficult to describe, it is very difficult to put it there. If you come to a building you haven’t seen before – I remember coming to Ronchamp’s Chapel for the first time and you are absolutely stunned by the quality of the space. And there are many others I am sure. I think that’s very important, inside space. There are whole periods of history where there is no interest. Post-modernism didn’t have any interest in the space. They were only interested in façadism, whatever. We have to grow up from that box, that box of eight corners or whatever. It’s about time. And that’s very little. Zaha is doing that brilliantly, that is why she is so good about breaking the space. Other people do it twenty times worse, even the big names. She is the one who did manage to do this really on a big scale.<br />
<br />
HUO To break the space open.<br />
<br />
JK Yes. Inside.<br />
<br />
HUO With Wolfsburg.<br />
<br />
JK Exactly. Exactly the building I would mention. That’s fantastic. Not many people, if you think about it, have done it before. Glass walls and things like that. It’s astonishing how the detail in her – I know God is in the detail – but in her building the detail is not that important, maybe. You will not remember the type of glazing they are using. Yes, I know what they are doing but to be part of some glazing connection becomes less important. I think that’s the way forward. No detail detail.<br />
<br />
HUO I have a question about your shops because your Marni fashion shop in 2000 transformed shops and you said it is fascinating what can be achieved with the transformation of a very ordinary space. Since then architects have frequently designed shops. What about the idea of the shop as a medium?<br />
<br />
JK Display. It’s very related to exhibition display, I suppose. You have to be interested in the right things. A big company comes to you and they never thought about it shouldn’t be mentioned the window display. I said, ’What do you mean?’ One of the biggest hairdressers never thought it was a serious problem what you exhibit. People don’t like to be seen; some shampoos, that’s not good enough, is it? So immediately, you have a problem: how do you attract? How are you different? Some of the shops for Marni and Commes des Garçons are on the main road where every shop tries to compete so you have to try to beat that. The Commes des Garçons Japan is on the fashion main road. We were one generation ahead and chose the floor; absolutely critical. If you have the wrong floor because this and that. And the whole idea: on the Marni we changed some sequence and how many times we are going to hang the item so you can see a tiny bit more. It’s amazing. Every time – you can hide the shop; very few people can afford to do it. Commes des Garçons in New York has no elevation and it was an area where there was nothing except a famous gallery. That’s a different game; you can play it only with a very big name.<br />
<br />
HUO You have more shop projects now?<br />
<br />
JK Funnily enough, no. We had Galliano shop and that somehow disappeared. There is a famous lingerie shop in London here, it’s tiny but you can break your neck on that sort of thing. It’s an extremely limited budget but we love to do it because every tiny detail matters and how to display those products. It is exhibition, as you say.<br />
<br />
HUO That leads to art. I was wondering about your relationship to different artists. We mentioned Jiri Kolar but have you worked in the recent past with visual artists? What is your relationship to visual artists?<br />
<br />
JK Yes. We have done several things with Anish Kapoor on many levels. There is always certainly fifty-fifty cooperation if not more. I think he is the leader, basically, and I think that is correct. It’s very rare. It’s not adding some big name on the bridge as we experienced recently. And Brian Clarke you may know; we have done something with him. I am doing something with some Czech guy who is not that far from, let’s say, Anish. But it must be real cooperation, it can’t be just a static adding by a little sculpture in the lobby of the building. What do we put here rather than buy a Henry Moore? That has gone; it has to be integrated into the project, holding hands maybe?<br />
<br />
HUO Two last questions.<br />
<br />
JK Please.<br />
<br />
HUO In relation to the art context what is also very interesting is your whole idea of your atlas of found images and postcards which you use, which is almost like an art project. It is something which is not only for your inspiration and Inspiration books but it is even in a book like your Confessions (2002). There are pages of your work and then there is a Camus book cover, or there are pages of your work and there is an exhibition catalogue for Mentata de Kunst or a telephone from Bell Company and so on. That is almost like the Jan Kaplicky atlas one would say, as Gerhard Richter would call it. I was wondering how your images are filed, how your archive is orgqanized and how you work with this atlas. Could one call it an atlas?<br />
<br />
JK Yes, certainly. It used to be slides if you ask me the formalities. A lot of it is here in your head, which is probably the best filing system, but of course it fails in critical moments sometimes. We have an amazing collection of images. Every time I go through any magazine I scan now. I used to photograph but it is easier now and it is growing rapidly. Sometimes most bizarre. I don’t know if you have ever seen one of my lectures.<br />
<br />
HUO Absolutely.<br />
<br />
JK So you can use it and re-use it in the projects. A lot of people copy that system now for inspiration. It’s a very important part. Sometimes, funnily enough, you discover things afterwards; you had it somehow in your mind but then you find the image. It sounds perverse but it’s not because you just confirm your thoughts. But I would emphasize that amazing moment of the creativity which is so innocent in a way. If somebody is talking to you about how they create, they never do, the right people; it’s so personal and so private and it doesn’t come easily. I sometimes share big space and there are twenty or thirty people looking at you and they must think you are doing absolutely nothing. But it could be absolutely critical sometimes, some decision of the colour. There is no scientific way how to decide.<br />
<br />
HUO It’s purely intuitive.<br />
<br />
JK Absolutely.<br />
<br />
HUO Maybe a last question. There is a lovely book by Rainer Maria Rilke where he gives some advice to a young poet. What would be your advice to a young architect in 2007? (We are recording this on January 2nd 2007.)<br />
<br />
JK Very difficult question but a very beautiful question. It changes all the time but I think look around, always look around, and don’t think you are discovering America; you never are. And have a relationship to the past and a relationship to the future; both are equally important. There is no harm in finding the beauty in the Parthenon as well as in the beauty of the jumbo jet or flower.<br />
<br />
HUO Thank you very much. It was great.<br />
<hr />simulacrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01025844469103673248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8673717048871599765.post-71107300103354822472010-01-01T03:49:00.000-08:002010-01-01T03:52:03.476-08:00Radio Praha Interviews Deyan Sudjic to talk about Jan Kaplicky and Future System<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIGVLPEPdDTWzgeYqz6PQSv23KZm8I3TQBKyVATHPSq7QNWvy93TJ2td9vq3xGBWTyXULzXmed53soqpM8DZHiOcRdIn3nOMeK032KikzoNkaOBuwbtON1sFgx7W4KJPJK0UXm38ELcZUG/s1600-h/sudjic_deyan+radio+praha.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIGVLPEPdDTWzgeYqz6PQSv23KZm8I3TQBKyVATHPSq7QNWvy93TJ2td9vq3xGBWTyXULzXmed53soqpM8DZHiOcRdIn3nOMeK032KikzoNkaOBuwbtON1sFgx7W4KJPJK0UXm38ELcZUG/s320/sudjic_deyan+radio+praha.jpg" /></a><br />
</div><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">architect/artist: </span><b style="color: #666666;">Deyan Sudjic</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">interview title:</span><b style="color: #666666;"> </b><b style="color: #666666;">“What buildings could be like if they weren’t so horribly earthbound” – UK exhibition commemorates architect Jan Kaplický</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">interviews compilation no: </span><b style="color: #666666;">T-56, A-07<br />
</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">interview format: </span><b style="color: #666666;">Text, Audio </b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">date:<b> </b></span><b style="color: #666666;">11-09-2009</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">appeared in: <b>Radio Praha</b></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">interviewer: </span><span style="color: #666666;"><b>Rosie Johnston</b></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">photo by: </span><span style="color: #666666;"><b></b></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #666666;">courtesy:<i><b> http://www.radio.cz/en/article/120164</b></i></span><br />
<br />
<b>Interview Details:</b><br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<br />
Audio Version:<br />
<br />
<b>download MP3:</b> <a href="http://old.radio.cz/mp3/podcast/en/arts/090911-what-buildings-could-be-like-if-they-werent-so-horribly-earthbound-uk-exhibition.mp3">http://old.radio.cz/mp3/podcast/en/arts/090911-what-buildings-could-be-like-if-they-werent-so-horribly-earthbound-uk-exhibition.mp3</a><br />
<b>download RealAudio:</b> <a href="http://helix.radio.cz:8080/ramgen/rm/EN/09/09/EN090911-13-high.rm?start=18:06.00&end=26:44.48">http://helix.radio.cz:8080/ramgen/rm/EN/09/09/EN090911-13-high.rm?start=18:06.00&end=26:44.48</a> <br />
<br />
<b>Text Version:</b><br />
(as appeared in website)<br />
<br />
The late Czech architect Jan Kaplický's buildings have been described as 'some of the most remarkable... that Britain has ever seen' and, by a disgruntled Prince Charles, as amongst the worst examples of 'the surrealist picnic' that is modern architecture. When Kaplický died at the beginning of 2009, British architecture lost one of its most creative, and provocative, figures. Long-time friend and head of London's Design Museum Deyan Sudjic has curated an exhibition called 'Remembering Jan Kaplický – Architect of the Future', which runs until November 1 in Kaplický's honour. On a recent visit to London, I asked him to talk me through the exhibit:<br />
<br />
“Very sadly, Jan Kaplický died in January of this year, and I’d known him for a long time, in fact, he was a friend, and I was one of his first clients. So, for both personal and museum reasons, I thought it was important to have some sort of memory, some sort of very quick tribute, to Jan’s extraordinary output. So, what I’ve tried to do here is assemble a sort of snapshot of the work that he has built over the years, or planned, or conceived. And I’ve just assembled it as it was in his studio, where there was always a long white table full of extraordinary bits and pieces. <br />
<br />
“So it is really a very low-key, un-curated exhibition. Except there are a few twists, you know, for example, we’ve aligned this extraordinary phallic model of a skyscraper that he did in 1990 dead on the Swiss Re, the so-called ‘Erotic Gherkin’, which is one of the new elements of London’s skyline. And this is a little memory that Jan was an influence on many architects.”<br />
<br />
<b>You said that you were an early client of Jan Kaplický, can I ask what you commissioned from him?</b><br />
<br />
“As a young and impecunious architecture critic, I thought it was important to put my money where my mouth was. So, at that time I had bought a flat in Maida Vale, in this very humble, stucco-fronted, terraced house, of which I had one floor. It looked very normal on the outside, but Jan turned the inside into a spaceship.”<br />
<br />
<b>In the foreword to this exhibition here, you say that Jan was very influenced by the professions of both of his parents - his mother was a botanical illustrator and his father a sculptor – can you explain how a little bit more concretely? </b><br />
<br />
“I think that what I always saw in Jan’s work early on, when he was working in other people’s offices, was this astonishingly precise delineation of lines. He was a fantastic draughtsman, doing things of great precision. And I’m sure that, in retrospect, this could be something that he learned from his mother, who of course made these exquisite drawings of plants. And I saw something of that.<br />
<br />
“And then of course, through his career, there was a change. The earlier work was very technologically influenced. He was obsessed by space, by high technology, by Czech achievements, actually. He was always fascinated by Škoda, by the cars that they made, the Tatra, by Czech aircraft, by the fortifications built by the Czechs in the 1930s. And that was an influence, but then later in his career, he started to become more interested in the forms of the body, of sensuous form, and I think that might be something to do with his father’s work as a sculptor.” <br />
<br />
<b>In front of us are lots of models of things that were never built, and I think there were some things that he designed never with the intention of being built. Is it fair to say that a lot of the things that Jan Kaplický designed were purely in the realm of fantasy?</b><br />
<br />
“I wouldn’t use the word ‘fantasy’ about Jan’s work. He loved to speculate, he loved to dream. These aren’t fantasies, they are the world as Jan would have liked it to have been.”<br />
<br />
<b>What was Future Systems doing in the very early days?</b><br />
<br />
“To be an architect, you don’t necessarily need to build things. If you think about the past, Piranesi made these astonishing, fantastic, drawings of Roman ruins; he was evoking an atmosphere, a mood, and he was shaping directions. And I think that Jan’s work in the early days was very much about that. He was speculating about what buildings could be like if they weren’t so horribly pedestrian and earthbound, and he was dreaming. <br />
<br />
“And I suppose the most astonishing, miraculous thing is that, from those beginning, Future Systems became something which did build, which made a department store in Birmingham, which made sports buildings at the Lord’s Cricket Ground, which made houses and apartments. And that was a fantastic shift, and something to do with Jan’s partnership with Amanda Levete, who he was married to. Sadly, they were divorced and they became partners in business, which did start to build, and that was an astonishing shift.”<br />
<br />
<b>Would you say there is a very big difference in the way that Czech people perceive Jan Kaplický’s work and British people perceive Jan Kaplický’s work? </b><br />
<br />
“I went to Prague for Jan’s funeral, and it was the most astonishing, overwhelming event. I hadn’t realized, even though I knew Jan well, that he was a sort of national hero. It was like a state funeral, there was the letter from Václav Havel, there was this astonishing gothic chapel in which it took place and thousands of people. And I suppose that made me reflect upon Jan’s life and I suppose that, in some ways, he was embraced by the Czechs maybe because his career reflected a fractured country. He was born before the German invasion, he was a victim of the 1968 Russian invasion – he came to London then. He went back and made a new career, so maybe there was a sense of healing, in his person, about the modern Czech Republic. And I think that’s something that Britain didn’t really get the point of.<br />
<br />
“But I do remember one of the first things I did with Jan was, when I was a journalist, we asked him to select a tool from an exhibition of tools at the Victoria and Albert Museum, and he picked up a Bren gun, which, of course, is an example of Czech-British collaboration - the Brno Enfield gun - which is pretty handy for killing fascists.” <br />
<br />
<b>In recent years, Jan Kaplický has maybe become most synonymous in the Czech Republic with the National Library building which he designed, and which is most likely not going to be built due to strong political opposition. Do you think that the fascination with that overshadows more interesting things?</b><br />
<br />
“I think that Jan’s last years were in some ways the most happy and the most fulfilled he’d had. He loved the kind of politics of the library saga, and the Czechs love to argue!”<br />
<br />
<b>You said in his obituary which you wrote for the Guardian that his work did not betray the ‘gloomy pessimism’ that forms part of the Czech national identity, can you qualify that statement?</b><br />
<br />
“Well, my great aunt ran off with a Czech from Montenegro, so I think I have some insights into the Czech personality, and they sure do radiate gloom.”<br />
<br />
<b>I know that this is an exhibition of key works. Are these key works in your eyes, are they key works in Jan Kaplický’s eyes? How did you put this together? </b><br />
<br />
“Well, there were some things that I felt could not be missed. So, there are only a few of his montages, but they are beautiful ones. I love those, the way that he could actually imagine a building that could pick up and disappear and go somewhere else, in any landscape. So, there’s some of those. There is, as I have mentioned, the ‘Green Bird’, which is Jan’s astonishingly phallic idea for a high-rise tower, which does prefigure Norman Foster’s ‘Erotic Gherkin’ which has now transformed the London skyline, designed 15 years later. There are some of his projects which look at the imagery of transport, of space travel, turned into ideas for things which you could live in.<br />
<br />
“But then there are also projects which were realized, there is work on the Selfridges project, on some of his houses. There are an amazing couple of schemes, collaborations with Anish Kapoor, the sculptor – they worked on a project for London’s South Bank, which would have been an amazing part-sculpture, part-building. So we tried to cover all the bases.” <br />
<br />
<hr />simulacrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01025844469103673248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8673717048871599765.post-5874235838939519812010-01-01T03:30:00.000-08:002010-01-01T12:26:43.568-08:00Jan Kaplicky - a Czech architect turning "future systems" into reality: Kaplicky talks about his origin and architecture with Radio Praha<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0_8s3N-zE6G2zOW-bdwWG8RIJ5BQYKpEyRo-N_mqoWozoQP9pAysgrI-1Bd-J47kfSI9atx1xcAkPHKshLKdlIfplnSgMB8TuTCIWgGWh7z7SBUen6su2rfYJgyRP65a5RBrawB0H4dp_/s1600-h/kaplicky+and+levete+radio+praha.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0_8s3N-zE6G2zOW-bdwWG8RIJ5BQYKpEyRo-N_mqoWozoQP9pAysgrI-1Bd-J47kfSI9atx1xcAkPHKshLKdlIfplnSgMB8TuTCIWgGWh7z7SBUen6su2rfYJgyRP65a5RBrawB0H4dp_/s320/kaplicky+and+levete+radio+praha.jpg" /></a><br />
</div><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">architect/artist: </span><b style="color: #666666;">Jan Kaplicky, Future System</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">interview title:</span><b style="color: #666666;"> </b><b style="color: #666666;">Jan Kaplicky - a Czech architect turning "future systems" into reality</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">interviews compilation no: </span><b style="color: #666666;">T-55, A-06<br />
</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">interview format: </span><b style="color: #666666;">Text, Audio </b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">date:<b> </b></span><b style="color: #666666;">14-12-2004</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">appeared in: <b>Radio Praha</b></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">interviewer: </span><span style="color: #666666;"><b>Ian Willoughby</b></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">photo by: </span><span style="color: #666666;"><b>Future System</b></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #666666;">courtesy:<i><b> http://www.radio.cz/en/article/61302</b></i></span><br />
<br />
<b>Interview Details:</b><br />
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=8673717048871599765" name="more"></a><br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<br />
<b>Audio version:</b><br />
Download audio: <a href="http://helix.radio.cz:8080/ramgen/rm/EN/04/12/EN041214-14-high.rm?start=16:55.38&end=25:59.96">http://helix.radio.cz:8080/ramgen/rm/EN/04/12/EN041214-14-high.rm?start=16:55.38&end=25:59.96</a><br />
<br />
<b>text vestion:</b><br />
<br />
<i> (as appered in the Website)</i><br />
<br />
Today we meet Jan Kaplicky, who is regarded by many as the greatest Czech architect of his generation. Readers in the UK will surely know his amazing Selfridges building in Birmingham. But although Jan Kaplicky has won world renown for the work of his London-based company Future Systems, he has found himself somewhat at odds with the establishment here in the Czech Republic. Mr Kaplicky was born in Prague in 1937, and when we met recently he first told me something about his family background.<br />
<br />
"My father was a sculptor and painter, and he did a few small pieces of architecture, like our garden and some other things. My mother illustrated some books on plants to the last day of her life; many, many were published in different languages, in English, and they were distributed around the world.<br />
<br />
"So there was a lot of that - she'd done some pieces of fashion when she was very young and things like that. So there was always this. My father used to write articles, so these things were all around.<br />
<br />
"Then of course the catastrophe of the war came and then, after a break of about two years, the forty years of Communism, or I should say Stalinism, started, and you couldn't do anything. It was literally impossible to exhibit, to design or whatever.<br />
<br />
"Everything was strictly controlled and you were basically living in the small environment of your home. If you were lucky, if you were not - like many of my friends - their families were expelled from Prague, and things like that; you were very lucky if you could stay even in your own house."<br />
<br />
<b>If we can now go forward in time to 1968 - you decided to leave, I understand, as soon as the Russian tanks rolled in. </b><br />
<br />
"I realised that the time has come, you can't stay here, because there's absolutely no hope, in your lifetime. Maybe later - luckily we are sitting here and the Czech Republic is part of NATO and Europe, which is incredible, incredible.<br />
<br />
"But at that time I thought I can't waste time sitting and waiting to see if some politburo will make some decision or not. That is not how you can live your life, that is an impossibility."<br />
<br />
<b>You went to London. Why London? Was it your first choice?</b><br />
<br />
"In a way yes, because I could speak a bit. And I didn't want to stay in the German world of Germany and Austria. Also I sensed maybe something would happen architecturally there, which wasn't yet the case. But it was beginning to simmer somewhere in a corner and I was right. Then Britain started to be an architectural superpower, which it certainly wasn't in 1968."<br />
<br />
<b>You were 31 when you left here. How long did it take you to get established in the UK?</b><br />
<br />
"Many years, many years. I would say ten years, maybe more, maybe more. Particularly if you are doing things which are not automatically accepted, or whatever. Or you don't want to follow a hundred percent commercial line, which maybe would be easier.<br />
<br />
"You must realise you don't have any capital whatsoever. I escaped with a hundred dollars borrowed from my client. And you can't write a letter to your mother and say send me another hundred." <br />
<br />
<b>In 1979 you set up Future Systems. That's an extremely ambitious name, it seems to me. What was the thinking behind Future Systems?</b><br />
<br />
"The one idea, which now sounds more normal, was to have a name which does not represent the name of the people. And luckily we did it, because the people have changed. And I think architecture is not the activity of one man or woman, it is the activity of many."<br />
<br />
<b>In recent years you have had a few acclaimed buildings realised in Britain, the Lord's cricket ground media centre and the remarkable futuristic Selfridges building in Birmingham...</b><br />
<br />
"It's not futuristic, because it's here. Now it's on posters around Birmingham, it's on bank cards. I'm sure postcards are coming very soon and maybe even postage stamps. If it is a symbol of the town...the Sydney Opera House is the symbol of Sydney, that's fine.<br />
<br />
"They are very grateful. The city fathers or planners were very impressed. They love it, because it brings some attention to Birmingham. Some people like it, maybe somebody on the corner doesn't like it but that's fine, that's a democratic state.<br />
<br />
"I'm sure the Parthenon was hated by a few characters, and so was the cathedral in Canterbury. The Empire State Building wasn't loved, and now it is popular culture." <br />
<br />
<b>If we can come back to this country, how do you think the authorities in Prague especially have treated architecture, and modern architecture?</b><br />
<br />
"Well, the authorities sometimes, I think, don't treat anything after 1900 with great respect. They are worried about a little cornice on a very average apartment building, of which there are millions here and in Budapest and Vienna, and God knows where else. If one of them goes the world goes on turning, very happily.<br />
<br />
"But some unique buildings from the 30s or even the late 20s were destroyed. They let them be destroyed commercially and otherwise. I would cry sometimes at what has happened. How is it possible legally? I don't know."<br />
<br />
<b>Do you think that the decades of Communism perhaps distorted or destroyed people's aesthetic sense in this country?</b><br />
<br />
"They certainly did. You must also add six years of Fascism. I think people who were maximum teenagers in '89, who hadn't even started architecture school, they probably have chances, and I am sure they will develop into very successful people, not just commercially but mentally."<br />
<br />
<b>How has Czech design caught up with the West, so to speak, in the last 15 years?</b><br />
<br />
"That's the most difficult of all your questions...well, I still feel they somehow are a little bit isolated, or they were. Some people built their reputation on isolation. That happened after '89 as well; some people base their careers on being famous under total isolation.<br />
<br />
