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The Atlas of Emergency Medicine 4th Edition Kevin J. Knoop
This book traces the development of John Hejduk’s architectural career, using the idea of “exorcism” to uncover his thought process when examining architectural designs. His work encouraged profound questioning on what, why and how we build, which allowed for more open discourse to enhance the phenomenology found in architectural experiences.
Three distinct eras in his architectural career are applied to analogies of outlines, apparitions and angels throughout the book across seven chapters. Using these thematic examples, the author investigates the progression of thought and depth inside the architect’s imagination by studying key projects such as the Texas houses, Wall House, Architectural Masques and his final works.
Featuring comments by Gloria Fiorentino Hejduk, Stanley Tigerman, Steven Holl, Zaha Hadid, Charles Jencks, Phyllis Lambert, Juhani Pallasmaa, Toshiko Mori and others, this book brings to life the intricacies in the mind of John Hejduk, and would be beneficial for those interested in architecture and design in the 20th century.
J. Kevin Story, AIA is an architect in Houston, Texas. He has served as part of the Adjunct Faculty at the Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture and Design since 1996. Kevin teaches Intermediate and Advanced design studios and architectural construction detailing. He holds a Bachelor of Architecture and Master of Architecture degree from the University of Houston.
Routledge Research in Architecture
The Routledge Research in Architecture series provides the reader with the latest scholarship in the field of architecture. The series publishes research from across the globe and covers areas as diverse as architectural history and theory, technology, digital architecture, structures, materials, details, design, monographs of architects, interior design and much more. By making these studies available to the worldwide academic community, the series aims to promote quality architectural research.
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Philippe d'Anjou
The Architect as Magician
Albert C. Smith and Kendra Schank Smith
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A Modern Architect’s Sense of Place
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The Complexities of John Hejduk’s Work
Exorcising Outlines, Apparitions and Angels
J. Kevin Story
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The Complexities of John
Hejduk’s Work
Exorcising Outlines, Apparitions and Angels
J. Kevin Story
First published 2021 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge
The right of J. Kevin Story to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Story, J. Kevin, author.
Title: The complexities of Hohn Hejduk’s work: exorcising outlines, apparitions and angels / J. Kevin Story.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon; New York: Routledge, 2020. | Series: Routledge research in architecture | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020006835 (print) | LCCN 2020006836 (ebook) | ISBN 9781138476493 (hardback) | ISBN 9781351105897 (ebook)
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020006835
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020006836
ISBN: 978-1-1384-7649-3 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-3511-0589-7 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon by Swales & Willis, Exeter, Devon, UK
Illustrations
All images, figures and illustrations depicting John Hejduk and his works listed below are included in this publication with permission granted by the Estate of John Q. Hejduk.
Cover The Fox and the Crow, Aesop’s Fables, John Hejduk, 1947, courtesy of the Estate of John Q. Hejduk, digital image by J. Kevin Story
0.1 John Hejduk, ca. 1990s, image courtesy of Steven Hillyer, Director, Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture Archive, The Cooper Union, New York 1
3.1 Comtesse d’Haussonville, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, 1845, Copyright The Frick Collection, New York, 51 7/8 in. × 36 ¼ in. (131.8 × 92.1 cm). Oil on canvas
4.1 The Ant and the Grasshopper, from Aesop’s Fables illustrations, John Hejduk, 1947, courtesy of the Estate of John Q. Hejduk, digital image by J. Kevin Story 72
5.5 Beatus Facundus, Illustration, from the Beatus Manuscripts, ca. 1047, 250 × 205 mm, title: “en:” The sixth Trumpet. The Angels trapped on the banks of the Euphrates. Rev. Ix, https:// commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Beatus_de_Facundus#/media/File:B_Facundus_173.jpg
127
5.6 Enclosures (E-13), 1999–2000, John Quentin Hejduk, Ink, gouache, and metallic paint on Hejduk office stationery, 11 × 8 1/2 in. (27.9 × 21.6 cm), image courtesy of The Menil Collection, Houston, Anonymous gift. Paul Hester, Photographer 127
5.7 Beatus illustration, Angel Detail, Facundus for Ferdinand, ca.1047, title: “The Angel spreads the first Cup. Apoc. XVI”, Illumination on parchment, 110 x 200mm, courtesy of Wikimedia.org, public domain. https://commons.wikimedia.org/ wiki/File:B_Facundus_216a.jpg 129
