Introduction by Rodolphe el-Khoury

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Cutler: It’s about the skin, an old idea that is cleverly done.
Jimenez: We’re seduced by surface manipulation. There is a joy in the fabrication of the surfaces.
Hadid: It’s a prop. The skin is like a temporary structure. It’s like a house wearing an inexpensive dress. You can take it off and on, change it in time, The architect puts too much emphasis on the skin; it is disposable.
Hinganu: It’s a trick, but a nice trick, to take the undulated metal and perforate it, which changes the materiality and makes it transparent.
Kennedy: I think the project is about image and iconography. I wish the detail they showed were actually crucial for making the project. It purports to be about tectonic issues and materials, and I’m not sure it really is. It’s about image. My second concern is the back of the house. I would be enthusiastic about this project if it was all about skin and how it moves from the inside to the outside–a body wrap. But there’s a loose arbitrary addition. This is a highly sophisticated project aesthetically. But the house itself, in terms of rooms, is completely conventional.

Jimenez: We’re seduced by surface manipulation. There is a joy in the fabrication of the surfaces.
Hadid: It’s a prop. The skin is like a temporary structure. It’s like a house wearing an inexpensive dress. You can take it off and on, change it in time, The architect puts too much emphasis on the skin; it is disposable.
Hinganu: It’s a trick, but a nice trick, to take the undulated metal and perforate it, which changes the materiality and makes it transparent.
Kennedy: I think the project is about image and iconography. I wish the detail they showed were actually crucial for making the project. It purports to be about tectonic issues and materials, and I’m not sure it really is. It’s about image. My second concern is the back of the house. I would be enthusiastic about this project if it was all about skin and how it moves from the inside to the outside–a body wrap. But there’s a loose arbitrary addition. This is a highly sophisticated project aesthetically. But the house itself, in terms of rooms, is completely conventional.

Architecture, April 1998 (Award Issue)

Office dA received a Progressive Architecture Award in 1998 for the Weston House. The jury’s comments (reproduced above) give a fair idea of the standard reception of the work. It is typically ambivalent. The work’s power is acknowledged, but not without some reservation: the jurors bestow the award but are compelled to express a concomitant disapproval or justify their choice in quasi-apologetic terms. When the skepticism is not overt, words like “sophisticated”, “clever”, “seduced” or “trick” hint at the architecture’s deceitful charm, the critics’ unwholesome indulgence.

The ambivalence is symptomatic of a pervasive attitude: an equal dissatisfaction with the drab iconoclasm of orthodox modernism and the frivolous rhetoric of Post-Modernism. Office dA’s projects suggests an intermediate course of action, “between language and matter,” to use Graham Owen’s formulation. The stock reactions to these proposals, whether in guilty approbation or reluctant condemnation, distill the tendencies of the current architectural debate and thus compel me to offer additional commentary. My aim is define the general terms of the debate as much as clarify Office dA’s particular position. If my remarks seem biased or my tone occasionally defensive it is because I was a former member of the Office dA team and my interest in the work, its familiar past and promising future, is more than academic.

“The architect puts too much emphasis on the skin; it is disposable.”

The polemics of the surface have kept two generations of critics busy since Post-Modernism’s jubilant experiments in semiotics and later, through the postmodern infatuation with surface effects. Robert Venturi and Mark Wigley may have their differences but they concur in their profound appreciation of the superficial.

Theories of the surface have indeed been treated extensively and may very well be the most significant contribution to recent architectural criticism. There is no point in rehearsing here the lessons of Las Vegas and Nietsche except to point out Office dA’s own contribution to this line of research and re-open, at least momentarily, a debate which has apparently been closed, perhaps prematurely.

Judging from this jury’s comments, it would seem that the proverbial pendulum of history has gone full swing and that the surface is again suspect, its legitimacy as a privileged site of architectural value is questioned. It is in short “disposable”. The accusations are familiar; they have effectively served the modernist denigration of ornament with customary references to fashion, to the accessory and the feminine. Déjà vu? Are we dealing here with some curious cultural amnesia or perhaps a full-fledged modernist backlash?

Populist investments in surface may simply have been too vulgar and the post-structuralist kind too arcane to merit serious and lasting attention. Granted, the mere existence of the Piazza d’Italia is reason enough to justify the moratorium on “façade.” But what about Herzog and deMeuron? They have built an entire career on ingenious and skillful surface treatments, they seldom fail to seduce traditionalists and avant-gardist alike and have yet to exhaust their creative potential in reinventing the elevation.

