Martin Rajniš is a Czech architect and urbanist, one of the founders of the Czech Chamber of Architects. A supporter of "natural architecture", he designs and builds a variety of wooden objects - from observation towers and art objects to kindergartens and bridges. His designs were shown at the Czech National Pavilion at the 12th Venice Biennale of Architecture in 2010, and in 2015 he joined the jury of the ARCHIWOOD Prize.
Martin Reinisch gave a published interview in 2014 in connection with his solo exhibition at the DOX gallery in Prague.
Martin Rainisch's exhibition at the VKHUTEMAS Gallery will run until July 1, 2015
* * *
Jan Ticha: Martin, the exhibition at the DOX Gallery presents the results of twelve years of work, twelve years of designing and building architecture in harmony with nature in the broadest sense of the word. You call it Natural Architecture. It was born gradually, since you returned from a trip around the world in 2001 and gave a lecture at Roxy, in which you formulated for the first time what you learned from this trip. You talked about how annoyed you are with modern Western architecture, how many interesting things you met with the so-called "primitive" people, and you began to fight for the architecture to change direction, slightly abstract from the achievements of civilization and become natural. If today, 13 years later, look back at all this, how do you see it? Which of the ideas you were talking about then came true?
Martin Rainisch: My decision to travel and try in my “third life” to orient myself a little better in the world, to learn something, was absolutely correct. And what I at the time in "Roxy" called professional suicide, turned into a healing and strengthening balm. My outrage at modern western, eastern and central architecture was strong. Some of the outrage that stemmed from my daily interactions with large investors has, of course, subsided since then. But my conviction that architecture is in crisis has not changed decisively. And this crisis even deepened. Architecture has ceased to be concerned with the main thing that it should do.
YAT: What should architecture do?
MR: Architecture should be an omnipotent friend, an omnipotent, all-encompassing foundation of human life. Architecture should be benevolent, livable, harmonious, understandable, readable, close to people. She should help people live well, happily, amicably. Architecture is the nest of our lives. And the moment we began to look at architecture as a technical system, as a functioning mechanism, we began to perceive people as repeating parts of some giant gear. The further, the more I am convinced that it was a total mistake, a failure. The era of modernity has slipped from under the feet of architecture. Architecture is a lovely, sweet, good-natured sloth. She moves slowly, because for a house to really take root in society, it must remain unchanged for at least ten generations. To make it clear how people live and die there, how a person falls in love and is disappointed there, how difficult and beautiful life is there, how this house looks in fog, in frost, how it adapts to the landscape, to society. And all this does not happen quickly, this is a matter that requires long-term joint work of generations.
YAT: But where can we find this balance, so as not to abandon modern advances that make our life easier?
MR: The only way is to go back to the roots and search. We are incredibly lucky to live in a huge, continuously lasting experiment that nature is putting on. She has been putting it on for 4 billion years, and every moment billions of cells, units of information, structures are participating in it. We are surrounded by an inexhaustible arsenal of amazing things. We carry one of the best in our heads. Those 130 grams of the human brain that thinks, and the remaining 1.3 kg that support this process, is probably the best thing that has been found in nature so far. This allows us to understand a number of things. I think it would be crazy to say that we are giving up on something. We will not give up the things that serve us, but at the same time we will not allow them to turn into our masters, which in any way suppress us, deform, upset us. After all, we are homo sapiens. How did we defeat the Cro-Magnons? Thanks to our love for art and our ability to communicate. Architecture does not function, architecture is a magical structure in which to live. Modern architecture is a sloth abandoned by everyone, whose legs have parted, the era has slipped out from under his feet, disappeared somewhere ahead, in a cloud of dust, and he does not know what to do.
YAT: Do you think that the way out of this crisis, out of this trap, into which the poor sloth fell, leads through a return to the roots, as you just said? Maybe this is rather the road ahead, where the sloth will find something new that he does not yet know?
