Morphosis

,

First published in the United States of America in 1994 by Rizzoli International Publications, Inc.

300 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10010

Copyright © 1994 Rizzoli International Publications, Inc.

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without permission in writing from Rizzoli International Publications, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Morphosis: buildings and projects, 1989-1992 I introduction [essay] by Richard Weinstein. p. ern,

Continues: Morphosis I Peter Cook. 1989.

ISBN 0-8478-1663-X. - ISBN 0-8478-1664-8 (pbk.)

1, Morphosis Architects. 2, Architecture, Modern-20th century. I. Weinstein, Richard. II. Cook, Peter, Morphosis.

NA 737.M72M67 1994 93-43144

720',92'2-dc20 CIP

Cover: Vienna Expo '95 Competition, montage, 1991

Front matter series: Bridging, based on ten-part seriograph, 1990

Design by Lorraine Wild, Whitney Lowe, and Andrea Fella I ReVerb, Los Angeles Printed and bound in Italy

Contents

Preface by Thom Mayne

Telling the Truth by Richard Weinstein

8

13

PROJECTS

18 CRAWFORD HOUSE

Chiba Golf Club

SKETCHES

CH lB. 88 1-4/33 40
MTVS.90 5-8/57 64
72
PRIN.89 9-12/ S\ 88 94 ARTS.89 13-16/97 104

\14

120

126 128 136 142 148 152 162

166 168 178 184

SALI 90 17-201193 200

214 v lEN. 90 21-24/ 217 224

YUlE.91 25-28/ 233 240

256 262

NARA.91 29-32/265 272

282 286 288

MTV STUDIOS

The Emery Performing Arts Center PRINCETON HUMANITIES BUILDING

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT IRVINE FOOD KIOSK Los Angeles Artspark Performing Arts Pavilion Pol itix Retai I Stores

Osaka Expo '90 Folly

WALKER ART CENTER GATEHOUSE ROTa Restaurant

DISNEY INSTITUTE & TOWN CENTER COMPETITION Paris Architecture et Utopie Competition

POTSDAMER PLATZ URBAN DESIGN PROPOSAL

CDLT House

VECTA SHOWROOM

Piazzale Roma Competition

QWFK House

Blades House

HIGASHI AZABU OFFICE BUILDING SALICK HEALTHCARE OFFICE BUILDING Walker Art Center Installation

Vienna Expo '95 Competition

YUZEN VINTAGE CAR MUSEUM Cranbrook Academy Gatehouse LONDON DOCKLANDS TOWER

Nara Convention Center

Project Credits Bibliography Photography Credits

Preface

IT HAS FREQUENTLY BEEN ARGUED THAT MODERN ARCHITECTURE HAS SOMEHOW LOST ITS

WAY OR, MORE APTLY, ITS GRIP ON THE SOURCES OF CREATIVE INSPIRATION, RATHER THAN ACHIEVING BETTER AND FINER BUILDINGS WHICH HAVE A DIALOGUE WITH THE ENVIRONMENT THAT EVIDENCES A LARGE MEASURE OF INTEGRITY, IViODERN ARCHITECTURE HAS RESORTED

TO THE DESIGN OF STRUCTURES THAT ARE BANAL, REPETITIVE, AND BY THEIR INSISTENCE

ON LOOKING TO OUTWARD AUTHORITY FOR MEANING, ENTIRELY LACKING IN INTEGRITY, WHETHER ONE LOOKS TO A HISTORICAL PRECEDENT, OR TO THE MOST CURRENT PHILOSOPHICAL DISCUSSIONS TO EXPLAIN OR JUSTIFY A WORK, ONE REMAINS, BY DEFINITION, DISTANCED FROM THE PROBLEM, I AM INTERESTED IN PRODUCING WORK WITH A MEANING THAT CAN

BE UNDERSTOOD ONLY BY ABSORBING AND COIVIPREHENDING THE CULTURE FOR WHICH IT WAS MADE, SINCE CULTURE, PARTICULARLY THAT OF THE LATE TWENTIETH CENTURY, IS IN CONSTANT FLUX, ARCHITECTURE IS ALSO PERPETUALLY IN FLUX, IN THE CASE OF AN ARCHITECTURE THAT IS INTEGRATED WITH ITS ENVIRONMENT, ONE IS NEVER FACED WITH A FINISHED RESULT BUT ALWAYS CONFRONTS THE WORK AS A POINT IN AN ONGOING, DIALECTICAL CULTURAL PROCESS,

