The relation between architecture and its immediate context has always been a determining question to pinpoint architectural postures and ideologies.\u00a0 The stances oscillate between defining architecture as an autonomous object determined by an internal logic; or -on the other hand – viewing architecture as part of a larger environment, responding directly to the surrounding context in terms of materials, attitudes and forms. In the first case, architecture risks to become isolated and trapped within its own disciplinary framework. Formal inquietudes, tectonic strategies or theoretical ambitions often ensnare the architectural project within a web of self-referential professional concerns, generating a placeless (or out-of-place) architecture. In the second case, the use of clues and guidelines extracted from the immediate surroundings, often generate an architecture that advocates for a status quo. Context in general – but especially the morphology of the immediate build environment – is frequently used as the obvious rationale to defend compositional choices. As if a repetition of what-is-already-there justifies initial design approaches. In many cases, it propagates buildings that do not accomplish to re-think or go-beyond the current situation. It produces an architecture that hides, steps back and blends into the environment, no longer making a provocative and stimulating contribution to the local milieu it seeks to support.<\/p>\n
In order to review these two postures, I would like to take a small detour and touch upon some works of the American artist John Baldessari (who recently just passed away). From the beginning of his career Baldessari experimented with pictorial work in which he deliberately omitted the crucial parts of the subject or object portrayed. An early example is the work Bird # 1 (1962) in which he paints a moving duck against a blue-gray background. It is not very clear why (perhaps by the same movement of the animal?), but the head and legs of the creature drop out of the frame, leaving its most characteristic parts to the viewer’s imagination. In 1974, he makes a series of self-portraits in which he hides his face with hats, and about another decades later, he replaces the hats by colorful confetti’s that cover up the faces of the characters in his prints, paintings and collages. In a hilarious video – made by the artist himself and narrated by Tom Waits – Baldessari explains the audience that he will probably be mostly remembered as ‘the guy that puts dots over peoples faces’.<\/p>\n
In the early 2000’s Baldessari returns to a theme that he sporadically explored before: ears and noses (he actually already painted the canonical work God Nose – a wordplay on God knows-\u00a0 in 1965). What I find fascinating is the way Baldessari plays his game of hide-and-seek with those facial organs: eliminating their context, hiding the crucial narratives and leaving the spectator guess the full picture. Like the nose in Nikolas Gogol’s short story that leaves the face of a St. Petersburg official’s and develops a life of its own, Baldessari depicts the ears and noses as singular organs, rather than organs that relate to the whole of a face or body. For example, in the screen-print ‘Nose\/Silhouette, Green ‘ (2010) produced with for the Los Angeles artist workshop Gemini G.E.L., he depicts an isolated nose on a green blob that somewhat vaguely represents a facial profile. In fact, if the nose would not be floating in the center of that amorphous surface, I doubt one would recognize that amoebae-shaped blot as a face (the green color also doesn’t seem to prompt the association).<\/p>\n
They say that the nose makes the man. But, seeing the sensory organs drifting abandoned on Baldessari’s solid colored background, they appear rather otherworldly, strange and bizarre.\u00a0 Instead of playing their usual proud and character-defining role within in a larger composition, they appear as awkward and peculiar autonomous objects. The shape of the outer ear and the nasal lump on our faces become rather inexplicable curiosities, with doubtful esthetic qualities: gawky protrusions that have none of the glamorous qualities of the eyes or the lips, for example, who can sort of pull it off on their own.\u00a0 Ears and noses are dependent on their context to be understood, become meaningful, obtain value. The opposite is also true. A crooked nose or sticking-out ears, completely change our facial features. Let alone an inversed nose, or ear, such as portrayed in Baldessari\u2019s ‘Altered Person’ collages.<\/p>\n
Now, back to architecture. Let’s say that good buildings should be like ears and noses. Architecture should not blend in respectfully or anonymously with the surrounding context, but seek to be a distinctive, singular element: even fantastical, incongruous and awkward. Like the nose floating over the green surface in Baldessari’s lithography we discussed before, architecture can structure and define its immediate environment. What was just an undefined green blob, suddenly becomes a suggestive profile, just by adding a decisive element at a crucial point of the composition. A building should have the capacity to simultaneously re-write, as well as support and give meaning to the context that surrounds it.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Image: John Baldessari, \u201cNose \/ Silhouette: Green\u201d, 2010<\/p>\n
Note: A first version of this short text was developed for a lecture entitled “Ears, noses and duck rabbits\u201d at the University of Houston on April 1, 2019 \/ The version above was presented at a lecture given at Cranbrook on January 25, 2022)<\/p>\n
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