- -- "Did Tschumi
do this part on Broadway, too?" asked my friend.
"That glass ramp part is really cool, but did he do
the brick part, too?????"
- -- "You mean the
part that looks sort of like the existing buildings next
to it? Yeah, he did that. Wild, huh? McKim, Mead &
White did those buildings about 100 years ago "
- -- "Wow.... I
don't get it," continued my Mad Ave friend, who
writes-funny (we're talkin' WAY funny) ad-copy for a
living, "Why would he do that?" (he's not
trying to be funny)
- -- "I don't
know. But it's a problem, isn't it? I just can't help
thinking that Rem Koolhaas wouldn't have done that. No
way Rem does that."
- -- "Who's
Rem?"
- -- "Well, he's a
Dutch architect, hypermodern -- real important, like
Tschumi. I just can't see Rem doing some neo-19th-century
"post-modern" match-and-blend scheme. Or Gehry.
Or Hadid. It's the 21st century."
- -- "Who?"
- -- "Zaha Hadid.
She's a London-based Iraqi architect. First woman in
the history of the planet of international significance
in architecture."
- -- "Oh. So it's
kind of either like retro nostaligia or trompe-
l'oeil or a harmony-thing or something? Seems pretty
conservative. But maybe its supposed to be sardonic, you
think?"
- -- "Well, he's
the Dean of Columbia's School of Architecture, and he's
remarkably talented. I love his Parc de la Villette
project in Paris. Some cool stuff, red metal panel,
1917ish Russian Constructivist."
- -- "Maybe that
would have been good here."
- -- "I like the
way you think."
-
- Having now moved
inside the campus, looking at the campus-side entrance,
northeast corner of Lerner, adjacent to Butler Library,
my friend continues...
-
- -- "Must be
Columbia. Politics. We've got that in advertising
too."
- -- "I guess.
Maybe his hands were tied. But it doesn't explain
everything," I said.
- -- "I know what
you mean. Look at that corner! What's with that round
brick column??? I don't know much about architecture,
but... And It doesn't look like that part has anything to
do with the ramp. It looks like two different architects
did it. The first part was built like 40 years ago or
something and they hired Tschumi to come in and renovate
it and he made this super-cool sinking ship glass
blue-light modern thing."
- -- "Yeah, It
looks like the Titanic, doesn't it? Like it's sinking
into the water. Nice," I waxed.
- -- "Like the
Titanic hit an iceberg. Or got wedged between two
icebergs," said my friend, trying to get a handle on
the incongruity.
- -- "Titanic: 10.
Icebergs: 5...? -- big iceberg: 6.1, small iceberg
3.9," I summed up, using the zero-to-ten scoring system.
- -- "The icebergs
look like Ohio,1958."
- -- "Titanic
meets icebergs: 3.2," I continued.
- -- "Tough
score."
- -- "I know. So
when it get's right down to it, whaddawegot? The cool
Titanic part is, what, 9% of the project? And the
Ohio-1958 iceberg parts are 91%?"
-
- As we begin heading
back through Columbia's main gates at 116th and Broadway,
we reflect some more. First me...
-
- -- "Well, I
think the underlying contention is collage. You know,
glueing. Like Braque and Picasso in 1912. Glue a ticket
stub to a piece of chair caning to some paint on canvas
to a playing card to a drawing of a clarinet or a fruit
bowl. Synthesize a new world of forms from everyday
stuff. Make art by heightening perception of the inherent
plastic properties of the banal."
- -- "So the idea
here is to collage super-tech 2000 to Ohio 1958?"
- -- "Looks that
way. Glue an Xtra Large '70s historio-postmodernist take
on McKim, Mead &White's late 19th-century
neoclassicism to a Small take on '90s
techno-modernism."
- -- "It's tough.
I wonder what the guys in Sing-Sing would think of all
this. I mean whaddathey say, "Hey, Harry, these ramp
lines are kind of like Frank Gehry over at Attica, don't
you think," said Mad Ave, recalling our penal
associations of the interior.
- -- "So: 9%
Titanic super-tech 2000 -- 10; ......glued to 91%
Iceburgs Ohio-1958 slash postmodernism -- 5;....equals
what?"...I continue to number crunch.
