MAP 8 by Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning

The 2000 Charles & Ray Eames Lecture

Michigan Architecture Papers MAP 8 路 Gigon I Guyer Published to commemorate the Charles & Ray Eames Lecture, given by Annette Gigon and Mike Guyer at the College on

3 Apri l 2000.

Editors: Brian Ca rter and Annette W. LeCuyer Design: Christian Unverzagt Typeset in News Gothic Printed and bound in the United States of America ISBN:

1-891197-13-4

漏 2000 The University of Michigan A. Alfred Taubma n College of Architecture and Gigon

Urban Planning

I Guyer, Zurich

In collaboration with Herman Miller, Inc.

Taubman College

2000 Bonisteel Boulevard Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-2069 USA 734 764 1300 734 763 2322 fax www.caup.umich.edu

Contents

Introduction

13 Architecture for Art 14

Kirchnef Museum. ()avos

26 Museum of Art Extensoon, W1nlefthur 36 Uner Museum, Appeozell 47 Reinhart Collection am R6merholz. Winterthur

58 Concept into Mattef 60 Art for Architecture 62 SportS Center, Davos 76 Housing, 8roelberg 88 Signal Sox, Zurich 98

Museum and Archeolog.cal Park, Kalkrlese

114 Gâ&#x20AC;˘goo/ Guyer 116 Charles & Ray Eames 118 Hefman Miller Inc.

Introduction

The Charles and Ray Eames Lecture celebrates the regional, national and international significance of the work of these two outstanding 8

designers and their sustained collaboration with Herman Miller in Michigan. As an example of an especially productive link forged between design and industry, their legacy reaffirms the traditions of this college. The work of Charles and Ray Eames - woven from interrelated strands of investigation, design and production- reminds us of the core values which energize much of our own work at the drawing board and in the workshop. Particular qualities of their method are important to highlight because they are very much evident in the work of this year's Charles and Ray Eames lecturers, Annette Gigon and Mike Guyer. Gigon and Guyer's emerging body of work is characterized by the marriage of craft with the exigencies of industrial mass production ; explorations in the use of color; and meticulous attention to detail. Gigon and Guyer's first building, the Kirchner Museum in Davos which was completed in 1992 , attracted international attention for both its precision and its poetry. As an essay upon the possible qualities of light, this museum transformed the perception of glass, that most ubiquitous of modern materials. From this auspicious beginning, the development of their work, largely through competition winning schemes, has been sure-footed. In addition to awards for their work in Switzerland and Italy, the extension to the Winterthur Museum was nominated for the prestigious Mies van der Rohe Award for European architecture in 1996 and the Museum Liner in Appenzell was shortlisted for the same award in 1998.

Gigon and Guyer characterize their process as a fusion of work and matter, of the abstract and the concrete. They are focused upon the development of a grammar of materials which is aimed towards the transformation of the ordinary into forms, structures and arrangements with new visual meaning. This transformation is neither strident nor assertive, but instead subtle and suggestive. A critic, commenting on their work, has noted, "The architecture of Gigon and Guyer requires a second glance, on the level of the form but also on that of the meaning evoked. If we are satisfied with only what we see at first glance, we will miss the complex significance that emerges from the applied poetic method."

The way in which Gigon and Guyer's material grammar elevates lowly industrial building components and processes of production to an art form recalls the spirit with which Charles and Ray Eames changed our perceptions of materials like aluminum, fiberglass and plywood a transformation from pure utility to beauty, from leg splints to chairs which are now in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art. And like Charles and Ray, Gigon and Guyer acknowledge that the impetus of their work is curiosity. They have observed that, as human beings, we understand almost nothing of the world in which we live. Through the art of careful observation, their work is directed towards finding new connections between nature and culture, and between work and matter.

Gigon and Guyer use apparent simplicity as a foil for underlying complexity. Their precision of intention is matched by meticulous execution. I invite you to look, and then to look again at this finely calibrated work with an inquiring eye.

Annette LeCuyer Associate Professor

"It is a special privilege to be invited to the University of Michigan to give a lecture in honor of Charles and Ray Eames, designers whose work was intimately bound up with the exploration of materials and of the relationships between architecture and art. We have designed several buildings which serve to present art and others which have been developed in close cooperation with artists. In this work, two different approaches to the coexistence of art and architecture can be distinguished."

Architecture for Art

In thinking about museums, the main question for us is how art should be displayed and what sort of architecture is necessary to present each artist's work. We prefer both the exhibition rooms of museums at the turn of the century and the anonymous spaces in pre-industrial exposition halls and art galleries to the opulent and over-designed museum architecture characteristic of the eighties. We have been encou raged in this sentiment by the statements of artists and curators including Remy Zaugg, a Swiss artist who has focused on the phenomena of the perception of art; Richard Serra, who prefers neutral spaces for his work; and Georg Baselitz , who pointedly remarked that museum rooms should consist of no more than four walls , a floor , overhead lighting and a door. Alfred Lichtwark , a German curator at the end of the nineteenth century, expressed a similar attitude, complaining of the museums of his time having oversized staircases, perspective axes, and too many windows which - although creating a beautiful facade - did not leave enough wall space to hang paintings. Influenced also by minimal art and conceptual art, which draw a fine line between artistic and non-artistic manifestations, we have come to the conclusion that an exhibition space should not be a demonstration of architecture. Rather, it should be devoid of architectural attributes. Exhibition rooms should neither compete with nor seek to enhance works of art. They should be constructed in such a manner that the visitor's attention is drawn to the works on display rath er than to the details of the architecture.