5.8 Angel Detail, From John Quentin Hejduk, Enclosures (E-07), 1999–2000, Black ink, gouache, metallic paint on Hejduk office stationery, 11 × 8 1/2 in. (27.9 × 21.6 cm), image courtesy of The Menil Collection, Houston, Anonymous gift. Paul Hester, Photographer 129
5.9 The Pedler, Hans Holbein, from Dance of Death, 1522–1526, woodcut, paper, h 65mm × w 50mm, compiled by Dr. F. Lipman, 1986, “the Pedler” by Ephemeral Scraps is licensed under CC BY 2.0, public domain. https://search.creativecommons.org/photos/418ecfe1-a052-4169-9459-21f7886c9399 131
5.12 Enclosures (E-07), 1999–2000, John Quentin Hejduk, Black ink, gouache, metallic paint on Hejduk office stationery, 11 × 8 1/2 in. (27.9 × 21.6 cm), image courtesy of The Menil Collection, Houston, Anonymous gift. Paul Hester, Photographer 136
5.13 Christ Carrying Cross, Botticelli, ca. 1490, 132.5 × 106.7 cm, courtesy of Wikiart.org, public domain, Mark 1.0, no copyright. www.wikiart.org/en/sandro-botticelli/christ-carrying-the-cross
5.14 Manila Folder, Enclosures layout sketch,1999–2000, John Quentin Hejduk, Ink on paper, 9 ½ × 11 3/4 in. (24.1 × 29.8 cm)
138
x Illustrations (folded), image courtesy of Menil Archives, The Menil Collection, Houston. Paul Hester, Photographer 141
5.15 Enclosures (E-10), 1999–2000, John Quentin Hejduk, Black ink, gouache, metallic paint on Hejduk office stationery, 11 × 8 1/2 in. (27.9 × 21.6 cm), image courtesy of The Menil Collection, Houston, Anonymous gift. Paul Hester Photographer 143
5.16 Sanctuary 1 (1–12), 1999–2000, John Quentin Hejduk, Ink, gouache, metallic paints, and crayon on Hejduk office stationery, 11 × 8 1/2 in. (27.9 × 21.6 cm), image courtesy of Menil Archives, The Menil Collection, Houston, Gift of the artist in memory of Dominique de Menil. Paul Hester, Photographer 147
5.23 Exterior perspective for Christ Chapel, from Pewter Wings, Golden Horns, Stone Veils, 1994–1996, John Hejduk, pen and black ink on wove paper, 21.5 × 28 cm,
5.25 St. Ignatius Chapel, Seattle, WA, Watercolor Sketch, “Bottles of Light in a Stone Box”, Steven Holl, 1994, digital sketch image courtesy of Steven Holl Architects 162
6.1 John Hejduk, ca. 1980, image courtesy of Steven Hillyer, Director, Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture Archive, The Cooper Union, New York and the Estate of John Q. Hejduk 169
6.2 Cigar Box Interior, J. Kevin Story, 1979, 8 × 10 in. b/w photograph, J. Kevin Story, Photographer digital image by J. Kevin Story 172
Every effort has been made to contact and acknowledge copyright owners, but the author and publisher would be pleased to have any errors or omissions brought to their attention so that corrections may be published at a later printing.
Foreword
Kevin Story has produced a remarkably thoughtful treatise on the enigmatic ideas of the architect, artist and teacher John Hejduk. His study is driven by genuine appreciation for Hejduk’s work and how, in a world dominated by pragmatism, it illuminates the poetic dimension in architecture. Kevin who is himself an accomplished (and busy) practicing architect and teacher has rediscovered Hejduk at a point where age has become a mature context; a time when people are often jaded or disillusioned by life in the real world. Kevin is still able to find fascination in a perennial question: “Why do architects draw angels?”
Kevin came by his interest in Hejduk existentially. He was one of the fortunate students in Professor John Perry’s famous U of H Honors Studio in the fall of 1979 when Hejduk visited the college as a critic. His visit had a deep effect on the students: he brought a different voice to the school: gentle, persistent, affecting. He challenged the students to forget the formal and functional recipes they were using with reliable success and to trust their imaginations, to be poets, dreamers, architects and artists, all at one time. He challenged them with projects of radical indeterminacy, in the ultimate kind of studio environment where no one knew the answers. It was all about discovery, even without questions. As Kevin shows in his thesis, John’s artistic life was a magical mystery tour. And unlike many architects who teach, John was a teacher first who was devoted to questions of architectural pedagogy. As a teacher he first devised a set of modernist space making exercises using the nine-square grid as a provocateur for various syntactical variations and accommodations. The exercises blossomed into narrations in which architectural elements became characters in various quasi-theatrical ensembles. John saw the building program becoming allegorical, interpreting architecture as situational and symbolic. Kevin’s interpretations of John’s spiritual, “sanctuary” projects, a preoccupation during his latter career, are particularly insightful and original in ferreting out the meanings of these stark, existential encounters with angels captured in bounded space that John drew with passionate expressiveness. Kevin’s research, including extensive interviews with the architect’s wife, shaped a view of Hejduk as a deeply religious man working out his faith in powerful architectural schemes and visions.
