CLAY CITY Alexander Brodsky Artist in Residence
Amsterdam Academy of Architecture
From Table to City Foreword
A large empty table stands in the courtyard of the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture. Al most square but not quite, it measures 8.75 by 10 metres. It is winter. As it rains, small puddles form on the dark table top. The water reflects the chestnut tree branches and the patches of blue sky between the grey clouds. The table waits as time passes by; an imaginary city is in the making. The city still exists in the students’ imagination. They are shaping the city’s building blocks with their hands, using Chamotte clay, at a scale of 1:300. Working only from memory, the students model the clay into houses, flats, bridges, churches, railway stations, office high-rises, museums, factories, schools, swimming pools, an airport, a zoo, a stadium, and so much more of what makes a city a city. The students are hard at work within the Academy walls. While the table in the court yard patiently awaits. Then, a short Russian gentleman wearing a red coat climbs onto the table, chalk in hand. He tentatively draws some lines, erases them, and draws them again. A river divides the table top into two, the con tours of islands appear, neighbourhoods take shape. He adds more lines, until the plan of the city feels complete. Finally, the moment has arrived. Stu dents emerge from all corners of the school bearing large wooden trays full of small clay buildings, like platters heaped high with delicacies. They slide the trays onto the edge of the table. The building of the city commences. The gentleman in the red coat is Alexander Brodsky: architect, artist, and artist-in-residence. Together with the stu dents he picks and chooses elements, places and repositions them, until all the clay buildings have found their place. The city gradually grows and fills the table: office blocks down-town, residential neighbourhoods lining long streets, industrial parks at the perimeter, museums and schools dotted around, plus a railway station. Finally, the bridges that connect the different city parts. Despite the cold and rain, work con tinues unabated, even into the late hours when construction lamps are brought out to illumi nate the emerging city.
The final day: 25 January 2019. The Academy building resounds with the music of Dmitri Shostakovich: String Quartet No. 7, followed by a prelude, an elegy and a pol ka. The performance by the renowned Brodsky Quartet celebrates the creation of this new city. Three violinists and a cellist captivate the audience in the packed hall. After thunderous applause, the courtyard quickly fills up with people, eager to see the city of clay: Alexander Brodsky with his family, students, Jan-Richard Kikkert, lecturers, invitees, academy staff, the musicians. Looking intently, gesticulating, tak ing photographs, attempting to recognise famil iar fragments of this clay cityscape. The empty table has transformed into an imaginary city; one that will live on in the memories of those who experienced it. Madeleine Maaskant Director, Amsterdam Academy of Architecture
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Introduction This publication presents Clay City, the 2019 Winter School at the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture led by the Russian architect and artist Alexander Brodsky. He was invited as an artist-in-residence as part of the AIR programme of the Amsterdam University of the Arts. Together with Brodsky, 136 first and second-year stu dents worked tirelessly from 14 to 25 January 2019 to collectively build an imaginary city of clay. Temporarily occupying the Academy’s courtyard, it was an impres sive sight: a vast, dense cityscape handmade with an incredible wealth of detail. It took us on an architec tural tour through history from ancient Rome to future Amsterdam. Then left to the Dutch elements for six weeks, the city started to disintegrate. This edition of the Winter School was not about choosing a winning presentation; instead it centred on the idea of making something that exceeds the individual to achieve an end result to be collectively proud of. The opportunity to invite Alexander Brodsky to Amsterdam presented itself during our annual European tour to Russia in 2018. At Nikola-Lenivets Park, 175 km south-west of Moscow, we saw two of Brodsky’s pavilions among the landscape installations: Rotunda, which was made from salvaged doors and construction elements, and Villa PO-2 built from recycled concrete fence units, the most ubiquitous construction element in the former Soviet Union. These pavilions evoked a poetic quality that I recognised from Brodsky’s fantastical etchings which incorporated his tory, depth and imagination. Later that week, Brodsky gave us an introduction to his work at his office, and we visited an exhibition that showed his drawings beside Piranesi’s – the effect was overwhelming. Themes in Brodsky’s work such as the notion of history, circularity and vision fitted well with what I wanted the students to explore for the upcoming Winter School. Initially, Brodsky was slightly daunted about the fact that there would be 136 students in the group; this is when he thought of a col lective project to build a city out of clay. It was about creating something together that no one could achieve on his or her own. I believe it is important that students learn to collaborate and the Winter School was the ideal opportunity to do this with a large group. The plan to build a clay city was set tled, but we needed a site for it – and a large one at that. After scouting around Amsterdam for locations, we realised that our own courtyard was ideal. We built a table of 28 standard concrete form plywood panels (1.25 × 2.50 metres), so the model measured almost 90m2. For the base we reused mate rial from the previous graduation show, staying true to Brodsky’s approach. At first the students were slightly puz zled about Brodsky’s brief to make 1:300 clay models of buildings from memory, but carefully fol lowed the instructions. Some days later the Dutch antiauthority mentality surfaced and the students started interpreting Brodsky’s assignment in their own way.
