Hello. Good evening everyone. Hello. Good evening. Thank you so much for joining us. My name is Grace Law. I am professor and chair of the department of architecture here at the GSD and principal of Law Dolman. It's great to see all of you this evening. Tonight marks the sixth John Huck Soundings lecture, an annual event honoring the legacy of John Quck, Harvard GSD MR class of 1953. Before we begin, I would like to thank those who have made this year's headach lectureship possible through their generosity. I would also like to thank Swiss Next, a co-sponsor of this event with the architecture department and we're very very grateful for all the support in making this opportunity possible. I'm delighted to introduce Jacques Herzog, co-founder of the Swiss practice Herzog & de Meuron, who hardly needs an introduction. He returns to us as a former faculty member and a longtime friend of the GSD. When we hear his name or the name of his autonomous firm, many notable buildings immediately come to mind: the Tate Modern in London, the Bird's Nest National Stadium for the Beijing Olympics, or perhaps an older, more intimate project such as the flickering copperclad signal box in Basel of the late 1990s. The common thread running through these projects and many others is something less easily named, but I will try: a way that Herzog's buildings hold in suspension matter, perception, and atmosphere. In 1978, Herzog and De Meuron emerged with an architectural vision at some distance from both post-modern quotation and high-tech spectacle. Early commissions became laboratories for a kind of realism that returned the scale of the sentences, making simple figures carry unexpected intensity. Just over a decade later in 1989, Jacques and Pierre came to the GSD as visiting professors, then returning from 1994 through 2014, bringing this ever evolving project into conversation with our students and faculty. In their 2001 Pritzker Laureate acceptance speech, they described their time at Harvard as a critical step before some of their most ambitious work on the global stage. Jacques's time at the GSD overlapped with the rise of digital representation and more intricate systems of execution as drawing, modeling, and building were reorganized by software and globalized production. The option studios that he offered with Pierre asked how these tools could tighten the link between design and making, but also how to work within industrial building culture increasingly detached from craft while still producing material presence. This question has endured in their work across scales, programs, and context. Their practice treating architecture as a field of phenomena that are encountered before being intellectually registered. That affective ambition is matched by a commitment toward process and the meticulous archiving of that process, insisting that the life of a project includes all of the artifacts of its trial assemblies, mock-ups, and samples, one-to-one fragments are treated as primary sites of authorship rather than an incidental means to an end. In an image economy structured around the rapid production and consumption of finished and final architectural images, this insistence on laying things out on the table, as Jacques put it here in his 2011 lecture, like ingredients in a kitchen, keeps judgment, disagreement, and discovery active inside a large contemporary practice. What finally gets built retains a palpable residue of thought. Today, Herzog and de Meuron's portfolio spans more than 600 projects in over 40 countries. In the quarter century since their crowning achievement of being awarded the Pritzker Prize, Herzog & de Meuron's work has been recognized by many other major international honors, including the RIBA Royal Gold Medal, the Mies van der Rohe Award, and the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal. Yet, from the outset, the office has been driven less by a recognizable style than by a set of evolving questions. We have decided to discuss a few of these this evening in lieu of a formal lecture. Our conversation will focus on three themes, each grounded in specific projects. First we will discuss time and appearance through examples of the Ricola house and the M Plus. Second, we will discuss the question of materiality and what Jacques calls the hidden geometry of nature as explored in the Dominus Winery and the Schaulager. And third, the relationship between authorship and process for which we will discuss the Elbphilharmonie and the Calder Gardens. Because the discipline is under increasing pressure to operate in response to capital, carbon metrics, value engineering, and procurement risk, these three themes feel especially relevant now. They direct attention to the primacy of sensation and the force of artistic will that underpin the unique spatial experiences manifested in the work of Herzog & de Meuron. For many of us in this room, the Herzog & de Meuron projects are already familiar. So tonight is a chance to delve into the ideas that animate them and which continue to inspire us. I am sure that we will all enjoy returning to our shared and ongoing inquiries. Jacques, it is a real pleasure to have you back at the GSD. Please join me in welcoming Jacques Herzog.
Um, and what is also very interesting about this particular strange format is I told Jacques, don't worry, it's just you and me. We're in a room and pretend that nobody is here. But I think a lot of people are here. So, this is a lot. But as best we can I hope that we can just have a really intimate honest intuitive conversation. I do have some questions prepared but I thought that it would be a great opportunity in fact for us to again as much as we can pretend nobody is here. So let's begin a little bit with time and appearance. I'll just say that Jacques and I have been in a kind of weird email conversation where I've lobbed something over the email and he lobbed something back at me. So, we've been in this kind of very loose conversation. But, it's been quite interesting because we thought that there are two projects that could be used to describe or to talk about the question of time and appearance. The first project will be the Ricola house which was a 1993 project a storage facility in France and then we will then move to the M Plus project which is in Hong Kong a cultural center. But maybe I'd just start this conversation by saying that since your early days, it's been clear that you've been interested in changing appearances, the changing appearances of architectural form. And as a result, the kind of idea of individual perception. And as we know, complex architectural form can trigger creative perception by the viewer. And so I thought maybe we could just talk a little bit about of course what we're beginning to see right now the Ricola project and in particular tell us a little bit about how that facade is operating and what you were thinking about through this condition of screen printing.
