INTRODUCTION

INTERVIEWS March – May, 2002

WORKSHOP June 22 and 23, 2002

EXHIBITION Sep 13 – Nov 3, 2002

PARTICIPANTS

DEUTSCH

Phase 1 – Studio Interviews In the course of the exhibition project Trespassing, interviews with interested architects will be conducted during Phase 1, although this does not imply a selection for potential participation in the exhibition. These interviews serve primarily to develop a more comprehensive view of the self-image, the architectural and socio-political approaches of producers in the realm of architecture. The questions will be sent to the respondents prior to the interviews if requested. The interviews will take place in the respective studios. With the consent of the interviewees, the interviews will be recorded, transcribed and used in subsequent working phases. Interviews with the Architects/Teams con: (Wien), C2S2 (Innsbruck), Ammar Eloueini (Paris), fasch/fuchs (Wien), FAT ltd. (London), Bureau des Mésarchitecture (Paris), Noncon:form (Wien), Offshore (Amsterdam), Ortlos (Graz), PPAG (Wien), PAUHOF (Wien), R & Sie (Paris), Schie 2.0 (Rotterdam), Softroom (London), SPLITTERWERK (Graz), Klaus Stattmann (Wien), Stiefel (Wien), The next ENTERprise (Wien), Wolfgang Tschapeller (Wien) Excerpts from the Trespassing Studio Interviews "... The idea for an open-source platform actually emerged when I was thinking about how I could publish my Ph.D. thesis. Besides the fact that I could or will publish a book, in the end, what's interesting is naturally to make the programmes, the empirical studies accessible. And what's more logical these days than doing that on the Internet? ..." (C2S2) "Yes, my scientific work, my Ph.D. at UIL in London is my most interesting work to me, personally. It is a long-term project, scheduled for a total of five years, where, on the one hand, I feel committed to a scientific tradition, so to speak, that is, a systems theory tradition, and on the other hand also to a development that is taking place in architecture at the moment. Where, after a long search, I see an opportunity for myself now, in a way, to combine all that, precisely because I now also have the means to, for one thing, use concepts of systems theory in architecture, and for another, to apply them with the aid of computer programmes." (C2S2) "Also, how to get from the project to the way it is constructed is very important. Because for me, the problem now with a lot of the work that is digitally done, is that it becomes to a certain degree a formal issue in a sense, and it just stays there, it doesn't go beyond this, and I think in terms of trying to ... trying to bridge from something that is done on the computer and see how you can construct it is a very interesting relationship." (Elouini) "What is interesting with lines is that this is the simplest geometry that you can ever use, but it is the most open to interpretation, and all this idea of the diagram is to leave it open to interpretation and not limit it from the beginning. Because as soon as you start to work with primitives, there is this sort of straightforward connection of reading a diagram as a form." (Elouini) "I think obviously one of the key things that kind of started to break this all open as an issue is the computer, the personal computer, because the machine that you have on your desk as an architect is the same machine that a graphic designer has on their desk or a video editor has on their desk, it's physically the same machine. And the software is pretty similar in all of these cases, and some of the times it's the same, and certainly the working methods used are very similar, of course people are going to have their little specialities, so their computers can be more set for doing this or that, but it's very common, so you have the opportunity to use all of these different bits of software and apply all of these techniques, that are actually applicable to a wide range of things." (Softroom) "... We learned in Holland that there were two phenomena. For one thing, there are completely new clients, clients who no longer know exactly what they want. The second thing was that because of these new clients, completely new projects emerged. 50% of the projects which we deal with have nothing to do with a classical description, a 'GOA' [Austrian fee scale for architects], or in Holland it's called an SR. So these are tasks that are really not defined from the beginning. Suddenly new techniques emerged with which you could actually communicate these projects of a different nature. We don't mean by this 'techniques' in the academic sense, as design methods, but really as in practice, that is, how the task is formulated together with the client." (Offshore) "... How do you deal with an image production, a representative production (that's us - we're just representative - we don't build like Kiesler - we don't sit in the house and build our house), how do we deal with that? That's exactly the difficult part. Can you be so far removed? On the one hand, we need them to communicate. On the other hand, we can