Issuu

In an American Tradition / Laura Iloniemi

moments in time

apertures

Drawing Critically / Owen Hopkins

absent nature

Architecture in Watercolor / Pierluigi Serraino

objects in nature

without intention

107

Wandering the Garden of Balance, Epiphany & Paradox / John Marx

124

approaching abstraction

127

deconstructing perception

137

improvisations

145

author biographies

158

index

160

John Marx’s watercolors, originally 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 watercolor and even something of the psychologically piercing observational quality of artists like Giorgio de Chirico. And yet Marx’s watercolors also read as a gentle and affectionate homage to many great American twentieth-century artists. A homage that is inspired and celebratory rather than derivative. An architect’s take on these modern masters’ works. The Edward Hopper-like qualities of Marx’s urban scenes are apparent (fig. 3) in the way light falls onto a façade and into an otherwise unremarkable street highlighting its textures and the mood of many light industrial cities and towns around the country, and in the skillful study of the ordinariness of modern life ever-present in these images. Like Hopper, Marx appears to look ahead while yearning for something lost. Some watercolors featured here bring to mind the paintings of Precisionist artists at work in the 1920s and 1930s (fig. 1). For example, Charles Demuth is known for his contemporary scenes of roofscapes, factories, chimneys and hoardings, of pipes, wires, and pylons. The pleasure Marx takes in painting in a reductive, linear style is akin to a Precisionist aesthetic, a streamlined approach well suited to depicting the built environment. A number of Marx’s watercolors evoke the work of Georgia O’Keeffe (fig. 2). Marx’s treatment of desert scenes and their juxtaposition with rectangular built forms shares the sense of sensual awe present in O’Keefe’s landscapes and adobe paintings. This comparison does not in any way suggest an imitation of O’Keeffe, rather, what it does suggest is a similar way of seeing or experiencing the world. Here is a Midwestern outlook shared by O’Keeffe and Marx that welcomes the humbling pleasure of raw landscapes, of vast sand dunes and wide horizons: the laying of the

1 Demuth, Charles (1883-1935), My Egypt, 1927. Oil, fabricated chalk, and graphite pencil on composition board. Overall: 35 15/16 x 30in. (91.3 x 76.2 cm). Purchase, with funds from Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney. Inv. N.: 31.172. Photo Credit: Digital image ©Whitney Museum of American Art / Licensed by Scala / Art Resource, New York. 2 O’Keeffe, Georgia (1887-1986), Ranchos Church, 1930, Oil on canvas, 24 x 36 in. (61 x 91.4 cm). Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1961 (61.258). Photo Credit: Image copyright ©The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image source: Art Resource, New York. 3 Hopper, Edward (1882-1967), ©ARS, NY, Early Sunday Morning, 1930, Oil on canvas. Overall: 35 3/16 x 60in. (89.4 x 152.4 cm). Purchase, with funds from Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney. Inv. N.: 31.426. Photo Credit: Digital image © Whitney Museum of American Art / Licensed by Scala / Art Resource, New York.

world bare. A landscape, too, punctuated with primitive architecture that is picturesque in its simplicity. Another powerful American art historical phenomenon running through some of Marx’s watercolors is that of Abstract Expressionism. The black and white colors of the later works (fig. 5) invite comparison with the canvases of Franz Kline, even though the medium of watercolor is more delicate than Kline’s heavy oil brushstrokes. It is instructive to see how Marx introduces a feeling of heaviness through the use of a somber palette of watercolors while never oversaturating the paper. It’s like a balancing act, seeing how far one can go in terms of pushing the medium toward a bolder dynamic. Marx’s abstracts also evoke the existential search of Abstract Expressionists. There are, of course, artists working in this period who had a lighter touch and whose influence is worth considering when looking at Marx’s abstracts, such as Morris Louis who is known for Color Field painting and his masterful experimentation with oil based acrylics, introducing a new versatility (fig. 4). It is fascinating to see connections with such powerful work in Marx’s nine-by-nine-inch watercolors. Perhaps it helps to be an architect to be as spatially ambitious as Marx is within this modestly-sized series of watercolors. 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 watercolors 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. As architects strive to communicate their way of thinking, Marx’s watercolors are an example of a humane approach in terms of conveying emotional meaning in relation

