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Itin 47 Deconstruction in New Zealand

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Itin 47 Deconstruction in New Zealand ITINERARY n.47 NOT ON MAP This year marks 25 years since 2 7 8 13 Deconstructive Architecture was inagurated with a controversial exhbition at MoMA. This itinerary looks at local contributions to this global phenomenon. 1 3 6 9 10 12 14 4 5 11 Venice Biennale Installation Venice Deconstruction in New Zealand Deconography The fuss kicked off with events The late 1980s was a turbulent time for New Zealand architecture. In the decade’s prosperous early years, Kiwi held in 1988 on either side of the practitioners embraced the up-beat forms of post-modernism that swept ashore from various northern points of Atlantic – a symposium at The origin. In the less giddy times following the ‘87 stock market crash, many local architects were receptive to the Tate Gallery in London, and the more skeptical stance and aggressive aesthetics linked to deconstruction. exhibition at New York’s MoMA. Local architects had a particular interest in this new trans-Atlantic deconstruction phenomenon. Auckland enfant The MoMA show’s controversial terrible Mark Wigley, who had achieved local notoriety through television shows on Kiwi architecture, popped list of exhibitors included Frank up at the center of the action in New York. He worked alongside Philip Johnson to put together the canon- Gehry, Daniel Libeskind, Rem defining 1988 Deconstructivist Architecture show at the Museum of Modern Art. Reports on Wigley’s involvement Koolhaas, Peter Eisenman, Zaha appeared in Architecture NZ at various stages, swiftly followed by reviews of both the show and the associated Hadid, Coop Himmelblau and catalogue. In the years that followed, an ideological battle raged in international architecture circles between Bernard Tschumi. Most denied deconstruction and postmodern classicism (and the closely related New Urbanist approach). Given the long- any direct connection between term ascendancy of the decon-ers (three of the seven MoMA exhbitiors would go on to win Pritzker Prizes) it was deconstructive theory and their a battle that, in the realm of high architecture at least, decon eventually won. work, and even the show’s curators In our schools of architecture it was a shorter and more decisive skirmish, culminating in the unprecedented preferred to see the work’s roots in success of The University of Auckland’s decon-informed exhibit at the 1991 Venice Biennale. As exemplified by Russian Constructivism, although the Venice project, in New Zealand deconstruction came together in an unusual way with the local version of most of the exhbitiors disavowed another internationally prominent stream of thinking, critical regionalism, with its concern for the geographical and this connection too. The notable cultural context of architecture. These streams intersected in notions of “ground” and “fault” that saw the literal exceptions were Tschumi and and conceptual ground for architecture in New Zealand being unstable and fissured. The “deep-grinding energy” Eisenman, both of whom took up that Michael Linzey (see Listing 7) posited as characterising both our lively geology and evolving bi-culture was direct collaborations with Jacques invoked to explain the “aesthetic of fragmentation” in local projects. Derrida. Perhaps because they The advent of postmodern classicism and deconstruction on the local scene seemed to raise anxieties about bound themselves so closely to overseas influence, particularly the way in which ideas flowed in from abroad through magazines. The new work the theory, the careers of these was decried as inauthentic and obscurantist, a view in turn criticised as anti-intellectual and inarticulate. Looking two suffered when decon waned. back, however, it is surprising to find that outside the architecture schools and corner bars, deconstruction In contrast, Derrida-deniers generated remarkably little architecture. The talk was rarely walked. Based purely on built results, in the local Gehry, Hadid, and Koolhaas battle between decon and pomo, pomo won hands down. went on to win Pritzker Prizes. Both however, were soon overtaken by neo-modernism, and nervousness about overseas influence faded, in The pale, neo-modernism of the part because even the most significant international developments have had little visible impact on our local 1995 Light Construction show scene. While such major shifts as those signaled by Rem Koolhaas’ hyper-rationalism or Zaha Hadid’s fluid at MoMA signaled the end of geometries have been much discussed here, there is little evidence of their being adapted for local use. We have deconstruction’s ascendancy. no blobs, no datascapes, and few explorations of the new structures or geometries made possible by digital Intriguingly, several decon technology. The new approaches associated with sustainability are among the few entries into our architectural exhibitors (Tschumi, Koolhaas, mainstream. Twenty-five years on from deconstruction’s brief flowering, the issue for Kiwi architecture may not be Gehry) were also included in the its dependence on overseas ideas but its independence from them. Andrew Barrie Light Construction show. Reference as: Andrew Barrie, “Deconstruction in New Zealand”, Itinerary No. 47, Block: The Broadsheet of the Auckland Branch of the New Zealand Institute of Architects, No. 1, 2013. 