Kirchner Museum, Davos

In 1989, we won a design competition for a museum devoted to the German expressionist painter 14

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. The building was completed in 1992. The initiator of the project, a German auctioneer and collector of Kirchner's work, wanted to build a monographic museum in honor of Kirchner to which he would donate part of his collection. The endowment of approximately 400 works including oil paintings , works on paper, sculptures, photographs and diaries - was large enough to enable changing exhibitions to be hung twice a year. Kirchner worked in Dresden and Berlin until the end of the First World War and was in poor health when he came to Davos in 1918. At the time, Davos was a well known health resort. He stayed and worked there for the last twenty years of his life. Kirchner, who had a marked talent for applied art, was a trained architect before he embarked on his career as an artist. Naturally, we wondered how Kirchner would have designed his own museum . Of course, it is impossible to answer that question. Moreover, a museum referring to Kirchner's style would compete with his paintings and might even discredit them by trying to claim a spiritual kinship.

Davos is at an altitude of 1,500 meters (4,900 feet), so in winter the museum is often covered with snow. 18

Owing to the clerestory, daylight transmission is not affected even by a thick blanket of snow on the

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roof. The quality of the light in the exhibition rooms -

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shadowless and even - is comparable to outdoor

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light on an overcast day. It could be said that the

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light rooms have the function of a cloud which

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diffuses sunlight. The structural concrete walls of the exhibition spaces also form the walls of the hallway so that the cubes of the exhibition rooms define the complex volume of the entrance and the lobby. The cashier's desk is located in the lobby, and the cloakroom is adjacent. This small space, where visitors take off their warm winter clothes, has wood paneling to give a feeling of warmth.

In the lobby and hallway, both floors and ceiling are made of concrete. The heating system is built into the concrete slab. Unlike the gypsum-covered walls of the exhibition rooms, the concrete construction remains totally visible in this part of the building.

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While moving from one exhibition room to another, visitors automatically pass through the hall each time. In contrast with the introverted exhibition rooms, the hall is not meant to be a display space for paintings, but instead a space for visitors to relax, look out of the windows, study and read. One might also call it a didactic zone. Through the windows of the lobby, visitors see the street, the small park surrounding the museum and the landscape - in other words, the themes and subjects that Kirchner painted during the last twenty years of his life in Davos. The glass facade covers the four high cubes of the exhibition rooms, rendering them as a crystal-like configuration. The different kinds of glazingtransparent, translucent - have diverse functions regarding light transmission and viewing parameters. The translucent insulating glass walls filter the natural daylight which indirectly illuminates the exhibition rooms beneath the glass ceilings. The transparent, mirror-like insulated glazing in the lobby offers visitors views out and allows passers-by to catch a glimpse into the interior of the museum.

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Textured, translucent glass clads the insulated concrete walls of the exhibition rooms, revealing the 24

insulation behind the glass or hiding it, depending on the angle of view. Through the letters of the words 'Kirchner Museum Davos' which are transparent in an etched glass panel, the insulation is in plain view.

The roof, which we consider to be the fifth facade of the building, is ballasted by pieces of broken , recycled glass instead of the usual gravel . Glass as a substitute for gravel is possible because both have the same specific gravity. This waste glass can be understood as the last state of the material, the last state of treatment of the material. The high cubes of the exhibitions rooms have been placed freely between the old trees of the former Hotel Park. Their arrangement resembles the settlement structure of this resort town where the many flat roofed buildings are loosely set side by side.

Museum of Art Extension , Winterthur

The Museum of Art in Winterthur, constructed in 1915, was designed by the architects Rittmeyer and 26

Furrer. Since there is no longer enough room in the existing bui lding to mount temporary exhibitions alongside the expanding permanent collection, the Art Society initiated a privately financed extension for the museum. The building site officially belongs to three institutions: the Museum of Art, the Museum of Natural History and the public library. Therefore, the city agreed to give its consent to a privately financed extension for the art museum only for a limited time span of ten years. A further condition set by the city was the retention of the public parking lot on the site which is a source of income for the municipality. As a consequence, the museum extension, completed in 1995, had to be temporary and was required to be cost effective because of its limited lifetime. The extension is connected to the existing building like a caravan or trailer, with on ly a minimal point of contact through which the new gal leries are accessed. Situated between old and new, this link is designed as a neutral area without pa intings.

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A covered walkway and stairs connect the existing museum to the new extension on a lower level . 28

Like the deep wooden door frames of the old building, the link is lined with wood in the form of industrially produced medium density fiberboard paneling. A single work by the artist Lawrence Weiner is located in this room. It consists of words "painted stones ringing the rubble of a structure made of stones not painted" - which evoke a work of art or a virtual piece of art, thus underlining the presence and absence of art in this space. The interior spaces are very simple in order not to compete with the works of art and , in this particular case, also to save money. The rooms are rectangular. In contrast to the Kirchner Museum in Davos, there is no common access area. The exhibition rooms are directly connected with each other, making the plan efficient and economical. The extension is subdivided into nine rooms. There are six different sizes and proportions, and three rooms have large lateral windows . Skylight enters all rooms through the north-facing sawtooth roof. The dimensions of the rooms vary from 60 to 140 square meters, extending the length of three, four or five sawtooth sections respectively .

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Because of the lack of a light regulating system like slats or blinds , the sawtooth glazing is carefully 30

dimensioned to prevent the incidence of too much light on sunny days, and the glass of the skylights is milky to diffuse the light. A single window on each side of the building serves as an orientation point for visitors as they circulate through the labyrinth of nine rooms. In the longitudinal direction, the doorways are placed diagonally , and in the transverse direction the openings are in line. The intention of shifting the doorways is to slow down the speed of circulation. The tension between the temporary, low budget nature of the project and the desire to avoid an ephemeral appearance in the exhibition spaces results in a layered, almost Janus-like construction which is the combination of an industrial building and a museum. On one hand is the light steel loadbearing frame and on the other is the solid interior built into this light superstructure. In order to avoid a provisional appearance which would interfere with the perception of the art, we tried to avoid joints in the interior and to have plain surfaces. The interior walls are therefore made of solid blocks of plaster.