The Impossibility of Dreams, 2019

I see beauty all around me `

` ` ` in the quiet corners ` ` ` of ordinary places

at the intense edges of`desire `

` `

in the soft moments of shadows at twilight

` `

` ` `

` `

at the crossroads of adversity

where absurdity lies waiting

in the life force of nature pushing its way through chaos

at the impossibility of dreams and dreamers

in the sincerity of a warm smile

Idyllic and Distant Sea, 1990

The Quiet Place, 2014

I find my spot this craggy ledge by the sea guarded by four gnarled Cypress which cling to the rocks with an ancient grace

The path through the trees

they endure this hard place deformed by the elements yet defiant in their character

down to the beach is lined with a bed of pine needles soft luxurious betraying its isolation

Here I can rest in precious solitude contemplating a stillness of being

Too soon the wind picks up the silence of this moment is broken as the music of the sea rushes in fills this void and just as quickly leaves This eternal rhythm reconnects me and my dreams rest for a moment before I must make the climb back up.

Caprice of Nature, 1983

There’s a story that John Marx tells of a poet sitting in a café. The poet is at a table nursing a coffee and on the verge of beginning to write. Finally, the poet picks up a pen, but stops before making any mark on the page. A thought suddenly flashes into view: “I can’t write if no-one’s paying me.” Someone else in the café observing the poet comes over. “You’re a great poet. Why are you struggling to write?” The poet verbalizes the thought: “I can’t write if no-one’s paying.” The observer reaches into their pocket. “Here’s a dollar, so start writing.” And the poet begins their work. But before the observer returns to their seat comes another question: “What are you writing about? That dollar was to write about pandas.” “But I don’t want to write about pandas,” the poet responds. The dilemma is one that architects would surely recognize. The fundamental message drilled into every aspiring architect when they enter architecture school is that architecture isn’t like other disciplines. The briefs that students are given or develop themselves, the debates that take place, the type of language used, even the very configuration of architecture as a distinct discipline assume that architects operate with almost complete creative autonomy. However, as students discover as soon as they leave the confines of the academy and suddenly find themselves at the bottom rung of the architectural ladder, the reality of the profession is naturally very different. This is even the case if an architect later on in their career ends up leading a practice, as in John Marx’s case. Indeed, he describes his role as Design Director at Form4 as one of “managing compromise,” and often avoids watching his buildings get built. “It’s too painful.” “We can have these fantasy worlds,” Marx notes, “but we’re working by commission. We’re forced to take this much harder road and it’s a tough world for architects to work in.” It’s a world that’s only getting tougher as the building industry becomes ever more obsessed with quantifying and managing risk. “It’s vital to have creative outlets. I sometimes enter design competitions with no intention of winning. Some people only enter competitions to try to win and end up having to second-guess the client. For me, it’s about having an artistic experience, a pure moment of self-expression.” It’s this urge that also drives Marx to make watercolor drawings, a body of work that he sees as a parallel to poetry: “a blank act that comes entirely from one’s own motivation.”

Constraint, negotiation, and compromise are, of course, inherent in the practice of architecture—and on one level are what distinguish it from, say, sculpture. Architecture is as much about managing the translation of a design through to actual building, as it is about the creation of the design in the first place. The fact that this process is becoming harder is not simply a consequence of the building industry curtailing the architect’s role and

responsibilities, but, as Marx suggests, is reflective of a more profound lack of trust from clients—and arguably society at large—in the architectural profession. This, he argues, stems from the deep sense of alienation that the public feel toward much modern or contemporary architecture, which no longer reflects architecture’s fundamental mission: “to be of service and to inspire humanity.” It seems the lesson of post-war modernism that it’s not possible to do one without the other is still not fully learnt. To be of service architecture has to inspire humanity, and vice versa.

