"Architects are architecture; Phyllis Lambert has architects," said Rem Koolhaas of its decision to award Phyllis Lambert with Golden Lion of this year for lifetime achievement at the Venice Biennale. In an interview published on iconeye.com, the site for Icon Magazine, the 87-year-old founding director of the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) examines his career, Mies van der Rohe, and condition of contemporary architecture the editor of Icon, Christopher Turner. Read to learn more about his life in influence architecture.
Congratulations your Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement. How have you learned that you had been awarded the honor?
Thank you. I received a phone call from Conservative, Rem Koolhaas, telling me I had to wait for weeks as he went before the council, unable to tell anyone - I am an official letter. Is not that wonderful?
in its citation, Koolhaas called the Seagram Building, "one of the few achievements of the 20th century to perfection on Earth". Your father originally commissioned a building by Charles Luckman you thought a disaster. You've spent months traveling around the US meeting all the great modernist in the search for an alternative, you describe in your book, Seagram Building (Yale, 2013), as a crash course in architecture. What was it that so called Mies?
It was barely two months, in fact, in 1954. It was a great experience, of course. In collaboration with Eero Saarinen and Philip Johnson, we made a list of all the architects to visit. Then I went to visit them in their offices.
I've always been intrigued by Le Corbusier, but what was so interesting is that all young architects have defined their similar or different work of Mies. And Mies had only made 860 Lake Shore Drive - he was doing this other type of building in Crown Hall - you know the long-range thing - but was it in America
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He had a major reputation in Europe, of course. But when I saw 860 Lake Shore Drive ... You get a physical reaction to it, it's so wonderful, it is strict and so well proportioned in the way buildings work together because it is two buildings set to 0 degrees with respect to each other, joined by a platform. It was unlike anything I had seen.
As director of planning at Seagram, you define yourself in a glass office next to that occupied by Mies and Philip Johnson, his collaborator on the tower, and you were keen to participate as much as possible. Have they always welcome it?
I had to fight to be director of planning. I had my office with architects - we had little cabins next to each other, and it was an amazing experience, as you can imagine. I was a client. My father was the guest of the day, but I'm the customer in practice
Philip Johnson said something funny - he said: "She knows nothing on. architecture, many, but because she was there, there were no shenanigans. "I was in all the meetings with people in real estate, engineers, architects associates, and I interacted with society and in particular with the contractor. I was there to ensure that there were no secret agreements, that person does not play the game.
You went before the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) and learning to the Chicago firm Mies.
I went to Yale and Yale after two years I transferred to IIT. Mies was more to teach, but I saw the kind of work they were doing and those things that I wanted to learn. I wanted to learn practical things, such as how to use a 2 x 4. I was not interested in speculation.
There was a kind of honesty about the work at IIT. I certainly learned how to put a whole building, and learned on the job too, the Seagram Building. He was just a wonderful experience. I'm not an apprentice Mies. One summer, I took a few credits while working at his desk. I was his student, there to learn.
Not that it decreases its buildings, but a new edition of the biography of Mies by Franz Schulze (co-authored with architect Edward Windhorst) suggests Mies was something of an alcoholic. Is that your experience?
This is ridiculous. Mies drank a lot, but it was certainly not an alcoholic. So what if he was. There was no evidence of that at all. Some people drink a lot and are OK, some people are not. Mies drank a lot, he liked to drink. I only saw him lose control, and I have seen many
In New York, he came to my apartment and he drank -. A few martinis and whiskeys - and say we'll see Blaue Stunde , the coming dawn. But that does not makes you an alcoholic. This kind of gossip has nothing to do with the world, the mind, the importance of architecture.
You designed the Saidye Bronfman Centre in Montreal as Miesian mold. What have you built?
I decided I wanted to do a building that was very Miesian. I had a good schooling. I knew how to put things together and it was a great experience. My next project was working with Gene Summers, who was the office of Mies, and we made the restoration of the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles.
Then I returned to Montreal and was very involved in stopping the demolition of the 18th and 19th century fabric of the city - walking in the streets to stop things, a kind of urban warfare. While working on the architecture in many ways. But I did a little theater for my mother, a theater for their home. I renovated my own house from the 1860s and two other small houses in a street in a neighborhood of Montreal - little things like that
You set the CCA in 1979 was his modernist mission - to emphasize the importance of architecture in creating a better society - against postmodernist mood of the time
I find that cities in North America have tried to look like bombed cities in Europe and the massive demolition of this historic fabric has been accomplished by people who don 'know anything about architecture. I am fascinated by the subject.
I had begun to form a collection of architectural drawings when I worked in the office of Mies curiosity. It is very difficult to read architectural drawings; you need to learn as any other language. And I was interested in the way people did in the past, in different places and at different times.
I also started a collection of photographs and, of course, books. I am appalled by much of what postmodernists have done stupid things they did, but there was very good attitude, because the modernists have avoided what was around a building. They thought we were just knocking everything down, and I do not believe that. Postmodernists were interested in context.
You are a great collector, with an important archive things related Mies. What other jewelry CCA?
We have a key work of Mies, but the largest archive is at MoMA. We have a fantastic collection of drawings and prints from the 16th and 17th centuries. We have a large collection of photographs of architecture, and I think we kind of created the idea of this as a subject. We have a large collection of Le Corbusier and some Wright
But what we really have is solid and complete archives of Cedric Price, James Stirling, Aldo Rossi -. Architects at the cutting edge, which were pushing the limits. CCA is becoming on large archive of 20th century architecture.
In his essay for the show Mies in America entitled Miestakes, Koolhaas says, "I do not respect Mies, I love Mies" How do. -you his "Miesian interference" describes himself on the campus of IIT [the McCormick Tribune campus Center, qui faces Mies's Crown Hall]
I think it is a brilliant project. This is a very difficult thing to do on a campus by an architect of such consistency. the campus is amazing because you can see the development of the thought of Mies with each building but it is a very coherent body of materials.
I was on the jury that chose the Rem project for the student union and I think it is a brilliant building . Rem has this very strong edgy part, what makes it so great. He pushes hard against what is there. the spatial qualities of the building are extraordinary.
As you go down as chairman of the CCA, what state did you leave architecture?
down as president has nothing to do with leaving architecture. I think architecture is an extraordinary moment. I love the question Rem asked the Biennale, the idea of Fundamentals. It is not dealing with architects -. The most recent biennial treated with Stars and architects Rem pitted much to some crazy types of shapes that people are looking
It's time to get back to the essential. The world is changing at a rapid pace now, cities are changing at a geometric scale - we have to deal with that. There are good architects and there are great architects (and there are commercial architects - I do not mean those), and they know how to think, they question all the time and how to approach, analyze and address the issues at hand. They know what the company is and what we have to do.
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