do my reading home work

The Real PeRsPecTa 42

208

The Real PeRsPecTa 42

209

Intentionally awkward conditions occur with increasing frequency across a num- ber of creative fields. This repeating occurrence alone, unaided by any articulated agenda, suggests that some emerging vein of aesthetic and social possibility is being tapped. Conditions creating unease and discomfiture—hallmarks of the awkward— are more than an unforeseen byproduct of this new work; they must be understood as their defining feature. Distinct from both formal elegance and critical dissonance, the awkward’s near-fit with cultural and societal patterns is what defines its unique and troubling timbre. This is not to suggest that the awkward is part of the zeitgeist; the zeitgeist may be intangible, but it already exists. Rather, it is part of a more subtle phenomenon of articulating what isn’t quite here—unexpected, yet obvious in retrospect.

awkwaRd PosiTion Andrew Zago

Co nt or ti on is t Cl if to n Ge rr

y II I

The behaviors manipulated to produce the luminous fountains are precisely the same as those that are manipulated in fiber op- tics. Indeed, any transparent medium can be manipulated in a similar manner. Smartness does not reside in the material, but in the manner of its instrumentalization. One must, however, understand the fundamental physics of light. Ironically, this type of direct and discrete control of light all but disappeared from the field of architecture during the 20th century, and has only resurfaced in timid uses of fiber optics, in which the phenomena are attributed to the material and technology, and not to the behavior of light.Fig. 09, 10

Conventional materials in architecture are commonly treated as artifacts: things that have specific and fixed attri- butes. Naming the material specifies its appearance, its perfor- mance, and its range of applications. The choice of material is presumed to be deterministic, and as such, its properties are foregrounded in its application. In both the approaches from 19th century magic, however, the physical material is but a tool, a subordinate actor in the background. The material has no significance as an artifact; its purpose is only to facili- tate the manipulation of phenomena in order to create effect. The theater historian Frederic Woodbridge Wilson, in the cata- logue of an exhibition he curated on 19th century magic, dif- ferentiated the sophistication of skilfull manipulation from the sophistry of the spectacle:

Magicians transformed themselves in the nineteenth century… No longer were they to be perceived as pos- sessors of supernatural powers. No, they asserted, their feats of wizardry were made possible by exqui- site skill—a special dexterity, a formidable memory, or a subtle knowledge of nature…05

As constituents in the normative material palette of architec- ture, smart materials bring little innovation. Indeed, they are generally expensive and often clumsy substitutes for con- ventional materials and technologies, without supplying any substantial performance benefits. Truly innovative exploitation of these materials demands a real understanding of phenomena, a direct definition of effect. The attributes that we have tra- ditionally assigned to artifactual materials are meaningless as we are forced to wield knowledge rather than rhetoric in the pursuit of an architecture that is efficient and responsive.

�Fig. 09 The phenomenon of total internal reflec- tion can be demonstrated in any transpar- ent medium.

�Fig. 10 This textile uses discretely placed LEDs as a local and low power light source with translucent woven fibers for distribution. The fibers are cut and scored at various points to allow the emission of light.

Magic or Material

�05 Cfr. Frederic W. Wilson, “Imagery of Illusion”, a catalogue accompanying the eponymous exhibition that took place at the Harvard University Nathan Marsh Pusey Library from 12/9/1998 to 3/26/1999.

The Real PeRsPecTa 42

210

The Real PeRsPecTa 42

211

Predictably, at the novice level, a small increase in expertise can bring about a sig- nificant improvement in the work produced, while at the master level, large advanc- es in expertise bring work only asymptotically closer to perfection. Although this relationship—and the profession’s sense of its importance— has never completely disappeared, by the latter half of the 20th century, it was no longer taken as axiomatically true. As architecture began to reflect on its own tradi- tion during its postmodern phase, the twin impulses of revival and critique served to recast expertise as either historic scholarship to be referenced or as an insidious tool of control to be unmasked and purged. It’s unlikely that prior to this period of self-reflection, the relationship of mastery to authenticity presented itself as a problem to architects. The constituent parts of mastery have, of course, been deeply contested at times, but not the as- sumption of the mechanism itself. This is no longer the case. The critical tradition within postmodernism employed irony as a powerful and necessary tool to reveal and disarm systems of power and suppression, both in architecture and in culture and politics at large. While liberating, this employment has left in its wake an in- grained reflex to level an ironic gaze towards any presumption of mastery. This re- flex casts mastery and traditional authenticity as quixotic beliefs at best and sinister manipulations at worst. Figure 2[

