Memory of Pierre von Meisse

How to build and how to teach to build ..

Jan Horský's interview with Pierre von Meiss published in the Czech bulletin Alfa 07 a 08/14

Let me start with a more general question: How do you look at architecture? Sometimes its very essence is discussed: whether it is art or not art…
It is a difficult question. It's definitely a craft. Art - more precisely, free art does not have to serve practical use. This is one thing that architecture can never be deprived of. When you remove an artifact, nothing happens. Unlike the situation after the removal of the architecture. And one more thing: I don't like to tell architecture students that they will be artists. The school cannot even guarantee that it will educate a student as a good artist. But it can guarantee that a good craftsman will leave. Vice versa, you can inspire art school students with an artistic future.

Whether it is art or not, what unites quality performances is the resulting spectator catharsis. Could you recall some intense emotion associated with visiting architecture?
I would definitely name Falling water. I visited the work during my stay in the USA, in my youth. It was an experience. And then I would probably mention Perret's Cortot concert hall in Paris with beautiful concrete columns.

And lately?
I definitely enjoyed your new faculty of architecture. The horizontal views of the whole building are beautiful. Great place to study and teach. But even though I really enjoyed the architecture, I must add that I found a certain mistake there. And I was quite frozen.

Could you be specific?
There are three halls in the building - and at the same time they are skylights. I see a problem in the fact that the skylights are tall and the gray concrete does not sufficiently reflect the flowing light falling from the glass roof. More precisely, concrete absorbs light. I would almost say sixty percent. If the concrete walls were painted white, the situation would suddenly be different. I remember Galfetti reconstructing Bellinzona Castle in Ticcino. The castle stands on a rock. Galfetti built an access elevator shaft and whitewashed the stairs and walls. He didn't have to. In a way, it is a small thing, but a great result in the space of vertical communication.

ORDER

In your lecture, the students were interested in the elements of order and non-order that you are working on. These are important elements that can be related not only to architecture but also to the society in which architecture originates and which it mirrors. When there is too much order in architecture, it is as if society reflects it negatively. On the other hand, I think that it is in the Czech Basin that we often lack order as a necessary substance of its democratic character.
People criticize when there is too much order. And as soon as the repetition appears. But we are facing a paradox. In my opinion, one literally needs repetition. After all, our hearts, our breathing - these are also examples of repetition. But also aesthetically - as soon as we see a repeat, aesthetic satisfaction comes.

Could you give an example that you have in mind?
For example, a window. Or a kind of ornament. Repetition gradually begins to create a structure that satisfies the human mind. Without structure, we would feel a little lost. Once you begin to perceive repetition, you can imagine the whole. If not every window were the same, if every window was different, I would not be able to see the whole facade. A different example is offered by Ginger and Fred from Gehry and Milunić on the Prague waterfront.

You must have been there to see it. Each window is in a different position. The motif here is the reflection of the waves in the Vltava, to which the house relates to...
This is probably how the authors interpret it ... I'm sorry, but now I will avoid this detail: personally, I am very critical of this building. In my opinion, the key attitude of the author of a new building is the relationship to a specific, immediate urban situation. The example you gave seems to me like a civilized environment into which a wild animal has run. A wild animal from Southern California that wants to show off here. At the world exhibition, it could be a perfect exhibit - at the world exhibition, which is, of course, ephemeral. At the end of the exhibition, you will destroy the exhibits ... But the architecture is to stay here and build the city. You cannot build a city from these buildings. Imagine that everyone did it that way. You wouldn't last here. You would start to hate Prague. These buildings would destroy the city. Because they don't have urban discipline.

Let me ask: Could it not be that the authors perceived a deeper urban order - especially the relationship to the river and the castle's landmark?
I doubt it. Gehry enjoys it ... and even though Milunić chose him for his European origins, I don't think he has urban roots.

If he was building in Prague for the second time - don't you think it would be more urban, as you say?
I don't think so because the client invites him just to build Gehry ... He wants to introduce Gehry's fingerprints ... When I studied fifty years ago, the city was buying a new Picasso or Monet for its gallery. Today the city buys Hadid or Nouvella, etc. The first building of Zaha Hadid was, as is well known, the fire station in Weil. But the house never served as a fire station. It became an artifact that lost its original function. Firefighters rejected the building because it was not practical for them. By the way, this is what I said: if you grasp architecture as art, you have to - you can forget about the benefits ...

