form4architecture – Reflections on Shared Purpose

April 4, 2019April 4, 2019

Watercolour Book in the Works

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By Laura Iloniemi

John Marx’s watercolours, first published in the Architectural Review, are a compelling example of an architect’s way of thinking informing the visual arts. Quiet and subtle, they are nonetheless captivating works in terms of how they explore notions of a sense of place, of how we inhabit built space and how we experience these phenomena in the core of our being. There is an existential quality to Marx’s paintings rarely found in the medium of watercolour and even something of the psychologically piercing observational quality of artists like De Chirico.

It is fascinating to see connections with such powerful work in Marx’s nine by nine inch watercolours. Perhaps it helps to be an architect to be as spatially ambitious as Marx is within this modestly sized series of watercolours. Here, he explores a subject matter usually reserved for much bigger works of art and carries this off with the conviction of someone used to starting with a blank sheet of paper and transforming this into a building.

In this sense, Marx’s watercolours are very much the explorations of an architect, an exploration concerned with an atmosphere created through memory and association and also through our peripheral vision, a seldom appreciated aspect of how we truly experience buildings and places. Too little is made of how painting can explore this type of narrative and meaning. And far too few architects are actively engaged with this medium. Zaha Hadid and Will Alsop have been recent exceptions, while Le Corbusier, the Modernist hero, remains the most celebrated.

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As architects strive to communicate their way of thinking, Marx’s watercolours are an example of a humane approach in terms of conveying emotional meaning in relation to our surroundings. As much of Marx’s subject matter reads as “built landscapes” – heightening the role of the manmade while in balance with the natural world – it offers a message and a sentiment that is perhaps more important than ever to relay to wider audiences. As a method of working, watercolours have an inherent fragility that makes the portrayal of this message all the more poignant. Marx’s works also celebrate the poetic immediacy ingrained in working with watercolours where the artist’s hand is forever present and a foil to an increasingly virtual world.

In this vein, Marx’s inhabited landscapes point towards an answer to an inquiry poised by Sir John Soane’s Museum Critical Drawing Talk Series, “If drawing once allowed architects to visualise possible futures, might its rebirth point a way towards recapturing architecture’s optimism and agency?” The optimism of Marx’s watercolours, and also that of his poems to be published in his forthcoming art book, is certainly ingrained in how Marx works as an architect. Their variety reflect the richness he values in the way architecture should be approached. Not as something reductive but as something as widely engaging as possible.

As Marx writes, “We, as architects, and as a culture in general, might benefit from embracing the concept of design value across a much broader spectrum than we currently permit.” And it is in this very spirit that Marx’s watercolours are an all-important supplement to his architecture, enriching his work and allowing a fruitful cross-pollination of ideas and also emotions to create moments – be they in his watercolours, in his poems or his buildings – that dare to be hopeful.

The above is an extract from an essay from John Marx’s watercolour book to be published later this year by Oro Editions.

Watch this space for further details.

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November 20, 2018November 20, 2018

Fall Reading V: “Dreaming Aloud”

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Form4 Architecture’s Co-Founding Principal and Chief Artistic Officer, John Marx, initiated a highly original publication in the Architectural Review (AR) monograph series. “The Absurdity of Beauty – Rebalancing the Modernist narrative” is a hybrid monograph that features Form4 Architecture’s work as well as a wide range of topics that advocate a fundamental shift in the way architects design through a mix of poetry, essays, and watercolors. This shift is to do with how we tackle contemporary challenges, like placemaking, gentrification and identity in society, through our built environment. Marx’s own essay within the publication, “Dreaming Aloud”, touches on a theme that is at the heart of what instigated the idea of approaching the monograph in this multifaceted way. This theme is the notion of “range”.

“Range” is understood by Marx as embracing inclusiveness in place of exclusiveness. It is about seeing architecture as a plentiful feast as conveyed in the cover image of this blog. “Range” rejects the notion of artistic endeavour only being of value within the confines of conventional and often hierarchical definitions.

The visual quality of the AR publication as realised by Art Editor Tom Carpenter celebrates “range” through the variety of imagery and the richness of the graphic sensibility throughout the monograph. It is all about giving a distinct platform to different voices that in their individualistic ways challenge us to create emotionally meaningful, culturally vibrant places to live and work. Places that we value and that we feel belong to us.

The following extract on “range” from “Dreaming Aloud” elaborates on what John Marx wants to convey when using this term.

“Dreaming Aloud” by John Marx – Extract:

Range is a very balance-dependent concept. On the one hand, we as a humane species thrive (diversity-adaptability are the key traits which ensure our survival) because we don’t all want the same things at the same time; on the other hand, we also tend to form ourselves into groups with like-minded interests or traits. It is the creative dynamic between these two conditions where healthy and vibrant communities thrive. Existing on either extremes of this equation can have undesirable and unintended consequences.

