In the XX century, the alienation of man from "naturalness", from himself and his labor was sharply felt. The reason for this was the technicalization, functionalization and specialization of all areas of human activity. Disappointment in progress triggers a reaction that indicates a number of errors, inconsistencies in the previous cultural paradigm. Post-war art, acting as an instrument of reaction, directs its gaze to the structures of human perception, the problem of the unconscious, the split nature of the subject, dematerialization, the act of speaking - that is, to the unsolved problems that caused alienation. However, in architecture, these themes were present fragmentarily, and only Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron (Basel bureau Herzog & de Meuron, HdM) were able to bring them into the spotlight.
Not only the problems of interest to the authors, but also the HdM design tools come from the world of art. They interpret the thoughts of artists and photographers, constantly interact with the art scene, and carry out joint projects. It should also be noted that many of their clients come from the "art sphere", for example, collectors turn to these architects to design buildings for museums and exhibition complexes. “HdM often number their projects like Paul Klee or Gerhard Richter. Some of their buildings have names: Blue house, Stone house, Residential house along the wall, etc.”. In 1979-1986, when the bureau had few orders, Jacques Herzog made a successful career as an artist. This and much more brings their work closer to contemporary art, allows them to draw parallels and trace mutual influence.
Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron were born in Basel, Switzerland in 1950. Together they graduated from the Zurich Polytechnic Institute (ETH Zürich) and worked for Aldo Rossi, who influenced them greatly. Established their own workshop known as Herzog & de Meuron Architekten, teaching and building all over the world. Architects live in the same place where they were born - in Basel. The origins of their special approach to architecture can be found already here, based on the archeology of the place. Rem Koolhaas calls Basel an "intermediate" city: it is an international center for the chemical and pharmaceutical industry, which could well become a source of interest of architects to the problems of changing and alienating the urban environment.
Many of their early projects had an industrial or even warehouse function. The renovation of one of them, London's Bankside Power Station, into the Tate Modern, brought the architects well-known and the Pritzker Prize. The focus on industrial sites stems from an industrially oriented economic formation within which architects are forced to design. The architecture itself becomes a complex technical product, requiring knowledge of "how to make it." In this process, alienation manifests itself, since knowledge is not craft, but industrial. In the space where "machines produce machines", man is deprived of any kind of producing function, and therefore alienated. “Most modern public buildings are oversized and give the impression of emptiness (not space): robots or people who are there themselves look like virtual objects, as if there is no need for their presence. Functionality of uselessness, functionality of unnecessary space”[ii].
This is how the turn towards sensory and sensory architecture comes about, the need for which HdM speaks of. In their opinion, architecture should not be subjected to rational analysis, it should influence a person through his feelings, through smells and atmosphere, should overcome alienation. The smell that architects refer to, “the smell before personal history,” creates a stream of spatial sensations and memories. This is the position we come across in the work of the artist Joseph Beuys, with whom architects were strongly influenced. The return to nature was important for Beuys, so he resorted to the theme of animals and their voices in his performances, which frees him from any semantics and allows him to turn to the “sculptural” or phenomenological quality of language. Boyce's work is often associated with a personal experience of material and smell. For art objects, the artist used materials such as ghee, felt, felt and honey, devoid of a stable form and outlines. He embodies his memories of the moment of collision with nature and "natural" materials in the myth of the Tatars. The artist claimed that during World War II his plane was shot down and the young pilot was doomed to die. But the local residents - the Tatars - saved him, smeared it with grease and wrapped it in felt. “The nomadic people, with the help of the forces of nature, not only heals the warrior from wounds, but also transfers fat and felt to him as homeopathic materials of human warmth” [iii]. These unattractive, strong-smelling materials were the beginning of a dialogue about the meaning of material and smell. In these works, a sense of the dead-end alienation of modern man from nature and attempts to enter it at the magical-“shamanic” level, to return to the bosom of nature, to heal “the wound inflicted on man by knowledge” [iv].
