56-year-old architect Thomas Lieser is renowned for his provocative, interactive restaurants, nightclubs and theaters in New York City. He designed the Wexner Center, the Fine Arts Center and the State University complex, both in Columbus, Ohio, with Peter Eisenman, and collaborated on La Villete in Paris with Eisenman and Derrida. His winning design for the Museum of the Moving Image is currently under construction in New York and, according to the architect, is "an environment in which complexity is achieved by integrating architecture with a subtle screen image." In the summer of 2007, his bureau won an open international competition for the construction of the World Mammoth and Permafrost Museum in Yakutsk. Lieser's project has been bypassed by many leading architecture firms, including Antoine Predock (USA), Massimiliano Fuksas (Italy), Neutelings Riedijk (Holland) and SRL (Denmark). The competition was organized by the government of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) and the La Paz group, a French company engaged in ecotourism around the world.
Thomas Lieser was born and raised in Frankfurt and practices in New York. Prior to his passion for architecture, he was interested in Pop Art, especially the works of Andy Warhol and Joseph Beuys. Thomas grew up in a home built by his parents - his mother, an interior designer, and his father, an architect who, as a Jew, spent the war years on the run with a family in Paris and established a progressive architectural practice in Frankfurt after the war. I met Tom at his office in Dumbo, Brooklyn, overlooking the waters of the East River and the stunningly beautiful Manhattan, where all of New York's famous architects practice. Except for one - Lieser.
Let's talk about the project competition for the World Mammoth and Permafrost Museum and how did you hear about it?
- We learned about the competition on the Internet. At first we were skeptical - a mammoth museum, it’s so strange, but then we realized that we are talking not only about mammoths and a museum of nature, but about the environment - half a museum and half a research center with a laboratory for cloning and studying DNA. In this part of Siberia, there are many mines and mines, in which prehistoric skeletons and other fossils are often found. In scientific circles, there is a great interest in deepening research in this area. There is even talk of the possibility of cloning mammoths. But what's especially interesting is that everything we know about building construction doesn't work here. For example, the buildings in this place are on ice. The depth of the ice can be up to many hundreds of meters, so there is no solid ground here. This is a permafrost zone, at a depth of up to two meters below the surface of the earth, the temperature here never rises above 0 ° C.
You have done some serious research
- All information came from my hairdresser. Her boyfriend's grandfather turned out to be the leading authority on permafrost. He wrote many books on this topic and visited Yakutsk several times. There are very unusual conditions for construction. It is not uncommon for buildings to slide and topple over. The reason is that any heat coming from the building itself can go to the foundation and melt the ice underneath.
What is the main idea of your project?
- There is no one dominant idea in the project. The site is very unusual. It is completely flat and suddenly a hill grows on it at an angle of 45 degrees. Our building is a direct response to such a strange landscape, and it responds with a very steep bend. Due to the permafrost, the building should touch the ground as little as possible. Therefore, we offered high supports, which cannot be called unusual in those places. As a result, the building looks like it is trying to stand on its hind legs. Traditional buildings in Yakutia are usually planted on wooden piles or on real trees. Even modern large buildings do not touch the ground and stand decorously on columns. When we lifted our building to its feet, the idea of an inverted image on the roof arose, since the interiors should have good lighting even with a large accumulation of snow. Therefore, our light wells resemble mammoth trunks. Due to such practical solutions and the unusualness of the site, the building looks a bit like an animal or a herd of animals. The transparent shell of the museum repeats self-generated geometric patterns in the layers of permafrost. The volume of the building is formed by a translucent double facade filled with aerogel, a very dense superinsulator.
What is the latest news from the museum and when will it be built?
- The last time we contacted was in November. Unfortunately, we cannot communicate directly, but only through intermediaries, i.e. an educational research organization at the UN; and the French agency La Paz. We have heard that changes are expected at the Sakha Ministry of Tourism and that the delay in construction is related to this, but we do not know much for sure.
This competition is not very transparent. Do you know who was on the jury?
- No, the only thing I know is that they were all Russian architects and local officials. At first I wanted to fly to Siberia and see everything with my own eyes. And to be convinced of the seriousness of the organizers' intentions, we asked them to pay for my trip. Since then, we have not heard anything from them.
In Russia there was little press about this project in comparison with the attention that was given to the competition in the world press
- I have no idea why. We constantly receive requests for information and illustrations for books and magazines from all over the world. Just today we received such a request from Italy. With such a request from Russia for all the time we have been contacted only once. I'd really like to know how we can move the project forward.
You told me that you have never been to Russia. However, can you say that Russian art or architecture has played a role in your education or professional practice?
- Quite obvious! I am very proud to have studied at the same school of architecture as El Lissitzky, at the Faculty of Architecture at the Higher Polytechnic School in Darmstadt, Germany. I studied the works of Lissitzky and Malevich. At home I have a couple of original anonymous Russian paintings from the 1920s. I am very interested in Russian constructivists. For many years I have known Bernard Chumi, whose passion for Russian constructivism was of great importance to me.
Do you have a favorite architect of that time?
- Melnikov. Of course, he really influenced me! But you know, I know nothing at all about contemporary Russian architects. Last year I saw an exposition of contemporary Russian artists at the Art Basel exhibition in Miami. For me it was much more interesting than exhibitions from other countries.
Tell us about your office and who works here
- We consider ourselves a small bureau, about 20 people. Most of them are very young architects. Some graduated from Columbia University, many young people from different countries. Some come for six months, but most stay for at least two years. This is a very horizontal office. You may come as an intern, but find yourself entrusted with the design of the project much to your surprise and shock. I try to run a working studio like a school. I teach at Cooper Union, Pratt Institute and Columbia University. I don't have any particular way of working - designing or teaching. I encourage students to come up with their own ideas.