"Now it is Europe. I can't believe that some of the very high officials - we shouldn't mention the highest one - can be anti-European. It's almost criminal to think like that.<br />
<br />
"They are little bit scared about producing something unusual. Or they are obsessed about being Czech or something. Well, that doesn't exist. Have you heard of Lithuanian architecture? It doesn't exist - it's new European architecture."<br />
<br />
<b>Do you get young Czech architects applying for internships or jobs at Future Systems?</b><br />
<br />
"No, no, and don't ask me why. I don't know. Maybe they tell them not to - I don't know."<br />
<br />
The most controversial building here in recent years was the Dancing Building by the Vltava by Vlado Milunic and Frank Gehry. What's your opinion of that building? I know people are divided about it.<br />
<br />
"They are, and the building which makes so much fuss here, and quite rightly, is actually designed by somebody from outside. So is the Jean Nouvel centre in Smichov. That's not without interest.<br />
<br />
"And the clients in both cases are foreign firms. Why a Czech company is not inviting - and they are sort of landmark buildings, particularly with the Gehry building - more of that, more of that. Why this worry about being unusual? It will come here, and I'm sure somebody will build something extraordinary on Wenceslas Square, or wherever." <br />
<br />
<hr />simulacrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01025844469103673248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8673717048871599765.post-60764428160118037682009-12-30T16:06:00.000-08:002009-12-30T16:06:19.040-08:00Le Corbusier: an Interview<span style="color: #666666;">architect/artist: </span><b style="color: #666666;">Le Corbusier</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">interview title:</span><b style="color: #666666;"> </b><b style="color: #666666;">Le Corbusier: an Interview</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">interviews compilation no: </span><b style="color: #666666;">V-09</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">interview format: </span><b style="color: #666666;">Video (voice with slideshow)</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">date:<b> </b></span><b style="color: #666666;"></b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">appeared in: <b>mydesignstories.net</b></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">interviewer: </span><b style="color: #666666;"></b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">photo by: <b></b></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #666666;">courtesy:<i><b>http://mydesignstories.net/video/le-corbusier-an-interview</b></i></span><br />
<br />
<b>Interview Details:</b><br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<br />
This You Tube video is a short, 3 and half minute interview of Le corbusier talking about many things related to architecture. a slide show runs in the video comprising of different buildings designed by Le Corbusier.<br />
<br />
video:<br />
<br />
<object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/LQayb3glupE&hl=it_IT&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="never"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/LQayb3glupE&hl=it_IT&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="never" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br />
<hr>simulacrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01025844469103673248noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8673717048871599765.post-25449490947071642262009-12-28T03:08:00.000-08:002009-12-28T03:08:32.337-08:00Icon and iconoclast Tadao Ando's architectural vision goes way beyond buildings: interview with Japan Times<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVRmfrwOVjzv44A9q1Ss91-bXvpZ4yT7I_PAjbNqkZ6jY-mGxp6ueGR3T2bSsX8UA6SRROqVLwtbaeCgB5cAqCsmT4TveFo-d7I2YSt8XNA4k766mNrUV3y1uBmaU_ywNcjEcU4EOMoqb1/s1600-h/tadao+ando+japan+times+02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVRmfrwOVjzv44A9q1Ss91-bXvpZ4yT7I_PAjbNqkZ6jY-mGxp6ueGR3T2bSsX8UA6SRROqVLwtbaeCgB5cAqCsmT4TveFo-d7I2YSt8XNA4k766mNrUV3y1uBmaU_ywNcjEcU4EOMoqb1/s320/tadao+ando+japan+times+02.jpg" /></a><br />
</div><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">architect/artist: </span><b style="color: #666666;">Tadao Ando</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">interview title:</span><b style="color: #666666;"> </b><b style="color: #666666;">Icon and iconoclast<br />
Tadao Ando's architectural vision goes way beyond buildings. </b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">interviews compilation no: </span><b style="color: #666666;">T-53</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">interview format: </span><b style="color: #666666;">Text</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">date:<b> </b></span><b style="color: #666666;">Dec. 7, 2008</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">appeared in: <b>The Japan Times</b></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">interviewer: </span><b style="color: #666666;">Edan Corkill</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">photo by: <b>Yoshiaki Miura</b></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #666666;">courtesy:<i><b>http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20081207x1.html</b></i></span><br />
<br />
<b>Interview Details:</b><br />
<a name='more'></a><i><br />
One of the first houses built by Japan's most famous architect, Tadao Ando, is centered around an open atrium. That sounds nice until you realize that the atrium forms the only "corridor" between each of the rooms. Fancy a hot cup of tea before bed on a rainy winter's night? You'll need an umbrella and an overcoat to get to the kitchen.<br />
<br />
Paradoxically enough, it was this Spartan abode, built in 1976 in Osaka, that launched a career that now includes hundreds of award-winning buildings the world over — and another 30 are currently under construction. At the time, future clients admired the house for the clarity of its at-one-with-nature vision. One of them, Keizo Saji, who was then the president of beverage behemoth Suntory, was so impressed that he later asked the architect to design a museum.<br />
<br />
In 1994, the resulting Suntory Museum, whose inverted, and truncated-cone structure sits on the Osaka harbor front, became the first of many major art museums Ando has completed. Recently, too, his Benesse House Museum on Naoshima Island in the Seto Inland Sea was named by Conde Naste Traveler magazine among the new "seven wonders" of the world. The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, in Texas, and the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts in St. Louis, Missouri, are just some of the other art museums completed by the 67-year-old architect, who proudly explains that he received no formal education in architecture, but taught himself through copious reading and travel.<br />
<br />
The integration of nature into the built environment is a theme that has remained consistent throughout Ando's career. That fact will no doubt surprise those who know his work only by its most famous trait: concrete. Almost all of the architect's buildings use the material — generally in stark, low-rise and long walls that initially confront, but ultimately seduce visitors with their sheer precision and geometrical beauty. On presenting him with the Pritzker Prize — architecture's equivalent of the Nobel — in 1995, the jury described Ando's devotion to the material, saying he uses it as though it was "the tectonic demiurge of our time."<br />
<br />
But even concrete can be harnessed to bring humans closer to nature. That first drafty house in Osaka is one example; so too is Ando's new subway station for the Toyoko Line in Tokyo's central Shibuya district. Giant void spaces — offering views from the subterranean ticket concourse down onto the train tracks — also allow fresh air to be pulled 30 meters below ground by the force of the moving trains.<br />
<br />
Ando says the degradation of the natural environment through the overuse of natural resources is one of the greatest challenges facing "inhabitants of this planet." The Shibuya station project is one of the "completely new visions" that he says will be essential to solving the problem by minimizing energy-use for the purpose of ventilation.<br />
<br />
Another is his plan to turn a large swath of Tokyo into a car-free zone and create linked parklands to turn the metropolis into the "garden city" he says it was during the Edo Period (1603-1867). And, as Director of Grand Design for the 2016 Olympics bid, he hopes to accomplish both of those goals in time for what he is confident will be the first truly open, truly environmentally conscious Olympics — held in Tokyo.<br />
<br />
The Japan Times caught up with the indefatigable Osaka native at Gallery Ma, in Tokyo's Roppongi district, where he is currently the subject of a large retrospective, and where that famed first house is reproduced in full scale — with open atrium and all.<br />
</i><br />
<hr /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaMgvXpQd1kOoGoA2-wYjBpAnR6Qtrza3zAeSN8vW76U41Xuts_AzsToKXIYGWkufXKX2ypKyigFztmoqs0hGc9e_e_TR_wEkoKeicJ193oHIqnya7guJvwl1ZMggoRef3d5yx5WUh6Jiu/s1600-h/tadao+ando+japan+times+01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaMgvXpQd1kOoGoA2-wYjBpAnR6Qtrza3zAeSN8vW76U41Xuts_AzsToKXIYGWkufXKX2ypKyigFztmoqs0hGc9e_e_TR_wEkoKeicJ193oHIqnya7guJvwl1ZMggoRef3d5yx5WUh6Jiu/s320/tadao+ando+japan+times+01.jpg" /></a><br />
</div><br />
<br />
Your Row House in Sumiyoshi, Osaka, from 1976, has an open central atrium, so if you want to go from the bedroom to the kitchen, and it's raining, you may get wet. Why did you design it like that, and why do you think it was praised for the clarity of its vision?<br />
<br />
The site of the Row House is 3 meters wide by about 15 meters deep, and in the middle is an open garden. Because there is an open garden, nature is allowed into the building — the sunlight, the rain, the wind. So the vision incorporated into that work is that the inhabitants live in tandem with nature. That means it's a house you have to adapt to. When it's cold you put an extra shirt on — you live with nature. In some ways it's a contemporary reinterpretation of traditional Japanese architecture.<br />
<br />
The then head of Suntory, Keizo Saji, had approached me saying that he wanted to make a museum. He came and saw the house. The vision that he saw in that house was that, although the scale was small — it's a very small house — it was very clear what I wanted to achieve. He said that with a lot of contemporary architecture it was difficult to understand what the architect was trying to achieve.<br />
<br />
What else did he like about the house?<br />
<br />
He liked it that you could look at the sky; from that small garden you can see your own piece of sky. He said it was interesting that it was as if the house itself was "in dialogue with the planet."<br />
<br />
The Shibuya station I made is also in dialogue with nature. Every major city in the world has a subway about 30 meters below ground. In Shibuya, it has been designed so that the wind created by the trains actually pulls fresh air into the station from outside. That means you can reduce energy use in ventilation and heating. Minimizing energy use is of course a worldwide trend at the moment, but for me this idea started back with the Row House in Osaka — with bringing nature into the internal environment.<br />
<br />
So, in addition to cohabitation with nature, the minimization of energy use is another element on which your architectural visions are founded. What other elements are there?<br />
<br />
If you look at traditional architecture in Japan, you can see that it was centered on a system of circulation — which involved nature. Then, after World War II, Japan adopted the so-called American style of life — based on the consumption of oil. I think it's time we started thinking about a Japanese style of urban development. That's one major factor in my work.<br />
<br />
I have been doing a lot of work like this. For example, the 21_21 Design Sight in Roppongi (a design museum). It's a part of the giant Midtown complex, but it is built within a park. It's small, but it's situated within a natural setting. The Omotesando Hills building (a shopping center in the swanky Tokyo district of Omotesando that replaced the popular and historically significant Dojunkai apartment building) is not large either, but I designed it so that it would preserve the original scenery — it is the same height and a similar shape to the original building. That's another element that is Japanese. So there are a number of works I have done now that realize this idea. <br />
<br />
Can you tell me a little more how those buildings are "Japanese"?<br />
<br />
Well, I guess it's less "Japanese" than it is at-one with nature. In Western architecture, the idea has been to have thick walls that protect the inhabitants from nature. But with Japanese wooden architecture in particular, it's not possible to say where nature ends and the human area begins. They are one.<br />
<br />
You have said that "courage" is the most important attribute for an architect to have. What kind of courage does an architect need?<br />
<br />
It's the same with all the arts, such as literature or visual art — if you are going to express yourself you need courage. You have to stick your neck out. Sticking your neck out of course entails a danger. Like with music — composers such as Toru Takemitsu are always taking risks.<br />
<br />
The most important thing is that architects realize that they must break new ground. Architects must be aware of that — they must be aware their architecture should actually influence people. Like when I made the Row House, I was deliberately confronting what had become the conventional thinking about residential architecture in Japan — that it must simply be comfortable, rational and fun to live in. I am telling people that a residence is something they must think about themselves. Unless they think about it themselves, they won't achieve a way of life that is suited to them. I proposed that they live in harmony with nature.<br />
<br />
Some people responded favorably; others less so. If you do something new, those opposed tend to make up the majority.<br />
<br />
The architect must also bring together a large team of professionals — is that another key skill?<br />
<br />
Yes — the architect is not going to dig the hole or put up the concrete him or herself. They have to bring the team together. And that's another reason why their vision is important. People come together where there is a vision.<br />
<br />
But in addition, you need your team members to have the skills to make your visions real. We are in a good position in Japan because the standard of architectural technology is very high here. The technology is able to make real the vision that we have.<br />
<br />
You've worked a lot overseas. How does the teamwork differ there?<br />
<br />
The level of technical proficiency — not just with architecture, but with everything, from cars to machines — is very high in Japan. This has been true in history too, back to the Edo Period, even. The standards that the general public in Japan demand are very high. It is these demands that raised the standards of Japanese manufacturers.<br />
<br />
Architecture is the same: "Build it quicker!" If it takes too long to build something, the public complains. But in America and other places, the builders tend to fall behind schedule. It's unusual to find a country like Japan, where everything gets done on schedule. I also work in Italy and America — and they both fall behind schedule. But in Italy they take greater pride in high-quality architecture, and sometimes it just takes them a bit longer. In America, the seat of their pride is money: "Look at how much money we can make!" However, I am not in the business of making something that makes money, so there is quite a gap in our thinking when we build something in the United States.<br />
<br />
The Japanese have pride in both quality and money — the balance is good. I think this way of thinking will be exported more in the future. <br />
<br />
It hasn't been yet, though, has it?<br />
<br />
The Japanese are bad at conveying their ideas overseas. This is not a problem of language — as we are often told. It's deeper than that: It's a problem at the core of the Japanese psyche.<br />
<br />
These days the world is becoming more and more linked due to globalization, but Japan is being left behind. Japan seems to think it will be all right on its own. But the reality nowadays is that when the American economy crashes, the rest of the world crashes too. The world really is one now. If nonrenewable fuels are used up it means they're used up for the entire world — it's not just Japan's problem. This means that in future we have to think of ourselves as inhabitants of Planet Earth — not as citizens of a country. A larger vision is required. It's not enough to make one building that doesn't emit carbon dioxide; a complete change of thinking is required, and it will come. <br />
<br />
You said that the general public in Japan are more demanding than people overseas. Does that mean it is possible to make more experimental architecture overseas?<br />
<br />
You can make more adventurous architecture in Japan. The degree of freedom is higher here. It is easier to get permission to build things. In towns in Europe, for example, they won't let you make things that go against the grain — because of laws preserving historical buildings and views. So in that way, the freedom is greater in Japan.<br />
<br />
However, Japanese are like children; they are too free. You need a starting point — an objective starting point for your freedom. Japanese children have freedom without a foundation, freedom without responsibility. You need freedom with responsibility.<br />
<br />
What kind of freedom is that?<br />
<br />
For freedom with a sense of responsibility, you have to have one eye on the whole as you exercise your freedom. It's not good enough to just have freedom. People should have freedom to think freely, not the freedom to do anything they like. Architecture is the same. It needs to be an architecture that is free, but that is built on the architectural traditions and history — both Japanese and international.<br />
<br />
A lot of the jobs you do overseas are renovations, such as the Palazzo Grassi and the Punta della Dogana museum projects on the Grand Canal in Venice. However, the work you do in Japan is mostly new. I guess that is a result of Japan's scrap-and-build approach. Why is there this difference between Japan and the West?<br />
<br />
I think it is because after the war Japan wanted to become more American. There was a belief that you just needed to build new things. In Japan, buildings became kinds of commercial merchandise, like other products.<br />
<br />
It was because of this that the current rush of condominium development began — build and sell, build and sell, like products.<br />
<br />
Of course, architecture will always be partly a product, but it must also be an urban resource. The more you build and sell, then the rate of consumption increases — profit increases — but then you run out of natural resources and you damage the environment.<br />
<br />
What are you going to do? It is the government that must think of answers. In Europe, their answer has been to construct their society slowly — not resorting to a system of mass production and mass consumption. Of course, the price they paid was that they haven't developed economically as fast as the United States. Which approach is better? We need to think about this.<br />
<br />
Do you think Japan needs stricter laws to preserve historical buildings?<br />
<br />
It depends on the building, of course, but yes, I think it does. It is easier to judge the value of very old buildings. Thirty or 40 years ago, all buildings were made on principles of profitability only, so there are many that are not worth preserving. You need to establish clear criteria to determine historical worth.<br />
<br />
Why do you think a European organization would entrust the renovation of an old building in Venice to an architect from Japan, where essentially there is no tradition of renovating buildings?<br />
<br />
I'm doing a museum and head office for Giorgio Armani in Milan at the moment. I did a theater for him in 2001. This work also began from the renovation of a 70-year-old factory. He likes to make new things out of old things. He likes customers mixing old clothes with his fashion, too, so his way of thinking is consistent. But, I agree, they needed courage to ask a Japanese to do that work for them. You know, there are a lot of architects in Italy! But, I guess there are some people who think the Japanese sensibility is interesting.<br />
<br />
On the other hand, you also work in places like Abu Dhabi, where you are working from a completely blank slate. Is your approach to these kinds of jobs different?<br />
<br />
Essentially it is the same. For example, the work I am doing in Abu Dhabi is for a maritime museum. When you approach the building from the land, then it forms a gate to the sea. When you approach it from the sea, it becomes a gate to the land. At the top is an exhibition space, and there is another underwater too. It's a museum, so it has to be conscious of local history.<br />
<br />
Brand-new buildings can be as conscious of history as renovation projects. On the other hand, the Dogana di Mare renovation in Venice, where we are turning the old Customs House into a contemporary-art museum (to be called the Punta della Dogana), is directed ostensibly at the future — because it is a museum of contemporary art. But of course, it must be conscious of the past, too — because you're making something inside a 500-year-old structure.<br />
<br />
In the end, all of my work starts from "zero" — it's just the position of the zero is different. With the renovation work, I consider the existing building to be part of the site, part of the environment in which I must build the new building. All the work builds on the past to convey a message directed at the future. That's what Keizo Saji saw in the Row House in Osaka. He detected hope and a dream for the future.<br />
<br />
You just mentioned that the Japanese sensibility is appreciated overseas. What is this Japanese sensibility? I know when you received the Pritzker Prize the jury mentioned in their announcement that your work continued the already significant contribution of Japanese architects to international Modernist architecture.<br />
<br />
I think Japan's contribution has been the idea that architecture is not a "thing" — it's not a solid object. It's like Kakuzo Okakura wrote in his "Book of Tea" in 1906: Architecture is never a shape, it is the space enclosed by the shape, by the walls and ceiling. I think he is right. This sort of thinking is not exclusive to Japan — similar things can be found in the West too, but I think with the use of lightweight walls, coming from shoji and fusuma (types of sliding screens), Japan pioneered that idea.<br />
<br />
You are currently in charge of the Grand Plan for the Tokyo Olympic bid for 2016. Can you tell me what your actual role is?<br />
<br />
I am the general director of all the facilities. But there is also a plan called "Tokyo 10 Years From Now," which I am working on for the Tokyo Metropolitan Government. I want to re-establish Tokyo as a garden city. A long time ago it was a city of daimyo (feudal lord) residences — and some of them have survived, such as Korakuen and Tokyo University. I want to bring the grounds of Meiji Shrine and other park areas together to make a green Tokyo. My "Umi no Mori" ("Forest in the Sea") plan is a part of that. The forest is being built on garbage — it's 100 hectares, about the same area as an 18-hole golf course — of reclaimed land in Tokyo Bay. By making the garbage mountain into a forest, I want to turn it into a symbol for global environmental awareness.<br />
<br />
We have to make a world that doesn't produce garbage. We have to stop wasting resources. So, by making this forest in the middle of this 30-million-person metropolis, we are hoping to become a model city for the world.<br />
<br />
While we're at it, people in Tokyo are conscious of environmental issues, so why not make the area inside the circular Yamanote Line a car-free zone? It could be a pedestrian paradise, though service vehicles and taxis would be allowed. Tokyo could be turned into one of those cities built on an ideal — based on the same principles of natural circulation as pre-modern Tokyo. And then, if we could hold the Olympics in that city, it would great.<br />
<br />
For the Olympics, we are thinking of preserving the main buildings from the 1964 Olympics — the National Gymnasium by architect Kenzo Tange, and so on — and reinforcing them so they can be used again. You know, I'm an architect, so everyone thinks I am going to design the main stadium and all the new buildings, but no: I want all the architecture to be decided by open competitions. Renovation and reconstruction work would also be decided by competition. I want to bring expertise from around the world to Tokyo. Nowadays, in terms of the economy, Japan is too isolated. I want the Olympics bid to be more open to the outside world.<br />
<br />
It sounds like there are some ideas in there worth exploring with or without the Olympics.<br />
<br />
Yes, the "Tokyo 10 Years From Now" plan is, in fact, unrelated to the Olympics. We need to make it happen either way. The population in India and China is going to grow even more, and they're all going to want to drive cars. It's going to be a terrible situation for the environment. Tokyo can become a model for the carless city.<br />
<br />
It seems your vision for the future of Tokyo is as clear now as that original vision you had for the Row House in Osaka more than 30 years ago. Are you confident it will inspire as many other people in the future?<br />
<br />
After the war, both Tokyo and Osaka developed at an amazing pace, but mistakes were made; each should have been developed with a grand plan in mind, rather than in a piecemeal fashion.<br />
<br />
Tokyo is big problem. You know, at the moment, Tokyo is not the focus of the world's attention. With other cities in Asia developing so rapidly, Tokyo is a forgotten city. But the problems facing us with environmental degradation offer a chance to rethink, to readdress planning issues in Tokyo. By doing so, we can make Tokyo into a model for the world. It can become a greener city, a more open city, and, if it is selected to host the 2016 Olympics, that movement will get a major boost.<br />
