The wonderful world of John Hejduk

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University of Triest

The wonderful world of john Hejduk

Guaragna Gianfranco

Triest, Italy

Abstract

The idea of storytelling is a concept we somehow find in preponderance of the architecture of John Hejduk.

The universe of Hejdukian thought in fact, is a profoundly dramatic architectural universe; a sort of reliquary inhabited by angels and demons and dotted with fantastic characters, animals, machines and anthropomorphic figures. However, it is a world pervaded entirely by poets full of a profound sense of the sacred.

The house of one who refused to participate, for example, is a project for Venice in 1979 which, minutely described in its parts and functions, is configured as a sort of storytelling in which images and writing inevitably become complementary. That is, it irrefutably reveals that to Hejduk, writing and architecture are indissolubly linked to a unitary form that makes them inseparable and indistinguishable from one another.

Keywords: Hejduk, storytelling, project, Venice

Аннотация

Гваранья Джанфранко

Университет Триеста, Триест, Италия

УДИВИТЕЛЬНЫЙ МИР ДЖОНА ХЕИДУКА

Идея «истории, рассказа» в архитектуре Джона Хейдук является концепцией, которая выражена в форме для того, чтобы стать единым целым с проектом.

Концептуальный мир архитектора Хейдук, по сути, это глубоко драматичная архитектурная вселенная, своего рода реликварий, населенный ангелами и демонами и усе - янный фантастическими персонажами, животными, машинами и антропоморфными фигурами. Тем не менее, мир, который поэтично полон глубокими сакральными чувствами.

Например, Проект «Дом того, кто отказался от участия», созданый для Венеции в 1979 году, подробно описанный в элементах и функциях, представляет из себя своего рода историю, в которой образы и содержание являются взаимодополняющими элементами. Мы видим неопровержимую взаимосвязь и единство языка архитектуры Хейдук с формой, которая делает их неотделимыми и неотличимыми друг от друга.

Ключевые слова: Хейдук, история, проект, Венеция.

This idea of storytellingin another aspect, and with an entirely other significance, is a concept we somehow find in preponderance of the architectures of John Hejduk.

In fact, the universe of Hejdukian thought, as well explained by Renato Rizzi, is a unitary and undivided reality of the trinity of poetry, painting and design as interconnected and indistinguishable worlds (1). His is a profoundly dramatic architectural universe; a sort of reliquary inhabited by angels and demons, dotted with fantastic characters, animals, machines and anthropomorphic figures. A world pervaded entirely by poets full of a profound sense of the sacred, within which, as Rizzi still emphasizes, word and image become two planks of the same cross. (2)

It should however be noted that this close link between architecture and literature, in addition to distinguishing his entire work, is a way of relating to the discipline that will characterize the teaching activity of the period in which he taught at Cooper Union, at which a combination of texts on architecture and literature were studied.

Moreover, it should not be forgotten that this link is not completely foreign to its formation. If in fact this type of method's development can be traced back to the teaching period with Colin Rowe in Austin (3) - which, we remember was a fervent supporter of the humanistic approach and famously aware of architecture - it is also true that Hej- duk, before becoming a teacher and later dean, had attended the same Cooper Union that at the time reflected an idea linked to a type of design approach based precisely on experience and aesthetic-philosophical investigation. (4)

It is well known that Kafka's or Borgesian space, as explained by Cristina Grau, (5) transcends the limits of literary space. The fact that Hejduk, speaking of Kafka's Metamorphosis, defines it as an unique event as it manages to describe precisely the space of anguish and that of the night (6), does nothing but reiterate Cristina Crau. That is, it irrefutably reveals that to Hejduk, writing and architecture are indissolubly linked to a unitary form; inseparable and indistinguishable from one another.

-->The house of one who refused to participate for example, is a project for Venice in 1979 (7) which, minutely described in its parts and functions, is configured as a sort of story in which images and writing necessarily complement. Here the theme of 'showing oneself is completely different from the concept that had characterized the main aspects of the Modern Movement. That is to say that it has no relation with the idea of transparency conceived tectonically.

Dal Co, the harmony of dwelling is accomplished by showing oneself (8). But on the contrary, many years before the birth of the televised Big Brother and many years after the appearance of the Modern on the international architectural scene,the Hejduk Venetian project was a dramatically translation of a sort of pillory for the inhabitant; who, in a special room of the house destined exclusively for this function, is implacably condemned to show himself through a mirror that, on the facade of the tower in front, reflects its image on the outside.