These double gypsum walls infill the steel frame, support the paintings and also house the ventilation system, electric wiring and the roof gutters. The floor is made of cast granolithic concrete which contains the heating services. In contrast to the interior, the exterior cladding of the museum is made of industrial building materials. The inexpensive steel frame is clad with small sized glass and metal components which can be easily assembled and subsequently dismantled at a later date. Such industrial materials, in addition to reflecting the modest budget and the limited life span of the building, also refer to the industrial history of Winterthur. Perforated galvanized steel cassettes which span horizontally are filled with insulating quilts. Frameless glass planks which span vertically protect the cassettes from the rain. Seen head-on, the facade reveals the insulation cassettes behind the glass profiles but, at a sharp angle, all underlying layers are concealed. The glazing is like a floor-length dress or skirt surrounding the ground level garage and visually anchoring the museum which hovers above.

Here, the glass elements have open joints in order to allow air to circu late freely through the garage. 34

The same industrial insulation cassettes used for the facade also clad the ceiling of the garage where they carry insulation, absorb noise, and provide a finished ceiling lining.

The sawtooth roof, the footbridge and the emergency exits - similar volumetrically since they all project from the basic prismatic shape of the buildingare clad with hot-dipped galvanized metal sheet. The windows and the footbridge are defined as huge joints or gaps between the green glass planks. The windows have a double-structure which consists of an outer, single layer of glass at the height of the glass planks and an inner insulating window which can be opened. Blinds placed between the layers are thus protected from the wind. The insulation cassettes behind this glass are clearly visible. During the day and at night, the windows provide views into the museum which may arouse the curiosity of passers-by.

Li ner Museum , Appenzell

The new museum in Appenzell, completed in 1998, is dedicated to the two artists Carl Liner 36

senior and junior, but with the intention of gradually incorporating contemporary art as well. Carl Liner

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senior died in 1946; Carl Liner junior died in 1997.

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Both artists lived and worked in Appenzell.

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The site is on the border between the small historic town and the beautiful countryside, close to a pasture and a street leading to the railway station. The plan is comprised of a series of relatively small exhibition spaces. Single rooms can be devoted to groups of works, to the different styles of father and son, and to other artists as well. In this way, a concentrated spatial, almost chapel-like mood is generated which allows visitors to enter into a direct and intimate dialogue with the different works on display. The ten exhibition rooms measure between 30 and 50 square meters each and decrease in size from south to north . Circulation from room to room meanders initially to slow down the visitor's pace, then changes to an enfilade with views into successive rooms . Additional orientation is provided by windows facing east and west and by oriel-like projections in the form of large, light spaces at each end of the building.

Every gallery has its own roof with a skylight facing north. The solid part of the roof functions as a reflector so that the walls are evenly lit at viewing height. The series of rooms, with their sloping saddle roofs seen in section, resembles the shape of a sawtooth roof. However, instead of an even rhythm, the roof rises and falls in response to the varying size of the rooms. The walls of the exhibition rooms are painted white and the floor is made of cast granolithic concrete. The load bearing structure of the museum is massive, consisting of concrete and concrete block. Services are housed between the double walls. The lobby is the biggest space and the only room with a skylight facing south. It is the place where people buy tickets, postcards and books but also where they can assemble for discussions or lectures. The articulation of the museum as a series of small units with the attendant subdivision of the roof is designed to reflect the diversity of the art collection within and the small scale, checkered and hilly landscape of the Canton of Appenzell with its proverbially small farmhouses .

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Externally, sheet chrome steel on wood lathing is used on both the roof and the facade. On the facade , the pieces overlap like the shingles traditionally used to clad Appenzell houses. The dull color of the metal resembles the silver coloring of weathered wood on fences and old barns in the region. To prevent the roofs from reflecting sunlight directly into the northfacing skylights , the chrome has been sandblasted to diffuse light. The sandblasted metal becomes analogous to clouds , natural diffusers of light. By using the same cladding material for the roof and exterior walls, the building volume is like a small mountain range. In contrast to the surfaces clad with overlapping metal sheets , the windows and the skylights are encased in welded steel frames which project from the face of the building. The only place where the massive concrete bearing structure of the building is revealed is at the entry.

Reinhart Collection am Romerholz, Winterthur

The original villa was built in 1915 in the style of a French country residence, and a gallery extension 46

was added in 1925. On his death in 1965, Oskar Reinhart bequeathed his home and his internationally renowned art collection to the Swiss Confederation. In 1970, the rooms of the home were converted into exhi bition spaces. Although the focus of the col lection is Impressionist art, it also includes art of the Renaissance and late Middle Ages. The renovat ions which we were commissioned to undertake were completed in 1998 and inc luded the construction of new exh ibition rooms as well as a series improvements to lighting, security and organization. In addition, mistakes made during the previous renovation were to be rectified to restore the bu ilding to its original state. Many modifications have been made. In most cases, we have not treated them dialectically in the classica l sense of demonstratively distinguishing between old and new, but instead in a synthesizing way of reconstructing and making repairs or organic additions. As such, these changes- including the restoration of parquet floors and vau lting and the reinstatement of windows- are barely visible as interventions.

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restoration , the most obvious change- a dialectical modification - is the construction of three new

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exhibition rooms in place of two existing ones.