The parallels between the work of Joseph Beuys and HdM are clear. Both the artist and the architects turn to materials outside of symbolic meaning, use their phenomenological characteristics - “copper as an energy conductor, felt and fat for storing heat, gelatin as a buffer zone” [v]. These materials match copper, roofing felt, plywood, gold or copper sheets - anything HdM has used. Such a repertoire, according to Beuys, allows one to reach the “pre-cultural” foundations of materials, to enable a person to overcome alienation from nature.
An example of Beuys' influence on HdM architecture is the Schaulager Museum in Basel. The building resembles a bale of thick felt - one of the artist's works [vi]. The walls of the museum give a unique impression of softness. They were originally conceived as compacted soil with an adhesive bond, but for technical reasons this solution gave way to “a kind of concrete mixed with local gravel” [vii]. The functionally determined pentagonal shape of the main exhibition building is as if "extruded" from the ground. The entrance is organized through a small "gatehouse", separated from the main building, made of the same material. The building seems to be very harmonious and natural in a quiet location, far from the city center, among private residential buildings. Like many buildings by architects, the museum does not have an expressive volume or facades, but rather corresponds to the "theory of sculpture" by Beuys. According to her, no predetermined form exists, there are only guiding forces that help architecture come into being. The museum is created by the material of the walls and the very organization of space, structure, a kind of "way" of the building's existence.
Beuys in his works refers to copper as an energy conductor. In his opinion, she is able to establish the lost connection between nature and man. In their industrial masterpiece, the Signal Box at Basel Train Station, HdM uses this material. The building is wrapped in copper strips 20 centimeters wide. In the area of window openings, they unfold slightly, letting in light inside. Thanks to this solution, the building acts as a "Faraday cage", that is, it protects electronic equipment from external influences, including lightning strikes. This project reveals HdM's attitude to architecture as an invention, a technical product. Copper winding is not just an artistic device, but a functionally determined solution that symbolically establishes a connection between a person and natural energy.
Another artist whose influence is mentioned by the architects themselves should be named: this is Robert Smithson, one of the founders of land art. Getting in touch with his work also brought many ideas to HdM. Most interesting to explore is a series of Smithsonian objects under the general title of non-sites, in which stones and earth collected by the artist were exhibited in the gallery as sculptures, often in combination with glass and mirrors. "No-places" refer to places that are located outside the museum, to the "prehuman" history and memory of the landscape. The artist in his works shows the interaction of pure minimalist aesthetics with the natural landscape, or rather, the way in which the landscape absorbs culture.
The architects refer to Smithson when describing the Stone House in Tavoli (Italy). The structure of the house is a concrete frame filled with fine gravel. The rigid framework, like the minimalist boxes and Smithsonian mirrors, forms a “no-place” that allows unformed stones to form, to denote unstructured nature.
This is the kind of thinking we see at the Dominus Winery in California for the HdM project. The winery is located in a unique location in the Napa Valley, which is famous for its beautiful views and fertile land. The extreme climatic conditions of California - very hot during the day, very cold at night - dictated the choice of wall material and the way it was used. In front of the facades of the building, the architects placed gabions with basalt, which has a high thermal efficiency: it absorbs heat during the day and releases it at night, thus, air conditioning functions, allowing you to maintain the required temperature for making and storing wine. Gabions were filled with basalt with different densities: some parts of the walls are impenetrable, while others let in sunlight during the day, and at night artificial light seeps out through them. This method is more like creating a "functional ornament" [viii] than a classic masonry. Of course, HdM did not invent the stone wall. But the stone is left with "freedom of choice," as if it were lying on the ground. The wall organizes the organic chaos of the stone's existence. This is how the land itself looks, tamed, like the American coyote Boyes [ix].
The ideal rectangular geometry of the winery contrasts with the landscape. The human presence, according to the architects, should be invisible, the plant should not stand out in the environment, but should not mix with it: "… almost invisible, absorbed by the soil and the surrounding hills, but still existing" [x]. The design of the factory invariably contains Smithsonian themes - ruin and human footprints. The president of the company, which owns the winery "Dominus", Christian Moueix (Christian Moueix) gives the plant a monumental definition: "… as a mastaba of a great nobleman, buried among his army" [xi]. The building becomes a ruin because it was designed already absorbed by nature. Human footprints exist here as a force structuring basalt gabions into a strict rectangular silhouette of the building.