Isn't it a question of formulating the assignment? Or also a mission? For example, during the construction of a church in the city, its solitary, resp. we are not surprised by the exclusive nature ...
Yes, yes, four hundred years ago, the city had specific functions, such as a town hall or a castle or gates as the official entrance to the city. And objects with special functions also had a special expression ... The rest is quite an ordinary city. Ordinary apartment buildings, two-storey or three-storey, but not designed by architects. The problem with today's city is the fact that everyone is pretending to offer the city special features. Such as McDonald's or banks, various Nestlés and Shell, etc. But when we look at the 19th century, what were the houses and functions that were significant in the city? The railway station, the post office, the concert hall, the theater, the court, all these were the operations of the modern state. These objects were of great importance and therefore offered a truly specific architectural expression. But this is not the case with the Dancing House. Or does this house have the status of an object of public importance?

In other words, what happened to a city that is beginning to fill with the architecture of international stars, as you say? Why doesn't it take care of the traditional urban character anymore? Isn't the fragmentation of an urban character an expression of democratic governance that dilutes the traditional vertical hierarchy?
So you ask why the city perceives these architectures as exceptional and not as part of its tissue? The reason is money. That's what decides. For having a billboard designed and built on the street ... But why does the city, I ask cynically, not allow the investor to hang a real billboard with an advertisement on the facade of the house? Instead of designing and building a house-banner international star? I'm really asking a little cynically. So more than architectural personalities, it is a reflection of social movement. And it is also affected by the huge amount of money that currently revolves around the city. You are asking about the dilution of the city's traditional character. I do not think this is a problem of democracy. I think these are values.

Or rather the disintegration of values ...
Exactly. When I overdo it, most city residents have a dream - to live in a villa. Why? This wish probably has some psychological fungus. Maybe in the spirit of My House - My Castle. If everyone fought for democracy as the highest value, I do not think it would be possible for him to pursue living in a villa in parallel. I think, there is something wrong about that. I probably perceive democracy as a certain community, which is not characterized by the fact that everyone lives separately in a house on a plot of land behind a fence ... Maybe I feel selfishness in that. Of course, the city evolved from a traditional character in the 19th century through the twentieth century, which is symbolized by, for example, the automobile ... And let's look at a North American city, for example, which is clearly different from the city as we perceive it in the European sense. And this is one of the reasons why I like Prague - especially in the center - which in a sense does not lose any of its democracy due to a certain density ... Perhaps this statement is based on my idea of the discrepancy of the trend of individual housing, respectively. egocentrism, with community principles of democracy ...

1989

This is not your first time in Prague. In addition to a lecture five years ago at our faculty, you stayed in the Czechoslovak Republic in the 1990s as part of post-November assistance ...
That is a long history. In 1990, together with two colleagues in Lausanne, I organized a summer school for nine teachers from Eastern Europe. I got money, about 90,000 Swiss francs but the problem was how to choose the nine colleagues? In the end, I decided to subject the selection to a kind of trust - and as far as the Czechoslovak Republic was concerned, I turned to Vladimír Šlapeta, with whom I knew relatively well from various professional events. And by the way, he recommended Jiří Hůrka, with whom I still associate, and someone from Brno and Bratislava. Of course, I suspected that the further east, the tougher the hierarchy: your country was not a typical example ... In Romania, for example, the main interest of senior university professors was to get in line - and finally go to summer school in Lausanne...

Otto Wagner, shooting range, Vienna, 1908; image from the archive of Pierre von Meiss

What is the way out?
I therefore opted for the limit - forty years of age. Which caused a problem, for example, in Bucharest, if I remember correctly - to find an architect-teacher or assistant under forty ... The summer school was a success, the colleagues lived in different households, they found shelter from our Romanian and Polish colleagues, it was more than twenty people right in Laussanne and it was a fantastic experience, so in the end the question logically came: will the summer school take place again next year ? But I almost perished under the weight of organizational tasks ... So I had to apologize. To be honest, it would be a better idea if our educators came to you to find out what are the conditions for teaching and what what the professors teach. What the city looks like, the school and the teaching staff and the students. So the following year I spent my sabbatics in Bucharest, Brno - and also in Prague and Warsaw.