MR: For me, the way back is not the way to historical architecture, and I am not going to return to anything like that. Such attempts have already been made, and they have led nowhere. I understand the way back as a way to quality, understanding, feeling things. Yes, we do not live in a primitive community, we live in a society. We do not make things that we need in everyday life, we entrust someone to make them, we buy them. At the same time, the most important architecture is the one that we perceive every day: living room, bedroom, terrace, kindergarten, school, beer hall. The pub is very important, especially in the Czech Republic. All of these things have been going through hard times over the past 180 years. As architects, we find ourselves in a terribly strange situation. It is our own fault that we have been pushed to the edge of society. We have made so many mistakes and so many stupid things that people do not trust us. If we do not want to just sit and complain resentfully, then it would be wise to try to look for ways and examples of how we can do otherwise. We are trying to do this. Often these are just a couple of first steps, these are not ready-made concepts, not something complicated. The most important thing is to try, whether it can be done for little money, or everything should be expensive and pretentious. And we are conducting such experiments.
YAT: An experiment, then? What is the place of experiment in architecture?
MR: Absolutely fundamental. I am not saying that this is purely an experiment. This is finding a way. The experiment is aimed at proving a certain hypothesis. We are trying to push the experiment somewhere further. We build a variety of houses. And at the same time, we are trying to bring in some things that are done infrequently, but they can be pleasant and interesting. For example, "transborder". This is a hybrid between a cable car and a bridge, the rigid structure of which is located at a high altitude so that the flood will not carry it away. And yet he's funny. This is one of many examples of where we want to go. Go the wooden lighthouse of Yara da Tsimrman, growing out of the concrete-stone wall. What is quite common in the Sahara, where houses are built from the very stones that lie nearby, and are a direct continuation of the landscape. When a house grows out of the landscape, it gives a person a pleasant feeling, it is logical, it is easy, this is the simplest thing that could be done in this place.
YAT: Over the centuries, architecture has separated itself from nature, and only in the era of modernity came a turning point. Today we have no need to somehow separate ourselves from nature, on the contrary, we are looking for it. When we want to relax, we look for it, because we just need it.
MR: Yes, we are descendants of people (now I'm talking about an era millions of years ago) who were happy in nature. Those people who were not happy in nature, who did not like the color green, did not like the blue sky, clouds, spotted giraffes and the like, and who were all saddened by all this, had fewer children than others, those who I liked it all. We are the descendants of those who liked nature. This is called biophilia, the love of life. We take materials from nature, but most importantly, we adopt certain principles, certain configurations that occur in it. And these principles penetrate into architecture more and more. While in 2001 it seemed like something suspicious, nowadays there are thousands of architects and other creative people who are returning to nature, returning to natural materials, to natural structures. I think that imperceptibly, but everywhere in the world, something is being born that is not a style, aesthetics, but a very diverse stream of things. It looks like a river delta. Initially, a wide channel is divided into many islets, rivulets, which diverge, merge and flow further, flow more slowly. Perhaps this is the method that will allow architecture to re-enter into friendly relations with people. Friendly architecture. Concepts such as comfort, clarity, harmony, the further, the more they are at the heart of what is happening in architecture. Each epoch bears in itself the remnants of the old, but at the same time the new is born in it. This is the content of this exhibition. This exhibition tells about the results of more than ten years of work of a small group of people who are trying to invent, live, win a different architecture, try to return to the wonderful work in the service of people. Of course, we still have a long way to go. What we are doing is a hint of how one might approach the composition of the overture. There are some student difficulties here, but sometimes these few notes of the overture combine and create a new melody. There are things that unite the incompatible, the Malian Dogon with Zen, clay modeling with construction from branches, things that have complex mathematics with things that are completely primitive. And at the same time, in the background, there is always a broad discussion about planning and non-planning. I am suspicious of plans, but I constantly draw them. I say to myself: how can you be suspicious of what is your daily bread? But a long life taught me to always bite the hand that feeds me.
YAT: Or are you your suspicion precisely because you have drawn so many plans in your life? Because you know how many pitfalls they have?
MR: Of course. I know that the plan destroys in the bud some of the things that bring life, those curved lines that cannot be created on a computer.
YAT: What if there is such a thing as the elephant ridge under construction here on the terrace at DOX? What does the project of such an object look like?
