Volume

Broadcasting Architecture featuring The Hokusai Wave by Alejandro Zaera-Polo; Systems vs. Icons by Vincente Guallart; The Delft Attraction by Dirk van den Heuvel; The Architectural Archis vol. 20, #3 Exhibition as Medium and Message by Arjen Oosterman; Transnational Spaces, a Bauhaus Dessau research; photo essays about the ultimate success of architecture per issue â‚Ź 15

Much m Broadc ore in this V asting olume : C-lab N ewspap er Amo Po s t e r Archis CD -

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Philip Johnsons’ Crystal Cathedral as TV set for ‘The Hour of Power’ photo Bas Princen

Dirk van den Heuvel To broadcast a message you need to know which message to broadcast. But what if architecture and its discourse have become blurred by doubts about boundaries and muddied by language that lacks precision?

It was a Tuesday morning, during a seminar chaired by Christine Boyer when that all too familiar topic, the Dutch hype and especially the issue of Dutchness, popped up. The participants pounced on it in a flurry of excitement.

At first a few definitions and sweeping statements were thrown about, but then, as if one had just realised a big mistake, the group began shredding any possible concept of Dutchness. It wasn’t the sudden reversal in the conversation that had an effect of alienation, but rather the fact that the participants, sitting around the table here on the 8th floor of our school, were all foreigners.

Since the Dutch hype – a careful construct of our government sponsored media machine – foreign students pour into our school. Of course, foreigners started coming much earlier as part of the European project – a series of small scale exchange programmes beginning in the 1980s that enabled Dutch architecture students to go to Barcelona or Milan. In return, we would receive a few curious Catalans and Italians who would be excited by the freedom of our studio system.

When the Berlin wall came down a new phase started, with the flow of Yugoslavian immigrant-students as the most palpable as well as bitter effect. Now, 15 years later, at the moment the European constitution has been voted off plunging the eurocrat project into crisis, we are becoming fully aware of this new condition that is redefining our everyday practices, and also in the safe haven of the Delft University.

Apart from those inexhaustible discussions on Dutchness, language, and the many shifts in language are among the leading characteristics of this new everydayness. There are these moments at one of our 14 floors when you get entangled in

Dirk van den Heuvel

The Delft Attraction |

Volume III

| 12 – 13

a group, loudly chatting and cheering, and you’re completely lost, with no idea what language these students are using. It’s not just Italian or Spanish anymore. And it’s not just the students, but also the PhDresearchers and guest professors who fly in from who knows where. You wonder, where are they from, and what are they looking for, what is the Delft attraction anyway?

Just as xenophobia has become part of our everyday internationalism, so too has exotism, I suppose. And it works both ways. It is a symptomatic part of the media strategy and the politics of internationalisation deployed by our Dutch institutes. It is also at this point that modernisation and cultural politics coincide – that all-too-familiar perpetuum mobile that produces the antithetical mirror images of the self and the other.

But how does Delft fit into this media machine? Delft was never really at the center of these politics and the Dutch hype. On the contrary, compared to the bright world of the Rotterdam scene with its hotspots – such as the Berlage Institute, the NAi, and the multinational branding practices of OMA and MVRDV – Delft seems utterly hopeless, a sad giant with feet of clay, obsolete from the practices of spin and marketing that make up Dutch cultural policies.

Next to this myth of the giant the most persisting myth is that of Delft as a bastion of modern architecture. It was forged by Rem Koolhaas at the occasion of the symposium ‘How modern is Dutch architecture?’ staged as his goodbye party at the end of his guest professorship in Delft. In the 1990s quite a few Dutch critics capitalized on this myth using, and sometimes misusing, the Delft history that is tightly intertwined with the histories of modern architecture through the

monumental figures of Cor van Eesteren, Johannes van den Broek, Jaap Bakema and Aldo van Eyck. It is at this point that the best-seller story of relentless modernism, supposedly practised by Dutch architects is linked to the Delft history. One version of this story emphasizes that at Delft University there is a long-standing tradition of questioning issues of modernity including the way the city is regarded as the framework par excellence for architectural renewal and invention. Another one highlights the moral and social stance that would be part and parcel of Delft modernism – cherished by some, refuted and dismissed by others.

