John Hejduk's Pursuit of an Architectural Ethos

113 John Hejduk’s Pursuit of an Architectural Ethos Martin Søberg Within the past decade the visual arts have in particular indicates a certain depth within such witnessed an increase in the production of artis- projects, a desire for transgressing questions of tic research. This is a type of practice-driven formalism and mere aesthetics while coming to research that, based on creative investigation and terms with fundamental principles and purposes of the production of artistic work combined with proc- architecture. These objectives may be described esses of reflection and documentation, arguably as a pursuit of an architectural ethos that investi- results in the creation of new insights, recognitions, gates what is architecturally proper and meaningful if not to say genuine knowledge.1 Generally speak- in a contemporary context, including architecture’s ing, artistic research differs methodologically from symbolic potentials – and as such addresses traditional scientific research as it relies primarily normative questions.2 My hypothesis is that on the imagination and aesthetic impetus of the such questions concerning the media, language, artist rather than on concepts, logical thinking and programmes, semantics, and ethos of architecture transparent argumentation. In architecture this would also be relevant to a field of artistic architec- tendency has been less prominent. While much has tural research today and that knowing more about been done to conceptualize, map and theorize the previous projects that explored these questions, targets, history and assessment of artistic research obvious differences apart, could help us to conduct in visual arts, similar work is still somehow absent artistic architectural research in a more focused when it comes to architecture. This prompts us to manner. ask how we would conceptualize and assess a type of artistic architectural research that would differ Assessing investigatory, imaginary work in a from scientific architectural research since based on historical context would include examination of its the development of architectural proposals, projects aims and methodologies, even if such work might and prototypes such as new aesthetic models and not have been considered research proper by its followed by interpretation and a type of theorization authors. In this text I focus on a number of projects specifically linked to these design practices? by American architect John Hejduk (1929-2000) – work that exists only on paper, in drawings, collages, Indeed, there is a recent history of investigatory, only occasionally as scale models – as examples imaginary architecture that flourished particularly in of a practice that spans from investigations into the the 1970s and 1980s. This includes projects that specific media and language of architecture to the explored the specific media and language of archi- creation of complex schemes that even included the tecture, its programmes and semantics, combined invention of human characters to inhabit and fulfil with a sense of poetic imagination that pointed to the purpose of each individual architectural struc- questions regarding the relationship between archi- ture. tecture and the world that surrounds it. The latter 10 11 Architecture Culture and the Question of Knowledge: Doctoral Research Today, Spring 2012, pp. 113-128 114 During the late 1960s and early 1970s, Hejduk retical justification given to formal arrangements explored different spatial problems and what was a moral imperative that is not longer operative we might term the formal language of architec- within contemporary experience’.3 Eisenman then ture through his imaginary work. To some extent described a new dialectic consisting of two tenden- this paralleled a structuralist tendency within the cies that together would constitute the basis of an humanities, founded on theories stemming from architecture focused on the development and repre- linguistics and semiotics, and correlated as well sentation of form itself: one tendency presuming to studies of basic spatial and geometric elements form to be the result of a reductionist transformation and structures in visual art, particularly in Minimal of geometric solids – the other relying on decom- Art. Hejduk’s focus on the media and language of position and fragmentation as a fundamental architecture was nevertheless not an end in itself condition.4 but was continuously – and particularly in his later work from the middle of the 1970s onwards – linked Following Eisenman’s description of this dialec- to a notion of imagination implying that architec- tic, Hejduk could to some degree be seen as a ture could not be reduced to formal exercises but protagonist of a postfunctionalist agenda. Yet Eisen- would always entail aspects of narrative, of action, man’s implied focus on form per se, as well as his of symbolic meaning. Somewhat contrary to Peter critique of a functionalist ethos, seems to neglect Eisenman’s idea of an autonomous exploration of the possibility of a different kind of architectural pure form, to Hejduk formal gestures and manipula- ethos – one that would rely on the decomposition tion such as repetition, appropriation, fragmentation of form while still insisting on the possibilities of the and layering were therefore, as we shall see, never programme, of meaning, the communicability and separable from semantic content. As such, his symbolic potentials of architecture, even suggest- objective increasingly mirrored that of contem- ing that formal decomposition could be instituted porary poststructuralist thinkers such as Roland through programme and vice versa. To Hejduk, Barthes, Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Derrida as pursuing such an ethos was a challenge that led they attempted to conceptualize topological condi- him to the question of how to generate architectural tions in which structure and formal language were character(s) as based on the imagination of the contrasted and complemented by the decomposi- architect, understood as the possibilities of making tion of meaning and the play of signification. proposals with no regards to specific realities.5 As such, the notion of character allowed him to over- To these poststructuralist thinkers, as to Hejduk, come the functionalism of the Modern Movement this would entail a critique of the dichotomy between while retaining to some degree its formal language. form and meaning as they pointed to more complex Furthermore, this emphasized the possibilities of relationships between the syntactic and semantic architectural signification on a symbolic, expres- aspects of aesthetic production. In architectural sive level, thus pointing in the direction of a new culture, a similar critique was presented during the architectural ethos in which form and programme 1970s, particularly of the dichotomy between form amalgamate. As he stated: ‘I cannot do a building and function as upheld by the modern movement. without building a new repertoire of characters of Thus Peter Eisenman in an editorial in the journal stories of language and it’s all parallel. It’s not just Oppositions in 1976 questioned the operations of building per se. It’s building worlds.’6 Thus the crea- functionalism and neo-functionalism and its inher- tion of characters may not only relate to the creation ent humanism whilst arguing for the advent of of architectural representations and appearances, postfunctionalism, stating that ‘the primary theo- but simultaneously to the creation of programmes 115 and the combination of forms and programmes into of inexhaustible layers of meaning and purposeful syntheses for which Hejduk applied the term worlds. purposelessness unfolding in an interplay between form and programme as described by the imagina- The notion of character was introduced to archi- tion of the architect. tectural lingo during the eighteenth century – initially with reference to the use of the same notion in rhetoric Building Character – referring to the meaning and readability of a build- The notion of character became increasingly impor- ing and the appropriateness of its visual expression tant to Hejduk during the middle of the 1970s, a in relation to its functional purposes. But increas- period in which he exhibited three projects in Italy, ingly, particularly during the nineteenth century, it all of them, in very different ways, relating to the city came to be identified with formal expression, with of Venice. Until then Hejduk had to a large extent the notion of style. Hejduk and Colin Rowe touched created work situated in undefined contexts but upon the term in their studies of the American town having to relate to the historical surroundings of Lockhart, published in 1957.7 However, Rowe had Venice, the investigatory method of repetition and already dealt with character in his essay Charac- re-appropriation and thereby questioning of pre- ter and Composition written in 1953-1954, but not existing elements, some even designed by Hejduk published until 1974.8 In this essay, Rowe analysed himself, became a still more important aspect of his the historical importance of the notion of charac- work. Deleuze has pointed to the singularity of such ter, particularly in an Anglo-American setting, as a repetition – that in a sense, Monet’s first water lily hard-to-define term that does, nonetheless, imply comprised all the following.11 Thus Hejduk destabi- symbolic content and a fusion of individual artistic lized asserted configurations and meaning through expression and the expression of the purpose

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