In 2012, the architects' work on the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion in London brings them back to the theme of historical traces and alienation from naturalness. According to HdM, the structure of the building is formed by the foundations of previous famous pavilions designed and built here. From above, it looks like a land-art object, like a park pond, but its outline is shifted slightly to the side, revealing the "archaeological excavations" of the former foundations. The HdM pavilion does not manifest architecture in terms of form and construction, but makes one reflect on the history of the place, on the meaning of traces and memory, and on culture in general. This project is a conceptual statement that allows you to take a fresh look at the role of architecture in the historical existence of man. Symbolic reconstruction of foundations is the only possible way to represent a culture that is continuously absorbed by natural processes. The pond in the park hides the traces of history, while revealing the pathos of the relationship between the natural and the artificial.
The opposition between nature and man is resolved by HdM through the concept of “reality of architecture”. This is how Herzog defines the topological place of "reality" in materials. Thanks to them, architecture becomes real, implemented as such. But materials in their natural state are not able to say, "… they find their highest manifestation […] as soon as they are removed from their natural context" [xii]. The discrepancy between the natural state of the material and the acquired new function is an action carried out by man, culture, technology. In fact, this is the character, signature, Wirklichkeit, or reality.
HdM experiments are not intended to create a whimsical volume, they are a search for an answer to the question of what form is, an attempt to show how its reality is realized. Interesting is one of the early projects of HdM, 1979 - a house for a small family in Oberville. The building barely stands out from its surroundings with its minimalist aesthetics. However, a distinctive feature is that this house is painted in Yves Klein's trademark blue. The artist was the first to notice that color works as a naming, assignment, signature, has an independent meaning: “For color! Against the line and the pattern!”[Xiii]. Antique Venus, painted by the artist in blue color, becomes designated, appropriated. Klein's ultimate dream was "… The sky that he once wanted to sign by making a work of art" [xiv]. The blue house in Oberville is not just blue, it is in the context of signifiers, where color pulls a number of meanings with it, transforming the meaning of an artistic expression.
This radical change in spatial logic was also reflected in another HdM project. The Blue Museum, or the Barcelona Educational Forum (Museu Blau, Edifici Forum) was built specifically for the Forum of Cultures. Today, it hosts major congresses, exhibitions and many other social events. The forum is a triangular plate suspended above ground level with sides of 180 meters and a thickness of 25 meters. The building, supported by 17 supports, seems to float in the air, forming a covered public space at street level, illuminated by holes cut in the plate. The main area of the forum is an auditorium for 3200 people, located in the underground level. On the roof there are shallow pools with water used to cool the building. Facades painted in blue have a porous surface, reminiscent of Yves Klein's sponges. The alternation of a dense spongy surface with large mirrors allows the building to vibrate, it begins to be perceived fragmentarily. “The strength of their work emerges from the tensions attuned between disappearance and matter, illusion and reality, smoothness and roughness” [xv]. The building seeks to dematerialize, to turn its existence into a game of appearance and disappearance.
Dematerialization is an important motive in the work of Yves Klein [xvi]. He rejected the materiality of art and architecture, recognizing only action, performance. For the artist, the actual act of utterance was important, the process as a result of which a work of art appears. For HdM, it is also important to invent not a form, but a tool or a principle, a certain algorithm for the existence of an architecture. “The structure doesn't make a house, it just allows the stones to be piled into the walls. To place such a strong emphasis on the conceptual origin of a structure is to refer to something outside this particular building, something that resembles the very act of building itself”[xvii].
The act of utterance in architecture is not intended to acquire a definite, concrete form. The building, according to HdM, is in constant formation: design, construction, actualization, transformation, destruction. Architecture always works in the way least expected of it. Here, rather, an unintended action is possible: the action has been carried out, but has no intention. In an interview, Jacques Herzog said: “We do not always know what we are doing” [xviii].