Foreword xiii
Hejduk visited U of H back in 1979 and not everyone was convinced that what he was doing had much to do with being an architect. Maybe even less so when John sent his former student, Daniel Libeskind (then head of architecture at Cranbrook Academy and at that time the quintessential “paper architect”) and others who were a part of Hejduk’s mystery circle that followed. And for a period of ten years or so the ideas hatched by Hejduk and fueled by fellow travelers were a big part of the creative dynamics of the College. It was at a time when there wasn’t much professional work and jobs for students in architecture offices were hard to find. The computer was just entering the scene and the old defining skills of hand drawing and sketching, model-making and drafting were highly respected though at the same time on the verge of being displaced in many architectural practices. The school was everything. It seemed like a sanctuary – almost monastic – protecting and practicing a deserted art against a time when it might be needed again. In an age of cynicism Hejduk’s visions may seem hopelessly innocent. But they helped to make it possible for students and architects to dream. And to the extent that dreaming is still a part of architecture, they continue to do so.
Kevin’s work on this project was a bit like a flaneur’s walk with new subjects of interest, insights and new interpretive directions appearing regularly as Kevin’s research unfolded. A primary source of these openings was the extensive, original interviews Kevin conducted with many notable collaborators, friends and critics of his subject. These include several handwritten letters and telephone interviews with Gloria Hejduk, John’s wife, in which she shared personal insights and experiences. The collection of interviews is a valuable, archival appendix to the study.
Bruce C. Webb Professor Emeritus
Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture and
Design
University of Houston
A Carnegie-designated Tier One research university
Acknowledgements
Along the journey to the completion of this project I have had support and encouragement from my family, friends and colleagues. Foremost among my supporters is my wife Nancy. She has been a proofreader providing insightful critiques of the form and content of my writing and she has always been an encourager. I can never thank her enough for her sacrifices.
If not for Professor Emeritus Bruce Webb this book would not be what it has become. Bruce has been a stalwart advisor, encourager, thoughtful critic, a deep well of knowledge and without his input and criticism my work would not be as comprehensive and thoughtful as I hope it has become. I share any credit I may receive for this work with Professor Webb.
This book would not be possible without the support of Patricia Oliver F.A.I.A., Dean of the Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture and Design. Thank you Patricia for your encouragement and very generous support! I would like to extend my sincere thanks to Professors Rafael Longoria, Dietmar Froehlich and the U of H Architectural Graduate Study Program for their support during the course of this project.
The depth of this work would not be possible without the ever present support of Mrs. Gloria Fiorentino Hejduk. Her kindness, availability and sincere hospitality are cherished by me and my wife Nancy. I offer my sincere thanks to Renata Hejduk for her help with this project and for opening the door to Gloria’s vivid memory. I feel privileged that I can now count Gloria and Renata as friends.
Special thanks are extended to Dr. Weiling He from Texas A&M for her insightful critiques of my early writing and to Steven Hillyer, Director of the Cooper Union Archives, for his generous help with this project.
I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the following persons for their willingness to provide me permission to use their insights into John Hejduk’s life, work, pedagogy and legacy that are included in the epilogue of this book. The names listed below are in order as they appear in the epilogue: Stanley Tigerman, Juhani Pallasmaa, Zaha Hadid, Charles Jencks, Steven Holl (courtesy of Steven Holl), Jesse Reiser, Toshiko Mori, Diane Lewis, Jim Williamson, Phyllis Lambert (Founding Director Emeritus Canadian Centre for Architecture), Joan Ockman, Dr. Alberto Perez-Gomez (Bronfman
Acknowledgements
Professor of the History of Architecture at McGill University), Rafael Moneo, Bruce Webb, Carlos Jimenez, Donald Bates, Chris Petrash and Mrs. Gloria Fiorentino Hejduk.
Very special thanks are extended to whom John Hejduk described as: “that great teacher, that grand man, that special heart, that Texan, John Perry.”1 Without Professor Perry’s persistence beginning 40 years ago this current work would not be possible. Thank you John for your generosity, friendship and encouragement!
I would like to acknowledge and offer my sincere thanks to my teaching mentor for 20 years, Professor Robert Griffin for his generosity, friendship and encouragement. Additionally, I would like to thank my teaching colleagues at U of H; Professors Tom Diehl, Sharon Chapman, Nora Laos, Geoffrey Brune, Peter Zweig, Duke Fleshman, Jesse Hager and Gary Eades for their support and encouragement. I would like to extend my thanks to Anita Parker and Zerik Kendrick for their generous time in helping me edit parts of the text and images for publication. I would like to thank Michael Thomas and Theresa Ward for their generosity during the production of this work and a special thanks is extended to the Routlledge staff for their support along the journey to publication!
Lastly, I would like to thank John Hejduk for his enigmatic complexities. In my research I have come to appreciate the depth of Hejduk’s search for the connectivity between the undertones found in architectural constructs with the metaphysics and phenomenology of human perception. I offer my sincere thanks to John Hejduk for the depth of his spirit, the vastness of his imagination and his lifetime of soulful exorcisms. He poetically delineated the complex ambiguities within the phenomenology of spatial perception and he has taught me the importance of uncovering that which is unrevealed in spatial design to expose the vastness of a mineable field of self-discovery.