First of all I'd like to thank you Grace for having me here and thank you all for coming. It's really touching for me to be back and physically nothing has changed. I mean architecturally everything also the hotel I stay the Charles everything looks exactly like. But you should but obviously the world has changed dramatically and I say this because when we look back to the Ricola thing and even M Plus which is already a few years ago. Architecture reflects very much the time in which it is built. The time where I Pierre whoever was involved in a project were different people and architecture doesn't change really architecture stay if I go back to the Ricola building it's still the same you know it doesn't have a soul or a mind like we humans have and that's why we change whereas buildings only physically change in that you see stains of aging, traces of aging. And we always loved and I think the Ricola is a good example for this. We loved to use this passing of time as an ingredient to create architecture. The Ricola building has the silk screen printed facade which obviously is the main feature. I was personally always interested in silk screen printing and in repetitive figuration and the question of figure figurative versus abstract and you can see in these images that it's very paradox you know there it's this glass facade it's polycarbonate when there's no light seems to be totally opaque whereas the concrete facade that you see now is really opaque but seems to be transparent mirror. Water is like mirror. The water that runs down is an active agent of our design. And if you go back now, there is moss and water transforming this concrete wall in a much more lively and transparent element. Whereas the polycarbonate facade, if there is no one there, if there's no light there is just dead, you know. So we like to use obvious physical givens to inspire buildings to make them different. And making a building different finding a way to make architecture specific, something that we didn't know before we did the design was from the beginning something we wanted to do because we didn't like anything that was being done at that time. Didn't like the architecture when we started in the 70s and early 80s and that's why for instance this silk screen facade you know was something that the client allowed us to do and that's what when I say the time was different I don't think that now today you would so easily find a client industrial for an industrial building to let you do something like this so many things come together when we talk about architecture it always involves the time in which we live and the time obviously changes things and the topic appearance and time is a very important ingredient of all we do.
So I'd like to know a little bit more about that because in the Ricola of course that's a storage building in essence and in some ways it epitomizes the shed. It is a shed.
Absolutely. And um it's hard not to recall the argument about the duck versus the decorated shed in this condition. And there have been some who had said that well in a case like this this is neither the duck nor the decorated shed but the decorated duck.
And there was a and I think in that kind of a commentary perhaps there is some acknowledgment that the rigidity of modernist language at that time and that you were thinking about was not enough and so trying to make a kind of corporal presence with this translucency.
I think that's a very very interesting argument you make here. Decorated shed is Venturi, that's hardcore pop, a duck is a duck and this means something. This here is using pop art technology which is Warhol used this a lot, but it's not pop art, it has a more like natural history. It has a more magic mysterious character and that's what makes it different from the decorated shed. It doesn't want to say something like advertising. Advertising say smoke Marlboro. This is not saying consume this herb. It's a sweet. It's nice. It's attractive. It's something totally different. It's like a forest, and this is like a piece of nature. This wall with water is perhaps more natural than what suggests to be nature this printed leaf. So it raises all these questions come up and that's the difference to Venturi's approach to architecture. So, but in this case, the actual imagery is a silk screen and it has a kind of it's almost a version of a fertile of some you know and and of course it does remind one of the herbs that we know are the essence of Ricola products and so just to understand a little bit more about that did you propose that image or how did that image rise to the occasion? Of course, that was a reason to say, 'Hey, it has dried herbs in this storage.' By the way, the form is just generic, it's just a box that you open. So the form is not really a topic. It's really about all these surfaces, this kind of question of appearances. And so the client likes it that the client Ricola the owners are very art. There's an art affinity in their whole family. So they let us do whatever we wanted to do. I mean not really but every single building we've done for them is very different and it tries different things. And the herb was the beginning but at the end of the day the herb the leaf is not really in the foreground. I used the photograph of Blossfeldt, a photographer famous German photographer of the early 20th century. And the interesting thing is that he uses photography to photograph natural objects but in a very abstract way. When he this leaf is so beautiful because it's natural. It's very refined but it's very abstract. This was a previous attempt to do something which was more like almost like a drawing. So we tried several things before we ended up with this floral pattern. And the interesting thing another interesting thing is that's why this slide is interesting. You see the man when they mounted this panel what is the size this is also about in pop art what is the size of a scissors or the size of the face of a Marilyn and in this case because it's architecture the size needed to be more or less the size of a human. So the leaf, this plant, if you stand in front of it, that's different from looking at it on a slide wall. It speaks to you immediately. If the leaf is this size and you are in front of this leaf, it's just like a tile in your bathroom. It's ridiculous. But as soon as you grow it to a certain size, it's just right to seduce you, to suck you in almost. And if it's too big, it's scary. So it has many many details which make this different from just a decoration.