]

In the wake of postmodernism, restless architects conceived of various responses to this impasse, which necessitated a reinvention of the terms of archi- tecture’s ambitions. One response has been to uncouple architectural production from assumptions of mastery. With this strategy of easy-expertise, first deployed by OMA and its followers, architects either explicitly disavow traditional mastery or at least devalue the role of technique in their production. This attitude willingly risks an impoverishment of the artifact of architecture in order to gain some degree of political freedom. Another response to this impasse has been to see in computation- al design and fabrication tools a self-justifying methodology for new architecture. While attempting to arrive at a new, non-historical form of expertise, those who confuse the technical for technique (which has its antecedents in some ideologically strident strains of Modernism) seek expertise by stripping mastery of its cultural

awkwaRd PosiTion / andRew zago

Th e Ir on y Ho ri zo n

As an emerging cultural sensibility, the awkward may help define fertile territory for new architecture. It goes to the core of a persistent dilemma: how to employ mastery in a profession that finds the traditional display of such expertise untenable. Consid- ered not in general, but rather as an unlikely adjunct to expertise, the awkward can deflect and redefine the architect’s traditional range of instrumental control.

MasTeRy and auThenTiciTy

The profession of architecture historically ascribed great value to the attainment of mastery over the means of producing a work of architecture, the assumption be- ing that this type of expertise was a prerequisite for creating noteworthy buildings. While it was understood that the architect should have some measure of talent, intelligence, industriousness, and experience, the notion of mastery suggested more than a combination of these attributes. It posited that the architect should be an expert in a constellation of working techniques—most unique to the discipline and many singular to his or her own practice—and should understand the application of this expertise to be the single defining attribute brought to any project. Tradition- ally, this expertise was based on a relatively fixed body of knowledge, whether it was an understanding of the classical orders and principals of proportion, of build- ing types, of statics, of material properties, of ornamentation, or the development of artistic skill in draughtsmanship and rendering. In the revolutionary fervor of early Modernism, historical models and methods for architecture were largely rejected, replaced by new referents of aesthetics, technology, and politics. However, while reliance on much of architecture’s canonical knowledge ended, a presumption of mastery—with its attendant body of knowledge and skills—persisted.

The relationship of mastery to quality—of expert technique giving a work of architecture its gravity and depth—can be understood as the means by which work achieves its sense of authenticity. That is, it achieves a condition in which the nature of the project’s existence supersedes its apparent intentions and becomes, in itself, resonant with and explicative of the nature of things. This traditional depen- dence of authenticity on mastery is depicted in the accompanying graph. Figure 1

awkwaRd PosiTion / andRew zago

Cl as si ca l Mo de l of R ec ip ro ci ty

The Real PeRsPecTa 42

212

The Real PeRsPecTa 42

213

The steep angle of approach to the irony-horizon causes neo-traditional architecture to bounce and fall short, despite its expertise-velocity. The problem, it seems, is not that the mastery of architecture’s material means is axiomatically impotent, but that nearly all of the traditional ways in which that mastery has been defined are either irrelevant or simply untenable. The issue is not to dispense with technique, but to reconceive of technique for a post-ironic authenticity.