- -- "At least the
glass/ramp part is terrific."
- -- "That's for
sure. It's the only part of the building where the spirit
of the interior makes itself apparent. Conceal and
Reveal. Too bad the building isn't inside out. That
mailbox wall would make a great facade".
- -- "A
conundrum," says my friend (and he used to drive a
cab).
- -- "A missed
opportunity."
- -- "Yeah."
- -- "If you could
just rework a bit so that...," I tried to put my
finger on it.
- -- "What?"
- -- "I dunno. So
that there's more . . . lobster?"
-
- VISIT
4Tuesday
8.24.99
- the pieces and the
game; or, of meatloaf and lobster
-
- The Opojaz
critics firmly believed that before trying to explain
anything, one should find out what it is...before trying
to explain anything, one should find out what it
is...find out what it is....what it is....what it
is....what it is....what it is...
-
- I shift my thinking.
And I think I've got it. I wrestle with this building.
With its unsettling dichotomy. But I know what it is.
-
- It came to me, as I
strolled through campus today from the Avery architecture
library, that it's like an accordian.....two handles with
a stretchy part in between. I'm talking about the iconic
view from Lowe Library looking at the northeast corner
with the brick column. Then, finally, I made the leap: to
chess, specifically to the way a rook moves, to Picasso,
"Violin," 1912, and the chess-like diagrammatic
devices of synthetic Cubism generally (e.g., solid/void,
positive/negative, figure/sub-figure, cut/intercut,
contingency/sub-contingency, and phenomenal versus
literal transparency) -- principles that I now see
clearly this project is not about, though the latent
presence of an elementary "rook's move" can be
inferred -- shift could have happened.......and
finally to food -- meatloaf and lobster. I must be
hungry...
-
- [to be continued...]
-
- Thursday 8.26.99
- chess
moves...versus chess pieces (or, the problem of designing
excellent pieces versus playing an excellent game)
- ...for background on
this philosophy, see http://www.thearchitectpainter.com/MadisonGray/deep_SIGHT/reviews/moma_KnightMoves.htm
-
- "...playing
intensely the architectural game." _Le
Corbusier
- ...meatloaf &
lobster...two pebbles and a diamond...the ho-hum and the
special, the everyday and art. All architectures can be
(perhaps, inevitably, must be) evaluated on the basis of
their double responsibility -- analogizing to chess -- to
design both excellent chess pieces and play an excellent
chess game. At the ultimate level of championship play,
as it were (especially appropriate right at this moment
in light of the current World Chess Championship in Las
Vegas: http://www.worldfide.com/chess/index.html), an equilibrium of
excellence is achieved in which there is manifest an
inextricable reciprocity or interdependence of the
intellectual/aesthetic/visual principles that underlie
their (inter) relationship.
-
- Great
Pieces + Great Game = 10
-
- What is the
"Pieces + Game" score for this project?
-
- VISIT
5Thursday
9.2.99
- Heightening
perception of the abnormal...what's level? what's safe?
-
- "The
purpose of art is to disturb." _Georges
Braque
-
- There is a moment on
level 1 (the main campus entrance is level 2) where the
idea of "level" is called into question. And
the phenomenon of disorientation, as one stands and tries
with little certainty to determine where the datum of
horizontality is (as I did again today with another
former student, PM, and a few days ago with my brother
[an unrecorded visit]) is quite wonderful. The devices of
tilting and counter-tilting are intensified. The sloping
ramps overhead and adjacent, the rotation/crank and
counter-rotation/crank of the aluminum and glass interior
facade (concealing the presence of a surprisingly large
room, an auditorium, behind it), and the presumably level
wood floor that looks anything but contribute to a
beautiful fugue of horizontal disorientation. This theme,
whereby the experience of the interior heightens one's
perception of the abnormal, is also made manifest in the
precarious-feeling steel and glass-floor ramps, which
traverse, through complex structural attachment, the
monumental facade of glass that fronts on the campus.
(The glass ramp-flooring is transluscent, not
transparent, which, though obviously more practical,
helps explain why the experience is less exhilarating
than one might have anticipated.) Through tilting and
danger (what's level? is it safe?), Tschumi has
successfully and satisfyingly heightened perception of
the abnormal.