But if Delft was ever such a bastion of modern architecture, it certainly is no more. The generation that spread this particular gospel is almost retired now, and it remains unclear whether any tradition will be hegemonic for the coming years.

Delft worked, and up to a point still works, as a huge, rather quiet incubator facilitating many events and actors – think of the Berlage Institute which actually grew out of the Delft international design seminars that were organised by Hertzberger, or the Koolhaas studio in which Winy Maas and Jacob van Rijs participated, or all those other Delft graduates of an international reputation such as Willem Jan Neutelings, Kas Oosterhuis, the Mecanoo group, Lars Spuybroek and NL Architects to name just a few.

This incubator function is not a natural given.

It is part of our legacy of the 1960s and 1970s, quite another story about institutional revisions, welfare state policies and ideological concern. It produced a multiform, education-supermarket of various parallels and overlapping studio programmes. It triggered fierce debates and provided the opportunity for students and teachers to embark on collective research programmes, rather than the current obsession with the presentation and publication of individual results. Indeed, like so many other stories of those years, this one yields to the more topical story of the privatisation and fragmentation of the public inter-

Faculty of Architecture, TU Delft

hype incubator supermarket marketeers

Happiness

photo Armin Linke

www.brickshelf.com

www.blindimagephotography.com

courtesy MTV Networks

Happiness |

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| 16 – 17

from Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, 1948 This is where we find Mr. Simms: [the architect in Mr.Blandings Builds His Dream House, ed.] earnest but cowed, unable to weigh in on technical issues, seemingly second to everyone on the job site.

After a scene in which the Blandings hijack the schematic design of

their home, wrestling with Simms for control of the drafting board, the architect is reduced to an all-but-outdated legal necessity: the guy who stamps the drawings.

His only real service is to render reflections of the Blandings’ own starryeyed dreams.

Philip Nobel, ‘Who built Mr.Blandings’ dream house?’, Mark Lamster (ed.), Architecture and Film, Princeton Architectural Press, 2000

Alejandro Zaera-Polo Communicating ideas is half the work.

So why not make this integral to the design process from the outset. Read more about the architecture of the cultural effect.

Architects fall into one of two categories when it comes to acquiring projects: on the one hand, you have those who are connected to a certain circle of clients and who use this network to obtain projects, and on the other hand are those who operate through media to target the public at large. Of course neither category exists in a pure state, but generally, the first group operates through cocktails, dinners, golf, sailing, and so on, and is most likely to offer well-tested models and services catering to a certain type of demand. This first acquisition protocol tends to produce a more subservient and conservative architectural practice, because the architect does not have much room to maneuver around the client. The hierarchy of power couldn’t be clearer. The client has a very strong personality and desires and the architect is constrained to a strategy of personal seduction and a well-tested portfolio. The second group’s strategies, in contrast, are molar, rather than being ingrained within a given structure: they are not linked to a social network but to a mass audience.

Their connection lines are less structural and more mediated. They are more likely to use competitions, conferences, academic networks, exhibitions and publications as acquisition tools. Prototypes or ideas are broadcast and eventually crystallize in commissions, where the client usually operates as the administrator of a more collective will. This mode of project acquisition usually enables the architect to be more experimental because it retains the project’s initiative, even if it is a vague one, and the architect can use his public clout to twist the clients’ arms – to a certain degree – in pursuit of a more daring architectural agenda.

Statistically, most innovative projects – and, certainly, some of the worst catastrophes

– are procured via this protocol. When following this model, it is vital for the architect to maintain a public discourse, to float constantly new ideas and strategies, to release publications, and to appear seductive not by sporting cocktail attire but by spilling broadsheet ink.