So that scale is going to come up I think a lot in this conversation because in fact the way in which nature has been scaled in many of the projects that you've done we'll actually be talking about that again later so I'd like to definitely return to that but in terms of the artistic influence you know when I was looking at this project I was seeing obviously like Donald Judd in the simplicity of the box. I was seeing the Andy Warhol reference in the silk screening. And in many ways I was wondering, okay, so is this possible partly because the program is inert. You're not responding that you're able to some some refer to it in a maybe perhaps a slightly derogatory way as a tattooing of the building, but I think you were trying to do something else to make that material speak. It is a polycarbonate.
Yeah, it's a very unexpensive material. That's another thing that I like about this building. If you took this and made it into a luxurious refined design, maybe it would be stupid. It's it's it works well the way it is. So the material in which we print this leaf produces this kind of on this slide you can see this seemingly opaque surface and here we are back to this question of appearance because nothing is what it seems to be you know and and especially nature is also like this. I mean nature the surface of water is so changing is this is so interesting. If you just watch the surface of a lake or of a river how much it can change. Sometimes it looks like metal like lead you know. Or like sometimes it's very transparent. And the same is with or can be with architectural objects.
But it seems like in the Ricola project clearly you're working with the daily rhythm day to night to have that material change in its appearance. So if we fast forward by three decades maybe we can turn a bit to the M Plus project because now we're looking at this question of time and appearance. And when we think about M Plus there seems to be a kind of long arc in the work in which now the facade moves to carry other kinds of graphic imagery of course to become a very public facade. And here just to orient everyone to this project. This is a project from 2021 at the M Plus a cultural center in Hong Kong. And so I thought this was a very interesting bracketing of this particular fascination with time and perception and appearance because of course over the three decades the technology has also changed. Can you tell us a little bit about this?
I also think this is a very good example in that context. First of all this building starts with a very physical component and its DNA is very Hong Kong. It sits on top of a train tunnel connecting the airport with Hong Kong and we had to build this over this train tunnel and it was a competition based project and our competitors wanted to avoid this tunnel and that was also in the brief. Pay take care there's a tunnel underneath so you have to somehow bridge over find a way and we sort of said we want to use this as like an archaeological element and obviously it's very physical you know you can see this hardcore concrete structure so the building sits on that and we excavate this underground which at the same time creates a kind of an underworld where artists have a more experimental laboratory kind of gallery type. So we can as if it's a fake found space. It was found but fake because we excavated we created as if we found it. And as we know many museums today are longing for such spaces which are a bit awkward which are a bit industrial which are raw which are not the refined gallery which we also did in this building but it was like we built the building on this physical component. You see this kind of labyrinthic quality that was given for free because I didn't want to shape this myself. I don't like to shape things proactively. I like to look what is and then sometimes you just find it. Sometimes the most interesting things are just there. We just don't see them very often. And so that's how it starts. And then we have this very large plinth which seems to hover above this underground and the same is being tilted up like a slab. So we have these very different but very simple elements that compose this make this building. And the vertical one which stands out from that ground is a kind of a screen like a TV and this was also very early in the process. That screen because the screen is like a face towards Hong Kong on the other side of the bay. And the interesting thing of this screen is it's such a strong physical object, but in that we insert these LED lines in between these tiles, we transform this very physical object into something totally immaterial. And this is especially interesting in that context of Hong Kong because Hong Kong has this forest of high-rise and mostly commercial buildings and it's also even more interesting to do this in that context because the high-rise we do and the possibility of these LED screens is like a kind of a pirate you know like artists invade the business world, the business silhouette to make it theirs. And you can see this on this slide.
So let's unpack that a little bit more because I'll be honest, the first time I saw this project and I didn't see this particular set of images. I only saw an image of it in the daytime as a kind of plinth and slab building. And when I first saw it, I said, 'Huh, what's going on there?' And then I saw the digital image pop up and I thought to myself, 'Oh no, has the architect has the building become the billboard literally and what does that mean?' But then as I was studying this project further, I realized that there's actually something really fascinating about the way in which one can occupy that billboard, if you will, that digital screen. So all of a sudden there's a kind of thickness of space in that digital screen. And I thought to myself, okay, so there's something actually beautiful and humane about that particular moment. But then the other side of me said you just referenced it. It can contain a political message. But on the other hand it can also contain a kind of commodification of architecture to some degree. What would you say to that if somebody asked you that?
Well you can always interpret it this way or that way. The architecture can just offer potentials. It cannot say you have to see it this way or that way. It cannot say you have to use it this or that way. But you should not miss in no project even the tiniest one the inherent potential that is given to you as an architect whether it's the place where it is whether it's the program whatever and times may change and the building will be used perhaps in a different way someday but it has this potential to speak to people and it has the potential to be invaded by others than me or Herzog & de Meuron because many artists have been using this screen and have been transforming this building into something theirs and that's another aspect which I like about this project the transformation of this different appearance is not just happening but it can be occupied by other people.