Alexander Brodsky, Villa PO-2, NikolaLenivets Park, 2018.
Brodsky’s etchings at the Tsaritsyno Museum in Moscow.
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By that time the city became truly a work of collabora tion. The intense production sessions were peppered with additional programmes such as a lecture by Prof. dr. Martijn Meeter about human memory, and a screening of Brodsky’s favourite film July Rain, a 1967 Soviet film directed by Marlen Khutsiev which portrays Moscow in a period of apparent détente, paired with film fragments about Amsterdam curated by Jord den Hollander. As drawing is a crucial part of his work, we asked Brodsky to make a drawing for the Academy. Parallel to the clay city outside, Brodsky drew a 10-meter-long abstraction of a city inside – a section of the drawing is featured on the inside cover of this book. We also asked Robbie Cornelissen and Carlijn Kingma to give a drawing master class, where the students made two drawings parallel to Brodsky’s to reflect on the Winter School. In the meantime Brodsky steadily worked on his own immense drawing, stopping only to enjoy his daily herring. Due to the Academy’s concurrent model where students engage in professional work by day and attend class in the evening, the class rooms were empty until 6pm. This gave us the opportu nity to quietly make rounds through the building where we saw the number of clay objects steadily accumu lating – there were thousands of pieces. Brodsky care fully observed the students’ work, imagining what city he could make of this. At a certain stage he requested some larger objects such as a train station, power plants, an airport and a hippodrome. Some iconic works ap peared: Libeskind’s Jewish Museum in Berlin and OMA’s CCTV headquarters. But also the Sydney Opera House, Mies’s Nationalgalerie, the Battersea Power Station including Pink Floyd’s flying pig, Oscar Niemeyer’s Igreja São Francisco de Assis and Bjarke Ingels’s VIA 57 West. When we figured there were enough mod els, we asked the students to bring and arrange their pieces by size on the tables around the courtyard. This was an impressive moment because the clay creations just kept coming and coming – there seemed no end to them. By then everyone was curious to see what all this would lead to. Brodsky drew a rough layout of the city on the table – for him a city always starts at a river, so water became the main structuring element. By this time it became clear that we would need a lot of bridges. The models showed the imagination but also the personalities of the students: neat, provocative, meticulous, ambitious. The clay beautifully merged all these individual qualities into one magnifi cent cityscape. The build-up of the city also generated spontaneous interventions such as a hill that suddenly appeared in one corner. The level of precision was ap parent in a candid movie. While assembling the neigh bourhoods, one of the students – who didn’t know he was being filmed – played the quality controller. He checked whether the models were made carefully enough; those that didn’t make the cut were tossed into the cooling tower. The end result looked familiar at first, with its mass of pitched roof buildings, as Brodsky instructed. But like in Italo Calvino’s Le città
Brodsky & Utkin, Columbarium Architecturae, Museum of Disappearing Buildings, 1990.
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invisibili this model doesn’t represent a real city but an idealised version. The true meaning of the work became clear in the weeks after it was finished. Exposed to the extremes of the Dutch winter, the clay started to ‘melt’ and the city fell apart. Almost symbolically the dome of Albert Speer’s Volkshalle fell first. Bridges collapsed, high-rises toppled, the city was the site of a terrible fate, vanishing like the fading frescos in Fellini’s Roma. The deterioration continued: familiar buildings dissolved, lit tle remained of the aeroplanes and the site resembled pre-historic remains of a wooden settlement. This decay symbolised the passing of time, or as Brodsky put it: we come from clay and we return to it, a perfect cycle. The project became a portrait of this generation of students who used their memory and imagination to express what they find important. I wish to thank Alexander Brodsky for his imm ense contribution, Madeleine Maaskant for her support, the Amsterdam University of the Arts for making this possible, everyone that helped produce (and clean up) the Clay City, and of course the students who gave two weeks of their energy and enthusiasm to make the dream of this magnificent city a reality.