The awkwaRd

At the core of traditional expertise is a sense of correctness. Historically, the canon of architectural knowledge provided the architect with the instruments to create work, but it also provided an elaborate reassurance that the work was grounded in a verified set of presumptions. Today, our faith in these canons has all but vanished, but there remains the vestigial armature of assumptions and predilections regarding proportion and form, composition and ornamentation, material expression, and tec- tonics against which architects either claim or reject the mantle of mastery. That is, there persists a sense of correctness shaped by the traditional notion of authenticity, even if architectural work no longer explicitly references it. A post-ironic authen- ticity could begin by positing techniques that are, by intention, incorrect. Where traditional mastery strove for a perfection of form, new mastery stumbles into an awkward position. The awkward stands in peculiar relation to the correct. It doesn’t align with normative manners, but it doesn’t critique them either. It gains its special resonance by maintaining a clear relationship to larger cultural norms while constructing an alternate logic within them; neither in step, nor totally out of step. This alternate logic does not clash with the normative so much as it bumps and grinds against it. To pursue the awkward in the context of mastery is not so much subversive as perverse. The awkward requires the architect to perform contrary to his or her best judgment, to tactically undermine fine-tuned skills in an attempt to define new and unsettling aesthetic territories. While the awkward runs the risk of appearing as mere ineptitude, that appearance also gives it the potential to side-step irony. In its apparent artlessness, it seeks neither to perpetuate the power structure implicit in traditional mastery nor reduce its role to critical reflection on that structure. Rather, by opting out of any obvious relation to correctness, the awkward demands a new set of aesthetic coordinates. To the wedded strategies of assertion and negation, the awkward appears baffling. The difference between the awkward and other displays of expertise can be illustrated through three examples, set in Paris, of tactically distinct approaches to the inhabitation of urban space. In the first, Gustave Caillebotte’s painting La Place de l’Europe, temps de pluie of 1877 Figure 4, we see Haussmannian boulevards ex- tend into deep perspective. The flaneurs, as connoisseurs of the street, stroll with its

awkwaRd PosiTion / andRew zago

dimension. A third response has been to re-acquire the traditional model of mastery through a neo-traditional authenticity that transcends irony. In this strain, which runs from Louis Kahn to Peter Zumthor, mastery incorporates modern abstrac- tion (thereby avoiding the pitfalls of literal historicism) while simply dismissing the ironic gaze as a form of theoretical game-playing. Of these responses, the first—the uncoupling of production from mastery— has had the most valiance. Its indifference towards expertise has produced novel architecture while deftly deflecting the withering stare of irony. Although they cede important aesthetic territory, its proponents are responsible for rekindling the belief in the new for its own sake. The third graph illustrates this trade-off. Figure 3 The work of easy-expertise is able to pass the irony-horizon, but stops when its tech- nique mastery is exhausted.

The neo-traditional approach, however, bears further consideration. Efforts to attain a neo-traditional authenticity spring, of course, from the recognition that the physical fact of a building has had demonstrable success as the prime agent for transformative architectural experiences and insights. The architect’s skillful deter- mination of form and material can give buildings a presence that is, in itself, archi- tecture’s primary sensation. The demonstration of this ability has been the source, historically, of architecture’s most notable achievements. Irony, to some, seems a feeble barrier to this potent capacity. Architects of this strain believe that redou- bling efforts of earnest diligence can make the obstacle of irony irrelevant. Despite that belief, neo-traditional authenticity, which has both its capable practitioners and its self-righteous proponents, has been incapable of fostering either a degree of contemporary relevance or urgent novelty. Both of these qualities—relevance and novelty—are as central to authenticity as is its timelessness. This owes to the fact that even though there may be qualities of architecture that categorically transcend a particular era, its specific formulation must also resonate with its moment of entry into the world and is inconceivable in isolation from it. As much as one may like to see architecture move past the limit of irony, it is a deeply ingrained part of our current cultural landscape that must be accounted for. The incongruity of neo-tra- ditional authenticity in the contemporary climate is also depicted in the third graph.

awkwaRd PosiTion / andRew zago

Tr ad it io na l Au th en ti ci

ty a

nd

Ea sy E xp er ti se

The Real PeRsPecTa 42

214

The Real PeRsPecTa 42

215

grain, not confronting Paris, but merging their own perambulations with its urban geometry. Flaneurs practiced a rarified cultural art form that both exploited the form of the street and depended on its ability to reinforce their own sense of propriety.

In the second example, a traceur leaps crosswise over a walkway in a Pa- risian housing project. Figure 5 The traceur’s astonishing physical feats (called parkour) are enthralling not only because of the agility required, but also because his leaps are a direct counter-point to the intended use of the urban form. A decon- structivist art form, parkour reveals the presence of embedded social oppression in the form of the city by working against its grain, thereby highlighting and calling into question its proscriptive nature. Acting in this way, however, the traceur is as dependent on the status quo of the urban form as is the flaneur. Both are defined by the existing city they wish to challenge.