Yeah. I think that's important and when I was there last time and different artists videos were popping up, it was very touching for me. I really because I didn't know how I would feel if I see my building or our building being invaded by someone else and make it a totally different thing because at night, you know, you can see this on one of these slides. It literally is not that physical building anymore. That's why I started this kind of part of the conversation with saying what is underneath and that it's so physical and so powerful and so generous and grand and I like this paradox. I think paradox is the ultimate aspect of something seductive and something interesting in architecture because it seems so but in fact it is different or you know you look at this and it seems so fragile and so but at the same time it's when you there you can touch it you can almost it's like this Hensling cradle thing this seductive building that you like to touch and almost eat I don't say you can eat this building but when you're there you will see there are many areas many corners which have a very tactile quality.
So I think this is an interesting segue because we're going to talk about seduction I like this. Maybe we can go to the next theme just because I want to make sure that we can have enough time to talk about a lot of the projects here and I think seduction is actually at the underpinning of the next theme which is materiality. You have referred to materiality as the attempt to understand or uncover the hidden geometry of nature. And I'd like just for our audience to recognize that geometry here, I mean, we often use the word geometry and we are often thinking of very specific mathematical meaning of geometry that focuses on the relationships of points, lines, angles, surfaces, planes, solids, etc. But I think Jacques, you're using the word geometry in the ancient Greek sense, literally meaning to measure the earth. And here materials have inherent properties. So for you a kind of hidden order or a hidden essence, a metaphysical sense if you will. And you've described searching for the kind of spiritual principle and not primarily the outer appearance of nature to in a sense unearth the project. So this conversation might ask if nature is neither nostalgic image mimicry nor the pursuit of a scientific principle, how can architecture bind nature and artifice into some kind of legible relationship? How can architecture make felt rather than merely pictured within an image economy that prioritizes instant legibility? Where meaning is expected to register immediately before material processes or constructional judgment. We're going to be discussing two projects here. The Dominus Winery which is in Napa, California. It's a winery and vineyard project from 1998. And then we will also talk about the Schaulager which is the art storage project in Basel. So tell us about this. The hidden geometry of nature came up in one of your very early lectures here as well. So I'd like to draw that bring it forward.
I think that Dominus Winery is a good example for this topic. The stone that we ultimately used as a main material. This is a mockup we did in our garden in Basel. You see two formats. The smaller ones which are filled in to these gabions and the larger ones which are too big actually. So they produce a gap. But we come back to this later. It was really new to use gabions as a building material. Normally it's just used in landscape but again we had a great client Christian Wex and they let us do this and it's still very fresh when you go back there. So it physically stands up and you can see this is an image when we built it. It has these three components. It has the gabions which are metal and then this is an important image because the metal is almost more important than the stone if you look from the side and the sun hits this metal. So it has a very bronze-like appearance and if you look frontally against it from outside then it's just stupid stones. And if you look from inside it's just magic. And coming back to nature and geometry and hidden ingredients and things, if you just have a stone, normally architects select stone because they like their surface. They prefer this marble against this marble. Here we just use the gravel that was found in this volcanic landscape. And so the in between space between the stones is as important as the stone itself. So we use both the form. You can see this is a stupid attempt, right? And then we just threw them into the gabions and found it much more interesting than if we piled them up correctly. Why? Because when we just throw them in then we create different gaps between the stones. And then we found out when we use larger stones the gaps are not filled out. So they leave space in between which create this kind of image of the difference. So there's no decoration, no imagery. It's just the stones do that and we had never this is like lace but it's solid stones and thick stones. So we have this paradox impression when you walk through this gate that you have this very strong very powerful stone wall and when you walk through the gate then all of the sudden you see the backside and you just see the in between spaces and the shape that you see is rather the in between space than the stone itself. And ultimately, yes, it works for the climate because the fat stones keep the heat out of the building. And it's an old joke I make, but they never used the air condition to cool the thing because it was not needed. They could have saved a million dollars. But that's also why stone has been used for thousands of years exactly for that and this climate in California is very ideal because it's very hot during the day and can be cooled in the evening which is perfect for wine storage. So that's the story briefly told but it was a long way to discover that we didn't know that it's not based on knowing but it's based like many things we do on experimenting on the spark and an idea but then we discovered other things.
So when did the choice for this particular idea for the gabion wall and how early was that? Did you find the stone and look at these and say these are dumb stones?
No, no, we've done we have many drawings. The building had a shape. It was more shape based. But whenever we try possibly we try to not avoid shape form in architecture and let it happen. And here this rectangular form was more in line literally spoken to the different sequences of the production: collecting the grapes, then the tank room, then the storage, and then the archive etc. And the upper floor I also like this image where the glass wall becomes a projection wall of this light, playfulness with the light. But I think the hidden geometry is also visible there. The materials can do more than just be nice and decorative. And when you see this building in the nature because the stones are from there and even if it sits in the middle of the field of the vineyard, the building is like a stealth bomber. You can hardly see it because somehow the color of the stone, the color of the landscape, even if it's planted, it almost disappears. And at night it has these subtle transparencies which and this moment when the sun fades away it again has a different appearance. So this chapter is connected to the first one even if here we talk about materials.
Yes. I mean it seems that way because in both the Ricola project and in this one you are really binding together things that we wouldn't necessarily see as being together for example heavy and light at the same time, transparent and opaque at the same time.
