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    MERTINS, D. The Shells of Architectural Thought

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    cosorio5

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    of 15
    THE SHELLS OF ARCHITECTURAL THOUGHT DeTLer MERTINS Thinking: Thing and Time Among, the numerous atchitectomie figures devised by john ijk in bis work Fladivotot, two may be considered allegories for propositions that underlie the work itself the Clock/Collapse of “Time, which was constructed on Redord Square ip London, is emblematic of a radical reconfiguration of rime, while the Objece/Subjee, installed in Philadelphia, exemplifies Hejduk’s conception of axchitectural though, of thought exbodied in things ‘The Clock isa perfectly aligned column of smooth wooden cubes, idealized pure forms carrying digital numbers in ascending sequence. The tower's caisson is made of rough-hewn timber with metal connectors and fi fastened to tec! axles with wheels thar rest on steel rails, Bor Hej, “the clock tower on the cision can be moved from pluce to place, from time to time.” 'Thie spatial and teraporal mobility may also be understood te be interealized in the structure of the exisson itself, which accommo, ‘ates the Clack in positions that are analogous to diferent models of ve, Not only does the Clock/Callapse af Time travel through time, but ables time to travel through it. According to Hejduk, “The clock ower moves ehraugh spatial cime, elevational, fa time (90 degrees), then angular, isometric time (45 degrees, finally horizontal, perspective time (o degrees)."* Presenting these differen posisions of rime together, a NEIDUK'S cHRoNoTOPE and in way that fuses time and space into suggestive, although ambigu- ‘0, puradigms of knowledge (spatial time, fa time, perspective tine, cifectively cssolves the opposition between linear and cyclical times between history andthe eternal return, without posting anew temporal construct. Time az such collapses inco a kind of timelessness (could this bbe what “spatial time” implies?) which is distinguished from the tn leseness of idealise classicism, for instance, asa composite of “times,” 4 ‘in of temporality in which the spicits of all cimes intermingle. John Helduk’s work over the past decade hat depended on this simultaneous construction and collapse of time in order ta depict haunting seencs that teat one and the same time preindustial, industrial, and pestindustrial, that evoke many times, but are out of place all times and could he con. ceived only inthis time The Object/Subjece is a pair of almost identical anthropomorphic constructions that enact a mating ritual. Each of the Object/Subject pair consists of 2 cube made of uniform smooth panels that axe tautly bolted J place and sopported on four posts with coss-bracing The lege are just 4 little raller thaa the height of the cubic corso. Each of these two Object/Subjects has a communication disk on top and a side aren supe Porting 2 miniacure version of itself with window /eyes and apiky cars Where one figure has a single wedge-shaped projection on its “front” side, the other has 1wo wedges that ereate a space perfectly formed to recewve the wedge of the other figure. The ewo are positioned to suggest their intimate communication and immanent coupling. Tis significant chat Flejduk’s Object/Subject isnot single object, {and does not serve to figure an organic reolution of the subject/object split. Instead, Hejduk presents the interplay of ewo objects that are nat interchangeable and potentially interlocked —ancither is solely “the object” nor “the subject.” In fact, each construction bears a double Inscription as both object and subject, autonomous form at imntanent spint. Ia Hejduk’s metaphorical terms, chey may be considered to be inert mater shaped by the hand and then brought ro lie by The Breath of Bacchus Your Caracal part, inhaling soy 2 whisper which dnappests sca the grey blow a vido son yar creator made a mirae rough he sotce of hishands and wrise he Bew ino your innpenetable white marble radi the it inanimate sgh ean al sound Hejdul’s embodisnent of the subject/objece duality in gendered and spi. iualized architectonic figures cakes the, ostensibly natural question of human dividedness out of the realm of philosophy (ontology and episte mology) and places it squarely inco the world of human production smd. artifice. Here in the rich, fictive, eulcural world, the question of human dividedness is continually renegotiated im the fabrication of tangible “se,” Hejl vertex in thing fr ter han ate ems “tren Un" pang, iets o ace remus! tou cea hug stance We aot seul ching, we ca soi sera Tg eas wel bts shucngor henge isl, sen ascent “eof ea metaphor or thoes sca ports nerd eb sn