What are the fundamentals of architecture these days? That question used to be a fairly simple one that you could answer in a manner that was either technical (structure, cladding, form), social (shelter), or aesthetic (proportion, style, character). Today, much is automated—both the pieces that make up buildings and the manner of putting them together—and a BIM-dominated future promises even more semi-automatic production. That takes care of the technical issues. While aesthetics or style are rarely, if ever, discussed, they, too, seem to appear semi-automatically out of whatever filter the operator or designer uses.
An exhibition currently running at the Heinz Architectural Center of the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh has a different answer as to what human-made, fundamental elements would be: domestic, social, and physical landscape elements, filled with meaning and implication, strange in their scale or appearance, and perhaps proceeding in a much more willful manner than a BIM-oriented process would warrant. It offers some alternative strategies, but,ultimately, it is not clear toward what end.
The Fabricated Landscape presents what longtime curator Raymund Ryan claims to be “an emerging culture of architecture in which the smallest and most intimate of projects is connected to a vision of far more extensive landscapes and infrastructures.” In other words, begin not with columns or beams, Greek orders or modern functionalism—nor with abstract social concerns—but rather with objects of a domestic scale, such as furniture, interiors, or small structures that you can understand as tools of living, that then draw you into a wider realization about your place in the world. That is the fabricated landscape of the title, which creates a human-made alternative to the natural one instead of solely offering up isolated buildings. It is a big claim, and one that the curator does not try to prove with either a theoretical argument or an extensive survey. Instead, Ryan has chosen 10 offices from around the world to make his point that small things can have big meanings.
The 30 projects on exhibit are, to say the least, diverse beyond their geographical points of origin. Ranging from proposals for desert oases where refugees can find shelter and deconstructed dollhouses painted pink to a chapel in Italy designed by a Japanese architect, a social housing project in England, and a proposed bus stop in London designed by a Dutch architect living in Bahrain, this is architecture whose only common denominator seems to be that it is not only devoid of ornament, abstract in its shape, and otherwise “modernist” in the sense that we have used that term since the beginning of the 20th century, but also monumental, referential, familiar, and inviting of your sensory exploration. This is architecture that tries to have its formal cake and eat its social import too.
The recipe to make this work seems to be: Strip architecture down to geometric elements, whether they are chairs or walls; flip them or deform them; blow up their scale; or slice or dice them so that they remove themselves from a sense of neutrality and begin to suggest more complex forms.
For Japanese architect Go Hasegawa, that means cladding a chapel in sheets of marble that evoke the grandeur of Baroque churches while being thin enough to be almost translucent. Ryan then presents the work in photographs by Italian artist Luisa Lambri that abstract this cladding and makes their texture and the composition of the veins more evident. Hasegawa shows another project in sections printed in gold, as if they were precious icons. The Belgian Office Kersten Geers David Van Severen draws its gridded and blocky compositions in full-color perspective, transforming them into romantic versions of a simple house form.
Not all the architecture is that pure in its reduction. Some of the most interesting pieces, such as Mexican architect Frida Escobedo’s window construction, bring together elements from everyday construction—windows, shades, hardware—and recombine them in such a manner that they both retain memories of their original use and become an apparatus that questions privacy and transparency by making the simple act of drawing the blinds open or closed into a ritualistic act. Other works, like Dutch architect Anne Holtrop’s design for a bus stop, consist of forms that evoke something primitive and grand, while formed from human-made materials in abstract shapes.
In some cases, the social import is overt, as in the Office Kersten Geers David Van Severen proposal for a walled garden compound in an unnamed desert area where refugees could find respite and services. In other cases, such as the same designer’s luxury villa proposal, it is difficult to discern what may be the greater significance of their large frames and loft-luxury compound emerging from the side of a hill.
Perhaps the most thorough of all the projects is that by Assemble, the English collective of artists, architects, and activists that worked closely with inhabitants to reimagine the row house as a mode to provide both all modern conveniences and a sense of community. Presented with models, a full-color cutaway axonometric drawing, and almost traditional sections, their project comes closest to being a standard architecture presentation. Similarly, their work for Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art, though beautiful, seems less overt in developing larger meanings.
It is the presentation, finally, that makes the exhibition work—or not. The seduction of the often-enigmatic objects, which intrigue more than they display function, combined with the explanatory drawings that come closer to believable proposals, are almost enough to suck you into the dreamlike world of The Fabricated Landscape. It is a place where luxury and social purpose, luscious materials and barebone forms, and abstraction and illustration meet to create a dreamlike sense of a possible collection of basic elements coming together to make...
And that is the problem with the exhibition. It is not clear what all this work is ultimately giving us other than a hint that it is somewhat more than models and drawings for more or less interesting buildings. Some of the projects and their representations, such as SO—IL “Breathe-Mini Living,” a gauze-covered twist that seems based on its design for a gallery in Seoul, are so tentative as to not even have that power. Others, such as MAIO’s collection of pink-painted furniture assembled on a mirrored table to evoke a fractured version of a doll’s house, are so strange and banal as to drown the installation with too much visual effect. And, even when the balance is just right, as in Escobedo’s work, you wonder whether the work could not be extrapolated, explored, exposed, or otherwise exhibited to greater effect. The elements of a fabricated landscape are there. What is missing is the vista of what this new world might be.
The views and conclusions from this author are not necessarily those of ARCHITECT magazine or of The American Institute of Architects.