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As most of the artworks in these rooms were to

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be eighteenth and nineteenth century paintings with heavy gilded frames , we were interested in an intimate atmosphere to be generated by the shape of the rooms, the lighting and the materials. We developed a new lighting system based on a chimney shaped section. Daylight enters from above through etched glass; horizontal slats adjust the amount of light which falls into the exhibition space through lamp-like glass volumes lowered from the ceiling. The light produced by having the ceiling reach down into the exhibition space is similar to the light conditions in galleries at the beginning of the century, and it allows better illumination of the joint between walls and ceiling.

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To adapt the new extension to its historical context, we wanted to use a building material that would 52

quickly acquire the patina of age. We started by mixing copper dust in prefabricated concrete panels and then observing how they weathered. Almost by accident, we discovered that the combination of limestone and copper dust in concrete oxidizes into a subtle greenish color within just a few months. The rain that pours off the copper roof accelerates the process of this reverse journey through time from new to old. By coincidence , limestone is the material of the walls of the original villa and copper of the plumbing. By utilizing something akin to an alchemist's recipe, we tried to capture the genius look of this site.

"In each of these museums, the exhibition spaces are treated as containers for art. They are conceived as simple, unspectacular rooms with good proportions, good lighting and good materials. This architecture, which draws on traditional models, is self-evident. Our purpose is to downplay the exhibition spaces for the sake of the art, which means that the architecture should be familiar, unq uestion ing and, you might even say, obvious. It is like dimming the lights in theaters and cinemas in order to prevent the audience from being distracted.

The exterior of each building can be understood as a consequence of the interior; it makes the functions of the museum visible. The facades lend expression to the various conditions of the building: the pa rticu Ia rities of the site, the construction, the climate and the budget. Moreover, the exterior is 路 a reflection of its making - it reveals the principles governing its construction and the grammar of its materiality."

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"The images projected in this room are shadows of color. They are colored light depicting physical projects. They are indirect, filtered perception -as in the Lucerne exhibition - removed from buildings and their materiality, supplemented by our physical presence and the original sound of our voices. In the cave-like, semi-darkness of the lecture ha II, the question is raised but sha II remain unanswered: Which is more rea I, more authentic - the idea, the concept, or its materialization?"

Art for Architecture

Material is ultimately the element that makes architecture visible. However, this statement must be qualified because architecture is complemented and supplemented by the phenomenon of color. Colors have a more basic effect. They are superficially more visible, more conspicuous than their support; they cover it up and outshine it.

Of course, color is produced by matter as well and takes a variety of forms. Pigments may be mixed in with plaster or stucco, applied as a glossy coat of paint or as a transparent wash. Even in its thinnest form as a reflection or as colored light, color still requires matter in order to be produced and perceived. To explore this idea, we have undertaken several projects in which the collaboration of artists has had a great influence on the appearance of our architecture. Our motivations for working with artists and, as a matter of fact, their reasons for working with us have nothing whatever to do with the idea of architecture as a walk-in work of art. We are not interested trying to turn architecture into art. Our goal in seeking the collaboration of artists is for them to make a contribution in keeping with their own character and their artistic interestsa contribution in the sense of thinking, seeking, looking and acting together with us, of working on the subject of a building.

Sports Center, Davos Our first project in cooperation with an artist was the Sports Center in Davos, completed in 1996. 62

It replaced a beautiful and popular wooden ice rin k building designed in the thirties by the architect Rudolf Gaberel which was destroyed by fire in 1992.

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Dreaming of a progressive, modern town in the

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mountains- in contrast to the well-known villages

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with saddle roofs - this ambitious and gifted architect introduced an exceptional new building code which required the construction of flat roofs. The ice rink building was one of the first structures constructed to this new code. As Gaberel's building aged and weathered, the light wooden facades darkened. On sunny days the dark facades generated too much heat which melted the ice. This heat absorption and consequent radiation on the ice rink had to be prevented in the new project. In addition, the functions and facilities of the former building were to be enlarged in the new scheme.

The many facilities squeezed into the building gave us the idea of revealing the multiplicity of functions on the outside. At the same time we wanted to find

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a way to mark the building as a sport and recreation center. We felt it should be a visual landmark for 64

sporting life, for activity and vitality. To achieve this, we decided to explore the use of color.

A two layer, multi-colored facade is designed to express the various functions housed within the simple volume. We developed a wooden facade which resembles a double wooden fence surrounding the building. The facade consists of three basic elements: vertical inner lathing, vertical outer lathing and horizontal steel rails between. These elements define a constructive grammar for the whole facade. The inner lathing is colored while the outer lathing remains untreated. The sliding shutters, the railings of the balconies, the brise-soleil in front of the balconies and the wind screens are all developed out of these few elements. The windows, with frames which stretch from floor to ceiling, are expressed as large joints in the outer lathing. On the north, east and south facades, the two layers of slats are close together, separated only by the steel rails. The outer layer is generously spaced to reveal the colored layer beneath. The spacing of the slats on the sliding shutters is tighter than on the facade .

On the western facade facing the ice rink, the outer lathing is distanced from the inner lathing 66

to define the depth of balconies which separate the two layers. In the guestroom story on the third floor, this distanced outer lathing has the double function of sliding shutters and brise-soleil. For the grandstand, the outer lathing serves as a wind screen on the north and south sides. The benches of the grandstand are made of the same wood as the outer lathing.

Concrete columns and beams support the wooden grandstand and its roof. They extend the length of the facade to support the balconies as well. The beams have different cantilevers, stepped for the seating and slightly elevated for the roof. The concrete columns on the exterior reveal the principle underlying the construction of the whole building. Concrete is used for the supporting elements and wood is used for a variety of functions: to protect, to clad , and to absorb.