Brodsky adds the finishing touches to his drawing at the Academy.
Jan-Richard Kikkert Head of Architecture, Amsterdam Academy of Architecture
In the lecture hall, Brodsky ‘live’ sketches the plan of the Clay City.
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In Conversation With Alexander Brodsky: Clay Interviewed by Jeanne Tan JT How did you start working with clay? AB There was this huge sculpture factory in Moscow where I was working for many years, it doesn’t exist anymore. At that time in the late 1970s it was an important place that made models of the main monuments in the Soviet Union like huge statues of Lenin and soldiers. They made the models in 1:1 out of clay, then made a plaster mould of it and sent it to the factory to make a statue out of bronze or stone. I spent a lot of time making my own small objects in this factory and was really impressed by the clay. Tons and tons of clay were used and reused every day for these sculp tures. There was this amazing machine to mix the clay. You have to understand that clay is a material that can be used forever if you don’t fire it. Just dry it, add water, it melts and is mixed with this machine and then it can be used over again. I was so fascinated with this material. JT Was it a special kind of clay? AB Yes it was a special kind of clay, I haven’t seen it anywhere else. After the factory closed I never saw it again. It came from a place near Leningrad. It was not grey but a beautiful light green. For some reason they used this type of clay and they had a huge amount of it in storage. I was using this clay every day, and the funny thought occurred to me that this clay was all the time circulating in the factory, so that every piece of clay could be anything, like Lenin’s nose or a soldier’s leg. Because you use the same clay, melt it, mix it, dry it, so on. So each time I took a new piece of clay I thought it could have been 200 different things before, and now I’m making something with it myself, which was interesting. I started using clay more and more, I made some exhibitions in the 1990s with clay objects and installations in Moscow. The Grey Matter exhibition was in New York in 1999. Somehow clay became one of my favourite materials. I never fired it. I just left it to dry, and sometimes I reused it. JT Why did you leave it unfired? AB I liked this beautiful texture, this beautiful feeling of fragility. The feeling that it’s dust, and now it’s a piece of art but it can become dust again, and it keeps circulating and be reused over and over. JT How would you compare the process of working with clay and making etchings? AB Etching and clay have something in com mon, it’s difficult to explain – they look good together. When I started working with clay I didn’t make etchings anymore because I didn’t have space to do it. For many years I didn’t make etchings, but I always went back to clay. JT And the clay cities? AB The city first appeared in Moscow in an installation in a gallery called Coma. At first I didn’t think about making it from clay, originally the idea was to make the city out of sugar so then it could melt into water. But sugar was not the right material be cause it would dissolve too fast and the city would have to be pre-formed somehow or made of sugar cubes. So finally I decided to make it from clay. Somehow this
Alexander Brodsky, Grey Matter, New York, 1999.
Alexander Brodsky, Grey Matter, Capelle aan den IJssel, 2000.
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was the beginning of a long period when I made a lot of things in clay. After Grey Matter I had an art commission for a nursing home in the Netherlands, where I made a number of clay objects. JT Did you experience the city in a different way while shaping it from clay? AB I’ve built the city three times previously: once in Moscow and twice in Milan. The main thing I remember was this amazing feeling of work ing alone in the gallery, building everything myself. It was this wonderful feeling of creating a real city, changing the streets and looking at the city from different perspectives. JT What was the idea behind the Coma installation? AB The main thing I wanted to say with Coma was to represent the city as a patient on a surgery table in hospital, where doctors do some thing bad to the body of the city. So it was mainly about Moscow and the bad things that have happened to Moscow for the past years, as with many other cities. On both sides I placed medical needles with black oil and video fragments that I made of the city. This black oil started dripping, the city was sinking. People who saw the exhibition in Moscow said different things: it ab solutely looks like Barcelona, another said Venice, oth ers said something else. The city didn’t flood completely during the exhibition because we didn’t have enough time, but by the end it was half sinking in the oil. JT You grew up in Moscow. What fascinates you most about cities? AB Usually I look for surprises in every city. You turn the corner and see something you don’t expect. Moscow used to be full of surprises but day by day they changed everything, destroyed old parts of the city and I became less and less surprised. Contemporary architecture in the way they use it in Moscow doesn’t give me surprises anymore; it’s a very personal thing. What I used to like about Moscow was this strange unpredictability; you find some corners, yards, layers of different times and so on. In every city it’s more or less the same. Now in the city centre, they take an area that was complex, full of small scale streets and little yards and then destroy it and put one or two build ings there instead: that becomes too simple, it changes the space. Before it was like a whole world. Now all you see is just a small piece of space with a couple of build ings and nothing more. JT The clay cities seem like an entire world, mysterious, surprising and intriguing. AB That’s partly because of clay itself, the texture, it’s very alive. You make some thing with clay, put in simple windows, then it’s a build ing. It has some life in it, which is mysterious. When there are thousands of buildings, of course it feels much stronger. In a huge city, you find yourself inside this world and get lost in it somehow. JT How has your relationship with the city evolved during your career? AB I never moved away from Moscow, I grew up there and I still live there except for the few years I spent in the US. I never left the city. So I can see all the changes that happen day by day. Moscow is a very different city now. I remember Moscow from
Alexander Brodsky, Coma, 2000.