ee proce nop Te al hedge sh, ae by psc pale ak Seton enol te body use te Scone ees thle eins mvt chs omaning slept os OTe ifable yery a wl ee he thea lpg = it tehnolpes of knowke and esting aii by tory The ‘hele ought thar up the age tha ere the | HEJDUK'S CHRONOTOPE lout co which the Object/Subjece teasingly leads our reflections. The ‘Objece/Subject is, Finally, the ahell of Hleydul’s own thought aboue che subjecr/object relationship; i i his summary metaphor for the role of architecture asthe fabrication of thoughtful things that are at the same ‘ime natural and artificial, organism and machine. UW the Clock/Collapee of Time suggests that Hejdules work operates through the superposition of inherited temporal structures, then the Object/Subject signals his mode of thinking theough the production of things as well as words. Hlejduk’s sketches reveal how he vworks with objects, shaping and combining physical elements ina way that may be likened 0 language; and yet, language remaine inadequate to their exptession. He concretizes thoughts in imapisticobject/subjeets whose smcaning continually clodes theory Ie is Hejéu’s ability to use the med 4m of architecture for thinking that has zhe greatest implication for the contemporary practice off architecture. This atpect of Hejduk’s work compels us to rethink how architecture can seve ws a communicative art in the public dona nly, 2. Math: Tranpereny ond Opacity Piadivonok may be tsken aa eritical and melancholic vision of evaters porary urhan society: The catalog of figures that intrauces the work i= an accumulation of characteristic social and chan types—insticutions, social roles, building types, public spaces, and machines—coscumed and scripted as self- propelling automata who perform their parts repardless of the presence or absence of an audience or viet. The guillotine of the Public Puniabuncns Tower drops in regular ythm throughout ehe day alchough “the town never exccuces anyone.” ‘The book unfolds as a equence of disjointed bur interrelared tableaux in which Hejdul arranges his troupe to portray an analogous city that isa primitive, acho fc, and originary version of the contemporary city. ‘These timeless semes-—ae once familiar and strange—make visible the mechanisms of social formation and deformation, In scuating this analogous city in and ut of time, Hejduk teases into the foreground the usbsn, institutional, 26 DETLER MERTINS and architectural cexts through whieh life is constituted and played out. ‘The carnivalesque re-presentation ofthe technologies of social adminis tration tus them into spectacle and thereby makes them into sites for public discourse and, potentially, redemptive reoccupations and imagina- ‘ve transfarinazions, The radicalty of this work eegisters in the degree {to which che images disturb, unsectle, and prompe critical reflection Hejduk’s architecture, in both its drawn and buile forms, exercises peculiar and haunting power over the imagination—a power that resides primarily in the architectonic economy of mask—which is achieved by interlocking representational and non-representational techniques, com bining the ruimesie of eypes with various formal and expressive tactics “The thinking that Hejduk undertakes in Vladinorok leaves behind 0% ‘only a portrait of urban and social bondage but also a portrac of archi- tecture bound to the shells oF thoughts about itso Like film about the making of a fil, Hejduk’s Madrwstek is a book about the making of 2 book, depicting an architecture about the making of architecture. (OF course, this statement needs f© be immediately qualified, for there i nothing rationalist about Hojduk’s architecture, Nor doet it participate in the modernist selfdisclosure of construction, material integrity, internal order, or function, Instead materials, means of construction, sand internal order are rendered mysterious bile Being signified. Te leoson toughe by Hejduk’s architecture rests in bis unsurpassed sill in constructing such mysteries and in leading the viewer into 2 state of contemplation about society and aboue architecture's cole within it— 1 critical and distanced contemplation that has neither beginning nor end and that defies logical progression, raking instead a myriad of derours and digressions that sircumaavigate, but never quite locate, sruth or meaning ‘Though my interest i primarily in Hejduk’s archieectonies, 2 great deal of the poster of Hledovstak derives from Hejduk’s ability to see title, text image, and architectonic in provocative relationship to each othe, without one dominating the other. Hejduk skilfully maintains the gap bbetaeen signifier and signified hy calling on che beholder’ imagination to 2 ‘construct bridges or to dwell in the abyssal gap of meaningleseness. To