Fall 2006 Constructs
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Fall 2006 Constructs To form by putting together parts; build; frame; devise. A complex image or idea resulting from synthesis by the mind. 2 A Conversation with Massimo Scolari 4 Peter Eisenman and Alan Plattus 5 A Conversation with Marc Tsurumaki 6 Newer Orleans: A Shared Space, an exhibition reviewed by David Hecht 7 The Prairie Skyscraper, an exhibition reviewed by Karla Britton 8 Against Type: A Panel Discussion 9 On the Waterfront symposium reviewed by Mark Love 10 Philip Johnson’s Miracle Elixir, a symposium reviewed by Daniel Barber and Brendan D. Moran 12 Fall Previews: Exhibition, Team 10: A Utopia of the Present, by Suzanne Mulder; symposium, Team 10 Today 13 Exhibitions, Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future; Some Assembly Required. Symposia, Labor in Architecture, Team 10 Today. In an e-mail discussion with Massimo wrote on a bridge, “YOU DON’T HAVE TO 16 Book Reviews: Julie Eizenberg’s Architecture Scolari, the fall 2006 Davenport Visiting CREATE SOMETHING UGLY TO BE DEEMED Isn’t Just for Special Occasions; Catherine Professor, Nina Rappaport asked him INTELLIGENT.” What am I doing now? I am Ingraham’s Architecture, Animal, Human: about his work and projects in architec- working on a retrospective of my works at The Asymmetrical Condition; Perspecta 38, ture, art, and design as well as why he the Municipal Museum in Riva del Garda, a Architecture After All; David Grahame Shane’s doesn’t practice. He will give the lecture town beloved by Kafka and Thomas Mann. Recombinant Urbanism. “Crossing Architecture” on Thursday, These days I work with a few close friends, September 7, 2006. in a state of semi-hiding, waiting for the 18 Academic News: On Site: British Landscape day when it will no longer be considered a Architecture; Delhi’s Transportation Dilemmas; Nina Rappaport: The first thing I would crime to be a man of culture. Yale Women in Architecture; MED Colloquium and like to ask you as a way of reintroducing NR: Is your furniture design an indication of Research; Undergraduate Studio. you to the architectural community is, what what your buildings would look like if you are you doing now that you are not teach- were still a practicing architect? Why has 20 Spring Lectures ing and are not as involved in architecture, furniture absorbed your design aspirations but rather in the arts? For example, you rather than buildings? 22 Spring Advanced Studios did an installation piece for Kurt Forster MS: Leon Battista Alberti wrote that “the at the Venice Biennale in 2004 as well as city is like a big house, and the house 24 Faculty News a replica of Julius Caesar’s bridge for the in its turn is a small city.” But a chair is Palladio Center. Do you consider yourself just a chair after all, and it still has to be 26 Alumni News an architect? (I know that you were one of the same height as the one used by of those in the 1960s who expanded the Tutankhamen. The human backside has A Note on the Type: Helvetica Neue R definition of an architect when you were changed very little since then. The rela- The intention of this project is to render a type family by working with Aldo Rossi.) tionship between architecture and furni- using the language and functions of software. Instead Massimo Scolari: Since working with ture design is at the very basis of Italian of bold, medium, italic, etc., it should now be possible Rossi in the early sixties, I have always design: Architects such as Vico Magistretti to involve other dimensions (time) or qualities (the ability looked upon architecture as a subject mat- designed the furniture for their buildings as to move, grow, hide, read) in the production and use of ter for painting rather than as a profession. well. In this way a project culture entered digital typography. Besides, Rossi was involved at that time in carpenters’ workshops, transforming them teaching and writing, but was building very into furniture factories. As I said, I am an Variations on a typeface, Helvetica Neue, emphasize little. My individualism and aversion to any architect, not a builder: painting and design different modes of production for the headlines of sort of constraint have served as repeated are not consolation prizes for not building Constructs. This issue introduces Helvetica Neue R Eden reminders that I don’t possess the neces- and do not absorb disappointed aspira- by Sarah Gephart with Eden Reinfurt based on the Twirl sary qualities for the team-work ethos of an tions. Fortunately, a degree in architecture command in Adobe Illustrator. architectural practice. It was simply a mat- does not come with a moral obligation ter of acknowledging my own limitations. I to build buildings. Manfredo Tafuri had Front and back cover: Team 10 visiting Toulouse le Mirail, am anyway of the opinion that specializa- a degree in architecture, and it wasn’t 1971. From left: Sia Bakema, Peter