Drawn worlds Today, Marx sees architecture as having “lost the joy of simple poetry, the quirky, subjective arbitrariness that gives life its meaning.” And it is no surprise that it is these qualities that are present in abundance in his watercolors and the focus of continual exploration. Looking across this body of work there’s a remarkable consistency of vision, of color, of formal language, and of subject. One is reminded of the surrealist landscapes—or rather mindscapes—of Giorgio de Chirico, the eeriness of Edward Hopper’s scenes of city life, and even the quietly haunting quality of the populated landscapes of nineteenth-century French painter, Puvis de Chavannes (fig. 2). From an architectural perspective there is also clearly something of the tone (if not the style) of Aldo Rossi’s depictions of his archetypal architecture, and also of the fantasy worlds of Rossi’s fellow Italian, Massimo Scolari (fig. 1). The comparisons to works of fine art and to particular modes of architectural representation associated with postmodernism are not just formal, but are also, and more importantly, to do with their status as images. Although emerging from very different minds, at very different places and moments, and existing in distinct cultural and intellectual fields, none of these images could be described as instrumental. That is to say, the drawing is the end in itself, existing on its own terms, rather than a means of pursuing something else. This is in distinct contrast to the vast majority of drawing or image-making that is considered to be “architectural”. In an architectural practice most drawings are created with a view to bringing something else into the world— usually a building. Drawing is a synthetic act that mirrors the synthetic act of building. Sometimes even the content plays a part: for example, Bruno Taut’s Alpine Architecture (1917) where the mythical city of the modernist future is shown in the distance waiting to be reached. Beyond the examples cited above, there is, of course, a long and distinguished history in architecture of drawing used for purposes other than simply for design. We might think of Joseph Michael Gandy’s extraordinary depictions of the buildings of Sir John Soane in almost collage like assemblages that blur the fictive and real, or

his bird’s-eye-view depiction of the architect’s great masterwork—the Bank of England—as a future ruin. There’s Hans Hollein’s montage (1964) of an aircraft carrier perched ominously in an otherwise idyllic landscape (fig. 3), or the self-consciously megalomaniacal images of cities consumed by unrelenting grids created by Superstudio in the 1970s. We might even look to the early drawings and paintings of Zaha Hadid in which architecture is recast into a fragmented world of distorted geometries and perspectives. Just as with Marx’s watercolors, none of these examples constitute propositions for actual buildings, let alone designs. Yet all reflect a vital strand of architectural drawing as a plane for self-expression, or for an interrogation of the status quo in architecture and the broader world—a practice we might describe as critical drawing. Drawing in this way functions not simply as a design tool but as a site for a completely different mode of architectural production, one that stands apart from, and therefore allows for critical interrogation of, the financial, political, and social world in which architecture as building operates. If these external realities determine the scope and limits of how and what architecture actually gets built, critical drawing acts as a way of satisfying the urge inherent in the discipline of architecture—and arguably held by a greater or lesser extent by all architects—to work free of constraints and try to reshape the world. Faced with a blank piece of paper the architect is able to construct their own realities. Although they may sometimes be only distantly related, the realities that exist in drawing in turn can help reshape the ones we live in.

