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    Tschumi Koolhaas Truby Interview

    Uploaded by

    FedericoDuran__

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
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    of 10
    ‘Spal Deson A Retroactive Dialogue Rem Koolhaas and Bernard Tschumi in Conversation’ Switzerland and other “Small Nasty Countries” ‘Stephan Triby (ST): My main motivation for approaching you, Rem and Bernard, to maike this evening happen, is the fact that your life trajectories are often described as oppositional, as controversial, and sometimes even 4s antipodal ~ a point that we shal talk about shortly. But before we go {nto this, think it is very important to stress that you both share ~ in an almost uncanny way —an amazingly vast common ground. Maybe the mast strategic site ofthis coramon ground, it seems to me, is that both of you take counter positions against what has been called the “Project of Autonomy"? Assuch, both of you often talk about scripts and programmes — thats, about the performative within and beyond architecture. My hope for this evening is that we shall generace something like a “retroactive dialogue,” that is, Aialogue that is retroacive because — in a more silent “state of aggregation” ~ it always existed, but for some reason could never be articulated. Now it {s perhaps not entirely ty chance that we can speak about this mute dialogue ‘between the two of you in “neutral” Switzerland. So Te's start with Swit zerland. Both of your professional engagements with Switzerland actually started at the same time, in around 1988, with the Hotel Furkeablick (OMA/ ‘Rem Koolhaas) and the design for Lausanne's Bridge City Master Plan 1. Tre convertion 2 pub cebate mceratee by Sten Toy = tec ‘ace cn 18 Nay 201 a re Els Capos Hongperberg dure. Ths eorng ‘se coopeationtetwean tne HAS Spa ast Et Prat Pip Ursorang. od DAROH Te version genes here hos saan snotere so 2 Fer copra rio hurels The rect often: Pais within and oglst. (Bernard Tschumi) (i. How would you both describe your professional and private relations with Switzerland? Bernard, since you also have a ‘Swiss passport, could you please start? Bernard Tschumi (BT): feel uneasy about your biograp! cal question ~ please, no biography. Biography is some- thing that, toa certain degree, we construct out of the data of our lives. On the other hand, finding myself back in ‘Switzerland today is not an accident; Ihave several projects here. For many years, I tried to avoid Switzerland as much, as I could: the first thing I did after graduating was to go ‘to France, then England, and then the US. The fact that I now find myself drawn back into Switzerland hes nothing to do with its culture, but with specific architectural rea- sons. Switzerland has an attitude toward architecture that doesn't exist anywhere else. I's an attitude toward materi- ality and concepts that interests me. Let's talk about thi not biographies. By the way ~ I'ma very bad Swiss, since T also have a French passport. ‘ST: How would you, Rem, describe your relationship with Switzerland? Rem Koolhaas (RK): My relationship with Switzerland started by “accident” thirty years ago: my girlfriend's par- cents had a house near St. Moritz. Since then, Switzerland, for me, represents an escape and a contrast. Initially, 1 ‘thought Switzerland was simply a non-city; but, as T gat to know the country better, I saw that actually it had under- gone ~ and is still undergoing — a very radical transforma tion. Right now, I'm more interested in Switzerland than ever, because I'm currently much more interested in the countryside than in the city. ST: Why? RK: Because the countryside is an area of drastic change. CCelerina, this litle place near St. Moritz, for instante, is a very graphic example: although years ago it was tctally ‘Swiss, itis now largely Sri Lankan, Thai, etc. Celerina has changed radically in terms of the composition of its popu lation. What I'm saying is that we are all familiar wita the global phenomenon that people are now largely urban ‘dwellers. But what interests me more than anything else » Spal cesign ‘what do urban dwellers leave behind? That is what I'm try: ing to study, also in Switzerland. ‘ST: Let'sgo back to 1988 again. Rem, you were renovating the Hotel Furka- blick and you, Bernard, had just won