In the Museum of Architecture. AV Shchusev in Moscow opens the exhibition "Emilio Ambas: from architecture to nature." The vernissage will take place on April 6, at 18:00, within its framework, a lecture by the curator of the exhibition, Vladimir Belogolovsky, will take place.
– Why did you choose Emilio Ambas as the hero of your next exhibition? How are his works and ideas relevant in the late 2010s?
Vladimir Belogolovsky:
– It so happened that he chose me as a curator. We met ten years ago when I came to his studio in New York for an interview for Tatlin magazine. In general, this is my way of meeting all the leading architects - I do not interview for the sake of publications, this is a way of communication, I am just interested. As soon as I entered, he said: “We turn off the recorder and just talk. And no entries. " And after our conversation, he gave me a sheet of paper with "my" questions and his answers: "You can publish this." After a while, I brought him the publication. He looked at me and offered to dine together. When coffee was served, he asked directly: "How can I help you?" I offered to curate his exhibition, to which he said: "What is your second wish?" It was before my trip to Australia, and I asked him to introduce me to a person with whom I could create a kind of curatorial project. He put me in touch with Penelope Seidler, the widow of the prominent Australian architect Harry Seidler, who, when I was asked to do a small exhibition, retorted: "Why don't you organize a worldwide tour?" It should be noted that I first heard the name of Seidler from Ambas two weeks earlier and was the least likely candidate to oversee such a project in all of Australia, where even taxi drivers know the name. However, I agreed without the slightest hesitation. And a few years later, when my exhibition was shown in dozens of cities around the world, I received a message from Ambas: “You are having such a wonderful tour of Seidler. Would you like to do my tour? " This is how my first wish came true.
Ambas' works are timeless. They are the product of his richest imagination. These projects allow us to be transported into a kind of poetics of the idealized world of fairy tales, myths and rituals. Therefore, in this case, one can hardly speak of a certain relevance. In general, you need to be careful in pursuit of relevance in art, and architecture is art, isn't it? However, what unites all of Ambas' works is their connection with the landscape. There is not a single project that does not follow the following principle. Each of its objects is one hundred percent building and one hundred percent landscape. Each building returns to people at least the entire occupied territory in the form of a garden or park. This is the principled position of the architect. He considers it unethical not to try to improve the site inherited by the architect. Today, when in the professional environment they only talk about green architecture, what could be more relevant than discussing the projects of its progenitor? After all, he has been using greenery, plants, water and light in his architecture as the main building material since the mid-1970s.
If you listen to Ambas, he is also interested in the “metaphysical” component of architecture, its connection with archetypes and basic concepts of human life, and social - in the sense of the desire to make people's lives better, and purely pragmatic, including the ecological, resource-efficient line. But what ultimately dominates his work?
– You rightly noted that his architecture is precisely creativity, which cannot be said about most of the projects that you have characterized with such words as "ecological" and "resource efficient". Of course, metaphysics comes first for him. Well, imagine a young man who goes into architecture because he wants to create resource efficient buildings. This is absurd. I travel a lot around the world, and I tell you for sure that today architecture is simply sick. She is in deepest crisis. Do you know why? Because almost all ideas boil down to one thought - to the introduction of architecture into nature or nature into architecture. This is a very noble goal, but it is so dominant today that we stop thinking and try to create different architecture, and most importantly, personalized one.
You know, if 10-15 years ago I asked architects to define their work in separate words, then in response I never heard that these words would be the same for any two architects. There were many of them - complexity, clarity, ambiguity, deep structure, incompleteness, provocation, speed, weightlessness fight, and so on. Everyone had their own vision, and when in 2012 the curator of the Venice Biennale, David Chipperfield, not without reason asked the question - what is common ground? common denominator. However, after a few years it became obvious that it was then that architecture was at the peak of its creative takeoff. Her wings were cut off, and for at least two years now - after the 2016 Biennale, when Alejandro Aravena finally excommunicated architecture from art - we are engaged in pragmatics. And we like it so much that today almost all leading architects, answering the question I mentioned, repeat the same word in unison - nature. And where does your project begin - with an analysis of the site. All as a substitute. I am scampering all over the world in search of originality, but they answer me in Beijing, New York, Mexico City with the same words. When the same words are spoken in the language of different architects, it means that they refuse to think for themselves. Of course, there are exceptions, but there is also a tendency - to follow fashion and not irritate critics, who today determine whether this building is good or not - according to the table. The green project is excellent, the social project is very good, the sculptural and “iconic” project will no longer be praised for this.