From an architectural object or project standpoint, range includes the way we judge the value of the work that is created. This aspect of range is well illustrated at the annual Burning Man festival, where some 70,000 people gather at a temporary city in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada to celebrate creatively. Among the many events at the 2017 Burning Man, more than 300 artworks were set out on the Playa. These ranged from ‘museum grade’ sculpture, to the Jedi Dog Temple designed by a five-year old boy. The participants recognise that everything on this range has a deep value to them, because, in the case of Burning Man, each art piece is given as a gift, and each was created from the heart. However they also embrace the idea that the nature of each piece is different and adds value each in its own special way. We, as architects, and as a culture in general, might benefit from embracing the concept of design value across a much broader spectrum than we currently permit.

Read more about theabsurdityofbeauty.com

November 4, 2018November 20, 2018

Autumn Reading IV: “Designing at Evolving Frontiers”

Pierluigi-2b Saulk — Salk Institute, La Jolla, CA, 1965, by Louis Kahn from a picture of unknown photographer

In this series, we are publishing excerpts from Form4 Architecture’s monograph: The Absurdity of Beauty – rebalancing the Modernist narrative. Our third post focusses on an essay written by the British architectural critic, Jay Merrick, who spent his formative years growing up in California. We are delighted that Merrick used his early impressions of living on the West Coast to reflect on what makes Californian architecture distinct as it plays on a unique mythology that has put the state on the world map from the days of the Gold Rush and well into the 20^th and 21^st centuries.

The inclusion of a chapter on Californian architecture in this monograph examining the Modernist narrative was important to us not least because we are a San Francisco based practice. The story of California and its own brand of culture has therefore shaped the way we design. Californian landscape, light and climate and the early adoption of environmentalism have all played their part; as has its free spirited entrepreneurial outlook that has been the backbone of Californian society from the early pioneers to today’s tech giants. The success of Silicon Valley has also coincided with the Bay Area’s approach to workplace interiors becoming globally influential. These interiors support a collaborative and flexible approach to work that is very much of California. This made us want to reflect on the roots of the innovations that Californian high tech companies have introduced to not only office design per se, but to office life around the world.

The title of Jay Merrick’s essay “Designing at Evolving Frontiers” hints at the way he sees the journey Californians have taken as changing with the times, whilst creating a thriving contemporary culture that is often ahead of its time. How this journey is expressed in the local architecture is something Merrick captures with great flair and insight.

“Designing at Evolving Frontiers” by Jay Merrick – Extract:

“The museum’s curator, Justin McGuirk, links Californian existence with Jean Baudrillard’s definition of an achieved utopia – a place that ‘allowed itself to imagine it could create an ideal world from nothing’.

Facebook’s start-up motto in 2004 was ‘Move Fast And Break Things’, an ethos of fearless invention which had already been demonstrated in architecture such as Greene and Greene’s 1908 Gamble House – the so-called ‘ultimate bungalow’ – and Irving Gill’s remarkable, proto-minimalist 1916 Dodge House in West Hollywood. In the 1930s and ’40s (and leaving aside California’s early Modernist houses), aesthetic-formal frontiers had been breached by vividly outré, neon-edged Popluxe (aka Googie) architecture, such as Wayne McAllister’s faux-futurist Simon’s Drive-Ins, and the boomerang-canopied Harvey’s Broiler outlets.

In 1960, John Lautner’s pedestalled octagonal Chemosphere was the apotheosis of space-age domestic Modernism and, 18 years later, the weirdly discombobulated Gehry Residence in Santa Monica was an instantly legendary lift-off moment for Deconstructivist design.

Simultaneously, the countercultural ideas and output of artists, writers, and environmentalists became key influences on Californian architecture. Ed Ruscha’s laconic photographs in Twentysix Gasoline Stations, for example, were produced five years before the publication of Learning From Las Vegas. ‘I’m interested in glorifying something that we in the world would say doesn’t deserve being glorified’, said Ruscha. ‘Something that’s forgotten, focused on as though it were some sort of sacred object.’

Equally sacred in Californian architecture are compelling fusions of Modernism and environmentalism – contradictory, tense, potentially fertile. Charles Moore’s blocky cascade of clifftop condominiums at Sea Ranch, 100 miles north of San Francisco, was brilliantly novel in 1966. The noted architectural critic Paul Goldberger said it was, ‘the ancestor of virtually every California beach house and Vermont ski house with unpainted wood siding, a boxy form and a slanted shed roof – one of the few buildings of our time that has become part of the vernacular’.”

Read more about theabsurdityofbeauty.com

Pierluigi-1 Case Study 22 r1 — Case Study House #22, Los Angeles, 1960, by Pierre Koenig from a picture by Julius Shulman

Pierluigi-1a Eames r1 — Case Study House #9, Pacific Palisades, CA, 1949, by Charles & Ray Eams from a picture by Julius Shulman

The above drawings relating to this blog post 11/4/18 are all by Pierluigi Serraino, AIA.

Pierluigi is a San Francisco Bay Area based architect, author, and educator. His work and writings have been published in professional and scholarly journals. He has authored and contributed to several books, among them Modernism Rediscovered (Taschen, 2000), Eero Saarinen (Taschen, 2005), and The Creative Architect: Inside the Great Personality Study (Monacelli Press, 2016). His latest book is California Captured (Phaidon, 2018) on architectural photographer Marvin Rand. His forthcoming book is a comprehensive appraisal of architectural photographer Ezra Stoller (Phaidon, 2019).