Let me ask you a question: so you stopped lecturing at your home Polytechnic while being on sabbatical?
Yes, I chose my annual sabbatical vacation, which means, by the way, only 75 percent of my salary. For the record: you are entitled to the sabbath every seven years of teaching. The obvious condition is the elaboration of a sabbatical project. As for Brno, I did not teach students but I organized a seminar for teachers. They arrived from Prague, but many of them were also from Bratislava and Brno. I must say that it was a very exciting year but also a challenging one - in Romania, for example, there was not much food. It was quite a shock for us, I remember that we ate mainly cabbage ... So I quite lost weight (smile). But it wasn't a lot of fun: you even had a hard time finding light bulbs! Fortunately, my wife from Laussanne sent me some. After all, students often did not see what they were drawing. - There were no computers yet. Or they had literally five Western magazines in the school library: one from the US, British, French, and so on. I gave the task and then in the library I see that the students redraw from those magazines over the paper ... But I also suddenly realized that they are better off than ours in Laussanne, who put the magazine in a copier and don't even know what they are copying. ..

ARCHITECTURE ELEMENTS

As you know, you recently published the book Elements of Architecture - From Form to Place and on Tectonics / Introduction to Architectural Design, and you recently rewrote and supplemented it. Currently, your Elements are being prepared for Czech readers. They are translated by doc. Michaela Brožová, who also uses your pedagogical methodology in teaching ...
The fact that Elements will be in Czech is an excellent intention. Why: students should receive a similar, professional publication in their mother tongue. At the end of the study, the student often speaks English or French. But at the very beginning, after high school in the first year, he doesn't read much. He prefers to look at pictures, which actually distracts him a bit from reading. All the worse when most books are in English ...

On examples selected from the millennial history of construction and presented equally in word and image, you document and explain the universal principles of creation in the book and in lectures. This private collection of architectural and urban realizations, drawings and plans, as well as paintings and sculptures will not deny your admiration and love for Mediterranean culture, ancient Greece and Rome, Gothic, Renaissance and masters of modernism of the first third of the 20th century. Which of these examples do you give most often in lectures, because you are closest to it?
Of course, my answer depends on the topic and audience of my lecture. If my lecture is devoted to urbanism, I will definitely include a color photomontage of Hydra. Because it is a plausible example that the strictest rules for image protection poorly imitate the past instead of examining the true interaction of elements of coherence.

Greek city Hydra

Photomontage: Hydra with modernist houses

If the lecture is about spatial composition, I usually use some of the schemes to make sure that everyone understands what we are talking about. In this context, I like to use pictures of the buildings of the great masters of spatial composition of the 20th century: for example, Frank Loyd Wright, Mies van der Rohe, Kahn, Le Corbusier and especially Carlo Scarpy. I cannot use the works of Herzog with de Meuron, OMA, Hadid, Gehry or Ita, because spatial composition is not a key theme for these authors. They devote more than space to creating an image. If in the lecture I deal with facades, respectively. skin, which the reader will find in Chapter 10 - Body and Surface, I will certainly use Wagner, as well as Herzog and de Meuron. Because Otto Wagner was the genius of the facade composition and the Herzog team with de Meuron is truly inventive. And so I could go on: if the lecture deals with - for example, space, light, engineering, etc. - my sources are, of course, different again.

