Critic: Guido Zuliani
At the Beginning
This essay keeps focusing on the discussion of the autonomy of architecture which I am interested in in western modern architecture. In the content, the autonomy of architecture becomes a clue to follow John Hejduk’s trajectory and understand his works in a specific angle. The essay begins with the brief introduction of the history of “autonomy” and “the autonomy of architecture”, then attempts to explore and interpret the meaning of autonomy in Hejduk’s works and figure out how Hejduk made his articulation by using the autonomy of architectural language. Due to my limits of the relevant context and knowledge, there should be some misunderstanding and uncomprehensive issues, as well as some biased summaries I make in this essay. What I try to do is to approach the reality of Hejduk’s work, as closely as I can.
“Autonomy” and architecture as a discipline
Basically, “autonomy” is a concept in political and moral philosophy, referring to subjecting oneself to objective moral laws. It is the capacity of a rational individual to make an informed, un-coerced decision. (Wikipedia’s definition of “autonomy”). This word indicates the characteristic of determining moral responsibility and accountability for one’s action, which is often used in the philosophical description of the exploration of modernity. In Kant’s philosophy, “autonomy” is the principle of the moral. In his Critique of Pure Reason, “reason” is the preoccupation of attaining “self knowledge”, insisting on an individual has the capacity of achieving justice by the categorical “self laws”, not the despotic decrees. From my point of view, the most important issue of “autonomy” from the 19th century is that it refers to the independence of series of issues such as ideology, human rights, and so on. The reason to approach “autonomy” is to capture “freedom”. “Autonomy” and “freedom” cannot be split in these discourses, which will be beneficial for us to understand the importance of the articulation of the autonomy in architecture field.
When “autonomy” comes to architecture, its meaning has been changed in the different eras and different articulations. However, its main essence which is related to “freedom” is never ignored. There are two seemingly ambivalent situations which together are led to “autonomy”: architecture as an independent discipline and the freedom of architecture.
The first one who situated the theme of the autonomy of architecture is Emil Kaufmann in the 1930s. He opened the discussion of the autonomy of architecture according to his analysis of the work of Enlightenment architect Claude Nicolas Ledoux. For Kaufmann, the manipulation in architecture done by Ledoux isolated the formal aspects in architecture, for instance, cubic masses, walls, roofs, and so on. This isolation and the dialogue among these formal elements represented a formal autonomy, meaning the form in architecture can be treated as an independent object to be discussed in this discipline. In the same era with Kaufmann, Heinrich Wolfflin, an architectural theorist, was more concerned about the disciplinary autonomy in architecture. He claimed that the Baroque style was subjected to the political propaganda at that time instead of responding to the esthetic of the rational forms. He also proclaimed the autonomy in Renaissance architecture as the architectural form was absolutely determined by the inner paradigm which was in the discipline of architecture. Albeit we all know that architectural form cannot be treated as a single, isolated event, and architecture has a very strong connection with social, cultural, economic, political aspects, the notion of the autonomy of architecture opens a discussion on what it means to view architecture as autonomous. Architecture is for architecture’s sake. In my opinion, through the autonomy of architecture, architects can set up the boundary of the architectural discipline, so as to better understand and develop architecture, meantime, see how far architecture can go as an independent entity.
(Figure1: Three of Ledoux Houses)
After Kaufmann, a number of architects keep exploring the autonomy of architecture, for instance, Manfredo Tafuri, Colin Rowe, Aldo Rossi and Peter Eissenman. In their specific contexts, the meanings of the autonomy of architecture depend on their own interpretations and evolve as their distinctive manifestoes in architecture.
(Figure2: Aldo Rossi's Analogue City and Peter Eissenman's cardboard house )
Nostalgia and American “identity”: American architects and John Hejduk in the 1960s
When the modernism architecture, accompanied with the notion of the architectural autonomy, came to North America, a problematic issue has been raised and emphasized, which is the identity of American modern architecture. It is the most important thing for American architects to deal with, causing their anxiety, especially after the Second World War.