Alexander Brodsky, detail of Untitled, 2018.
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the late 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, it felt completely differ ent. The atmosphere was very cosy. It was a huge city but somehow cosy. Some parts were like a big village in the centre. There were some really wild places near the Kremlin, big courtyards that were like lost worlds. But now it’s not possible to find these sorts of places anymore. Of course it happens to all cities; sometimes I’m really sad about this atmosphere we’ve lost. JT How did you start making clay facades? AB Some time ago, I was preparing an exhibi tion with clay models and I made a sketch of the gallery with clay models on tables. I thought we should put something on the wall. I made some draw ings on paper and suddenly I saw that my picture also looks like a clay object on the wall – I thought why not? Why can’t I make a clay drawing that hangs on a wall like a real drawing but be made of clay. So I made a few things and I understood it was possible, even with trans portation. They are very fragile, but we’ve sent them to different places, to London, Berlin, even to a museum in Sydney. As long as you don’t drop them… JT Does this flat format show the material in a different way than when it’s three dimensional? AB Yes it gives a different impression. You look at this piece on the wall, you see the tex ture, you see how the clay is all cracked. The first time you see it you don’t know what’s inside: a very thin metal structure holds it together. It’s quite strong. JT You describe clay as a material that can be used for making memories as physical ob jects. Can you tell us more about this idea? AB Clay is very easy to work with, physically it’s a soft material. If you know how to use it, you can make absolutely everything, even huge com plicated structures. You work slowly and carefully, know ing the nature of clay, with no structure inside. Pottery makers can make huge hollow clay pots, adding layer by layer. It’s not like working with stone where the physical part takes a lot of time and you need special tools. All you need is a piece of clay, your brain and your hands and you have it. All together this reminds me of making mem ories. I’m sitting, recalling images in my head, my hands are looking inside my head and I reproduce images in this soft material. The neutral grey colour reminds me of memories when you don’t think in colour but in black and white like old photographs. These things together and the grey clay are a symbol of making memories as phys ical objects. When an object is still wet, you can keep adding and changing it. When you’re satisfied with it, you leave it to dry and it becomes one of these memories. JT Are there new ways you want to experi ment with clay? AB At ETH Zurich, where we made another smaller city, some students fired the build ings at a very low temperature. Suddenly I saw that the clay looked very beautiful; it became darker with a nice grey colour. It was somewhere in the middle – it had not become ceramic yet, so it was still clay but much stronger. It’s complicated to find this exact temperature. So I’m thinking of doing something with this process, to make something a bit harder that looks like it has just dried but is not so fragile.
Alexander Brodsky, Untitled, 2012.
Alexander Brodsky, Untitled, 2015.
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December in Florence IX There are cities in this world to which one can’t return. The sun beats on their windows as though on polished mirrors. And no amount of gold will make their hinged gates turn. Rivers in those cities always flow beneath six bridges. There are places in those cities where lips first pressed on lips and pen on paper. In those cities there’s a richness of scarecrows cast in iron, of colonnades, arcades. There the crowds besieging trolley stops are speaking in the language of a man who’s been written off as dead. Joseph Brodsky 1
1. Joseph Brodsky: ‘December in Florence’, translated by Maurice English and George L. Kline, Shearsman (7): 19 – 21.
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Декабрь во Флоренции
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Есть города, в которые нет возврата. Солнце бьется в их окна, как в гладкие зеркала. То есть, в них не проникнешь ни за какое злато. Там всегда протекает река под шестью мостами. Там есть места, где припадал устами тоже к устам и пером к листам. И там рябит от аркад, колоннад, от чугунных пугал; там толпа говорит, осаждая трамвайный угол, на языке человека, который убыл.