From the moment we thought of working with color as a means of visualizing the different inner functions to the final selection of colors for the facade was a long and complex process. To determine the colors and their composition, we decided to collaborate with the painter Adrian Schiess. Schiess once remarked that he thinks of paint as an element that is endlessly dispersing and spreading. His main works are called "Fiache Arbeiten " or flat works. They are normative industrial panels in wood or aluminum which are first painted manually and then air brushed mechanically with car paint. Schiess exhibits his panels as elements lying on the floor or ground in series of different colors. Reflections of the surroundings in the high-gloss surfaces change constantly as the daylight varies. This very sensitive and precise approach to color, the integration of the surroundings into his work, and his preference for prefabricated elements appeared to be ideal for our purposes.

Schiess proposed five different color schemes which were mocked up on wooden panels. This polychrome experiment evolved into a composition of three colors

which were to be applied large scale to the exterior building volumes. The final scheme - which is 72

derived from red , blue and yellow- consists of a clear orange, complementary blue and a greenish yellow. Yellow is used for the windows and the inner lathing on the west facade facing the ice rink/sports field. Blue is used for the south facade and a combination of blue and orange is ~s-ed for the east facade where the main entrance is located. Inside the building, the palette of three colors is expanded to nine shades. The colors are used for large panels applied to the walls and ceiling to conceal services installations and provide sound insulation. In order to avoid the danger of arbitrary composition, Schiess assigned a single color to all panels of the same size. In the entrance lobby, the ceiling and the windows bear both the yellow and the bright blue from the exterior. Dark blue is added on the upper part of the wall . In the restaurant, the concrete lateral walls remain unpainted while the windows are painted in the exterior colors of yellow , orange and blue.

On the second floor, the combination of exterior orange with strawberry red in the hall shows how strongly space and color are able to influence each other. With strong light, the red becomes so intense that it almost upsets the balance of the room. In the skylit bedroom corridor on the third floor , acoustic panels and doors on one side are painted in a sequence of changing colors. The ceiling and the opposite wall are rendered in white stucco on which the colored wall is faintly reflected. Large black letters and numbers painted on the doors provide orientation. In combination with the colors, the signs and letters suggest the colorful design of sportswear and equipment. While the rooms are designed by an architect, the use of color is explicitly that of a painter. The perception of the building takes place within this field of tension. Externally, the colors relate to the building volumes, the surroundings, the landscape and the sky. Within the building, they react to the density and complexity of the interior life and its spatiality.

Housing, Broelberg

Located in a village , this housing development has beautiful views over the lake of Zurich. Clusters of 76

old trees blur the boundary between the site and the open natural landscape. Instead of sprinkling the site with one-family homes, we suggested concentrating the building volume in six locations in order to preserve the trees and the park-like character of the land. To implement this idea, we prepared a master plan in 1990 which was finally approved in 1994. Within the perimeter of each housing concentration , different functional concepts generate varying building volumes. The first realized housing complex is situated in the northern part of the park. It is composed of three different building units on a single story podium with garages tucked underneath. Four row houses face east to the lake and two apartment buildings, each containing five dwellings, are oriented to the south and west. All units are entered from the podium through a public courtyard created by the three bui ldings.

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seeks to express the luxury of living in a beautiful, quiet landscape with a view over the lake. Large windows developed specifically for this building resemble huge square eyes which 'consume' the beauty of the landscape. These eyes are the principal elements of the facade. Their irregular placement expresses the individual character of each apartment. Like the windows of luxury cars, the panes of glass have no frames on the outside. Instead, on ly black printed stripes are visible where the inner wooden frames are glued to the glass. Like the bezelled setting of a jewel, an aluminum frame which holds metal roller blinds surrounds the window. Because of the relatively expensive windows, we had to find more economical solutions for the rest of the construction . An externa l insulation and finish system consists of stucco applied directly to insulation panels. To avoid simulating solid substrate stucco walls, we wanted the color of the stucco to refer to the organic insulation behind. We wanted to use a color more likely to be associated with

things in the organic world - like leather or the trunks of trees - than white or gray colors which are associated with mineral materials like stone, plaster or concrete. We envisioned a brown similar to the dark brown of horses or the creosote on wooden fences in the landscape. During the design stage, we contacted the German artist Harald F. Muller. The focus of Muller's work involves unearthing photographs in archives and, through a series of detailed investigations, selecting particular images which are processed specifically for a given exhibition space. Size, surface structure, placement on the wall and the method of hanging are important issues. This procedure, the intense study of something that already exists, the precise and intuitive selection, and Muller's specific knowledge of colors and their chemical composition are all aspects of his work that appealed to us.

MUller painted a variety of brown hues in support of our research. Chemical and physical factors 82

transformed the imagined brown of the stucco into more of a mineral brown, almost a grayish or whitish brown similar to ploughed earth instead of an organic brown like wood or leather. This was a change that we liked, because the grayish brown expresses the composition of the stucco as a compound of mineral and organic materials. The smooth dark brown stucco encloses the different buildings like a skin and emphasizes the overall volumetric composition. At the same time, a curious tension is generated by the angularity of the volumes and the irregular arrangement of the openings. On the facades facing the podium , the dark brown is contrasted with a bright orange. The brilliance of the orange creates an atmosphere of warmth and responsiveness which transforms the courtyard into an intense color space, ever-changing with the moving daylight. The podium floor is made of concrete, glass brick and gravel. The podium is divided into public access zones and private outdoor spaces by steel frames clad with plywood planking.

Signal Box, Zurich

The site is adjacent to the railroad tracks on the industrial outskirts of Zurich. Completed in 1999, 88

the building houses the computerized switching station that services a Ia rge portion of the track system. Upon finishing the building shell, it took another year for the electronics to be instal led inside by the Swiss Federal Railroad.