THE DECISION TO RESIST A STANCE OUTSIDE THE WORK, LOOKING TO EXTERNAL AUTHORITY FOR AN OVERLAY OF MEANING, IS AN ESSENTIALLY OPTIMISTIC, EVEN IDEALISTIC POSITION, THERE IS A DISTINCT GROUNDLESSNESS IN THE WORLD TODAY, AN ABSENCE OF ANY VIABLE CONSENSUS OF IVIEANING THAT IVIIGHT BE CAPABLE OF PRESCRIBING THE MANNER IN WHICH WE WILL LIVE, THE DISCOVERY OF QUANTUM UNCERTAINTY, THE DEVELOPIVIENT OF CHAOS THEORY, RAPID SHIFTS IN TECHNOLOGIES OF GLOBAL COMMUNICATION: ALL POINT TO THE NECESSITY OF DEVELOPING AN INTERNAL AUTHORITY TO NAVIGATE THIS SHIFTING TERRAIN, WHAT

IS ACHIEVED IN THIS ELEVATION OF THE INDIVIDUAL IS THE POSSIBILITY OF A MORE DIRECT, INTUITIVE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE WORK AND ITS CULTURE,

AT MORPHOSIS, OUR METHOD HAS ALWAYS BEEN HIGHLY INTUITIVE AND REFLEXIVE, WE UNDERSTAND OUR ARENA OF OPERATION TO BE ONE MARKED BY CONTRADICTION, CONFLICT, CHANGE, DYNAMISM, AND TO THAT END WE ARE INTERESTED IN PRODUCING WORK THAT CONTRIBUTES TO THE CONVERSATION, THAT ADDS YET ANOTHER STRAIN TO WHAT SOME

MAY HEAR AS THE CACOPHONY OF MODERN LIFE, DISCORDANCE IS UNSETTLING TO SOME; THEY CALL FOR HARMONY, EXTOL TRADITIONAL NOTIONS OF BEAUTY, CALL FORTH ANCIENT HISTORIC PARADIGMS, WE HEAR DISCORDANCE AS NOTHING MORE AND NOTHING LESS THAN SIMPLY INTERESTING, IT IS THE MUSIC OF REALITY, ADDITIONAL STRAINS LAYERED INTO A COMPOSITION WILL NOT INTENSIFY THE CACOPHONY BUT WILL ADD TO AN EXQUISITE COMPLEXITY, OUR INTEREST IS NOT IN DECONSTRUCTION AS A RESPONSE TO COMPLEXITY AND CONTRADICTION, BUT IS RATHER AN INTEREST IN RECONSTRUCTION, OUR CONCERN IS TO ESTABLISH AND WORK WITHIN COHERENCIES, OR ORDERS, THAT ARE OPEN AND MULTIVALENT,

S

THAT MAY REQUIRE MORE THAN A CURSORY EXAMINATION TO DISCERN. WHILE WE PROCEED WITH OUR WORK THROUGH RIGOROUS PROCESS, WE ARE CONSTANTLY ON GUARD TO PROTECT AN OPENING FOR THE UNPREDICTABLE AND THE UNKNOWABLE SO THAT THE PROCESS IS ULTIMATELY OPEN-ENDED AND REFLEXIVE RATHER THAN VISIONARY AND PRECONCEIVEO.

I SUPPOSE, AS THE EPIGRAPH OF RICHARD WEINSTEIN'S INTRODUCTION IMPLIES, THAT OUR METHOD SOMEWHAT RESEMBLES THAT OF CANETTI'S DOGLIKE WRITER: OBSESSED WITH STICKING HIS DAMP NOSE INTO EVERYTHING, HE INSATIABLY TURNS OVER THE EARTH ONLY TO DIG IT UP ONCE MORE. AT A TIME WHEN PRUDENCE AND PRECEDENT MIGHT DICTATE A ROLLING UP OF DRAWINGS AND A LAYING DOWN OF PENCILS, OUR OFFICE IS OFTEN JUST BEGINNING

TO ATTACK A PROBLEM FROM ANOTHER ANGLE. OUR HABIT IS TO REVERSE THE QUESTION-AI'JDANSWER PARADIGM AS WE INVESTIGATE AND REINVESTIGATE OUR INITIAL RESPONSES. THE QUESTION IS UNDERSTOOD TO BE OPEN, SUBJECT TO CHANGE; AND THE WORK IS IMBUED

WITH THE PROCESS OF GRAPPLING WITH THE QUESTION RATHER THAN WITH PROVIDING A FIXED SOLUTION. WE ASSESS THE WORK BASED ON THE QUESTIONS' INHERENT CONCERNS WITH HUMAN ETHICS AND VALUES. TO FIND A METHOD OF PRODUCING AUTHENTIC WORK IT

IS NECESSARY TO REPHRASE AND REWORK THE ORIGINAL QUESTIONS.

