The New York Times
April 9, 1995
Arts & Leisure, p. 40.
Architecture View / Herbert Muschamp
Fleeting Homage To an Architect Who Only Dreams
Hejduk's idiosyncratic practice stands for that paradox:
the idea that solitude is integral to the public realm.
It's an idea to set against the homogenized commercial
vitality of marketplaces and business improvement
districts, a warning that these well-meaning, popular
and often bland attempts to save cities could cost them
their souls.
Martin Finio and Kevin Fischer, two graduates of the
architecture school at Cooper Union in New York, have
completed a five-year labor of love: a full-scale
realization of a design by John Hejduk, the school's dean.
But the fruit of their labor will be around for only a
fraction of the time it took to produce it. "The
Conciliator," a l9-foot-tall, dark gray tower based on one
of Hejduk's drawings, will be dismantled in early June.
Installed on a traffic island on Fifth Avenue at 23d
Street, across from the Flatiron Building, the structure is
a puzzling, enigmatic object, looking something like an
unattended information booth. And without someone on hand
to explain things, the design may baffle those not familiar
with Hejduk's (pronounced HAY-duck) work, and perhaps a few
who are. But it isn't often that revered teacher ventures
forth from academe. lndeed, without the persistence of two
young architects Finio and Fischer (who raised both the
structure and the money to pay for it), this project would
not have seen the light of day. Their persistence is a
tribute to Hejduk's legendary power to inspire students.
Yet the project itself barely hints at the reasons for it.
Those hints are worth following, however, if only to
understand Hejduk's influence on the next generation.
While not a stranger to building -- his 1975 reconstruction
of Cooper Union's Foundation Building on Astor Place is one
of lower Manhattan's gems -- Hejduk is better known as the
consummate paper architect, an artist who has shirked off
the cumbersome apparatus of conventional practice and
created entire cities of the mind. His drawings, often
gathered together in the form of "masques," set forth an
elaborate personal mythology of angels, medusas,
watchtowers, condemned men and other allegorical figures.
In these cerebral cityscapes, buildings often resemble
costumed performers. They act out the idea that
architecture can be as solitary a pursuit as poetry or
painting.
The conciliator, a character from Hejduk's Berlin Masque
(1979-83), is among the simpler of his designs. His drawing
depicts a slim tower capped with a sharp notched crown
flanked by two ramps. Presumably the ramps enable
disputants to approach tha conciliator to mediate a
conflict. The conciliator dwells within, and speaks through
windows on either side, a father confessor to strife.
The design, fabricated in wood, has been altered in
execution. The ramps are gone, though a vestige of one
remains as a sharp wedge that thrusts west toward Broadway,
as if to slice the Flatiron Building in two. Rain spouts,
minimalist gargoyles, now protrude from the tower's walls.
In place of a live conciliator, Finio and Fischer have
substituted a small I-beam; visible just inside the window,
it is an homage to the founder of their school, Peter
Cooper, an iron maker. Sensitive siting, refined details,
spare forms that merge figuration and abstraction: these
are Hejduk hallmarks.
If one seeks to categorize the design, what comes to mind
is not an architectural style but a personality type:
introverted, brooding, theatrically self-possessed. It is
the manner of the passive aggressive, the chronic
withholder, of those who want others to think they have
dispensed with normal needs. As a friend remarked, this
style can have an almost aphrodisiac effect. But it
contradicts the conventional view of architecture as a
social art, and is remote from the bubbly air of
sociability that many architects are trying to revive in
American cities.
Hejduk's self-containment, however, is not as out of step
with contemporary practice as it may seem. Consider the
exterior of malls, atriums, gated residential enclaves:
sullen introversion has been the norm for many building
types in recent years. A style of solipsism also prevails
in many architecture schools, where a preoccupation with
theory has gone far toward displacing the traditional
emphasis on professional practice.
Some years back I attacked John Hejduk in a magazine
article because it seemed to me that an architect's retreat
from practice would just further erode a public realm
already damaged by severe neglect. My point was not that
only completed buildings deserve to qualify as
architecture, or that architects have to be pragmatists,
but that something valuable is lost when architects
renounce conventional practice. The realization of an
architectural design isn't a purely technical matter. It
also has a cultural dimension.