Smithson, unknown, tion is a pointless exercise, because you because he was incapable of building unknown, unknown, unknown, Alison Smithson with end up knowing more and more about less that he wrote about its history, but rather Soraya, Hannie van Eyck, Giancarlo De Carlo, unknown, and less, so the big picture tends to get because he wanted to be an architectural Aldo van Eyck, Christiane Candilis, Brian Richards, lost—and along with it, the truth. When I historian. This decision is just as legitimate Sandra Lousada, O.M. Ungers, unknown, unknown, began teaching in Rossi’s group in Milan in as that of someone who builds without any Stefan Wewerka, Simon Smithson; in the foreground 1967, I was still a student and believed that knowledge of architectural history. Takis Candilis, Jerzy Soltan, Georges Candilis, and Jaap helping others to understand and prog- NR: How does having your pilot’s license Bakema. Photograph courtesy NAi. ress in their work was a moral, social, and relate to your visual understanding and therefore political duty. Then in the 1980s, perception? I am also curious how it cor- Volume 9, Number 1 European universities began to experience relates to the paintings that you made in ISBN: 0-9772362-7-7 a general crisis whereby the culture of the 1980s, where you depicted a bizarre, ignorance—which people had concealed almost ancient flying machine. Does the © Copyright 2006 until then behind a veil of silence—came flying machine imply a new perspective of Yale University School of Architecture unashamedly out into the open, and by its the world? How has that affected rendering 180 York Street invasive nature became the dominant voice the world in a different way, for example, in New Haven, Connecticut 06520 of the day. So began the age of anything perspective, then in the parallel and axono- Telephone: 203-432-2296 goes, in which anybody could say and do metric drawings in which you have devel- Web site: www.architecture.yale.edu anything. It was a paradox, in that culture oped an interest? was vanquished by democracy, and truth MS: The wings that traverse my skies Fall 2006 was driven out of even the politics of the have an important compositional function Cost: $5.00 great nations. My resignation as Arthur because they govern the infinity of space Rotch Professor at Harvard in 1988 was where light is more subtle. My design for Constructs is published twice a year by the prompted by the fact that I refused to raise a glider was based on a collage from the Dean’s Office of the Yale School of Architecture. the grades of undeserving students. In the 1970s and became part of the Porta per same way, I resigned from my chair in the Città di Mare painting in 1979. It emerged We would like to acknowledge the support of the Theory and History of Representational again in 1991 when I created the big lamel- Rutherford Trowbridge Memorial Publication Fund; Methods at the Venice University Institute lar wood wings for the Venice Biennale. the Paul Rudolph Publication Fund, established by of Architecture (IUAV) in 2000 because I That sculpture is now located on top of Claire and Maurits Edersheim; the Robert A. M. found myself at odds with an institution that the Venice School of Architecture as a Stern Fund, established by Judy and Walter Hunt; failed to apply selection by merit of either reminder that architects have to let their and the Nitkin Family Dean’s Discretionary Fund in its students or its teachers, and that—in the imaginations take wing. As far as its shape Architecture. total absence of any meritocratic system— goes, as Kurt Forster noted recently, it treated differences equally and equals dif- probably owes its design to the Stealth Dean: Robert A. M. Stern ferently. Where there is injustice, no place B-2, completed in 1988, ten years after I Associate Dean: John Jacobson is too sacrosanct to abandon. Charles V designed my wings in Porta per Città di Assistant Dean: Peggy Deamer famously declared, “Estode todos caballe- Mare. Piloting a plane means more than Assistant Dean: Keith Krumwiede ros” (“Let all of you be knights”), to his sub- flying; it means taking command of the jects crowded below. When everybody is entire complex flying apparatus. It’s an Editor: Nina Rappaport an artist, there is no art. For the critics who indescribable Daedalian sensation: One’s Graphic design: David Reinfurt, O-R-G inc. guide the big investments made by muse- actions are regulated by a precise disci- Copy editors: Cathryn Drake and David Delp ums and art galleries, everything is worthy pline that allows no infringement of the Student Assistants: Marc Guberman (’08) and of interest; and anyone who criticizes those rules because, as my instructor used to Alek Bierig (Yale College ’07) publicity stunts posing as art is simply say, “Taking off is optional, but landing is Event photographs by John Jacobson, Tom Bosschoert marginalized as someone who doesn’t get mandatory.” (’08) and Adrienne Swiatocha (’07) it.