Columbia GSAPP: John Foerster ‘64 Fund Lecture - Jacques Herzog

Thank you for having me. I'm glad to be able to speak here. I proposed this format of a conversation. I think that's very important to mention because if I give a frontal lecture I repeat myself and I say what I already know. Whereas the conversation is the opportunity to have an exchange and to learn from you what you see that I would eventually not see in the same way. And it's also important to have so many students and to open up the Q&A so that it's really more of an exchange than a lecture because with today's possibilities and accessibility in our website people can see our projects and can read a lot about these projects already. So the degree of information is a different one than 20 years ago or 25 years ago when we started this project. This when we started this project we did this as a collaboration. Rem and I have always had a certain mutual curiosity and also jealousy every once in a while. So it was an ideal way to sort of learn from each other and to start a project that is in many ways interesting for I think his work but also for our work because we take it further and we already could realize in this project a few of our ideas namely what you say when you look at the building how it touches the ground but also I think geopolitically is the moment of radical transformation. As we know now that 9/11, the day before 9/11 we had a seminar kind of an event in the Guggenheim where many architects were present and nobody knew that the day after we would be this event. I was on my way to Minneapolis because we were working on a new museum project, an extension project in Minneapolis. And so it was a crucial moment and it's important especially for the younger ones here to understand that projects are very much bound to their time and their place. And that's a key element in our work. You know, you selected you told me you wanted to focus on New York and I then said let's take these this this and this and this project because they allow for let's say more general things that are you know right also for other project that we've done. But now this one here, if you look at this project, it is obviously very iconic idea and it was done in a moment when such innovation was really what we wanted to do. We wanted to do something that has never existed before. To some degree, we still want that. But I think that the role of architecture has dramatically changed because architecture somehow has disappeared from the front pages from the and also even art. You know, even the most famous artists and architects play much less of an important role in the newspaper because the world has changed so dramatically exactly since that moment 2001. It's like a turning point. In the 90s everything seemed to be possible. You know the French philosophers who were speaking about immateriality you know it in everything that was real that was bound to physicality was totally out. Reality is out. And that was a moment where in a dramatic way, reality came back. And my notion of architecture was always architecture is real and is physical. And only then does it work with human beings because we are physical and real. And all this of this immateriality was dead immediately. And now this reality thing comes back in a dramatic way even in an age of AI. This is what we have to deal with. We have to use architecture in a way that its physicality is really made for the benefit of the people. So issues like sustainability but not only in a material way or in a way that now many are using wood everywhere. But in a more general way, renewable and sustainable is much more what architecture can do. Whereas at this point this hedonistic side was much more possible and was also needed and opened up doors and in this way it is still good. And I think the way this building touches the ground or grows out of the ground has a sustainable idea behind it because it touches the street and it makes the street a very important element of urban life. The street, the building, how a building touches the ground and how it expresses itself towards the outside to the people is key for the success of the building for the success over many years to make it sustainable to make it accessible to offer programs for everybody. That's one point and the other point is and now we can show the next images that a building especially in New York I was always fascinated by the fact of the bedrock. You see that in Central Park where at least some of the stones are really stones of the fundament of Manhattan. And in an early project we've done long before this one for Prada the Prada headquarter in the old piano factory. We renovated or preserved the whole building. We wanted to do a garden, a stone garden in that we excavated. We take away all that was covering the stone and wanted to reveal the natural ground, this rocky ground because the awareness of sitting on the stone on the rock has gone you know and this project was somehow bringing back this idea. So that's certainly one ingredient which is still very relevant in many things and we will see the Caixa Forum project afterwards which is dealing with exactly this notion of how does a building touch the ground from where then it goes up that's a substantial element.