It should however be pointed out that The House of the Person Who Refused to Participate is not an isolated project but part of a personal research that the New York architect takes on his own cognitive dissonance and that finds stimulation and coagulation in Venice in which to eviscerating multiple themse of reflection, through literary architecture. In fact, it is directly linked, summing up its part, to three previous projects in which a series of considerations are concentrated on the dualism between (we quote textually): "Europe and America; abstraction and historicism; individual and collective; freedom and totalitarianism; the colors white, black and gray; silence and language; literal and ambiguous; narrative and poetry; observer and observed. "(9)

Reading this detailed enunciation of themes, one can observe polar oppositions or juxtaposition acting to illuminate through mutual compliment. While this seems to open a vast range of hypotheses, alternatively the sector of possibilities is reduced to a minimum to compel them, often forming a lapidary and decisive image.

However, just as it can not be overlooked that narratives and poetry are explicitly mentioned among the themes listed, it can not be surprising that even the names chosen for the projects evoke a world that brings us back to that of novels or poetry.

The Cemetery of the Ashes of Thought, the silent witnesses and the thirteen watchtowers in Cannaregio, in fact, are the titles of three other Venetian projects written in a period from 1975 to 1979 in which a series of beautifully presented drawings and colored models, together with The House of the One Who Refused to Participate, complete the entire cycle of Venetian tetralogy. (10)

In this most recent project, the 'Wall House' is reproposed in one of its many reworkings; an architectural style already present in the project The Cemetery of the Ashes of Thought and that, in addition to the anthropomorphic idea of architecture, undoubtedly represents the most evident peculiar elements of yet another work. However, if the Etienne-Louis Boullee project for the National Library was an explicit tribute to the School of Athens, culture and erudition in general, John Hejduk's project The Cemetary of the Ashes of Thought is a celebration of the literature. It is not only because of the specific function to which it is dedicated, but rather because of the particular use that Hejduk makes of the project text which, as in all his works, transcends merely the didactic role.

In fact, while he first draws a meticulous description of the intervention, indicating the colors of the walls, the size and height of the holes intended to house the transparent cubes containing the ashes, the positioning and the material of the plates (bronze) on which the authors names and works are registered. Thereafter, the project involves the construction of an artificial island in the lagoon on which a house destined for a single person will have to be built, but will only live there for a limited period of time. The lone inhabitant, finally, from the lagoon will look at the cemetery and others will not be allowed to stay on the island during his stay. (11).

As in the House of The One Who Refused to Participate,in this project Hejduk addresses the theme of solitude in his own way. Travalica Intentionally the canonical role attributed to the architect to assume a different one. This is not limited to the usual function of the designer who responds to a hypothetical need of the client develops a housing unit for one person, but thinks of a house for one person, interpreting the adjective in its double meaning.

In fact, as a director or writer, he decides where and how The House of Man Condemned to Solitude should be, but above all establishes the role that the inhabitant must assume within this sort of story in which the architecture necessarily intertwined with the world of narration.

If The One Who Refused to Participate was condemned to show himself, then the man on the island in the lagoon is destined to look. However, perhaps Hejduk only makes us believe that the latter is intended to contemplate the ashes of thought however even his act, if we look closely, seems to be coerced. In fact, watching seems to be the only action allowed to that one inhabitant who, although immersed in the muffled silence of the lagoon, appears more and more guilty and condemned to atone for his segregation punished in forced solitude.

On the other hand, it can not be denied these inexorably lonely men, relentlessly condemned to look or to be observed, seemto expiate a penalty for an undefined fault that somehow brings us back to that unconscious guilt of the guilty without Kafkaesque's memory.

From the way he deals with and develops the theme of the project and the manner in which he elaborates the representation, it is clear that Hejduk's is not an occasional way of proceeding, i.e. aimed at the specificity of the theme. Rather, when The Cemetery of the Ashes of Thought has risen to a place appointed to combine architecture and literature, it becomes for Hejduk certainly an opportunity to clearly express his idea of architecture. Because, when for example he talks about the consistency of space in Proust or in Gide, what he refers to, as he himself says, is not the consistency of the space described in the literary text that is dense in the first and rarefied in the second, but it is precisely the consistency of Thought as such. (12)

It can therefore be understood that The Cemetery of the Ashes of Thought, although objectively it is, can not be reduced to the mere object of the function. That is to say that it is not only a tribute to the great figures of literature, ie a sort of rhetorical pantheon dedicated to literary thought, but rather represents the will to give substance substance to thought. It is the supreme space in which the thought that goes beyond the specific discipline is celebrated.