-
- the best room/the
best move...
"What's with
the outside?...It's a one-move building. Put all your
money in the ramp and the heck with everything else...The
auditorium is the best part of the project and just what
it needs." _PM
Oddly enough,
perhaps, the surprise room, the XL auditorium mentioned
above, makes the project. The device of delay, whose
effect is surprise, is successfully employed here: there
is no hint of this room outside, nor is there any hint
inside, when within the contracted narrow public
circulation/meeting space of the ramps. And the spatial
amplitude of the room breathes remarkable life into the
project. Moreover, the literal transparency though the
north interior facade of the auditorium -- which allows
"horizontal" views through to the ramps and to
the outside -- and the facade itself, a perforated,
corrugated aluminum-clad surface delimiting the intruding
tilted volume that reads through from the ramped-interior
(the rare, but brilliant, moment of phenomenal
transparency), contribute to my sense (and PM's as well)
that this is the BEST MOVE -- the defining moment of
excellence, where the veritable architecture of the
project takes place. This facade, functioning as an
iconic device of literal and phenomenal transparency, is
the project's most coherent, unequivocal signifier of
modernism...and the best hint of the spirit of the
2000-is-here avant-garde.
- Literal
collage is a
device that essentially involves the juxtaposition
of physical material; whereas
- Phenomenal
collage is a
device that essentially involves the ambiguity
& reciprocity of figure/field.
-
-
- |THRESHOLD: Thus the following
illustrations and discussion function as a lens
for viewing the idea of collage,
which is, at least by implication, at the very core of
not only Tschumi's Lerner Hall but much of current
form-making, including that of Frank Gehry. (Is Gehry's
work more a reflection of an understanding of phenomenal
collage or literal collage?) All seven illustrations are
examples of Synthetic Cubist and Synthetic
Cubist-inspired space making/form making devices
-- i.e., phenomenal collage. They
illustrate visual "chess moves" in the game of
solid/void "chess-piece" deployment. They
illustrate the complex interrelationships of
figure/field-based organizational structures.
Principal devices include interlocking,
intercutting, contingent/sub-contingent
development, incompletion, fragmentation,
and the primary assertion of the void.
For an example of the opposite type, literal
collage, see Picasso's Still life with
chair-caning, in the article that provides the
background for this essay, "Collage Reading:
Braque |
Picasso" by Jef7rey HILDNER in the
Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture Annual Proceedings 84, 1996, pp.
181-187: http://www.thearchitectpainter.com/surface_7ARCHITECT/articles/collagereading.htm.
-
- 1.
2.
3.
- 1.
Picasso, Violin,
pasted paper and charcoal, 1912
- 2. Author, Knight's
Move _NYT: cut, separate, slide, pasted paper,
pencil and gouache, 1997
- 3. Le Corbusier, Maison
Currutchet, section, 1949
-
- 1. Picasso's Violin illustrates the simple
device-sequence underlying what I call the Knight's
Move -- that is, figural diagonal displacement
(though inspired by Braque's revolutionary, original work
in this regard, this Picasso is especially easy to read).
Here, the two dark sepia shapes of text, idiosyncratic
and contingent, are not only intercut and therefore codependent
with the void of the white space around them
(or, is the white space solid and the dark shapes void?),
but they are also clearly intercontingent
relative to each other: Imagine them as originally
conjoined in the upper right corner, then cut apart and
diagonally separated. The sequence of moves/devices
Picasso implictly employed is actually susceptible to
even finer analysis by simply retracing the sequence in
reverse and reuniting the two shapes or "chess
pieces." For example, move the lower piece (the
"knight") as follows: flip horizontally, slide
up, move right, join. The original move, then, comprises
four elementary devices in reverse: cut,
separate, slide/shift, flip.
-
- 2. The
author's pasted-paper collage Knight's Move _NYT: cut,
separate, slide illustrates a similar, simpler
sequence of diagonal displacement, involving the solid (p
-- positive) and the void (n =
negative). Like the Picasso, it allows other readings,
including those in which both figures are dynamic rather
than regarding one as stationary (e.g.., substitute the
device "shift" for
"slide" and immediately the displacement
activates both pieces after their separation).
3.