In the text of the exhibition of New York Five written by Colin Rowe, he points out clearly the dilemma that American architects faced in 1970s: the modern architecture in America lost its roots and soil while in Europe it had an intensively strong connection with the social reality. It seemed that in America, there was no need to rise another revolution to put forwards the progress of “American modern architecture”. However, in the meantime, the zeitgeist of architecture was emphasized and architecture was regarded to respond to its specific era and location. “If modern architecture looked like this c. 1930 then it should not look like this today.” Rowe mentioned that they were in the presence of anachronism, nostalgia, and frivolity. In another text “European Graffiti” written by Taffuri, “a deep sense of nostalgia” is used to explain the situation in American culture. Tafuri indicates the New York Five stood between nostalgia and detachment. To some extent, they tried to make their projects with the tag of “American” and “work on the language” of architecture. They combined these two issues to generate a new way to manifest their architecture. The influence of this tendency has inevitably embodied in Hejduk’s works.
(Figure3: Five Architects)
Another reason that the American architects since the 1960s moved to focus on the autonomy of architecture is, as Anthony Vidler says, probably most of architects like John Hejduk who suffered from the Second World War, as well as the extremely rapid development of technology, felt horror at the impact of technology. They started to rethink about what architecture was and what architecture could bring to humans, believing technology should not dominate the world. When looking back at human’s history, the development of architecture doesn’t not have such strictly direct relationship with the development of technology as the modernism architecture, especially the international style. Architecture is bound to have something eternal beyond technology. Thus, what is that eternal spirit or principle, how architecture itself can display its own values in modern society? The post-modern architects and theorists chose to look back to the Renaissance, to ancient Roma. These architects tried to keep architecture independent of technology, exploring the eternal and inner principle itself. For Hejduk, he preferred to think about space made for body, made from body, instead of space made for machine. At this time, these architects introduced “autonomy” into the discourse of architectural theory and practice. Such kind of notation is necessary for us to better understand Hejduk and locate the position where John Hejduk stayed.
I have to say it is difficult to interpret Hejduk’s works in a very systematic way. We can trace his thought by analyzing his manuscripts and sketches.
According to Stan Allen’s opinion in nothing but architecture, “Hejduk’s refusal of theory is a refusal of theory understood outside of, or apart from, the operational space of its procedures. Hejduk's practice of theory gives up totalizing explanations as absurdities. It can only explain itself to itself (The speculative and the practical, held apart in both the modernist and the classical, are productively collapsed in Hejduk's work.” Here clearly, what Hejduk pursues in his work responds to the theme of the autonomy of architecture. In his work. There is no boundary between theory and practice. Architecture acting as theoretical texts articulates itself, instead of the ordinary letters in our language. Focusing on autonomy of architecture, I try to analyze Hejduk’s works in different periods from this specific angle.
From “Texas Houses” to “Wall Houses”: building up the autonomous language of architecture
What I understand is in order to achieve autonomy, the architects like Eissenman, and Hejduk had to invent a new kind of system to manipulate and articulate the autonomy of architecture. For them, architecture is not the result of the individual intentions of architects. Instead, it has to rely on an eternal principle which guides architects to design and construct. To search for that principle, they tried to decode and decipher classical architecture in ancient Greece and Rome or modern architecture in the early stage. Simultaneously, they generated their own coding system to explain the result of their research on that principle. There is no need to articulate the legitimacy of the system. The coding is only the externalization of the eternal principle. For Hejduk, from “Texas houses” to “Diamond houses”, to “Wall houses”, he tried to operate his own interpretation to modern architecture by manipulating and coding his architectural language.
(Figure4: the Cover of Seven Houses)
Compared with Eissenman’s interest in Renaissance architecture, Hejduk started with the research of the works in the early stage of modernism architecture, where Le Corbusier and Mies Van Der Rohe stayed. Probably influenced by Colin Rowe’s “the mathematic of the ideal villa” and “Transparency”, in the sequence of Texas Houses, Hejduk read Corbusier’s and Mies’s architecture as formal elements and objects in history, isolating them from other surrounding elements. Columns, walls, openings, slabs, stairs, roofs, these concrete elements in architecture were displaced and manipulated in the nine-grid system. The relationship of different elements and programs was emphasized and developed systematically from House 1 to House 7. Here I don’t want to explain each of the houses elaborately, just mentioning starting from Texas Houses, Hejduk attempted to build up the system of his own architectural language using the basic architectural elements which are regarded as the autonomous objects.