That is why it is precisely today that Ambas' projects need to be shown. These are projects of a free-thinking creator. They express his complex inner world. Yes, there is a risk in these projects because they cannot be explained. You cannot teach students to dream about their projects as they come to Ambas. His experience is not transferable, just as the experience of many original architects, whose architecture does not obey a certain formula or methodology, is indescribable, as in the case of Rem Koolhaas or Bjarke Ingels. But when studying the creativity of such architects, the main understanding comes: architecture is not a search for answers, but a search for questions. Ambas architecture is one of the many ways to create architecture. And if the student is shown ten different paths, I assure you that he will come up with the eleventh. It is for this that such exhibitions are needed, among other things.
Does the Latin American, non-Anglo-Saxon experience play a role in Ambas's projects? I mean not only his homeland, but also the subsequent interest in Barragan and so on
– Certainly. His still very early, while at school, experience in the studio of the Argentine architect Amancio Williams is very indicative. Ambas considers him a true poet. And Luis Barragán is a separate story altogether. He just opened it. You know, the leading architects of Mexico told me that they only noticed Barragán after the 1976 exhibition at MoMA, which Ambas was supervising. Few people knew him at all, he was simply considered an eccentric. But by that time he was already an old man and managed to build almost everything. Ambas even talked Barragán into one of his latest projects, the Casa Gilardi house in Mexico City with its famous swimming pool, where the space literally dematerializes into blue, red, yellow and green tones. Ambas's idea was to present to the then architects, who at that time paid more attention to sociology issues than architecture as art, just such a sensual, I would say, magical architecture. It worked, and the exhibit broke attendance records and was then shown at many universities across America. Of course, the architecture of Barragán is different, but it can be described with the same words. It is poetic, fabulous, ritual, and it contains the same ingredients - water, fountains, plants and steps leading to the sky and the sun.
Emilio Ambas - a designer works sometimes as an engineer, with absolute insight into the technical side of the matter. Does this approach extend to architecture?
– I would highlight his gift as an inventor. He jokes that this very word would be enough for him on his grave. He cannot but invent, there are such people. And among the architects there are such. It is given to him. Each of his projects, be it a building, a ballpoint pen or a chair, is an invention. A person sits in an ordinary chair, and can sit like that for five minutes, well seven. In the most comfortable position, he quickly becomes uncomfortable. What does an ordinary person do? He changes his posture. What does an inventor do? It sets itself a challenge, and so in 1976 the world's first ergonomic Ambas chair, called the Vertebra, appears, which responds to your urge to lean forward or lean back. But the ingenuity of his buildings is not in manufacturability, but in the invention of new archetypes - a house-mask, a house-garden, a house-cave, a building-mountain, a building-greenhouse and so on.
And in conclusion, I will say that I would not at all want to be considered a specialist in Ambas architecture or in the same green architecture. You know, I was so passionate about green architecture on my recent trip to China that I was offered to teach there. When they began to discuss the topic, they gave me a course on green architecture. Now I will fight this phenomenon from the inside. So - I am, first of all, a curator. I find a topic that interests me and try to attract the interest of others. But it's not about a specific topic. Any exhibition is not the end, but the beginning. A successful exhibition is not the one to which the most people came, but the one to which one person came with a proposal to make a new project. Well, if someone once says to me: “You know, 20 years ago my mother brought me to your exhibition, and now I became an architect” - well, it will be very touching.