Within the three story building, technical facilities and computer security systems are on the lower levels and the control rooms are on the top floor. Because some of the facilities generate a great deal of heat and other rooms must be temperature controlled, it was important to design an intelligent shell that could both store and release heat into the environment. We therefore constructed a solid concrete structure with sufficient thickness to accumulate and store heat or cold and which is insulated to meet the temperature requirements of the individua l rooms. The reinforcing steel in the concrete forms a Faraday cage to protect the sensitive electronics inside from disruptive outside influences.

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On the third floor, the control rooms have windows overlooking the tracks. These windows consist of a sealed inner leaf that can be opened from inside and a free floating outer sheet of glass which serves as a sunscreen. Shutters in between regulate the intensity of light in the interior. The glazed sunscreen is coated with reflective vaporized metal. The patina on all of the objects and buildings near the tracks -a result of the iron dust from the train brakes - inspired us to integrate the small building into this family of rusty red and brownish colors. This intentional camouflage seemed appropriate since the signal box, serving mainly to house electronic switchgear for the railroad, is not a public building. We therefore dyed the concrete with pigment which is chemically the same as the oxidized particles released from the brakes when trains decelerate. Just as the iron oxidation from braking changes the color of the ballast on the railroad bed , chemically stabilized iron oxide pigments color the concrete in warm hues in a spectrum of black, brown, red, orange and yellow.

The brown iron oxide in the concrete integrates the building into its surroundings, and indeed almost 94

camouflages it. In contrast, the reflective metallized glazing of the top floor control rooms is set off against the quiet mood of the concrete. Referring to the function of the building, the windows are like shiny eyes watching over the tracks. We again worked with Harald Muller on the interior color scheme. Wooden components are painted in the colors discovered in the immediate surroundings of the building. Cupboards , wardrobes and staff restrooms become colorful implantations of the exterior world within. The staircase and the control room remain unpainted. In these spaces, color is perceived only as a faint green produced by daylight transmitted through the vaporized metallic coating on the glazing.

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"The concept of a design -our interpretation of an arch itectu ra I task - is the point of departure for the collaborative venture with the artist. The artistic work is so well integrated into the design concept of the buildings that it is no longer possible to make a distinction between artistic and architectural components. This is in stark contrast to the museums, where artwork and architecture are intentionally separate and distinct, and also in contrast to the more familiar situation of art specifically commissioned for a building."

Museum and Archeological Park, Kalkriese

On this project which is currently under construction, we are working in collaboration with landscape 98

architects and archeologists. Based on the latest archeological excavations, the museum and the park will explain to the public where and how the famous Varus Battle of the ancient Germans against the Romans took place in the year 9 AD. A museum building will house archeological findings which at present are displayed in existing rural buildings on the site. The site currently includes wooded areas, clearings, lot boundaries and road systems - marks on the land which show the various ways it has been cultivated and used over the centuries. The site of the battleground is a narrow passage between a dense beech and oak forest and the lower ground of marshland with brooks and isolated groups of trees. Marching columns of Roman legions were attacked by surprise and driven into the marsh by the Germans who were hidden in the forest and protected by earthworks.

The ancient situation is being reconstructed on the foundation of the current agricultural parameters 100

of the land. Trees will be planted on the southern part of the site in order to recreate the ancient forest. Towards the north, existing woods are being partially cleared to reflect the sparse vegetation of the former marsh with its isolated groups of trees. The open field between will be enlarged and maintained as a meadow.

Three different road systems mark the site. The route of the Romans along the earthworks in the difficult terrain is traced by large, irregular steel slabs placed in the pattern of a path. To give the impression of the chaos of battle, the slabs of the Roman road are placed irregularly. Words , scribbles, numbers and symbols relating to the historic event are written on the slabs. The position and height of the German earthworks and their palisades are staked out by steel poles. The locations of the earthworks have been established by a combination of archeological excavation and empirical assumption.

The forest is accessed via narrow paths covered with wood chips which give visitors the opportunity 102

to experience the freedom of movement of the ancient Germans behind the earthworks. A further network of gravel paths is superimposed on the landscape , its geometry defined by the current agricultural division of the land. These trails allow visitors to explore the whole terrain , beyond the positions of the Romans and ancient Germans , and to move through the area as a landscape park. The curved Roman routes , the branching German trails and the paths derived from agricultural patterns are evidence of the many epochs and cultures superimposed upon this site . The perspective of the visitor is thereby focused not only on the battle of the year 9 AD, but on the present time as well. Such multiple readings are inevitable in all archaeological interventions which seek an understanding of the past.

A reconstruction of the original landscape which is excavated into the ground is the most important intervention in the park and forms an outdoor museum which complements the new building.

This reconstituted landscape covers an area of 2 ,000 square feet and includes earthworks, sandy 106

soil and sloping marshland with isolated birch trees and a dense body of beech trees, all of which give the visitor an authentic impression of the landscape as it existed at the time of the battle. Steel sheet pile walls serve to retain the existing terrain and also act as a railing around the reconstructed landscape which is set apart from the present day topography and vegetation. Visitors will descend slowly into the sunken landscape on lateral enclosed entrance ramps. An archeological section with different layers of soil will be painted full scale on the sheet piling and explained to visitors by texts. Three pavilions- Listening, Seeing and Understanding - collect, concentrate and deepen sensory impressions while walking through the park. They are located along the Roman path and allow the visitor to leave the reality of the landscape for a moment in order to experience it in a different and more intense way.