demonstrate their arbitrariness 43 signs, i i8 significant that exo of Hejdule’s actors have appeared in diferent roles. The Howse of the Printer in the Berlin Masque also played The Old Farmer's Howse in the Lancaster/Hanover Masque; similarly, The House of the Musician in Berlin vas ‘The Widow's House in Lancaster/Hanover, we focus on the corporeal presence that ejduk gives to his troupe of institutions, personalities, and urban forms—euch as Senare/Couneil, Cultural Center, Mayor/Cardinal, and ‘Typical Stret—it is possible to discero the existence ofa second troupe, an extensive repertoire of archi tectonic type, elements and devices that ate immensely powresul in their ‘own right In designing these figures, Hejduk mobilizes architecture a8 medium ina way thar draws on two practices that have been opposed over the past two hundred years: allegory and expression. If the Clock/Callapse (of Thine signals the folding together of cyclical and linear time into a state of timelessness, then Hejduk’s conception of the medium of architecture likewise folds together devices associated with representational theories of architecture, such 38 mimesis (imiention), and tactics that were developed 1s architects sought £0 step outside of representation and memory. Hejduk’s work revisits madern architecture’ problematic relationship to simess, which, since the collapse of confidence in classcise representa tion during the eighteenth century, has haunted the diseipline and com {used its socal role. Hejdul’s work negotiates a recuperation of represen= tation by absorbing the results of anticmimetic research about the nature of architecture and of perception into the representational devices of type, memory, body, and image, thereby cllapsing neo 2 revitalized the- stricaliey two centuries of effort aimed at transparency of “form” and expression.” Hejduk passes techniques once consndered transparent «0 meaning back into the opacity of he mask: these shells sre capable of evoking. in ways that are both direct and indirect, chat engage conventions and associations a5 wel as the perceptual apparatus of the body. Be they animistic, anthropomorphic, or architectonic, Hejduk’e ‘roupe of Objece/Subjects it composed largely of archetypal forme— 2 vatiatioas on house, tower, block, slab, éheater, gate, pavilion, garden, labyrinth, stxcet, square, bridge, machine, and sphinx. While this lise gore well beyond Quatremése de Quiney’s originary types for architec: tre—the hut, che cave, and the tont—Quatremére’s meaning of type as “precxisicar germ” has implicitly been reactivated, slong. with ice role ina theory of imitation, not as the naturalistic pre sentation of reality but as “a necessary fiction that supplies its plac.”* But where Quarremére invokes the idea of type to buttress the waning authority of clasriciem, itis precisely such authority hat Hejduk’s work renders problematic. Quatteméxe’s pleasure in evoking the orginary type 4s displaced by Hejdul’s melancholy about institutionalization. Hejdul’s depiction of the originary wihin moderniey is acutely eritical and works to unlock che violence and repression ordinarily suppressed by modern socal institutions Ministries, Museums, Cemeteries, Guards—and dis ciplned by architecture. HejduK’s mimesis does not refer to ideal types but rather seeks ¢o illuminate and conssqueatly redeem the types that govern ordinary life. The melancholy of his objects arises from the ten- son of working within the historical and matenial reality of modern fife tw bring out the repressed and the redeeming in tbe same transformative “the root of” oF movement. {In addition co his archivectural typology; Hejduk also mobilizes a repertoire of building clements, some of which have already been noted in my deecription of the Clock/Collapse of ‘Time and the ‘Object/Subject. The buile projects exhibit a stark elementals and deploy an apparently self disclosing tectonic system of simple structural frames wn wood of steel with panel cladding, Despite che patent eactlity ‘of the works, no rationaliet interpretation can account for their strange indiference to material or the constructional mysteries that have pre= sented themselves to builders working from Hejduk’s apparently straightforward “construction drawings.” Instead, constructive elemen talism fas been drawn into an exchange between theatrical and foumal/expressve practices. » acagageagagseanavesenaovgcavecagagngaca , MEIDUK'S CHRaNOTOPE 5. Biography: Practice and Taory Higduk once explained in an ineerview the pracess by which he studies ‘he works and writings of other architects and artists, how-—in he terms of the interviewer—he “processes information which is historical” — (ori the terms Ihave heen usingy—how he thinks and works throagh the shells of