I'm thinking, for example, of an artist like Christo, who
regards the process of realizing as an essential part of
his art. When Christo wraps up a monument like the Berlin
Reichstag building, the project's meaning is partly drawn
from the involvement of public officials and private
citizens in its creation. Architects draw on that level of
meaning as a matter of course. It is not only the public
use of buildings that makes architecture a social art. It
is also the architect's engagement with clients,
communities, contractors and others whose participation is
required to alter the material world. If architects can
fully gratify their creativity on paper, they are
squandering the opportunity they have to activate the
creativity of others.
Still, as a pedagogical device, Hejduk's stance of radical
solitude is worth defending. At Cooper Union, Hejduk trains
students who will be entering what is, in effect, a
reactive discipline; they will be called upon to satisfy
the needs of others. But Hejduk proposes that there's more
to it than that: even architecture's social dimension
depends on the creative capacity of individuals. Hejduk
seeks to protect the solitary place where creativity
occurs, where all our social support systems can become
distractions.
The question is whether Hejduk's approach retains its value
outside the academic setting. The answer is that the city
today needs Hejduk's contribution even more acutely than
the classroom does. Architects are outstanding at
visualizing privacy these days. Decorating magazines
provide a monthly update of their successes. But solitude
is a much harder quality to pin down. Perhaps that is
because, in Hejduk's vision, solitude is paradoxically an
urbane quality, an aspect of interior life coaxed forth by
the city's overbearing passive aggression.
Hejduk's idiosyncratic practice stands for that paradox:
the idea that solitude is integral to the public realm.
It's an idea to set against the homogenized commercial
vitality of marketplaces and business improvement
districts, a warning that these well-meaning, popular and
often bland attempts to save cities could cost them their
souls.
But how can we measure the value of Hejduk's idea if he
keeps it under wraps? Perhaps the time has come for Hejduk
to step up to the window for a little conciliation. New
York should have a building designed by him in durable
form.
End
April 9, 1995
Arts & Leisure, p. 40.
Architecture View / Herbert Muschamp
Fleeting Homage To an Architect Who Only Dreams
Hejduk's idiosyncratic practice stands for that paradox:
the idea that solitude is integral to the public realm.
It's an idea to set against the homogenized commercial
vitality of marketplaces and business improvement
districts, a warning that these well-meaning, popular
and often bland attempts to save cities could cost them
their souls.
Martin Finio and Kevin Fischer, two graduates of the
architecture school at Cooper Union in New York, have
completed a five-year labor of love: a full-scale
realization of a design by John Hejduk, the school's dean.
But the fruit of their labor will be around for only a
fraction of the time it took to produce it. "The
Conciliator," a l9-foot-tall, dark gray tower based on one
of Hejduk's drawings, will be dismantled in early June.
Installed on a traffic island on Fifth Avenue at 23d
Street, across from the Flatiron Building, the structure is
a puzzling, enigmatic object, looking something like an
unattended information booth. And without someone on hand
to explain things, the design may baffle those not familiar
with Hejduk's (pronounced HAY-duck) work, and perhaps a few
who are. But it isn't often that revered teacher ventures
forth from academe. lndeed, without the persistence of two
young architects Finio and Fischer (who raised both the
structure and the money to pay for it), this project would
not have seen the light of day. Their persistence is a
tribute to Hejduk's legendary power to inspire students.
Yet the project itself barely hints at the reasons for it.
Those hints are worth following, however, if only to
understand Hejduk's influence on the next generation.
While not a stranger to building -- his 1975 reconstruction
of Cooper Union's Foundation Building on Astor Place is one
of lower Manhattan's gems -- Hejduk is better known as the
consummate paper architect, an artist who has shirked off
the cumbersome apparatus of conventional practice and
created entire cities of the mind. His drawings, often
gathered together in the form of "masques," set forth an
elaborate personal mythology of angels, medusas,
watchtowers, condemned men and other allegorical figures.
