What's the manifesto for a downturn? Art + Necessity
Philosophy in Jest?
Architect Shohei Shigematsu once joked that he was "doomed to live with the downturn." He was making light of hitting many of his life's significant milestones at times of global economic distress. In a less individualized way, we're all doomed to live with a downturn. The pandemic can make a person worry the entire human race is doomed. On a personal level, any of us nodding acquaintances with our own mortality is familiar with the downturn. And then there's the whole shebang, the whole enchilada: our world's ecological catastrophe.
Why does architecture make me think about mortality in a way most arts don't? Does building in this day require optimism, resignation, blindness, pragmatism? Are we like bees with their hives and termites with their mounds, who can't help but build? Or is it the same as the artistic drive to paint, even when the resulting painting will never be seen in public? What kind of necessity is that? Is the creative urge such a vital force for human beings that we can't help but be driven towards it?
But here's a distinction: buildings are usually visible and used by humanity. They're a basic building block (ha) of society; we have the physical necessity of architecture. We also have future problems whose solution comes in the fantasies and explorations of the present. Creativity must churn in the minds of billions, just in case. Those gears must always spin, even when they aren't being plugged into a practical problem.
And yet so much of architecture is hideous, bland, and kills all whimsy and life. I'm thinking of many main drags through American towns where vinyl siding, low buildings, and paved lots dominate. A tree or a garden is a sad vagrant in most of these contexts, as is any creative imagination. (Post Road in Rhode Island, I'm looking at you.)
How did mommy creativity and daddy pragmatism become so divorced?
Shohei Shigematsu clearly wants mommy and daddy to stay romantically entwined. Happily or otherwise.
Have you seen the CCTV HQ in Beijing? I forgive you if you roll your eyes. After all, I had certainly never seen images of this building before looking up Shohei Shigematsu. It's an Escher-like building, like a Titan's angular tripod, except a leg fell off. "Domineering" doesn't begin to cover it, nor does "foreboding." It feels very self-aware to me. The War of the Worlds meets 1984, a looming and peeping Tom. Was this his intention?
Basic biographical facts:
Shigematsu has nested around the planet. He was born in Fukuoka in 1973, and studied architecture in Kyushu and Amsterdam.
He joined the Dutch Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) in 1998, a wee whippersnapper at the age of 25. OMA is now famous and was already getting long in the tooth when Shigematsu joined. Early leaders of OMA, Rem Koolhaas and Bruce Mau were the producers of the indispensable architectural touchstone book: S, M, L, XL.
Shigematsu became an associate of OMA Rotterdam, then director, and became a partner at the OMA NY office. With OMA NY, Shigematsu leads the design team for the CCTV HQ in Beijing, Millstein Hall at Cornell, Prada Epicenter, the Shunjun stock exchange, and Faena Shopping Center in Miami Beach. He has worked with artists such as Marina Obromavich and Kanye West.
Questions for an architect:
And here are my questions to Shigematsu, if I could ask them ;)
- Do you think having many national anchors changes how you view location?
- What's your fundamental question?
- You joked that you were "doomed to live with the downturn." Do you genuinely feel this way?
- Is there a manifesto for the pandemic?
- How do you feel about the term "starchitecture"?
- No building is an island: how did you learn to work with local authorities and planning commissions?
- What is your feeling about contextualism?
- What about earthworks (Robert Smithson and Robert Irwin, also Nancy Holt) vs. contextualism (Frank Lloyd Wright is the most obvious example)?
- What do you think is the architect's role in the era of catastrophic climate change?
- What would you say is the principal difference in creative output between your leadership and that of Rem Koolhaas?
- Do you feel that NEW work needs to feel new? That it needs to be iconic?
- You seem to like glass, concrete, and steel. How do you feel about older traditional materials, such as brick, adobe, wood, and even wattle and daub?
- From your list of forms/roles a building could take, I see: "Autonomous, competitive, seamless, subservient." Are there other terms you would add to the list?
- Public access was valuable to you at the CCTV HQ. Is that an element you always try to include?
- Does the structure of the CCTV HQ seem foreboding to you? It feels very self-aware to me. Big Brother, looming and peeping Tom? Was this your intention?
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