Иосиф Бродский
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In Conversation With Alexander Brodsky: Winter School Interviewed by Jeanne Tan
Brodsky briefs the students at the first meeting.
Production of the clay models begins. The windows were made by piercing the clay with chopsticks.
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JT How did you come up with the idea to build a city out of clay with the students? AB I always thought about the possibility of building a bigger city – the previous cities were not that big although they were for the galleries. When I was invited to Amsterdam, I understood that there were a lot of students and I didn’t know what to do with them at first – suddenly I thought this is it, a chance to build this big city. It can be very beautiful. JT What kind of city did you have in mind? AB I didn’t have an exact city in mind. With Coma it was about Moscow. But since everything here was to be made by the students, who haven’t been to Moscow, I thought it would be strange to ask them to do something about a place they’ve never been to. I wanted an eclectic mix of everything, which is in some way Moscow – it’s a crazy mixture of layers, epochs and styles. But here because of the big group, I asked them to make whatever they wanted. Everything was connected by the scale of the window. The scale of the model was approximately 1:300. But the stick we used to make the window was key to the whole thing. The building can be any size but once you put in the window, it brings every piece of clay to the same scale, in a primitive way. You could make a piece with three windows and it becomes a small house or a huge piece with the same windows and it becomes a skyscraper. JT How did you start the process of making it? AB The students were free to produce any thing. But I asked them to start with one specific type of building for the main body of the city. It was a neutral, traditional building with a pitched roof, one to eight storeys high that are common in many old cities. I asked them to make as many of these sim ple buildings as possible, in all different shapes and sizes. This way, there would be enough mass to fill the city. JT You asked the students to make the ob jects from memory, not using photos or images. What was the idea behind that? AB I think when it’s from your memory, it gives it a special quality. It goes through your brain but it changes in some way that you’d like to change it. So I really didn’t want to make copies but to make portraits, which is very important for me. It adds another quality – you forget something, add some thing else that’s not there but all together it becomes much more interesting than just a precise copy from a photo. JT It really becomes your own interpretation. AB Yes, and that was also the rule of the game for my installation Grey Matter. I made a list of objects but never looked at the real ob jects and made everything from memory. When I finally finished and compared everything to the real objects, it was interesting to see how I had transformed them in my head.
In the classrooms, hundreds of clay models are accumulating on the tables.
The courtyard is filled with activity as the city takes shape under Brodsky’s guidance.
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It was interesting to see what the stu dents produced. They made a lot of con temporary architecture which was surprising – I thought it would be a more historical city. But they were free to make whatever they liked and there were many con temporary buildings, some of which were still under construction and I had never seen before. JT Your previous clay cities all have a close relationship with water. Is that how you planned this city? And can you tell us a little about your fascination with water and cities? AB I think water is very important, especially a river that goes through the city. In cities like Venice or Amsterdam with canals, there are reflec tions everywhere. The first city Coma was filled with black oil, which created really fascinating reflections. Here I thought it would be beautiful to have islands and a waterfront. Also the other reason was, in case there were not enough buildings to cover the whole surface, the water areas give the possibility to build denser city areas. JT Why did you want a dense city? AB I think it gives a stronger atmosphere when the city is more dense than in real life. It feels abstract and realistic at the same time; It’s a strange combination of these two things. JT What do you think were the main challenges? AB I think the biggest challenge was that there was no precise plan as such, it was more an improvisation. So I couldn’t calculate the num ber of buildings the students would make and I was a bit anxious about the possibility of having too few build ings to cover the table to create a really big city. Also I couldn’t control the quality of each building from the beginning. I told the students that whatever they made, absolutely everything will be used. That was also a rule of the game: they knew that everything would be used. The good thing about the clay city is that it accepts any kind of building. If you look carefully at each piece, you see beautiful and ugly parts, but together it works well as a clay body. It’s similar to what happens in a real city: at a distance you see a beautiful cityscape, close up there are good and bad parts, but all together it looks very beautiful. JT While the school was empty during the day, you had the time to visit the class rooms and see how the works were pro gressing. How was this for you? AB It was very exciting. My main concern was whether we would have the time to make enough buildings. Halfway through, I understood it was going great, and that we would have enough. I enjoyed looking at the details. If you look carefully at many buildings, there are many small details that you can’t see in the whole mass. Amazing details like chim neys, windows, stairs. Some of them were really strange! [Laughs.] But all together they looked good. I thought some of the factory buildings and bridges were very beautiful, and the big dome – it was just the dome with no walls. Some pieces were absolutely out of scale which was really funny but we decided to use them anyway,
The city in the final stages of decay; salt emerges from the dried clay, creating the effect of a white city.