(Figure 5: John Hejduk Texas Houses: House 1-5)
For me, Diamond Houses is the most interesting project in Hejduk’s early works, while Texas Houses is more fundamental and Wall Houses is more about personally metaphysics thinking and narrative. In Diamond Houses, Hejduk achieved a transcendence from 2-D drawing representation to 3-D spatial representation, making the connection from Mondrian to Corbusier and Mies. “He constructs a diagram of history of architectural space, declaring the paradigmatic space of the present to be the compression onto a vertical two-dimensional surface of the space generated by the two legs of the right angles.” In this projects, the way of his representation, the way of the perception in space begin to construct the structure of the space itself. Time is compressed and dissolved when the diamond-plane or the square-isometric view is perceived. There is a moment that we can figure out when the formal manipulation and the perception of space take place, the viewer begins to be ambiguous and disappearing. Thus we start to think: what’s the position of the architect and the real viewer in this project? Do they stand outside the drawing and space? In my opinion, at this time, the architect and viewers like us are detached from the architecture, keep a distance from the architecture. The architecture becomes to be the viewer and operator of its own. The aura of architecture is captured by itself, and the autonomy of architecture is the result of this detachment. It seems that Hejduk sets up the basic principle of the manipulation and he leaves away letting the diamond house to develop by itself.
Wall houses is the end of these series of the architectural experiments. In Wall houses, Hejduk completes his system of the architectural language. If there is some moments occurring in Diamond houses that Hejduk displays his homage to the history of cubism and modernism architecture, then from Wall Houses, he sets free of his architecture and make his architecture become the articulation of its own. The architectural elements in Wall Houses reorganize themselves creating the new order and the event by their composition and juxtaposition.
“The event” to express as the result of the subject formation is emphasized in Wall Houses compared with Rossi’s system in the processes of the object. “It is all encompassing," he says of the Wall, "it's an expanding universe. It's emanating from a center; it's an explosive center." And you are not just looking at it: you are in it," he insists. "You become an element of an internal system of organisms.”
Starting from “Venice project”: the extension of the autonomy of architecture
Since the series of the projects “Masque”, Hejduk started to take architecture as his narrative language, compared with taking architectural elements as his articulating language. Hejduk mentioned that in the text of Thirteen Towers of Cannaregio in 1979 his architecture had moved from the architecture of optimism to the architecture of pessimism.
At this time, architecture is no longer acted as a result of manipulation, becoming the text of a language. In Hejduk’s architectural language system, architecture to an architect is as if text to a poet. Architecture transcends its own meaning to narrate. The meaning of the noumenon of architecture gets lost, while it is endowed to a new meaning because of the system of the language.
Many times Hejduk insisted on that someone should get into his project when they try to understand it like the Berlin Project, the new and poetic urban elements were inserted into the urban fabric. At this moment, his architecture gained the right and position equal to humans. His architecture got their souls when they made conversation with humans, archiving the autonomy of architecture.
If we accept such kind of the interpretation, it would be not difficult to understand the existence of the symbolic, uncanny, and mysterious architectural elements in Hejduk’s works, embodying the religion, the ritual ceremony, and the narrative. The meaning of his architecture is deconstructed and dissolved, reaching the place where Hejduk calls “the otherness of architecture”. It’s the exploration about art, literature and our world.。
I want to point out here is contrast with Eissenman’s pursuit for the nomenoun of architecture, Hejduk attempts to dissolve the boundary between subject and object. The completeness of the narrative in his project can be achieved through the interaction between the subjective architecture and the objective human, like his Venice project shows us. The interesting thing for me is finally Hejduk sets up his autonomous architectural language to touch the margin of architectural discipline.
Conclusion
In brief, what does architecture mean for Hejduk?
For me, in his early works, architecture is for architecture’s sake. In his later works, architecture is as the memory of human. For Hejduk, the autonomy of architecture is not the end of his whole-life exploration, the autonomy of spirit and human is the area he wants to approach and touch. I think in his lateness of his life, he almost was there. [end]
Bibliography
[1] Hays, K. Michael, editor. Hejduk's chronotope. New York: Princeton Architectural Press [for the] Canadian Centre for Architecture, 1996.
[2] Hays, K. Michael. Architecture’s Desire: Reading the Late Avant-garde. Cambridge MIT Press 2010.
[3] Anthony Vidler. Histories of the Immediate Present: Inventing Architectural Modernism. Cambridge MIT Press 2008.
[4] Hejduk, John; edited by Kim Shkapich. Mask of Medusa: works, 1947-1983. New York: Rizzoli, 1985.
[5] Hejduk, John. 7 houses: January 22 to February 16, 1980. New York, N.Y.: Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies, c1979.
[6] Rowe, Colin. Five Architects: Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press, 1975.
[7] Manfredo Tafuri. “European Graffiti.” Five x Five = Twenty-five, OPPOSITION 5, MIT Press, 1976