<br />
<hr /><i><br />
The International Olympic Committee will announce the host of the 2016 Olympic Games on Oct. 2, 2009. "Challenges — Faithful to the Basis," a retrospective on the work of Tadao Ando, continues at Gallery Ma in Tokyo's Roppongi district until Dec. 20.<br />
<br />
The Japan Times<br />
(C) All rights reserved<br />
</i><br />
<hr />simulacrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01025844469103673248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8673717048871599765.post-29887000197901744332009-12-28T02:54:00.000-08:002009-12-28T20:13:41.410-08:00Atelier Bow-Wow: Tokyo Anatomy; controversial Yoshiharu Tsukamoto talks about his understanding of architecture with Archinect<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisOT5wiewG3339QWtq_yH8keQlpLgqloFv-IJU1epzbn2OfRv8VAgZoP-MViPRboBadjK1FDDHAV_YJuwTPHc5ISYcPqoIEjffLXFCtctuYtHpvBmCIqq4bZvlydtM2XAVllO2XI4hSnPI/s1600-h/yoshi+bow+wow+01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisOT5wiewG3339QWtq_yH8keQlpLgqloFv-IJU1epzbn2OfRv8VAgZoP-MViPRboBadjK1FDDHAV_YJuwTPHc5ISYcPqoIEjffLXFCtctuYtHpvBmCIqq4bZvlydtM2XAVllO2XI4hSnPI/s320/yoshi+bow+wow+01.jpg" /></a><br />
</div><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">architect/artist: </span><b style="color: #666666;">Atelier Bow-Wow, Yoshiharu Tsukamoto</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">interview title:</span><b style="color: #666666;"> </b><b style="color: #666666;">Atelier Bow-Wow: Tokyo Anatomy</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">interviews compilation no: </span><b style="color: #666666;">T-52</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">interview format: </span><b style="color: #666666;">Text</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">date:<b> </b></span><b style="color: #666666;">May 22, 2007</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">appeared in: <b>archinect.com</b></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">interviewer: </span><b style="color: #666666;">Mason White</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">photo by: <b>Mason White</b></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #666666;">courtesy:<i><b>http://www.archinect.com/features/article.php?id=56468_0_23_0_c</b></i></span><br />
<br />
<b>Interview Details:</b><br />
<a name='more'></a><i><br />
Yoshiharu Tsukamoto, along with his partner Momoyo Kaijima, is one half of the Tokyo-based Atelier Bow-wow. Founded in 1992, Atelier Bow-wow is one the most unique practices of its generation. With Japanese architecture once again taking center stage through the work of Yoshio Taniguchi, Toyo Ito, SANAA, Kengo Kuma, and others, it is refreshing to witness a practice confident enough in itself to shun a particular style. Instead, Bow-Wow embraces a kind of accidental urban vernacular, using their research/work to chronicle the complex - and often unforgiving - logic of the city. Acting as urban detectives, Bow-wow has catalogued the agility of Tokyo's fabric to produce radical programmatic collisions (Made in Tokyo) and nuanced micro architectures (Pet Architecture).<br />
<br />
These observations have figured heavily in their own work, as documented in recent publications Post-Bubble City and Graphic Anatomy. Armed with the understanding of architecture's maneuverability in Tokyo, Bow-wow posits a practice engaged in what they call "lively space." This is a kind of space that is willingly infected with the accidents of site and program rather than trying to control or sterilize them.<br />
<br />
Yoshiharu Tsukamoto recently completed teaching a studio at Harvard GSD and runs a lab at Tokyo Institute of Technology.<br />
<br />
I caught up with Tsukamoto in Toronto at the TD Centre and later in Tokyo at Bow-Wow HQ to talk pets, public space, stairs, zoning, metabolists, and manga kissa. - Mason White<br />
</i><br />
<hr /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgsLBWNM05rySEToalNW2pbO3cD8Hu1Q1a8kyR0uJ19A3hYiwvTfM8fy7-82KS-dV6ypfjDUGxqh_DwPfmL3P5HbspDsqvd5mlumA5L6jQl9_MUvWhqprRDsZf0WLqEWl2yt1CLkw1CvVk/s1600-h/yoshi+bow+wow+02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgsLBWNM05rySEToalNW2pbO3cD8Hu1Q1a8kyR0uJ19A3hYiwvTfM8fy7-82KS-dV6ypfjDUGxqh_DwPfmL3P5HbspDsqvd5mlumA5L6jQl9_MUvWhqprRDsZf0WLqEWl2yt1CLkw1CvVk/s320/yoshi+bow+wow+02.jpg" /></a><br />
</div><br />
<br />
MASON WHITE: I wanted to start with some background beginnings of Bow-wow by asking you about Made in Tokyo and Pet Architecture. Were you working on them simultaneously and independently or did one lead to the other?<br />
<br />
YOSHIHARU TSUKAMOTO: Made in Tokyo came first, and then during the research for Made in Tokyo we discovered the idea for Pet Architecture, or the idea of very small buildings in the city. In Made in Tokyo there is one house called "Pet Architecture 001."<br />
<br />
That is the first one?<br />
<br />
Yes. We found this house and I realized we have this same kind of building all over Tokyo. It is one that is always customized by the user. It is a very small ad hoc building, but it shows how people practice their own space production. This interests me a lot. Then I tried to find other small buildings that could be considered pet architecture.<br />
<br />
At the conclusion of Pet Architecture you even proposed your own versions of pets that don't exist yet. Were any of those ever realized?<br />
<br />
No no. [laughs]<br />
<br />
What was the idea behind these pets?<br />
<br />
It is a transduction. We observed pet architecture and then developed a typology of typical sites. By using these principles of typology we thought we could create another type of pet architecture.<br />
<br />
But some of them are on specific sites such as the Kan 8 Loop Road?<br />
<br />
When we designed Mini House (1999), the site next to it was a terrain vague. It was in fact the land reserved for new construction of Kan-8 Loop Road. It was easy to imagine that this cutting through operation into the existing street pattern will produce many left over space along the new road. Then we simulated several pet architecture on those fragmented site.<br />
<br />
Was it useful to both observe reality, as in the first 70 pets, and then speculate on your own in the last section?<br />
<br />
This is always what we are doing. We try to use the principles we learned from existing examples. Often we alter the reality or create a different reality.<br />
<br />
Obviously the research is very Tokyo specific, but have you considered extending this research to other contexts from Paris to Moscow? Is that a desire or is it something only Tokyo exhibits?<br />
<br />
I am very interested in working also on different cities. Every time we are invited to participate in art events in different cities, we create a micro public space using the framework of an art exhibition. We go there few months before the exhibition and observe the behavior of the city and people. Then we design something based on this observation. I think it works well. For example, in the Shanghai Biennale we designed Furnicycle (2002). This is based on the observation of customizing bicycles and furniture in public space. The same kind of micro public space was done for White Limousine Yatai (2003) in the Tsumari Triennale. It is just experimental for the exhibition, but now I think we can adapt this kind of work into real situations.<br />
<br />
For these micro public space projects, what do you think makes a good public space?<br />
<br />
The quality of public space is up to the peoples' participation. If all the participants are just a customer it is not a real public space. For example, in a shopping mall there are many people gathering and talking. It looks like public space, but they are just customers. They are all guests. They don't have any responsibilities to maintain the space. I think that just being in a gathering space is different from participating in the shared space with someone. We have our own programs of what public space is within our body. In the projects on micro public space we try to turn on this program by which individuals can participate in certain contexts. This might be around furniture or a mobile structure which we have produced. So micro means small, but at the same time individual. The smallest public space might be a public space for just one person.<br />
<br />
It sounds like the idea of programmatic customization is very important to you. In pet architecture, architecture is customizing itself to fit into its environment and then in micro public spaces individuals are customizing their environments. Does that also transcend into your design work for public or private buildings?<br />
<br />
I learned a lot from pet architecture. They show interesting space created by occupancy. It connect two different subjectivities in architecture. One is a designer or architect's, and the other is a user or inhabitant. In 20th century these two subjectivities have been opposed to each other. Space lived by someone called the space of representation is always opposed to the representation of space, which is planned or designed by architects or urban planner. Henri Lefebvre proposed a third place. He proposed the idea of the practice of space. This is his key word in his writing The Production of Space. When we originally did the research on Tokyo, I didn't know the work of Lefebvre. Our research was accepted within the art world so I met some curators and artists. Through the discussion with them I knew that our work is very close with Lefebvre's thought.<br />
<br />
So practice of space becomes very important when we are designing. Occupancy is one very powerful issue to think about the practice of space. Whether we are doing private buildings or houses, we propose often the building without any partitions. This creates just one continuous space, but subdivided.<br />
<br />
But using stairwells intensely to emphasize the continuity...<br />
<br />
Yes, with stairs and small floors. So different places can be seen each other in the distance, but it is all connected. Instead of making a strong partition between rooms we use the sense of occupancy to give a subtle articulation in the continuous space. So as you walk around you encounter different types of occupancy. This is interesting, because it means we need the help of the users to achieve our intentions.<br />
<br />
Can you talk a little bit about site? We were talking earlier about flag-shaped sites and wedge-shaped sites. In both Made in Tokyo and Pet Architecture, you looked at the complex fabric of the city as producing these very unique lots of land through accidental or overlooked spaces. How do you design within these lot types? In a way, studying vernacular occupations of them is one thing, but designing on them for a client with a specific program is another. You need to allow for light, views, access, etc. How do you address this?<br />
<br />
In such a small sites, it is important to revise your understanding of what a view is. If we keep the traditional understanding of view, we cannot make a window on the site.<br />
<br />
Because all you look at is your neighbors wall a meter away.<br />
<br />
Yeah [laughs]. Or the gap spaces between buildings. But, I am very interested to open a big window to the neighbor. There are always small plants and trees which are unknown to many, but they are living there and can be a part of the view.<br />
<br />
The landscape in the gap between the buildings?<br />
<br />
Yeah.<br />
<br />
Maybe that is a pet landscape.<br />
<br />
Yeah [laughs]. It is important to enjoy even this view of a landscape or a wall. It cultivates another way to sense the environment.<br />
<br />
How do zoning and building codes work in Tokyo? A flag-shaped site is completely contained by adjacent buildings with only thin access corridor. In your own house and studio, you are surrounded by built mass on all four sides with only a narrow access gap. Is that legal?<br />
<br />
Two meters is the minimum frontage for a buildable site.<br />
<br />
Which do you find more challenging, designing in the restrictions of a micro leftover urban site or in the overwhelming freedom of a cleared site like the Hanamidori Cultural Center (2005)?<br />
<br />
Both are challenging. The Cultural Center is a challenge to create the maximum spatial redundancy.<br />
<br />
What do you mean?<br />
<br />
You know how redundancy is now used in information technology to describe the safety level of a network? For example, a machine cannot work when a part is missing; The machine stops. But a network has another type of structure. If one part stops working but the other parts are still functioning. This is the contrast between the machine and the network. This characteristics of network is described as redundancy. Today Japanese society is becoming more and more controlled and surveyed. Every space needs to be defined with an initial purpose. So if you do something different from its initial purpose, it is almost a crime. It is all to make the environment safer. However, this way of making the environment safer is also making the environment weaker to unexpected accidents. It is better to have redundancy in public space. The [Hanamidori] Cultural Center is designed for exhibiting the culture of landscape, but in fact, it is very difficult to show the landscape in the building. So we have to keep the program as open as possible. We decided to make the building very open, which is supported by contained spaces of lectures halls, storage, and office. The leftover spaces can be used for workshops and library and exhibitions. Actually there was even a wedding party here once. One of the staff at the structural engineering firm of this building was married here.<br />
<br />
So it is very flexible.<br />
<br />
Yes, very flexible.<br />
<br />
So this kind of site, a site with seemingly less constraints, can be as challenging as the inner Tokyo fabric?<br />
<br />
But in this case, the challenge is trying to keep the redundancy in the institutional constraints.<br />
<br />
Did you find it difficult to shift between cataloging the city as it is and designing in the city? Though I am sure these can never really be so distinct, but was it difficult to go from being an observer of the city's details to being a participant in the making of those details. In one part of the Bow-Wow from Post-Bubble City book, you mentioned that after having spent so much time looking at the accidents of the city you found it challenging to design an accident. And according to Pet Architecture, an architect may not even be needed to operate within these complex sites. How did you work around this?<br />
<br />
This is a good question. From the beginning, we were very aware of this danger. We cannot readapt this into our practice. From our research we can see how this kind of building has been produced in the city. They emerge from overlapping different rhythms or conditions. And if we can understand this phenomena by the meeting of different types of conditions, we can also apply it into our architectural projects. We can follow the same kind of process. We cannot design a building to look like the buildings in Made in Tokyo, but we can follow their natural process of the production of spaces. So this is what we are now consciously doing.<br />
<br />
In some ways your first two books hold true to the guide book form. I am sure that many people have actually used this as a guide book, since the sites are well documented. But since many of these are ephemeral structures, maybe many of them are gone now. Do you happen to know?<br />
<br />
No we didn't follow what is happening now. Many of them are very temporary and fragile.<br />
<br />
When you published these two books, were there many prototypes left on the cutting room floor?<br />
<br />
Oh yes, we have more.<br />
<br />
Is there a Made in Tokyo ... part deux in the works?<br />
<br />
Well maybe it is possible. I would really like to write a book on the metamorphosis of Tokyo residential urban structure consisted of detached houses. How the urban fabric has been produced is very interesting to observe. We have found three different types. One is a mixture of residential and commercial activity. We call it commersidence. Cat Street is a really good example. Another type is subdivurban.<br />
<br />
Subdivurban? What is that?<br />
<br />
Sub-divided suburban. The plot should not be that big because it is not central part of city. The reason to live in a suburban area is to get more land. However, the first generation of suburban of Tokyo is now integrated into the urban fabric.<br />
<br />
It has been swallowed?<br />
<br />
Yes. And then people really want to live in that area because it is already established as built residential area. So there is always the pressure of investment.<br />
<br />
To make them more dense.<br />
<br />
And now that this area [Okusawa] is 80 years old, Japanese inheritance tax is so high that people cannot afford it. So they have to subdivide the site in two or three pieces and sell part of it to pay the taxes. So that is subdivurban. The third one is fortified village.<br />
<br />
As in a gated community?<br />
<br />
No, just from a structural point of view that it is well fortified. Many old residential areas still have wooden flat buildings. In the case of big earthquake, those areas easily start burning and the fire can spread widely. In order to prevent spreading fire, big streets dividing those areas are given a role to react as a firewall. 30m in depth on both side of the big street are zoned as a commercial area. 10 stories high, fireproofing buildings are aligned along the street. It surrounds the low-rise residential area and encloses village-like atmosphere of low-rise residential area. The gap between this commercial and residential area is significant.<br />
<br />
What is a specific example of an area like that?<br />
<br />
Yotsuya where we are living. Or even parts of Shinjuku. But those structures are not planned, it has merged from the process. They all began as residential structures. I would like to conduct deeper research on this issue. This would show how Japanese daily urban structures are produced by the collision of different conditions. I think this kind of understanding of the city is totally different from an urbanism based on the shape.<br />
<br />
You mean figure-ground understanding?<br />
<br />
Yes. We cannot make a strategy of the growth of the city just from a figure-ground understanding. We should focus on the principles of this growth. With the understanding of this logic of growth, we can add something for the future. We can push this logic and principle and we can push the way to grow the city towards a better living environment. I think this can be a new type of urban planning.<br />
<br />
How do you think that fits within some of the historical Japanese urban movements? As in the work of [Fumihiko] Maki or [Kenzo] Tange and their visions for urbanism, and especially the work of the Metabolists. Would you say that your research is a critique of their visions?<br />
<br />
Maybe the Metabolists are the most important reference. Our work can be a critique on metabolism. The situation is really different. The generation of metabolism could work in the expansion of the city and proposing buildings on a green field. Today the situation does not want that kind of urban vision. For our generation it is more important to think about the daily architectural vocabulary. Now the power and capital of making the city is not concentrated in one part; It is segregated and dispersed. It is very important to use this fragmented energy to make the city and bring in meaningful production of urban space. Our research is a trial of discovery of Tokyo's specific architectural vocabulary. I don't say those buildings may be wonderful, but...<br />
<br />
Well, they are honest.<br />
<br />
Yes. They are following the very simple principles which are very capitalistic of Tokyo.<br />
<br />
Something I still don't understand about Tokyo is its lack of verticality. It is incredibly dense, but is ultimately a low-rise fabric. Especially in considering current growth in Asia that is distinctly vertical. Do you think it has any kind of vertical destiny or is Tokyo regulated against verticality?<br />
<br />
Since Tokyo developed on the repetition of residential houses, we had to create a lot of streets. Most of the streets are very narrow. If we have a big street, then we loose the land.<br />
<br />
I guess some parts are vertical, such as Shinjuku and Roppongi.<br />
<br />
Those are exceptions. The site of Shinjuku high-rise district was a water plant. The Bay area, formerly occupied by warehouse and industrial are where verticality can happen. Those areas can be more vertical, but in the residential area I think it is almost impossible to make it vertical.<br />
<br />
So you think it will continue to just subdivide as in your subdivurban observation?<br />
<br />
Yes. And through fortified villages. Those will be the destiny of Tokyo.<br />
<br />
What is your favorite area or experience in Tokyo?<br />
<br />
Maybe walking from Harajuku to Shibuya and Daikan-yama and then Nakamegro. This trajectory is very interesting. You start from Harajuku and then you reach Nakamegro at maybe midnight. And then go to Tsukiji fish market at maybe 5 in the morning. Or you spend a longer time in Shibuya in a Manga kissa [a comic cafe]. In Akihabara, they have another kind of shop called a Maid cafe.<br />
<br />
What kind of cafe is that?<br />
<br />
It is very perverted. Young girls dressed like maids with frills while they serving tea and coffee. And when you enter the cafe, they say "welcome back home." It is role-playing and about subservience.<br />
<br />
Do you read Manga at all? And do you have a favorite?<br />
<br />
My favorite is anything by Taiyo Matsumoto. Also I like [Hideo] Yamamoto, though he is really perverted. He cannot avoid drawing sex, but he draws it very well. It is a really silly story.<br />
<br />
Do you see any relationship between Manga and the city or architecture?<br />
<br />
Manga, like the city, can be a wonderful kind of nonsense.<br />
<br />
Thank you.<br />
<hr /><br />
<i>Many thanks to Yoshiharu for his time, boundless energy, and that amazing soba shop(!). Additional thanks to Bill Galloway, Blaine Brownell, Asami Takahashi, Israel Kandarian, Gretchen Wilkins, and Tezuka Architects for peripheral conversations. All photos by Mason White.</i><br />
<hr />simulacrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01025844469103673248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8673717048871599765.post-75749549843309431582009-12-28T02:03:00.000-08:002009-12-28T02:03:43.175-08:00Kazuyo Sejima & Ryue Nishizawa Successes stack up for Tokyo design duo: Sanaa interviewed by Japan Times<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiS92xGcH9vNviTcsU3zwmdia6Enic1ZpgQ9fzAreoApxPBWxdiPqJN7LMHlKjSV1IgicIWhs4yu9xmtfGDiXrFb3_d2Nn3GOJYDtOG5YXgB2uVXVf4m8ruboP46UwZiwMJ42tp99uEGJrU/s1600-h/Kazuyo_Sejima_and_Ryue_Nishizawa+TJ01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiS92xGcH9vNviTcsU3zwmdia6Enic1ZpgQ9fzAreoApxPBWxdiPqJN7LMHlKjSV1IgicIWhs4yu9xmtfGDiXrFb3_d2Nn3GOJYDtOG5YXgB2uVXVf4m8ruboP46UwZiwMJ42tp99uEGJrU/s320/Kazuyo_Sejima_and_Ryue_Nishizawa+TJ01.jpg" /></a><br />
</div><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">architect/artist: </span><b style="color: #666666;">Kazuyo Sejima, Ryue Nishizawa, Sanaa</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">interview title:</span><b style="color: #666666;"> </b><b style="color: #666666;">Kazuyo Sejima & Ryue Nishizawa<br />
Successes stack up for Tokyo design duo<br />
</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">interviews compilation no: </span><b style="color: #666666;">T-51</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">interview format: </span><b style="color: #666666;">Text</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">date:<b> </b></span><b style="color: #666666;">Jan. 6, 2008</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">appeared in: <b>The Japan Times</b></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">interviewer: </span><b style="color: #666666;">Edan Corkill</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">photo by: <b>Yoshiaki Miura</b></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #666666;">courtesy:<i><b>http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20080106x1.html</b></i></span><br />
<br />
<b>Interview Details:</b><br />
<a name='more'></a><i> Being an architect requires patience and endurance. For argument's sake, let's just say it's 2002 and, as the highlight of your career to date, you win the competition to design a new art museum in one of the most prized locations in the world: Manhattan.<br />
<br />
Time to crack open the champagne? Well, not quite. For architects, winning a competition is like taking the first, nervous step into a giant labyrinth — a labyrinth so vast and complicated that it might be years before you emerge at the other end.<br />
<br />
Japanese architecture office SANAA — centered on its principals, Kazuyo Sejima (born 1956) and her protege-turned-business-partner Ryue Nishizawa (born 1966) — was set up in 1995. Old-timers? Well, after winning several high-profile competitions around the turn of the century (the New Museum in Manhattan included), it's only in the last three or four years that they have finally begun to emerge from their labyrinths and present the world with the tangible fruits of their amazing architectural vision.<br />
<br />
In 2004, the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, a large circular glass structure encasing a random sprinkle of square galleries, opened in that city in Ishikawa Prefecture in rural west-central Japan — and was promptly bestowed with the coveted Golden Lion award at the Venice Biennale for architecture.<br />
<br />
A year earlier, they completed their first major work in Tokyo: the elegant, glass curtain-fronted Christian Dior Building Omotesando in swanky Aoyama. In 2006, along with several buildings in Europe, they finished their first major commission in America, the Toledo Museum of Art's Glass Pavilion, which stunned critics for being perhaps the world's first genuinely transparent museum — both external and internal walls are made of glass.<br />
<br />
By early last year it had become de rigueur in architectural circles to cite SANAA in lists of the most innovative architects in the world — alongside the likes of Frank Gehry, Rem Koolhaas, Renzo Piano, Tadao Ando and Toyo Ito.<br />
<br />