The third example is set in front of the Bibliotheque Nationale. Figure 6 Here, French contortionist Pierre-Antoine Dussouillez displays a novel approach to ascending public stairs. While requiring (one imagines) as much physical dex- terity as the traceur, the intention and the result are markedly different. Neither the staid elegance of the flaneur nor the edgy grace of the traceur is evident here. Dussouillez is in error; the discomfiting juxtaposition of limbs renders him inca- pable of either conforming with or acting against the existing urban form. He is also funny. The absurd transformation of his own figure disarms the proscriptions of the urban fabric and demands not that he find a way to fit into the existing context, but that a new urban arrangement account for him.

Pi er re -A nt oi ne D us so ui ll

ez o

n th e

st ep

s of t he B ib li ot he qu e Na ti

on al

e, P ar is

, Fr an ce

awkwaRd PosiTion / andRew zagoawkwaRd PosiTion / andRew zago

Gu st av e Ca il

le bo tt e,

L a P l a c e d e l ’ E u ro p e , te m p s d e

p l u i e ( 18 77

)

Bl ue , fr om U rb an F re efl ow , pe rf or

ms a

Ko ng v au lt

Cringe Comedy: The currency of an emerging cultural sensibility can sometimes be mea- sured in humor before it can be articulated in another form. Something can be funny before we know why. The awkward, as a sub-category of humor, has become a noted phenom- enon in recent years. So-called cringe comedy, as practiced by comedian-writers Larry David or Ricky Gervais [Figure 19], seems to mine new comic territory. Awkwardness blows through their work like an inevitable and unstoppable force of nature, bringing with it at least as much discomfort as laughter. They create the sensation of an alternate real- ity that is coherent, sensible to many, and embedded within normative experience yet never quite commensurate with it. The newness and political potency of awkward humor was famously displayed in the reaction to Stephen Colbert’s performance at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner in 2006. His searing performance, targeting both the Bush administration and the press, was met largely by blank stares from the crowd and was initially reported in mainstream media outlets as an incoherent flop. However, as word of the performance spread, it was embraced by many as very funny indeed. More than just a comic routine, this unsettling satirical performance has come to be regarded as an instance of long-overdue civil disobedience.

Ri ck y Ge

r va is a s Da vi d Br en t

da nc in g on B BC ’s T h e O f fi c e

The Real PeRsPecTa 42

216

The Real PeRsPecTa 42

217

in the context of expertise. Thomas Ruff, noted student of the strident perfectionists Bernd and Hilla Becher, employed this approach in his Jpeg series of photographs. These indulgently-produced large prints were all derived from images lifted from the internet. The images were then heavily manipulated, not to enhance them, but to subject them to extreme file compression. The type of compression used creates digital artifacts in the images, which is known as quilting. Figure 7 This usually undesirable byproduct of technology typically occurs when one misunderstands file compression. The intentional quilting of the photos, while at first off-putting, even- tually yields to the reading of a reticulated skein that creates its own atmospheric surface, independent of and oscillating with the pictorial content of the photograph.

A more telling example of the use of amateur error can be shown by con- trasting Peter Zumthor’s baths at Vals Figure 8 with a photograph of Zumthor’s Kunsthaus Bregenz from Hiroshi Sugimoto’s Architecture series. Figure 9 At Vals,

Zu mt ho r’ s Ku ns th au s Br eg en

z fr om H ir os hi S ug im ot o’ s A rc h i te c t u re s er ie s

awkwaRd PosiTion / andRew zago

zuMThoR vs. sugiMoTo

The awkward necessarily encompasses a wide array of possible applications. There are at least as many ways to be awkward as to be correct. Its strategic deployment, however, requires that it appear, at first, incorrect, that it offend refined sensibilities, and that, as a latent reading, it create an unexpected and novel effect. Although not yet articulated as such, employment of the awkward is gaining currency in contemporary culture. One example is the amateur error, which appears

Pe te r Zu mt ho

r’ s Th er

ma l Ba th V al s, V al s, G ra ub ün de n, S wi tz er la

nd

awkwaRd PosiTion / andRew zago

Th om

as R uf f,

j p e g a n 0 1 (

20 04

), C

-P ri nt

wi

th D

ia se

c, 7

4. 02

x 1

13 .7

8 in

ch es

( 18

8 x

28 9

cm )

