This last weekend, I attended two lectures on architecture at the Rachofsky House. The house was between exhibitions, with no art installed inside; so the house itself was the "star."
The first lecture, by Director Allan Schwartzman, was on how architects for art institutions sometimes seem to be trying, perhaps unconsciously, to upstage the art. The second lecture was by Thomas Phifer, who designed the Rachofsky House while with Richard Meier's group, concerning the house and some projects he's worked on since. (Unfortunately, I had to miss Charissa Terranova's talk on "The Utopian Drives of Conceptual Architecture: Avant-Garde Architecture in the 1960s and Architectural Theory.")
I enjoyed the talks I saw very much. Schwartzman discussed various aspects of the house and collecting for it, such as the fact that there are no large interior walls for larger art works with views from an adequate distance that aren't impinged upon by various disjunctions, pillars, ceilings, railings, etc., and he also discussed other art institutional buildings that "don't want" art.
There's no shortage of large walls outside, however.
Once you get past the initial wall that greets you as you pull into the driveway, you're confronted with the nearly-solid wall of the front of the house. Phifer compared it to the facade of a Venetian palace and made reference to a separation between public and private space. I'll grant that; it's also shaped like an elongated ping-pong paddle, with rather few, relatively small chinks. It does not invite me in – indeed, without a greeter, one might have trouble finding the door. Rather, it bounces me back across an unusually large, flat, green lawn, divided into quadrants by Robert Irwin's brilliant land art installation. (No one mentioned the resemblance of the property to a game of table tennis.)
In back of the house, another prominent wall abuts a long staircase from the second floor to the back yard garden. If you're on the staircase, the wall segregates you from both the garden and the largest gathering space within the house, grouping you instead with not much besides the tallest hedge I've ever seen (another wall).
I understand Mr. Rachofsky originally planned to reside in the house even while it also served as a public building; the concern Phifer mentioned to separate public and private spaces may well have given rise to these walls.
One part of the house that feels surprisingly welcoming for both art and people is the glass-encased, north-side landing half-way between the first and second floor. Interestingly, although the visual chosen for the Rachofsky House info page on the house itself shows the ping-pong table view, the visual for the House as an art institution foregrounds this northern landing (here).
UPDATE: Additional details and thoughts about these talks are set out in the comments to this post.
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I was not able to attend Phifer's lecture this past Saturday, however can you post some more detail regarding his references, influences, etc and how it affected the design of the Rachofsky House?
ReplyDeleteFor example, there is a single cruciform column in the living room assisting the support of the loft space above....does he mention it as a reference to Mies van der Rohe?
Any other interesting tidbits about his talk?
He did say columns were used to support upper levels, rather than load-bearing walls; I'm not sure whether he actually mentioned Mies van der Rohe. He did not discuss particular columns, except that someone asked about one on the first level -- I'm not sure which one -- and he couldn't recall any structural purpose for it.
ReplyDeleteHis discussion of influences was not detailed. He mentioned that he'd been more strongly influenced by Le Corbusier at the time he designed the Rachofsky House than he is now.
He referred more than once to Venetian palazzi, particularly with respect to the facade and the division between public and private spaces. He also showed a diagram of a palazza showing how staircases were staggered, so that you have to traverse each floor in order to get to the next one.
He probably spent half or more of his time discussing his newer projects.
I believe there is at least a possibility that someone at the Rachofsky House may have recorded the lecture, so you might want to contact them.
Being an architect who crosses over into pure art I went to Allan Schwartzman's lecture "Collecting Art for Architecture that Doesn't Want It". I went expecting to learn a little more about buying and installing art with an eye toward difficult spaces. For an architect the first half of the lecture was a bit like being intellectually ambushed in a dark alley. It was all fun and games holding up the most egregious examples of bad museum architecture and basically bashing the entire profession as being full of out of touch egotistical asses bent on throwing client money at bad design solutions. It addition, according to Mr. Schwartzman, architects seem to know zero about art.
ReplyDeleteA half dozen or so bad examples of museum architecture do not in any way define the entire state of designing thousands of buildings/spaces for housing art in the US. It would have been more intellectually honest if Mr Schwartzman had provided good examples as counterpoint without being asked. But he did'nt. Mr. Schwartzman...knowing enough about architeture to be dangerous...chose to agrandize himself at the expense of architects.
DFW Architect
I hear and think I understand your concerns.
ReplyDeleteTo be fair, however, the title of Schwarzman's talk warned us that it would NOT be about architecture that does want art.
A couple of further thoughts.
ReplyDeleteRe- the dominance of walls, there are, of course, plenty of windows, too; possibly certain walls were magnified in order to counterbalance the expanses of glass?
Also, Phifer said something to suggest a spiral flow to the house. Among other things, if I recall correctly, if one were looking down on the house from above, the staircases near the front side of the house spiral counter-clockwise and the flow of the stairs near the Western, back side of the house spiral more or less clockwise. In any case, it occurred to me that part of the brilliance of Irwin's piece in the front yard as a response to the house is that that piece also has a spiral flow (clockwise).
I happen to be watching a video of a Lawrence Weschler lecture presented by Chinati Foundation on Sept. 8, 2009, speaking on Robert Irwin and David Hockney. Weschler mentions that Irwin designed Dia Beacon and cites an [unnamed] architecture critic at The New York Times as having written that, while there are renowned museums designed by Gehry (Bilbao) and Meier (the Getty), the most successful building as a museum did not have any architect. Irwin of course did not design the old factory but spent 2 or 3 years tweaking it by doing such things as, e.g., partially frosting the large windows so they would continue to let lots of light in but distract less from the art.
ReplyDeleteThe video of the lecture (which is not primarily about architecture) can be seen at http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/2128678 .