Herzog & de Meuron, high-bay warehouse Ricola AG, Laufen, 1986–87, 1990–1991, image from the archive of Pierre von Meiss

Awareness of architectural space - intangibility defined by matter is, in your opinion, as doc. Brožová points out, the most important discovery of an adept of architecture. Do you remember when you made this discovery yourself? What was the situation?
So far no one has asked me such a question ... It was probably during the school years, but it did not take effect until I was thirty. I taught at Cornell, and from first to last year we had great debates about space. The students dealt with detailed analyzes of buildings and cities that they could never visit, located in India or Europe. I began to be suspicious: the space presented by plans and photographs will always lack the crucial dimension of physical experience. Therefore, after returning to Switzerland, I founded the EPDL Laboratory for Experimentation with Architectural Space, a place where any spatial configuration as well as light can be easily simulated with the help of a palm-sized kit and sliding ramps in a 1: 1 scale. Today, the LEA is already closed. The university came to the conclusion that at the time of computer simulation, this rather groundbreaking system is old-fashioned. They were wrong: moving in space and being able to change it is by no means comparable to the experience gained on a monitor. Moreover, it is no coincidence that my chapter on space is immediately followed by a chapter on place and experience ...

In conclusion: what other schools did you teach at?
As a visiting professor, I worked at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, I also taught in Italy, Cyprus, also in Brno, Bucharest and Warsaw…

Can it be assumed that you teach the first years most often?
The second years. You don't have to teach sophomores to hold a pencil and they're not snobs yet… who think they know everything - and the only one who doesn't know is their professor…

This interview was published in the Czech bulletins Alfa 07/14 a 08/14.

How do you translate to Czech De la forme au lieu + de la tectonique?

Jan Horský's interview with doc. Michaela Brožová, the author of the translation of Pierre von Meiss' book

The book From Form to Place + on tectonics, with the subtitle Introduction to the Study of Architecture, is an extraordinary piece of work. An easy journey into the depths of the field in a beautiful Czech translation. The book is imbued with a love for architecture and the reader - the student. Before we get to the more detailed questions, what comes to mind when you remember the moments in translation? Otherwise, the book is read by an ordinary, albeit professional, reader, otherwise an expert - translator…
Michaela Brožová: I read the book first, without realizing that I would translate it. It impressed me with its complexity, breadth and selection of topics it deals with. I liked that it provides a solid theoretical basis for design and teaches how to think about architecture, is not primarily guiding, and encourages the reader to think. The second thing why I find the book extraordinary is the concept of a parallel arrangement of text and images, which allows the reader another way of reading (374 images with captions composed of approximately 680 separate images). The author also works with a reference example with reference buildings, through which he introduces the reader to his private imaginary museum: he does not choose them according to their image or publicity, but how they specifically touch the space, light, facade concept, etc. I am not a professional translator, but prof. von Meiss wanted the book to be translated by an architect, and because we have known each other for a long time and we also use some of his pedagogical methods and textual materials in teaching, he entrusted the book to me. In retrospect, I wonder to myself that I committed myself to translating such an extensive and difficult text, I had no idea then how long it would take in the end. Translation reading is a completely different kind, it is not enough to broadly understand the meaning of the message, but it requires dealing with every word, every particle and their position in a sentence. I worked on the translation with more or less intensity for four years, in various places, so the moments in the translation you are asking were blessed, I remember both the anguish and fatigue when I could not come to terms with certain things and the joy and pleasure when the problem was solved. In a way, translation was an everyday meditation on architecture. Mrs. Mgr. Zuzana Krýzlová, who read and commented on my translation was a great help to me; I had feedback from the reader and a language expert, we had discussions about different places and compared alternative translations. The book "appeared" to me again as a coherent piece only after the completion of the Czech translation.

To what extent did the book influence you as a teacher of architecture?
Years ago, after reading the first edition, I realized that we do not systematically teach "project theory" and that it is necessary to convey certain information "separately" in the form of small lectures or joint stops on a particular topic, which we introduced into teaching ZAN. It seems necessary to me especially for beginning students, and if this is not the case, the shortcomings will appear later. I am also afraid that if some related topics, such as shape psychology and their significance for design, are not discussed in ZAN, the student will not learn about them in other subjects. The book contains the basics needed to create and design, and as von Meiss writes, in order for a student to question or transcend them, he must first learn to master them. At the faculty, the book did not only influence the teaching of architecture: its first edition was independently discovered by our colleague Krýzlová in Paris, and she still uses the texts to teach French.