Notes

”... The cosmos of Hejdukian thought is always unitary, undivided 'reality': a trinitarian form made up ofpoetry, painting, and project. They are interconnected, indisposable, inseparable, hierarchically arranged like the angelic orders, to fill otherwise unattainable distances. Those between universality and particularity, between contemplation and compassion. "

Renato Rizzi, John Hejduk Incarnatio, Marsilio, Venice, 2010, p. 20

Renato Rizzi, Ibidem p. 11

"With the arrival of Colin Rowe in Austin, Texas, a radical change is introduced in the way in which the education of architecture and architectural research itself is con - ceived. With the emphasis on a reinterpretation of the Modern Movement and above all on the issues raised by Cubist painting, Colin Rowe brings a shift in the architectural process: the idea becomes central to architecture. The theme of the idea is charged with philosophical contents, from Plato onwards, nor can one refer to Panofsky's considerations. But what is the idea for Colin Rowe? It is what constitutes the "autonomous" content of each architectural project. "

Francesco Semerani, John Hejduk From form to figure to archetype, PhD thesis, University of Trieste, PhD in Architectural and Urban Design XIX Cycle, April 2008, p. 5

Giuseppina Scavuzzo, John Hejduk or the passion to learn, in John Hejduk, edited by Lamberto Amistadi and Ildebrando Clemente, Aion Edizioni, Florence 2015

"The two writers have coined spatial symbols that have mastered the collective imagination so that when we want to define a specific space, instead of proceeding with a detailed description we refer to a space of fiction, to a literary space that completely sums up and defines all the qualities better and faster: a Kafkaesque space or a Borgesian space. In this operation of substitution of the object with its symbol, we transform what is necessarily diachronic, successive, in synchronic, simultaneous. By eliminating the time of the description the spatial image is immediately shown, like a drawing or a painting. This happens because the spaces in which the fictions of Borges and Kafka are developed, or those that the reading suggests are not always coinciding and transcend the limits of literary space; they stop being a representation of the world instead becoming a universe in itself. " sacred feeling architecture

Cristina Grau, Borges and architecture, Op. Cit. pp. 105 and 106

"... thanks to the love of literature of professor namedCaldiero, resembling Savonarola, I read Kafka's Metamorphosis, a unique architectural event in my life. It is the precise description of the space of anguish, or more specifically the space of the night and later I came to understand the meaning of bearing witness and not forgetting "

B. Goldhoorn (ed.j Schools of Architecture, Netherlands Architecture Institute, Rotterdam 1996, p. 11

Cit. John Hejduk or the passion to learn, Giuseppina Scavuzzo, in John Hejduk, edited by Lamberto Amistadi and Ildebrando Clemente, Aion Edizioni, Florence 2015 p. 11

Francesco Dal Co, curated by, 10 images for Venice, "Exhibition Catalog"

OfficinaEdizioni, 1980, pp. from 66 to 76

"... It is nostalgia, in fact [Francesco Dal Co writes], of a harmonious dwelling, of a place, therefore, where the dwelling is realized openly, in the desired and planned continuity of interior and exterior, where the deepest intimacy does not exclude a scheerbartiana brightness, where comfort is not synonymous with a simple process of objectification. Utopia, in short, of a tectonically conceived transparency, where the harmony of dwelling is accomplished by showing itself ... "

Francesco Dal Co, Living in the Modern, Bari, Laterza, 1982, p. 4

"Since 1974 Venice has anticipated the essence of my work. It is the forum of my inner contrasts. Thoughts refer to Europe and America; abstraction and historicism; individual and collective; freedom and totalitarianism; the colors white, black and gray; silence and word; literal and ambiguous; narrative and poetry; observer and observed. "

10 images for Venice, Op. Cit. p. 67

The cemetery of the ashes of thought is 1975, The silent witnesses is of 1976, The thirteen watchtowers in Cannaregio is 1978/79 and The house of the one who refused to participate is 1979

"The exteriors of the Stucky Mill building are painted black.

The interiors of the Stucky Mill building are painted in white.

The long, extended walls of the 'Ceneri del Pensiero' cemetery are black on one side and white on the other. The surfaces of the long, extended walls are gray at the top and at the end. Within the walls, square holes of 93 cm2 are opened at the height of a man. Within each hole is a transparent cube containing ashes. Under each hole, on the wall, there is a small bronze plate with the indication of a title of a work, for example: 'In search of lost time' 'The forgers', The Inferno ',' The Lost Paradise '' Moby Dick ', etc. On the inner wall of the walls of the buildings of the Mulino Stucky there are small plaques with the name of the authors of the works: Proust, Gide, Dante, Milton, Melville etc. In the lagoon on an artificial island, there is a small house. A single house for a single person for a limited period of time. Only one personcan live in the house for a set period of time, and others will not be allowed to stay on the island during his stay. The solitaire, through the lagoon, looks at the 'Ceneri del Pensiero' cemetery. "

10 images for Venice, Op. Cit. p. 66

"... The central theme is the consistency of space, not that described by the literary text, rarefied as Gide, or dense as in Proust. It is therefore the consistency of thought ... "

From the lesson on education, held by Hejduk in the autumn of 1995 at the International Union of Architects congress in Barcelona; transcribed and published in the volume Schools of Architecture, in John Hejduk by Giuseppina Scavuzzo, Op. cit. p. 15

Fig. 1. Hejduk, La casa di colui che rifiutd di partecipare

Fig. 2. J. Hejduk, Il cimitero delle ceneri del pensiero

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