Maybe I you ask me about the hidden geometry that was really an early text when I was very interested in also other aspects than the way for instance copper is used in architecture is just a technical use but especially Beuys who is an artist who has inspired us early in our career you know for him this was a feminine material whereas iron was a male material and because of this conductive energy flow that copper can have or has and we used it also practically for the signal box that you mentioned because the wrapping of the copper keeps any radiation from outside out of the building because it wraps around and copper does this better than any other than steel for instance. So I think it's interesting to look what else can a material do than just being used in a purely functional way or an aesthetic way.
And I think that's what you have done in this particular project, the transformation from this thing that we see as an inert object into this collection through the gabion I think is an incredibly interesting transformative condition which actually maybe if we turn to the next project takes that even one step further. In the Schaulager project, this is an art storage project in Basel. It was done about five years later. And so there are some things that you were thinking about clearly especially in relationship to materiality, found things and the way in which it would change your understanding of the site. Tell us a little bit about this because of course this is on the site on the quarry of the location.
Yeah. You can see these images are some of the holdings of the Schaulager. It's an archive actually. It is a first of its kind and became very popular in the world of art because museums are getting bigger and bigger and more and more expensive. So to do a storage rather than another museum is a brilliant idea the client had. So it's filled with artworks which are not stored in crates where you cannot control them but they are openly stored in small galleries basically like cells, but paintings hang on the wall, objects on the floor or on pedestals, but more compressed, much more compressed. So you use five or 10 times less space for more art. So the fact of storing and protecting is a bit like in the Dominus Winery is very key and that's why we did the building which needed to be a bit a different building type. We have this big atrium from where you see what is in the building. But the site when we dig out the site this is like a quarry of gravel. This is Basel sits on the bench of the knee of the Rhine. So most of the area around has amazing gravel grounds and when you excavate the site you have the material and in fact this is almost like the ideal condition of any building anywhere in the world when you do a building just find the material in the ground. So you take the material to build the building from the ground and you don't bring it from wherever. And we could do this much more often. Here the gravel was being used to build the walls. Ideally, we didn't want to use cement, but the client turned it down because the walls would have been even thicker and slightly inclined and some gravel would have come down. But it's less cement and it's especially all the material didn't need to be brought there. So ecologically and sustainability wise this is the topic now much more discussed than at that time but it's an ideal case for that also. And we wanted to expose the material that we use that's why we scratched off its surface so you can see it's not like a concrete wall where you don't see what the material is and for anything else you can see the surface here we use this and blew it up. That's a kind of a pop version of the natural surface that you see on these steel doors. And the windows that you see and also the ceiling, this kind of surface comes from when we had to do some windows. And we sort of didn't like the fact that we use these very special walls and just cut a window in it. But we said a window needs to somehow give some evidence of what that material is. So we also try to find a way to reveal the inherent character of the material. And if you see take your finger and you go walk your fingers through sand or through gravel, it produces exactly this kind of shape that you see in the windows. So these windows are in fact the traces of an object cutting open this wall. So you can see this here. And the shape which produced this was very easy to do in that we just were we just used this kind of piece of metal and blew it up. Now you can do it with digital.
So I had a question about that metal. Did you how did you decide how many crinkles would be in this metal?
Well, we just bumped into this and we just produced it. It was exactly how when you do this finger, you know, it depends how you move this finger, there's not one logical form. It's just a type of form that is the result of this movement. So, can I ask about this because it looks like a giant finger that walks and it looks like a giant finger but at the same time it also has a kind of geologic quality that looks like it is part of a fissure in the earth. It recalls these natural conditions and yet is not mimicry but in some ways indexing a kind of nature if you will. And so in your mind, what is the difference between an idea about indexing nature and actual mimicry or like a direct representation? Would it have been okay if I had taken that crinkle and that had actually been something else from nature and then scale it up?
That's a good point, but there's no clear answer. If it looks stupid, it's mimicry. But if it looks good, okay. So, what defines when something looks stupid? You because we can mock it up and we can be when I say I very often have a kind of an idea, but we are like architects, we are quite a few working on the project. So it's then we come in this kind of question of the process you know we look and we are several opinions and we discuss it and I think we have enough interior kind of culture of dialogue and of criticism to avoid the most stupid things ideally. Okay. So you're speaking in a room of lots of students and faculty so there are many people who would say we know it when we see it. Um, you have a gut feeling and when when but we're not allowed to say to the students that looks stupid. We're not allowed to say that. No. So we are back to this question of the flower and the relationship between you as a visitor and the object in front of you or the window. And I think that's very much architecture. That's why architecture can hardly be judged based on images because it's really something physical in front of the human. And it's very different if a window is like this or like this. I mean also in art in painting that was a huge gap in art history in the 20th century when in America abstract expressionism was blowing up the scale. All of a sudden Barnett Newman did these amazing paintings which were forcing you as a viewer to literally walk. It was like very physical and it could only be invented in a country like America with these amazing landscapes. And the Dominus has this panoramic opening which is an homage to the American landscape. This could not be in Switzerland no other country in Europe because of the scale. So scale is not only to the viewer or to the visitor but also to the landscape and to the specific culture. So America has a different landscape and you do different buildings and I think Dominus is very typical. I couldn't say this about Schaulager. I think you could do this also in America but sometimes this question of is it stupid does it work has a lot to do with so many factors that have to be specifically answered in the concrete moment in time in the place.