Then came the Manhattan project: On Dec. 1, 2007 the New Museum of Contemporary Art opened to the public on the Bowery. Just before they headed off for those opening festivities, Sejima and Nishizawa sat down with The Japan Times to talk about that project and how they got where they are.<br />
</i><br />
<hr /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRLAnJLMsbdm1leFebVY5XU1y8nlPeGydI4m1F8GhR5NCjYhX0dWTVE1vwoMMnoztOPDQM197zyZhdclyqydbhIeLn2FReHe2oAA4TI5AvmILXqzvakcAdDZlCvFX_QfflHUKkCn9qFm4w/s1600-h/Kazuyo_Sejima_and_Ryue_Nishizawa+TJ02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRLAnJLMsbdm1leFebVY5XU1y8nlPeGydI4m1F8GhR5NCjYhX0dWTVE1vwoMMnoztOPDQM197zyZhdclyqydbhIeLn2FReHe2oAA4TI5AvmILXqzvakcAdDZlCvFX_QfflHUKkCn9qFm4w/s320/Kazuyo_Sejima_and_Ryue_Nishizawa+TJ02.jpg" /></a><br />
</div><br />
<b>SANAA stands for Sejima and Nishizawa and Associates, and it is the business you operate together. How did it start?</b><br />
<br />
Sejima: When I set up my own office in 1987, Nishizawa was still a graduate student. He came and worked for me part time. When he finished his studies in 1990 he started working full time. After a while, when he started thinking about quitting to open his own office, I asked him if he'd work with me. Then we started SANAA (in 1995).<br />
<br />
Nishizawa: Well originally, I had no intention of making a joint office with Sejima-san, but when I was about to quit we decided that for international competitions and large-scale domestic jobs it might be interesting to work together. So SANAA, the joint office, was created essentially to do those large jobs, such as the 21st Century Museum and the New Museum. I have my own office too, for smaller jobs: houses, shops, interiors.<br />
<br />
<b>So, Sejima was your boss and then became your partner, right?</b><br />
<br />
N: She's still my boss! It just looks like a partnership from the outside!<br />
<br />
S: No, he was actually one of the first part-timers who came to work for me, so it was always like we were working together.<br />
<br />
<b>Can you describe your work process? Who actually comes up with the design ideas?</b><br />
<br />
S: We get asked a lot if there is any division of the responsibilities between us. But there isn't! Our way of working was never that one of us would lead with a sketch, and then our staff would work from that. Rather, from the very beginning, all our staff throw in ideas — How's this? How's that? — and then we decide on the direction through a process of discussion. But when it's time to decide on something, Nishizawa and I do it together.<br />
<br />
<b>Your building for the New Museum in Manhattan has a very distinctive appearance — it's like variously shaped boxes piled on top of each other. Where did that idea came from?</b><br />
<br />
S: Well, the New Museum opened in 1977, and it was a museum that a group of curators had started themselves so they could do what they wanted, with more freedom. The building had to be free, new and different, like the art.<br />
<br />
N: First, with a plot of land as small as that 740 sq. meters, there was no alternative but to stack the galleries on top of each other. But when you put galleries on top of each other, you end up with a high-rise building, right? In that situation the most cost-effective method is to make what's known as a "typical floor plan." In other words, all the floors end up the same and, as a consequence, the building ends up looking more like an office tower than a museum. So we decided that each floor needed to look different from the others, and to achieve that we needed to vary their sizes.<br />
<br />
The other thing was that by changing the size and shifting the positions of each floor, or each gallery (because there is essentially just one gallery per floor), it was possible to add skylights in the middle floors. Normally you can't have skylights in the middle floors of a high-rise, right, because there's a room the same dimensions above.<br />
<br />
S: The different-sized floors also made terraces on the middle floors possible, and they were important too. In galleries it's difficult to make windows, because you need walls for the art. So we came up with the skylight and terrace idea. Maybe you could put art on the outside terraces, or something. And people can go out there too, and then you can see the New York skyline from an unusual height.<br />
<br />
You know, if it's an office building then the general public doesn't have free access, but they do in an art museum. So they can come in and enjoy a new dialogue with the city. Also, the building needed to be set back from the street, so each floor is a little smaller than the one below. And we've added further variety by changing the ceiling heights of each floor, so a smaller gallery might have a higher ceiling.<br />
<br />
<b>The exterior surface of the building is also unusual. What material did you use?</b><br />
<br />
N: It's a polished aluminum mesh, and it is positioned slightly away from the surface of the building, meaning it is like a double-layered wall. Consequently the wall appears to have a depth to it. Its appearance also changes depending on the weather. When it's cloudy it looks gray and flat, but when the sun shines the aluminum reflects the sun, and the shadows of the mesh are visible on the internal wall.<br />
<br />
S: The other factor was the surrounding neighborhood, the Bowery, which is home to restaurant-equipment suppliers. The mesh was a kind of reference to that, but we've made the gauge of the mesh much larger than it would be in any product.<br />
<br />
<b>So you tried to relate the building to its surrounding environment?</b><br />
<br />
S: You always need to think about how a building will look beside its neighbors. Of course, that doesn't mean you should merely imitate them. Neither does it mean you should make the other buildings look bad. The ideal is to create something that, through its presence, makes the overall environment look better, and at the same time makes your own building look good by virtue of its relationship with the surrounding buildings.<br />
<br />
<b>Did the New Museum curators have any particular requests?</b><br />
<br />
S: One thing was that they wanted it to be very open to the city, and the public. Of course the galleries are very important, but we've also given a lot of attention to the theater, the bookshop, the admission-free zone on the ground floor and even the loading dock, which is right next to the main entrance. There are lots of ways people can interact with the museum.<br />
<br />
<b>What impression would you like visitors to have of the architecture when they leave?</b><br />
<br />
S: With a lot of buildings you have no idea, from the outside, how the inside looks. We wanted to make the exterior a more accurate representation of the interior. I'd like visitors to be able to look back at the building and say, "Oh, yeah, I went up there" — and, maybe, "In that room there was this or that piece of art." I think this design will naturally help them understand the building itself.<br />
<br />
<b>Changing the subject, when did you first decide to be architects?</b><br />
<br />
S: When I was in primary school my mother had a magazine with a photo of the Sky House, by (Japanese architect) Kiyonori Kikutake. My parents were about to build a house, so they just happened to have that magazine, and I saw it by accident. I really became interested — interested in the fact that a house could look like that. [Built in 1958 in Tokyo's Bunkyo Ward, the design consisted of a single volume, elevated on four pylons.] Seeing that photo left a deep impression on me. But I was really small, and they ended up not building their own house, so that spark of interest was quickly forgotten. Then in Japan when you get to the third and last year of high school at about age 16 or 17, you have to decide on a university course. I remembered about that house that had impressed me so much, and so I applied for architecture. At that point I didn't realize the house was famous, but when I went to university and was in the library I realized that it was.<br />
<br />
<b>Did you consider anything else?</b><br />
<br />
S: When I was in junior high school I liked fashion, so I was a fan of fashion designers, but I didn't really have any idea how I could do that. We're talking about 30 years ago and I was out in the sticks in Sendai, so the idea of becoming a designer was really foreign to me. At least "kenchiku" (architecture) wasn't a foreign loan word (like "design," or dezain, as it is pronounced in Japanese). Kenchiku sounded more like the sort of thing you studied at school and then took on as a profession.<br />
<br />
Much is made here of the fact that Japanese universities generally include architecture in engineering faculties, whereas in the West it is closer to art.<br />
<br />
S: Yeah, that's right, it's a branch of engineering. But these days everyone, young people too, have better access to information. At that time, you couldn't really consider design to be a profession. At the time it was more about, well, I'm not into medicine, not into law, and then I see architecture in the faculty of engineering and it seems like it might be OK to try.<br />
<br />
<b>I believe your father was an engineer.</b><br />
<br />
S: Yes, but he is an engineer engineer, not an architect.<br />
<br />
<b>Were you influenced by him?</b><br />
<br />
S: No, not really.<br />
<br />
N: There was never any particular point when I decided to be an architect. I'm an archetypal Japanese in that way: one day I looked at myself and I was an architect.<br />
<br />
S: But you applied to study architecture, right?<br />
<br />
N: Yeah, but I only did that because my high-school teacher was like, "You like music and film, and you're good at mathematics. OK, you're going into architecture." I wasn't really interested in it at all, but I was like most Japanese people and just went along with what I was told. I was set on the tracks and before I knew it I was an architect.<br />
<br />
<b>Why did you go to Sejima's office?</b><br />
<br />
N: It looked interesting. I sensed a real future in her work. When I was doing postgraduate studies at university, I was working part time with Sejima-san and, you know, that hasn't changed since then. It was fun. They were fulfilling days. I don't even remember graduating — it was just a continual progression.<br />
<br />
<b>Who are your architectural heroes? You have worked together for a long time, so I wonder how well you know each other by now. Nishizawa, do you know who Sejima's favorite architect is?</b><br />
<br />
N: Mies van der Rohe. (A German-born American architect [1886-1969] known, along with Frenchman Le Corbusier [1887-1965] and German Walter Gropius [1883-1969], as one of the founders of Modern architecture and its pared-back, function-over-form aesthetic that unseated the decorative architecture of the 19th century.)<br />
<br />
<b>What does she like about him?</b><br />
<br />
N: Mies, um, I can't express it. It's like, "Bam!"<br />
<br />
S: "Bam!?"<br />
<br />
N: There's a real stateliness, and sharpness. It's got originality, with a splendor, or a gorgeousness — no, a splendor. Mies is cool. Yeah, cool. That's what she likes. And there's nothing showy about it, nothing unnecessary.<br />
<br />
<b>Who does Nishizawa like?</b><br />
<br />
S: Hmm, Le Corbusier! I think he likes lots of things about him. What he often says is that Le Corbusier had his own way of living, and his own ideal, and they coincided. I think he says he likes that. Choosing just one person is always difficult.<br />
<br />
N: Yeah, like I've never once thought that Le Corbusier was above Mies!<br />
<br />
<b>Architecture students have a habit of going on pilgrimages to see famous buildings when they are studying. Where did each of you go?</b><br />
<br />
S: Ah, with me that was . . .<br />
<br />
N: A package tour!<br />
<br />
S: No, I didn't actually go on one of those trips.<br />
<br />
N: Sejima-san doesn't do that kind of commoners' stuff!<br />
<br />
S: No! No! But OK, when I was in second year at university I went to Kyushu and saw Arata Isozaki's office/gallery facility, the Shukosha Building, by myself. And then in my third year, my parents said I should see some things outside of Japan, so I applied for this package tour — and the title of the tour was "Looking at Architecture" or something like that. But it was more like a study and recreation trip for construction company employees. I was a student with no money, but everyone else was better off, and they went off here and there on optional tours.<br />
<br />
<b>Did you see modern architecture?</b><br />
<br />
S: Well, I thought we would when I applied, but it was more a tour of Middle Ages villages.<br />
<br />
N: No modern architecture?! You mean you saw Assisi and places like that?<br />
<br />
S: Yeah, and we went to [the World Heritage-listed medieval walled hill town of] San Gimignano in Tuscany, and then to Scandinavia, where we did see (some buildings by Finnish Modern architect) Alvar Aalto. Then we went back to Paris, and they all went off on their optional tours, and I went by myself to see some of Le Corbusier's buildings.<br />
<br />
N: I went to all sorts of places, but I think the first I can remember was with my brother — he is an architect too — and I was in second year. In the middle of summer he issued a directive: "We're going to look at architecture!" So we walked around Tokyo: Tadao Ando, Fumihiko Maki, Takamitsu Azuma — buildings by all the famous architects. And I think I got sunstroke. You know, I saw lots of architecture, but I still didn't really get it. Only Ando's architecture was kind of, like, well this is different from the others. But, you know, it was all architecture. I mean, Tokyo is full of architecture, and when you're told something is good, you don't just instantly get it, right? I didn't know anything. But then after that, when I got a bit older, I decided to go to look at architecture myself in Europe — Paris, Florence, Rome and Greece.<br />
<br />
<b>Which buildings left the most lasting impressions?</b><br />
<br />
N: First, Paris surprised me with its elegance. I remember I was dropped off by the river near Notre Dame Cathedral. It was night, but it was lit up. I took one look at that glowing scenery and it was like, wow, this is an amazing place. So I found a hotel, and I was so excited that I got up early the next morning. The dawn was more beautiful than any image of Paris I had ever seen in the movies. The other place I remember vividly was St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. There were lots of memorable things. And the Basilica di Santa Maria Novella in front of the train station in Florence, too.<br />
<br />
<b>What about architecture in Tokyo? Which buildings in Tokyo do you recommend to foreign visitors?</b><br />
<br />
N: Maybe Kenzo Tange's National Gymnasium at Yoyogi (built for the 1964 Olympics) or Kiyonori Kikutake's Sky House — it's a great example of Modern Japanese architecture, but it's a private house, so you can't really just go and look at it.<br />
<br />
S: In a more contemporary vein, maybe Herzog and de Meuron's Prada Building in Aoyama (which is made of glass). You know, they actually had the nerve to come up with that! Or the Yokohama International Passenger Terminal by Foreign Office Architects. That's very interesting.<br />
<br />
<b>The architecture world has an image of being dominated by men — especially egoistic men who seem to love leaving their mark on the world with big buildings. Do you experience any difficulties or advantages because you're a woman?</b><br />
<br />
S: Women love making big things too! And small things. With large buildings there are so many people who get involved — and so many people who use the buildings. On the other hand I make small things too; I like designing objects, such as spoons and private residences, which is a very personal process. There is an image that it is only men who make big projects, but I think that's just because there weren't many women in architecture in the past. Now that is really changing. There are more women architects now — but people often say that women have a softer image, a softer exterior. We make things through discussion.<br />
<br />
So, rather than saying it's difficult to be a woman, I think maybe there is just a difference of nuance in how we make something. And yes, it is a male-dominated society, and there are good and bad things there. Because I'm a woman, maybe where a man might start yelling I would not yell, and instead say calmly, "I can't have you doing that." On the other hand, because there aren't many women, then sometimes men go easy on us a bit.<br />
<br />
<b>How have New Yorkers reacted to the New Museum?</b><br />
<br />
S: Of course, if you asked 100 people and they all said they loved it, then it would be too weird. We'll be happy if more than half of the people like it. Last week Nishizawa went to see the completion of the building, and a lot of people were stopping to take photos. That was nice to hear.<br />
<br />
N: New York, compared with the rest of America, is a really special place. I find it a really special city. Things are always changing in New York. It's a town constantly in the present-continuous tense. You go there and you can feel the world changing. And of course the New Museum is, you know, new. So for us the idea of the New Museum was the same as the city itself. When you look at New York, most of it was built in the 19th century. We wanted to make a really new, 21st-century building — appropriate for a museum in a city that is always in the business of defining what is new.<br />
<br />
<hr /><i>The Japan Times<br />
(C) All rights reserved<br />
</i><br />
<hr />simulacrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01025844469103673248noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8673717048871599765.post-28770284482941640972009-12-28T01:46:00.000-08:002009-12-28T01:46:57.967-08:00Arata Isozaki: astonishing by design: interview with Japan Times<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYk2Dv3aXX5zsBZL-p5kJs13plnyhhcosKPVLcT2DxjnK_Pr-ZmxiD_OCbuj1juTDraOxCaOv0EfSxm-iaN0ZyYlvBh5VG69dQ0Q3FbZkdD4XebI_ZHMb5571BKgAkGMOuJMWuxTSPOFXE/s1600-h/arata+isozaki+times+jn+02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYk2Dv3aXX5zsBZL-p5kJs13plnyhhcosKPVLcT2DxjnK_Pr-ZmxiD_OCbuj1juTDraOxCaOv0EfSxm-iaN0ZyYlvBh5VG69dQ0Q3FbZkdD4XebI_ZHMb5571BKgAkGMOuJMWuxTSPOFXE/s320/arata+isozaki+times+jn+02.jpg" /></a><br />
</div><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">architect/artist: </span><b style="color: #666666;">Arata Isozaki</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">interview title:</span><b style="color: #666666;"> </b><b style="color: #666666;">Arata Isozaki: astonishing by design<br />
He may be almost 77, but there's no end to his groundbreaking ideas<br />
</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">interviews compilation no: </span><b style="color: #666666;">T-50</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">interview format: </span><b style="color: #666666;">Text</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">date:<b> </b></span><b style="color: #666666;">June 1, 2008</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">appeared in: <b>The Japan Times</b></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">interviewer: </span><b style="color: #666666;">Edan Corkill</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">photo by: <b>Yoshiaki Miura, Ryuji Miyamoto</b></span><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #666666;">courtesy:<i><b> http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20080601x1.html</b></i></span><br />
<br />
<b>Interview Details:</b><br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<br />
<i>If the entire Japanese architectural fraternity was one big royal family, then Arata Isozaki would be a king approaching the end of a long and glorious reign.</i><br />
<i><br />
</i><br />
<i>The "pedigree" of this majestically silver-maned 76-year-old is, quite simply, faultless.</i><br />
<i><br />
</i><br />
<i>Architecturally speaking, Isozaki's "father" was the great Kenzo Tange — best known for his 1950 Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park and the National Gymnasium in Yoyogi built for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. Isozaki was taught by Tange at the prestigious University of Tokyo in the early 1960s — along with those other architectural luminaries, Kisho Kurokawa and Fumihiko Maki.</i><br />
<i><br />
</i><br />
<i>But then, tracing Isozaki's architectural roots back past Tange leads straight to Kunio Maekawa, with whom Tange worked just before World War II. In terms of modern Japanese architecture, it might well be said that Maekawa was the first, the original king before Isozaki. After working for Le Corbusier in Paris in the 1920s, Maekawa became one of the most important interpreters of Modernist architecture in Japan.</i><br />
<i><br />
</i><br />
<i>Like any great monarch, however, Isozaki's conquests gradually spread further and further afield as they mirrored the growth of his stature. Beginning in 1964 with a humble public library in his native Oita Prefecture in Kyushu, his next large projects were dotted around Tokyo's outskirts, including the Museum of Modern Art, Gunma (1974), the Tsukuba Center Building (1983) and Art Tower Mito (1990).</i><br />
<i><br />
</i><br />
<i>In these works he developed an original style built around simple concrete forms — giant rectangular prism-shaped galleries perched on stilts for the Gunma museum, for example, or spherical, pyramid-shaped and cubic masses arranged like children's building blocks across a site at Tsukuba and Mito.</i><br />
<i><br />
</i><br />
<i>Then, by 1982, Isozaki was pioneering Japanese architecture overseas, making the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles (1986) and the Team Disney building in Florida (1991). In the United States, he also found that his playful use of shapes segued nicely with the dominant postmodernist penchant for a decorative flourish. For the Disney Building, he gave each of its component shapes a different color, and even incorporated a subtle Mickey Mouse reference in the form of an entrance hall shaped like the cartoon rodent's ears.</i><br />
<i><br />
</i><br />
<i>Next month, Isozaki celebrates his 77th birthday — traditionally a highly significant age for Japanese people. Yet the architect, who now has his own "heirs" (former employees such as Shigeru Ban and Jun Aoki, who have now established their own reputations overseas), is showing no signs of slowing down. Indeed, amid his hyperhectic schedule, he even took time between business trips to talk to The Japan Times at his studio in Roppongi — not only about his latest works in China and the Middle East, but also about his own birthday plans as well.</i><br />
<br />
<hr /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7u-rTEMKK4wck9f1-NnWqjyDwvGopeWOu0WndX8d-GtaMbPFGiUaoN76hkGyX8VWsBYBxFPp7uhFt_BFjb6EIMYGepCnRWYj_ZA1OljPKqManCUNqmd7JwHmXgosfNprkC2Zt-xeiCxiK/s1600-h/arata+isozaki+times+jn+01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7u-rTEMKK4wck9f1-NnWqjyDwvGopeWOu0WndX8d-GtaMbPFGiUaoN76hkGyX8VWsBYBxFPp7uhFt_BFjb6EIMYGepCnRWYj_ZA1OljPKqManCUNqmd7JwHmXgosfNprkC2Zt-xeiCxiK/s320/arata+isozaki+times+jn+01.jpg" /></a><br />
</div><br />
<b>The media often refer to the amazing construction booms happening now in China and the Middle East, but what it is like to be involved in all that as an architect?</b><br />
<br />
It's not like I deliberately chase the booms. Someone will call and invite me to participate in a competition somewhere, so I enter, and, if I'm lucky, I win. Then, all of a sudden I'm working in China, or the Middle East.<br />
<br />
<b>You have experienced many construction booms — Japan had one in the 1980s. What characterizes the current China boom?</b><br />
<br />
In China, the problem was that in a very short period of time a huge number of buildings had to be made. That is partly because the population is so huge, and partly because once a development policy is passed it is implemented immediately. However, to nurture architects you need time — for their education, for them to gain experience. You just can't do that in 10 years; it takes 20 or 30.<br />
<br />
I believe the Chinese government realized they didn't have the knowhow to do the design and construction necessary, so they decided to allow a lot of foreign companies into the market. That happened around the end of the 1980s. It was something that Deng Xiaoping started.<br />
<br />
<b>What kind of work are you now doing in China?</b><br />
<br />
In any city it is necessary for 95 to 99 percent of the buildings to be residential, commercial or business. Of course, with these buildings you have to maintain a certain standard of architecture. But it is also necessary to have a small percentage of buildings that are architectural standouts, and they should be the city's cultural facilities. My policy has always been to focus on these cultural facilities — museums, libraries, universities, convention centers and so on. I like to partner developers who share this way of thinking. In China at the moment, I have a few projects under construction: the Shenzhen Cultural Center, in Shenzhen, for one. That is a concert hall. Then there's the Central Academy of Fine Arts' Museum of Contemporary Art in Beijing.<br />
<br />
<b>Has the Central Academy museum opened already?</b><br />
<br />
It is opening in October. It's pretty much completed now, with the school using part of the building already. The grand opening will be in October.<br />
<br />
<b>Your buildings used to be known for their use of cubes, pyramids and other simple shapes, but this is a very organic form with lots of curves. Where did that idea come from?</b><br />
<br />
That way of thinking emerged during a certain period when I was doing a number of jobs. For example, the Domus: La Casa del Hombre in La Coruna in Spain, which was a museum focusing on the human body. It was completed in 1995. That was one of the first jobs that incorporated organic curves. At that time, works using curves started appearing more and more. The Central Academy job is a continuation of that, but at the same time, it further develops it. The entire structure there is complex and organic.<br />
<br />
<b>Recently, you've also done the Shanghai Zendai Himalayas Art Center. How is that?</b><br />
<br />