ehought about architecture ¢hat ethers have lee behind. His reply is revealing: 16 strong. This 2 ood question. Wel Findamentlly {ead them batt Sn’ ted tenn le you an eeample wig Corb From 19539 19631 ‘would take Corb books end yas pore ovr them looking a hem, ight ter night, erally jus going tough the books, x thasand ee, wt "had aborted Coxbusier. absorbed the images the nizations, inte me 1 9 onpuilikeBlatng papex Now Id ave wok the.) While “abeorprion” alveady suggests « process of cransformation of at least emulation, rather than “copying,” Hejduk wees the term “exorcise” elsewhere in the same interview, 1 exrssed Le Cabs i che Daron Hsses The Dimond Houses ‘oie thes consprsl hai hee ape metere we the Corb overtone tha, Hike he emetic mest work bt is he theft ua they reminded me af Le Corb odo gtr chat {y working it ou, hy ering the sage. So hee i ava Big, sneaked witha weal cord walt eae tng sn comyese te For Hejduk, thinking through che shells of architectural thought in com Pressed or collapsed time means working through this condition of tmbitical binding thae is both life-giving and constraining, 2 condition of “no exit.” It means not only internahcing ad personalizing the work of ‘others, bar drawing from it formal principles and devices—-in the case of Le Corbusier taking the “conceptual basis" and the “isometne systems at ‘work—and exorcsing “image” and “overcone.” 30 DETLEF MERTINS In recalling the influences on his student workin the periad 1047-50, LHejduk lists an unexpectedly mixed, although for that period eypical, constellation of Bgures: the rail end of the Bauhaus with Waleer Gropius at Harvard, josef Albers at Black Mountain, the Caralano-Carninos group under Henry Kamphofner, Oklshoma and Truce Golf, Herb Green, Frank Lloyd Wright, alvar Aalto, Paul Klee and, ally, Le Corbusier, to whose ‘work he wat initially opposed, “T was very anti-Corbusier. Fer. was empathetic to Wright, somewhat to Aalto.” In contrat, his inital seudies at The Cooper Union were less “structured,” more emotionally based and intuitive. “The work was poured out, felt out. One skerched them out, drew them ous, without a structural fame” (telerting probably wo che “seructuringfremework” of precedent rather thae licrally to a building seroeture). ‘While I do not intend to belabor these autobiographical statements, they do serve to reinforce what is evident in the work itself, namely that iejduk has developed his architectural repertoire by working Feely from the shells of archiceccural choughts, absorbing and working through inherited paradigms of architecture, meving roward the articulation of formal concepts and medes of expression, which are then “poured out,” “fee out,” and “drawn out.” Wha projeecs is the explicitness with which this process is itself represented ‘orally and how chisexplicieess in che work is at odds with the con- ‘ventional image of Hejdul’s work as un-theoretical and even resistant (0 ‘heory: My purpose isto thematize this embodie self-reflexivity aboot the medium of architecture, to drew oue the implications of Hejduk’s absorptive and poured-oue practice. While an aura of mystery and poet- ies has been constructed around his work through careful appropriations snd hybridirations that forget their source, it may be revealing to recon- nect the formal devices that Hejdak has absorbed co the theories of rep- resentation and non-representation that they were intially linked to. ‘The implications of Hejduk’s practice as exemplified in Padimok are, 1 believe, greacest with respect co his undeclared work on the structures or shells that mediate agchireceare asa mode of thought. crests me about the more recent 1 NesDuK's cHRoNoToPE 4. Navara 1 and Expration {If John Hejduk’s work may be though to conflate premodern representa- ‘on and modern expression inco a postmodern Férwindung of heir oppo. sition, then its afinity wich the architecture of Clande-Nicolas Ledoux should not be surprising, for Ledow’s classicism distorted! the conven: tions of premodern representation in the direction of natural expression ac the beginning rather than atthe end ofthe experiments of modernism Ledoux’s clistortions help identify three important lines of reearch that may be taken as early versions of twentieth-centuy functionals, for tmalism, and expressionism, which Hejduk’s work may be aderstood to have “absorbed” and “exorcised.” Over the course of his career, Ledoux ‘moved fiom Jacques-Frangois Blondel’s version of the theary of imitax tion, as the emblematic and stylistic representation of characte, toward the expression of internal organization (modeled on the natural sciences), clemental architectonics (based on descriptive geometry, stereotomy, and

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