So getting back to the exterior expression of this, I am kind of curious your views on ornament. The question of ornament in architecture, so extensive so many extensive writings on it and of course we know that Loos felt that ornament was absolutely depraved condition. At the same time, we also realize that ornament today, as we think about it, can in some way it's a systemic it can be a systemic part of construction that organizes material to create meaning rather than a mask or simply applied surface. What does it mean to you today? Because actually this project in particular one could say has a kind of ornament or an idiomatic expression that has to do with some of the things that are natural.
I think that's also a very interesting question because the term is not very clear but my understanding of ornament is the opposite of decorative. Ornament and decoration has nothing to do with each other, but they touch each other. I totally am against the stupid text of Loos, the racist text of Loos about the ornament. If he saw the many people who are tattoo today, he would send everybody to prison. But I think ornament the way I understand it is and I think the I don't know whether we see the trade building in Tokyo is a holistic understanding of architecture is the coming together of a facade that is not only a facade but at the same time defining a face and is defining also the aesthetic of a building and the construction, so it's integrating the whole system of a building and that produces what we call ornament. It's a kind of an idea of the whole thing. When you have a box and you just have some images on top, that's more decoration except for in the case of M Plus it's literally penetrating the whole construction. It has a conceptual meaning. Otherwise if it doesn't have this conceptual meaning, it's just advertisement, just poster.
Well, yeah. I mean it seems to me even Loos broke his own rules to some degree recognizing that some things do actually are more imbued with cultural meaning and/or marks of their construction. So that's a very interesting subject. I'm wondering because we've now been talking about this arc of these questions. I'm also wondering if we should talk about process because the Schaulager sets us up to look at all of these ways in which you've manipulated materials and transformed them to become either these kinds of screen surfaces or other things. And I think that that really shows up when we think about the relationship of authorship and process. Here we're going to be talking about the Elbphilharmonie which was a 2016 project Hamburg Concert Hall and then we'll also talk about one of a newer project Calder Gardens a museum for Alexander Calder in Philadelphia. But you have spoken about process and you've said that it does not replace authorship per se but that process supports the origin story for each new project. And this opens up, I think, questions about the role of process in authorship and how process can also be a participant or a silent contributor or maybe even a silent author to the project. And in this sense form is not an origin but a residue of that process. And maybe using these projects we can talk about that initial impulse or the spark that you referred to earlier. And maybe you could describe briefly what...
You mean by spark.
Well, that's relatively easy. It's like sometimes very fast.
No. [laughter] Yeah. No. No. In the case of the Elfman, I said this many times when the client came to Basel on the first meeting, he gave me a postcard of this building and I made a sketch and this was very similar to how the building came out. So it was like something that obviously was immediately here. God knows why. And all these images show that we then forgot it for a while and we tried many other things, you know, and that's then the process, you know, that we did. We tried to take the first sketch. This first sketch says it has to be this kind of wavelike structure on top of this existing box, you know, and how that was the right and the client originally said we have this box, let's do a concert hall in it, you know, and so that was a spontaneous idea. That's what I mean by spark. Sometimes you need something that gets things being started in a direction, you know, if you have a process but you don't start it with something really with a kind of an energy, you know, then it goes in the wrong direction. And also during a process very often it needs other impulses. And because it's architecture and not painting or sculpture where someone alone is doing this thing, it needs always corrections to remain to find the way to where it should be, you know, but very often at the end it's a concert hall and it should be on top of this thing. But in another project, like in the case of the CI, we come back to this one. I didn't know anything and the client didn't know anything. He didn't give us a brief, he didn't give us there was no zoning, not even a clearly defined space, so that was a very different process. Here even if it's much bigger, the money was clearly limited, you know, and we said it should be on top, but it needed this spark as I say. And we very soon did a very seductive image and that's why it has this article in the newspaper. We want it because this image of this object on top of this brick building that was a long process, but the image for this was very early in the process and it's not very developed, but it has this object on top of it and everybody loved it. And only later came this disaster, this kind of 10 times more expensive, 10 times longer and all these things that we got on our table, but it was not we didn't promise to deliver this project for this or this amount of money. But I think it's an interesting example of something that was here like this and then it was a long process to find its way before it came out like this.
So, but let's talk about that because obviously in a case where the image was consumed, it was applauded and it was accepted. So, in a way it precedes the actual process to get it done.
So, absolutely. Tell us about that because I think that is actually the way of the world in competitions and whatnot. You put something out there, and you don't really know where it's going to take you. So maybe you could tell us a little bit about why did you stick with it and what of the spark of that idea? I mean, actually I could imagine there could have been several competing sparks.
And you chose one clearly.
