From Bauhaus to Koolhaas

By Katrina Heron


Wired: Is architecture behind the times?



Maybe because they're not overly appealing options from a business perspective.


Where do you see the future of architecture going?


You're doing a big project in China now, aren't you?


What are you learning there?


It would also seem likely to produce a less hospitable environment.


You make it sound like no one's in charge.


So generic is not a dirty word?

Well, Singapore has succeeded, over the last 40 years, in removing any trace of authenticity. It is a culture of the contemporary. And many Asian cities are like this now, seeming to exist of nothing but copies - in many instances bad copies - of Western architecture. But actually, if you look closely you can perform another reading - you can see, for instance, that these copies are dealing differently with layering and with problems of density.

S,M,L,XL - why make a 1,344-page book about anything? Some people have said the book's physical bulk is a deliberate retort to the outpouring of "weightless" digital information.

Yes and no. What's interesting is that the book form itself has been threatened by a succession of media - film, TV, now electronics. It has survived, but each of these media has profoundly influenced it, changed its nature forever. So, in its physicality, S,M,L,XL is counter, but in its conception, it is analog: it is "against" the other media, but at the same time unthinkable without them.

So it wasn't simply your famous love of "Bigness"?

S, M, L, XL - I am passionate about every scale. But in the '70s and '80s, while the world was in the process of enlarging, architecture was subdividing; there was a self-marginalization, a fanatical attention to detail, even a language that was splintering. Bigness already existed, as the outcome of inventions such as steel and air-conditioning, but engineering was still being considered a mere afterthought and not a necessary complement to architecture. And in fact there seemed to be absolutely no conceivable connection between architecture and the driving forces in society. So the reason to consider Bigness was to find a way to align architecture with the bigness of the new climate.

You've also said, "I like thinking big. I always have. To me it's very simple: If you're going to be thinking anyway, you might as well think big."

[Laughs.] That's also part of it.

Are you thinking Bigness on the MCA project?

There is an enormous, deliberate, and - I think - healthy discrepancy between what I write and what I do.

Do you have an idea of how the project will develop?

It's too early to say, but what interests me is that Universal City is a site of production - films are actually being made there - and of consumption - a vast theme park, hotels, et cetera. The "work" legitimizes the "pleasure." And since moviemaking is the driving theme, there is the suggestion of ever new additions to the canon. In that sense, Universal is fundamentally different from a place like Disney, where a fixed repertoire of ancient inventions is endlessly, morosely recycled. This project has to, and can, symbolize real vitality, real creativity.

For a long time, you didn't believe that building was the necessary outcome of designing, and in fact you've built only about 20 projects so far.

S,M,L,XL is deliberately seamless about this, trying to present an absolute equivalence between unbuilt and built, because in a way I think it's a moot point. Of course, it can be very inspiring to build things. But part of the goal of the book was to explore architecture that didn't come to fruition. I was also interested in showing the implications of failure - showing both the calculations and the miscalculations of projects.




The culture of dissemination, dispersal.