Regarding his interest in hand drawing historic buildings, Pierluigi notes, “Drawing is a way of knowing. What is learned in the process of re-drawing the icons of modernity and previous eras? A world of content unfolds and a higher awareness of the scope of architecture as an art form.”

October 1, 2018October 11, 2018

Late Summer Reading III: “Rethinking Silicon Valley”

In our series of extracts from The Absurdity of Beauty – Rebalancing the Modernist narrative we wanted to include an excerpt from writer Sam Lubell and his essay “Rethinking Silicon Valley”. Sam edited the California edition of The Architects’ Newspaper over many years and is currently a staff writer at Wired magazine. His interests and knowledge of the Bay Area thus made him uniquely placed to write about Silicon Valley in The Absurdity of Beauty. His essay on the architecture of the Silicon Valley is an insightful description of the urbanistic challenges office developments for high-tech industries continue to face as they are built ever further afield.

As architects at Form4 Architecture, we are particularly interested in this discourse having worked with many high-tech companies in the area. Over the years, we have sought ways in which to improve a sense of placemaking and the relationship of our buildings with their neighbours. We have tried to match the enthusiasm and interest our clients have for creating uniquely forward-looking office interiors to the exteriors of these buildings.

01_2. GlassWallOffices15 — *Example of Silicon Valleys’s generic office types that blur and coalesce into a featureless urban tableau*

It is a curious phenomenon that in terms of progressive design thinking Silicon Valley excels at space planning and fit-out but less so at genius loci. As Sam suggests, change is taking place and we are excited to be part of a movement that hopes to see the Silicon Valley as a place that people will not only go to work but one in which they will want to live.

“Rethinking Silicon Valley” by Sam Lubell – Extract:

So while today’s glamorous tech entities have brought a welcome emphasis on design with a capital D to the area, they haven’t transformed what remains a placeless place. Collaboration here is internal, not with the community; offices are open – and often they’re arranged with their own internal streets – but that’s as far as their urbanism reaches. Their elaborate contortions and urban simulacra haven’t reached beyond their corporate boundaries; and they’re not ready to rethink the larger social fabric.

Urban change, though, is slowly seeping into this anti-urban culture. Albeit via baby steps. Santa Clara is exploring mixed-use development around its new stadium. San Jose’s Santana Row, while hardly authentic, has developed into a true centre of human activity. Companies such as Adobe are going vertical in San Jose’s downtown core. And downtown Palo Alto, the most walkable and vibrant of Silicon Valley’s places, now demands higher rents than San Francisco.

Summer Reading II: “Building Enchantment”

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In this second post for our summer reading series “Excerpts from: The Absurdity of Beauty – rebalancing the Modernist narrative”, we wanted to highlight the discourse around poetry and architecture that informed our approach in publishing this monograph with Architectural Review. Conversations around the notion of poetry were critical from the start and developed as we talked to architect and Royal Academician Ian Ritchie about what he would write for the publication. He also introduced us to his friend, architect and writer Richard England, who has dwelled on this topic over many years.

What emerged from our many pleasurable exchanges whilst putting the monograph together was a discourse on how the poetic qualities of architecture are what makes it an art form. They are what enables architecture to have universal appeal and to be emotionally meaningful. These exchanges led to Richard England also writing for the monograph and what followed was his thoughtful essay “Building Enchantment”. In it, England eloquently describes the expressive potential that architecture and poetry share. The devices are, of course, different but their ability to transcend the everyday is the same.

We hope you enjoy the following passages from Richard England’s essay “Building Enchantment” and its foray into the essence of things and perhaps the very things we seek to find when we fall in love with architecture.

“Building Enchantment” by Richard England – Extract:

In attempting to establish a relationship between architecture and poetry, it seems appropriate first of all to investigate the origins and meanings of the two respective disciplines: Architecture derives from the Greek word Arkhitekton, where Arkhi signifies ‘master’ and Tekton ‘building’. Poetry also comes from the Greek Poieses, meaning ‘to make’.

“Making and building”

From the etymology of the words, it is clear that the two disciplines are involved in a process of making and building, ie, creating. However, the materials and methodologies employed are different; building materials for architecture and words for poetry. Yet both share the aim of enchanting and elevating the human spirit. Architecture and poetry also share the qualities of precision, metrics, structure and rhythm, as essential constituents in both their creative process and manifestation. Also common to both is the play of contrasting opposites: solid and void in architecture, sound and silence in poetry.

Poetry, not unlike architecture, is also about building, building with words and sculpting with sound. It is about the taste of words and the intermittent voids and silences of the pauses; a crossover between sound and silence. One reads not only what is written, but also that which is not written; the words between the lines and the invisible words too; the heard and the unheard, the said and the unsaid. It is how musical and meaningful the poet can make these passages that elevates his or her work from the realm of prose to that of poetry, in the same way that an architect can make a building lift the spirit and enchant its users. It was TS Eliot who said ‘poetry must communicate even before it is understood’. The true poet is the one who casts a web of magic that has the capacity to carry the reader away, just as the true architect caps into his building human emotions to lift the hearts of its users.