No, no, there I think a spark never competes. A spark is a spark and destroys everything else. But so there's a primary because we there's one slide which shows the brick storage building and then what comes on top or on the side the tower that was meant to be a commercial element to support the building. The hotel which is now in this everything is now included. Somehow we knew that this was going to be the end result but we nevertheless tested other things, you know, and then that's the one where we were thinking we could test other things. And then there's another process around how to shape the concert hall that's this one here, you know, where we have this circular ring and this kind of dynamic which is almost based on the Greek theater. But we gave it up because this is kind of a stupid form because if it's too dynamic, you know, it makes you crazy. So we choose something and that's this model which I really like because it's really many times we've been changing this. It has a movement, this kind of spiraling balcony world that goes in one direction and then the next movement is like this. So it goes in different directions. So it's dynamic but static at the same time. That was a result of a process that was not a result of one idea. So, this project because it's so large obviously has different components of this topic of process versus spark or authorship.
Oh, there's actually a lot I want to go back to because actually the auditorium space itself and I this is a kind of digression but maybe I have that right at the moment to have the digression. But I was looking at it and I was studying the image of the interior and I thought, okay, so there's at first glance you think it's very symmetrical, maybe like the Scharoun's Berlin Philharmonie, like you think of all the precedents that come to mind. But then I realize if you look at it, it's very willfully asymmetrical actually, like this view is a great view to see this. So it looks on first glance you say, oh, very symmetrical, but then no, it's actually not. And it has a lot of contortion in different levels that sort of again it feels very willful. It feels like this is your will to do this. Can you talk about this because I'm just wondering why is there so much contortion or why is there so much shaping? Why was it necessary in that case?
Yeah, that's a good question. If we didn't have these breaks, so let's say it would be just balconies wrapping around like the classical theaters or like the Scala, you know, which is great, or the Shakespearean theater which is symmetrical but also linear, you know. And I think it's more interesting in also in Scharoun's building which we obviously like a lot that the balconies are nevertheless like separate landscapes, you know, which give you more intimacy. It's more topographical. So, that is the decision, you know, we wanted this not to be a stadium, you know, but we wanted this to have the proximity or the kind of between the viewers and the musician. Something we also want for football arenas, you know, we want the pitch and the people around to be in close relationship. But in a football stadium, it would be stupid to do this kind of separation between the different sectors, you know. So that was obviously something we wanted, but we didn't know exactly how to do it. But it has as I said this movement. There's a rationale in this but I couldn't we would need to have a floor plan to explain. And then it also has these small ways which connect it. So it has also like a landscape really where you move into this building. This is also some of the magic of this kind of encounter between the people that you see, the little doors, the different entrances, as opposed to a football stadium which has these huge areas where people can come in and go out. If this was a football stadium, it would be a cows, you know, because there's more aggression in a football stadium than in a concert hall. But it's all related to that kind of questions somehow.
Yeah. Yeah. Maybe we can turn our attention to the Calder because actually that is in a way so different than the Elbphilharmonie. You mentioned that there was really no site, no budget, no program at the beginning. And so in a case like that, how does the spark emerge? Because there's actually the resistance is not there in the same way when you're given these kinds of things at the outset.
Well, this is the most unusual project perhaps I've ever worked on and I said I because it was during COVID and I really worked in isolation and just a small team led by Jason who is also here, was eventually then my partner. I really needed to know what that could be. And we were selected by the Calder Foundation and by the Barnes Foundation. These two are the client representing the client, Joe Newower and Sandy Rower. Since the first discussions, this was a kind of question around what could that space be for Calder. And Sandy who is the grandson says, you know, he wants this to be the most innovative and the most unexpected place for Calder because Calder's work is so well known, it's always exhibited mostly on white plinths. And so we wanted to have a maximum of unlikely and different spaces. And because it didn't have all these restrictions that normally architectural projects have, this is more like an artwork. But I'm not saying this is an artwork, but the process because like an artist, nothing is given that you have to say what could that be, you know. And the first drawings, although one is here, was a totally different approach was a kind of collection or stack of fragments, like fragments of spaces, spatial fragments that would make this thing. And then I knew that this was never leading to a good, could be nice, but I don't want a nice project. I want a great project. And so we said it should have no form and no color because that's color. It should be everything that color is not. That is the fragment approach. That was one of the early sketches. And then because it was COVID, actually I really worked alone a lot and sent sketches that were all stored and tell the story of its making. And it's a lot, every single element that came in was tested and based on what I said before. Do I like it or do I find it stupid after a while? Is it right or not? It's very much based on gesture. What does it actually mean? Does it make you stop or feel? Does it feel natural? And it should feel natural. And it's so full of questions of what architecture can be. This one for instance, you see on the right hand side, that's the ramped garden as we called it. The moment was a kind of fake nature. That's also an element that comes up a lot. Nature and artificial, natural and artificial. And we then replaced it by the vestige garden. This kind of rectangular form is a fake vestige because there was another neighborhood on that side that we found out after a while which could give a structure to this part of the garden as opposed to the previous idea where we faked nature. And I sent Jason images of Tenerife where we have a house. Reef is a volcanic island which has lots of places where you stand in front and you say to yourself, is this man-made or is this nature? And obviously it's nature but it looks like a giant had carved it and cut it. It's very fascinating. But it didn't work. I didn't want to do this because it would have looked stupid. So we had to find something else which is also not form but is like found, like a piece of archaeology or geology. You mentioned this term of geology. And then as the project evolved, the spaces came along automatically without shaping them. You know, a circle is of course also an artificial shape, but the circle is somehow obvious, you know, it's the most generic shape. So it's not really the architecture who says I do a circle, you know. That kind of thinking is very important. What makes you stop and say, hey, why did the architect do this? It should feel natural and unpretentious. That's the most important thing that was driving me and also the team. By the way, Neda was also working on this project, so the tiny team, one person, was the team led by Jason. And of course as the project progressed, we knew how to do it. It was basically an underground, it was excavated. It was more space than form. It doesn't have color. But nevertheless, this was an early collage that I did where I thought water could be interesting, but we let it go. There is a lot of process, but each step needed a clear idea. You couldn't say it's natural or it's alternative. But it's really one step excludes a next one. And that's very different from the kind of process that we saw in the Elbphilharmonie process. Every project is so to speak a kind of a process, but this was a different kind of logic in it. It includes the previous one.