That Le
Corbusier understood the figure/field lessons of
collage is clear in the rook's move of
this small house (Maison Currutchet, above). The tall left
fragment, which includes the open-air roof terrace, and
the larger right fragment may be understood as having
"originally" formed a single cubic mass. Their
implied orthogonal displacement or separation to the
current position (e.g., think of the left fragment as
having been pulled away from the original mass -- sliiiiiiiiiiiiiiide
left) expands the boundaries of the rectangular field and
thus recomplicates the volume and enriches the
inside/outside relationships of the house. Through his negative-positive
form making, Le Corbusier has created a 50/50
solid/void structure in which the negative
space is as equally figural and important as the
positive forms. Thus here, as in the pasted paper
collages, perhaps the most significant act is the
creation of the codependent space between,
to which the rook's move is subservient. This in-between
"space" may be either a solid or a void (in Le
Corbusier's building it is a codependent void -- outside
space; in Tschumi's building it is an independent solid
-- the glass-enclosed ramps), and it may function
ambiguously as much as a field as a figure. Ultimately,
it manifests the properties of interconnection, such
that, as in a jigsaw puzzle piece, it is simultaneously
autonomous and a dynamic, contingent fragment of
a larger whole.
|If the Knight's
Move
is diagonal displacement,
especially of reciprocal figures, what I call the
Rook's Move is simply orthogonal
displacement
of the same. ___
- 4.
5.
- 4. Diagram, by author, of
Juan Gris' painting, Still life with guitar,
1917
- 5.
Knight's move | Author, Piero Abstract_,
pencil and gouache, 1997
-
- 4.
& 5.
These two
drawings reinforce the theme of fractured,
contingent, figural interlock and the
recomplication of surface; i.e., phenomenal
collage or the ambiguity of figure/field. The diagram of
Gris's Still
life with guitar indicates his important research
into space-defining devices. Drawing Piero Abstract_ also illustrates, again,
the negative-positive
diagonal move of the cut-figure "knight" and
the codependent space between..............
-
-
- 6.
7.
_click to see full painting
- 6. Rook's Move
(variation) | Author, Displacement,
pencil and pasted paper, 1997
- 7.
Author, Rook's
Move 3 _Urban Landscape, oil on canvas, detail,
1997
-
- 6. This study -- Displacement -- illustrates a simple
variation of the rook's move (cut &
backslide), as well as the phenomenon of spatial
contraction -- deep space/shallow space
-- and the concomitant property of figure/field
ambiguity. Plus, it also hints at perhaps the
most subversive proposition of modernism. Integral to
phenomenal collage and the idea of abstraction,
wherein object and background (figure and field) may be conflated
or interlocked, this proposition might
be regarded as what Harrison & Wood describe, in Art
and Theory: 1900-1990, as the central paradox of
modernism:
|Paradox of Modernism: the
assertion of the autonomy of form versus
.the destruction
of the autonomy of the
object. ___
- 7.
Finally: this painting gives
expression to the idea of negative space
and solid/void ambiguity -- intrinsic to
the interlocking matrix of the
rectangular field is the basic orthogonal
displacement of the rook's move..and the codependent
space between...
- Therefore,
-
- .......one may well
argue that all architectures are located on a sliding
scale that runs from literal collage to
phenomenal collage -- and thus on an interactive
double-sliding scale that runs from autonomous
form to representational form
and from autonomous object to contingent
object. It is not a matter of either/or
but degree. To what degree, in other
words, is Tschumi's building about literal collage, and
to what degree is it about phenomenal collage? And, to
the degree that the choice between the two was conscious,
why was this choice made?
-
- There
are indeed many architectures. How shall this one to be
classified?
- 3___
- Chess
Strategies
The following conceptual
diagrams of the north facade of the building --
hierarchically numero uno in the architectural
Form-Making proposition -- try to provide a basis for
arriving at the/an answer. The north elevation/facade
yields the conceptual diagram that underlies the iconic
view of the project, the oblique, 3/4 view from
Campus Walk, Lowe Library, etc. I juxtapose this diagram
to a diagram of what the project could have been.
Actual
Strategy:
BOOK
ENDS/AUTONOMY
- LITERAL
COLLAGE + literal transparency
- 7. Figural
autonomy and centripetal containment (a
trapped/book-ended center); side-by-side abutment of
autonomous forms + isolated center tilting
- 1. Short masonry mass; 2.
