Diary: Bad Architecture Stories (Hunch 1)

7 November, 1998
So, we went to LA.
At first, things went smoothly. Lots of driving.
One afternoon, I heard that there would be a lecture that evening by some kind of develop-architect. People said it wouldn’t be very interesting, but I thought it was kind of cool and weird for SCI-Arc to invite a NOT VERY INTERESTING DEVELOPER.
BY the time we got there, the lecture hall was packed. Impressive. What kind of developer would attract so many SCI-Arc students? Who were all these people?
The lecture started.
Jon Jerde.
Never heard of him.
He started by explaining that he didn’t always get so dressed up- in a dark suit with a tie- but he had just had a meeting with Michael Jackson. Then he went on about a project with Jean Nouvel, Citywalk in LA, something in Germany, and Canal City in Fukuoka- a huge shopping, business, hotel complex, with a semi-circular canal flowing through it. It seems that he’s covered most of the affluent countries.
As he went on, I felt a grin started to appear on my face, and to grow bigger and bigger.
Something unusual was happening to me.

I still don’t know if I like Jerde’s buildings, but maybe liking them isn’t the point. Somehow, I don’t hate them either. The funny thing is, HE’S REALLY SINCERE. He wants to create a “place,” a “community,”- all that. And he talked about how successful these buildings have become- how much money they are making for his clients. MONEY!

Everything he said related to what I already know in architecture, but the way he uses these qualities or social demands is very different, even opposite. It’s so perverse.
Somehow, this contradiction with my education- with that attitude towards architecture I had learned to have- made me uncomfortable.
At the end of the lecture, only one person asked a question. The crowd dismissed peacefully and easily.
For the rest of the evening, I sat with my excitement and confusion and said “IT’S SO PERVERSE” maybe 20 times.

The next day we had a seminar.
The last speaker, Ann Bergern, had written a thesis on Jon Jerde’s work and the “Architecture of Pleasure.” I wondered what there was in his work to write a whole thesis on. She went on and on for maybe two hours about Plato and Freud and the grin on my face got even bigger. I was satisfied to see an attempt to reveal all the possible layers.
Then the discussion began.
Some said Jerde’s work was not worthy of discussion. Others called it second-rate: BAD ARCHITECTURE.
I thought: Where do we draw the line between good and bad? Who decides what is first-rate and what is second-rate? By what logic or rules do we categorize buildings into architecture or Architecture?
I was terribly disoriented.
And I still haven’t recovered.

8 November
Fieldwork is half research- searching for something; half experience- letting it find you. Intelligence weaves them together, connecting what you found to what you thought you were looking for.

14 November
After all these years of studying architecture, there’s still a tremendous gap between what I like to do as a girl- a very ordinary girl- and what I’m cultivated to think as an architect. I like going shopping. I like ice cream. I like toy stores. I LIKE PINK THINGS! But in my architecture-life, I see myself, my friends, my classmates taking a distance from everyday life. In Johannesburg, I used to drive around with other architecture students, groaning at all the developments and shopping centers popping up. But none of us ever tried to identify what happened in our society to cause them.
We loathe them.
We despise them.
But we don’t understand them.
Meanwhile, we expect that once we graduate we’ll be qualified to handle building projects, clients’ needs, developers and contractors, and still be architecturally correct.
As architects- the kind of architects we’re learning to be- we always differentiate US from THEM. We design for THEM. We analyze THEIR lifestyles, as if we’re not part of it.
When I first came to Holland, I would walk around Rotterdam hating “those people.” How could they be so damn happy (at least they looked kind of happy) with their neat little lives- their most-fashionable outfits, most-comfortable living units, most-advanced communication tools. It frightened me how they could park their SHINY LITTLE CARS, full of accessories and decorations, with high-tech stereos blasting their newest CDs, in the middle of the Kruisweg, blocking traffic, each convinced of being the coolest person on earth. What is this all about? If this is everyday life, can I handle it?
But I also envied them. Is it against the rules for me to embrace these things too?

LA was liberating in its shameless enthusiasm for kitsch- in its mastery of the trivial.
My friend Hadar took me to see this musician’s front yard. He has 17 of Michelangelo’s David raised on pedestals in front of his home: 8 on the left, 9 on the right. In the middle is a statue of Venus. The whole world can see his admiration. Anything I could ever imagine to be “bad” is built and loved in that city, and I have to admit, I am inspired by the badness, rather than the goodness, of Jon Jerde’s works. But who decides it is bad? Is our work judged by “us” or “them”? Aren’t we part of this “consumer society,” “popular culture,” “middleclass landscape”? For how long can we detach ourselves?
“SECOND-RATE’ ARCHITECTURE IS COVERING THE GLOBE.
It is the architecture that people find it easy to engage with. It is loved and used in millions of everyday lives. Shouldn’t we be looking more closely?

19 November
I have no destination, only lots of little stops.
If I zoom out I see them as happy stops, though I’ve anxiously stumbled through them with too much ambition, too little time, not enough sleep, too hungry, too busy, too stressed, too satisfied, too determined. What I remember from each are not the glorious moments, not the rewards, but the battles between myself and myself, the climb from one thought to the next, the brief moments of enlightenment.

27 November
Sometimes an idea gets stuck. I can’t move forward for days. Everyday, I say to myself: “It’s coming today. I feel it.”
19 December
In the beginning, I didn’t like Stan Allen.
Didn’t trust him.
I was hard-headed and his suggestions seems outrageous- he didn’t seem to “get” what I was trying to do. But as the first term progressed, his ideas turned out to be brilliant, very powerful. After a few crits, the project began to grow, almost by itself.

I think I started to take Stan seriously when I discovered that we like the same Japanese writer, Haruki Murakami. I love Murakami’s pace- his speed, and then his slowness. He can go on forever about the details of the interior, the smell, the food, the woman’s body; or about how to make pasta. But then, another time, he’ll blurt out the story so quickly- LIKE AN ACTION MOVIE- that I have to cover the next line so I don’t miss any details and jump into the ending. He writes he’s like talking. Maybe he worked hard to develop this style, but I wouldn’t know.

So we were in LA, wandering around this Neutra house; Stan was chatting with his friend- who lives in the house- on the terrace.
I overheard the friend say: “I like the girlfriend.” And Stan said: “She will come back later.”
I thought: WHAT GIRLFRIEND WILL COME BACK LATER? Then I saw the book in his friend’s hand- The Wild Sheep Chase. I had finished it only the week before.
So I told Stan’s friend that Murakami is my favorite Japanese writer, and recommended Norwegian Forest. I didn’t say more. But after that I started to wonder.

Now I know that Stan is a great teacher. But the most important thing I learned was to let him teach me. MY EGO WAS KILLING ME.
After finally earning the title “architect,” I didn’t like being called a student.
But now I’ve changed my mind: I always want to be a student- a LEARNER.
You know that feeling you get when you’re in Ronchamp, or La Tourette, or Hagia Sophia? When I signed my name in the visitors’ book after seeing Le Corbusier’s chapel, I swore that for the rest of my life I would always sign my profession as “student.”