manipulate them to such an extent that the effect will be completely different. That's why we hope that we will be able to get away from all representation. At the moment, there is a trend that many people don't want to look at images any more because you can't distinguish where all this 'fucking rendering' is coming from. We hope that we will see a revival of cultural and architectural production in which we can take part, where the product itself is up for discussion ... and we hope to move away from representations and return to designing operative things." (Offshore) "... The core consists of architects, whereas Ivan has a really close connection, he trained as a programmer. That's where we get the capacities to develop this digital platform. Then there's Martin Frühwirt, he's also an architect, but he has really strong links with design, meaning graphic design, and I'm an architect, I took the civil engineers exam, I'm the one with construction experience, really. So that's really the mix of capacities in our team." (Ortlos) "We're not working with levels, lines, permeations anymore, we're not interested in any of that anymore, we're no longer interested in ratios, either, nor in materials or how they are related, nor in floors, walls, ceilings. For us, what's important is that if you took a photograph of a room, and if you didn't light the room all that well, then on the photo, the room would look like a photograph of a picture, all flat, like these images that we just saw, because you can't really perceive the depth anymore if you cover it with a non-geometric pattern. It has an irritating effect, you can hardly recognise anything anymore, except for the pattern itself." (SPLITTERWERK) Q: "Towards the outside, though, what happens, an object is formed after all, isn't it? How do you deal with that?" A: "For three or four years now, our strategy has been to try to … invent objects that don't actually fit into their locations; where people will say, that doesn't fit there, it's not supposed to be like that, where you would probably also say, no, that's too large there, or that's completely inappropriate for the location. In the case of the 'Kunsthaus' [House of Art in Graz], for example ... we simply went strictly all the way to the limits of the building lines… so it really has no form, it just goes all the way to the limits in every way, and it claims the largest possible space for itself. We're also concerned with non-forms …" "… I never felt the need to make a house. I never drew one, it makes no sense to me, to make another house. (...) Now we are trying to make one house, which is totally different in idea than these 800,000. I hope that this will be the start for a different and more loose, more footloose housing, it's a sustainable way of dealing more loosely with ground." (Schie 2.0) "... What is a senseful addition to a post-modern rich society, as the Dutch society is? And I have really had very hard times solving this problem." (Schie 2.0) "... The architects leave their desks and venture into the city as workers, that was, in a way, the slogan. And what are we looking for, and the question there in the end was, how can we draw other kinds of experience from the spaces, also for ourselves, which go beyond these expertises and analyses written in our technical terms ... We are conditioned by our expert knowledge and in the end, we also want to liberate ourselves from it and search once again for an immediate experience of reality ..." (con:) "... We do believe that concepts have a power to allow things to be read differently, so that takes us to readability, and then we quite consciously didn't say, this is the kitchen, and that's for sleeping, meaning what can these niches do, but instead we tried, with the concept of a filling station, or with the concept of an aggregate, to just circumscribe various phenomena, which then allow for a programmatic range ..." (con:) "... In principle, we quite decisively took our personal needs as the point of departure, needs you have in a city, or how you want to move in a city, for instance, or how you want to use it - without knowing what was going to come of it. There was no programme, just the consciousness that anything of interest inspires, anything that communicates this desire to actively enter into things ..." (The next ENTERprise) "The user is always very important for our projects. And like I said at the very beginning, we take our own needs as a point of departure in the beginning and investigate our own action, in the end, that is something that you want to trigger in some form in the users by means of the spatial structures that you make." (The next ENTERprise) "Especially now, in a kind of this sort of idea that the machine is static, and a kind of early modernist comparison to ocean liners, and that the decoration should be removed, that decoration would be criminal. And that is in a sense to deny a large part of what architecture is about, which is about symbolic and important, communicative kinds of gestures. And we doubt if modernism