Glass mass
(enclosed ramps); 3. Tall masonry mass
-
- 7. Three autonomous masses
comprise this ABA neo-classical system.
Each of the three masses is self-sustaining -- if any two
masses were to be removed, the remaining mass, because of
the way each has been designed, would yield no clue that
anything was missing. There are no formal
repercussions or inflections of one mass made
manifest on another. One mass stops, the other starts.
Similar materials and blockiness distinguish the end
masses from the center, but each of these end masses
could stand as complete, whole buildings if the other
were removed because they are not codependent
figurally. Neither is the space between them
codependent. The forms signified by this diagram (i.e.,
the project as built) are autonomous forms not contingent
forms. This autonomy finds expression through two independent
systems of juxtaposed dissimilar
materials (shown here as blue and gray). It is
an architecture of univalency (i.e.,
there is only one reading of the form relationships), of inward,
centripetal forces that reinforce the dominance
of a trapped center, as well as
alternating (ABA) conditions of physical
opacity/transparency/opacity (i.e., literal transparency)
and stasis/movement/stasis. While x-axial or lateral
movement is implied by the ramp within the glass center
mass, this force is trapped or book-ended
-- there is no peripheral expression of the ramp --
and it is therefore subordinate to the dominant force of z-axial
frontality, which governs the
side-by-side abutment of three independent
building blocks. The principle organizing
devices -- side-by-side
abutment/book ends + isolated center tilting -- establish a static
system of non-turbulence and non-disruption
at the secondary and tertiary levels of form-
and space-making, yielding an assemblage of absolute
and autonomous non-relationhips
(i.e., literal collage).
-
- Alternative
Strategy:
ROOK'S MOVE/CONTINGENCY
- PHENOMENAL
COLLAGE + phenomenal transparency
- 8. Figural
contingency and centrifugal expansion (a codependent
"space between"); displacement, figure/field
interlock + interwoven extended/peripheral tilting
- ...cut,
separate/slide, pull through and wrap/fold the (left)
corner
- 1.
Rook Fragment; 2. Codependent Space Between;
3. Rook
-
- ...the
conception of the world as law-bound in the relation of
simple elementary components, yet open, unbounded, and
contingent as a whole. _Meyer
Scaphiro, "On Some Problems of the Semiotics of
Visual Art: Field and Vehicle in Image-Signs"
-
8.
These diagrams, which take Tschumi's basic ABA
sub-division as the starting point, are examples of an alternative
diagram-type. They illustrate the principle of contingency.
They suggest the presence of an integrated, dynamic
system of interlocking,
contingent fragments organized on the
basis of classical (i.e., Roman [see
Rowe, Collage City]) and hypermodernist
(i.e., Cubist-based) principles of ambiguity
and reciprocity of figure/field. Devices
of contingeny include negative-positive
form making and the rook's-move of
implied lateral displacement, which
produces a codependent space between.
The disposition of collage fragments
function to reflect the dialectic
between the autonomy of form and the contingency
of object/s. The resulting assemblage is more a contingent
fabric than an autonomous object. Fragments are codependent
figurally with the other fragments that comprise
the codependent visual field, including
the existing site (were the diagram to be advanced from
this point it would be essential to include the facade of
Butler Library, to the left, if not also the buildings on
the other side of Broadway to the right, as well as an
indication of the Broadway building in front of the
"Rook"). This diagram-type also expresses centrifugal,
lateral forces that help to liberate the
center from its ABA straight-jacket. In contrast to the
actual strategy, here the emphasis is on extension
to the edges, incompletion,
fragmentation, and form-readings of difficulty
and fugal multivalency. Z-axial
frontality and x-axial laterality are in
tension. Architecture is a contingent
fragment of a larger whole. The principle
organizing devices -- figure-field
interlock & shift/displacement (cut, separate/slide, pull
through and wrap/fold the corner) +
interwoven extended/peripheral tilting -- allow for secondary and
tertiary turbulence and discontinuity
within a highly stable dynamic system
of multi-contingent inter-relationships
(i.e., phenomenal collage).
|10.
11.