In these cerebral cityscapes, buildings often resemble
costumed performers. They act out the idea that
architecture can be as solitary a pursuit as poetry or
painting.
The conciliator, a character from Hejduk's Berlin Masque
(1979-83), is among the simpler of his designs. His drawing
depicts a slim tower capped with a sharp notched crown
flanked by two ramps. Presumably the ramps enable
disputants to approach tha conciliator to mediate a
conflict. The conciliator dwells within, and speaks through
windows on either side, a father confessor to strife.
The design, fabricated in wood, has been altered in
execution. The ramps are gone, though a vestige of one
remains as a sharp wedge that thrusts west toward Broadway,
as if to slice the Flatiron Building in two. Rain spouts,
minimalist gargoyles, now protrude from the tower's walls.
In place of a live conciliator, Finio and Fischer have
substituted a small I-beam; visible just inside the window,
it is an homage to the founder of their school, Peter
Cooper, an iron maker. Sensitive siting, refined details,
spare forms that merge figuration and abstraction: these
are Hejduk hallmarks.
If one seeks to categorize the design, what comes to mind
is not an architectural style but a personality type:
introverted, brooding, theatrically self-possessed. It is
the manner of the passive aggressive, the chronic
withholder, of those who want others to think they have
dispensed with normal needs. As a friend remarked, this
style can have an almost aphrodisiac effect. But it
contradicts the conventional view of architecture as a
social art, and is remote from the bubbly air of
sociability that many architects are trying to revive in
American cities.
Hejduk's self-containment, however, is not as out of step
with contemporary practice as it may seem. Consider the
exterior of malls, atriums, gated residential enclaves:
sullen introversion has been the norm for many building
types in recent years. A style of solipsism also prevails
in many architecture schools, where a preoccupation with
theory has gone far toward displacing the traditional
emphasis on professional practice.
Some years back I attacked John Hejduk in a magazine
article because it seemed to me that an architect's retreat
from practice would just further erode a public realm
already damaged by severe neglect. My point was not that
only completed buildings deserve to qualify as
architecture, or that architects have to be pragmatists,
but that something valuable is lost when architects
renounce conventional practice. The realization of an
architectural design isn't a purely technical matter. It
also has a cultural dimension.
I'm thinking, for example, of an artist like Christo, who
regards the process of realizing as an essential part of
his art. When Christo wraps up a monument like the Berlin
Reichstag building, the project's meaning is partly drawn
from the involvement of public officials and private
citizens in its creation. Architects draw on that level of
meaning as a matter of course. It is not only the public
use of buildings that makes architecture a social art. It
is also the architect's engagement with clients,
communities, contractors and others whose participation is
required to alter the material world. If architects can
fully gratify their creativity on paper, they are
squandering the opportunity they have to activate the
creativity of others.
Still, as a pedagogical device, Hejduk's stance of radical
solitude is worth defending. At Cooper Union, Hejduk trains
students who will be entering what is, in effect, a
reactive discipline; they will be called upon to satisfy
the needs of others. But Hejduk proposes that there's more
to it than that: even architecture's social dimension
depends on the creative capacity of individuals. Hejduk
seeks to protect the solitary place where creativity
occurs, where all our social support systems can become
distractions.
The question is whether Hejduk's approach retains its value
outside the academic setting. The answer is that the city
today needs Hejduk's contribution even more acutely than
the classroom does. Architects are outstanding at
visualizing privacy these days. Decorating magazines
provide a monthly update of their successes. But solitude
is a much harder quality to pin down. Perhaps that is
because, in Hejduk's vision, solitude is paradoxically an
urbane quality, an aspect of interior life coaxed forth by
the city's overbearing passive aggression.
Hejduk's idiosyncratic practice stands for that paradox:
the idea that solitude is integral to the public realm.
It's an idea to set against the homogenized commercial
vitality of marketplaces and business improvement
districts, a warning that these well-meaning, popular and
often bland attempts to save cities could cost them their
souls.
But how can we measure the value of Hejduk's idea if he
keeps it under wraps? Perhaps the time has come for Hejduk
to step up to the window for a little conciliation. New
York should have a building designed by him in durable
form.
End