itself is a decorative and an aesthetic supply, and it's not an integral to any function at all." (FAT) "The idea that architecture is information seems particularly relevant when we are not living in an industrial society. Here in Western Europe, and here especially in this country, where 80% of the economy has to do with ideas, is a service-industry. So it's an invisible thing. It's about communication, whether that's literal communication like TV or whether it's communication of financial markets. So we think that that, as a kind of context within which we are making architecture, is the key to it." (FAT) "…One of the biggest things really is looking at other areas, which might be very relevant to architects. And that has been for us things like fine art and sort of advertising, communication … And really for two reasons, we were interested in the space between what an architect is and what an artist is. Because of the way that artists redefine what it is to be an artist. And what it is that they make and how it works and what it communicates and all of those kinds of things. And we are also interested in this kind of economy of how art can communicate as opposed to architecture … So we are interested in the way that art can talk about all sorts of things which are very important to people's lives, which we think the majority of architecture completely ignores, fails to recognise as relevant and doesn't want to engage with at all …" (FAT) "… Form as such is unthinkable in architecture, to limit oneself to formal-aesthetic exploration would serve no purpose. If we take present-day problems seriously, we need inventions, we must strive to create new realities." (Pauhof) "… Monumentality in the sense of mental concentration is an essential category for us, because meanings can no longer be communicated by means of form and cultic symbols. There is a clear concept of density, with the inherent possibility of difference, without strictly defined hierarchies, without a centre. The state of suspense must be understood in a literal sense. The vanishing points are dissolving. We are seeking infinitude within that which is precisely defined." (Pauhof) "That's why there is a concept that is used really often, namely value-added budgets, which emerge in architecture, and I do believe that's where qualities can be found, although that does not exhaustively describe what the concept implies. But I do believe that architecture, whether good or bad, creates something like spaces of events, except that the question is how to make them accessible. And I think that the more architecture makes these possible, the more exciting it is." (Noncon:form) Q: "Enrichment through the context, through the political context in the case of this project, is that primarily a textual enrichment, or how is that reflected in projects?" A: "It led to giving greater sense of urgency to issues and approaches, and political attitudes or stances, which we have in any case and also bring up. ... We are - this may sound a bit trite - but we are in part a political project as architects. And one that reflects in a socio-economic sense. In the case of the 'Kunsthalle', one of the major points was to integrate reflections of perception for the users, and that kind of thing is always in part political: the fact that it has to do with politics, that it has to do with emancipation, that it has to do with self-determined and self-reflecting people, all that was simply made more urgent by the situation, so we talked even more about politics." (Stiefel) "... then that's settled, that architecture presents itself to me as a formal case of a constructed reality, which is dependent on the potential that various special cases of society contain through socialisation. So in Africa, I would end up with different results than in New Zealand, in England, in Germany, and that would also be the challenge, the cultural potential, as it were, where one, or where I can see the incentive in the fact that architecture can be reviewed as a cultural case, really, that's something I can work with." (Stattmann) "... Where there are many desires, and let me put it like this, the house as an extension of the potential desires that you experience as a recipient towards the object, there is no obliteration, but it actually rather serves the purpose of a hologram. Meaning a three-dimensional object which allows the most varied viewpoints, or levels of interpretation as well, to permeate at the same time." (Stattmann) "I can imagine nothing worse than ... a society which gives itself up to its average desires. Really, that kind of thing would lead to death by entropy, purely and simply, in terms of boringness ..." (Stattmann) "For the project itself, this honeycomb shape became a 'critical resort', a kind of filter which can determine and modulate a) the notions of the client, b) the given spatial programme, c) the conceived materials and d) the position of the object within the city. (...) The choice of the honeycomb shape, as a critical resort, so to speak, in project development, naturally moves the crosshairs from the user to the goods stored. The honeycomb is a form of organisation for goods, for the storage and stationary state of goods. It is certainly not a form of organisation for the movements of the user, the grids are not suited for the human shape and too narrow, and bent on top of it. The movements of the user are charted like anthill paths within the density of the goods." (Tschapeller) "In the course of a discussion, Stellarc once developed a scenario on the relationship of body and machine, I took notes ... 