The clay decays into different colours; here, the airport has almost disintegrated.
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and they were accepted into the city. The aeroplanes were very funny as they were too big for the airport. JT What was your reaction to final model? AB It was absolutely a great feeling. I was really fascinated by this final image: the city was so big and full of little details. The physical amount of buildings added an important quality: thou sands of buildings that give the impression of a real city. It was the combination of this mass of buildings, the tex ture and quality of the material, the cracks in the clay and the little windows that made the city alive. JT And then it started to melt…. AB That was an interesting moment. I origi nally wanted a roof over the installation but there was not enough budget, so I accepted that this was how it was going to be. I just hoped that it wouldn’t rain too soon so that the model could stay whole for a few days. Actually it started to rain exactly on the day of the opening. But it was not really hard rain. The city began to melt and I understood very quickly that this was really really great – the changes to the city during the month were amazing to see. It became much more interesting than when it would just stay new. So in the end it was good fortune that there was no budget for the roof! [Laughs.] Because the city led a short but dramatic life, like a real city. It’s like what happens over a thousand years but here it happened within a month. First it rained, then it snowed, exactly the right amount that was beautiful, not too much. It was a thin layer of white snow like this for a while, like a nuclear winter. Then the snow melted and the city became another image with water and a bit of snow. The buildings changed. After that everything dried and there was an absolutely different city: it was white, not from the snow but from the salt in the clay. It became a white city. The clay worked strangely. It was the same material in all the packages, it looked the same in the beginning but after a while, they all became different. There were black pieces, white pieces and grey pieces, very beautiful. I was very happy in the end that the city stood under the rain. JT The city really expressed the qualities you like about clay, that it has a life. AB Yes. I would be happy if the city could have stayed for another couple of months and the whole city disappeared finally… JT Did the clay city work out the way you envisioned? AB Yes. Though, I didn’t realise at first that the students could only work during the evenings for most of the two weeks. So I had to ask them to work faster, and they worked really high-speed towards the end. [Laughs.] I thought it was important that the students would have fun. I wanted to make them feel like children again, and to let them work with their hands. They were doing this workshop after work, after sitting behind a computer all day. In the end, I think they relaxed and had fun making these crazy models. JT Why did you want the students to work with their hands during this Winter School? AB Often when you hear the word workshop you think immediately of the computer. Architecture workshops almost always involve sitting in front of a computer. I really wanted to do something
opposite and make the students get their hands dirty and go inside the clay. Working with your hands is really important sometimes – it gives you wider possibilities for the head, and it’s nice for your brains to work with your hands. It’s relaxing, it gives you more possibilities to think when you look at how your hands make some thing. It’s a miracle how it works, I think a bigger miracle than when you press buttons on a computer. I like a lot of things that are made by computer but it’s also really important just to take a pencil, a piece of clay or a piece of wood and make something with it. It’s important not just for students but for people of any age, and it’s important for me too. JT What do you think the students learned from you and what did you learn from the students? AB What I’m definitely sure they learned from me is how to take the little stick and make windows with it. It’s a simple thing. It’s about scale and it’s a kind of miracle: you take the stick, a piece of clay and touch the clay with the stick and make buildings. It’s something every kid can make but it’s a little miracle. We used a chopstick actually, very simple. I showed the students how to cut it into squares that were the size of the window. And what do you learn from young peo ple? How to be young. The thing that’s really nice about working with young people is that they are open, they want to communicate, tell you something and listen. It makes your brain younger. JT Is there a closing comment you’d like to add? AB For me it was a great pleasure and I hope this is something the students will re member and will like when they recall these two weeks. The possibility to make this huge city with the huge help of students was very important for me, I enjoyed it very much. And I think it would be great to make an even big ger city! [Laughs.] A permanent one for an exhibition or museum, a bigger city that will stay for a longer time…
Winter in the Clay City.
