Jacques Herzog, Pierre de Meuron, Chris Dercon, Hans Ulrich Obrist - A stroll through a fun palace

A very warm welcome to our next speakers — to Chris Dercon, to Jacques, and to Pierre. Jacques and Pierre spoke yesterday at the press conference. We spoke with Jacques about the curatorial premise of this Pavilion, the collaboration with the artists, the rule of the game. This morning we want to begin with Herzog & de Meuron and also Louis Barré. When we discussed, you said there should be a third chapter which would be about preservation. I'm very delighted that Chris Dercon is with us today — curator, art historian, filmmaker, many dimensions to Chris's work. Currently the director of Tate Modern. But the connection to Herzog is not only the building of Tate Modern but also the house — it's a much longer dialogue which Chris has had with Herzog & de Meuron over many years, particularly in relation to preservation. Very important conversations at the moment of Haus der Kunst in Munich. So maybe Chris, you begin.

Thank you. Don't forget that this was a unique dialogue because it was not only Pierre and Jacques — we were also involved, and it was a collaboration and a dialogue with Rem Koolhaas. What's left from that dialogue about how to reconstruct this Temple of Nazism is a maquette which we probably will never manage to publish. But the questions asked in that maquette — how to reconstruct this expression of a Nazi regime — has been utterly inspiring. The connection with what's happening here is perhaps the following: Cedric Price, of course incredibly known because of the preservation of his archives, but he also said very clearly that if a building is not anymore of use it should be demolished. And I wonder what Jacques and Pierre think about this — if a building is not anymore of use, should it be demolished?

Well, I think it's a very modernist statement and a provocation. We could say exactly the opposite — you should never destroy anything, you should always somehow try to reuse it. I think the reason why we have this talk here about preservation is because we just did a book about our Park Avenue Armory project, which is a preservation project. But more generally, it is about how to deal with what is existing, pre-existing.

We have very European roots in saying that whatever we do and wherever we are, there's always something around us that we have to deal with. And I think that's a more interesting question than particularly this or that building and the concrete approach to how to reconstruct, rebuild, renovate, reuse, or totally destroy it. I would never sign a statement like this. Louis Barré, who is the reason why we sit here, was of course very hesitant when it came to physical activity, and even more when it was about taking things down — because his whole background, his whole history, was exactly the opposite. In that way, Price and Barré represent totally opposed standpoints.

You have always been interested, Jacques and Pierre, to work with pre-existing buildings. And I believe the very first project you made which fits into this panel about the elements and fundamentals was the extension or the reuse of an attic room of a manor house. Can you tell something more about this project, which maybe was like a manifesto for what you're still doing today — a combination of restoration, renovation, reconstruction, extension, and I would also say contamination? Could you talk a little bit about your attic room?

Maybe manifesto is a strong word, because at that time we were just ready to do different kinds of interventions in a city or in a building. It was not only the idea of doing something new as young architects — to do a manifesto and say 'this is now blue' or 'this now has a pitched roof' or something else. It was more to understand that interventions in a city can be of a different kind. And this was certainly not like we listened to or wanted to literally take Louis's words and make a minimal intervention — that was not our intention at all. But it just happened that we were asked to do this, and yes, we wanted to do this even if it was only like a small intervention which is almost not visible in an attic.

Could you say that the ideas, the questions asked by the sociologist Lucius Barré, influenced this first intervention? That you were not afraid to do this — that it gave you courage, that it inspired you to do this? Because it was also to have another attitude, another approach to the urban and architectural question, rather than modernist architects, the great masters, who always wanted to create big buildings. Certainly Lucius was sharpening our awareness to other possibilities, not only to do the big gesture, the big stabatza, the big gesture with a big knife.

I think, Chris, we should open it up a bit more generally. Your initial statement about Cedric Price — why did he say you should take down a structure? It was a provocation, but also somehow it's interesting that he wants to make room free for new things, new activities for humans. With the same idea, Lucius said we have to keep stuff. Our attic — I think we learned a lot on using the existing. It was a good lesson for us. What is a break? What is... all these stupid things. But more generally, we should say: what is for architects today, not only in Europe, because worldwide things are there — people, cities, contexts. And we should not overly fetishize the existing. This wonderful brickwork wall has a material, sensual quality that we all love, so somehow we would all be tempted to leave that and reincorporate it in a later building. And now there's a small gap between respecting this and giving it a new value, and making it into a fetish which is in the way of something new. From that point of view, I'm totally in line with Price and say take this down and open up new ways. But on the other hand, to give it value — that you discover something, hey, there is great value in something, respect that — that makes everything more complex and more difficult. And architecture is difficult because it has all these many things that we have to judge and deal with. That's why it's far beyond preservation — it is what do we do with existing opinions, existing structures, etc.

That's fascinating. The two projects which are so relevant for this discussion are this project you mentioned, Chris, about Haus der Kunst, and then the Park Avenue Armory, which is the subject of this book Jacques mentioned at the beginning. One of the things I was wondering is that in both cases — remember Chris, at the moment of Utopia Station in Munich we had many conversations and you told me: can one have a Fun Palace actually not built from scratch, but can an existing structure as found become a Fun Palace? In some way that's also interesting in relation to the Armory, because the Armory is not a museum. There are of course these period rooms which are very preserved and intimate, but then there is this big space — a music venue, an art venue, actually of all the venues in New York the one which is most kind of Fun Palace. It's a question to all of you — can a Fun Palace happen in a structure as found?