Critical practice In positing critical drawing as a distinct, autonomous mode of architectural production, the question that immediately arises is the nature of its relationship to the broader architectural discipline. If when contemplating and working out design, drawing operates essentially as a tool, when it is used in this quite different sphere as a

device for representation, interrogation, and speculation, its role is rather different. I would argue that the best characterization of the relationship between critical drawing and the discipline of architecture is in terms of the supplement: a small, seemingly insignificant component that is in fact critical to the integrity of the whole. To give an example of this in less abstract terms, we see this kind of relationship most obviously between the city and the park; the latter only exists in the context of the former, which it serves to sustain physically and symbolically. A park only makes sense in relation to the city. And while the park is only a small part of a much larger whole, the city could not exist without it. Following this idea, it becomes clear that the importance and vitality of critical drawing, as a field for wholly free expression and artistic autonomy exists precisely because architecture is by definition governed by compromise and constraint. Moreover, because the relationship between critical drawing and the broader architectural discipline is structural, rather than based on content, it doesn’t necessarily matter if the subject of a drawing isn’t critical.

about making images, drawing by hand is wholly and purely about drawing—it is a critical act for architecture as a discipline and for the individual architect making it. When Marx talks of contemporary architecture having lost its “subjectivity” and opportunity for individual expression, and of the urgent need to recapture it, his own example offers both an analysis of the situation and a way forward. If mainstream architecture has shed its capacity for “lyrical expression,” to use a phrase coined by Marx in relation to the aspirations of his own work, it has done so, I would argue, as a result of the diminished role of drawing in contemporary architectural culture. Marx writes: “I want to reach deeply to the emotions of users through the lyricism of dynamic form, to unleash their excitement about city living, about participating in vibrant communities, all this aspirating to create an architecture that straddles the iconic and the humane in a single design.” If buildings are to be capable of realizing these noble aspirations, then, as Marx’s watercolors show us, drawing critically might be the means.

The essential point is that in the context of architecture the very act of free self-expression is inherently critical. And taking this idea further, because the vast majority of the drawings produced in architecture today are computer-made, to draw or paint by hand, as Marx himself does, is in itself a doubly critical act. To draw on the page and to revel in the physicality of materials is an act quite different to drawing on a computer or even a tablet. From the instinctual to the highly considered and resolved, the mark on a page is not just a signifier to something else, but is a direct trace of memory, imagination, and emotion. A hand-drawing is not simply an authorial statement but an innately personal one, a statement of self-expression and also of the self. If drawing by computer is ultimately

3 Hans Hollein, Aircraft Carrier in Landscape - Exterior Perspective, 1964, The Museum of Modern Art. Digital Image ©The Museum of Modern Art / Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, New York.

Ă‰tude 28, 1981

Peering out

from the darkness

from this my prison

I sit quietly

observing life

as I pass by

Urban Ã‰tude - First Light, 1993

Architecture in Watercolor

by Pierluigi Serraino

1 Marx, John, Midwestern Texture, No. 06, 1978, Ink on paper, 11 x 17 in. 2 Marx, John, Amsterdam Canal, 1978. Ink on paper, 8 x 10 in.

The romance of illustration is a hallmark of the architectural tradition. Even in todayâ€™s digital era, every architect comes to terms with drawing. Yet hand drawing is, at its best, the realm of spatial poetry, an intensely lyrical way of relating to architecture. It comes with its own rhetoric, view angles, narratives of what life is supposed to be, and tonal palette with mood as a core concept in watercolors. Drawing or painting is a solitary action charged with intent. This intent is different with each designer, displaying enormous degrees of variation in engagement. This is the story of one such engagement. John Marx uncovers an architectural world through soft watercolors. Into this silent exercise he brings poetic visions and a distinct technique. If drawings are windows into a world of possibilities, Marxâ€™s watercolors display mute serenity, a sense of quiet navigation into the built environment negotiating its ever-changing identity with the natural world. John Marx coaxes the viewer into an impressionistic visual narrative filled with references vaguely familiar, as opposed to literal links to specific landmarks. We have seen these places before, but are unable to pinpoint accurately where. The depicted surroundings are reassuring and speak of day-to-day life. These sceneries are at the same time precise and nuanced. They straddle the world of painting and color drawing. Art historically they exist in an in-between space that makes immediate definition challenging, perhaps unimportant. They are a highly personal way of looking at the world from an individual engaged emotionally in reading reality through the built environment. They are not design tools used in the sense of working drawings, but they are all the more important as tools for observing and being present in the world, a vital skill for any architect. The tradition of architectural drawing has its roots in the very history of the field. Either as an exploration of imaginary worlds or as a utilitarian set of instructions for the execution of a building. Its common denominator is that the outcome is something beyond itself. While the act can be plainly described as marks on paper, its final result is as open-ended as the individuality of its author. It is an entry point into a search for form, proportions, scale, juxtaposition, and so on. In essence, within the architectural domain, creative drawing is an investigative medium with an agenda. Its innumerable permutations are the visible manifestation of the mindset that traces those lines whose semantic interdependence are the exclusive province of the architect.