1 1986 2 1988 3 1988 4 1990 Jacques Derrida and Architecture Deconstructivist Architecture Uncanny*Atopia*Fiction Museum of NZ Competition Entry PhD Thesis Museum of Modern Art, NYC Auckland Wellington Mark Wigley P. Johnson & M.Wigley, Curators Nigel Ryan, Organiser Athfield w/ Gehry & Thompson Photo: Twose/Rawson/Jenner The first Resene Paints The two-stage competition for Architecture Exposition, held in MoNZ drew 38 first stage entries, This doctoral thesis, completed 1986 and titled “Tabula Rasa”, this one being a collection of at The University of Auckland was judged by Ross Jenner, the prismatic pavilions that under the supervision of Mike Francis Pound, and Mark Wigley. characterized Gehry’s ‘80s work. Austin, looked at the “architectural The 1988 Exposition, organized Despite not being selected for argument embedded within by Nigel Ryan, then a Masters the second stage, the scheme Derrida’s work” before Derrida Alongside a symposium at The Tate student at The University of was relentlessly promoted by became directly engaged with Gallery in London, this exhibition Auckland, took on a more Russell Walden, his criticism of architecture through the work held at MoMA served to lodge international flavour. The theme the judging becoming particularly of Bernard Tschumi and Peter deconstruction at the center of was set and judged by Thomas accusatory when the 1997 Eisenman. Eisenman was international architectural debate. Leeser of Eisenman’s office Bilbao Guggenheim catapulted invited to act as one of the thesis’ The curators declared decon was (and Wigley’s NYC flatmate) and Gehry into the architectural examiners, and would later not a movement but a “point of Renato Rizzi from the school stratosphere. The MoNZ scheme facilitate Wigley’s entry into the intersection among … architects of architecture in Venice. The was prepared at the time Gehry New York architecture scene, moving in different directions.” They competition co-winners – a project began developing the ideas that including making an introduction suggested it would be short-lived, by Nick Stanish and another by crystalized at Bilbao, but had it to Philip Johnson – see next entry. and they were right. Simon Twose, Brendon Rawson been built it would have sat in the A reworked version of the thesis The story of Wigley’s involvement and Ross Jenner – were exhibited rather frustrating position as the was eventually published as The is entertainingly told in a chapter in a specially rebuilt George last of Gehry’s 1980’s-style works Architecture of Deconstruction: entitled “Canon Fodder” in Michael Fraser Gallery. rather than ranking among his Derrida’s Haunt (Cambridge, MA: Sorkin’s Exquisite Corpse (New See NZ Architect 5, 1986 and groundbreaking 1990s designs. MIT Press, 1993). York: Verso, 1991). Architecture NZ Nov./Dec. 1988. EuroDisney, not Guggenheim. 5 1990 6 1991 7 1991 8 1991 Venice Prize Installation Museum of NZ Competition Entry Interstices 1 Architecture to a Fault 5th Architecture Biennale, Wellington Dept. of Arch., Univ. of Auckland Venice Biennale Catalog Essay Venice, Italy Architecti Ross Jenner & Nigel Ryan, Eds. Michael Linzey The University of Auckland Published in Italian in the This competition entry, one of five Biennale’s official Venice selected for the second stage, Prize catalog, Quinta Mostra was developed by a partnership Internazionale di Architettura Included in an exhibition of that included Cook Hitchcock (Milano: Electa, 1991), this 43 architecture schools from Sargisson, Bowes Clifford text accompanied images of a around the world, this installation Thompson, John Scott, and selection of staff and student played with notions of drawing, Ross Jenner. A key theme for the This scholarly journal emerged work from the School. In a text representation, lightness, and design was “ground”. Connecting from an annual series of dense with philosophical and ephemerality. Staff and student the weak bearing the Museum’s University of Auckland seminars literary references, Linzey makes projects on the walls and a large reclaimed site to New Zealand’s focused on new developments a variety of allusions to the drawing on the floor were placed geological origins in the uplift in theory. The first issue is an “ground”: he posits the work as in dialogue with a paper shroud of tectonic plates, the building intriguing mix of contributions emerging from an “archeology wrapped around a timber structure was set on “immense tilted floor by names now obscure and of theory”, alludes to the Maui in which 3604 framing collided with planes”. It had been a long time notable; it includes early projects myth of NZ’s creation, points to a Melanesian navigation map. The since a big urban earthquake in by Architectus, a house by fault lines in our culture, language installation was given the “best in NZ, and the designers took an future Oscar-winning art director and architecture, and draws show” nod, the Venice Prize.
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