I think you should go through it. Well I think that you find this in many of our projects that this kind of notion in the ground has like is animating the design you know because it gives you can take M+ the museum we've done in Hong Kong our competitors were avoiding the tunnel underneath because it was like a hindrance you know, and we said this is an opportunity to excavate the tunnel because the tunnel is like a contemporary archaeological piece which sits in the ground and because it is a different geometry from the building site. We said this is like something like a gift you know, so it introduces an awkward geometry which informs possibly informs a kind of found space underneath an industrial space which is so needed and so much liked by many contemporary artists. So the building the M+ also uses the ground to animate to inspire or to impulse the rest of the building. And you find this in many of our projects. Then the upper part is the result of zoning. So this rocky building is we wanted to avoid the awareness of individual floors. We just wanted to make it porous and offer diversity and difference in every single room. But that came after many attempts, many trial and errors and the folds are resulting obviously from the zoning. So it is like many other projects and many artists who have done project where the zoning was inspiring the design but here it was leading to a kind of a fake rock or an artificial object and that's another obsession or another ongoing topic in our work the kind of fluid or the kind of relationship between artificial and natural and I think with AI this is going to be again being impulse in a way that we do not know yet. But this building is like a kind of possibility to create something which expresses this ambiguity and why should it be like a rock? Because it creates as I said before diversity. It's very impressing but at the same time it's very intimate. Every single room has a different way to almost inhabit the windows. We did continue. We did many studies how people could use these windows. We didn't know how to create them. First, this is Ian Schrager, our client, in a full-scale mockup of one of the rooms. So it was very close to being realized.

And unfortunately it didn't happen then continue. We built this mockup in Basel and the whole team from Rotterdam and Basel were coming together in discussing this progress.

It was at the end of the day we found a way to make it both rational, conceptual but also have this kind of notion of something natural like a crystal.

Yeah, I mean we wanted to do it where the team is. So it was obvious that we have had to build it in Basel so we can follow the size so it didn't look too stupid. So it should make sense and it couldn't be produced somewhere else and close to the team. And I mean that's also how we work many times. We do very often mockups, full-scale mockups before we present it to the client to make be sure that we know what we're talking about. Especially in such a case where it's so unusual and this was so exciting for all of us.

Yeah, this is a project which we did almost at the same time and this is a project I like to go back a lot. It is in a similar way lifted from the ground but with a different different reason. This is in Madrid and the building is surrounded by other buildings. So there is literally no space for public life. That's one thing. The other thing is that it was a pre-existing building, a brick building that we didn't want to fully remove and destroy because we loved its physicality. The brick almost like a Roman antique building had something from Madrid, you know, these barrios which have this incredibly strong expression, this beauty and we did something brutal and nice at the same time and sometimes it's important this combination of opposite opposite character this paradox. I think the paradox is perhaps the most important characteristic for what I think can produce great architecture or great art that it has something and it has its own contradiction in itself and strangely by cutting off the ground and lifting the building you know keep it hovering we don't reduce its physical expression but we enhance it you know the this hovering building this mass under which you then go in and you go into the building and you also go down into the auditorium creates the public space and is extremely attractive because the building has this amazing weight above. I think that's why it is also still very attractive for visitors in Madrid. And the upper part is has the shape of the other part continue. You can see then in the section that what I said that lifting it up opens up like two worlds. The underworld with the auditorium and the fountain that is also kind of an artificial nature and the upper part with the gallery spaces and the amenity floor above and the cuts in the building are nothing else than reflecting the opposite buildings as if they had carved it out from the different sides. So it's not it's also a kind of a found form that we put on top of this traditional typology.

It would have been impossible. Now you see there is no building in front on this side. But this is only because there was a fire and they didn't rebuild the building. When we started this thing, it was literally just this side of the building. So it did make even more sense. So you would understand even more clearly why we had to lift it up. You know.

