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Architecture, Design and Conservation Danish Portal for Artistic and Scientific Research Aarhus School of Architecture // Design School Kolding // Royal Danish Academy The Function of Architecture Jensen, Boris Brorman Published in: Conditions Publication date: 2010 Document Version: Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Link to publication Citation for pulished version (APA): Jensen, B. B. (2010). The Function of Architecture: Interview with Farshid Moussavi. Conditions, (4), 92-96. 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Sep. 2021 THE INTERVIEW FUNCTION CONDITIONS OF ARCHITECTURE Boris Brorman Jensen met with Farshid Moussavi at Harvard Graduate School of Design to discuss the production of added value and how architectural practice, research and teaching, influence and stimulate each other. Boris Brorman Jensen: This it produces culture. We have to look issue of CONDITIONS is focusing on at how built forms or objects perform. FARSHID MOUSSAVI possibilities to expand the ambitions This does not mean that it doesn’t is an architect and educator, and co- beyond the given assignment. So the matter how it is made, but we have to founder of Foreign Office Architects question is, do you think architecture connect the production of architecture (FOA). Since 2006, Farshid Moussavi should try to engage? What is the right to how they perform. has been Professor in Practice of Architecture at Harvard University. strategy to ensure the production of com- She was trained at Harvard Graduate mon value within architecture? BBJ: Ok! Let’s relate this to your own School of Design, University College practice. Fifteen years ago you won the London, and Dundee University. She has taught at the Academy of Fine Farshid Moussavi: I just gave a competition for the Yokohama Interna- Arts in Vienna where she acted as talk at Columbia University basically tional Port Terminal. The competition Head of the Architecture Institute, addressing this issue. I presented the brief asked for a ferry terminal. They the Architectural Association, the Berlage Institute, and the Hoger research I have been doing through got that, but they also got a new type of Architecture Institute, and in the my teaching at the GSD: “The Func- urban landscape, a looping boardwalk, United States at Harvard, Columbia, tion of Ornament” and “The Function and a complex structure employing a Princeton Universities, and at the University of California in Los Ange- of Form”. I was trying to explain the whole set of different activities. Is this les. Moussavi's research has been overriding ambition behind these strategy of added value something you materialised in two books: Function two books. How we define the word deliberately looked for, or was it more a of Ornament (2006) and The Func- tion of Form (2009), both developed ‘function’ and how we understand the result of your design process? through her seminars at Harvard' function of architecture. If we claim Graduate School of Design. Mous- that architecture plays a role in society FM: No, I would say it was absolute savi serves on the RIBA Awards Panel, the Steering committee of the Aga we are basically also saying it has a deliberate. It was our first project so I Khan Award for Architecture. She is function in society. Since the begin- have to admit that it was more intui- a member of the Board of Trustees ning of early 20th century we have tive. We got a brief and a site, but of of the Whitechapel Gallery as well as the Board of Trustees of The Archi- understood function as utility. Focus course we wanted to add value. That is tecture Foundation in London. has been on utility and the object in why you enter international competi- its own terms, and I think we need to tions. It is because there is an ambi- do if we are committed to claim that tion beyond just delivering the basic architecture is a cultural activity and requirements. It is about how you put that architecture produces culture. resources and requirements together in Architecture doesn’t represent culture, a way that gives certain added values. 93 Base units aggregation Chris Vant Hoff aerial view interior We were not necessarily thinking The city started to develop the space FM: I think you are right, but I’m about it with enough distance, but it in between and now people walk from not saying that we are all the time was absolute deliberate. We looked at the leisure development to the pier. looking for new ways in which we the relationship between the terminal The terminal has become a kind of include public space. You could say that was supposed to be built and the destination. I think good architecture it’s about the connection between the broader possible picture of the city. has always done this. Buildings do this building and the context. It could The waterfront of Yokohama is an to a lesser or greater degree depending also be about adding value that is important feature. It’s a harbour, but on what you are building; for example, more internal to the project. I think there were not any places in the city residential projects with no public that’s basically what makes architec- where you could come in contact with access are obviously more limited. But ture a critical discipline. This is what the water and where people could the way the building is placed, the way gives architecture a social and cultural meet. All we knew was that there was shadows may fall on it, its proximity role. And I agree that the Sterling going to be a new leisure development to and view over other buildings and Museum in Stuttgart was (if you like) close to one of the train stations that the angle of the building itself all have one of the first grand projects where was supposed to shift the centre to the an impact on the context in which instead of lifting the building off harbour. So we saw the building of it is located. I think architecture has the ground and letting the city flow the pier as an opportunity. It would always done that. Don’t you think so? under it, people were allowed to go become a second pole connecting this through it. Well I’m not quite sure. other leisure development that was BBJ: Well my first experience of added It might be rooted in Le Corbusier’s perhaps 20 minutes walk away. We value within architecture was as a Carpenter Centre… were thinking of the pier not just as student when I visited James Sterling’s a terminal but as a leisure destination ‘Neue Staatsgalerie’ in Stuttgart. I was BBJ: Louis Kahn once said that: “The and a public space – we would activate instantly fascinated by the way he con- purpose of architecture is not social a space in between. And in fact that’s nects public space with the museum’s reform!” Do you think he is right, or what happened! Nobody asked us for sculpture garden and how the building should architecture always try to offer a piece of urban design and we did it becomes a part of the city’s infrastruc- something to society? entirely naively. And what happened ture. The inner space of the building while we were building the terminal? basically becomes a part of the city. FM: I think that statement can be conditions #4 Base units aggregation Evangelos Kotsioris aerial view interior misinterpreted. I think the word that maybe we could argue that archi- they sit in their context, each one of reform is somehow problematic. I tecture has a more powerful social role us relates to those sets of sensations believe that architects do impact the now than at any other time. When differently. This gives certain elasticity social, mental and political realm that people have interest in the social as- to architecture. Postmodernism’s exer- we are part of. I really believe so. Ar- pect of architecture, they always come cise of adding symbols was, in a way, chitecture and the built environment up with some kind of mechanism limiting to architecture. Architecture give us experiences that affect the way where architecture becomes social; is abstract and pluralistic by nature. It we think. It constantly influences the for example, the addition of symbols connects to everyone differently. This way we conduct ourselves therefore to architecture in order to relate it to fact, coupled with the great diversity making it a social activity. I just don’t society. But we don’t have a shared of our society, makes architecture believe in the reform bit, especially understanding, common culture or an incredibly powerful field. In a in the light of the world that we live even mental reading of these things. society that lacks wholeness, common in today. I don’t think it is possible Therefore to rely on these one-to-one memory, common understanding, to guarantee that people will perceive commutations between what architec- suddenly architecture has an ability to architecture in the same way.