OUR COMMITMENT TO THIS INVERSION OF THE QUESTION-AND-ANSWER PARADIGM LEADS TO METHODOLOGICAL AND PRACTICAL ASPECTS OF THE WORK THAT HAVE AN IMPACT IN

AND OF THEMSELVES. DRAWINGS AND MODELS ARE AI'J ESSENTIAL PART OF WHAT WE DO: THEY STIMULATE IDEAS, ALLOW A LEVEL OF PRECISION OFTEN ELUSIVE IN VERBAL DISCOURSE, AND PROVIDE A PLACE TO WORK THAT IS FREE FROM THE REQUIREMENT TO ACCOMMODATE. MODELS AND DRAWINGS PERMIT FREE ASSOCIATION, EXPERIMENTATION, AND EVEN A NECESSARY DEGREE OF DISTRACTION. DRAWINGS AND MODELS WILL FREQUENTLY REVEAL A FRAGMENT THAT HOLDS MORE PROMISE THAN THE WHOLE, FORCING A CHANGE IN DIRECTION THAT ALLOWS THE ENTIRE WORK TO TAKE ON THE CHARACTER OF ONE PART. THIS HAS LED US TO EXPLORE THE NOTION OF FRAGMENTATION FURTHER. IN THE WAY THAT A SINGLE STRAND

OF DNA IS EMBEDDED WITH ENOUGH INFORMATION TO REPRODUCE A GREATER WHOLE, OUR EXTRACTION OF A FRAGMENT FROM ONE PRO~IECT MAY SUPPLY THE GERMINATION FOR A NEW WHOLE IN THE FORM OF A SUBSEQUENT PROJECT. THIS METHODOLOGICAL STRATEGY HAS PROVIDED LINKS BETWEEN SMALL AND LARGE PROJECTS AND HAS HELD UP WELL IN DEALING WITH THE COMPLEXITIES REQUIRED BY LARGER-SCALE WORK, PROVIDING AN ALTERNATIVE TO THE PREMODERN ORTHOGONAL APPROACHES THAT ARE CONVENTIONALLY USED.

Thorn Mayne September 1993

9

Telling the Truth An Introduction to the recent work of Morphosis

However, the true writer, as we see him, is the thrall of his time, its serf and bondsman, its lowest slave. He is fettered to it on a short, unbreakable chain, shackled to it as tight as can be ... In fact, if it did not sound a bit ludicrous, I would simply say: he is the dog of his time, .. driven by some inexplicable viciousness. Indeed, he sticks his damp nose into everything, nothing is left out, he also returns, he starts all over again, he is insatiable ... This vice connects the writer as immediately to his environment as the nose connects the dog to his preserve ... His vice drives him to exhaust the world ... [and] immediacy and inexhaustibility, the two characteristics that people have always demanded of the genius ... are the offspring of this vice.

Ella. Canettl, The Conscience of Words

The contemporary moment, stressed by uncertainty, is torn by an open wound between the past and the future. Accelerating social, economic, and environmental change has caused some to search for comforting continuities in human experience, which can locate the present in relation to both the past and the future. Architects of this sort may generalize historic typologies through abstraction and, by suspending their work in time, give it a valence connecting to both the past and the future (Kahn and Rossi come to mind). Others address the present environment with an insatiable drive for authenticity of method based on personal experience and, in measuring their work against this experience, reveal both a present and an implicit future. They too are the thrall of their time and are compelled to give its shape and pressure metaphoric expression, but they also inhabit that realm of the present in which they feel the future has already staked its claim.

Tn practice this method does not begin with a normative notion of, say, a library, where the typology suggests serenity, isolation, and focused study-Saint Jerome at his desk with a tranquil lion at his feet, or the search outside time set in motion by Kahn to discover the "existence will" of the institution library. T nstead, in the press of the moment as it is felt to be, a number of spaces develop through different compositional forces and motivations; appropriate context may vary with time and place. The urgent connection to the contemporary moment that Morphosis pursues separates the firm from the typological residues of consensual feeling based on architectural tradition. The conservative impulse, in contrast, seeks to perpetuate this tradition through considering what constitutes an appropriate spatial frame for a set of activities.