This is also a project that for me historically is also in a moment of change. So it was started before the financial crisis at the time that Michael Bloomberg was making possible much more typological speculation in the city. But then it was finished after the crisis, right? And the project for me is also very interesting the way that he's taking things that are there in SoHo and he's piling them up. Right. This is the first tower we've done in New York so far, the only one. And it has this staggering this kind of stack on the ground floor and further up. No, keep stay there. And why it is the stack allows for is a sculptural concept that we have applied in different places. We will see Vitra House afterwards with to it's a sculptural concept with totally different reasons why we've done it here and there and eventually it's same but it's also different here. It's obviously an attempt to create to combine individuality with a general appearance. And in the upper part instead of a crown or a spiral or something else we create this kind of individual houses expressing really the family or the individual person or people who live there. And in the ground floor it's important because because of this stack or this kind of single boxes there is a different proportion. It's a different relationship between the people on the ground and the building. You don't stand in front of the tower which goes all the way up, but you have a different approach, a different relationship between the human and the object in front of you. This it takes away the often kind of awe-inspiring quality because if you many towers want you to stand in awe in front you know like a new bank there was recently I built a new bank in Manhattan which does that. So a shape of a building tells you a lot is very psychological you know it tells you a lot about the intention of the owner or the intention or power behind a commission. What does the client want to express and the client since this is also a residential building understood perfectly well that this building is really like almost like a beehive where people could say this is where I live. It's more recognizable. It's more palatable. That's why we did that, you know. And the artwork on the ground the we asked Anish Kapoor to add a sculpture is kind of funny. I think Anish is a great artist. I think it's interesting to offer something on the ground which is for everybody. You know, of course, maybe a shop or a cafe is a nicer offering, but this is also I always loved that in New York that you have great public sculpture in front of buildings. It's like for free that you can have an extra experience. Many people don't care so much or people New Yorkers find it normal but I never find it normal to have a sculpture in front of a building on the street and to have such a object is something you know that you give something away and it does even enhance more what I said about the stacks you know the individual boxes express weight against lightness we it's again this idea of paradox which is an inherent sculptural concept.

For architecture.

Yeah. But you can have this in every tower, you know? I mean, if you do a tower in New York and you lift it up, you look around, it's always great, you know, even even that's very true for towers mostly if you're in a tower you don't see whether it's a nice or an ugly tower but here I think this idea of giving you the feeling that you are in your own entity but nevertheless part of a whole thing that's the very simple idea behind it.

Well if you enhance the surface of a building you make it has a tendency you make it nicer because you have more windows. You have more connection to the outside but you make it more expensive because you have more envelope. I mean many students here don't know that yet maybe but there will be a pressure from the client side or from the investor to make it a slim tower. That's why most of the New York towers are just glazed boring boxes you know and and there's a reason. And this also sealed windows you cannot operate the windows. Here you have a terrace you can operate. You can go out. This for me is key for a tower, but not only for a residential tower, but for an office tower to at least open a window and let go of someone out at some point. And that and then we can speak about the different experience towards the outside because then you really have a kind of a panoramic experience with your own body. Otherwise, you are always behind a sealed facade. That's the normal thing. And that seems like nothing. But to be in a space where you can open a window, you know, that's you have to convince a client to make it possible. And I think this client here, you know, went a step further. You know, he accepted this kind of cantilevering objects which clearly make it a much more interesting spatial relation. And it's also more private.

Than if you had just a vertical shaft.

Well, when you show such images, all clients understand that this is going to be nice. But it's a good question. We need good clients and we should never do something behind the back of the client. You should always make the client your accomplice. You know, you should involve the client and you should try to convince the client that she or he is part of the game because you don't do this for yourself as an architect. You make it for someone else so that in the future it will survive without you. It for me it's uninteresting to have a critic say this is a great building and in reality the people don't like it. They don't like to live there. The client doesn't like it. So this relationship with the client is fundamental for great architecture. There's no building I think maybe there's a few exceptions where this wouldn't be the case and this is a very simple reason. The reason is that you want buildings to survive in the future many years after you and you can only make them survive if people love the building. They continue to take care of the building and they only take care of the building if it's not a selfish exercise, but it's something that really is made for them and is working well over time. So that's a very simple thing. It's nothing to do with honesty or morality or anything like this, but it's a simple truth.