As we are – by both chance and choice – not part of the cocktail set, one of our crucial duties is to keep broadcasting a new interpretation of reality with consistent frequency. In doing so, we guarantee a certain initiative in our relation with whoever is invested with the authority to commission and administer projects, and we are empowered to pursue certain goals beyond the mere provision of architectural services. By constructing arguments that exceed a specific project and conveying them to a broader public, we produce a more ambiguous regime of power in our client relationships. The crucial matter here, rarely discussed within the architectural debate is the relationship between the acquisition protocols and their architectural output, or, in more general terms, between power and control. This is the relationship addressed

by Peter Eisenman in his deliberate disinterest with power in favor of control or by Rem Koolhaas in his fascination with pure power at play, freed from any architectural control. These two extreme positions frame the discussion and the attempt to construct a binding relationship between them through a very specifically architectural subject: representation.

Representation has been a contested subject for a whole generation of architects – including ourselves – which has focused in experimenting with material organizations and factual data as an escape from the discursive predominance of representation, meaning, identity and language that characterized earlier generations. In doing so, most of this research has resorted to a sort of a naturalization of architecture, focused

Alejandro Zaera-Polo

The Hokusai Wave |

Volume III

| 32 – 33

in the processes of material organization, and intentionally avoiding any discussion of representation. Ecologies, natural or artificial, have become a common reference for many of us, as processes of material organization, transformation and exchange not mediated by representation. But from this nearly idealist ecological perspective, the regimes of power at play in the practice of architecture are not a matter of concern, as their processes are not regulated by such consideration. But if we are to become fully engaged with the discussion of power regimes and their potential transformation, representation is a crucial subject to address: for example, in a democracy, individuals are represented as ‘equal ‘ while this may not be necessarily true from every perspective. How architecture engages in regimes of representation and how the architect represents himself within these relationships is a domain in which we need to engage if we are to tamper with the regimes of power within which we need to practice.

The tale of the Hokusai Wave is the history of how The engagement with clients and public media – in other words the sources of power – originated an evolution into our projective method towards an incorporation of iconography and meaning. Having grown out of a more or less speculative and academic environment, we spent a long time theorizing about building technologies and crafts, a most pressing endeavor for a young practice. As our practice has evolved towards a more professional output, our role has become paradoxically less involved with crafting and more engaged in acquiring and explaining projects, theorizing and communicating the practice to a variety of agents, in order to make the practice sustainable.

As the most interesting speculation generally happens out of necessity, our subject of research has moved consistently with the new requirements of our role in the office.

This process has not been a radical change

but a slow and progressive shift wherein the old speculations became intertwined with the newer ones, both on a conceptual and an operative level. It started, actually, ten years ago in one of those episodes that radically change one’s perception of reality. Faced with a full press conference in the Yokohama City Hall, circa February 1995, we had to explain what it was we were trying to do in our newly awarded Yokohama Competition project. Faithful to our doctrine, fine tuned through years of academic practice, we proceeded to explain the circulation diagrams, the geometric transformations, and the construction technologies that were involved in the project, hoping that the audience would have enough patience to wait for the emergence of the project. Halfway through the presentation, we started to notice the blank expression of the public in the room – a clear indicator that the message was not coming across (this was to become a very common experience during our evolution…). After a few minutes of cold sweat, an image that was carefully edited from the project’s discourse but still floating somewhere in the back of our minds came suddenly to our rescue. It was the Hokusai Wave, a drawing from a local painter that we had been toying with while we indulged in geometric manipulations and construction hypotheses during the design phase of the competition entry.

In a sudden – and risky – burst of inspiration, we terminated the factual process narrative to conclude that what really inspired us was the image of Hokusai’s Wave. The room exploded in an exclamation of sincere relief: ‘Aaaahhh…!’ and we left the room, still sweating and grateful for that moment of lucidity, and with the clear realization that something wasn’t quite working in our carefully crafted discourse.