J. Kevin Story, AIA Adjunct Faculty
Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture and Design University of Houston
A Carnegie-designated Tier One research university April 30, 2020
Note
1 Quote by John Hejduk is taken from a telegram sent by Hejduk to Juhani Pallasmaa to be included as the Introduction to an exhibit catalog titled: Explorations, Exhibition 1982, Museum of Finnish Architecture. The exhibit featured student work from the University of Houston Honors Studio. The telegram was reproduced in its entirety and the quoted text appears on page 9 of the catalog.
Introduction
… architectural tracings are apparitions, outlines, figments. They are not diagrams but ghosts … X-rays of thoughts. Meditations on the sense of erasures. To fabricate a construction of time. To draw out by compacting in … John Hejduk1
1990s.
Image courtesy of Steven Hillyer, Director, Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture Archive, The Cooper Union, New York.
ex·or·cise [ek-sawr-sahyz] verb (used with object), ex·or·cised, ex·or·cis·ing2
• free person or place from evil: to use prayers and religious rituals with the intention of ridding a person or place of the supposed presence or influence of evil spirits
• get rid of oppressive feeling: to clear the mind of a painful or oppressive feeling or memory
Figure 0.1 John Hejduk, ca.
John Hejduk was a 20th-century American architect, educator and artist noted for his use of narrative, allegory, metaphor and poetics in architectural design. Hejduk was influential with his thought-provoking, theoretical, polemical projects developed over the span of his 50-year career. He was the Dean of the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at the Cooper Union in NYC beginning in 1975 for 25 years. Hejduk was a respected educator throughout architectural academia in the USA and abroad. His pedagogical positions and methods have continued to be studied and critiqued within academic programs. His relentless pursuit of the otherness engendered by his thought-provoking investigations offers us the opportunity to explore and discover the complexities attributed to his pedagogical work and the poetics of form and space he sought to unearth. He was an architect that saw very few of his building designs constructed. Wall House 2, “The Bye House”, is arguably his most publicly recognized work and was constructed in 2001 after his death on July 3, 2000. During the course of Hejduk’s life journey he would fully absorb the tenets found in great works of art, architecture and literature. He contemplated the imagery he observed in the work and through these absorptions he created his own world of spatial dimensions. Hejduk spent a lifetime exorcising the depth found in the work of others to define his architectural journey.
The interpretative work in the following chapters analyzes John Hejduk’s pedagogical propositions. Hejduk was an academic and theorist, but his teaching methods extended beyond the walls of the studio environment. His world revolved around his pedagogical investigations. Hejduk’s work was synonymous with his pedagogy. He used his work as a language to communicate his ideas to others. He sought to teach by exorcising the thoughts in his work for others to contemplate and learn from. His teaching laboratory was as vast as one’s imagination and as deep as one’s soulful introspections would allow.
The organizational theme to the narrative of this book identifies three primary phases evident within Hejduk’s oeuvre, providing a chronological referential backdrop to analyze his pedagogical underpinnings. The three primary thematic phases attributed to Hejduk in the following chapters are comprised of: “Outlines”, “Apparitions” and “Angels”. These metaphorical themes define the experimental path along Hejduk’s architectural journey. It is hoped that the interpretive analysis using these themes provides a fresh insight to the polemical importance of John Hejduk’s work.
The topical themes or phases of Hejduk’s work defined in this book will be referenced using several recurring terms that Hejduk used to describe his investigative design process. The recurring terms posited throughout the text are: “exorcising” and “exorcism” and/or their derivatives. Hejduk’s term, “exorcising”, is used in this book to define his design process. He viewed the term “exorcising” as a means to fully absorb a particular work of architecture,
architectural concept, artist, architect, work of literature or art movement, such as, “exorcising Le Corbusier” or “exorcising Cubism”. His process of “exorcising” would “work-out” and “feel-out” the underpinning of his ideas. His exorcisms would result in new paradigms of thought engendering the otherness that is commonly associated with John Hejduk’s work. He would use his exorcising process to rid himself of preconceptions that could influence the outcome of his investigations. One could say, through “exorcising his architectural demons”, he set himself on a course of self-discovery to redefine the nature of art and architectural representation.
The term exorcising or exorcism is complex and it is used extensively in the interpretive analyses in the following chapters of this book. The Webster definition(s) at the outset of this Introduction defines the term as an act that carries a sense of fear and foreboding, but in the context of this book it also has a definition devoid of the fear typically conjured by thoughts of exorcism. The term exorcising in the chapters to follow is used to define Hejduk’s methodology of ridding himself of demons, but the term demon is not meant to be something evil. His demons were typically preconceptions that would influence his thinking. Exorcising was Hejduk’s way of discovering the first principles found in his work.
When Hejduk was interviewed by Don Wall in the mid 1980s for the book Mask of Medusa, Wall discussed a time when Hejduk was recovering from an illness and he (Hejduk) was trying to write down his thoughts for a preface he was contributing for an upcoming book release. An excerpt of this interview discussion is recounted below and provides the basis of intent of how the tenets of the term exorcising is used in the context of this book.