the competition for the Bridge City ‘Master Plan. It seems to me that while you, Bernard, were stressing the infrastructural aspects of Switzerland, you, Rem, were focusing mare on ‘the idyllic and sublime aspects of Switzerlanc RK: It s interesting that if we look back toHotel Furkeblick. = my first-ever conservation project ~it turns out that the sublime landscape has been a very important but perhaps. suppressed and most private part of my thinking. BI: Having lived in Switzerland during part of my child hood, the thing that I feared most was exactly those tow- ering mountains. The Bridge City Project of 1988 was an attempt to make Lausanne and also Switzerland more ur- bban. One particular feature of Lausanne is that due to the density of buildings you can enter a building on the fourth floor andexit from the ground floor ~that is, you have that sort of three-dimensional metropolis well known fromthe _ famous Fritz Lang film. We wanted to show the people of Lausanne a metropolitanism that they held in their hands, but had not yet recognised. ‘ST: You are probably both aware of the work of the ETH's Studio Basel, which has tried to describe Switzerland notin terms of a bucolt but instead of anurban tradition: Would you agree with Roger Diener, Jacques Herzog, ‘Marcel Meili, Pierre de Meuron, and Christian Schmid that Switzerlandcan bie described as one bigcity? BT: If ycu spend as much time on airplanes as Rem and I probably do, you also spend @ lot of time looking at the world from the air. If you fly over Switzerland, you see two things ~ one that has absolutely nothing to do with abig city, namely, a very organised structure of small ag: slomerations. On the other hand, you see something that could be called a “consciousness of the network”: this has somethirg to do with Switzerland's history ~ with military 3) Roper Dinar tcauesHeraog, Marcel Mal Pie oe Meuron Crs Sera ir suo aoe, Into Sage der Cagerwar Hep strategies, with warfare, with underground tunnels, and so ‘on. Inthat context, Ihavea striking image in my mind: you are in the mountains and you see a fighter jet flying at in- credible speed and low altitude right into Swiss mountain; ‘you expect a crash but suddenly huge doors open xp in the ‘mountain anda long landing strip appears inside. RK: Bernard’s scenario is striking. For me, Switzerland is an interesting country because it was the first to ditch the “visual envelopes” of modernity and to adopt a strategy of hiding and going underground, Switzerland developed and sophisticated its hypocrisy in terms of maintaining the vis- tual reality of asmall and traditional city. Thave always been, surprised ~ and this is a kind of challenge for some of my Swiss colleagues and perhaps also for the whole school we arein right now ~ how remote Switzerland's hidden moder- nity is from the conservative arguments for the “European, city” of Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani and others eaching here. ST: Rem, can you give a Swiss example of the discrepancy between the ‘visual envelopes" of tradition and modern reality? RK: Take Celerina, for example. It still maintains the illu- sion of a small village, but it is lear that i is not really in habited. Most of its houses are inhabited two wees a year, ‘but they still have to be maintained. Celerina has « ghostly reality. ig. ‘ST: Rem, it has become clear that Switzerland has been a pervasive theme inyour thinking about the city and the non-city for a long time. Bu: Iunder- stand that you have also started exploring the political condition of contem: porary Switzerland? RK: I'ma Iuckcy in that one of my best friends, Hars Ulrich Obrist, is Swiss. We are exploring currently the connec- tions and the similarities between Switzerland, Holland and Singapore, and are planning to do a book called Small ‘Nasty Countries in which we try to describe the futures of these countries. Imust say that Ihave been fortunate in this respect because being Dutch makes me very sersitive 10 understanding Switzerland, ST: What do you mean by that? Seale! Design RK: Small, developed places like Switzerland, Holland, and ingapore are currently all undergoing an identity crisis and all are reacting badly to this crisis, to the point that a ‘country like Holland, which was supposedly open-minded, is now becoming one of the most hostile countries