The Real PeRsPecTa 42

218

The Real PeRsPecTa 42

219

Zumthor demonstrates his consummate skills as a master of his craft by stridently clinging to traditional formulations of authenticity. This is evident in his use of stone (a material that is not only substantial, but is traditionally understood to be the embodiment of substantiality), in the expression of that stone and its tectonic arrangement, and in the formal correctness of the volumes. The Sugimoto photo- graph, while no less technically formidable, is out of focus (as are all of the photos in the series). How to properly focus is an early lesson in photography; the absence of that basic skill in the work of an expert is baffling. Sugimoto commits an obvi- ous—and intentional—error, then relies on his expertise to transform the work by incorporating this error, thereby achieving an uncanny new spatial effect. While the expert architect insists on displaying his mastery, the expert photographer does not so much hide his mastery as he dislocates it through an unlikely and dis- arming technique.

FRoM Balloon dogs To heRzog & de MeuRon

Abstraction had a privileged position in architecture and art for most of the 20th century. Capable of tapping into pure and rarified sensations—and not mediated by the legibility of meaning required of representation—abstraction was seen as a vehicle through which one achieved the purely abstract. Furthermore, with the discrediting of the classical canons, abstraction was seen as a necessary feature of authenticity. However, abstraction has lost its axiomatic relation to both the abstract and the authentic. The same mechanisms of irony that render authenticity suspect have turned the various manifestations of abstraction into nothing more than imag- ery, as loaded with legible meaning as a Madonna or a Doric column.

In this context, the representation of banal subject matter (as distinct from Pop or kitsch) in inappropriate contexts has emerged as an unexpected manifesta- tion of the awkward, one capable of evading this obstacle to abstraction. In Jeff Koons’s Balloon Dog series, for example, investing the trivial nature of the subject with an inordinate amount of effort and expense to transform its scale and material- ity creates astonishing sculptural effects. Figure 10 Although patently representation- al, the subject matter is incapable of sustaining meaning, or even of evoking a sense of surrealistic enigma. The content is dismissible, but perversely, its obvious pres- ence makes it a Trojan horse for the reading of pure authenticity and abstraction. Closer to the discipline of architecture are Greg Lynn’s tables from his recent Toy Furniture series. Figure 11 As with the Balloon Dogs, these tables are formed from trivial playthings. Unlike the sculptures, they are not a representation of the toys, but are composed of the toys themselves. The transformation from toy to table is achieved through the dissection and recombination of multiples of the same toy, rather than through a change of scale and materiality. The assembly is carefully calibrated to fall between the abstraction of Lynn’s related Blobwall proj- ect and a representation that is comically inane. While allowing for some degree of the literalness of Koons’s dogs, Toy Furniture suggests that this tactic of banal representation has to differ by discipline. The degree of literal representation that proves effective as sculpture would likely be too strong to succeed as furniture. The formal success of the tables also suggests that this tactic could shift scales and have an application in architecture.

Although they are yet to be articulated as such, aspects of the awkward are already and increasingly finding their way into contemporary practice. No firm has gone further in exploiting the peculiar potential of the awkward than Herzog & de Meuron. Having created such building features as the cuspidal edges of the Roche Tower, the glassed courtyard stuffed with a black rubber box of REHAB Basel Fig- ure 12, the oddly drooping cantilever of the de Young Memorial Museum Figure 13, or the artlessly massed volume of the Schaulager Figure 14, Herzog & de Meuron demonstrate the disarming potential of the awkward and the error in expert hands.

awkwaRd PosiTion / andRew zago

Je ff K oo

ns ,

B a l l o o n D o g s er ie s, I ns ta ll at io n vi ew o f

Re - O bj e c t ,

Ku ns th au s Br eg en z, 1 8 Fe br

ua r y– 13 M ay 2 00 7

Ta bl e, G

re g Ly nn F OR M’ s

To y Fu r n i t u re

awkwaRd PosiTion / andRew zago

The Real PeRsPecTa 42

220

The Real PeRsPecTa 42

221

Across the spectrum of practice, architects are creating works that seem to revel in clumsiness, from Johnston Marklee’s Hill House Figure 15 to Toyo Ito’s Tama Art University Library Figure 16 or OMA’s Seattle Public Library. Figure 17 While their formal attributes are often couched in terms of adherence to program- matic imperatives, view corridors, property and setback restrictions, or other non- visual criteria, these projects seem to go out of their way to be overtly indifferent to formal and tectonic propriety.