Wall: Getting rid of the germs through and in writing?
Hejduk: Yes. That was a heavy one, I got rid of it and I’m so glad. That preface was in there a long time, was building up for a long time. Had to get rid of it. Now it’s out. It’s exorcising. Architectural exorcising.
Hejduk’s process of “exorcising” allowed him to pull thoughts and images from the depths of his soulful ponderings and bring them into the light for him to analyze and absorb and for others to see, experience and contemplate. In a sense, his process of exorcising is akin to providing a visual and physical clarity to the fleeting imagery we may experience in our daydreams. His methods were thoughtful, introspective and analytical, but he always maintained a childlike innocence of spirit and an uninhibited exploration of his imagination. He was a wanderer searching for the unexpected.
“Exorcising” for Hejduk, is similar to the design process used by many architects, in that, most architects generate their work through iterations of sketches, drawings, modeling and other methods to refine their thoughts in
order to discover the underpinning and resolution of an idea. This is a common practice performed by all thoughtful architects and designers. The difference in Hejduk’s method, in my view, was not to use the iterative design process to only find a resolution and clarity in the work; Hejduk used his work as an experiential language to ask questions of what, why and how we build. He saw himself as an interrogator and a questionnaire of architectural solutions. Therefore, his works were not produced as final resolutions to architectural problems, they were meant to be questions pointing towards a deeper understanding of investigations into the connectivity we desire to have with form and spatial experience.
The content of this book is divided into seven chapters interpreting the work of John Hejduk. Chapter 1 provides the reader with an overview of the formative years of Hejduk’s education, his early years as an educator and friendships made along the way. These experiences would be very influential in the development of his future work and would inform many, if not all, of his future pedagogical underpinnings.
Chapters 2 through 6 provide an interpretative analysis of the major themes found in Hejduk’s work including: the Pedagogy of the Texas Houses, the Pedagogy of the Wall House, the Pedagogy of the Architectural Masque, the Pedagogy of the Last Works and the Pedagogy of the Cigar Box.
Chapter 6, the “Pedagogy of the Cigar Box”, is a recounting of a personal encounter this author experienced as a student, in the Honors Studio, under the tutelage of visiting critic John Hejduk at the University of Houston College of Architecture in the fall of 1979. Hejduk was the first of four visiting critics the students worked with during the 1979–1980 school year. Chapter 6 is included as homage to the remembrances of the Honors Studio and the influences John Hejduk and the studio creator, Professor John Perry have given to the students of the U of H College of Architecture.
Chapter 7 is provided as a summation to the life of John Hejduk and offers a look into the serendipitous importance Hejduk’s early Texas experiences had in the development of his pedagogical probing. An epilogue is offered as a closure to this book by providing the thoughts and remembrances of John Hejduk by others that knew and/or admired him and his work. When direct quotes by Hejduk are used in the chapters to follow, they are highlighted using text that is bold and italicized. Quotes provided in the text by other sources are italicized but not highlighted in bold.
Organizational themes: Outlines, Apparitions and Angels
Theme 1: Outlines
out·line [ówt l`in]3
• line that shows shape: the outer edge or edges of something thought of as a line defining its shape
• line depicting shape of something: a line drawn around or depicting the outside edges of something to show its shape
“Outlines” in this book is interpreted in two parts as follows: Chapter 1 provides an “outline” of the primary influences Hejduk absorbed in his early years as a student, a young architect and a member of the infamous “Texas Rangers” faculty at the University of Texas. Hejduk would refer back to these experiences throughout his career as a referential backdrop to many of his pedagogical probings. Chapter 2 uses Hejduk’s “Texas Houses” investigations to analyze his search for the refinements of geometric formal relationships, spatial expression, structural systems, constructability and the conceptual nature of architectural detailing to provide tangible evidence of the importance Hejduk placed on the exactness of geometric constructs within the canon of his work.
Theme 2: Apparitions
ap·pa·ri·tion [àppə rísh’n]4
• appearance of something ghostly: an appearance of a supposed ghost or something ghostly
• appearance of something unlikely: an appearance of something or somebody unexpected or strange
Chapters 3 and 4 interpret Hejduk’s exorcism of “Apparitions” evident in his pedagogical investigations of the “Wall House” archetype and the “Architectural Masque”. These two archetypes define a pivotal shift in the allegorical, philosophical and poetic nature of Hejduk’s architectural polemics. This phase exposed Hejduk’s use of the allegorical and metaphorical narrative in his work to deepen his poetic sensibilities.
Theme 3: Angels
an·gel [áynjəl]5
• heavenly being: in some religions, a divine being who acts as a messenger of God
• picture of heavenly being: a depiction of an angel as a human figure with wings
The interpretations of “Angels” in Chapter 5 uses Hejduk’s “Enclosures”, “Christ Chapel” and “Cathedral” projects to analyze his faith in architecture to lift the spirit, to show evidence of his deeply guarded spiritual faith and
provide an insight into his lifelong appreciation of Renaissance art providing a summation and homage to his life’s work.
