MINIMAL TECTONICS

Ralph Brodruck
Assistant Professor in Architectural Design, Eindhoven University of Technology

Tectonics, the poetics of technology Die List der Unschuld as a strategy in the work of Herzog and de Meuron. In many publications H&dM show that they attach great importance to a close cooperation with artists. In this way they allow their understanding of architecture to be transformed in a (necessary) and decisive way. The goal of this close involvement is to let other modes of thought flood their design during the initial phase of a project. Herzog: We are constantly looking for dialogue, already from the very beginning of a project, if it is still limited to a few ideas or images. This looking for dialogue with other disciplines is not limited to field of art. Scientists, such as biologists and sociologists are often invited to become involved in a project. This method of working clearly shows that H&dM do not apply some architectonic a priori to their design, not with regard to the use of materials, the language of form or the use of detail. It is an open approach to design, free of preconceived ideas. In an interview with Rmy Zaugg, one of the artists who has regularly worked together with H&dM expressed his attitude with regard to their cooperation as follows: I am alluding to your openness, your refusal, to now today, how a future building or image has to look like. Your determination, not wanting to know, what architecture and what art is. When we know what art or what architecture is, then we only create illustrations of what we know about art and architecture. The cooperation between Rmy Zaugg and H&dM is illustrative for their method of working, and extends over a great number of projects in a period of several years. In the work of Rmy Zaugg as a conceptual artist, theorist and curator, perception always was one of the central themes. A sculpture of Donald Judd was for Zaugg the immediate cause to write his main work titled Die List der Unschuld that could be translated into The Guile of Innocence. This book, with the subtitle Das Wahrnehmen einer Skulptur translated as The perception of a sculpture is in fact the starting point of cooperation between H&dM and Rmy Zaugg. Herzog: Our copy of Die List der Unschuld is full of notes. Because of the modest size of this paper, I shall limit myself to pointing out the influence of this particular book by Zaugg on the work of H&dM. Another artist who has influenced the work of H&dM on a permanent basis, and who therefore must not go unmentioned, is Joseph Beuys of course. However, in the present paper his influence will be left out of consideration. Die List der Unschuld is an impressive description of a phenomenological approach to a sculpture by Donald Judd. Zaugg attempts to perceive the sculpture, entitled Six Cold Rolled Steel Boxes, as straightforwardly as possible. Other sculptures by Judd are left out of the picture as are characterizations of the Minimal Art movement of which it is part. In the preface of the book Zaugg quotes four extracts from The Visible and the Invisible by Merleau-Ponty. Zaugg wants to return to a world which precedes all knowledge. In this preobjective experience the world is not isolated from man nor is man from the world. One of the quotes runs as follows: the world is what we see and nonetheless, we must learn to see it, first in the sense that we must match this vision with knowledge, take possession of it, say what we and what seeing are, act therefore as if we knew nothing about it, as if we still had everything to learn.

Only the work itself as it is present in its context, the hallway of Basel Kunstmuseum, is the subject of Zauggs perception. Zaugg: My relation wants to be direct, between me and the work of art. In this context Zaugg perceives Judds sculpture as six ev-

eryday industrially manufactured steel objects. In spite of its context, the Kunstmuseum, the sculpture does not appear to have the expected aura of a work of art. Because of the material used, the steel plate with its scratches and rusty spots, and because of the use of the cube as the basic shape, as well as the way in which the objects are positioned, matter of fact, on the ground, a certain doubt takes hold of one as to whether it concerns a work that is constructed in order to achieve a certain expression. Zaugg: we knew that it is a fully construed work of art, but we feel a not construed and not artificial matter. Through its trivial appearance, the sculpture encourages the search for what this triviality is hiding and what it actually represents. The trivial appearance is guile. Its serenity and its innocence are simulated. Its obvious lack of meaning leads us to question what the sculpture actually represents. To gain a clear understanding of this phenomenon Zaugg compares Judds sculpture with a silkscreen of Andy Warhol. It is a portrait of Marilyn Monroe. While in the process of perceiving the object, Zaugg notices a difference between the actual perception of the piece of paper with the inkblots on top of it, and the reflective perception of the head of Marilyn Monroe. The relation between both perceptions is based on an illusion. The paper with the inkblots on top of it Zaugg calls the representing element, and the head of the actress evoked by illusion Zaugg calls the represented element. The actual Marilyn Monroe, who has passed away, he refers to as the reference object. Therefore Zaugg calls Warhols silkscreen an illusionistic representation. The principle of Judds sculpture is completely different. The sculpture raised no other image than the image we see in front of us. Zaugg: The sequence of boxes only evokes a sequence of boxes and not for example camel or a palm. Only the intention of the spectator can raise a difference between the actual boxes, and an image the boxes evoke. Therefore Zaugg is calling Judds sculpture an intentional representation. This intentional representation fully depends on conscious and reflective perception. This thematic approach of perception which Judds sculpture brings about, is typical for Minimal Art. In her book Passages in modern sculpture Rosalind Krauss describes Minimal Art as a practical phenomenology. To explain this Krauss describes a performance by Robert Morris. In this performance Morris shows that perception is highly influenced by context. Morris changes the position of a column, from an upright object to a horizontal one. This action is amazingly simple. Whereas the column itself does not change, our perception of the object changes dramatically. In its upright position the column seems light and thin, but in horizontal position it appears massive and heavy. Krauss: And this difference strikes at the heart of the idea that the meaning of a shape is to be found in its abstractness, or separability, in its detachment from an actual situation, in the possibility that we can transfer it intact from one place and orientation to another. Zaugg describes very precisely the way his perception is influenced by context. In the museum of Basel the six steel boxes are positioned in the hallway which clearly serves as a transit. The sequence of boxes is placed near the border of the hallway, beside a railing next to a void. The hallway is of course used in an everyday sort of way, which distinguishes it from the exhibition halls, where one normally finds works of art. In this context, the location of the six boxes looks coincidental, as if their stay is only temporary, as if they will shortly be picked up. Through our perception, sculpture and context cooperate closely. The everyday look of the sculpture is the outcome of its position in the hallway.