That's under construction. Half of it was designed using computers — the organic shapes at the bottom — and the top half is a more conventional series of square blocks. Part of the facade is also influenced by elements of Chinese characters. It's a combined-use facility incorporating a museum and a hotel. The thing that I thought was like, you enter the hotel and you're in a museum; you enter the museum, and there's a hotel there. So you don't make these two things separately, as has been the case in the past. Places like Roppongi Hills in Tokyo have several functions, too, but there are separate entrances for each of the components. So, if you were to think about something like that with a clean slate, then it should be possible to make a building where those two functions are really one. <br />
<br />
<b>You're also working a lot in the Middle East. What is the boom there like?</b><br />
<br />
At the moment I have two jobs under construction in Qatar: the Qatar National Library in Doha and a convention center. Qatar is essentially a monarchy. The lines between monarchy and democracy, and between what's public and what's private are not so clear. It is difficult to apply the same concepts as in the West; it is hard to know exactly how things work over there. By chance I got to know people close to the Emir, and I was then invited to build those projects. Construction progressed on the National Library for a while, but as a result of some political issues the work was put on hold. But I think when these problems have been resolved it will start moving again. Lots of strange things happen!<br />
<br />
The design is extraordinary, like the futuristic plans you made for west Shinjuku in the 1960s, where all the city would be raised on giant stilt-like columns.<br />
<br />
Yes, that Shinjuku project was an idea to build a city, or at least a part of a city — the residential and office parts — up in the air. It was of course not realized at the time, but now those old ideas are coming back again.<br />
<br />
<hr /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRsDKQB19wZ8Sf1xAU6G9bot6snBAkHITS6NueYQXW7SlfbXYMefvTKQ-zAxZqrnAWQv-HVwqEBdYHX8K55lQwVDhoNLvoeRa93FgKeJtI7uopgFCPaArEZjW-Z_aKaI98-RTvMglF3JPe/s1600-h/arata+isozaki+times+jn+03a.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRsDKQB19wZ8Sf1xAU6G9bot6snBAkHITS6NueYQXW7SlfbXYMefvTKQ-zAxZqrnAWQv-HVwqEBdYHX8K55lQwVDhoNLvoeRa93FgKeJtI7uopgFCPaArEZjW-Z_aKaI98-RTvMglF3JPe/s320/arata+isozaki+times+jn+03a.jpg" /></a><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i><b> </b>High points: Art Plaza (top), formerly Oita Prefectural Library, which was completed in 1964 in Oita City in Kyushu, was the first building about which Isozaki says "I felt I could make my own original architecture." The architect currently has several large projects in China, including the Shanghai Zendai Himalayas Art Center (below). RYUJI MIYAMOTO (top); ARATA ISOZAKI & ASSOCIATES (below)</i></span><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilYs61tjOzjDpZ7O-X7gFDhJf8x38xPMg9CN689rG3GSVvItR4RPOOItEWxZFCPsGSAiGPwctRZo_3sPjHQEcj0K0bf173ftFoEKVoeMvx-p2pPakWvzPEi3KKvBv5KLgml0WCHV5VGlAi/s1600-h/arata+isozaki+times+jn+03b.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilYs61tjOzjDpZ7O-X7gFDhJf8x38xPMg9CN689rG3GSVvItR4RPOOItEWxZFCPsGSAiGPwctRZo_3sPjHQEcj0K0bf173ftFoEKVoeMvx-p2pPakWvzPEi3KKvBv5KLgml0WCHV5VGlAi/s320/arata+isozaki+times+jn+03b.jpg" /></a><br />
</div><br />
<br />
<hr /><br />
<br />
<b>After the Middle East, where do you think the next construction boom will be?</b><br />
<br />
Now Russia is emerging too. If you look at the construction booms that I have experienced, they all started with my first job overseas, which was in Los Angeles — the Museum of Contemporary Art there. That was part of a very large-scale development. It was the same kind of project as the Mori Building's Roppongi Hills in Tokyo, where they started with a large-scale development and then added in a hall or a museum to attract the people. MoCA was also the first museum focused on contemporary art in the world.<br />
<br />
So, in America, in the 1970s and '80s many large-scale developments were being made, and in Japan, too, at the end of the construction boom that continued through the 1980s, there were lots of ideas for similarly large-scale developments. Then the economic bubble in Japan burst, and all those ideas were scrapped. Now, I think the situation you see in Tokyo is that the ideas born in the bubble period are finally being realized. [Marunouchi and Roppongi Hills are examples.]<br />
<br />
Either way, the construction boom that had come to Japan went away. Also, at the same time, the boom was happening in London, Berlin, Paris and other cities in Europe affected by World War II. Of course, postwar reconstruction was completed in the '60s, but in the '80s there was a time of renewing these areas. That's where the Docklands development in London and the Postdamer Platz in Berlin and Mitterrand's series of cultural developments in Paris (the so-called Grands Projets such as the glass pyramids at the Louvre and the Musee d'Orsay) came in. Then there was China and the Middle East — which looks like it might be the biggest of all — and now it is Russia and the former Soviet republics, Kazakhstan and places. At the beginning of next month I'm going to Ukraine.<br />
<br />
The interesting thing is that the construction booms move around the world in waves. What happens is that a certain volume of development money just moves from one region to the next. Once they make something in certain areas the money goes back to the investors, and then they look for the next place to invest. After Russia, who knows where it will go! Maybe it will stop for a while.<br />
<br />
<b>Considering how busy you are, how do you manage to keep track of all this international work?</b><br />
<br />
Well, I'm almost 77 — give me a break! About once a month I'm in America or Europe. Going to China is just like a domestic flight for me.<br />
<br />
<b>Do you have offices overseas?</b><br />
<br />
I had some work for the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, and the person who worked with me there stayed behind and made an office. He's Japanese and he's like a representative for us over there. Same with China, except it is a Chinese architect who is our representative there. In Milan there is an Italian architect who used to work for me in Japan. In Poland, too, there is someone I work with, so if there is a job in that area then we will work together. But still, the difficult thing about being an architect is that, unless you actually go to these places, you can't get them to trust you. But as for the more difficult places — the ones that require a lot of visits — well, I think I'll slow down with them sooner or later. But it just doesn't stop!<br />
<br />
<b>Your fame is such that you are often invited to judge large architecture competitions too, and juries you have been on have selected some of the most experimental architecture of the last few years — the weightless Sendai Mediatheque, made by Tokyo-based Toyo Ito in Japan and the gravity-defying China Central Television (CCTV) Building in Beijing, by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas. What do you look for when you're judging?</b><br />
<br />
With competitions, one of the most important things is determining the real intention of the client — and understanding their capacity is also important. For example, with the Sendai Mediatheque [a cultural facility in Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture, famous for its "transparent" steel columns], it was a public project and their goal was to make something new. If you give architects a brief that is too normal, then you get something normal. I can't take all the credit, but when I was consulted about the project, the first thing I said was, "Change the name." The hoped-for function was for a library, a gallery and a community center. So I said, in France if a bibilioteque is a library, then why not call this Mediatheque?<br />
<br />
<b>Really? I always thought that was a good name.</b><br />
<br />
Yes, and then when you put a new name on the brief — like Mediatheque — then the architects understand that you want them to put forward ideas that are unlike other buildings. The proposal we ended up selecting, by Ito, was certainly unlike other buildings.<br />
<br />
The CCTV competition [a new headquarters for China Central Television in Beijing; the winning entry, by Koolhaas, is a gravity-defying "skewed arch" that is currently under construction] was a slightly different situation. There were between 10 and 20 judges, and each had only one vote. With CCTV there were a number of proposals — one from a Shanghai firm, of a high standard — then there was a very beautiful, Modernist plan by a consortium of Toyo Ito and a Chinese firm. The third proposal was by Koolhaas, and I decided it would be best. But, in order to get the jury to agree on Rem's design I knew there were a lot of hurdles I would have to clear.<br />
<br />
Of course there were objections from Beijing city officials, and from within CCTV, too. [The building, a giant arch, but with the horizontal cross-bar executing a 90-degree turn mid-air, looks like it could fall over at any moment.] When we were debating the proposals, I decided it was best to just not talk about function at all. I focused the discussion on the amazing appearance of the building, saying that it alone could best express the function of a TV station. They had the opportunity to create an example of what I called "iconic architecture." That is what I said. The building itself will symbolize CCTV, like a giant corporate logo.<br />
<br />
They ended up accepting it. After that I noticed that all over the world, the term "iconic architecture" became common parlance. All the developers are saying it these days — they want an "icon." Now they don't care what the function of a building is! You could call it archisculpture, perhaps — architecture as sculpture, or vice versa. With the Modernist focus on functionalism, this way of thinking was denied for a long time, so it's not a bad thing that it's coming back again.<br />
<br />
<b>You've made some buildings that have become icons yourself. What do you consider the highlights of your career?</b><br />
<br />
The first work I did when I felt that I could make my own, original architecture based on my own concept was the Art Plaza in Oita Prefecture in 1964. I was very proud of that. And the first job that I really thought I could show to the world was the Museum of Modern Art, Gunma.<br />
<br />
The Art Plaza is a rare example of where a local government has refitted a building for a new function. It was built originally as a library and in 1996 it was reborn as a gallery. Most governments in Japan seem to prefer the "scrap and build" approach, and just knock old buildings down.<br />
<br />
Well, it's usually quicker to scrap and build. In this case, too, when they decided to move the library elsewhere it would have been quicker to knock this building down and build a new one. But if they did that they would have ended up with a terrible building! Actually, the public voiced their support for keeping the original building, so it was turned into an art gallery.<br />
<br />
Despite all this, your activities are not limited to architecture. In addition to writing, criticism and judging architecture competitions, you also get involved in large-scale public projects, such as Fukuoka's bid to host the 2016 Olympics.<br />
<br />
Yes, we lost to Tokyo, and now they are competing against other cities internationally. I had been thinking for a while about how it would be possible for Japan to host the Olympics somewhere other than in Tokyo. If you stage them in Tokyo, it's the capital city, and the message of a "nation" becomes too strong. This always happens when a capital city hosts the Olympics. You know, technically speaking, the Olympics must not be held by a country; the host must be a city. But it's got so big these days that the national governments support the host cities.<br />
<br />
So I thought Japan should do something different. Fukuoka! It's not a capital, not a country — it's Kyushu. But my plan was much bigger than that. I wanted to involve Pusan in South Korea, Qingdao and Shanghai in China and if possible Taipei in Taiwan, too. I wanted to bring all these areas together — the countries, no, the cities that form a ring around the East China Sea, to become joint hosts of the Olympics.<br />
<br />
I proposed that idea to Fukuoka and they officially made the presentation. I was told at the time that our plan was better than Tokyo's. But, in Japan, these decisions are not made on merit alone; it's money that talks. Tokyo had 10 times the population and 10 times the budget, so they gave it to Tokyo. It was a simple reason. It couldn't be helped. But, this idea that I had, I think in the 21st century other areas will realize that it is the best choice.<br />
<br />
<b>That's quite a revolutionary idea you had, and that reminds me: your first name, Arata, means "new." Why did your parents call you that?</b><br />
<br />
My father was a haiku poet, and he was part of what was known as the Shinko Haiku (New Haiku) movement. They wanted to transform the old style of haiku into a more contemporary style. So he was interested in new things, too.<br />
<br />
Also, my mother's father wrote kanshi, which is traditional Chinese poetry. I think my grandfather selected a few characters and my father chose this one.<br />
<br />
<b>This year you are celebrating your 77th birthday. What have you got planned?</b><br />
<br />
I do architecture and urban planning. I've also done lots of work with artists. I write, half as a critic, half as a historian. The only way to present all of this work is through exhibitions. When I turned 60, about 20 years ago, they gave me an exhibition at Los Angeles MOCA to celebrate, and it toured the world for about three years. When I turned 70, the Deutsches Architekturmuseum in Frankfut, put on an exhibition for me, too.<br />
<br />
But in Japan it is actually 77 that is the most important milestone. When you write the characters for 10 and 7 you end up with the character for yorokobu, which means "to celebrate." This is the year of celebration, as far as I'm concerned. There are seven different exhibitions that I will be holding at different times during the year. You should come and see them!<br />
<br />
<hr /><br />
<i>Information about Isozaki's seven exhibitions being held throughout this year can be found at www.isozaki.co.jp. Highlights include an exhibition of his museum designs at the Museum of Modern Art, Gunma (till June 22), an exhibition of his residence designs at Art Plaza in Oita City, Kyushu (till January) and an exhibition about the exhibitions he has curated at Hara Museum Arc, Gunma (July 27 through Sept. 23). The exhibition at Hara, which was itself designed by Isozaki, coincides with the opening of a new pavilion that he has made for the institution. </i><br />
<br />
<i>The Japan Times</i><br />
<i>(C) All rights reserved</i><br />
<i></i><br />
<hr />simulacrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01025844469103673248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8673717048871599765.post-40945719309822898212009-12-23T01:39:00.000-08:002009-12-23T02:37:20.698-08:00The Eisenman-Haneke Tapes: Peter Eisenmannn interviews film director Michael Haneke for iconeye<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghAU5OAgaCl9dlPnjnDWQ42XN4fOoSxT-rvGyR5T-aQ2TXslo4oOXSVre2zdgtKsnAyoXfa5cuybAIQDSy3e3PPorwbsjnvjYWeSzksNjUUBU9-zoBDnNfYr9RmXNhmkc5MZwgewBUkxVj/s1600-h/eisenmann+iconeye1.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" ps="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghAU5OAgaCl9dlPnjnDWQ42XN4fOoSxT-rvGyR5T-aQ2TXslo4oOXSVre2zdgtKsnAyoXfa5cuybAIQDSy3e3PPorwbsjnvjYWeSzksNjUUBU9-zoBDnNfYr9RmXNhmkc5MZwgewBUkxVj/s320/eisenmann+iconeye1.gif" /></a><br />
</div><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">architect/artist: </span><b style="color: #666666;">Peter Eisenmannn and Michael Haneke</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">interview title:</span><b style="color: #666666;"> </b><b style="color: #666666;">The Eisenman-Haneke Tapes: Peter Eisenmannn interviews film director Michael Haneke</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">interviews compilation no: </span><b style="color: #666666;">T-49</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">interview format: </span><b style="color: #666666;">Text</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">date:<b> </b></span><b style="color: #666666;">2 November 2009</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">appeared in: <strong>iconeye</strong></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">interviewer: </span><b style="color: #666666;">Paul Smith</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">photo by: </span><b style="color: #666666;">Chris Wiley, Michael Haneke, Elise Jaffe</b><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #666666;">courtesy:<i><b> http://www.iconeye.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3062%3Athe-eisenman-haneke-tapes</b></i></span><br />
<br />
<b>Interview Details:</b><br />
<a name='more'></a><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUigg5pd-KtzAP9MjcT_mTwosXR2FPwMyL8Og5cnPaRUgBQGTWVZpcK0IPdTc5mE7lEts8soLJfC0flknYBTaBsTBQwOO-YKwRrc_13Y-Jvo-SPCCbvV4DjI07Xubg6ytTr_SH8Pu_9A-9/s1600-h/eisenmann+iconeye2.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" ps="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUigg5pd-KtzAP9MjcT_mTwosXR2FPwMyL8Og5cnPaRUgBQGTWVZpcK0IPdTc5mE7lEts8soLJfC0flknYBTaBsTBQwOO-YKwRrc_13Y-Jvo-SPCCbvV4DjI07Xubg6ytTr_SH8Pu_9A-9/s320/eisenmann+iconeye2.gif" /></a><br />
</div><br />
<em>In a debate with Rem Koolhaas at the Architectural Association last year, Peter Eisenman said, “We should make architecture like Michael Haneke makes films.” Following up on that remark, icon asked Eisenman to interview the Austrian film director. They met in an Italian restaurant in New York a few days after a private screening of Haneke’s latest film, Funny Games, which is a shot-for-shot remake for a Hollywood studio of his original German-language version</em>.<br />
<br />
<br />
<hr /><br />
<br />
<strong>Peter</strong> One more prosecco… Here’s to the success of your film. <br />
<br />
<strong>Michael</strong> Thank you.<br />
<br />
<strong>Peter</strong> I have to say, it’s the most terrifying film I’ve ever seen. (Laughs.) The two psychotic characters are incredible. These upper-middle-class psychotics in tennis whites, holding golf clubs, show up at the door, and you don’t know what’s going on until the scene when he drops the eggs and says, “Oh, well I have to have four more.” Suddenly you’re thinking, “Oh, my goodness!”<br />
<br />
<strong>Michael </strong>It’s chilling. But, you know, I read in Der Spiegel about a case in Spain where two young guys put gloves on in order to torture someone just for their pleasure. And the methods of torture that they used… compared to that my film is harmless.<br />
<br />
<strong>Waiter </strong>Can I tell you the specials?<br />
<br />
<strong>Peter</strong> I’ll just have one course. The rigatoni for me. We have to talk!<br />
<br />
<strong>Michael</strong> I’ll have the pumpkin ravioli.<br />
<br />
<strong>Waiter </strong>Would you like something to start with, sir?<br />
<br />
<strong>Peter</strong> I’ll have a little mozzarella. Now, I have a lot of questions! If we look at Robert Bresson’s Pickpocket for a minute, it’s about filming what doesn’t happen on the screen, in other words the actual point where the pickpocket gets the wallet at the racetrack is never shown on film. You see him go to the racetrack and the next thing he’s in a police car. It’s an anti-action film.<br />
<br />
<strong>Michael </strong>The action is in the hand of the viewer.<br />
<br />
<strong>Peter</strong> The viewer becomes not active, but not passive any longer. I call it non-passive passive. But you cannot just do what Bresson did today because it’s a different moment in time. The viewer today is more or less completely passive. So let me propose an idea. I like to make a distinction between what happens in the mind and what happens in the body sensually, because it’s part of what happens in architecture. In Funny Games there’s no violence on the screen – it’s all in the mind. But what’s different about Funny Games than say, Pickpocket, is that there’s a level of sensuality, of physical feeling that comes with the mind, which doesn’t happen in Bresson. What I see in your film is a shift from what I call the sensual to the conceptual. In other words, there are two categories: there’s a mental idea – that’s Michelangelo Antonioni, Jean-Luc Godard, Bresson – and then there’s the sensual film of Bernardo Bertolucci, Luchino Visconti, etc. And what I think you have done, which is unique, is you’ve taken the sensual, which belongs to the body, and moved it into the conceptual realm. And that’s an entirely new idea for me. <br />
<br />
<strong>Michael</strong> Yes, I tried. But if I achieved this I don’t know.<br />
<br />
<strong>Peter</strong> But that gave me an idea for architecture. Because if my architecture used to be in the mental realm, what I tried to do in the Berlin Memorial [to the Murdered Jews of Europe] is precisely this: to move the sensual, physical experience into the mental domain. And so what I was trying to say in the Berlin Memorial was, “Is it possible, for a moment, to feel lost in space?” In other words, that moment of, “Oh my God, where am I?”<br />
<br />
<strong>Michael</strong> Yeah.<br />
<br />
<strong>Peter </strong>In Funny Games and in Caché there was that kind of horror that shifted from the purely physical into the mental, so what you had was a mental experience that was physical. I walked out of Funny Games and I was dripping wet, even though the experience was mental. And to me that’s what makes your films important for architecture, important for the arts. And I wanted you to think about that idea.<br />
<br />
<strong>Michael </strong>I see it completely like you do. I attempt that. I mean, I’m not always so sure I’ve succeeded, but it is a matter of temperament as much as concept. You can’t even consider it a concept as such. On the one hand I tend to theorise, to abstract, and on the other hand, I like sensual matters. I am, of course, a fan of Bresson, as you know. I think he’s the ne plus ultra.<br />
<br />
<strong>Peter</strong> Let me give you the moment that’s Bresson for me. When the camera pans and then watches the gate close, you don’t realise that the gate closing is the end for them. And in Pickpocket, there’s a moment where the hero leaves and Bresson sits on the shot and lets the door close where most filmmakers would cut away.<br />
<br />
<strong>Michael </strong>Ah! (Laughs.)<br />
<br />
<strong>Peter </strong>Now in Bresson, that’s purely mental because it has nothing to do with the idea of the film. But here, that long shot of the gate closing, you realise afterward, “Oh my God, they can’t get out!” And this is really something that’s different from Bresson, that shooting nothing meant something very frightening in your film as opposed to the door closing in Bresson. <br />
<br />
<strong>Michael </strong>In Pickpocket the opening and closing of the door – the separation of one to the other – is a metaphor that goes through the entire film. <br />
<br />
<strong>Peter </strong>Whereas when the gate closes in your film, it’s a metaphor of the trap. And you don’t know what it means until later. But here’s what I really wanted to ask you about. I believe that Bresson, Antonioni, Godard, Bertolucci, all these people represent what I call “high modernism” in film. I am very interested in Theodor Adorno’s essay Spätstil Beethovens [Beethoven’s Late Style]. And I believe what you are working on is late style. <br />
<br />
<strong>Michael </strong>You mean where you reap what others have sewn? Yes, maybe.<br />
<br />
<strong>Peter </strong>But you can’t do what they do. What you can do is take process to a level where it becomes not about intelligibility. In the typical modernist whodunnit murder movie you’re sitting there looking for clues. For me, and I’ve seen Caché several times, the first time I was looking for the killer, right? Who was the guy who shot the tape? And you sit there and try to figure it out. Of course, the scene at the end when the two boys meet is also titillating, and you think, well, maybe. But you realise the movie is not about this.<br />
<br />
<strong>Michael </strong>Yes, exactly.<br />
<br />
<strong>Peter</strong> It’s about something else. And then you have to see it again, and when you look at it again you become a different audience and you sit there and you say, “Wow, this is great. I’m not worried about whodunnit.” Rather, I’m looking at the filmic quality. And that’s what I think you’re about. Not about solving murders. So, for me, I’m not about solving problems, I’m about asking “What is architecture about?” And to me your films are a quintessential filmic experience. <br />
<br />
<strong>Michael </strong>I think it’s interesting what you’re saying about the late style. I don’t want to be preposterous but if you look at the music of Bach, at the time it’s written the music is already old fashioned. He has taken everything that was developed until then and brought it to flourish, and of course it’s the greatest achievement until that point in time. Bach is someone who takes from what happened before – he doesn’t really open new doors. He brings together everything that was done in the previous century. And I think generally in art, there are such periods where people just reap the rewards of their [predecessors]. But this is, in a way, the blessing of the historical moment.<br />
<br />
<strong>Peter </strong>No, no, I said to use the historical moment the way you do and produce something of difference. And to me that is why I look carefully at the film, because I use it analogously. A lot of my students are at the film tonight because I want them to understand the relationship between film and architecture. And the making of something that I consider late style. In other words, asking – whether in architecture or film – what does the discipline mean? And your work is a good example of this. <br />
<br />
<strong>Michael </strong>One critic, in fact the director of the Austrian Film Museum in Vienna, said I was a noble anachronism.<br />
<br />
<strong>Peter</strong> Noble – that’s exactly what we’re talking about. How much do you follow architecture though? Do you know the work of Hans Hollein and other Austrians?<br />
<br />
<strong>Michael</strong> “Know” is too much. I see it but I am not a specialist so I don’t know.<br />
<br />
<strong>Peter</strong> Do you know Wolf Prix?<br />
<br />
<strong>Michael </strong>Of Coop Himmelb(l)au? I appreciate him very much. But I am more… it is always a little bit ridiculous when a film director says this, but I am an acoustic man.<br />
