Creative processes

The Adam Caruso, Peter St John and Thomas Demand collaboration is viewed as a highly successful example of what architects and artists with complementary sensitivities can produce when the work is founded on mutual respect and shared curiosity.

This review of a conversation held at the British School at Rome asks why this may not necessarily be a reassuring and tranquil interpretation, at least in terms of the architect’s role in this relationship.

At first sight, the “Madame Wu and the Mill from Hell” exhibition seems to confirm the expectations. The walls of the room feature a print reproducing the curtains from the 2009 exhibition at the Neue Nationale Galerie in Berlin, in which Caruso and St John solved the problem of carving out spaces in the transparent Mies pavilion without constructing walls. This mechanism allowed Demand’s works to acquire distance and created sequences, averting the risk of ending up in the basement where they often exhibit 2D works that do not adapt to the suspended panels Mies adopted from the first. The two architects found their desired historic reference for their 2009 exhibition in the 1937 Mies and Lilly Reich textile exhibition and, with a large Thomas Demand work exhibited down the long side of the room, Rome really can be said to have recreated the essence of the Berlin exhibition.

The second project is Nagel House, a design they developed together for an art and architecture competition in Zurich. Instead of adopting the repertoire of landscape architecture, urban furnishing and paving patterns – and, most crucially, avoiding anything that resembled a public-art project – the three decided to construct a replica of a famous Chinese house that withstood the demolition process until it found itself sitting precariously on a scrap of land, before then being destroyed. Were this “stubborn nail” to reappear in the centre of Zurich, it would be underneath the large reinforced-concrete viaduct across Escher-Wiss-Platz. The idea of turning it into a Chinese restaurant and hanging paper lampshades from the viaduct soffit lent substance to their clear strategy. Although approved and paid for, the project was never completed because those opposing it played their cards well on the table of bureaucracy and the media. It was then buried once and for all by a referendum, although lost by the narrowest of margins.

The third project appears more conventional. After years of successful collaboration, the artist asked the architects to refurbish his house at Hellmuhele outside Berlin. This impression is also reinforced by the presentation of the project in lovely b/w photographs by Hélène Binet and two books of impeccable working drawings.

The complexity of the exhibition starts to become apparent in the adjacent room, during a two-hour conversation chaired by the influential and soft-spoken Italian curator Mario Codognato.
Despite featuring different types of collaboration, all three projects challenge architecture’s claim to lend form to a space precisely when they do so very successfully. It is important not to misconstrue this point: it is precisely because Caruso and St John’s work is so specific and of such good quality that the dilemma emerges in all its, almost philosophical, clarity. First, there is the issue of exhibition design. Adam Caruso told the story of their exchanges, which commenced with a request from Thomas Demand to solve the problem of the exhibition at the Fondation Cartier – once again, a transparent building and the risk of being relegated to the basement. Problem Solving is the title of a short text by the architect that can be read on the walls of the Rome exhibition.

It is far from being an indication of false modesty and, more often than not, the problem to be solved is an absence of “space”. So, the richly decorated and “untouchable” rooms of Palazzo Pitti prompted the construction of outsize pieces of furniture to be used as exhibition devices. In Zumthor’s Kunsthaus in Bregenz, the curtains were moved to form an enclosure within the open space of the gallery.
During the conversation, Demand complains that architects (in general but not the one sitting beside him) see artworks as objects in a room and not as ideas so Caruso and St John’s ability to find a solution without resorting to conventional architectural features may be the reason for working together. To use the artist’s words: “I stopped pondering and just let them do their part. Results were mostly baffling and I kept thinking a good while about them, even if I believe I got the proposition right away.”

Is the house a more normal situation? Not entirely. Demand says he loves the location but that he did not need a country house. He was not really sure how to use it and, in short, he did not see it as a home. Other factors made the project far from simple: the original mill structure has been there for centuries but during the Nazi period it was given a “rustic” appearance that the heritage service was anxious to preserve. This paradox did not deter the architects, who subtly dismantled the inner structure while restoring its surface.

Last come Nagel House and its “clever move” on the chessboard of public space. This proposal, while questioning the arrogance of architecture and conventional public-art practices, actually managed to create even greater friction. Does the absence of a sense of humour in Swiss right-wing populist party explains the defeat of this intelligent project? You have to visualise it, constructed and after some time has passed. The unusual lie of the house beneath the viaduct would suggest to passers-by not familiar with the story that, in some generic way, the house preceded the infrastructure, as was the case in the original Chinese reference. Italy abounds, often unintentionally, with such situations. Not far from the British School, the site of the MAXXI museum designed by Zaha Hadid was created in 1998 by casually separating two army barracks, but a house inhabited by stubborn Italian-army residents remains trapped within the museum shell. This may seem a parallel of Nagel House and a perfectly successful one, because not designed. Architecture is very present as a discipline in this partnership, precisely because of its absence.

The conversation, however, brought more. Adam Caruso spoke eloquently of the modern rhetoric on transparency and of their attempt to re-establish the fundamental dialectic between interior and exterior. The endless discussion on art spaces was updated with illuminating comparisons drawn from the experience of private gallery design and the differences with the complex programme created, for instance, for Nottingham Contemporary.

It will be fascinating to follow the rest of the “Meeting Architecture” programme, curated by Marina Engel in collaboration with the Royal College of Art, in the hope that it may provide openings for criticism, as has this first event, in which the brilliant dialogues was flanked by a captivating installation. The programme will progress in the coming years and six initial events have already been arranged. They focus on architecture again (Reinier De Graaf), art again (Vivien Lovell), films and architecture (Amos Gitai), and music and architecture (David and Peter Adjaye, Cecil Balmond and Daniel Libeskind). Other events involving Eric Parry and Richard Deacon, Wouter Vanstiphout, Richard Sennett, Thomas Schütte and Alfredo Pirri are an indication of input from the rich British cultural scene, albeit not exclusively so. The programme’s aspirations also reflect the role now played by the British School as a venue for events relating to architecture and other disciplines in Rome.

Until 19 November 2013
Madame Wu and the Mill from Hell
Meeting Architecture. Architecture and the Creative Process
British School at Rome
Via Gramsci 61, Rome