VOL

24(1

1)

JUL

2011

ARCHITECTURE Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown by Charles Correa Architects

FOCUS Water and Architecture

IA&B

- JU

L 2

011

18

IA&B. As the Dean of an institute like Columbia, how important do you think is it for students to interact with the realities in the field; to go out there and practice architecture, rather than in the confines of a studio?MW. The traditional power of the school is actually to pull oneself away from reality. That is the traditional strength; but you jump back in with more ideas and strength. So, the best schools are the ones where students work in the field and then in the lab, and keep passing backwards and for wards. In the field, you obtain a different kind of knowledge and in the laborator y you have a different experience, but what we have to do today is combine both. There has been a huge change in the last ten years. Maybe ten years back the most radical experiments happened inside the schools and the field would wait for the good news. But now, the real experiments are happening in real time and real situations, so the schools now have an entirely different function. So, my long answer to your question is yes, you’ve got to be in the field. In the field, you have to find sor t of a micro-retreat. In the past, we would retreat to the university, or the Association of Architects or our books. Now you have to create, in the field, small spaces to think because sometimes in the real world, it is hard to think.

IA&B. Based on your experience with various architectural styles over the period of time; from Philip Johnson to Frank O. Gehr y to Daniel Libeskind, to the exhibitions that you have curated and the shifts that have you have witnessed architecture go through, do you think experimental architecture today has the same relevance as it had during the time of say, Philip Johnson or Frank Gehr y?MW. The world is changing so fast these days that being a professional in today’s times simply means to be experimental. So, even the most boring architect has to have a research division. If you are making a skyscraper in say, Mumbai or Dubai or Africa or Latin America, each situation is radically different. So I would say that today there isn’t much difference between the experimental

Photograph: courtesy Studio-X

Mark Wigley, Dean, GSAPP, Colombia University, talks about the past, present and future of architecture and experimentation in conversation with IA&B.

An accomplished scholar and design teacher, Mark Wigley has written extensively on the theor y and practice of architecture and is the author of Constant ’s New Babylon: The Hyper-Architecture of Desire (1998); White Walls, Designer Dresses: The Fashioning of Modern Architecture (1995); and The Architecture of Deconstruction: Derrida’s Haunt (1993). He co-edited The Activist Drawing: Retracing Situationalist Architectures from Constant ’s New Babylon to Beyond (2001). Wigley has ser ved as curator for widely attended exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Drawing Center, New York; Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal; and Witte de With Museum, Rotterdam. He received both his Bachelor of Architecture (1979) and his Ph.D. (1987) from the University of Auckland, New Zealand. Mark Wigley is presently the Dean of Colombia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preser vation.

&Architecture Transformation

aesthetics of one architect as compared to the conservative aesthetics of another. But then you can make very radical architecture and still be a conservative architect. Now what we are really interested in is what would be the species of an experimental architect. And I think the new generation of architects is more radical than ever before. We now have a new generation that is multitasking and going global. They don’t like to buy an album, they like to mix. So you have a new species of architects, and this species, I think, will make all of the work of the likes of Gehry, Libeskind and Johnson almost irrelevant.

IA&B. There is a divide in ideology; on one hand, you have celebrity architects making trophy buildings all over the world while on the other, you have this newly developing ideology of architecture which is primarily public-interest. This is a seemingly small change, but is big in terms of its relevance. So as a Dean of a school, you must have students inclined towards both these ideologies. How do you strike a balance in terms of academics and in terms of practice between both the ideologies?MW. Columbia is a laborator y, and the interest of Columbia is directed at questioning what species of architects will there in the field 10 years from now; not what kind of buildings, but what kind of architects. And about the division between celebrity architecture and micro architecture, I don’t think our students wish to make this decision. I think celebrity architecture is a ver y traditional idea about branding; these are architects being used to help turn a city into a commodity, a marketplace. So it doesn’t really represent any evolution of the architectural discipline, which most Columbia students are interested in. So they are more interested in the micro, but this cer tainly does not mean that they want to be micro people. They want to make micro adjustment in a new kind of social optimism. They are also ver y arrogant, strong and could be celebrities themselves. Also, I think I have never really met an architecture student who wants to be a celebrity; that somehow seems to be a horrible fate. The best architects, irrespective of them being celebrities or not, always think that their next project is going to be the best one. And then if you are a student, this is especially true because you don’t even have a project yet. So, I think in a school l ike ours, which is interested in the future, none of the celebrity architecture has any real, strong relevance.

IA&B. To conclude with one last question, the time when you did the Deconstructivist exhibition, architecture was perceived as a function of form. And since then architecture slowly changed its role and is now perceived as a function of purpose. So do you see the transition in students of Columbia, who come from across the world?MW. Architects today are not ver y interested in form; perhaps they are more interested in organisation. They are interested in

let’s partner

Studio-X - Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation’s global network of laboratories launched its Mumbai centre to the public on February 10, 2011. Studio-X labs function in New York City, Beijing and Amman to engage in cross-cultural, interdisciplinary, and cross-continental exchange of knowledge and information.

the pattern of things. In other words, architecture is no longer simply physical. It is no longer simply the shape of an object; it is also the shape of social l ife, of finance, of political decisions, of human relationships. So I think, in my imagination, there is a new generation that thinks that they do not have to choose between form, image and function. They go in the middle, to the area of organisation. So these are architects who do not want to be naïve about money; it used to be a great honour for architects to be stupid about money but now architects want to be intelligent about it. They want to know about infrastructure, technology transfer, time, decision-making, democrac y, and communication with clients. So you have a more multi- dimensional architect. This, however, is not a new idea. Vitruvius had said that an architect should know a little bit about histor y, mathematics, astronomy etc. So, a l ittle bit about ever ything and not a lot about just one thing. What is it that the architect has to offer society? It is the ability to combine various forms of knowledge that don’t belong together. Now that architects are accepting that the real architecture of a city is multi- dimensional, the traditional ability of the architect to put many different forms of information together has become his strength. To think what is happening with cities, you have to think of 200 dimensions. Only the architect sees 200 dimensions and says, ‘Okay, let me see what I can do’, while ever y other field says ‘Oh, no no, I do the internet or I do banking’. Ever ybody else is ver y, ver y specialised. So now we see the return of the architect as the person who provides an organisation. This is a really interesting experiment. If I am from a generation where I can be talking to three different people at the same time on my phone, while searching the internet and reading a research repor t, while also watching the TV with my teacher in a different countr y, and I am now speaking a different language; this is definitely new species of an architect. So I am all enthusiastic and let ’s see what happens. This is especially true here in India. If you are not multi- dimensional here in India, you are nothing. Mumbai is the only city in the world which, when I go back to New York, makes me think, ‘What happened? There is nobody here. Was there some kind of a bombing?’ It all seems ver y white and quiet. Where is all the traffic? I really think Mumbai is the future. And it is the future that needs a new kind of brain – the multi- dimensional architect. The architect is an intellectual; not a ver y practical person.