Well as I said this kind of fuzziness is obviously offering more niches more yeah we did a lot of studies more niches and more yeah we are like animals you know we also like to hide somewhere and but at the same time we like a big open space. So yeah ultimately architecture is made from inside out not only from outside in and this shape has to work from both sides from far away it looks quite impressive with this kind of cantilevering forms and at the bottom also it works but this these forms are not just made for that they are made to be inhabited from inside out and again to make them work well from inside Otherwise you know they would be gone within short time.

The yeah and this was interesting project because here this idea of stack came very was very fast you know sometimes we asked how is the design process and I can I always mention that yeah architecture is based on process where many people are involved we have a large office we have great collaborators we have great partners we have great young architects they all make it possible but you need also a spark you need to give and here the this spark of this idea of having this stack came into place very soon at the beginning and one reason was that We wanted this to be a bit higher because all the buildings Vitra campus is having an amazing number of great buildings by great architect. For instance, the first building of Zaha ever, the first building she ever did was on that campus. This is outside Basel and the first Gehry building in Europe was also there. And we wanted to go a bit higher to have an overview of the whole area and the Rhine Valley. And then we also because this is the Vitra House is a building for visitors and it shows the whole collection of Vitra. So it has also it's a hybrid between something commercial and the museum and it's very attractive because it's lively and it's being changed all the time the interiors and the house is very simple house form because most of the collection is of course furniture for homes and so it made a lot of sense to take this form and then to stack it and with this stack the house form is very simple it's a kind of a non no-brainer kind of a form but as soon as you stack and you drill through it, you create unexpected, incredible, credible forms. And this is also something which is generally something we try to do. We try to avoid creating form proactively, you know, like Picasso that stands in front of the thing and then or other architects who shape, you know, we are a bit scared of this and we try to make form in that it happens, you know, it happens because you arrange things in a way that all of the sudden you discover how through intersection or through perception things take form in an incredibly unexpected way. Whereas when you create something, you have to expect it. And this sounds a bit strange, but just try it. This is a good example. When you go one slide back those red circles we have tested when we change the angle what happens in terms of intersection. What is the result of intersection? So this is really then the decision based on observation. I gave you the example when you lie on the ground on the beach for instance and you look into the sky and then you see the clouds. Everybody has done that before. This is very beautiful. But then the combination of clouds is not always the same. Then you discover something or as a sun you see a face or an animal or something like this and you catch this moment where this happens and this image is your own image is your creation. You can take a picture if you like, but it's something that you find. And this moment of finding something is something we should not miss in architecture. And you may understand it better when I say that architecture is the ideal medium for that because you always find something because we were often told why don't you repeat why we don't have no style has no style and also no taste because I hate both because they reduce your options and projects are different because obviously Every site is different. Every client is different. Has different needs, different means, different resources, different programs. So this diversity is actually much more logical than imposing a style on the site. But that's my opinion. I also like I have to say architects have been working a whole life with their own style. But I wouldn't want to do it.

And all these spaces they you know you could manipulate them but basically you had the instrument to do this. Yeah. And then you can we discussed it also with the client and there was automatically then coming results or solutions which were better because they were more opening or they were more closing or they more opening a view and all these things which are so elementary and so obviously architectural.

Yes the drawings cannot do this but the drawings we will speak about the gardens at the end the drawings are helping to think you know and they say let's try it this way but then to control it you need three-dimensional possibilities you know today you can do it very fast with the computer but you can also still do physical model whatever I don't care what then the means is but the drawing could not invent that you know but it's based on experiments I mean many architects try to work like this and then they manipulate it whatever but this is different in that we create like a rule like conceptual grid which then creates automatically creates diversity and then we select from that those different offerings.