Well, in many ways one could say on the one hand that the Elbphilharmonie is a kind of the opposite of the Calder because in fact their exteriority or the way that they make an iconicity is actually completely different and maybe the Calder is not at all concerned with that. But what I think is very interesting about both of them is that what they share is a kind of intensity of the interior realm. And in the Calder project, which I think is in many ways the ultimate landform building, the promise of it is it's in a kind of interior landscape that it produces that I think makes it quite special and unique. And in that way, when I was looking at it I thought like there's actually so much that we don't understand when you look at it from its exterior. So it's quite a surprise, I imagine, entering.
Yes, there's some slides that show it from outside. It has this embracing disc. This thing at some point I became aware it's a wall, it's a disc, and it's two gardens. And the garden idea came in later because obviously if there is no building, there is a lot of land and there's just this shack there that represents the American landscape, and this glass wall which is just a mirror mirrors the garden. And the older the project will be, I think already this here, it will look much nicer because the garden of Rudolff will become very lush and will transform it into really a garden for the people. And there is very little building and as you said, it's a lot of space to discover. Every step you walk through this building, you make this encounter and you forget the whole process behind it. I also tend to forget it already because as you walk through it, it should just feel natural and surprising each time. And it offers for Calder really a place of difference. And the plan there is of course that the Calder Foundation changes the objects every few months, so when you go a second time a year later or two years later, you may find something very different and maybe the same object in a different context. That kind of thing in that it is almost an ideal context for a museum. I think the museum should offer to the curators and the artists a wide variety of different places. For if you have a Mona Lisa, you should show it in a mountain shack somewhere, you know, in a stupid wall and then again in the Louvre and then maybe here. So great art always resonates in a different way. And to create different settings is really interesting. And I think Calder's work especially because it's also moving, Calder's work has this constant movement and this transformative quality more than other 20th century sculpture. No, I think that that's actually one of the other qualities of it is the temporal aspect of it. The Calder work itself changes and because of its kinetic conditions.
And so, but Calder is not present in this building. He's absent somehow.
Yes, I wanted him to be absent so he can, when he's in there, he can shine more. He can be more powerful. You know, there's always a danger that you do something for someone or some and you mimic this person or this whatever. I think that's how architects inspire themselves. That's what I really hate about architecture if it does that, because it doesn't lead to anything. It's like someone follows you with a shadow. And that's a lot of our work has that fear of that kind of pretentiousness or this kind of simulacrum. That's something I want to avoid always.
Before we open it up to allow students to ask some questions, I do have one other question that I thought would maybe encapsulate some of the things that we've been seeing today and this fascinating conversation with you. About seven years ago in this room, we had an event and Mohsen ran it. It was called How Will Architecture Be Conceived? In that event, Peter Eisenman, Harry Cobb, and Rafael Moneo came together to speak about this enduring question of how architecture will be conceived. And of course, this is a two-hour talk, so I cannot condense it here. But I think what's so interesting is that Cobb in his way set out to describe three moral imperatives that he felt are the most important in architecture as the basis of architecture's direction. Moneo spoke about the way in which we can see the present and future through the past and was very interested in history and the role of history in architecture. And Eisenman said that architecture is really no longer about this debate, certainly not about the debate between modernism and postmodernism. That's not what we're talking about anymore. And if it's not about that, then perhaps it's about abstraction or phenomena, abstraction versus phenomena. And then because Eisenman decided to pick on Cobb and Moneo and said, Cobb you are abstraction, Moneo you are phenomena. And so there's an interesting dialectic that is occurring here. And I was thinking to myself, where is Jacques Herzog on the spectrum between abstraction and phenomena?
It's up to you to say. I'm not interested. I'm really not interested in that kind of questions. I think — [laughter]