Drawing is sensitive to the cultural climate of the time in which it is produced. A specimen from the Medieval centuries and another from the Baroque period are documents displaying their marked differences in paradigms of visions, customs, and belief system. As

the historically-situated aim dictates the pathways the lines will travel on paper, a blueprint for an imminent constructed reality is in the making. Between the resolve to put on a page a plan of action and its actual execution, an iterative process revealing countless unexpected connections takes place. It is both liberating and soothing to shed clarity to what is routinely a blur in the authorâ€™s mind of what it will be. Its generic possibility, its potential for being everything and inconclusive, finds eventually a concrete commitment on the sheet with particularities that tie the intended result to its time and place, in essence, architecture. These broad reflections can be illustrated with a specific instance making this notion patently obvious. It is most revealing, for example, to review a drawing by Andrea Palladio and a watercolor done in the Beaux-Arts period side by side. The former is a rigorous effort in proportional relationships between the parts and the whole, carefully scripting through mathematical ratios documented on the wire drawing the belief that architecture rests on numerical beauty in reciprocity with models from the Roman past. The latter mirrors the grand ambition of its classical reference. Magnificent renderings celebrate master plans structured on territorial axes, and head-on elevations on large canvases where the sublime scale, the symmetry of the geometry, and the earth bound assertiveness of the Architecture find resolution in an iconography to admire for the institutions represented. Even within the expansive world of drawing, the art of watercolor stakes out its own vastness. The Beaux-Arts watercolors rest on the certainty of their ideological rationality. Architecture is modular, grounded in history, has a civic dimension, is heroic in scale, and logical in its construction. The watercolors produced under such outlook are monuments themselves, exhibiting all those traits in a phenomenal artistic synthesis: precise, detailed, and highly articulated. Late 20th-century watercolors emerge from the ashes of the Beaux-Arts aesthetic, taking a leap from the artistic avant-garde of the 1910s. Lacking a unifying code of representation, they display their ad hoc originality in the hands of their creators within the confines of the medium. They encompass the figurative and the abstract, lending themselves to any artistic agenda. What is here presented is an altogether different way of thinking about drawing and using watercolors. They are a distinct form of poetic investigations, impossible to codify and yet highly informative of a sentimental relationship with outer reality. Against the typical blotchiness of watercolors, these are precise, and accurate even in being reveries of non-existing spaces. Their formal origins are rooted in photography, inspirational in informing the compositional dynamic of the frame, whether a rectangle or square. Through that medium a set of impressions

Plato Goes Swimming, 2018

It was an idyllic scene

Here with a new friend

Cezanne, Matisse, Picasso might have been there last week painting this moment into history capturing an illusion of innocence from a bygone era

we share a love for this remote spot in the High Desert where the unexpected happens

a group of friends and strangers bathing in a small double pond

the water here is warm from a natural hot spring in an otherwise dry and empty land wild horses roam these parts drawn to the water drawn to life this water where we can only see the endless arc of a cloudless blue sky and each other where the cares of the world fade out to the sounds of laughter kindness affection

where today we experience the fullness the openness the sheer joy of a wondrous caprice “to be alive in this moment” but all moments connect again to the temporal pace of the earth’s curse of rotation we swim back towards the shore in between the two ponds there is a shallow with a choice to walk or swim

and she with measured grace rises slowly quietly out of the water her soft skin glistening in the fading sun midway she turns and smiles so sweetly that I know in that moment the universe can contain an infinite amount of feminine love and care When we reach the shore still wet and warm from the water we hug naked vulnerable with a generosity of friendship born from unconditional intimacy trust and love