<br />
<strong>Peter </strong>Yes, your whole film is acoustic because you don’t see anything, it’s all sound.<br />
<br />
<strong>Michael </strong>In music, I know what’s going on; in pictures, I am an amateur. I look at them, I like them, but I’m not very deeply into them. <br />
<br />
<strong>Peter</strong> Let me tell you something interesting. About ten years ago, I got together with David Cronenberg and invented a project. We had a mutual appreciation and I was going to design a virtual museum of David Cronenberg. We had a fabulous idea: each room in the museum would be a different film. The idea was: how could we make a piece of work that we both agreed was by both of us?<br />
<br />
<strong>Michael </strong>Uh huh? Interesting project. And why did it not realise? Money? (Laughs.)<br />
<br />
<strong>Peter </strong>You know, you were right, the mozzarella is fabulous, really good. <br />
<br />
<strong>Michael </strong>You know that Naomi Watts, after my film, she did the latest Cronenberg.<br />
<br />
<strong>Peter</strong> Eastern Promises? I didn’t know that. And how did she like your film? What did she think? <br />
<br />
<strong>Michael </strong>I think it was a little bit strange for her. Because it was a shot-for-shot remake, at the beginning she had a certain fear of being constricted. But once she accepted this it was ok for her. <br />
<br />
<strong>Peter </strong>But is every camera angle the same in this?<br />
<br />
<strong>Michael</strong> Yeah.<br />
<br />
<strong>Peter</strong> Every camera angle, every shot? <br />
<br />
<strong>Michael </strong>It was very difficult! (Laughs.)<br />
<br />
<strong>Peter</strong> But this is an interesting idea, the idea of repetition. The return of the same, let’s say. Why did you want to do that? <br />
<br />
<strong>Michael</strong> Because I have nothing to add. I already did the first film for an American audience, for an audience consuming violence. And it only didn’t reach that audience because it was in German. And so when I got the offer of the remake I said sure. After all, the subject became only more up to date. I mean, the world is only more violent. I wanted to give myself a certain challenge, I wanted to make it a little bit more demanding for myself. And so, I decided to do it shot-by-shot again.<br />
<br />
<strong>Peter</strong> If you see it in German with subtitles, as an American, there’s the distance of the subtitles and reading. But seeing it in English was quite extraordinary. I’ve never seen a film like it. My wife and I haven’t stopped talking about it since we saw it. We talked a great deal about discipline. I’m interested in opening up the interior discipline of architecture, and, to me, you are interested in exploring filmic discipline – you know, what is possible in the medium. You say your films are tight, their storyboards are tight. It’s more difficult in architecture because film is more expressive, you can feel the tightness.<br />
<br />
<strong>Michael </strong>Much more difficult! To create a touching room is really difficult. (Laughs.)<br />
<br />
<strong>Peter</strong> It’s impossible to create a touching room.<br />
<br />
<strong>Michael </strong>You achieve it in the Berlin Memorial.<br />
<br />
<strong>Peter</strong> In an abstract way. What’s filmic about the memorial is when you’re standing on the street and you see the people going in and coming out. Suddenly people are appearing and disappearing, and I think, “Oh my goodness, I never though of that.”<br />
<br />
<strong>Michael </strong>I don’t believe you! (Laughs.)<br />
<br />
<strong>Peter</strong> I always think of my work without people, but the memorial is better with people. I was there once when a woman’s child ran off and she couldn’t find him, and they started to scream. You could hear the child and the mother screaming and they still couldn’t find each other! Once you move, you don’t know where the other person’s gone. There are places in the memorial that are more important than others – much more frightening, let’s say. To me that’s part of being lost in space. And, of course, the silence. Like you talk about, you like sound. <br />
<br />
<strong>Michael </strong>Yeah. <br />
<br />
<strong>Peter</strong> I’m interested in space without sound. In other words without meaning, without sound, just pure physical [makes a crunching noise]. Minimal, yeah, but it’s maximal minimal. My wife said that your interest in sound and my interest in space both deny the visual. That’s very good. We are both attempting to deny the visual. Because you’re not a visual person. Your films are filmic, but you don’t see anything happen. You don’t see anybody getting killed! <br />
<br />
<strong>Michael </strong>To avoid the image of course means inciting your fantasy. Stimulating your fantasy.<br />
<br />
<strong>Peter </strong>But you have to react. In an American horror film they go, “Boo!” and you go “Whoa!” But it’s stupid. I don’t think yours is horror, I think it’s terror. I felt terrorised by you. You’re using a visual medium to deny the visual – in an age when image is everything, where the eye is the dominant sense.<br />
<br />
<strong>Michael </strong>It’s a result of the fact that I’m terrorised by the media. In a sort of way, it’s my defence. <br />
<br />
<strong>Peter</strong> But let me ask you, you say that Hollywood is a purveyor of violence. Is the audience in Germany less… [accepting of violence]?<br />
<br />
<strong>Michael </strong>No, because Germany is a cultural province of America.<br />
<br />
<strong>Peter </strong>So how does your film play in Germany or Austria? <br />
<br />
<strong>Michael </strong>In Austria, actually, I have the worst audience numbers. Maybe it’s changing now that I’m having success abroad, but normally they hate me. And I am proud of this. <br />
<br />
<strong>Peter</strong> I know what that feels like! I do most of my work in Europe – though I don’t like to be paranoid. (Laughs.) I think the really beautiful thing is to take a visual medium and turn it against itself. It’s really incredible to do that.<br />
<br />
<strong>Michael </strong>You know, today I had an interview with a journalist who said, “Is it not a bit subversive to do an anti-Hollywood film in Hollywood?” And I said yes.<br />
<br />
<strong>Peter </strong>Of course. But would you call your film a Hollywood film? <br />
<br />
<strong>Michael </strong>No, not at all. The only Hollywood touch is that they are American actors and Naomi is a Hollywood star.<br />
<br />
<strong>Peter </strong>But tell me, how do you think you will be able to retain focus with success? I mean, look what happened to Antonioni and Godard when they made Hollywood films. There was a certain loss of focus. <br />
<br />
<strong>Michael</strong> Yes. But I didn’t make a new film. I made the same film. I don’t know, I’ve had some propositions for films here and mostly they were either stupid or they weren’t interesting for me. Because I always write my own scripts. And I don’t really know American society so it’s difficult for me to find an idea that I can realise here.<br />
<br />
<strong>Peter </strong>I would think you’re correct.<br />
<br />
<strong>Michael </strong>The danger [of losing focus] is not very great. We will see when the film comes out in February if it’s a success. Then I will get a lot of offers. If it’s not a success nobody will ask me, so I am very wired! (Laughs.) <br />
<br />
<strong>Peter </strong>But how would you define the difference between the work that you do and let’s say, David Cronenberg? <br />
<br />
<strong>Michael </strong>It’s very different. Cronenberg is… it’s difficult to say. I find his work very impressive, but it is so personal. The transmission from his own obsessions – in my opinion, but I don’t know him personally. It’s like David Lynch.<br />
<br />
<strong>Peter</strong> I was going to ask you about him!<br />
<br />
<strong>Michael</strong> I like him very much. Cronenberg and Lynch create their own world with their own obsessions. And maybe I am also obsessed but not in this private way. Both are very impressive for me – it’s like a view into an alien world, fascinating. But the world that I would like to describe is not as interesting. I like to stick to the reality that I see. I’m more an exploiter of what I see than someone who watches his own obsessions. <br />
<br />
<strong>Peter </strong>And you think that their work is a mirror into their private obsessions.<br />
<br />
<strong>Michael</strong> Yes. Of course, in their private obsessions you see a reflection of their society as a whole. But it’s a very personal, psychological world. And I am not interested in psychology. I always say that my films are anti-psychological. In cinema, psychology and sociology are always an explanation to calm people down. It allows you to say that because mama was not nice to the little boy then the big boy is a bad person, right? That is generally the main structure. <br />
<br />
<strong>Peter</strong> But the audience can be looking at a psycho on screen and saying, “I don’t understand how a human being can be that cold, that brutal.” It’s almost confusing.<br />
<br />
<strong>Michael</strong> It is as confusing as life. <br />
<br />
<strong>Peter</strong> So, are you a realist? <br />
<br />
<strong>Michael </strong>I try to be. But it’s dangerous – all the isms are very dangerous. I am a realist but I am also not.<br />
<br />
<strong>Peter</strong> I would argue that Funny Games is brutally real. That’s what makes it. I mean, it’s not pretending to be real. It is so laconic, so terse. And what makes it awful is that it’s so… unawful. <br />
<br />
<strong>Michael</strong> It’s very real, how you feel [if you feel that these characters are emotionally cold]. I always try to create a model situation, but with a clash. Because a model is very abstract, it’s just a structure. And you give it some flesh, you fill it out. But it is not realistic. It is not naturalistic. The characters in Greek tragedy often walk on these stilts. So my characters are always on a higher platform.<br />
<br />
<strong>Peter</strong> But you don’t shoot low angles, like, for example, Yazujiro Ozu does.<br />
<br />
<strong>Michael</strong> He’s one of my great favourites. The first films I always show new students at film school are Andrei Tarkovsky’s The Mirror and Ozu’s Tokyo Story. And they’re always completely shocked because they’ve never seen films like this.<br />
<br />
<strong>Peter</strong> I don’t know that Tarkovsky.<br />
<br />
<strong>Michael</strong> It’s a masterpiece. The Mirror is his most complex film – his most difficult film and the most complex. <br />
<br />
<strong>Peter</strong> But let me ask you just about the structure of Caché for a minute. To me, seeing it several times, it seemed that when we were watching the tape being shot, the camera was always looking frontally. And when we were watching the tape being shown in the film we were watching from another angle. In other words, reality was always from an angle, no?<br />
<br />
<strong>Michael</strong> No, not always. For example, the discussion between Daniel Auteuil and the Arab guy, you’re supposed to see two times. Once in reality and once in film. And they were both shot from the same point of view but one was slightly crooked.<br />
<br />
<strong>Peter</strong> Aha. That’s what I meant.<br />
<br />
<strong>Michael</strong> Yeah, but you have to have good eyes to see it. (Laughs.) The normal public would have missed it. Maybe they’d feel something wrong, but they don’t know what it is. They can’t pinpoint it. But, you’re an architect – you should have a good eye.<br />
<br />
<strong>Peter</strong> A lot of the things I think about, I see and think about first in film. Basically, architecture is boring compared to film.<br />
<br />
<strong>Michael</strong> It’s boring? Ha. I have to say Antonioni is the master of filming architecture.<br />
<br />
<strong>Peter</strong> Yes, but he trained as an architect!<br />
<br />
<strong>Michael </strong>Ah, really?<br />
<br />
<strong>Peter </strong>He was an architect. And in L’Avventura, the shots of those Sicilian towns Avola and Noto are purely architectural – the stillness of them. I would say he’s not filming architecture, he is making architecture in film. There’s a difference because filming architecture is like making a documentary. He makes architecture. And Antonioni was a master. But you know who I love in terms of space is Rainer Fassbinder. When you’re looking through a door or a window into a space and there’s always a blockage. You’re not seeing the whole thing, you’re seeing part of the scene.<br />
<br />
<strong>Michael</strong> At the beginning his work was very theatrical – like on a stage – but after he changed a lot. <br />
<br />
<strong>Peter</strong> But, what do you think of him?<br />
<br />
<strong>Michael</strong> I loved his first film but I had problems with the others. The one thing I can’t stand is sentimentality, or the melodramatic. He is a great master, but I don’t like his sentimentality. And I don’t like bad actors, and his films have a lot of bad actors!<br />
<br />
<strong>Peter</strong> What about another Austrian filmmaker who I like: Peter Kubelka? <br />
<br />
<strong>Michael</strong> He is a master.<br />
<br />
<strong>Peter</strong> Of the flicker film. I made a flicker film once in homage to Peter Kubelka and then I realised I should stick to architecture!<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEje3SIejyB7gOrmlBSA5l1DKg9qKZJraQGcojlUd0XD6ZYkDNQeNq3zCcS2XUezwtEZKPrhqC8CwGZfds4awDbQQbq2C84FHqacltYeMv4EVdzJ6ygB0BhHa4XWOEY_SShBZ8BefZs-9P3C/s1600-h/eisenmann+iconeye3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" ps="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEje3SIejyB7gOrmlBSA5l1DKg9qKZJraQGcojlUd0XD6ZYkDNQeNq3zCcS2XUezwtEZKPrhqC8CwGZfds4awDbQQbq2C84FHqacltYeMv4EVdzJ6ygB0BhHa4XWOEY_SShBZ8BefZs-9P3C/s400/eisenmann+iconeye3.jpg" /></a><br />
</div><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><em>images Scene from Caché (Hidden), by Michael Haneke, 2005. </em><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><em>Scenes from Funny Games (US), by Michael Haneke, 2007. </em><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><em>Portrait by Elise Jaffe</em><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><em></em><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
</div><hr />simulacrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01025844469103673248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8673717048871599765.post-82830685030251196552009-12-23T01:12:00.000-08:002009-12-23T01:12:28.514-08:00"How Long Does One Feel Guilty?": SPIEGEL Interview with Holocaust Monument Architect Peter Eisenman<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuaQfeBQqQGha9Px1b7_zD5ZUzk40g71Bi_ROsmoZq6nssKH6cjFUUI2HdvWZyE1_cgNhrjjrMxiO9s7G-9GXsjYHgMRL3EYYnWfu9NODXUNc3tCwDyeP8UYCMhSF6N00Gnoa-MSmaszzo/s1600-h/eisenmann+spiegel+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" ps="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuaQfeBQqQGha9Px1b7_zD5ZUzk40g71Bi_ROsmoZq6nssKH6cjFUUI2HdvWZyE1_cgNhrjjrMxiO9s7G-9GXsjYHgMRL3EYYnWfu9NODXUNc3tCwDyeP8UYCMhSF6N00Gnoa-MSmaszzo/s320/eisenmann+spiegel+1.jpg" /></a><br />
</div><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">architect/artist: </span><b style="color: #666666;">Peter Eisenman</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">interview title:</span><b style="color: #666666;"> </b><b style="color: #666666;">"How Long Does One Feel Guilty?"</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">interviews compilation no: </span><b style="color: #666666;">T-43</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">interview format: </span><b style="color: #666666;">Text</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">date:<b> </b></span><b style="color: #666666;">05/09/2005</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">appeared in: </span><b style="color: #666666;">Spiegel</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">interviewer: <strong>Charles Hawley and Natalie Tenberg</strong></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">photo by: <strong>AP</strong></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #666666;">courtesy:<i><b> http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,355252,00.html</b></i></span><br />
<br />
<b>Interview Details:</b><br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<em>American architect Peter Eisenman's new monument to the Holocaust will be officially opened on Tuesday in Berlin. SPIEGEL ONLINE spoke with him about German guilt, the meaning of monuments and why he doesn't care if it is soon covered with graffiti.</em><br />
<em></em><br />
<br />
SPIEGEL ONLINE:<br />
<br />
Berlin has been watching the monument take shape for years. You've been working on it much longer, close to six years to be exact. Are you happy it's over?<br />
<br />
Eisenman: No. For sure not. It's like saying you're happy you're going to die. I am not a finisher, I am a starter. And I am always thinking, what is the next project, we are working on, and those are the things that are exciting to me. Endings are like, I always say, like a women's pregnancy. When she has a child, she is happy to have the child, but there is a thing called postpartum depression, that is that she is no longer carrying the baby. Is it exciting to see and having gotten it finished? Is there a sense of accomplishment? Is it more than I could have thought? Yes.<br />
<br />
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Are you satisfied with the finished product? Does it look like you wanted it to look? <br />
<br />
Eisenman: What is interesting to me is how much I have learned in doing the project. Just yesterday, I watched people walk into it for the first time and it is amazing how these heads disappear -- like going under water. Primo Levi talks about a similar idea in his book about Auschwitz. He writes that the prisoners were no longer alive but they weren't dead either. Rather, they seemed to descend into a personal hell. I was suddenly reminded of that passage while watching these heads disappear into the monument. You don't often see people disappear into something that appears to be flat. That was amazing, seeing them disappear.<br />
<br />
SPIEGEL ONLINE: You hadn't thought of that effect when you designed the monument?<br />
<br />
Eisenman: No, I hadn't. You pray and pray for such accidental results, because you really don't know what the finished product will be like. For example I didn't realize that the sound would be so muted inside. You don't hear anything but the sound of your footsteps. Also, the ground. We didn't want to use any materials that came out of the soil because the soil was for the Germans. "Blood and Soil" was the ideological moment that separated the Jews from the Germans. And here, the ground is very uneven and difficult. My wife yesterday got dizzy walking in the memorial because it slopes in several directions. It was really extraordinary.<br />
<br />
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Is there anything you don't like about the finished product? <br />
<br />
Eisenman: I think it is a little too aesthetic. It's a little too good looking. It's not that I wanted something bad looking, but I didn't want it to seem designed. I wanted the ordinary, the banal. If you want to show a picture, just show it -- don't spend too much time arranging it. And unfortunately it looks a bit too arranged.<br />
<br />
SPIEGEL ONLINE: A lot of people say it looks like a cemetery.<br />
<br />
Eisenman: I can't think about it. If one person says it looks like a graveyard and the next says it looks like a ruined city and then someone says it looks like it is from Mars -- everybody needs to make it look like something they know. There was an aerial shot in the paper on Saturday -- a beautiful photo. I have never seen a graveyard that looks like that. And when you walk in, it certainly doesn't feel like one. But if people see it like that, you can't stop them. It's fine.<br />
<br />
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Is there a feeling or an emotion that you wanted to generate in the people who visit the monument?<br />
<br />
Eisenman: I said all along that I wanted people to have a feeling of being in the present and an experience that they had never had before. And one that was different and slightly unsettling. The world is too full of information and here is a place without information. That is what I wanted.<br />
<br />
SPIEGEL ONLINE: You were against the building of the Center of Information underneath the monument, weren't you?<br />
<br />
Eisenman: I was. But as an architect you win some and you lose some.<br />
<br />
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Who is the monument for? Is it for the Jews?<br />
<br />
Eisenman: It's for the German people. I don't think it was ever intended to be for the Jews. It's a wonderful expression of the German people to place something in the middle of their city that reminds them -- could remind them -- of the past.<br />
<br />
SPIEGEL ONLINE: An expression of guilt, you mean? <br />
<br />
Eisenman: No. For me it wasn't about guilt. When looking at Germans, I have never felt a sense that they are guilty. I have encountered anti-Semitism in the United States as well. Clearly the anti-Semitism in Germany in the 1930s went overboard and it was clearly a terrible moment in history. But how long does one feel guilty? Can we get over that?<br />
<br />
I always thought that this monument was about trying to get over this question of guilt. Whenever I come here, I arrive feeling like an American. But by the time I leave, I feel like a Jew. And why is that? Because Germans go out of their way -- because I am a Jew -- to make me feel good. And that makes me feel worse. I can't deal with it. Stop making me feel good. If you are anti-Semitic, fine. If you don't like me personally, fine. But deal with me as an individual, not as a Jew. I would hope that this memorial, in its absence of guilt-making, is part of the process of getting over that guilt. You cannot live with guilt. If Germany did, then the whole country would have to go to an analyst. I don't know how else to say it.<br />
<br />
SPIEGEL ONLINE: The monument is specifically devoted to remembering the Jews who died in the Holocaust. Do you think it's right that the other groups victimized in the Holocaust are excluded from this monument?<br />
<br />
Eisenman: Yes, I do. I changed my mind on that a few months ago. The more I read about World War II history, the more I realized that the worse the war went in Russia, the more Jews were killed by the Nazis. When the Nazis realized they couldn't defeat the Bolshevists, they made sure they got the Jews. Now I think it's fine that the project is just for the Jews.<br />
<br />
SPIEGEL ONLINE: But now there is the danger that all other groups will want a monument and Berlin will turn into a city of memorials.<br />
<br />
Eisenman: I don't know about that. I'm certainly not going to do another one. I'm not into doing these monuments. <br />
<br />
SPIEGEL ONLINE: You're project was originally chosen in 1999 from among hundreds of proposals. What was the most difficult part of the six years that have elapsed since then?<br />
<br />
Eisenman: The project was heavily politicized. And knowing how to deal with the political process was difficult for me. I am an American and I don't fully understand the sensitivity or the sense of humor that operates in this country. Sometimes it has been difficult to know how to maneuver. There were a lot of problems and if you sit in a room with 20 politicians of different colors around a table, each one of them has to speak. That's a beautiful thing, but also very tedious. In the end, there is no such thing as a pure client who gives you totally free reign. And the best clients in the world are the people who cause you to struggle.<br />
<br />
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Now that the monument is finished and open to the public, it probably won't be long before the first swastika is sprayed onto the monument.<br />
<br />
Eisenman: Would that be a bad thing? I was against the graffiti coating from the start. If a swastika is painted on it, it is a reflection of how people feel. And if it remains there, it is a reflection of how the German government feels about people painting swastikas on the monument. That is something I have no control over. When you turn a project over to clients, they do with it what they want -- it's theirs and they occupy your work. You can't tell them what to do with it. If they want to knock the stones over tomorrow, honestly, that's fine. People are going to picnic in the field. Children will play tag in the field. There will be fashion models modeling there and films will be shot there. I can easily imagine some spy shoot 'em ups ending in the field. What can I say? It's not a sacred place.<br />
<br />
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Do you have a favorite monument?<br />
<br />
Eisenman: Actually, I'm not that into monuments. Honestly, I don't think much about them. I think more about sports.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_9sGjFq5fpqc57l0WGRgULTJ4ki3GyapzFIIYzH4YCiN-PGza1jkeIcd5QPA9MLb2Czfz3uM2VuAfkb5vngAOZDHIQB3_0ieAMP0ezVwbdLjbrNzMtJyLvO0ANawISJziGdes1liY20-W/s1600-h/eisenmann+spiegel+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" ps="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_9sGjFq5fpqc57l0WGRgULTJ4ki3GyapzFIIYzH4YCiN-PGza1jkeIcd5QPA9MLb2Czfz3uM2VuAfkb5vngAOZDHIQB3_0ieAMP0ezVwbdLjbrNzMtJyLvO0ANawISJziGdes1liY20-W/s640/eisenmann+spiegel+2.jpg" /></a><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><em><span style="font-size: x-small;">An aerial photo of the completed monument: "I wanted the ordinary, the banal."</span></em><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><em><span style="font-size: x-small;"></span></em><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><em><span style="font-size: x-small;">Some have criticized the monument by saying it looks like a gigantic cemetery.</span></em><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><em><span style="font-size: x-small;">"You pray for accidental results."</span></em><br />
</div><em><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span><br />