13

In Morphosis's architecture the actions of competing forces, colliding grids, or opposing geometries that govern different parts of the composition are formal means to express the architects' bond with contemporary experience. A contrary impulse toward coherence, consistency, and order also operates to bring the uncertainties unleashed into a humane and rational frame. The built structure exhibits patterns of feeling generated in response to the economic, social, political, and cultural forces whose actions affect what we design. These feelings reflect multiple systems at work in our society that produce confusion, uncertainty, incompleteness, miserable poverty, overlaps, improvisations, waste, decay, discontinuities of scale, deadening uniformities, and strident particularities. The physical structure of Los Angeles also exhibits the interplay of these forces; non hierarchical, multiple, mobile, its built form is their mold. Out of this existential substance to which the architects are bound, Morphosis seeks to make an authentic architecture. Their designs cohere through the fit between the world as they feel it actually to be, as it impresses itself on their sensibilities, and its constructed expression. This involves an unmasking that reveals the making of architecture: how materials are applied and the secret of their details; how joints are constructed and what kinetic torments they must endure; and where different geometries intersect-how unflinching the gaze that considers such uneasy resolutions.

The impulse to unmask and penetrate leads Morphosis to the creation of images that suggest the presence of the architect in the act of construction. Humanoid machines or their parts operate in the interiors or on the roofs, pieced together from cranes and construction machinery, arcing, swinging up into oculi, twisting from subterranean depths to seek light, or attaching themselves to windows and canopies. Even the act of conception is recorded as part of the drive toward authentication, through remarkable drawings and models that serve as metaphors for architectural creation, ideal in their own right and free from the contingencies that act on the built projects to which they thematically relate.

This obsessively self-referential way of making buildings illustrates the pitiless, even vicious engagement with one's time of which Canetti speaks. The compositional devices that Morphosis sets in motion are not initiated by a search for typological form evoking normative feelings appropriate to a given activity. In conversation Thom Mayne declared that he never thought such an issue relevant. T return to this point because it leads to a crucial distinction, important to understanding the work.

The distinction is between the conservative impulse, which seeks to perpetuate what is valid in precedent, and the passion that engages the moment and its implications for the future without regard to tradition. The search for typological common denominators that bind historical precedents to contemporary applications requires a distance from experience and emerges in the surreal atmosphere surrounding abstracted historical quotations. This remove can be felt in the work of the Krier brothers, Kahn, Rossi, and other rationalists, and in the very best work of Michael Graves. The public commentaries of these architects reveal a distance from, even contempt for, the values and behavior of our society as reflected in its ordinary built form. Explanations by such designers of their architectural choices emphasize what they consider to be timeless continuities of form and meaning, efforts premised on the belief that when the ligature of memory is snapped, some vital, humane, and necessary balance is lost. This belief is promoted by

an attachment to architectural tradition, aggravated by everything banal, coarse, and vulgar imprinted on the present moment. Appropriate form becomes a conscious issue because historical reference, however abstract or shorn of detail, is associated with cultural memories linking certain behaviors to certain forms-lofty religious spaces, intimate firesides, noble flights of stairs. Architectural form is employed to evoke feelings which promote the survival of these connections in contemporary life. The later work of James Stirling exemplifies such an attitude. Venturi and Scott Brown, though interested in linkages, are bound to their time-as is Morphosis-learning from a commercial vernacular while keeping a decent distance from commerce through irony. frank Gehry exhibits some of the same interests as Venturi and Scott Brown but embodies the Los Angeles context and its liberating lack of limit and precedent.

Some such associations between form and use must occur in the experience of any building, but the work of Morphosis is characterized by a different pressure, a forward movement based on a foundation in present experience. The emotions carried by the work support the view that the future must be urgently embraced and change, uncertainty, and improvisation accepted (if not enjoyed) as a principle of survival. The connection of space to use, the explorations of appropriate feeling linked to history, do not actively participate in the design process. The resulting abstraction is not a strategy to connect to the past but rather to promote new behaviors latent in current realities. Architectural form is still understood to evoke feelings that may affect behavior, but such contexts can promote new associations with reordered values. The bathroom can become a place in which the source of light, views, and transparency alters attitudes toward privacy and sexuality. The arrangement of spaces we call a house may have no designated bedroom but rather present a variety of situations in which a bed might be placed at different times. The user here is a nomad, free from hindering associations to choose what is appropriate according to impulse and especially to practice tolerance for change by incorporating uncertainty into lifestyle.