And what ever happened to the feminist/post-structuralist critique of the ornament. Already forgotten or never heard in the first place? Wigley recently demonstrated how white paint, the most immaterial of building revetments, was indispensable to the project of modern architecture. He may argue how whiteness, while representing the erasure of ornament, still functioned as a necessary ornamental substitute, but none of this will keep the Zaha Hadids from dismissing a whole building envelope as a “disposable” accessory.

Hadid’s disdain for accessory cladding is all the more intriguing when provoked by a renovation project such as Office dA ‘s Weston house: a project which by definition consists in supplementing an existing structure with new features, a design that is ostensibly most successful in integrating the new features into the existing framework. In fact, the consistency and coherence of the reclad house is such that an unsuspecting viewer would be hard pressed to ever distinguish the skeletal ghost of the original. The project in question is a renovation and addition to a suburban house in Weston, Massachusetts, a wood-frame building from the 1950’s which conformed to conventional typology, in both matters of construction and iconography. The new design calls for a strategic redistribution of the room layout and circulation with intent on maximizing the programmatic potentials of the building with minimal alterations to the structural frame. A garage, which also functions as greenhouse, is an important new feature. Its glass-clad facets are coordinated with the “draped metal forms of the house itself,” in a composition of contrasting effects. The new garage is furthermore integrated planimetrically: its crystalline geometry extends into the house to reorganize the central hall and the vertical circulation into a smooth sequence of perspectival effects. But the piece de resistance in this renovation is a new envelope, which transforms the external appearance of the house as much as the nature and quality of the living spaces within.

Short of total demolition and reconstruction any renovation project has to deal, more or less self-consciously with its accessory nature, with the fact that it is an add-on to an autonomous building. In the Weston House, no external traces are left of the old structure and no discernable seams lay bare the devices of the architectural “makeover”. There are no attempts to represent the former autonomy (structural and formal) of the building, say by orchestrating a dialogue between old new components. The original structure may still be supporting the roof but it’s totally masked—and subsumed—by the new features.

And this is precisely why the design is an offense to modernist orthodoxy: because it allows the supplement to overwhelm the structure and make reality a function of appearance. Far from being disposable, the new cladding represents the very essence of this house. Office dA may have designed only a “dress,” to use the jury’s term, but this dress substantiates the clothed body; there is no body, no architecture independent of the dress.

To invest so much in the superficial accessory, to give it a structural role in defining architectural character and identity, to therefore suggest that architecture is, in a major way, a function of cladding is typical of office dA’s work but also characteristic of a wide range of postmodern practices. The distinguishing factor in Office dA’s work is the investigation of the surface as a primary field of construction: building as a function of cladding. In this capacity Office dA is more in tune with Gottfried Semper’s theories than Venturi’s. The ornamental surface is not applied to a pre-existing solid wall as a symbolic or linguistic veneer. It is understood and designed as a constitutive spatial element as much as a vehicle to architectural and cultural signification. As Wigley would put it, “there is no building without decoration. It is decoration that builds.”

“It purports to be about tectonic issues and materials, and I’m not sure it really is. It’s about image.”

“Tectonics” is one of those catch-all terms which can evoke a wide range of ideas and align with different, if not contradictory ideologies. Perhaps because of this resilient ambiguity and a convoluted—if not confusing—genealogy in architectural theory, “tectonics” can be now found at the core of a building mythology that is keen on anchoring architectural value in the “pure presence” of building matter.

Largely in reaction to the structuralist/post-structuralist infatuation with the free-floating signifier and the indeterminacy of meaning, the cult of architectural authenticity undermines “representation” in the pursuit of some onto-mystico-metaphysical presence or “presentation.” Its rhetoric is fueled by Heideggerian clichés which architects have found particularly resonant in their allegorical reference to building and dwelling. What results is an iconoclastic brand of architectural criticism which persists on building a whole theoretical edifice on the precarious distinction between what is apparent and what is real—among other binary oppositions which phenomenology, ironically, had set to undermine.

According to the gospel of authenticity, issues of iconography, of language and rhetoric are secondary—if not inconsequential—to essential matters of materiality and fabrication. Hence the current profusion of statements which all too readily contrast “image” and “tectonics,” as if their mutual antipathy is a self-evident truth.

Yet one of the most productive themes in Office dA’s work is the intersection of rhetoric and fabrication. Consistently, the detail is the field where the actual and the visible are reinvented in unexpected alliances which push both the material and method of construction to unprecedented limits.