“You were only in your very last year at Cooper Union, didn't you?
- It's a very funny story. I was in my final year at the University of Darmstadt when I took part with a fellow student in a major national competition for the new headquarters of a federal bank in Frankfurt. A giant project. We took second place with one hundred thousand marks. Together with other prize teams, we were invited to participate in the second stage of the competition. We decided to offer cooperation to some well-known architect who already had experience in building banks. Nobody came up to us in Germany. Then we flew to New York, there are so many banks! We met with various celebrities, but Tod Williams agreed to cooperate with us. It was incredible - we lived in Tod's office, on the top floor of the Carnegie Hall building, where his apartment is now. We went to crazy parties and worked on our project. Tod taught at Cooper Union, and one day he asked me: "Why don't you go to Cooper Union?", To which I replied that this is the best school in the world and they will never take me there. But he still persuaded me to submit the documents. Some time later, we learned that our project took third place, which was tantamount to losing. On the same day I received a letter from Cooper Union with the news of my admission! I started studying at Cooper, and after so many years, I'm still in New York.
At Cooper Union, you probably enrolled in the class of Peter Eisenman
- Yes, I enrolled in his class and we began to read Tafuri. My English was very bad and I said to myself - I can't read this, it's pointless. Then Peter asked one of my classmates, "Where is this German boy? Send him to me." I told Eisenman that I didn't understand a single word, and he answered me: "What does it matter? Do you think everyone else understands anything? Go back to class and just read." I said - OK, and after a couple of weeks he invited me to his office. We started working together. I stayed with him for ten years. When I came to his office, there were 3-5 people, and when I left, there were 35 of us, and I was the lead designer all these years.
Can you share any other experience at Cooper Union?
- I think John Hayduk had the greatest influence on me. I remember how very nervous I was when I first got there. I thought - oh my god, this school is for the elite, what am I doing here? In general, I started my studies. In America, the last course is called thesis - a dissertation. I had no idea what it was. In Germany, you are given a graduation project, but a dissertation means something completely different. In Cooper, that means your work has to be original and distinctive from start to finish - you have to invent your own program. It all started with a warm-up - with a task to draw a musical instrument. I went to a flea market in East Village and bought an accordion - I took it apart completely, sketched it, assembled it and took it back to the market for the same money. Then we had a discussion, and John Hayduk looked for a long time, and then he said: "What a wonderful city!" I was taken aback - this is an accordion, not a city. But he really liked him and I began to notice not what was really there, but what he saw in it. In Germany, architecture would never be taught in this way. They would say no, this is too thin, and this is too thick. In general, it dawned on me - I drew not an accordion, I drew architecture! Then, this very dissertation began. Heyduk came to class and said: "I give you three words: a fan, a mill, a bridge." I was dumbfounded again: a fan, a mill, a bridge. What the hell? And then I remembered the accordion exercise and realized that the main thing was not what was given to us, but what we saw in it. The main thing was the following - why am I here and why do I want to become an architect?
And what did you end up with - a city, a house …?
- Yes, nothing happened. An abstract architectural construction came out. She is still in my office.
Are your current projects influenced by Eisenman?
- Of course, but right after I left his office, I worked hard to be myself. It was important because I wanted to move on.
In her book "Diagrams", Eisenman writes: "Traditionally, architecture is concerned with external factors: political, social, aesthetic, cultural, environmental, etc. Rarely did she address her own problems, such as: rhetoric and disputes over form, internal plasticity and structure. spaces … Architecture can manifest itself in a realized building. " Do your own views coincide with this point of view?
- Yes, but at the same time, these are exactly the issues on which I wanted to distance myself from him. He likes architecture, which studies its own rhetoric, which is very important, and Peter is, in a sense, the person who invented architecture as a theoretical discipline. But there are so many different things in architecture! There is a site, a program, a customer, a policy. All this is very important and certainly affects the work. It seems to me that architects should respond to all of these traditional challenges, but their responses need not necessarily be traditionally expected. I thought that it made no sense for me to leave Peter and continue to do something parallel to what he does, like Greg Lynn continues to do. Now I'm more interested in how the building is used, it feels what it allows you to do inside.
Describe your architecture. What are you aiming for?
- Let's define what I am not striving for. I do not strive at any cost to be outlandish and not like everyone else. But I'm trying to define subtle, subtle and surprising moments in the perception of the environment in a somewhat unexpected presentation. I am very interested in how people will use my building. I am interested in irony and humor. The building I'm designing for Siberia does look a bit like an animal. It's not exactly what I was aiming for, but I don't mind what happened. I am also interested in doing projects that reveal or expose the qualities of human nature. For example, I designed several restaurants in New York where we used a lot of mirror tricks. You look in the mirror in the washroom, but on the other hand, this mirror is a transparent façade facing the sidewalk and your entire private world turned out onto the street. These projects are addressed to people with their weaknesses and prejudices. These projects create a new context - amazing and unusual. I like to experiment with some discomfort. Perhaps this comes from my personal experience of social discomfort, the experience of a Jew from Germany. Peter has a similar cultural background and this may be the reason for his peculiar architecture. In general, I try to create projects that would actually turn out to be something different from what they might seem at first glance.
What excites you the most in architecture?
- Create strong and powerful projects and, most importantly, implement them. However, much has changed in the architecture of recent years. When I first started my career, the concept of a strong project meant something geometrically complex, because many projects were too simple. Now everything is geometrically complex because of the role of computers. Therefore, the concept of a strong project has shifted. I'm not interested in how buildings look, but how they feel. Now, the main thing is not at all in the wild difficulties. From the moment of Bilbao it is already too simple and not interesting. The architecture is constantly changing.