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The Listening Pavilion is lighted by an overhead window. Through a large hearing pipe composed of welded segments of galvanized steel, sounds from outside are amplified and transmitted into a soundproof room. The visitor can locate the sources of the sound by moving around the listening device. In the Seeing Pavilion, the visitor experiences by means of a camera obscura an intense, surreal upside-down reproduction of the outside world. The image is projected on a hemisphere of glass and illuminates the dark room in a mystic way. On the outside, the camera shows as a lens covered with a shell of steel like a large eyeball. The Understanding Pavilion, placed at the end of the Roman path , allows the curious visitor to look back over the battlefield through slits in the wall before being confronted with a video installation showing the current trouble spots in the world. The theme of this pavilion is battle as a form of conflict both past and present.

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The museum building marks the entrance to the park. Raised above the ground, it offers visitors an 110

aerial view of the surroundings from a tower rising above the treetops. The building is anchored to the ground by three different volumes which contain the main staircase leading up to the museum, the elevator and stairs of the tower, and the service ramp. The entrance hall at the top of the main staircase has large windows with views into the park. Moveable partitions and furniture allow this hall and the adjacent auditorium to be used in many different ways. The exhibition space is a simple room with three lateral windows and steel columns. The raised floor , the wall and the suspended ceiling are clad with black untreated steel panels. The dark materiality of the steel provides the backdrop for the exhibition which is freely placed in large threedimensional showcases and walls.

Stairs in the tower cross from side to side, traversing two open-air exhibition spaces which are oriented in different directions. At the top of the tower, a platform offers panoramic views of the former battlefield and the surroundings. The structure of the building is a simple steel frame clad externally with large weathered steel panels.

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A reduced palette of materials as a contemporary means of visualization makes it easier to distinguish the measures undertaken to illustrate the historical situation. The pavilions, the sunken landscape, the slabs of the path and the poles marking the earthworks all consist all of a single material: steel. The steel has many finishes - raw , rusty, oiled or painted - which allow the material to adapt to different purposes. In both the signal box and the Kalkriese museum, volumetric form is derived directly from a strong interpretation of the contents and programs of the buildings. It is evident in the minimal inteNention of the slightly sloped and folded concrete roof of the signal box as well as in the more expressive silhouette of the archeological museum. The choice of material is essentially linked to the underlying themes and concepts of each building.

Annette Gigon & Mike Guyer

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Gigon I Guyer

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Annette Gigon 1959 Date of birth 1984 Graduated from Federal Institute of Technology , Zurich (ETH) 1984-85 Collaboration with Marbach & Ruegg, Zurich 1985-88 Collaboration with Herzog & de Meuron, Basel 1987-89 Own architectural practice

Mike Guyer 1958 Date of birth 1984 Graduated from Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich (ETH) 1984-87 Collaboration with Rem Koolhaas, OMA, Rotterdam 1987-88 Assistant lecturer with Hans Kal lhoff, ETH 1987-89 Own architectural practice

Gigon I Guyer 1989 Establishment of joint architectural practice

Exhibitions 1993 "Werkstoff" (Material), Architekturgalerie, Lucerne. 1994-95 "Swiss Museums," Centre Pasquart, Bienne and Zug. 1995-96 "Light Constructions," Museum of Modern Art, New York and Barcelona.

Awards 1992 Award DRS (Television) for the Kirchner Museum. 1995 Award 'Auszeichnung fUr gute Bauten im Kanton Graubunden ' for the Kirchner Museum. 1995 Award DRS (Television) for the Winterthur Museum of Art Extension . 1996 Award 'Bauen in den Bergen' Joint 1st Prize Sexten Kultur Italy for the Kirchner Museum . 1996 Winterthur Museum of Art Extension nominated for Mies van der Rohe Award for European Architecture. 1998 Museum Liner nominated and shortlisted for Mies van der Rohe Award for European Architecture.

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Charles & Ray Eames

Charles Eames was born in St. Louis , Missouri in 1907 and, after studying architecture for two years at Washington University 116

and traveling in Europe , returned to St. Louis in 1930 to open an architectural practice of his own. Seven years before, the famous Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen had arrived at the University of Michigan . While in Ann Arbor, Saarinen became acquainted with the Booth family who offered him design responsibilities for the new Cranbrook Academy of Art. After moving to Cranbrook, Saarinen saw Eames' work published and, in 1938, offered him a Fel lowship. Two years later, Charles Eames became the Head of the Industrial Design Department. Charles met Ray Kaiser at Cranbrook. Five years younger than Charles, Ray was an accomplished artist and a founding member of the American Abstract Artists group who had studied painting with Hans Hofmann in New York prior to coming to Michigan . When Charles and Eero Saarinen were working on their 100 studies to initiate the designs for the Museum of Modern Art Organic Furniture Competition in 1940, Ray worked with them to develop the proposals that were subsequently awarded first prize in each of the two main categories. The designs did not go into production. World War II was imminent, and the procedures for molding plywood into complex curvatures and cycle welding for bonding of meta l to wood had not yet been perfected.

The Eames Lecturers 1998 路 Tod Williams & Billie Tsien 1999 路 Mack Scogin & Merill Elam 2000 路 Annette Gigon & Mike Guyer

Charles and Ray Eames were married in 1941. In the same year they moved to Los Angeles, where they continued the research and testing of molded plywood construction that they had initiated with Colonel Edward S. Evans of Evans Products Company in Michigan. George Nelson introduced the Eames to the Herman Miller Furniture Company and , in 1946, when their designs for molded plywood furniture were ready for production, the company bought the distribution rights as Evans did not have the capability of massmarketing. Three years later, as Charles and Ray Eames completed their Case Study House #8 in Santa Monica, Herman Miller took over the complete manufacturing rights for the molded plywood furniture and a manufacturing plant was built in Zeeland, Michigan. The Office of Charles and Ray Eames continued to work on the design of furniture for almost forty years and Herman Miller has been the sole manufacturer of all Eames furniture in the United States.