MR: Non-project project. David Kubik said: let's make an elephant ridge. And drew a sketch of the elephant ridge. And I drew a sketch of the elephant ridge. And we both perfectly understand that there will be a big difference between what we sketch here and what will stand on the terrace. Why? Curved branches cannot be used to create an accurate topology. Instead of a project tied to a specific topology, this is more of an instruction. We know what branches and bindings we need, we generally know what the density of connections will be, and we can mentally form the roundness of the elephant's back, and since Kubik is a sculptor and anarchist, the flexibility of things and the uncertainty of our path do not scare us. Hope it works out well. This is what I like about the Dogon and folk art. This is a balance between a certain measure of moderation, a rhythm of functionality, and at the same time there is a certain degree of disorder, randomness, chaos. Chaos makes things acceptable to us. If we meet thirty identical people, it will certainly make an unpleasant impression on us. Look "The Matrix", it very precisely expresses what the modern era leads to, Mr. Brown is, in other words, a walking high-rise building. There are hundreds of them, they are all the same, they are mechanical, this is not our world. Our world is diversity. I would compare this with the situation, as if non-verbal means, gestures, facial expressions, smacking lips, tone of voice disappeared in communication, then 80 percent of the meaning would have escaped us. Likewise, if we do a perfectly smooth, clean, aseptic architecture, the same thing will happen. This does not happen in nature and in folk architecture.
YAT: Now tell me how you resist that this doesn't happen in an architecture that has to be precise and planned. You are building not only elephant ridges, you are building completely different, serious houses that have received a building permit, and people live and work in them. What is the connection between houses that need to be precisely designed and elephant ridges?
MR: I try to do my best to ensure that our understanding of what is a legally erected building includes elephant ridges. Because a number of prescriptions a priori destroy some wonderful and necessary qualities. I would say that there is no difference between these things. Because (and now the most important thing I want to say) the seed of a tree carries information about this tree. It's like a tree project. But the project is the wrong term, rather, it is an instruction how a tree should live, how photosynthesis should proceed, this is not a literal plan. The seed does not encompass the project that the tree will have 8,721 leaves 21 mm apart, each leaf will have 67 teeth, including so many large, medium and small ones. Nothing like this. The tree has instructions on what leaves it should have, but each leaf is unique, just like our fingers, or ears, or eyes. Because they are made according to the instructions, not according to the scheme. That makes all the difference. The instruction is that someone knows how to do this, and at the same time, in some way, adapts this knowledge to the situation. There is room in it for a certain measure of irrationality. There are a lot of different approaches and ways. It cannot be said that any of them is a priori the only one and the best. There are reliable paths and there are very risky paths, but both are paths. So I, along with the others, set out to look for a way, how to caress, feed and not push all the time forward an affectionate sloth, thrown by everyone in the road dust. How to arrange a lot of places for this sloth by the road and say: sloth, here you just need to wave your claws once, and you will have something to chew on. There are more and more of these places, the sloth can profit from something tasty, he will be well-fed, affectionate and friendly. I only wish I could live to be three or four hundred years old and once say: yes, the twentieth century - that was fun! XXI century is nothing special, but XXII century is the best!
YAT: Let's go back to the very beginning: then in Roxy we talked about how to achieve the vision of architecture in 2030. Why did you choose this particular year?
MR: In a similar way as Orwell, who wrote 1984 in 1954 and presented life one generation ahead. This one generation is 30 years old. But it seemed to me somehow inconvenient to say "2031", and I rounded it a little, reduced the generation to 29 years.
YAT: Do you think that within the lifetime of one generation these changes will become noticeable?
MR: Most definitely. Now we are, say, 40 percent of the same generation. We have done something, we live with it, analyze it. The path does not lead in a straight line, it leads by turning. Some things were revealed to us only when we embodied them - not in technical details, they are obvious, but in relation to the meaning of how this house lives in the world. What waves he creates around him. How he got into the subconscious of people, and how people react to him. All this propelled us forward, we got to the next stop, but the summit is still very far away. It is too early to put on an oxygen mask.