The architecture required to support this attitude is abstract with respect to familiar associations and antithetical to historical typology, but far from unspecific with respect to architectural conditions. Variety is essential to providing alternative choices. The means to provide differentiation, however, are disconnected from the production of spaces evoking a familiar context for human action. Tnstead gratuitous external forces and constraints, independent of human purpose, become part of the operational strategy: the Mercator grid provides a siteplanning discipline; the way outside and inside materials join is emphasized; the treatment of a tall building derives from ideas of thinness or the opposition of front and back; the earth is shaped in relation to architecture. Tn the urban projects the context is analyzed to subject buildings to demands that have a complexity and energy that compare with the internal crosscurrents that activate the individual buildings. The larger scale of the urban designs seems to support the burden of intense formal invention more easily; some of the individual projects, by contrast, carry an excessive burden of invention.

Both individual buildings and urban projects further promote highly differentiated compositions by introducing a contrasting ordering principle, a metrical interval, with which autonomous alternative systems proceeding from their own logic compete, and against which they collide. These indeterminate conditions are then addressed, contained, sometimes

15

barely resolved, but produce a still more articulate and diversified environment. Thus many places in each composition become potent with new meanings, as they are emptied of familiar association.

The choice of the systems set to work against each other and the metrical armature providing a coherent frame may arise from chance or found conditions, though they do promote the formal issues upon which Morphosis's talent is inclined to operate. They are not motivated by conventional programmatic pressures or architectural precedent but manipulated independently of these. A contingent set of environments is given, modeling our experience of a world into which we are born questioning our purpose, fate, and survival, subject to forces and uncertainties that we have not initiated, in which power is exercised by personal choice rather than collective action. Tn Camus' phrase, we are "deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land." 1

Contemporary experience approaches the chaotic and obscures the argument for purposeful design rooted in consensual values for which it was once possible to argue. The compensating response found in Morphosis's work is a destabilizing personal drive toward authenticity, truth telling, and choice, coupled with an intention to establish through consistency of method a counteracting theme of coherence and rational order. This necessarily privatized process of comparing what one makes with what one feels is innocent of outside opinion and gives anxiety, anguish, and hostility free play in aggressive silhouette, threatening, tormented detail, and compensating strategies of order and control. The alienation from social norms provides a realm in which accommodation to emerging new realities of experience is possible, though connected to risk and a future haunted by a cyber-reality of dismembered but still active architectural machines.

In this reality, pieces of the building become sculpture, detach themselves from the frame to seek daylight, and assert their presence as carriers of the work's concentrated emotions. Fireplaces, entry pavilions, and door handles carry an intensity of detail and eccentricity. An attention to the materiality of stone or wood or metal violates the substances' subordination to an architectural attitude and moves them forward into the realm of contemplation, forward past the limit that traditionally served architecture in its role as a supportive companion to action.

Today the distinction between architecture .and sculpture is often ambiguous, and the criteria that help us to understand each are difficult to find. Because architecture is compelled to adjust form to the necessities of use, our pleasure in the experience of its success as an art is linked to its effect on our behavior. In this sense architecture operates on our senses while we are occupied with related purposeful action apart from the act of contemplation itself. This is not to say that buildings and their parts cannot be contemplated when we stop doing the business of life and concentrate, or that some of the values we enjoy in painting and sculpture are not then presented to our eye. But painting and sculpture are not bound to use in the same way, and their import is best understood through focused concentration. We appreciate sculpture more as reflection of personal attitude, of individual response to a social and natural order, while architecture seems to express our sense of the context within which the individual acts. This context is made up of patterns of feeling that reflect the institutional arrangements we have made as a society. These feelings, however diversified, fragmented, personalized, and complicated by change, are still the

1 Albert Camus. The Myth of Sisyphus (New York: vintage Books, 1955),5.

16

subject of architecture, Sculpture addresses individual feeling as it is affected by these arrangements,

During periods of intense change, when the relation of the individual to society is restructured, the relation between figure and ground, solid and void, becomes correspondingly ambiguous, Sculpture and architecture take on some of each others' characteristics"all that is solid melts into air," Change may be welcomed, or resisted, or follow Keats's "Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any, irritable reaching after fact and reason," Lionel Trilling comments:

The capability of "remaining content with half-knowledge"-that is, with contradictory knowledges-depends, as Keats says ... upon the strength of one's sense of personal identity. Only the self that is certain of its integrity and validity can do without the armor of systematic certainties. And indeed the firm awareness of personal identity, of the whole and valid self, is one of the two ultimate contradictory know ledges of which negative capability takes account. The other knowledge is of evil, of the gratuitous pain which human life undergoes.f

This seems to me the course that Morphosis pursues, is fettered to pursue, Their compositions never fully resolve the contrary tendencies of fragmentation and autonomy, working against a contrapuntal system of order, Nor do they resolve the irrational impulse, the threats to compositional integrity and the anxiety arising from external pressures, though the will to rationalize remains, to tell the truth about how things are constructed, what they are doing, of what they are made,

What appears at first to be a wholly contemporary expression reveals a deep, though detached, eulogy for the absent coherence of feeling that once found its justification in those monuments of architecture whose poetics expressed the essence of their time, This baffled gesture remains and, though overlaid with the violent crosscurrents of competing systems and the nasty invasion of technology and automatic control, is elevated by a lyric impulse that shows in the fine sense of proportion by which shape is measured and in the yearning for coherence, consistency, and order that is the most persistent of humane impulses,

The yearning for order and peace, for an authentic relation of the self to social reality, is a natural consequence of the fragmentation and privatization of our experience, The lack of integration between the ordering systems in Morphosis's work, with the expressive content of other compositional strategies, reflects a correlative disassociation between ourselves and the world we experience and an acknowledgment of what is evil and unknowable, The compensating effort to find an authentic voice, to communicate without compromise the full truth about our condition, arises from an insatiable connection to the existential environment, where nothing is left out, Burdened thus with specificity, and disciplined by truth telling, immediate and inexhaustible, the work transcends our moment and is enhanced by the exercise of moral purpose,

Richard Weinstein September 1993

2 Lionel Trilling. ed. The Selected Letters of John Kears (New York: Farrar, Straus and Young, !<)511. 2<).

CRAWFORD H

18

Crawford House

TO ARTICLILATE IVIULTIPLE BOUNDARIES AND TO OpfUSCATE THE I)ISTINCTION BETWEEN INTERIOR AND EXTERIOR SPACE WERE PRIMARY CONCERNSINDESIGNINGfHE CRAWFORD HOUSE, STRATEGIES THAT EI\IHANCE THE ACCIDENTAL, PROVIDING fOR cHil.NCE, WERE BROUGHT TO

BEAR ON THIS PROJECT,

WE BEGAN WITH THE IDEAS Gf THE DOUBLE NEGATIVE, OF THE DISSOLUTION

OF CONTAII'JED BOUI\JDARIES, AND OF THE REVERSAL OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PERIPHERY AI\JD CENTER. WE WANTED TO INSTIGATE A DIALOGUE THAT WOULD

ERODE THE DETACHIV1EI\JT AND ISOLATION OF THE TRADITIOI\JAL VILLA BY II\JTEGRATING ARCHITECTURE AND PLACE. TO ESTABLISH A PROPER RECIPROCITY BETWEEN THE BUILDING AND ITS SITE, WE LAID DOWN THREE GEOMETRIC ORDERS REPRESENTING THREE SCALES. THESE WERE THE NORTH-SOUTH AND EAST-WEST AXES OF THE

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Crawford House

MERCATOR, WHICH PROVIOEO A GLOBAL ORIENTATION; AN X-Y AXIS REFERRII'JG TO THE lOCAL MOUNTAINS AND OCEAN AND THE SITES OWN BOUNDARIES. THE METHOD BY WHICH WE ORDERED AN D DOMESTICATED THE SITE INVOLVED RECONSI DERI NG lARGER REG IONAl AN D GLOBAL NOTIONS OF PRIVAT~/PUBLIC II~SIDE/OUTSIDE, AND OWNERSHIP.

WE BEGAN WITH A seRIES OF MARKINGS TO MEASURE AND REINTERPRET THE SITE TO SUGGE~n A NEW ORDER. THESE NAZCA-LIKE SCRAPINGS, SUBTRACTED FROM

23

Crawford House

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27

THE SURFACE, CREATE AN OSCILLATION OF SCALES Ar\ID RESULT IN REPETITIVE, RHYTHMIC DIVISIONS THAT DISPERSE THE WHOLE THROUGH INTERACTIONS BETWEEN SOLID AND VOID. WITHIN THIS PROCESS, WE EMPHASIZED ISOLATED PARTS TO ENHANCE COHERENCE THROUGH THE PERCEPTION OF FRAGMENTS. THERE IS, CONSEQUENTLY,

NO FROI\lTALITY AND 1\10 SINGLE POINT OF VISUAL COMPREHEI\ISION. RATHER, AS ONE MOVES THROUGH THE COMPLEX, ONE COMES TO KNOW IT AS MULTIDIMENSIONAL,

Crawford House

DIVERSE, AND OPEI'J-ENDED.