Alongside their designs for furniture, Charles and Ray Eames developed an office which promoted design in many ways. Through programs of design research, materials investigation and technological innovation, they worked in the fields of architecture and interior design, exhibition and graphic design , product development and film making. They encouraged collaborations across the disciplines and designed new ways of working that connected industry and design.

The Royal Gold Medal for Architecture was awarded to the Office of Charles and Ray Eames in 1979. Ray died in 1988 - ten years to the day after Charles.

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Herman Miller, Inc.

D.J. DePree joined the Star Furniture Company in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1909 as a clerk. The company, which was four years 118

old at the time , manufactured high quality, traditional style residential furniture. Ten years later he became the President and in 1923 convinced Herman Miller, his father-in -law, and a sma ll group of investors to join him in purchasing a majority of shares of Michigan Star stock. They renamed the company, but not unti l the New York industrial designer Gilbert Rohde visited the Grand Rapids Showroom of the Herman Miller Furniture Company in 1931 did the idea of manufacturing simple and flexible modern furniture become of particular interest to them. Rohde became the company's design leader, and it was his proposals for furniture that led the company to pursue innovation in both design and technology. In 1933, modern furniture manufactured by Herman Miller was shown at the "Century of Progress" exposition in Chicago. Six years later, with sales shipments totaling $160,000, the company opened a showroom there followed by one in New York and a third in Los Angeles in 1942. By this time, with a new modular system designed by Rohde, Herman Miller had entered the office furniture market. As corporate sales increased , the company phased out the manufacture of all traditional style furniture in favor of modern designs.

When Gilbert Rohde died, D.J. DePree invited the architect and author George Nelson to serve as design director. From 1944, under Nelson's able leadership, the company was to establish long-term relationships with a number of outstanding designers. Charles and Ray Eames first started working with Herman Miller in 1946, a partnership that spanned more than forty years and produced a wide range of outstanding furniture. Molded plywood chairs fabricated in 1946 were followed by a series of molded fiberglass chairs developed out of experiments into airplane production techniques , the Eames lounge and ottoman of molded wood and leather in 1956, and , two years later, the aluminum group chairs which led to a series of new approaches to seating. In 1962 Hugh DePree assumed the leadership of Herman Miller as President and Chief Executive Officer, with D.J. De Pree taking up the position of Chairman of the Board. In 1968 the company introduced Action Office, the world's first panel system for office furniture, designed by Robert Propst and a team of designers. By the time D.J. DePree died in 1990, the company had a series of manufacturing centers in America and abroad , a new Corporate Center in Zeeland, and the Design Yard in Holland, Michigan. Continuing to act as an inspired patron and working with designers from England , Germany and the USA, their design studies in work seating led to the introduction of ergonomic chairs in 1972 and the recyclable no-foam Aeron chair in 1994. Three years later, and with sales of $1.5 billion , Herman Miller was ranked by Fortune

Magazine as one of the top twenty-five most admired companies in the United States.

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Acknowledgments

The Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning is extremely grateful to Herman Miller, Inc. for their encouragement, interest and generous assistance that have made both the Charles and Ray Eames Lecture and this published record possible.

Faculty, staff and students at the College have helped in many ways. In particular, Sallie Kne and Mary Anne Drew ensured that everything ran smoothly. Miyun Kang and Etienne Kuhn, students in the Architecture Program at Michigan, and Christoph Loetscher in Zurich gave valuable assistance.

The inspiration and effort of Annette Gigon and Mike Guyer have created these outstanding buildings. Working together with Annette LeCuyer, Brian Carter and Christian Unverzagt in Michigan and at their studio in Zurich, Gigon and Guyer helped to design and prepare material for this book. Their perseverance and hospitality were much appreciated.

Photographs Arazebra:47d, 49, 53b, 53d, 53e, 57b, 57d. Gigon & Guyer: 20f, 29a, 3ld, 32a, 40f, 42b, 42c, 42d, 47a , 47c, 65e, 67d, 73a, 73b, 73c, 73d, 74c, 74d, 79a, 79c, 79d, 79f, 80, 83b, 90a, 90c, 90d, 90e, 90f, lOla, lOlb, lOlc, lOld, lOle, 1011, 103a, 103b, 103c, 103d, 103e, 103f, 104-105, 108a, 108b, 108c, 108d, 108e, 108f, 112b. Heinrich Helfenstein: 6-7, 10-11, 17a, 17b, 17c, 17d, 17e, 17f, 20a, 20b, 20c, 20d, 20e, 23, 25a, 25b, 25d, 29b, 29c, 29d, 29e, 3la, 3lb, 3lc, ;3le, 311, 32a, 32b, 32c, 32d, 32e, 32f, 35, 38c, 38d, 38e, 38f, 40a , 40b, 40c, 40d , 40e, 42a, 42e, 42f, 44-45, 56a, 56b, 56c, 56d, 57a, 57c, 65a, 65b, 65f, 67a, 67b, 67c, 68-69, 73e, 73f, 74a, 74b, 74e, 74f, 79b, 79e, 83c, 83d, 86-87, 90b, 95d, 95e, 95f, 97a, 97b. Annette W. LeCuyer: 53f. Courtesy Herman Miller, Inc: 116, 118. Harald F. Muller: 82a, 83e, 83f, 92-93, 95a , 95b, 95c, 97c, 112a. Courtesy Kirchner Museum, Davos: 15a, 15b, 15c, 15d. Courtesy Winterthur Museum of Art: 29f. Courtesy Adrian Schiess: 70a, 70b. Courtesy Liner Museum: 38a, 38b. Courtesy Reinhart Collection am Rbmerholz: 47b, 47c, 47e, 47f. Courtesy Sports Center, Davos: 65d, 65c. Courtesy Museum and Archeological Park, Kalkriese: 99a.

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