'with the progressing micro-minimisation of machines, the body is now a landscape within which machines can function ...' and now I want to use this approach in just that way ... that with increasing building development and increasing modulation of the surfaces, anything will become a building (or already has), and that any construction can only be a construction within built structures. The landscape as a topographical feature disappears, yet certain predicative traits of the landscape are preserved (e.g. erosions)." (Tschapeller) "…So we are in the 90s, in an ambiguous period. We all decide that we need to go forward on the digital architectures, because they are about virtual space, and can forget all engagement with reality and decide that architecture is dead, like Charles Jencks. Or we try to confront it with territorialisation or with … it's really difficult …" Q: "So what's your position within this dilemma?" A: "In between! … I don't know if it could be possible, we try to keep on the edge of the razor, but it is getting very dangerous at the edge of the razor. I got wounded myself. I hurt myself. Now, the second way, perhaps it is interesting, not [an] attitude, but interesting writing about genetics now. It has been developed by… perhaps you know Michel Houllebecq, the writer in France, like 'Elementary Particles' ['Atomised'], and at the same time Sloterdijk in Germany. And they introduce… they re-introduce… not the culpability, but the way to work on the genetic mutation." (R&Sie) List of questions What types of projects does your office work on? Which fields do your assignments comprise? (Housing, schools, cultural buildings, ...?) Which are the most frequent? Which fields do you find particularly interesting? How much time do you invest in architecture? Working hours per week? Office? "Sidelines"? Do you work in a team? Why? Advantages and disadvantages of teamwork? Are there specialists, assigned roles within the team? Which contents are emphasised, aside from the given programmatic parameters? Which parameters are at the centre of design work and exploration? To what extent does the design process follow an inherent problem-solving logic? Does a concept of trespassing exist with regard to the treatment of the projects? Standard client: How is the position of the client defined with regard to the subsequent architectural design? How do you work with a given programme? Standard user: How is the recipient, how are the users perceived? Are users thought of as a homogeneous group of standard subjects? Or as many different, distinct individuals? Or as groups, communities with partial identities? Do you discuss the marginalisation of groups or individuals which normally "happens"? What countermeasures do you take? How is trespassing understood? At which point in project development is trespassing addressed, readable in your work? Does this involve programmatic levels, or levels of language, of configuration, at which the concept of trespassing is consequently expressed? Politics of form: How topical does this "precept" of modernism remain? Does the paradigm of "politics of form" influence decisions on form and figure? Can form even be political? If so, how? Can form have an enlightening and emancipating effect, as believed by modernism? Can it dissolve power structures, obsolete or habitual structures through deconstruction, as believed by deconstructivism? What would new, contemporary strategies for politics of form look like? To what extent, for instance, is architecture a conceptual object or information medium if information is conveyed digitally? Can acts of trespassing in architecture make new scopes of action accessible to users? New patterns of action? New agents? Participation? Self-realisation? Personal space? Which experiential, empirical and verifying criteria are applied to realised space / built architecture? To what extent is the originally planned space understood as a configured space of experience? Is comprehension placed in the forefront, or non-planned utilisation? How does the design provide for chance, the unforeseeable, cultural or divergent readings etc.? How do you deal with the unforeseeable, if the perception and use of space is ultimately not determined by the designer? For further information and photographic material please contact:   Urte Schmitt-Ulms Secession, Association of Visual Artists Vienna Secession Friedrichstraße 12, 1010 Vienna Tel: +43-1-5875307-21, Fax: +43-1-5875307-34 presse@secession.at