For me, the most useful and challenging question when we worked with Rem Koolhaas on this Q&A — what can we do with Haus der Kunst — was actually that Haus der Kunst is a historical process. Any building is a historical process. Listening yesterday to Ai Weiwei, who was inspired by a Lucian Freud lecture by Edward Said, saying: to go back to the very original moment of a building in the name of authenticity, in the name of history, is utterly wrong — it's an asocial, selfish project. You have to look at the historical process. And our discussion about where do we begin, where do we end at Haus der Kunst — I think we found it even more interesting what happened to Haus der Kunst, to the Nazi building, in the 1950s than in the 1930s. Because in the 1950s there were all these trees put in front of Haus der Kunst, which Jacques then called 'pubic hair' — putting pubic hair in front and pubic hair in the back. What also happened in the 1950s is that all the swastikas were stripped and everything was painted white — not a glossy white but a broken white, at least there was this kind of affinity. So in looking for this moment of renovation is looking at a historical process.

In terms of the Armory, where did you look for which kind of historical process? Because the Armory has to do with the building of the United States and the image of the East Coast, but also there is a public shelter for women. So where do you begin, where do you end, where do you start — in the middle of something? What we started with is of course when we first had the encounter with the building. The first encounter was not even asking when was it built, why was it built — this came later because we wanted to dig into this history. But the first thing we saw were the cables, because it was just the headquarters of 9/11. The Secret Service and the army had just moved out of this building, and that was the reality of the building at that time. That was the impression. And of course, knowing that you can't keep that — even if you think it's a strong impression, the building has to be transformed and brought over to another use.

I think in the case of the Armory, just like Haus der Kunst, it's very comparable that what has been added in the course of history is very psychologically interesting and telling about the change. History is not just 100 or 200 years back — you have to discover a concrete layer that you want to bring to the fore. Renovation is also about the sheer impossibility to bring time back. For instance, in the past when these wonderful historic rooms in the Armory were built, there was gas light, there was no electricity — you really cannot bring that back. Nevertheless, it's a wish of the client and we understand that you want to scratch off layers — so you destroy something and reveal, say, the early Renaissance rather than the Tudor style. That's a decision: you destroy something. But we also try to leave other traces, and we try not to put one thing against the other — like Scarpa, who is still a hero with many architects. We didn't want to go that way to say 'this is new, that's old, who cares.' At the end of the day, it has to be a good space where contemporary art is happening, balls are happening, even the police is going in. This approach is at least something we can discuss, and is not based on an ideology. The Americans, for instance, have a totally different approach — they see history as something concrete, and you have to simulate that, like freezing an image that was never really there. This is impossible.

And you mentioned the women's shelter, which of course was very important — it gives this building another dimension.

It's not just to keep a building and bring it to another use — let's say cultural use, so that would be just culture, culture, culture, culture. But you have also this other dimension, this other level, in New York, which we know with the many homeless. To keep this on top of it gives the building a much stronger identity — social identity.

Now talking about social identity, there is a problem. Yesterday night Columbia published this little booklet, accompanied by a text which Rem Koolhaas started to think about in 2004 — 'Preservation Is Overtaking Us.' It's a comment on this text and everything which followed by Iñaki Ábalos. At the same time yesterday night came this book out — a very critical book about the operational guidelines for the implementation of the World Heritage Convention. We know UNESCO has a problem: they lost 80% of their subsidy, which is their American money. UNESCO cannot do anything anymore for preservation. We lost so many buildings in the past two years — think about Syria. We are losing many buildings, and at the same time we want to preserve everything. The sad thing about what we can read here is that the moment between constructing, designing a building and preserving a building is getting immensely short. Already we can talk about prospective preservation. My question to you both: preservation today is in a crisis because it has to do with economical defaults, social defaults, aesthetical defaults, lawmaking defaults. Can we still preserve everything?

No, of course we cannot, and we lose a lot. Yesterday we spoke about forgetting, and fighting against forgetting. Also the main Pavilion that Rem is proposing is about lost traditions. This is an eternal issue in architecture. Tradition in fact was established — was the only condition architects and societies had — not to forget, for instance, how to do a door, a corridor, a window. Now it's forgotten because we have so much information, but not tradition — information. And because this is lost, everything is lost. Now this can be seen as something good or something bad — give a value to it. Preservation is about giving a value to things that exist and that we want to keep. I would be very relaxed about this. How much we can keep and how much we want to keep depends on money — if there is less money, there is less preservation. That's how it is.

That's a pragmatic attitude. I think it's the only way. We should give up ideologies and feel sad about this and that. It's more of an attitude — to respect things if you are in a position to deal with something. That's more an attitude of how you personally can act today as an architect, but also as a non-architect. That would be my take on this question. But again, I think we cannot just give principles.