THE I NITIAL I NTU ITIVE, REFLEXIVE APPROACH TO THE LAND

WAS TEMPERED BY A RATIONAL ARTICULATION COMMITTED TO RIGOROUS EXECUTION. THE DOMESTIC LANGUAGE, OR "HOUSENESS," RESULTED FROM THE COLLISION OF CONCEPTUAL INTENTIONS AND PRAGMATIC, UTILITARIAN REQUIREMENTS. THE IMPLICATIONS OF THIS CONCEPT PUT ENORMOUS DEMANDS ON THE PROGRAM, AND

Crawford House

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Ghiba Golf Club

THE BUILDII\JG CHAFED AT SOME RESTRAII\JTS REQUIRED BY THE MORE TRADITIOI\JAL PROGRAM OF "HOUSE."

Chiba Golf Club

Certain aspirations with the Crawford House were easier to achieve in the Chiba Golf Club because the program by its nature was untested and open-ended, involving few preconceptions. We intended to investigate the relationship between construction and nature

Chiba Golf Club

42

to replace the historical dominance of architecture over nature with a supportive or bala~cing relation

The surface of the earth was scraped away to provide a place for two parenthe walls are directly related to the landscape as non-buildings, with a mass appropriate to the magnitude of architectural site, We discarded the impulse to dominate the landscape with a ~ermetically sealed objecj of the space between the walls continues the investigation begun in the Crawford House by isolating an these totemic pylons and their supporting volumes expand into habitable snac- that allow light to penen

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ically inverted walls, The normally secondary architectonic element of wall became tbe focus. The he site, The middle urouml between these two convex surfaces represents the boundpries of an and instead created a series of subterranean spaces within this interstitial area, Th& organization eroding the repetitive, totemic geometry of the work's idealized structure, In this ~roject, however,

rte the subterranean depths,

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Chiba Golf Club

Chiba Golf Club

50

reiterates the inner order of the complex,

MTV Studios

THE COMMUNICAllONS II\J DUSTRY HAS NO NEED TO IDENTIFY WITH A PLACE OR ESTABLISH A FIXED PHYSICAL PRESENCE. ITS RAI SOI\J 0' ETR E I S CHANGE, STEMMING FROM A CONTINUOUS FLUX OF IMAGES AND ENGROSSED WITH] TH E I\I'EW. OU R WORK FOR THE MTV STUDIOS ADDRESSES THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THIS NONPHYSICAL REALITY AND THE ltRADITIONAL ROLE OF ARCHITECTURE AS STRONGHOLD, AS A STATIONARY

51

BASE FROM WHICH TO DEAL WITH THIS ENDLESS FLOW OF DATA.

ALTHOUGH THIS POLARITY GUIDED OUR INQUIRY, AS WITH SO MUCH OF OUR WORI< A SITE CONTINGENCY GAVE SPECIFIC FORIVI TO THE DESIGN. THE I<INETIC POTENTIAL OF SUBLIMINAL ELEMENTS-TENSIONS BETWEEN OBJECTS MORE THAN THE OBJECTS THEMSELVES-INSPIRED OUR SOLUTION.

THE SITE IS EMBEDDED IN A DENSELY DEVELOPED ENTERTAINMENT SHOPPING CENTER. ITS IMMEDIATE BOUNDARIES ARE THE SOLID WALL OF A THEATER COMPLEX AND A CIRCULAR PUBLIC

Chiba Golf Club

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Chiba Golf Club

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The Emery Performing Arts Center

The building that houses the Emery Theater and the Ohio College of Applied SGience was constructed at the turn of thl3 century for the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and the Ohio Mechanics Institute. Combining these two institutions in a singl~ structure presented some special concerns for architect Harvey Hannaford. To accommodate the needs of both, Hannafonj created

a central cCiurt provilling natural light and air which, while useful, was not neeassa-» a part of the exnerlencf of the building.

Our IHollosal transforms this previously underused COUrtyard into an enclosed skylighted

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MTV Studios

71

rotunda that functions as both a central lobby, which reinforces the importance of the central space through which

all users of the building can pass, and a sculpture court that can be used to display large-scale sculpture. As the models show, this space will be the locus of activity for the entire project.