Builder of worlds: setting the stage
John Hejduk searched for meanings between the lines, spaces, objects and subjects found in works of art and architecture. He explored the essences of poetic expressions and the underlying relationships that occur between spatially organized elements. The poetics attributed to Hejduk’s work was the result of a lifetime of exploration to deepen his understanding of form and spatial context, whether it was written, drawn, built, physical or metaphysical. All of which defines a unique multidimensional language. Hejduk appreciated the rigor and exactness of geometry as evidenced in his “Texas Houses” based on the “nine-square” student design exercise which was created by Hejduk and Robert Slutzky as part of the “Texas Rangers” faculty at the University of Texas. Hejduk used the nine-square problem to investigate the depth of spatial and metaphorical relationships created between form, object, space and time. The nine-square investigations led to a deeper, more personal architectural exorcising in his “Wall Houses” from the late 1960s to the mid 1970s and beyond. As his work progressed, Hejduk’s straightforward pragmatic approach to the resolution of architectural problems become powerful symbolic propositions in his last works as documented in his “Enclosures” in 1999–2000.
Hejduk’s architectural journey was one that represented a life full of revelations and new beginnings, but his journey came full circle in the end. We will see as this book unfolds, where Hejduk began his journey is where he ended. The transitional depth of architectural investigation in Hejduk’s work can be seen by tracing the lineage beginning with his 1947 Aesop’s Fables drawings as a visual tour de force of storytelling, to the compression of time and space found in his discoveries of the Diamond Houses and Wall Houses, to the representations of his Lockhart discoveries in his Masque projects, to the summation of his explorations as represented in his Cathedral project of 1996 and finally to Hejduk’s last works, the personal spiritual imagery of his Enclosures from 1999/2000.
Hejduk developed specific imagery in the presentation of his work. His exorcisms were not always meant to be resolutions to his probing, rather the imagery was provided by him as thought-provoking questions to contemplate. The playfulness and innocence of his imagination represented in his 1947 Aesop’s Fables drawings ultimately translated into a deep soulful search that was exorcised in his 1999/2000 Enclosures drawings at the end of his career. The Aesop’s Fables drawings explored a childlike imaginary world through the creative eye of an artist and the Enclosures plates were “felt-out” through the mature mind of a master poet exploring the depths of his soulful search, but presented in a manner evoking the inhibitions and innocence of a child.
The “second phase”6 of John Hejduk’s architectural journey began with the “Texas Houses”, 1954–1962, which were investigated through a quantifiable analysis of formal ordering systems and spatial contexts. Hejduk’s Texas experience marked a profound departure of self-discovery that would expand his tactile senses and deepen his resolve to exorcise his thoughts to derive personal expressions of spatial experience.
Other pivotal events during the second phase of Hejduk’s journey include his associations with Colin Rowe and Robert Slutzky. The 1957 essay titled “Lockhart, Texas” by Rowe and Hejduk, written in 1955–1956, would become very influential in Hejduk’s future architectural investigations. Through his Texas experiences he began to ponder questions of allegorical, metaphorical and metaphysical proportions that would later become evident in the Berlin Masque and other Masque investigations. The pedagogy of John Hejduk’s poetic architectural work represents a synthesis of a lifetime of investigation as evidenced through his teaching, writing, poetry, drawings, paintings and architecture. In a sense, his legacy to architectural discourse was his recognition of the labyrinthine depths of self-discovery that can be achieved through the orchestrations that connect an object, viewer, spatial context and time. Through his experiences over time and place his work provides a freshness and innocence of spirit that engenders a pursuit towards the phenomenological depths revealed within spatial constructs.
John Hejduk is remembered today as an educator, architect, poet, artist and theorist. He loved teaching young students. He was a lover of art, music and literature and he viewed the representations in these art forms as closely aligned with the ontological nature of architecture. Hejduk was considered by those who knew him as a mystic, poet, architect and outlier. He was a “larger than life figure” and a “force of nature” to those who crossed his path. He was a man that lived in his own world of soulful introspections, but he was not reclusive. He did not consciously explore philosophical questions in his work, but he would recognize and acknowledge the philosophical ponderings observed by others, after a work was completed. He would absorb the discoveries he found to inform additional explorations in his future work. There was also an ambiguity in Hejduk’s pedagogy. On one hand, his work was additive by building on lessons and discoveries he intuited from his previous investigations. On the other hand, he searched for the reductive quality in his work to create a simple clarity towards the “first principles” of his ideas. His work evolved over a lifetime of exploration to clarify the underpinning of his propositions. He built very few buildings and will not be remembered for his built constructions, but rather as a poet and a composer of paradigms in the theoretical worlds of allegory, narrative, metaphor and poetics. He was a “Builder of Worlds”.7
Hejduk would say: “To draw out by compacting in” as a method to express his own introspective nature. It is hoped that the interpretive analysis of John Hejduk offered in the chapters to follow becomes a primer to inspire others to look deeper into the underpinning of their own work. It is hoped
readers of this book will take time to contemplate the polemics of the poetics of form and space to gain a deeper appreciation for phenomenological and metaphysical attributes embedded in architectural works. During the course of his 50-year career, Hejduk asked questions about how we perceive spatial experience through the exorcisms exhibited in his work. To understand the pedagogical tenets of John Hejduk is a thoughtful step towards an understanding of how we experience and perceive the propositions of our own investigations, whether it is “written”, “drawn”, “painted” or “built”. To ponder the questions contemplated by John Hejduk better equips us to find purpose and refinement in the constructs of our built environment. A purposeful architecture designed to inform and expand the depth offered by architectural form and space and to open the imaginations of those that occupy spatial constructs to engender connectivity with the world around us.