I could bring another example in Munich. The first project was to demolish almost the whole block and come up with new buildings. During the planning process, we as architects, but also the client and the political leaders, understood that you couldn't just a few decades after World War II tear down the 1950s. It was not that we thought the 1950s were better than something else — it had more to do with a public memory. To demolish this one generation later would have been a very difficult moment.

In the book about the Armory which was published by Bower, you keep saying — at least in three instances — 'what we are doing is not preservation in the traditional sense.' What do you mean by preservation in the traditional sense, and what could then give a new sense, a new meaning, to preservation?

Well, I don't know whether we exactly said 'in the traditional sense.' It's rather different methods or different approaches to preservation. We never use the word preservation. I think there are other words — like reconstruction, because sometimes you reconstruct, sometimes you renovate, sometimes you simulate. So I suggest there are many ways to bring back what was there and to bring in new things. And as I said before, the Americans — Dan, Mies, Flender — they have a very clearly defined approach, a more or less fixed approach, which we are rejecting, because every space and every physical condition you find in such a building or in an urban context is different. So it's an ongoing process, just like history was a process.

Whether we use it as a word, preservation or not — one of the things which I think both in Haus der Kunst and in the Armory present is this sort of negotiation between, as Ponto always said, it being either a time storage or a lab. Sometimes it seems almost impossible to be both; however, exciting institutions are both. In the Armory, you have this central room where one week there is a Rick vanisha display for Stockhausen — it moves, and that's very Fun Palace. Another week there is a total installation by an artist, and the next week it's MB. Then you have these period rooms which are almost like a museum, but can also be conversation rooms. There is this tension, I suppose, in Haus der Kunst as well.

I would like to come back to the tension which is happening here, because I'm struck by the fact that this is an ideal mix between a lab and a time storage. I would like to clarify that by the following example: I have never seen an approach by two architects dealing in such a clear way with the difference which Walter Benjamin made already in the 1930s — in 1935 — between architectural drawings, plural, and architectural drawing. It's very interesting with this approach which you, Hans Ulrich, initiated with Tina Sehgal, that suddenly we start to understand a medium which was lost almost forever — which is architectural drawing. And there is such an interesting difference between the way Price and his colleagues approach it and the way Lucius Barré and his followers approach it. Then you go to the Japanese Pavilion and you have this small box room called the blueprint room, and I was thinking: why is there Shinohara, because he was one of the last? Why was there not a rethinking about what architectural drawing can do, and what architectural drawings are — what the drawing of architecture is? How did you approach this subject when dealing with the incredible, rich image archives of Price and Lucius Barré? Were you ever interested in what architectural drawing is, or the drawing of architecture?

Well, I think the drawing as a means or a tool of expression remains a strong and very fast tool. We often say to the younger people in our office: use sketches and drawings to express faster than you would do with a machine. Because of course technology continues to evolve, and one day you can have sketching machines. But as long as the computer needs to be used to produce a plan, the plan tends to be too perfect. What we like about the drawings of Lucius and also Cedric Price — and this is very much how we use the drawings — is that they are human, natural, easy, fast ways to connect thinking with the communication of ideas. I think that's a very important lesson, and I'm sure it remains important in the future. It's a very direct way between your eyes, your brain, and to visualize something. And it doesn't make it so definite — you can have a different interpretation of it than someone else. This field of interpretation is closer to hand drawings than to technical drawing.

It's interesting because we are talking about elements and fundamentals, and maybe we should in the future again think about architectural drawing — the drawing of architecture, architectural drawings — as a kind of fundamental which we should revisit. Can we revisit quickly Lucius Barré? We started to say that Cedric Price said when a building is not of any use anymore it can be taken down. Did you find in the image archive, in the drawing archive of Lucius Barré, any comic strip, any photo collage, any comment, any gesture, any question about preservation — does it make sense in Switzerland?

Well, what he certainly disliked is that preservation is freezing something. He was against all the 'Denkmalpflege' stuff that was rising and getting more important in the 1960s and 1970s. This was never his approach to protect things. On the contrary, he was always for the transformational aspect of life, but also of cities, which is part of life — that was always in the foreground.

Yeah, I totally agree. On the other hand, his roots were really an old Basel family, so he was rather on the conservative side. He was also co-founding the Green Party, so he had a very ecological approach to things. And I think there's an interesting ecological thought in the idea of preservation, and that certainly was close to his heart. I think we turn a bit around — we all share this idea, also with Rem on Haus der Kunst. He's also someone who is torn back and forth between preserving and giving back a certain value versus maintaining too many things and blocking paths for the future. But the past for the future, in the mind of Barré, was of social nature much more than of formal nature. To keep things, because he believed that old structures like the Armory and Haus der Kunst proved to be really great today.

That could not be a better conclusion. It also, with the Green Party, brings us back to Josef Paul Kleihues — his drawings, his co-founding of the Green Party, your beginnings with Josef Paul Kleihues, the drawings in the exhibition. And obviously the entire exhibition here started with these comparative studies of Lucius's drawings and Cedric's drawings. Actually many parallels we discovered, and that sense of humor plays a big role — they both... Thank you so much. Chris, Jacques, thank you. Thank you.