As with our other reuse projects, the plans for the Emery Center incorporate significant features of the original building while [Iroposing changes a[I[lropriate to the new functions. TIle theater will be renovated to improve its already very good acoustics (which are sOlllewhat cnmparable to those of Sullivan's Auditol'ium

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in Chicago) and to update the seating and backstage equipment. Former classrooms and support spaces have become

a restaurant and bookstore for local arts groups. We moved the entry from Walnut Street to Central Parkway to exploit the scale and the buili:ling's exposure on this important urban artery. This new narrative of movement will greatly enhance the Emery Performing Arts Center's presence.

Princeton Humanities Building

THE ONLY INTELLIGENCE THAT MATTERS IS THAT OF NOT CLINGING TO THE STATUS QUO AND HENCE ACCEPTING THE NEW.

OUR WORK, PARTICULARLY WHERE REQUIRED TO ADAPT TO AND REINTERPRET EXISTING ARCHITECTURE, DEMANDS TRANSFORMATIVE THINKING, OUR PROPOSAL FOR AN ADDITION TO THE PRINCETON HUMANITIES BUILDING ILLUSTRATES THIS, THE PROGRAM REQUIRED THAT THE ORIGINAL BUILDING BE LEFT INTACT, WE WERE ASKED TO ADD CLASSROOMS, SEMINAR ROOMS, FACULTY OFFICES, A FACULTY LOUNGE, AND AN INTERDEPARTMENTAL LIBRARY, ALL TO SERVE THE DEPARTMENT

OF PHILOSOPHY, WE HAD TO RESOLVE SITE DEMANDS FOR CONTINUITY, CONNECTION, ENTRY, AND PEDESTRIAN MOVEMENT, AND ADDRESS THE IMPORTANT CORNER AT MCCOSH WALK AND WASHINGTON BOULEVARD,

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WE BECAME INCREASINGLY INTERESTED IN EVOKING SOME SENSE OF A RELEASE FROM GROUNDEDNESS, THE CONSTRICTED SI1E LEO US TO PROPOSE LIFTING A CORNER BUILDING OFF THE GROUND TO PRESERVE AN IMPORTANT PEDESTRIAN PATH BORDERING THE SITE, THIS STRUCTURE IS TETHERED TO A SINGLE COLUMN) ALLOWING IT TO ROTATE J\ND ADJUST TO THE SITE, THIS SOLUTION ARTICULATES THE CORNER AND CREATES A

GATEWAY TO THE OLDER CENTRAL CAMPUS BY INCREASING THE BUILDING)S SCALE RELATIVE TO THAT OF THE ADJACENT MCCOSH HALL.

WHEREAS THE LIFTED CORNER STRUCTURE DOMINATES THE SCHEME, A SECOND PIECE PROVIDES A MORE LITERAL VISUAL LINK TO MCCOSH HALL. THIS LOWER, TRANSITIONAL BUILDING, RESOLUTELY CARVED INTO THE GROUND, CONNECTS BY AN UNDERGROUND PASSAGE TO MCCOSH HALL. THE PROGRESSION FROM THERE TO THE LOWER BUILDING AND FINALLY TO THE CORNER STRUCTURE TRACES AN INCREASINGLY ABSTRACT ARCHITECTURAL LANGUAGE,

University of California at Irvine Food Kiosk

THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT IRVINE ASKED US TO PRODUCE A KIOSK THAT li\lCLUDED A RESTAURANT AT THE EDGE

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UNIVERSITY OF CALI FORf\IIA AT IRVINE FOOD KIOSK

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OF AN OPEN SPACE OUR MOTIVE HERE WAS TO SHOW THAT UTILITARIAN/ANCILLARY BUILDINGS COULl) EXTp'>JD THE QUALITY OF THE LANDSCAPE. THE PROJECT'S VARIOUS EI_EMENTS SUGGEST A SCULPTURE GARDEN RAniER T~jAN A MID·CAMPUS WAY STATION.

WE SAW THE KIOSK AS A GATEWAY AND EXTENSION OF THE PARK. WHicH ALL(:JwED us TO INTERPRET THE BUILDING SPECIFIC,L\LLY FOR ITS SETTING WE CHOSE TO SUPPRESS THE ARCHITECTURE, REVERSING

ITS TRADITIONAL RELATIONSHIP TO THE LAND. AN EXISTING SLOPE AND PEDESTRIAN PATH GUIDED ouR REMovAL OF A

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