Did it affect you in terms of pedagogical methodology?
I also studied in Switzerland for some time and with my colleague Jiří Hůrka, who once worked with prof. von Meisse at several-week summer workshop (in which Snozzi, Botta, Vacchini and Galfetti also took part), we were greatly influenced by the way of teaching at the EPFL in Lausanne, where prof. von Meiss is responsible for studio teaching. He also founded and led a workshop-laboratory here, where models up to a 1: 1 scale were made. His teaching texts, studio assignments and final evaluations of students were characterized by great methodological sophistication. Even as a visiting professor at our school in the summer semester 2014/15, he left nothing to chance, the whole program was carefully prepared. From a pedagogical point of view, it remains a great role model for us. In accordance with the division of the book and its title - from form to place - we at ZAN have adopted a procedure based on the design of the spatial composition and form of the building to its adaptation to the environment and the creation of place. Many colleagues had issues with this procedure, while prof. von Meisse worked at the faculty because the finished architect usually comes from the place and it is crucial for him in shaping the mass. But in the end, most of them recognized this approach from the abstract to the concrete for beginning students as justified.

Did you discover any new topics?
It is a question of from what point of view to evaluate the novelty of the topics, it is rather a certain novelty of the view of topics traditionally connected with architecture. For example, the chapter Light and Shadow is not based on the usual, rather technical, procedures of lighting design, as we are used to, but on Arnheim's assumption, which attributes the function of light sources to illuminated objects. He then views the architectural composition as the art of placing and dosing primary and secondary (reflected) light sources in space and the control of light as one of the most important means of creating and enlivening space. Von Meiss seeks, without diminishing the importance of knowledge of technical parameters, to reformulate the main principles of lighting design from an architectural point of view. He also draws attention to the fact that during the elaboration of the project, light becomes one of the least controllable phenomena and, as a result, the least taught in the studios.

Which passages were the famous translation challenge?
Leaving aside the pitfalls of accurately translating a large number of technical terms, French is a language in itself that is reluctant to be concise. It is full of twists, loops and an inexhaustible number of small words, which you can quickly skip during global reading, but you can trip over them dangerously during translation, when they also acquire a philosophical meaning ... About some formulations we led discussions about with  prof. von Meis, starting with my question, why can't it be said more simply? The real problem was, for example, the word modenatura (fr. Modénature, from it. Modanature, originally from the 16th century - editor's note). This word does not appear in Czech and I was hesitant whether to copy it, which I found complicated and long (geometric arrangement of the wall surface - proportions, relief, profiles - into larger units) or to take over. Since von Meiss uses the word repeatedly, I opted for the second option. By the way, in contemporary Czech professional literature, the honored word modenatura was probably used only by Pavel Halík in translating Le Corbusier's work For a New Architecture. It is also necessary to mention the translation-demanding text, which Zuzana Krýzlová dealt with perfectly in two philosophically tuned appendices by Sébastien Marott and Bernard Huet at the end of the book.

There are a number of inspiring quotes in the book. Which ones did you like?
In the chapter Places, in conjunction with von Meiss's text on place, its need for temporal stability and recognizable physical qualities, evoking specific socio-cultural experiences, I like the quote of Aldo van Eyck: Places we remember and places we anticipate intertwine in the present . Memory and anticipation, in fact, represent a real perspective of space and give it depth. The quotation complements von Meiss's reflection on the dual role of architectural space, which is a witness to the past and at the same time an opportunity for the future. It calls here to rediscover the importance of place and its history in the process of transformation and creation of new places, the search for a relationship between form, place and history.

Can you tell which passage appealed to you the most?
I certainly have more favorite passages, for example in the chapter Body and Cloak it is a commented tour of the interior of the church of the ancient monastery of Hosios Loukas, built in the 11th century near Delft, where I am fascinated by von Meiss's almost detective ability to read an "enlightened combination of tiles and continuous cladding." Or, in the chapter Aesthetics of Earth's Attraction, a reflection on technology and modernity, bold and illogical forms, including a reflection on the cooperation of architect and structural engineer, specifically in the case of the Toyo Ita library in Sendai, Japan.

Editor's note: Pierre von Meiss' book From Form to Place + on Tectonics, ed. Archa 2018, can still be purchased at a discounted price in the office of the PR Department (211).