toward immigration. Similar developments can be traced in Swit zerland and also in Singapore. Around 1968: Journalism, Film, Art, Music, Architecture ‘ST: Let's become more chronological. I would like to start with your forma- tive years in the 960s, Bernard, whereas you studied architecture atthe ETH Zurich from 1963 to 1969, you, Rem, worked asa journalist for The Hlaagse Post from 963 up until around 1968. On the left, we can see api ture of Rem Koolhaas with Federico Fellini on the right, one of Bernard ‘Tschumi working on an architectural project in his Zurich fat, 3). Both Pictures were taken around 1965. If we look back to these times, the profes sionsinwhich you rained or practised — architecture and journalismseem tobe more le tol for becoming acineast. Would you agree with that? RK: Ithink this is probably a sign of how dominant film was at an art form and how inspiring it was in the Sixties. Not oaly was Italian cinema flourishing incredibly at the ‘time, butalso there was Roman Polanski, there was Rainer ‘Werner Fassbinder, there was Dennis Hopper's Easy Ride, there was also the so-called Kitchen Sink Cinema in Eng: land. So it was simply a natural consequence that cinem2, ‘being undeniably the most vivid, attractive, and glamorous art form at that time, was the most promising domain you couldbe interested in, BI: In my particular case, the ETH took me away from’ film for four years. What preceded it was indeed — let's not avoid the biographical here ~ a significant exposure to cin ema that my French mother gave me, taking me to the 12 o'clock, the 2 oflock, the 4 o'clock, and the 6 o'dlock screen- ings in Paris, possibly with the theatre thrown in in the ‘eveniays: By dheage of 28, Thad probably seen every movie renter Statraum una Ueene ‘that had left its marke on the history of the cinema. After I leftthe ETH —and fet had learned a number of things that wanted to reject ~ my only way of grasping reality and perhaps of understanding what another way of locking at architecture could be, was through the medium of cinema. Cinema was and stil is about space and movement. But wasn't only interested in the filmmakers, but also in the film theorists. Some of these figure were filmmakers and ‘lm theorists and wrote for the Cahiers du cinema, provid- inga whole new background toa way of thinking thatat the time felt could help usas architects ‘ST: When did you discover film theory, during your ETH years or after? BT: No, after. Oh boy, 1 was working like mad on ETH pro- jects. RK: Basically, I followed the same pattern. But when I see this picture, I would like to emphasise one thing which 1 think is a really tragic difference between then and now, namely, just how unbelievably accessible things were. In ‘this picture, 'm 20. I'm definitely not a Wunderkind. Thad failed my Bachelor's and I wrote a letter to the Editor-in- Chief of The Haagse Post, saying “Ilave your paper, would, like to work there. I've failed my Bachelor's, can I come anyway?" A week later, was able to take the initizive and interview Fellini, interview Fassbinder, interview every- one... The great beauty of the Sixties is not so much the re- bellious generation but how accessible people, institutions, schools, and newspapers were for almost everybody. ‘ST: Rem, inthe late Sixties you were not only a memiber of the Dutch film group 1.2.3, etc, but you also worked on a couple of film scripts, One of those unrealised scripts was a film project that you did together with René Daler for the flm director Russ Meyer. Its ttle was Hollywood Tower Mal RK: Yes. Russ Meyer was a very interesting man. He was a Colonel in the American army, did information and propa- ganda movies for the army, and then, at some point, he started to make propaganda movies about sex. His pornog- raphy was called “soft core pornography,” It was not com- pletely explicit. Many people, especially in Europe, became Sati! Design interested in his wor, ead him a kind of auteur alsote| cause hiss became very complex at aera ime. On wascalled Beyond the Vly ofthe Del (gp0) andthe seri ‘wis written by an intellectual called Roger Ebert, ver imgortat move crt in America, Sudenly, Ras Mee ws no longer making cheap fs bat fms about Nez tcensvestis, gender issues with incredibly Baroque ter ls. At hat pith ese interested nus elope a plot for him. St: Berard, old magine that ou preferred the Nowell Vague? ‘BI: Stephan, the Nouvelle Vague was fascinated by Ameri can cinema and it was critical of traditional French cin | «ema, Russ Meyer and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls actually. Scteened in cinemas on Boulevard Saint-Michel in Paris (Woaat is interesting is that these films ~ or rather film in _general ~ influenced a generation that really emerged onto thescene only a litte later. If you look atthe work of young. artists in the 1970s ~ Cindy Sherman, Robert Longo, and otters ~ they all transcribed their experiences of watching films into a totally different kind of art. Ths is quite differ ‘entfrom the generations before them, who were mostly in fluenced by painting and sculpture. For us, flm culture was something that potentially had the advantage of not pursu: nga discourse of autonomy, but instead of experimenting With intertextuality and with the production of meaning, ‘You could borrow freely from other disciplines. In this cor ‘ex, filmmaking was unbelievably appealing. RKC There is one more thing I would like to add: we havent talked about music so far, but music was actually also inter- «esting for us. In those years, we wrote anather script for Mal- olm McLaren, the impresario ofthe Sex Pistols. That time ‘Wasa juncture between music, movies, and architecture. BI: Yes, architects of the previous generation were more interested in the academic side of music, as represented by jazz in the 1960s, and as opposed to the immediacy of mu- sic, a5 represented by the Sex Pistols ten years later, Again, take New York City in the early 1970s: there were places tile the Lower Manhattan Ocean Club or The Mudd Club; everybody was simultaneously an artist anda member of Pe arocctant _STetsreame this n the contextofMay968.As fara xow.youwere “tote Paris then Rem, you were there asa ouralit and you, Berard, “ wrethere asa protester and went ta I seems to me hat you, Berard, Some mar active nd you, Rem, played amore passive olein ay 68. TIC Twent there asan observe, ST Soyou doi dety Rem? "RK: Of course also identified but Las there mainlyss an observer nt asa participant. BT T wen to Pai in 967 to gta job at Canis Josie Woods daring my “Prktium, and in late Ati 3968 things started heating up on the streets. Gorges Candis was socialise didnt want his ofc ro erike agaist im, che sld:"Go into the sees and come bck inthe morning and tell me what happened” We all wer into the furees and learned [otf things in very short period of time, Yes I wasarrested one nigh, together with 00 other people, but that's anther story. It was an extrordinary Imoment, which finaly allowed a generation to question array everything, There was na dcionary of received : ideas anymore, no moment when you could sy "This is ‘right, this is wrong.” Architecture, always being cn the side : of power was deftly nthe place to bei youwantedto be socialy responsible or even progressive ST: Hos you lnk te events around May 68 to architecture? Did you - ever think of the possibility of a barricade as an architectural project? I'm refering to the famous barlnds designed hy Goified Semper 3849 D rosa. \ BT: you ask meno, became obsessed with th correla tion between certain typeof urbanism anda cerin type of coil structure. This was he time when Henri Lefebvre twas loge tothe Stuatonistsand wrote extraordinary ines bout Tuscany, for example: “Look, you thin itis ature, but itisal the projection of society onthe ground” tar eto ook at any ety or any territory onthe globe a ro- jection of a socal and economic sytem. As architects, we Could either ake advantage and document thi system, oF Spat oesign ‘we could transform and change it RK:For me, 1968, crucially, was also connected to the fac ‘that that summer I was also in Prague when the Russians came, I think without that experience I would not have been sensitive to the effects ofthe Cold War, nor to the Bez lin Wall. The Prague Spring and its tragic end was for me the beginning ofa sensitivity to how very minor modifies tons can drastically alter the entire system. TAUS, Delirious New York, Manhattan Transcripts ‘ST: would lke tomove onto the topics around New York City inthe 19708 (One of your comrron grounds there is your presence atthe Institute or A

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