</div></em><div style="text-align: center;"><em><span style="font-size: x-small;">The Monument</span></em><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><em><span style="font-size: x-small;">The Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe is located in the center of Berlin, close to the Brandenburg Gate. Its intention is to honor the Jews murdered in the Holocaust, and to serve as a reminder for all future generations that such crimes should never happen again. The €25.3 million monument is made up of 2,711 concrete stele and covers an area the size of three football fields. An underground Information Center was added to the original design.</span></em><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div>Interview conducted by Charles Hawley and Natalie Tenberg <br />
<br />
<hr />simulacrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01025844469103673248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8673717048871599765.post-28558394041902311092009-12-22T14:39:00.000-08:002009-12-22T14:43:30.701-08:00Will Alsop returns to architecture: his interview with Guardian<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8T5OWdfaa781Px81Xj13Te-EYznRm8fNbiXMLIq5pMkg5ftfxMKlFnZHddTyDoWGwYvfM1ghyqlaMEHtSwnU6DqI-O5hV2qEp53Z9Gz7GwMMws-h1vjduLKOvL6DZSBTpMzCO1yp_j4JV/s1600-h/Will-Alsop-guardian.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8T5OWdfaa781Px81Xj13Te-EYznRm8fNbiXMLIq5pMkg5ftfxMKlFnZHddTyDoWGwYvfM1ghyqlaMEHtSwnU6DqI-O5hV2qEp53Z9Gz7GwMMws-h1vjduLKOvL6DZSBTpMzCO1yp_j4JV/s320/Will-Alsop-guardian.jpg" /></a><br />
</div><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">architect/artist: </span><b style="color: #666666;">Will Alsop</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">interview title:</span><b style="color: #666666;"> </b><b style="color: #666666;">Will Alsop returns to architecture</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">interviews compilation no: </span><b style="color: #666666;">T-41</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">interview format: </span><b style="color: #666666;">Text</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">date:<b> </b></span><b style="color: #666666;">2 November 2009</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">appeared in: </span><b style="color: #666666;">The Guardian</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">interviewer: </span><b style="color: #666666;">Steve Rose</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">photo by: </span><b style="color: #666666;">Eamonn McCabe</b><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #666666;">courtesy:<i><b> http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2009/nov/02/will-alsop-architecture</b></i></span><br />
<br />
<b>Interview Details:</b><br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>(image on top)</i></span><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Painting helps me explore architecture … Will Alsop. Photograph: Eamonn McCabe</i></span><br />
<br />
</div><br />
<b>Will Alsop returns to architecture</b><br />
<br />
<br />
<i>Three months ago Will Alsop said he was giving up architecture for painting. Now he says that was all a ruse</i><br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>(The following correction was printed in the Guardian's Corrections and clarifications column, Thursday 5 November 2009)</i></span><br />
<br />
<i>A first name went awry in this article about the return of the architect Will Alsop to his profession: the CEO of RMJM, the firm Mr Alsop has joined, is Peter, not Robert, Morrison</i><br />
<hr /><br />
Only in the world of architecture could a 61-year-old merit the description enfant terrible. But in the absence of any significant competition, Will Alsop persists in fitting the bill. What's he done this time? Not a new, eyebrow-raising ensemble of his trademark blobs and stilts, nor a provocative proposal to rebuild Croydon out of cheese (in 2007, he suggested flooding the south London suburb as part of a regeneration scheme). In fact, he's done the very opposite: in August, Alsop announced in the Guardian that he was giving up architecture altogether. He was going to teach instead, as well as launch "a serious inquiry into painting". It was a dramatic end to a career, although not an entirely surprising one. Alsop's love of painting is well known, and financial difficulties had already forced him to sell his practice to a larger firm a few years back. Now architecture had become "like pulling teeth", he complained.<br />
<br />
But three months after his shock exit, Alsop is back. He has opened a new office under the umbrella of RMJM, another major British architectural firm. It turns out that the "going off to paint" line was just a ruse to throw his previous employers, Archial, off the scent, while he did some behind-the-scenes manoeuvring.<br />
<br />
He smirks when I ask him to explain himself. "A: I didn't lie, and B: I have no obligation to the press," he says. "I was painting, and there's quite a bit of work in my Norfolk studio to prove it. On the other hand, you could say I always paint anyway. I've also been doing a little bit more teaching, at Ryerson University in Toronto. So I wasn't lying there. It's just that I didn't say what else I was doing."<br />
<br />
He is now heading up RMJM's London office, which is to be known as "Will Alsop at RMJM" ("It sounds a bit like Gordon Ramsay at Claridges, doesn't it?"). For the moment, his new Battersea studio looks more like a workers' canteen; the former industrial space is still mostly empty desks. There are fewer than 10 employees here, and one telephone line, although they will soon be joined by staff from RMJM's existing office in east London. There is, however, a chipboard wall already plastered with plans and sections of a new skyscraper (new projects in the Middle East and South Korea is all he will reveal), while a few of Alsop's large, colourful, semi-abstract paintings lean against the walls. "Once we've got it organised, it'll feel like an Alsop studio," he says. "Paintings and models, slightly scruffy, which I think is important. This space isn't roughed up enough yet. It should feel like a workshop."<br />
<br />
Alsop has always been the frustrated-artist type of architect. His built work is like his paintings: full of bold gestures, bright colours and patterns. When it works, it's playful and unique, like his Stirling prize-winning Peckham Library in south London, with its copper-green cladding and jaunty orange "beret" sitting on top, the whole top-heavy form held up by wonky stilts. When it doesn't work, the failure is all the more public, as with, The Public, West Bromwich's faltering interactive art gallery, where Alsop's brash black-and-pink, blobs-and-all design only drew more attention to its technical and financial troubles. The Public is now up and running, at last, but not before it had made another dent in Alsop's increasingly battered reputation. Even with a bog standard building type, you can count on Alsop to inject some of his considerable personality into it, as with his recent Palestra in south London – a top-heavy office block with jazzy glazing patterns, or his new Chips apartment block in Manchester, its bright-coloured facades emblazoned with giant lettering.<br />
<br />
Marking your spot on earth<br />
<br />
Alsop doesn't see the point of architecture that simply blends in. "I have done lots of work with the general public, and what I hear over and over again is that people are looking for something that marks their spot on the earth's surface. Something that has an identity which they don't share with others," he says. The trouble is, it's become harder and harder for him to be the free-thinking architect. "Very often the principal [architect] spends more time filling in VAT returns than getting on with what they spent seven years training to do," he says. "It's distracting. You need time and you need relative relaxation in order to work your way into a project, and if you don't do that you just end up repeating what you've already done."<br />
<br />
Perhaps if Alsop had spent a little more time filling in those VAT returns, he might still be running his own practice. For 25 years he worked independently, his career a steady accumulation of awards and bigger commissions – until about a decade ago. The tipping point was probably a commission for the "Fourth Grace" for Liverpool's historic waterfront: Alsop beat Norman Foster and Richard Rogers to win the prestigious competition with his radical "cloud" structure, but it proved a poisoned chalice. His design drew fierce public criticism, major changes were called for, costs spiralled, and then finally the scheme was shelved in 2004. Several other projects fell through shortly afterwards (a building in Bangkok, a development in Manchester) , and there just wasn't enough money to see the practice through its lean patch. "We should have been covered and we were not covered financially. That pissed me off," he says. "I paid the price for my disinterest in that side of architecture – as a business."<br />
<br />
In 2005, Alsop sold a 40% stake in his firm to venture capitalists. A year later, Alsop Architects was bought in its entirety by SMC, a publicly listed new architectural group that was then aggressively acquiring small regional British practices. Within a couple of years, SMC became the fourth largest architectural firm in the country, with Alsop the jewel in its crown. But they were plagued by internal issues that saw SMC's founder, Stuart McColl, ejected and the name changed to Archial. Then the credit crunch bit, and Archial posted a loss of £4.3m for the first half of this year. "I don't think the plc as a model works very well in architecture," Alsop says of SMC/Archial. "Rather than architectural intent, a number of decisions were made purely on a financial basis. The main board only had one architect on it." Alsop still had creative freedom, but his offices in Toronto and Singapore were closed down. "I had my wings clipped." Did it become acrimonious? "No," he smiles. "Just boring."<br />
<br />
On the face of it, there's not a huge difference between Alsop's previous role and his new one. But RMJM has a better pedigree: it was one of the key modernist firms of the 1950s and 60s, and has made a huge impression on the landscape of postwar Britain, from university campuses and housing estates to London's Commonwealth Institute, right up to the Scottish Parliament. Like SMC, it has also stepped up its expansion drive under new CEO Robert Morrison (a former army officer and a non-architect). Morrison thinks the industry is due for a major shake-up. "You saw it in marketing in the 70s, where WSP and Saatchi came along and looked at an industry which was largely made up of small companies. This is a very fragmented sector, and I strongly believe that over the next decade or two that's got to change dramatically, and the emergence of one or two superfirms is an inevitability."<br />
<br />
As well as Alsop, RMJM has collaborated with other well-known architects, such as Frank Gehry and Jean Nouvel, although nothing has yet come of these partnerships. Perhaps Morrison's vision really is the future of architecture: a handful of global "superfirms" with the odd star name attached for a dash of creative flair. But most architects hope not.<br />
<br />
Drawing, painting, dreaming<br />
<br />
Only 10% of RMJM's work is now in the UK; it is involved in several major international projects, such as Gazprom's controversial skyscraper in St Petersburg. Critics say the firm's growth has come at the cost of its identity, and that it is producing less remarkable work these days.<br />
<br />
Of course, it would be good to see Alsop return to form. His Stirling Prize was nearly 10 years ago. But even if he's no longer quite the enfant, his appetite for the terrible seems to be undiminished. He's looking forward to doing what he enjoys most: "drawing, painting, dreaming and working on architecture", albeit with the benefit of a large safety net. Professionally, this new marriage might turn out to be a happy one. Or it might last as long as Alsop's previous engagement.<br />
<br />
Either way, there is no chance of him ever really giving up architecture to go off and paint, Alsop admits. He will never retire. "Painting to me is a way of exploring architecture, anyway," he says. "It's all the same thing. If I spent all my time painting, it wouldn't mean I'd given up thinking about architecture. I can sit in my studio on a Saturday morning and find something on a large piece of paper, and the feeling that you get is almost as good as having finished a building that's turned out all right. It's not about designing something, it's about discovering what something could be – and I think that's a very important distinction."simulacrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01025844469103673248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8673717048871599765.post-36991240315509651842009-12-22T13:35:00.000-08:002009-12-22T13:35:04.149-08:00STARS CREATE ADDED VALUE: Interview with Wolf D. Prix by Business Location Austria<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGX9aE40PtoXxKvoRvmPBpiJAoh4po-ZeKtQA3WI5clzcAzy1byF2U84oDZmBvBTtS7_k2RmtPAAyEMFClzMXKNux1wImASSkLJM7JuDo9NVIG1aBAxwID2G7ZQOIrUYmDpOkqavgya5Hr/s1600-h/wolf+prix+businesslocation+austria.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGX9aE40PtoXxKvoRvmPBpiJAoh4po-ZeKtQA3WI5clzcAzy1byF2U84oDZmBvBTtS7_k2RmtPAAyEMFClzMXKNux1wImASSkLJM7JuDo9NVIG1aBAxwID2G7ZQOIrUYmDpOkqavgya5Hr/s320/wolf+prix+businesslocation+austria.jpg" /></a><br />
</div><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">architect/artist: </span><b style="color: #666666;">Wolf D. Prix</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">interview title:</span><b style="color: #666666;"> Stars create Added Value: Interview with Wolf D. Prix<br />
</b><span style="color: #666666;">interviews compilation no: </span><b style="color: #666666;">T-45</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">interview format: </span><b style="color: #666666;">Text</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">date:<b> </b></span><b style="color: #666666;">Annual 2006</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">appeared in: </span><b style="color: #666666;">Business Location Austria</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">interviewer: <b>Roland Kanfer</b> </span><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">photo by: <b></b></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #666666;">courtesy:<i><b> http://www.business-location-austria.com/content_interview.html?issue=2&page=63</b></i></span><br />
<br />
<b>Interview Details:</b><br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=8673717048871599765" name="more"></a>(as appeared in Web page)<br />
<br />
<hr /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>“Architects have to be avant-garde and strategic in their thinking. It is difficult for young architects today to get across their own profile, to make a name for themselves and then to push things through.”</i></span><br />
</div><br />
<hr />Interview with Wolf D. Prix<br />
STARS CREATE ADDED VALUE<br />
<br />
<i>“Architecture has to sizzle,” say Wolf D. Prix and Helmut Swiczinsky, who founded Coop Himmelb(l)au 38 years ago. The former experimental architects are now engaged in planning major projects. Below is an interview with Wolf Prix, the front man for the Coop, on vision and reality in architecture, the role of the media in the building process, and the future of architectural training.</i><br />
<br />
<b>After 38 years, Coop Himmelblau has finally made it and joined the establishment....</b><br />
<br />
I should hope so!<br />
<br />
<b>Is architecture for you just visionary design or does it also entail making that vision a reality?</b><br />
<br />
Built architecture is the three-dimensional expression of our society. The more complex the society, the more complex the architecture has to be.<br />
<br />
<b>Do you agree with those who say that architecture is shaped by the conflicting forces of art, business and politics?</b><br />
<br />
Of course. Architecture expresses the tensions that exist between these three fields.<br />
<br />
<b>How can an architect prevail in the face of these conflicting forces?<br />
</b><br />
He has to think strategically. He cannot allow himself to be the mere agent of the developer and bow to alleged factual restraints, although that happens with increasing frequency. Architects would then soon cease to exist. We would become painters of pictures conveying special moods.<br />
Developers use the term star architect to market their buildings.<br />
<br />
That probably has something to do with function, architecture and appearance. All developers know that they are getting a special building. Might it not be that we, the star architects, think conceptually, rationally and argumentatively and that this additional thought, in turn, creates added value?<br />
<br />
<b>What role do you think the media play in architecture and in construction? Do they promote mediocrity in architecture?</b><br />
<br />
The media are important for conveying content. When the discussion becomes shallow and confines itself to star architects, a distorted picture emerges of the architects’ responsibility.<br />
<br />
<b>How would you describe that responsibility?</b><br />
<br />
Architects have to be avant-garde and strategic in their thinking. It is difficult for young architects today to get across their own profile, to make a name for themselves and then to push things through.<br />
<br />
<b>Is the existence of the Chamber of Architects in its present form still justified?</b><br />
<br />
These guilds for artists are an inadmissible form of protection for mediocrity. But there has to be an instrument for supporting architects. What is needed is an association to represent the interests of the architects without being a mere tool of the building industry.<br />
But that organisation doesn’t necessarily have to be the Chamber. For instance, IG Architektur is emerging as an interest association.<br />
<br />
That too is a chamber, just more recent. That is what is so appalling about our society, that the very individuals who step forth to make changes are soon no better than the people they set out to change. What this country needs is a discussion, emanating from the universities yet also carried into the universities. Austria has six schools of architecture. There would be a chance here if people weren’t dozing off.<br />
<br />
<b>What should we be doing to prepare students of architecture for the future?</b><br />
<br />
We should be giving them strategic training on conception and realisation. Integrative thinking and development of strategies is the future for architects. Our school is positioned, just as we are, at the juncture of idea, conception and realisation.<br />
<br />
By Roland Kanfer<br />
<br />
<br />
<hr />simulacrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01025844469103673248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8673717048871599765.post-89027375663213670962009-12-22T13:26:00.000-08:002009-12-22T13:26:43.515-08:00The Tower Builder: Interview with Heinz Neumann by Business Location Austria<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihVpoqvRT-vxAQcvwEnoY2m4P9luH0zdktrcEiBPXdzL5vPsPCrNgqcDr7ZNiCmYb1VPIJwzMDwWBDw9k77MoOqhIdcJ4dGk9zdh5AUFGsatCVw4WoGJzMgJG_wcnGL1aGi6emWS2dGjjr/s1600-h/heinz+neumann.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihVpoqvRT-vxAQcvwEnoY2m4P9luH0zdktrcEiBPXdzL5vPsPCrNgqcDr7ZNiCmYb1VPIJwzMDwWBDw9k77MoOqhIdcJ4dGk9zdh5AUFGsatCVw4WoGJzMgJG_wcnGL1aGi6emWS2dGjjr/s320/heinz+neumann.jpg" /></a><br />
</div><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">architect/artist: </span><b style="color: #666666;">Heinz Neumann</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">interview title:</span><b style="color: #666666;"> The Tower Builder: Interview with Heinz Neumann<br />
</b> <span style="color: #666666;">interviews compilation no: </span><b style="color: #666666;">T-44</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">interview format: </span><b style="color: #666666;">Text</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">date:<b> </b></span><b style="color: #666666;">Annual 2007</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">appeared in: </span><b style="color: #666666;">Business Location Austria</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">interviewer: </span><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">photo by: <b>Uniqua</b> </span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #666666;">courtesy:<i><b> http://www.business-location-austria.com/content_interview.html?id=40&page=85&issue=3</b></i></span><br />
<br />
<b>Interview Details:</b><br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a>(as appeared in Web page)<br />
<br />
<hr /><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>“We have to handle our developed<br />
environments with great care<br />
because we, our society, our age,<br />
will one day be judged on the basis<br />
of the buildings that we leave<br />
behind.”<br />
© Uniqua</i></span><br />
</div><br />
<hr /><br />
Interview with Heinz Neumann<br />
THE TOWER BUILDER<br />
<br />
<i>Heinz Neumann is one of the best-known and most influential architects in Austria. His latest creations include the Uniqa Tower on the Danube Canal in Vienna. Business Location Austria spoke with him about his vision of modern office architecture.</i><br />
<br />
<b>Do you see yourself as an artist or architect?</b><br />
<br />
I like to call my approach to architecture “self-evident architecture”. One hundred years ago, someone asked Adolf Loos whether a building should be art or a building. His reply was: “A building has to be a building, because it has to appeal to everyone. If someone doesn’t like art, it doesn’t matter.” For me, this means that architecture must be “self-evident”.<br />
<br />
<b>What do you feel are the greatest challenges in planning a building the size of the Uniqa Tower?</b><br />
<br />
In order to plan and develop projects, you must be able to think conceptually and creatively and to find economical solutions. The harmonisation of a multitude of important aspects in a developed environment also requires an awareness of historical importance and responsibility towards future generations. This is a challenge.<br />
<br />
<b>What are the most significant factors in planning?</b><br />
<br />
We have to handle our developed environments with great care because we, our society, our age, will one day be judged on the basis of the buildings that we leave behind. This is an important responsibility. And architects bear this responsibility.<br />
<br />
<b>You planned the Uniqa Tower. This also included a comprehensive interior design concept. What does this concept look like in the case of this building?</b><br />
<br />
Office buildings should above all be functional, but the architectural aspect cannot fall by the wayside.<br />
Light, colour, room climate and room acoustics are the most important factors that an architect must consider and that determine the occupants’ well-being.<br />
<br />
<b>One of the special features of the Uniqa Tower is the bar and fitness area for the employees. Are these amenities unique to the Uniqa Tower, or are things like this commonly included in office buildings nowadays?</b><br />
<br />
These features show that the building owner looked beyond the mere creation of workspaces and attached importance to increasing the attractiveness of the building for its employees and for outsiders.<br />
<br />
<b>What is “fashionable” at the moment in office buildings? We see a lot of relatively “transparent” buildings with glass and wood elements today. What is in greatest demand?</b><br />
<br />
It is my personal conviction that it is not an architect’s place to spread a credo or to dole out advice “from on high”. Our developed environment cannot be based on the premise that you can only build round or square or slanted or whatever. “Fashionable” is a fleeting, continually changing phenomenon that has no place in a building project. I also feel that every building owner deserves a personal solution that fulfils his or her specific needs. In whatever material is desired or appropriate.<br />
<br />
<b>A quick look around the city makes it evident that a lot of people want to build as tall as possible. What is the intent behind these new office high-rises?</b><br />
<br />
High-rises are a product of the available space and the available infrastructure. It always has been and still is legitimate that a tall building is a landmark and a sign of the power of an organisation. In the case of the Uniqa Tower, I had to take into account that this building was to be the headquarters of a major corporation. Key themes in the design were transparency, openness, innovation, dynamism, future orientation, the company’s brand philosophy and its corporate identity. If I may, I would like to quote from the book “UNIQA Tower”: “The basic premises behind the design were as follows. The elliptical form lends a tall building the necessary elegance and slenderness. We did not want to place a hulking monolith at this important location, but a building that is elegant from every perspective. Anyone who knows all the details of this structure as a designer and architect recognises the poetry embodied in the slick, elegant form at street level that thrusts upward, tilts slightly but does not hide its strength and resilience, and that then runs down the other side and flows into the adjoining structures in a gentle, undulating form. I feel that the building was incorporated poetically into a relatively rigid environment.” [DL]<br />
<br />
<hr />simulacrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01025844469103673248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8673717048871599765.post-68051952668906554822009-12-22T12:51:00.000-08:002009-12-22T12:51:42.260-08:00Architects urged to copy India: Conversation with Charles Correa about sustainability by Asia Architecture Review<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhr555fefl4H1wJb30r4KbZ8k7NS_mxVW9ErWayZJscbkfEOljkucDIsfLyUGKF-SizfUGP5JNgHZQRary_e1ElgNNiQQGWUEn3nVWPtCK1yfWD4UU4uTooSvA5bEVYd2hXIyjPEzPA1kDD/s1600-h/charles+correa1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhr555fefl4H1wJb30r4KbZ8k7NS_mxVW9ErWayZJscbkfEOljkucDIsfLyUGKF-SizfUGP5JNgHZQRary_e1ElgNNiQQGWUEn3nVWPtCK1yfWD4UU4uTooSvA5bEVYd2hXIyjPEzPA1kDD/s320/charles+correa1.jpg" /></a><br />
</div><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">architect/artist: </span><b style="color: #666666;">Charles Correa</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">interview title:</span><b style="color: #666666;"> Architects urged to copy India<br />
