January 2005
Domus 877
Domus 877
January 2005
25 architects (15 Americans, 3 Japanese and 7 Europeans), closeted for two days – 12 and 13 November 1982 – in a room with a large fireplace to discuss their work and the prospects of architecture. Invited by a mysterious letter signed P3 to convene – without a word to anyone – in Charlottesville, Virginia. For two days – in the Rotunda of the University of Virginia, the Pantheon designed in 1823 by Thomas Jefferson – each architect was expected to present an unpublished project and talk about it with his colleagues. There were four sessions of six presentations held twice daily, interrupted only by a brief coffee or food break. The entire summit was recorded, photographed and documented.
the 1984 Charlottesville meeting (organised by Peter Eisenman, Michael Graves, Charles Gwathmey, Jaquelin Robertson and Robert Siegel) was, in essence, the first episode of “Big Brother” in the history of international architecture. Those forty-eight hours were the precursor of today’s reality TV in at least four aspects.
first of all, the event was orchestrated in every detail, albeit imperceptibly. Aside from the overt desire to gather together the cream of the architectural profession (no critics, historians or journalists allowed), the assembled party – made up entirely of famous male architects from the rich developed countries – represented some of the farthest removed and most idiosyncratic movements of late twentieth-century architecture. As in the globalized “Big Brother” show, the large meeting room in Charlottesville became the stage on which a carefully prepared scenario involving rival gangs was played out.
this gave rise to a second feature: its spitefulness. There was an acid and, at times, salutary treachery. “I’m a whore and I’m paid very well for building high-rise buildings,” answered Philip Johnson to anyone objecting that he ignored the needs of inhabitants. “A miserable hole” was how Leon Krier dismissed the project presented by Tadao Ando. “A kind of silly plaything, with angles moving in and out for no reason,” objected Rem Koolhaas to Eisenman’s proposal.
moreover, there was an almost pornographic desire to speak openly about issues. At Charlottesville the key issues of architecture and the contemporary city were raised without beating around the bush. There was nostalgia for the nineteenth-century European city as well as for the triumph of multitudinous individual urban facts. There was discussion about the uncontrolled drifting of architectural form freed from any connection with function or rigid structural restraints. There was a fascination with the pragmatism of the real estate market and the social function of architecture. There was confusion between teaching methods and design.
and finally, as in “Big Brother”, at Charlottesville the architects ended up voting as there was no audience to select nominees. Nevertheless, they staged a ballot by lining up on opposite sides those who were for or against a petition put forth by Carlo Aymonino that proposed restoring Rome’s Coliseum and using it for social events. It was a vote with surprising results, which on reviewing today shows a split into two unexpected fronts.
rereading the Charlottesville transcripts, published by Rizzoli in 1984, one wonders why that format – the idea of a closed confrontation in real time on the elementary materials of architecture by a small group of experts of differing opinions – was immediately abandoned, and why it was immediately replaced by an endless string of often pointless and almost always vague seminars and banal theme conferences.
But most of all one wonders if today, with a format boosted and perfected by years of TV and media practice, it would be possible to reintroduce a “Big Brother” of contemporary architecture.
Who would sponsor it? Who would be qualified to choose the participants? And – above all – who would be the audience?
All that’s left is to try.
Contents
Ettore Sottsass.Pictures from a window
The eccentric city
Beniamino Servino, Toni Servillo and Antonio Pascale discuss Caserta and its urban fabric. Luca Molinari describes two of Servino’s projects. Photography by Paolo Rosselli
Lebbeus Woods. Into the Woods
The cosmogonic landscapes designed by Lebbeus Woods describe a different way of making architecture. Text by Michael Sorkin
Wakato Onishi. Scandal in Yokohama
Yokohama Triennale: A new image for international expositions?
Onix. Eco-Farm
In the Netherlands, the Onix studio has built an eco-farm designed to create spaces for the disabled.
Text by Robert Such and Patrizia Mello. Photography by Bas Princen
Inaki Abalos. Sunsets
The story of the landscape is a continuous elaboration of the setting sun theme, the privileged moment where man and nature have their most intense dialogue
Sim-Shanghai
The largest urban planning model in the world. Photography by Joseph Grima
OMA. Right down…
Opened in The Hague, “The Souterrain” is an underground building connecting two tram stations and a parking garage. Edited by Matteo Poli. Photography by Hans Werlemann (Hectic pictures)
Growing by strata
Rapid prototyping is changing how we produce and invent objects. Domus presents some exemplary cases
Interview: Alejandro Jodorowsky
Hans Ulrich Obrist and Philippe Parreno interview Chilean Alejandro Jodorowsky, a visionary and multifaceted artist
Bruno Latour. The Emperor’s Brand New Clothes
Postmodernism vs modernism? A conversation between philosophers
World Architects: Tony Blair. Camouflage London
London is a spectacle of transparency that masks an invisible architecture of social control in its urban fabric. Text by Neil Leach. Edited by Eyal Weizman with Karen Marta, Elena Sommariva
Art Graft. Bertrand Lavier
From the Key of G to F
Post-it: Books
Rassegna: The bathroom
Panorama
El Topo: Richard Prince
Edited by Maurizio Cattelan, Massimiliano Gioni and Ali Subotnick (Wrong Gallery)