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Глиняный Город: Александр Бродский Приглашенный художник 2019 В этой публикации представлен проект Глиняный Город, зимний воркшоп 2019 года в Амстердамской Архитектурной Академии, под руководством русского архитектора и художника Александра Бродского. Он был приглашен в качестве автора проекта в рамках программы AIR Амстердамского университета искусств. Ежегодный зимний воркшоп, возглавляемый приглашенным художником, дополняет основную учебную программу Амстердамской архитектурной академии. Студенты учатся интенсивно работать над проектом в команде. С 14 по 25 января 2019 года 136 учеников первого и второго курсов работали не покладая рук, чтобы вместе построить воображаемый глиняный город. Под проект был полностью занят внутренний двор Академии, это было впечатляющее зрелище: огромный городской пейзаж ручной работы с невероятным изобилием деталей. Это увлекло нас в архитектурный тур от древнего Рима до Амстердама будущего. Этот воркшоп был не было о выигрышной презентации; вместо этого автор сосредоточился на идее создания чего-то, превосходящего проект одного человека, проект, которым можно гордиться коллективно. По сравнению с предыдущим инсталля- циями Бродского в Москве и Милане, это самый большой глиняный город площадью почти 90м2. Бродский дал задание студентам изготавливать глиняные модели зданий масштабом 1:300 только по памяти. Они могли делать все, что хотели, но начинали с простого здания с скатной крышей, чтобы создать основную массу города. На определенном этапе Бродский попросил несколько более крупных объектов, таких как железнодорожный вокзал, аэропорт и ипподром. Появились некоторые знаковые сооружения, такие как Еврейский музей Либескинда в Берлине, штаб-квартира CCTV ОМА, Сиднейский оперный театр и Национальная галерея Мис ван дер Роэ. Были изготовлены тысячи объектов. Масштабом было окно, посредством чего каждый кусок глины достигал одинакового масштаба. Модели показали масштаб воображения, а также личности студентов: аккуратность, провокационность, скрупулёзность, амбициозность. Глина прекрасно объединила все эти индивидуальные качества в один великолепный городской пейзаж. Результатом стал город с очень плотной застройкой, который казался одновременно абстрактным и реалистичным – идеализированная версия города. Истинный смысл проекта стал очевиден через несколько недель после его завершения. Под воздействием дождя и снега глина начала «таять», и город разваливался. Этот распад символизировал время или, как говорит Бродский: мы пришли из глины и возвращаемся к ней, совершенный цикл.
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Winter School 2019 Participating students Al Hajali, Hussain Al-dayri, Usama Allen, Blake Amanupunnjo, Jeroa Amelsvoort, Joep van Azizova, Ayla Azmy, Sherif Bakel, Yvette van Barbosa, Ana Luisa Battista Ferrarese, Giovanni Bazzolo, Matilde Begeer, Rosalie Berg, Sven Bern, Anna Bērziņš, Miks Bjelland, Tale Blouw, Maikel Broers, Dennis Brugmans, Suzanne Bruins Slot, Tom Cali, Thea Çardak, Adan Caspers, Wim Caudron, Julie Chaman Zadeh, Farimah Damen, Roy Demilt, Anne-Roos Deuzen, Anouk van Diaz Hurtado, Chrishtian Dicker Quintino, Alice Dobretsova, Elena Doesburg, Marlies Dominiak, Paulina Duin, Anne-Marije van Eck, Daniël van Eeden, Sophie van El Chaer, Tina Engelchor, Jelle Eussen, Myrna Frargy, Hagar El Fraser, Gavin Gallas, Eduard Ghys, Sofie Gijsen, Sander Gomez Rueda, German Gramsma, Reinier Greuter, Milo Hart, Daisy Hartman, Bob Heeswijk, Inge van Hendrickx, Floor Heydorn Gorski, Jacob Hooiveld, Maurits Hulsebosch, Niels