</b> <span style="color: #666666;">interviews compilation no: </span><b style="color: #666666;">T-43</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">interview format: </span><b style="color: #666666;">Text</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">date:<b> </b></span><b style="color: #666666;">October 12, 2008</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">appeared in: </span><b style="color: #666666;">Asia Architecture Review</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">interviewer: </span><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">photo by: </span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #666666;">courtesy:<i><b> http://asiaarchitecture.com/?p=50</b></i></span><br />
<br />
<b>Interview Details:</b><br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<a href="" name="more"></a><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=8673717048871599765" name="more"></a>(as appeared in their web page)<br />
<br />
Renowned Indian architect Charles Correa said that housing designs from his home country offer the key to eco-friendly buildings of the future. How true is it? Is traditional Indian courtyard hoises a key to sustainable architecture?<br />
<br />
Correa, who is famed for design principles based on low-density, low cost architecture at a reduced environmental cost, wants architects to examine low-rise, high-density urban areas such as Rajasthan as a way of best using natural and local resources.<br />
<br />
“The basic principle of housing in a country like India is that you have very limited resources,” Correa told BBC World Service’s Masterpiece programme.<br />
<br />
“Therefore you have to use great ingenuity. That’s when you really learn to respect what traditionally is done.<br />
<br />
“If you look at a village in Kerala, everything is re-used and recycled. Leaves which fall from palm trees are used again for the roofs.<br />
<br />
“There’s nothing like poverty to be the mother of invention. As an architect, looking at those solutions, I was absolutely stunned by it.”<br />
<br />
Rubbish dumps<br />
<br />
The explosion of the Indian economy in recent years has triggered massive expansion in the heart of India’s major cities.<br />
<br />
Correa, who said that Indians use space “extremely intelligently”, explained that in India, tower blocks – “going high” – do not attract many people, and therefore better use of space in low-rise buildings has to be achieved.<br />
<br />
Correa has played a part in designing some of the large number of developments which have begun springing up.<br />
<br />
He said that this had been a chance to put his principles into practice – not only environmentally-sound buildings, but ones that fit with their surroundings too.<br />
<br />
“In New Bombay, this new centre, what we’ve done is try to use some very simple, direct housing which uses open-to-sky space, which is very important in the tradition,” he said.<br />
<br />
“A courtyard, a terrace, is actually another room.”<br />
<br />
As environmental concerns become ever more prevalent, some architects are moving away from the glass, steel and concrete model of modern city building.<br />
<br />
One example has been the rebuilding of houses in Afghanistan using waste polystyrene.<br />
<br />
A similar scheme has now been tried in south London, where polystyrene from local rubbish dumps is mixed with cement to form lightweight yet durable building blocks.<br />
<br />
But Correa stressed that the knowledge of how to work with the environment, climate and materials had long been available – but modern architects had “forgotten and forsaken” it.<br />
<br />
He cited the Alhambra Palace as a “machine for dealing with the hot desert climate of southern Spain”.<br />
<br />
“The walls and water fountains are not just decorative elements, they are a way of trapping the dry air and humidifying it.<br />
<br />
“Today that is done by mechanical engineers… the architects make any arbitrary shape they want, and then the engineers step in and make the thing liveable.<br />
<br />
“We must understand that’s the big difference in the process. We have abdicated something very important to architecture, and that is the well-spring of imagination that comes from a response to some basic elements.”<br />
<br />
Traditional solutions<br />
<br />
However, Correa conceded that in the West, sustainable architecture is not cheap.<br />
<br />
He said that one environmentally-friendly element on one building could pay for electricity for a Kerala village for a year.<br />
<br />
“It is very cold and so you have to use brick and steel in order to build,” he said.<br />
<br />
“While you’re doing that, people go in for high-rise buildings.”<br />
<br />
Some new buildings are taking this into account – the new Swiss Re tower in London has been designed to maximise daylight and natural ventilation so that it uses half the energy typically required by an office block<br />
<br />
Meanwhile Correa said that his best example of environmental sustainability was not a building, but the city of Yazd in Iran.<br />
<br />
The main feature of the city is its “windcatcher” houses and towers, which take the dry desert air down into the basement, where it is humidified by water and then circulated through the houses.<br />
<br />
“The whole thing is a masterpiece of connected spaces,” Correa said.<br />
<br />
“What I’ve learned, living here in India, is that the most wonderful traditional solutions exist which exemplify all the concerns of the environmentalist today.<br />
<br />
“We don’t have to invent these things again.”<br />
<br />
Source:BBC News<br />
<hr />simulacrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01025844469103673248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8673717048871599765.post-65979378894444156882009-12-22T12:41:00.000-08:002009-12-22T12:41:55.614-08:00“Placing People First”: Interviewing Ong & Ong about their works by Asia Architecture Review<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguw6A6-CgggpELALSlEEjtaZlpgiupJLyfZB6YRRlJQ2nYT1Hc9Lz8rRIBdC1BGlQa5fJxsAcDs5yGFcisRxilWhwEyTOKh1caC4_xPp7vx6Byx1NYlOEae0hSBtQwKFkgeHP9DWoRYXx8/s1600-h/ong+n+ong+singapore.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguw6A6-CgggpELALSlEEjtaZlpgiupJLyfZB6YRRlJQ2nYT1Hc9Lz8rRIBdC1BGlQa5fJxsAcDs5yGFcisRxilWhwEyTOKh1caC4_xPp7vx6Byx1NYlOEae0hSBtQwKFkgeHP9DWoRYXx8/s320/ong+n+ong+singapore.jpg" /></a><br />
</div><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">architect/artist: </span><b style="color: #666666;">Ong & Ong</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">interview title:</span><b style="color: #666666;"> “Placing People First”<br />
</b> <span style="color: #666666;">interviews compilation no: </span><b style="color: #666666;">T-42</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">interview format: </span><b style="color: #666666;">Text</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">date:<b> </b></span><b style="color: #666666;">November 24, 2009 </b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">appeared in: </span><b style="color: #666666;">Asia Architecture Review</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">interviewer: </span><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">photo by: </span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #666666;">courtesy:<i><b> http://asiaarchitecture.com/?p=131</b></i></span><br />
<br />
<b>Interview Details:</b><br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=8673717048871599765" name="more"></a>(as appeared in their web page)<br />
<br />
<i>This week, we are proud to present an article highlighting our interview with leading Singapore Architectural firm Ong&Ong.<br />
</i><br />
<b>1) What was the inspiration behind the project?</b><br />
<br />
The inspirational concept of the NHC new building was drawn from the “Placing People First” philosophy. It encompasses the needs of the various key users – the patient, the visitor and the staff.<br />
<br />
<b>2)What do you think is the most unique feature of the design? </b><br />
<br />
A distinctive feature is its two fronts – institutional and garden. The institutional front, the main approach for vehicles and houses the medical facilities, is quiet and formal. The garden front, at the other end, faces the garden deck in the Outram Campus Master plan. This serves primarily as the healing park and waiting area.<br />
<br />
<b>3)How have the climate and environmental factors affect the design?</b><br />
<br />
Due to the specialised treatment procedures that will be practiced in the building, the indoor environment of the building is entirely under artifical control and with infection control being a high priority issue. Although the indoor environment of the building is totally artificially controlled for clinical reasons, the building is designed with best green and environmental sustainable considerations in mind, such as north-south orientation of major facades, adequate solar shadings, good window to wall ratio, high performance glass, sky gardens, etc. The external metal solar screen for the clinical block is a result of such considerations.<br />
<br />
<b>4)What are the urban issue facing this project and how do you come about resolving it?</b><br />
<br />
The new building will adopt various green building features, technologies and innovations to achieve better performance in energy efficiency, water usage, use of recycled and reusable materials, indoor environmental quality and environmental management. Examples include the passive solar strategy for the institutional front, which reduces heat emission and direct glare and sunlight into the building while introducing diffuse daylight condition and cutting overall energy consumption; and the use of environmental friendly building elements which are energy efficient in fabrication, self-cleansing and long-lasting. The use of sustainable construction defines a green benchmark for healthcare design in South-East Asia.<br />
<br />
<b>5)Would you like to tell us more about your firm and please add on any information you would like reader to know about the work of your firm.</b><br />
<br />
Corporate Profile<br />
<br />
Ong&Ong has earned an unparalleled reputation for integrating skilled architecture, clever interior design, creative sense for environmental branding and sensitive landscape design over the past 3 decades. Paramount to our success lies in our insistence on servicing our clients with creativity, excellence and commitment. We continually strive to uphold our mission to be the designer of our age – a premier design practice both locally and in the region.<br />
<br />
Faced with many tenets today, design is often varied and fragmented. To resolve this challenge, Ong&Ong adopts a 360° design solution which provides a framework for threading cross-discipline approach into a singular integrated design solution, encompassing all aspects of design from master planning, architecture, and interior design to landscape design and project management.<br />
<br />
In addition to projects in Singapore, Ong&Ong has also completed large-scale developments regionally. This has prompted the setting up of offices in China, Vietnam, India and Malaysia. In-depth knowledge of local context, culture and regulations allow us to better understand our clients’ needs. We are an ISO14001 certified practice and consistently strive to meet and exceed clients’ expectations. <br />
<br />
<hr />simulacrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01025844469103673248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8673717048871599765.post-63873490821812698522009-12-22T12:34:00.000-08:002009-12-22T12:34:07.921-08:00Interview with DeStefano and Partners on Yinzhou Fantasy Island Master Plan by Asia Architecture Review<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOfw_TJpYerfoZQCQpYj71fdU0EHfeUNKEIbDYhT07OFVfHT9FkL94FClAMBQwJeeZLMCUIvfx3a0UihAQ0RstZHVM-qhUy5w9LFelIA0j70k2av5At7Ex7dwTjf02t-17ou7KP84m_hCn/s1600-h/destefano+china1.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOfw_TJpYerfoZQCQpYj71fdU0EHfeUNKEIbDYhT07OFVfHT9FkL94FClAMBQwJeeZLMCUIvfx3a0UihAQ0RstZHVM-qhUy5w9LFelIA0j70k2av5At7Ex7dwTjf02t-17ou7KP84m_hCn/s320/destefano+china1.jpeg" /></a><br />
</div><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">architect/artist: </span><b style="color: #666666;">DeStefano and Partners, Scott Sarver</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">interview title:</span><b style="color: #666666;"> </b><b style="color: #666666;">Interview with DeStefano and Partners on Yinzhou Fantasy Island Master Plan, Ningbo</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">interviews compilation no: </span><b style="color: #666666;">T-41</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">interview format: </span><b style="color: #666666;">Text</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">date:<b> </b></span><b style="color: #666666;">August 24, 2009 </b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">appeared in: </span><b style="color: #666666;">Asia Architecture Review</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">interviewer: </span><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">photo by: </span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #666666;">courtesy:<i><b> http://asiaarchitecture.com/?p=125</b></i></span><br />
<br />
<b>Interview Details:</b><br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a>(as appeared in their web page)<br />
<br />
<br />
<i>Prominent Architecture firm DeStefano and Partners has recently create a new retail hub in the heart of Ningbo, China. The proposal introduces a dynamic shopping concept of Eight International Shopping Streets with a 200 meter tall landmark tower, giving rise to a new image of Yinzhou marked with a hybridization of cultural and ecogical friendly spaces. We are therefore proud to interview Mr Scott Sarver, Chairman and Design Principal for the Yinzhou island project.<br />
</i><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilb_zV8SxPuEJwDRqM5M98A8d-MPpipyKCDZGsbjYwE-9A-dodqIO5silp6b6APhcY1Z8o8t__iRvIL5w_kJgLSNLoVvLGQ8pNtYi_2aNoEEX0jv2RDeHwzBKpxs46UjPu6lOMGD-NdCjK/s1600-h/destefano+china2.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilb_zV8SxPuEJwDRqM5M98A8d-MPpipyKCDZGsbjYwE-9A-dodqIO5silp6b6APhcY1Z8o8t__iRvIL5w_kJgLSNLoVvLGQ8pNtYi_2aNoEEX0jv2RDeHwzBKpxs46UjPu6lOMGD-NdCjK/s320/destefano+china2.jpeg" /></a><br />
</div><br />
<b>1) Ningbo was one of China’s oldest cities, and was known as a trade city on the silk road at least 2000 years ago.It was also a major ancient trading port. How has the history of Ningbo influenced you in concepting a masterplan for the island of Yinzhou? </b><br />
<br />
Ningbo is located at the confluence of three rivers—The Yao and Feng Hua Rivers meet to become the Yong River which then flows out to the sea. The inspiration for this project and for the tower was to draw on the City’s history with foreign trade and create a retail/shopping complex modeled after the eight great shopping centers around the world—Paris, London, Madrid, Dubai, Milan, Tokyo and New York.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>2)What do you think is the most unique feature of the masterplan? </b><br />
<br />
The master plan draws on the concept of using the geometry of the land and the project, for example, the pyramids, the Eiffel Tower. In this instance, the site’s triangular shape created by the three rivers influences the strong geometry of the master plan and is reflected in the design of the tower.<br />
<br />
There is a concentration of activity all in one place; most master plans are based on diversity of use. The Ningbo master plan concentrates activity and works because it helps to support a more regional destination rather than neighborhood retail opportunities.<br />
<br />
<b>3)How have environmental elements affect the design?</b><br />
<br />
Environmental elements affect the design. Outside the island, there is a natural ecofriendly park that accepts the different water levels; the island has a hard edge with its vertical wall. The soft edge opposite the island accepts seasonal rains, natural flora and fauna. <br />
<br />
Through the master plan, it is intended that all buildings be developed with the highest levels of sustainability.<br />
<br />
<b>4)What is your take on the direction of China in term of Urban design and architecture?</b><br />
<br />
China is incredibly dynamic because of the rate of economic change that is underway, yet there also are very traditional and highly social urban planning needs to respect. It is important to understand the culture and these unique characteristics and not look to other places in the world to duplicate those in China.<br />
<br />
<b>5)Would you like to tell us more about your firm ?</b><br />
<br />
DeStefano Partners (DP) proudly brings a high level of design and professional expertise to a wide variety of architectural, and planning projects. From high-profile institutional and office buildings to neighborhood-defining streetscape elements, DP designs express the firm’s commitment to creating vibrant, livable and functional spaces through the delicate process of realizing goals that are unique to each client. Our design practice is collaborative, detail-oriented, and dedicated to creative problem solving. <br />
<br />
Based in Chicago, Illinois USA, DP serves clients in the U.S., Asia, the Middle East and Latin America to meet varied design and planning needs. DP is committed to sustainable building technology, emphasizing transit-oriented development and design elements that respond to local climate, culture and context. <br />
<br />
In the best Chicago tradition, we respect “the way things go together” and are proud of our high standards of craftsmanship, detailing and documentation. Inspired by the cultural, geographic and organizational diversity of our clientele, our mission is to realize environments that are conducive to daily living, supportive of commercial enterprise and engaging to the human spirit.<br />
<br />
<hr />simulacrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01025844469103673248noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8673717048871599765.post-58935535889331859222009-12-20T13:12:00.000-08:002009-12-20T13:26:51.639-08:00Question time: Zaha Hadid talks on Zaha Hadid on aquatics centre, Baghdad in interview with Guardian<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhF_uQXyBUTIvFJ4HlSU0xeUWYH_9eCvLtrRXtmR38t24r4hQO42AbhVGGsdXMujUcR5xi0_O7uBofhNdb8llJCG4CDQ-xvxeZH7_kcW1_uDhHQcAT1KdEd0zck5GjMy21_g6dzIdwe1SId/s1600-h/Zaha-Hadid-guardian+interview.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhF_uQXyBUTIvFJ4HlSU0xeUWYH_9eCvLtrRXtmR38t24r4hQO42AbhVGGsdXMujUcR5xi0_O7uBofhNdb8llJCG4CDQ-xvxeZH7_kcW1_uDhHQcAT1KdEd0zck5GjMy21_g6dzIdwe1SId/s320/Zaha-Hadid-guardian+interview.jpg" /></a><br />
</div><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">architect/artist: </span><b style="color: #666666;">Zaha Hadid</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">interview title:</span><b style="color: #666666;"> </b><b style="color: #666666;">Question time: </b><b style="color: #666666;">Zaha Hadid</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">interviews compilation no: </span><b style="color: #666666;">T-40, A-06</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">interview format: </span><b style="color: #666666;">Text, Audio</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">date:<b> </b></span><b style="color: #666666;">5 March 2009 </b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">appeared in: </span><b style="color: #666666;">The Guardian</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">interviewer: </span><b style="color: #666666;">Hannah Pool</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">photo by: </span><b style="color: #666666;">Alberto Heras</b><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #666666;">courtesy:<i><b> http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/mar/05/zaha-hadid-interview</b></i></span><br />
<br />
<b>Interview Details:</b><br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<i>Architect Zaha Hadid on her ambitious aquatics centre for the 2012 Olympics, why her work creates controversy, and rebuilding Baghdad</i><br />
<br />
<hr /><br />
<b>Audio:</b><br />
<script type="text/javascript">
function getAudioOmnitureAccount_344187949(){
return "guardiangu-artanddesign,guardiangu-network";
}
function getAudioOmnitureData_344187949() {
var omniture = new Object();
omniture.prop43="Audio";
omniture.prop44="Zaha Hadid, architect of the Olympics 2012 aquatics centre:Audio:1179027";
omniture.prop45="Architect Zaha Hadid on her ambitious aquatics centre for the 2012 Olymp:Article:1178668";
omniture.eVar43="Audio";
omniture.eVar44="Zaha Hadid, architect of the Olympics 2012 aquatics centre:Audio:1179027";
omniture.eVar45="Architect Zaha Hadid on her ambitious aquatics centre for the 2012 Olymp:Article:1178668";
omniture.prop46 = "mini";
omniture.eVar46 = "mini";
return omniture;
}
</script><br />
<br />
<br />
<script type="text/javascript">
//<![CDATA[
//]]>
</script><br />
<br />
<noscript>&amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br /&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt; &amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;img src="http://www.blogger.com/img/object_element.gif" style="height: 25px; width: 300px; " class="BLOGGER-object-element tr_noresize tr_placeholder" id="BLOGGER_object_0" /&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt; &amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br /&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt; </noscript> <br />
<br />
<script src="http://static.guim.co.uk/static/83728/common/scripts/eolas_workaround.js" type="text/javascript">
</script><br />
<br />
<br />
<div id="flash-player"><br />
<br />
<script type="text/javascript">
insertAudioPlayer("300", "25", "http://static.guim.co.uk/static/83728/common/flash/guMiniPlayer.swf", "linktext=Zaha Hadid, architect of the 2012 Olympics aquatics centre&publication_date=&file=http://download.guardian.co.uk/audio/kip/standalone/artanddesign/1236251509178/7518/gdn.arch.090305.tm.Zaha_Hadid.mp3&popupurl=http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/audio/2009/mar/05/aquatics-olympics-hadid?popup=true&popupheight=232&popupwidth=500&duration=224&audioid=344187949&omniture_account=guardiangu-artanddesign,guardiangu-network");
</script> <br />
<br />
<br />
</div><br />
<br />
<hr /><br />
You have designed the aquatics centre for the 2012 Olympics. Can you explain the concept behind the building?<br />
<br />
It was about a wave - or two waves - but we've also been working with organic morphology, underwater life, all that sort of stuff. The roof is a wavy roof because we wanted to achieve a level of lightness.<br />
<br />
It has allegedly gone three times over budget. Is that correct?<br />
<br />
<br />
The original project did not include all the contingencies, all the fees. Maybe now things will drop down. At the time these things were priced, it was a very competitive global market - the price of concrete and cement, of steel, was high. There are different pricings - one is for construction, the other includes everything. You can't mix and match them.<br />
<br />
Why do you think people get so passionate about how much a building like that costs?<br />
<br />
Because all public buildings here are under scrutiny. There is a tremendous focus on legacy after the Olympics, how this regenerates an area. It becomes a pavilion and a park, it services the whole neighbourhood; one has to think about these things in a strategic way, not just as an isolated project.<br />
<br />
Have you had any involvement with Boris Johnson?<br />
<br />
No, not yet.<br />
<br />
Because of the fuss about the cost, and the recession, do you wish you had designed a more modest building?<br />
<br />
No. In these moments of recession, uplifting the spirit is even more important and we should learn from things that were done in the past that were done in a hurry. You can't compromise with any of these buildings: you can't shrink the pool, because it's an Olympic pool; you can't compromise on changing rooms, on glazing.<br />
<br />
Your work is quite divisive. Do you set out to cause controversy?<br />
<br />
No. But because it's not familiar at the beginning, people shy away from it.<br />
<br />
There was a period when you were winning awards and getting commissions outside the UK but you couldn't get anything built here. Has that changed?<br />
<br />
I don't think so.<br />
<br />
Do you feel sidelined here?<br />
<br />
No. I just think it's a pity because my work stems from being educated here, and it's a response to this kind of city. It was a response to how to deal with a historic city.<br />
<br />
You have a reputation for being intimidating.<br />
<br />
There is nothing I can do about that. I don't think they are used to many women being in this role. There is a fixated view about how you should be. I don't necessarily abide by these rules.<br />
<br />
By intimidating, do you think they mean not British?<br />
<br />
I'm not sure it's a race thing. There are moments when I think that was the case. I think it's because you don't follow the norm and people are uncomfortable. It's not that I'm trying to be nasty to them or intimidate them.<br />
<br />
Do you enjoy the notoriety?<br />
<br />
Sometimes it's fun.<br />
<br />
You recently designed a pair of shoes, and now a tap - are you trying to make your work more accessible?<br />
<br />
No, it's just fun. You have to think about it in a functional way, and because it's a small object, every line has to be right. It can't be clunky - you have to really work on it like a sculpture - but it's a tap, so it has to work.<br />
<br />
You have said that you were inspired by the architecture of Baghdad.<br />
<br />
Baghdad was a very nice city, there were beautiful suburbs. Life in the Middle East is quite different from other places.<br />
<br />
When did you last go back?<br />
<br />
In 1979.<br />
<br />
Would you like to be involved in the redevelopment?<br />
<br />
It would be interesting, but it needs to be more than just a building - the redevelopment is a very big ambition. There's a lot of destruction and someone has to rethink how to build up a society, how to rebuild a nation. It's beyond doing a few cultural buildings.<br />
<br />
Do you miss Baghdad?<br />
<br />
I miss aspects of being in the Arab world - the language - and there is a tranquillity in these cities with great rivers. Whether it's Cairo or Baghdad, you sit there and you think this river has flown here for thousands of years. There are magical moments in these places.<br />
<br />
<hr />simulacrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01025844469103673248noreply@blogger.com0