110

River of My Childhood, 1988

111

Cartesian Imposition No. 1, 1986

135

John Marx, painter, poet, architect John Marx, AIA, is the founding design principal of Form4 Architecture in San Francisco, CA. He advocates for the inclusion of philosophy, art, and poetry in the thoughtful making of place. Keenly aware that architecture is a balancing act between self expression and collaboration, he uses the compelling power of form to create emotionally resonant architecture and urban spaces. In addition, John is a part time student of absurdity, paradox, and kindness. He has widely lectured on the topics of Design, Placemaking, Emotional Meaning, and Cultural Vibrancy in Silicon Valley and places as diverse as Korea, Italy, Austria, Australia, Canada, and the Technion in Israel. John exhibited his work at the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale and exhibited during 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale at GAFF. John’s design work and writing has been published in over 100 national and international publications, including writing in the Architectural Review, Architect’s Newspaper, Architect Magazine, Abitare, ARCADE, FORM Magazine, Architectural Record, Arts and Architecture, and ArchDaily. He is the recipient of over 160 design awards, including: eighteen German Design Council / Iconic Design Awards, three WAN Awards, five American Architecture Awards (Chicago Athenaeum), eleven Good Green Design Awards (European Centre for Architecture), the AZURE Design Award, AIA Justice National Design, two AIA Honor Awards, ten PCPC Gold Nuggets, the Korean Institute of Architects 100 Architects of 2013 through 2018, and the 2017 Upstart 50 Award, which honors the most innovative, disruptive, and creative business professionals throughout the SF Bay Area. In addition, John was honored with the Sam Shepard Legacy Award in 2018 from the Magic Theatre. In 2017, John became a Laureate of the American Prize for Architecture. Curated by The Chicago Athenaeum and The European Centre for Architecture, the award is recognized nationally and internationally as one of America’s highest public tributes for architecture in the United States. The American Prize for Architecture, also known as the Louis H. Sullivan Award, is bestowed to an “outstanding practitioner in the United States that has emblazoned a new direction in the history of American Architecture with talent, vision, and commitment and has demonstrated consistent contributions to humanity through the built environment and through the art of architecture.”

159

“Form4 Architecture’s work pairs emotional and artistic substance to public and environmental place-making and space-creating. Their practice focuses on the dynamics of form as the carrier of more lofty intent than just simply ‘building.’ ... This ideal and its philosophy conveys a ‘vision of the future’ and all the artistic possibilities of imagination, emotional meaning, and lyrical expressionism for a consequential better and more enlightened world around us... the firm has passionately dedicated itself to the renewal of beauty in architecture and all its tangible and intangible forms. The firm rightly understands that great architecture must be as lyrical as it is functional.”

Exhibitions: Watercolors Athens Architecture Club Athens, Greece 2018

Collections: Watercolors Jim Loghlin, Private Collection

Wessling Gallery, San Francisco, CA 2018

Clorox Corp., Paintings in Permanent Collection. Oakland, CA 1991

Fox/Lagreca Gallery, San Francisco, CA 1994 Eriksson And Elins, San Francisco, CA 1990–92

Kaiser Permanente, Paintings in Permanent Collection. Oakland, CA 1991

Gump’s, Awards: Watercolors San Francisco, CA 1989 Award of Distinction, Baca 9th Annual Exhibition, Manchester Gallery, Summer 1989 Pittsburgh, PA 1990 Manoa Gallery, Honolulu, HI 1989 San Bernardino Co. Museum, San Bernardino, CA 1989 Baca 9th Annual Exhibit, Berkeley, CA 1989