Katsushika Hokusai, The Great wave at Kanagawa (from a series of thirty-six views of Mount Fuji)

Yokohama International Port Terminal

As a strategy, the Hokusai Wave has, since this moment, been slowly gaining momentum in our office, in a manner that has never been rendered entirely explicit in our public statements, but that over time has neverthe-

acquisition representation message strategy

The Hokusai Wave resurfaced barely a year after the Yokohama press conference incident: the ferry terminal project had gone fallow and we were engaged in a brutally commercial commission: the world-wide expansion of the Belgo Restaurant chain.

We did have second thoughts as to whether we should accept this commission: A themed restaurant, the Belgo chain was a project dangerously opposed to our core disciplinary beliefs. Belgo restaurants depended on Belgian branding and facile iconography: Breughel, beer barrels, mussels and vaults.

But with the Yokohama project on hold, we had no option. Our strategy of survival was to turn these images into excuses for architectural experimentation: out of them we were able to produce shell structures, wooden vaults and sausage-like ramps. After years of waging the war against the populist claims of architecture as a tool of communication, we were realizing that without the excuse of the iconography there was little to justify our experiments with bent surfaces and shell structures. Paradoxically, the most banal, Disneyesque iconography became the justification – both conceptual and financial – for formal experimentation.

The same approach happened on an entirely different project that we submitted to a failed competition in Tehran for the re-construction of the Azadi Cinema – a former local symbol of international urban culture and, subsequently, of its brutal repression – into a multiplex. Unlike the Belgo projects, here the iconography was not imposed but was instead deliberately deployed to ensure communication with a remote environment: we used the image of an unfolding film band to render our explanation of the project more effective. Simultaneously, the band became the organizational system for the cinema rooms, piled on top of each other and connected via a battery of escalators with a consistent geometry. For the first time, we had deliberately coupled an image and an organizational system into a consistent entity as a

projective strategy.

The Azadi project revealed whole new potentials for the Hokusai Wave approach, and despite the fact that this coupling of iconography and organization remained largely peripheral to our office’s public discourse, it had become by then a standard foa-procedure for competition design, non-professional media strategy and client interface. This was 1997 and parametric design and datascape research were in full swing – even within our own office – so we determined that this iconographic research remained unfit for cultural consumption and we kept it on the back burner Different variations of the Hokusai Wave were subsequently undertaken in order to generate several of the new projects in the office. Paradoxically, this strategy, originally devised to respond to commercial demands, became the foundation of a series of commissions for local authorities, most of them in Spain. Short-circuiting our conventional arsenal of diagrams and constructive solutions with locally resonant iconographies became a very effective technique to territorialize our constructed foreignness and connect with local agents. Local iconographies became a perfect excuse to naturalize materials and geometries that would have been otherwise vulnerable to budget cuts or political uncertainty. Moreover, iconography helped us accelerate the identification of traits from our usually hypertrophied site and program analysis in order to provide a formal argument for the projects.

Iconographies did not precede the material investigation but rather emerged as viable figures from our immersion in each project’s analysis. We would collect general material about local customs and iconographies and keep that information on the table while we did site analysis and programmatic diagrams.

We knew that a project was structured when a formal correlation started resonating between them. The Villajoyosa Police

Alejandro Zaera-Polo

The Hokusai Wave |

Volume III

| 34 – 35

Station pentagonal plan was automatically derived from the site’s geometry and turned into Villajoyosa’s Pentagon – a reference for the municipal police headquarters with great popular appeal – and the lattices that fortify its windows were built as if they resulted from a film noir, machine gun shoot-out.

The Torrevieja Theater was modeled on the local sandstone quarries and boasts a white and faceted acoustic finish modeled like a salt crystal (sandstone quarries and salt lakes were the basis of the local economy before tourism brought its radical transformations of the local landscape, so we were bringing back a lost arcadia). La Rioja Centre of Technology Transfer in Logroño became a building that dissolved into a vineyard: a transparent volume covered with wires and wine leaves. The Canarian Government Multiples III proposal in Santa Cruz de Tenerife grew into a palm-tree trunk by applying triangular brise-soleils, shifting gradually to maximize their sun-shading effect, to a high-rise tower with a triangulated exoskeleton.

Canary Island Government Multiples III

Power Play |

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| 52 – 53