The chapters to follow will reveal the depth of the complex language developed by Hejduk over his lifetime. Through the interpretations, speculations, analyses and discussion points presented in the following chapters a complex otherness in Hejduk’s work emerges. Hejduk sought, through the absorptions of his pedagogical self-discovery, a means to express human experience through the phenomenological depth of spatial connectivity to exorcise the angels existing in the marble of his mind and soul. In a sense we are all trying to “carve the marble to set our own version of the angel free”.8 It is hoped that Hejduk’s pedagogical propositions “felt-out” and posited within the body of this book will provide the reader with a deeper sensitivity towards what lies beneath the surface of what we think we see.
The following chapters will provide an unraveling of a labyrinthine fabric of space, time, method, metaphor, phenomenology and metaphysics. These concepts will be excavated from the depths of Hejduk’s words and his architecture presented to the reader afresh with clarity and purpose. This is an exercise in “exorcising”.
A poem is a poem, a building is a building, architecture is architecture, music is … it’s all structure. Essential. I use it as language. Architects are organically responsible today to have their language run parallel with their structure. You know what I am getting at? The new edge in architecture. I cannot do a building without building a new repertoire of characters of stories of language and it’s all parallel. It’s not just building per se. It’s building worlds.
( John Hejduk, January 1991)
Notes
1 1986 quotes by John Hejduk taken from the book Theories and Manifestos of Contemporary Architecture, 2006, Second Edition, p. 285.
2 Merriam-Webster.com, Merriam-Webster, 2011.
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid.
6 Hejduk referred to the “second phase” of his architectural investigations starting when he arrived in Texas to begin teaching at the University of Texas in 1954.
7 John Hejduk stated in a 1991 interview with David Shapiro that his architecture was not building per se. It’s building worlds. The term “Builder of Worlds” is a reference coined by poet David Shapiro for a 1992 interview with John Hejduk during the production of a video produced by Blackwoods Productions. The title of the 1992 video is: John Hejduk: Builder of Worlds.
8 This phrase is a reference to a quote attributed to Michelangelo.
1 Formations of John Hejduk’s pedagogy
Exorcising outlines, Part 1
It is necessary to keep one’s compass in one’s eyes and not in the hand, for hands execute, but the eye judges.
Michelangelo
Early artistic influences
John Hejduk was born July 19, 1929 and grew up in the Bronx in New York City. As a high school student he attended the High School of Music and Art in Manhattan just across the Bronx River from the borough of the Bronx. It is interesting to note that the acclaimed film director Stanley Kubrick was one year older than Hejduk and grew up in the same Bronx neighborhood. Additionally, Hejduk’s friend and fellow “New York Five” member Charles Gwathmey attended the same high school. By Hejduk’s own admission, he did not excel academically in his high school years and after completing high school he was accepted to Cooper Union on a probationary basis due to his poor grade point average.1 At the time Cooper Union was a three-year institution that provided a certificate upon graduation. The intent of the education at Cooper Union during Hejduk’s years of attendance from 1947 to 1950 was to prepare students to move on after graduation to another institution of higher learning (a university) for a more in-depth study of their interests. John Hejduk’s educational experience at Cooper Union would prove to have a profound effect on the foundations of his future pedagogical underpinnings.
Looking back I can see the influences on me. I know where I come from, and I want to pay homage to those influences.2
Hejduk credited three of his Cooper Union teachers as influential in his education, modern artist Robert Gwathmey (architect Charles Gwathmey’s father), sculptor George Kratina and artist Henrietta Schutz. These teachers provided Hejduk with the analytical tools and skills that would inform his artistic work for the remainder of his life.3
Robert Gwathmey
Formations of John Hejduk’s pedagogy
Hejduk credits Robert Gwathmey with teaching him the importance and ability of “extracting the abstracted essence of form through the figure”.4 While Gwathmey’s style of art was not minimalist or abstract in the strict sense, Hejduk was able to see the abstracted realities represented in Gwathmey’s work. This is especially evident in the geometric ordering found in Gwathmey’s “Hoeing” painting from 1943.