Consider for instance “Fabricating Coincidences.” This installation was commissioned by the MoMA for an exhibition showcasing issues of fabrication. It was constructed—with indispensable assistance from CAD/CAM technology—from sheets of steel that were creased, pleated and folded into an elaborate sculptural form. The detail here speaks eloquently of the method of construction. Like a genetic code, it encapsulates the artifact’s morphological structure and demonstrates the process of its realization. “Tell tale details” of the sort are sanctioned by “tectonicism”, never mind the fact that the overall image of the artifact hyperbolizes the process of fabrication in a quasi-rococo composition of pleated facets that puts Issey Myaki to shame. Things get a bit thorny when the anamorphic feature of the piece is considered, when an optical agenda displaces the work to the “suspect” realm of the image.

Viewed from a designated station across the MoMA’s sculpture garden, the installation momentarily collapses into a flat plane. This singular optical event is an integral component of the piece and in many ways a generative factor in the design. The geometry and “tectonics” of the artifact were elaborated in the anticipation of this visual illusion which simultaneously contradict and reinforce the material and constructional principle of the detail. Here, image, geometry, material and fabrication process are coordinated into a tense hybrid of tactile and optical effects. Does the optical rhetoric of the piece–which proves to be constitutive–and its dematerialized representation of “flatness” compromise the soundness of its so-called “tectonics”? Or, on the contrary, does the particular tectonic quality of the piece emerge from the contrived tension between fact and illusion, between what is represented and what is presented, between the image and the material structure?

Another fact will complicate this picture even more: The rigidity of the steel facets is not entirely due to the fold; a hidden conventional beam acting as a template for the folded stairs provides additional support and stiffness. The architects want you to believe otherwise, they draw you into the “tectonic” illusion of the fold with an invisible trick. They count on the visual rather than actual performance of the detail. What is important is what things look like they are doing and not what they are actually doing. This sham is bound to put off the tectonicists although any experienced practitioner will recognize it for what it really is: a mere trick of the trade. Germain Soufflot had much use for it in Saite-Geneviève—-one of the first self-consciously modern monument where issues of tectonics were paramount. Hidden arches and elaborate steel reinforcement here assisted, covertly, in demonstrating the tectonic verity of the free-standing column and the simple rectilinear beam, the constitutive elements of Soufflot’s Gothic-inspired architecture. The building is most valued as a quintessential illustration of Rationalist structural principles; never mind that despite its copious provision of stealth supports the building would have long collapsed without the battery of additional tricks still being applied to this day. . And speaking of the Gothic, what would the “tectonicist” make of the flying buttresses? They are ostensibly designed to sustain a structural illusion within the nave, an image of lightness and effortlessness that is contradictory to their prodigious display of structural gymnastics outside. Epitome of tectonic expression or shameless visual deception? Consider the possibility, suggested by Erwin Panofsky, that the stone vaults did not actually require additional bracing, that the flying buttress was a matter of rhetoric rather than statics. The flying buttress—so dear to a Violet Leduc—would be tricking us into thinking that it is performing a structural trick. Twofold illusion; double heresy?

This much is clear: image and tectonics are far from enemies and Office dA capitalizes on their complicity. Instances where the optical logic of the image permeates the haptic principles of construction are indeed a staple of Office dA; they are perhaps the firm’s most consistent and original contribution to the poetics of building. The curtain-wall of the Weston House performs accordingly and accounts for much of the building’s appeal. Consider also the garden wall of “Casa La Roca”: the undulating filigree of bricks is designed to provide a thin free-standing wall with structural integrity but the visual impression is one of fragility and dramatic instability. And as if the contradiction between structural material and visual effect was not enough of a heresy, the overall image of a drawn curtain adds quasi-Surrealist touch of dematerialization.

“This is a highly sophisticated project aesthetically. But the house itself, in terms of rooms, is completely conventional.”

Most of Office dA’s buildings have conventional plans. They are conventional in their predominantly orthogonal geometry and in their conformity to established types. This is evidently the case in renovation/appropriation projects where the architects had to operate within pre-existing frameworks but also true of new structures where ostensibly benign plans seldom reproduce the flagrant inventiveness of the elevations.

There is no accident in Office dA’s interest in transforming existing structures: they allow the architects to rely exclusively on sectional and elevational strategies as a means to complement and transcend the pragmatic contingencies of the plan. The Inter-Faith Chapel is a case in point: the cladding strategy transforms a standard windowless room that is accessed from an institutional corridor into an otherworldly luminescent space: totally unexpected and far from conventional in elevation; still your run-of-mill rectangular room in plan. The Design for the Murr Tower performs analogous operations on a concrete monolith, this time with exterior cladding and virtually no alterations to the plan.