Istel, Jacoba Kallen, Art Khozina, Maria Kirschbaum, Evgenia Kleinjan, Janine Koe, Vyasa Koelink, Floris Kok, Danny Kollia, Venetia Koote, Luuk Krietemeijer, Stefanie Laaken, Arthur van der Laan, Niene Lange, Maro Lee, Jungmin Lentjes, Evie Linden, Robert-Jan van der Lodder, Tom Lode, Kilian Luchi Camilotti, Maiara Lulzac, Vincent Mabuchi, Daiki MacPhee, Abigail Marconcin, Augusto Mazza, Francesca Mcgrath, Sian Melazzi, Ginevra Morozov, Artjom Mulder, Charlotte Mulder, Sanne Neeleman, Kasper Nicanci, Mustafa Nijland, Kinke Noordover, Matthijs Nugter, Krijn Oude Monnink, Bram Özgen, Fatih Pessoa, Ana Barbara Platakis, Karolis Pokun, Heenah Postma, Wieger Pulido Garzon, Henry Rebel, Simon Rodenburg, Roosje Rothuizen, Jasmijn Salmi, Noury Sanz, Magali Schmidt, Steffen Scholten, Susanna Schouten, Tessa Schuitmaker, Laurens Schutte, Dian Selvarajah, Abbi Silva Costa, Pedro Smalen, Valerie So, Loretta Soeters, Merle Solovejus, Martynas
Soret, Léa Stortelder, Jesse Strickmann, Shahaf Tang, Ianthe Thoen, Lesley Timan, Anne Floor Timmerman, Vito Torres, Anna Traag, Ritger Tuinman, Max Ubink, Menno Veen, Robbertjan van Vergeer, Mark Vermeer, Tom Verstappen, Monique Visser, Maurice Vruwink, Susanne Wartenbergh, Sophie Werfhorst, Gerrit van de Wissing, Mike Wu, Irene Yang, Qian Zenaldin, Shady Zwaans, Laurien
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Facilitators Alexey Boev Annette Bos Marlies Boterman Lada Hršak Daria Naugolnova Sweder Spanjer Guests Robbie Cornelissen Jord den Hollander Carlijn Kingma Martijn Meeter
AIR programme and Winter School The Artist in Residency of Alexander Brodsky is a cooperation between the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture and the AIR programme of the Amsterdam University of the Arts. The Amsterdam University of the Arts invites the Artist in Residence to inspire students and teachers by confronting them with topical developments and issues from the arts practice. These tailor-made AIR programmes focus on innovation and connection in an international and multidisciplinary context. Led by an artist in resi dence, the annual Winter School supplements the main study programme at the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture. Students learn to work on a design assignment as a team during an intensive workshop.
Colophon Clay City Alexander Brodsky Artist in Residence Authors Jan-Richard Kikkert Madeleine Maaskant Jeanne Tan Editor Jeanne Tan Translations Daria Naugolnova Jan Warndorff Graphic Design Haller Brun
Winter School 2019 14 to 25 January 2019, Amsterdam Academy of Architecture
Printer NPN Drukkers
Curator Alexander Brodsky
Publisher Amsterdam Academy of Architecture
Coordination Jan-Richard Kikkert, Nina Knaack, Patricia Ruisch
Special thanks Daria Naugolnova The Brodsky Quartet
Image credits All photography by © Jonathan Andrew unless otherwise stated. p.3 photos: Olga Sabo, Jan-Richard Kikkert; p.5: Brodsky & Utkin, Columbarium Architecturae (Museum of Disappearing Buildings), 1990, from “Projects” port folio, 1981 – 90, 35 etchings, ed. of 30, 43” × 31-3/4” (F), photo: D. James Dee, courtesy The Artist and Ronald Feldman Gallery, New York; p.7 photos: Jan-Richard Kikkert, Alexey Boev; p.9 photos: Richard Pare, Gert Jan van Rooij; p.11 photo: Yuri Palmin; p.11 Alexander Brodsky, Untitled, 2018, Unfired clay, metal, black oil, 28 × 54 × 100 cm, table: 70 × 54 × 100 cm, photo: courtesy The Artist and Richard Saltoun Gallery; p.13 photos: Yuri Palmin; p. 20 photos: Jan-Richard Kikkert, Alexander Brodsky; p.22 top photo: Jan-Richard Kikkert; pp. 24, 26 photos: Alexander Brodsky. Inside cover: Alexander Brodsky, Landscape with the river, 2019. © 2019 Amsterdam Academy of Architecture All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy or any storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Whilst every effort has been made to ensure accuracy, the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture does not accept responsibility for errors or omissions. ISBN 978-9-08-277618-8
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Inside cover: Alexander Brodsky, Landscape with the river, 2019.
ISBN 978-9-08-277618-8