The Search for a Conditioned Openness
Attempts are being made again and again to classify our architecture in order to be able to discuss it better. A classification according to styles, for instance, makes communication easier because people think they know what they are talking about.
We do not pursue a certain style! This makes a classification difficult. For us, the important thing is not the product but the process. Well-conceived and usable architectural concepts that are limited to the essential facilitate an economic and unobtrusive realization.
We are particularly interested in the confrontations and interrelations of a socio-cultural approach to architectural and urban planning issues. In this experimental field, architectural-conceptual strategies definitely have priority over formal considerations for us.
Our dissociation from the historical fund of modernism is thus based on functional considerations, so to speak. We judge ourselves by specific tasks and have little interest in trends and isms. Neither is a general view of architecture of any relevance to us. We are trying to find an adequate spatial structure for certain utilizations and functions. In other words, we are interested in the display of utilization - in an open structure, which inevitably results in an abstraction of spatial and organizational dispositions. We are aware that, by giving the users plenty of scope, we are making great demands on them, because they cannot consume the building like a finished product but must take possession of it.
"...today a building is only interesting if it is more than just itself, if it fills the surrounding space with possible connections, especially if this happens with a quietude which our perception has not yet recognised as architecture at all." (P. Smithson)
"At a time when our sets of value were still determined by the church and the monarchy, and later by local governments and banks, it was important to demonstrate this power in the construction of buildings. Now that we are simultaneously influenced by many different factors, the time is over for any rhetoric in individual buildings." (P. & A .Smithson, Without Rhetoric 1973).
Arrival at the airport, check-in, passport and security control, shopping, waiting, boarding (and vice versa) are the stations and activities at an airport which should be expressed and made experiencable in an adequate sequence of spaces. At smaller airports, these activities can be carried out along a distance that keeps the target in view. The concept of a sequence of spaces is based on the measure of a visible distance. Interpreting an airport as the gateway to a city results in different designs of the airside and the landside facades, respectively, adjusted to the perception of the either arriving or leaving passengers.
A building must be able to hold its own in an area lacking identity. For this purpose, the building must radiate self-confidence. The necessary self-confidence is achieved by contextualizing the building in terms of urban development, which must not be mistaken for adaptation, and by the language of materials and forms.
A project is influenced by the complexity of its environment in terms of urban planning. However, a project can also have an impact on the complexity of its environment in terms of urban planning.
The functional demands of different utilizations are an essential starting point of design into which the architectural form is woven. The latter does not follow any predetermined images but rather is the result of the design decisions. This functional realism has little to do with the reductionist aesthetics which, today, circulate as a confessional code for simplicity.
In order to mark the building off from its environment, we define a seemingly closed building in the available area, for instance, and insert an orthogonal network in which single cuboid blocks are set side by side.
The openness of orthogonality and the inherent possibility of adding and lining up blocks simultaneously generate a dramatic effect and rhythm. The result is a complex of buildings which is dense at all levels and at the same time open and which offers sufficient space for both sensual experience and intellectual work - this includes contextualization in terms of urban development.
We do not strive for the so-called simple form as our aesthetic goal. However, this simple form can be the result of a designing process. Nor do we aim to reproduce anything, but rather we aim to make the utilization the content. This means minimum means for optimum spatial freedom. A means of architectural economy is simple geometry. However, in most of our buildings, this geometry is disintegrated in order to offer a wide range of spatial variations, architectural experiences, views and a variety of figures of movement. This is comparable to the traditional Japanese house whose geometry does not follow any compulsive order but serves the freedom of living. We are searching for conditioned openness.
We hardly ever think in architectural terms. The analysis of utilization has an impact on the type of building, its location and its lighting. The utilization is analysed, not defined. Once this is done, we look for the construction and the material.
The material, the details and the construction should not become any kind of problem, not during the design process, nor at the construction site, nor during the actual utilization.
 |
1 |  |
2 |
When specifying details, we are not primarily interested in developing the detail but rather in integrating it into the context of the task to be solved. Details must subordinate themselves and, at the same time, must be able to support a concept. Therefore, we cannot support a lapse of details into trivialities, let alone an understanding of details as architecture.
Classical modernism can only be newly interpreted and translated into the present if it is freed from its ideological and dogmatic burdens. Only then can a functional realism develop from the old functionalism.
Why are structural elements produced from concrete, glass, plastic, steel, wood or bricks? Or maybe the question should be formulated more precisely: why are optically visible surfaces done in a certain material? This question arises particularly in the context of surfaces, which have no specific static function, in which the materials need not be used for constructive reasons. Basically, the answer is appearance - the appearance which interacts with other components, especially aspects and factors that have a qualitative influence on the appearance of a building.
The choice of a material and the deliberate combination of the same or different materials almost inevitably results in a certain surface effect, which gives the material materialness. Materialness becomes a means to the end of making a comment, a fundamental statement. If the surface bears reference to the content of a project, the choice of the material serves the purpose of supporting and articulating a design concept. Surfaces and concept cannot be viewed separately, and it must be added that the concept can range from a town-planning concept to the development of a layout plan.
Here the work is in the low tech sphere - a new term that has not been precisely defined yet, but is conclusively understood as the opposite of high tech - which leaves a surprisingly large scope. Basically, high tech deals with the aesthetization, or rather formal aesthetization, of constructive details, whereas low tech requires complex considerations and measures to achieve a desired effect. However, the elaboration of details is always assigned a role in the overall context. Aesthetization occurs at a different level.
A building to a certain extent requires a viewer passing along it or walking around it. A glass façade is more than just a thermal separation. The almost classical structure that can be broken down into individual elements facilitates spatial layering in a confined space, which creates a suspenseful spatial continuum between the inside and the outside. Both the viewer and the user must study the building and must get used to it because it has only little to do with stored traditional images of a house.
A phase of irritation due to abstraction can well lead to a strong identification with the project. Such an irritation also results in a heightened awareness. In the context of this abstraction, the user must define himself via himself, without any help from third persons.
By breaking down structures into their individual components, which can be paraphrased by the term classical architecture, we re-assemble these elements in the context of an overall concept. By focusing on the essential, the elements, the structure and the concept take on abstraction, which at the same time prevents a personification. Our projects often unintentionally become critical statements as a result of our approach to developing concepts, which also includes the permanent questioning of their appropriateness and meaningfulness. However, nothing is further from our mind than to make a generally acceptable architecture.
For us, the important thing is not what you see but how you see it and the resultant response of the viewer while viewing something. The process triggered off by seeing expands the range of perception. The development of a project allows the viewer to perceive on two different levels. Abstraction involves a concrete relationship between one’s own size as a human being and the object.
Man is the measure of all things. He is conditioned by the size of a body and by his own ambition to measure things, especially material things, by his own size.
The image we produce about an object that we see is an intellectual construction. Usually we learn to see and especially how to see by means of consciously or subconsciously accepting general codes as is also the case with colours or objects.
It is clear that we too can only set up fragments, but perhaps fragments that do not make our work into a style.
Our architecture is not an architecture of built images but creates structures, which are open and precise at the same time: frameworks for the complex flow of images of utilization.
Roger Riewe is a principal in the Austrian Architectural office of Architekturbüro Riegler Riewe. He recently visited Calgary to deliver a lecture for our 1999 Somerville Lecture Series, as well as conduct the winter design charrette. Above is an edited transcript from the lecture.
Photo Credits: Paul Ott 1. Entrance to Airport Terminal, Graz, Austria, 1989-94 2. View from Runway