The Miami Overpass project also exemplifies Office dA mode of operation: the elevations reinvent a merely functional piece of equipment into a public space which present a convincing potential for the revitalization of a whole district. Once again, the design strategy overlays a whole new dimension to the structure without ever disturbing its planimetric and functional logic. Barely recognizable in its reinvented section, the new hybrid structure speaks, perhaps most eloquently, of the transformative–and redemptive– power of the elevation.

Hence the design ambition behind the cladding strategy of the Weston House: “while the corrugated metal is wrapped around the existing house as a thin drape, it is also called on to re-formulate the idea, perception and space of the house.” But in situations where office dA is not presented with existing structures for its “redemptive” process, the tendency is to rely on types or “straight-forward” planimetric configurations to set up conventional frameworks for highly unusual phenomena. The device is tactical: the “ready-made” plan embodies the conventional and pragmatic aspects of building-for-everyday-life that are challenged by the unorthodox vertical plane. The tension between planimetric expectations and sectional inventions yields a highly defamiliarized spatial experience, which accommodates and exceeds the commonplace.

What I have described is a general tendency and certainly not a constant in Office dA’s work. There are instances where the transformative tension is played out differently, among other conflicting features of the project. For instance, The Suchart House confronts typological abstraction with symbolic figuration “by allowing the figure to infiltrate and occasionally subvert the frame.” What is consistent is the transformative structure of the design: a conventional platform accommodates for the mundane aspects of dwelling and provides a springboard for their transfiguration in design.

There is a pragmatic logic–and an implicit political agenda–in Office dA’s design strategy which merits some attention. The pragmatism is most evident in domestic programs where conventional room layouts are streamlined for customization through inhabitation. The “weak form” of the generic plan can accommodate standard furnishings and is most amenable to individuated lifestyles and decorative whims. Of the political, suffice it now to mention that when CAD/CAM technology makes “total design” an economically competitive option, Office dA’s insistence on setting the particular within the generic is a function of ideology as much as of practicality.

PS: a matter of “convenance”?

A colleague related to me an incident he recently had while serving on a jury for a prestigious architectural award. About to enter one of the buildings that was short-listed for the first prize, he was stopped by an attendant who denied him access because of his shoes. This evidently brings to mind Adolf Loos’ parody of Jugendstile. In the case at hand, however, the shoes were delinquent in matters of security rather than style. Apparently, the ramping floors of the building which are designed to demonstrate the aesthetic and programmatic virtues of folded space have proven to be treacherously slippery. After several mishaps with unsuspecting visitors, the insurance company dictated the mandatory use of rubber-soled shoes within the premises. The building evidently did not fare well with the juror who, after exchanging his fine English shoes for the courtesy-to- visitors-Adidas, was ill-disposed for the leap of faith that avant-garde architecture so stubbornly demands. The virtues of the warped field and the architect’s theories of emancipatory space—or was it the critique of capitalist flows?—left him cold.

Clearly no such challenges, intellectual or physical, are posed by the Weston House—or any other house by Office dA for that matter. No ban on Stiletto-heeled pumps; no claims for the deconstruction of ideological closure. The Weston House may be “a highly sophisticated project aesthetically,” but it is still a house. Obviously, this is not a “completely conventional” house because the architects, while knowing where to tactically—and tactfully—conform to certain norms of building and inhabitation, also exploit the many opportunities for invention which do not impose tyrannical demands (financial, practical or experiential) on the users. The demonstration of formal and technological ingenuity is unmistakable and far from conventional, say in the corner treatment, but that will not keep the living spaces from accommodating to IKEA furniture.

Office dA’s tactics are clearly demonstrated in Casa La Roca: invention is most radical in the sculptural garden wall extending from the main body of the house. When architecture is here released, physically and symbolically, from its more mundane domestic duties, it can assume more aesthetically ambitious aims, ones that are rightfully held within the reach of art.

So when Monica Ponce de Leon and Nader Tehrani are commissioned an installation for an exhibition at the MoMA—a bona-fide work of art—they are not shy of theoretical and formal exuberance. And even rubber soles will not protect the museum-goers from razor-sharp edges and treacherous trompe-l’oeil should they foolishly brave their bizarre stairs.

The term “convenance,” inadequately translated as decorum, comes loaded with wearisome allusions to stuffy Ancien- Regime codes of propriety and may be hopelessly antiquated. Yet, with some measure of adaptation, it may very well be suited to describe Office dA’s ability to tactically calibrate the tone and intensity of their designs, to moderate their ingenuity, to suit particular cultural and material circumstances.

This ostensibly rudimentary faculty, which requires some measure of judgement—-and a great deal of “taste”—-currently seems to be blunted, especially in avant-garde practices. Office dA’s work eloquently demonstrates how a keener sense of “convenance” can do much to sharpen the wit and poignancy of architectural invention.