The painting is a complex study of the plane. The arrangement of the figures and field are distorted into a flat, cubist plane … As Hejduk says … “the people are abstracted themselves.” Their relationship to the land turns it into a field of color … the six smaller human figures in the background are composed in triangles, acting like a wall.5
Gwathmey’s artwork reflects a sophisticated use of figure and plane. His subjects were figural and thematically recognizable, but his representations had a distinct quality of perspectival flatness. Gwathmey’s “Hoeing” is an example of the compression of spatial context through the juxtapositions of objects and figures common to many of Gwathmey’s paintings. This spatial device would be redefined by Hejduk in his own work in the decades
Figure 1.1 Hoeing, 1943, Robert Gwathmey, American, 1903–1988, oil on canvas, H: 40” × W: 60¼” (101.60 × 153.04 cm)
after his experiences with Robert Gwathmey’s teaching. We can look back at the evolution of Hejduk’s body of work and clearly see architectural themes including; compression, flatness, allegory, sociopolitical commentary and use of color as direct influences from Gwathmey’s work. Indeed, the palette of colors used in Gwathmey’s 1943 “Hoeing” painting is strikingly similar to the subdued color palette used by Hejduk in his “Enclosures” drawings from 1999.6
George Kratina
George Kratina’s influence on Hejduk is multidimensional, although seemingly less straightforward than that of Gwathmey. Kratina taught sculpture and Hejduk remembers Kratina as follows:
He was a Catholic, and he was a Catholic sculptor. Basically a very religious man, religious in the sense of his Catholicism and a passionate teacher who never saw anything bad in your work, he always pulled out whatever was good in it.7
Sculpture class with Kratina was Hejduk’s first experience with three-dimensional design. In his recollections of his classroom days with Kratina, Hejduk stated:
I was a very bad sculpture student. I didn’t know how to transform an idea into three dimensions (my work) always looked static and uptight. That’s how it was. That was my experience of three dimensions. It just didn’t work.8
Hejduk never directly stated how Kratina’s teaching influenced his thinking. But, based on comments by Hejduk’s wife Gloria, observations seen in John Hejduk’s work and statements made by Hejduk himself, Kratina must have influenced the teaching style eventually adopted by Hejduk, as well as, influencing Hejduk’s lifelong exploration of the relationship between form and space. Hejduk’s admission as a failure as a sculpture student at Cooper Union must have contributed to his motivation to see beyond the physical nature of an object in deference to the underlying essence of the spatial nature found within the object. For Hejduk, the cutting away of a block of wood to express an idea in sculpture as an end product of artistic expression was not as important to him as the discoveries that are made during the process of trying to re-present the idea expressed through various artistic media, including sculpture. In 1985 Hejduk stated:
There are many kinds of architectural realities and interpretations of those realities, which included the major issue of representation of re-presentation. Whatever the medium used – be it pencil on paper, a
small-scale model, the building, a film of the built building, or a photograph of the above realities – a process is taking place.9
Hejduk disliked the exteriority posed by sculpture. He viewed sculpture as inanimate objects without the duality of interior and exterior spatial experience. This position by Hejduk points to the limitations of sculpture as a spatial medium. Form for forms sake, for Hejduk, equated to form absent of spatial experience. The investigation of architectural transitions through time and space would become one of the pivotal milestones in the evolution of Hejduk’s pedagogical underpinning.
While you can mentally “go into” a painting – your mind gets “caught” in it and you mentally proceed through – you cannot physically go into it. Sculpture is similar, it’s external to you; very seldom can you go into it. That’s why I have an objection to the sculptors who pretend to be dealing with architecture; their interiors are empty … I walk in, I walk out, nothing. Architecture has the double aspect of making one an observer or voyeur externally, and then completely “ingesting” one internally. One becomes an element of the internal system of the organism.10
Hejduk’s view of the spatial limitations of sculpture and his view of the varied processes used to create many types of architectural realities may have been born out of frustration at his first attempts at three-dimensional design under George Kratina. While this influence on Hejduk speaks to his personal search for architectural clarity, in hindsight we can also see Kratina’s influence on Hejduk as an educator. Hejduk discussed his view of how to teach architecture with his colleague David Shapiro by saying:
Osmosistically, by osmosis. I never draw for the student or draw over their work and I never tell them what to do. I try to, in fact, draw them out. In other words draw what’s inside them out and just hit a certain key point and then they can develop their idea … and that should be gently, really gently handled. I teach with gentleness.11
This teaching methodology seems to be a lesson Hejduk learned from his experiences with Kratina. Even through failure in Hejduk’s student attempts at sculpture, the encouragement of his teacher motivated him to see beyond the “static”, “uptight” qualities of his sculptural attempts. The process revealed a new dimension of form and space that Hejduk would produce in the years to come in projects like “Christ Chapel” and “Cathedral” from 1996, which reveal an expressive spiritual content and his Catholicism being reflected in the work. Hejduk’s recollections of Kratina’s strong Catholic beliefs exhibited in his sculptures must have been such a strong influence on Hejduk that he would, like Kratina before him, desire to embody his deep spirituality within his own work.