awkwaRd PosiTion / andRew zago

Of fic e fo r Me tr op ol it an A r-

ch it ec tu re ’s S ea tt le P ub li c

Li br ar

y, S ea tt le , Wa sh in g-

to n

awkwaRd PosiTion / andRew zago

He rz og

& d

e Me ur on ’s S ch au la ge r, L au re nz F ou nd at io n,

Ba se

l, S

wi tz er la nd

Jo hn

st on

M ar kl

ee ’s H

il l

Ho us

e, P ac

ifi c

Pa li

sa de

s,

Ca li

fo r ni

a

To yo I to ’s T am a Ar t Un iv er si ty L

i- br ar

y, H ac hi oj i Ca m pu s, T ok yo ,

Ja pa

n

He rz og & d e Me ur on ’s R oc he B

au 1

, Ba se l, S wi tz er la nd ( un re al iz ed

pr oj ec t, S ep te mb er 2 00 6)

He rz og

& d

e Me

ur on ’s R

EH AB

, Ce

nt re f or

Sp

in al

C or d

an d

Br ai

n In ju

ri es

, Ba

se l,

Sw

it ze rl an

d

The Real PeRsPecTa 42

222

The Real PeRsPecTa 42

223

The promise of the awkward in architecture is illustrated in the fourth graph. Figure 18 Awkwardness allows expert work to approach the irony-horizon at a more salient angle than neo-traditional authenticity. Like easy-expertise, it is able to cross that horizon. But where easy-expertise is ultimately limited by its lack of mastery, the awkward, in capable hands, can continue on an asymptotic trajectory towards perfection.

The awkwaRd and The coMPlex

On one hand, the awkward is presented here as a tactic and not a principle, a pro- visional approach to a cultural impasse that has hamstrung architecture’s access to authenticity. On the other hand, as with any new sensibility, it has the potential to reengage the world through its own logics. Part of the efficacy of the awkward, it seems, is that it suggests a pattern of forms and encounters that, taken individually, could be easily dismissed as mere novelty, but that, taken in aggregate, point to a new logic of space. The awkward accumulates as a series of inexplicable instances, but already these individual points begin to connect and form the ground of a new landscape of cultural production. Architecture, as a cultural practice, is imbedded in and coextensive with the material world. As such, it is simultaneously responsible for its role as cultural arti- fice and for a degree of fidelity to an evolving sense of reality. The awkward, by op- erating at the level of technique (that is, by altering the parameters of expertise and mastery over the material means of architecture) engages this nexus of the artifice and the real while harnessing unpredictable effects. A valid critique of traditional mastery is that it aspires to total determination of architecture’s means, materials, and effects. This is no longer a tenable framework for the production of architec- ture. Like another related sensibility, the accident, the awkward acknowledges the limits of instrumental control (the limited viability of the “top-down” model of mastery) and develops techniques that, by design, produce uncertain and unpredict- able results. In doing so, it does not simply abandon individual volition to the fiction of pure self-organizing complexity, but rather allows that volition to be inflected by novel and unlikely possibilities.

awkwaRd PosiTion / andRew zago

Th e

Ir on y

Ho ri zo n

#1 Ski Dome Tokyo, Japan, 1998

#2 WEF World Economic Forum Davos, Switzerland, 2005

#3 Swimming pool at the settlement Ma'ale Adumim, West Bank, 2003

#4 Soccer game Atacama Desert, Chile, DATE

#5 Mountain with antennas Kitakyushu, Japan, 2006

#6 Oriental Pearl Tower observation room Shanghai, China, DATE

#7 Ertan Dam, downstream side Panzihua (Sichuan), China, 1998

#8 Unknown Soldier Museum Baghdad, Iraq, DATE

ArMIn LInKE PhOTOS