In an interview, Herzog refers to Zauggs analysis. Herzog: His view of the cubes in the context of the weighty, almost melancholy building of the Basel Kunstmuseum made a profound, enduring impression on us. This understanding of how a context affects perception plays a part in the positioning of the Ricola warehouse in Laufen. The position of the Lagerhalle is close to a sheer cliff of an old stone pit at the border of the site. H&dM comments: The decision to build the warehouse there gave us the possibility to make the wall a more consciously perceived landscape in itself. Our architecture tries to strengthen what exists, to pull it into the realm of the perceptible. Here, it is the essential constitution of the building and bedrock walls, which is significant. Similarities as well as differences are to be understood without coding. According to Jacques Herzog, the warehouse could be conceived as an intentional representation. Herzog: In this building we pursue a coincidence of the representing and the represented element, in a degree as we did not carry it out in any other building. In the structure of the building support and load of the individual parts become visible. This structure is comparable to the idea of a stacked wood storage. But the warehouse does not evoke the image of such a wood storage. The structure is about the relation between the individual parts; in the faade the support and the load actually take place. According to Herzog, this coincidence of the representing and the represented element is a quality which is developed in the art of the sixties, and which once was natural to architecture. Herzog: This is the identity we are looking for, and which is lost in architecture. Herzog refers to the sculptures of Richard Serra. A sculpture which represents this quality very strongly is Serras One Ton Prop. Four lead plates, each 250 kilos, propping each other up. Gravity itself is the structural principle; the existence of the sculpture depends on an unstable balance, not the illusion of balance, like a composition, but actual balance. Krauss: All Serras sculptures are concerned with what can actually be experienced and observed. Some reveal the process of their making; some clarify aspects of their physical properties, and others redefine the nature of the space they occupy.

The way Serras One Ton Prop is constructed, is similar to the detailing of Judds Six Cold Rolled Steel Boxes. Zaugg describes the structure of the boxes as a symbiosis of natural forces and technical skills. The arrangement of the individual steel plates is in accordance with the field of gravity. Structure and orientation of the boxes cohere strongly. Zaugg; The position of the boxes enforced through construction explains their construction and the other way round.

Basel 2004) p. 138 8 Ibid., p. 72 9 Ibid., p. 189 10 Rosalind E. Krauss, Passages in Modern Sculpture, (Cambridge, The MIT Press, 1981) 11 Ibid., p 239 12 Herzog & de Meuron, Natural History, (Canadian Centre for Architecture, 2002) p. 83 13 Herzog & de Meuron, Fr eine intuitieve Verstndlichkeit/ Towards an Intuitive Understanding (Daidalos, special issue, August 1995) p. 58 14 Herzog & de Meuron, Architektur Denkform, (Basel, Wiese Verlag AG, 1988) p. 45 15 Ibid., p. 45 16 Rosalind E. Krauss, Richard Serra/Sculpture, (New York, The Museum of Modern Art, 1986) p. 11 17 Rmy Zaugg, Die List der Unschuld, (Basel, Kunstmuseum Basel 2004) p. 268

The warehouse derives its identity from the almost anachronistic way it is built. Every element keeps its own entity within the structure of support and load. In the design of the warehouse H&dM do not apply some architectonic a priori. They absorb technical knowledge and transform it into architectural forms. The materials are organized through gravity. A physical process which is familiar to us through a pre-objective experience or an embodied knowledge as Merleau-Ponty would name it. By revealing this knowledge the warehouse is returning to the principle of techne in a way typical for Minimal Art; as Zaugg would say; (where) the spectator who is reflecting and revealing it, at the same time is reflecting end revealing himself. 1 Rmy Zaugg, Herzog & de Meuron - Eine Ausstellung, (Ostfildern, Hatje Cantz Verlag 1997) p. 26 2 Ibid., p. 29 3 Rmy Zaugg, Die List der Unschuld, (Basel, Kunstmuseum Basel 2004) 4 Rmy Zaugg, Herzog & de Meuron - Eine Ausstellung, (Ostfildern, Hatje Cantz Verlag 1997) p. 29 5 Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, (Evanston, Norhtwestern University Press, 1968) 6 Ibid., p. 4 7 Rmy Zaugg, Die List der Unschuld, (Basel, Kunstmuseum