One of the ways to interact with this unpredictable field of being architecture is through exhibitions, which play a central role in the work of HdM. Architects perceive them as an independent genre and include them in the chronology of their works as stand-alone projects. These are tests for subsequent projects, approbation of new procedures that are then applied in buildings. In them, architects focus on direct contact between the interested public and specific objects. The reaction of the audience helps further in the design: “It is clear that these exhibitions inevitably reveal weak points. And it is possible that these weaknesses already exist in real architecture and are only revealed more clearly in the exhibition mounted by the architects themselves”[xix].
HDM understands that the architecture itself cannot be exposed as it exists in a different topological space. Exhibitions are a new type of architecture consumption, they are part of the "architectural landscape" taken out into the museum space, and are independent works of art. Exhibitions allow you to look into the history of the creation of architecture, to see an object as an extended action. For HdM, it is not so much the form that is important as the process of its creation, the act of utterance. This stance aims at the gesture of architecture, the ways in which it becomes "made." Architects see the reasons for the emergence of architecture, the reasons for existence outside of it.
HdM refers to the act of construction, exhibitions, the algorithm of the origin of the material, they are extremely attentive to the "structure" of architecture. They believe that all the strength and power of architecture lies in the direct and unconscious impact on the beholder. One of the central problems for them was overcoming the alienation of man from his environment, in which they turned out to be close to contemporary art. In their opinion, architectural work should be closely intertwined with artistic practice, with the artists themselves, with their ideas about the post-war postmodern space. HdM's creativity allows us to talk about the complex interaction between architecture and art, about their intersecting themes in a single field of public speech.
Herzog P., Herzog J., de Meuron P., Ursprung P. Herzog & de Meuron: Natural History - Lars Muller Publishers 2005. P.13
[ii] Jean Baudrillard. Architektur: Wahrheitoder Radikalitat Literaturverlag Droschl Graz-Wien Erstausgabe, 1999. P.32
[iii] Joseph Beuys. Call for an alternative. ed. O. Bloome. - M.: Printing House News, 2012. P.18
[iv] Ibid. Page 27
[v] Herzog P., Herzog J., de Meuron P., Ursprung P. Herzog & de Meuron: Natural History - Lars Muller Publishers 2005. P.19
[vi] Joseph Beuys: Fond sculptures, Codices Madrid drawings (1974), and 7000 Oaks, a permanent installation furthering Beuys' Documenta 7 project. 1987
[vii] Herzog P., Herzog J., de Meuron P., Ursprung P. Herzog & de Meuron: Natural History - Lars Muller Publishers 2005. P.193
[viii] See: Moussavi F. The Function Of Ornament. Actar, 2006.
[ix] Joseph Beuys. Performance: "Coyote: I love America and America loves me." New York. 1974
[x] Herzog P., Herzog J., de Meuron P., Ursprung P. Herzog & de Meuron: Natural History - Lars Muller Publishers 2005. P.139
[xi] Ibid. P.140
[xii] Ibid. P.54
[xiii] The motto of the exhibition is "Yves, Propositions Monochromes" at the Galerie Colette Allendy in Paris. 1956
[xiv] Yves Klein. Assignment of the sky // livejournal.com URL: https://0valia.livejournal.com/4177.html (date accessed: 26.08.2014).
[xv] Herzog P., Herzog J., de Meuron P., Ursprung P. Herzog & de Meuron: Natural History - Lars Muller Publishers 2005. P.8
[xvi] See: Carson J. Dematerialism: The Non-Dialectics of Yves Klein // Air Architecture. P.116
[xvii] Herzog P., Herzog J., de Meuron P., Ursprung P. Herzog & de Meuron: Natural History - Lars Muller Publishers 2005. P.48
[xviii] Inquietud material en Herzog & de Meuron // YouTube URL: https://www.youtube.com/embed/NphY8OhLgRk (date accessed: 26.08.2014).
[xix] Herzog P., Herzog J., de Meuron P., Ursprung P. Herzog & de Meuron: Natural History - Lars Muller Publishers 2005. P.26
Marat Nevlyutov - architect, postgraduate student, researcher of the department of problems of the theory of architecture of the Research Institute of Theory and History of Architecture and Urban Planning of the Russian Academy of Architecture and Construction Sciences (NIITIAG RAASN), student of the Strelka Institute of Media, Architecture and Design
