Endless House

The “Endless House: Intersection of Art and Architecture” exhibition marking the 50th anniversary of Frederick Kiesler’s death shows rarely seen drawings and models by the Viennese architect and starts a dialogue on house design via a comparison of work by several artists and architects, from 1940 to the present day.

The Endless House project, which gives its name to the exhibition, studied house design which, according to Kiesler, serves not to merely satisfy simple physiological functions but is an art with rules that we must continuously seek out and understand. “Man is a complex biological, psychological and socio-political being who has to restore the general and complex meaning of living through creativity (…) [1]. These are the principles by which the fluid forms and volumes of his design are combined and linked freely with each other and to the search for a spatial continuity that constitutes the very concept of endless space. Space is dynamic and the flow of everything inside it is dictated by human action. As a result, the distinction between floor, walls and ceiling is blurred to create a flexible and organic environment.

The architect’s numerous hand drawings, followed by the original model of the Endless House and a blow-up of the project, depict this enveloping space which goes back to the idea of a primitive shelter or a cave. At the same time, they are a symbolic gesture embracing the impossibility of delineating a shell that contains human living in space and time. When the project was first exhibited at MoMA in the “Visionary Architecture” exhibition in 1960, it was already manifestly impossible to construct and, indeed, the architect never saw his idea realised. Nonetheless, the Endless House is considered one of the most original designs of the 20th century [2] and its contribution to the history of architecture extends far beyond that field of discipline.

The atmosphere in the exhibition space on MoMA’s third floor centres on precisely this experimental component. Amassed in one room are numerous very different projects in which individual architects and artists have tried to respond, each in their own way, to the issue of dwelling, albeit in different contexts and periods of time. The drawings, photographs, models, installations and films displayed reveal a desire to steer the discipline of architecture in new directions.

The Wing House in Helsinki by Asymptote Architecture draws on a design process in which the spaces evolve via organic forms.  Similarly, David Jacob’s Simulated Dwelling for a Family of Five adopts curved surfaces to trace a fluid sequence of rooms for everyday living. Adhering to this same idea of spatial continuity, two of the designs exhibited were inspired by the Möbius strip, to interconnect the internal spaces of the buildings. In the case of UN Studio’s Möbius House, these are domestic spaces but in the Max Reinhardt House by Peter Eisenman they are public.

Kiesler’s spatial continuity includes the relationship between a building’s internal and external space and, with this in mind, the architecture expands to embrace both the constructed environment and the landscape, both seen as works of human transformation [3]. The model of Diller Scofidio’s Slow House, exhibited among various other designs, clearly shows a strong connection between building and landscape. The curved layout follows the conformation of the site’s terrain and the internal space expands towards a large dual-height window framing the view outside. Another project clearly expressing the sense of the relationship between architecture and landscape is Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House; supported, as we all know, by eight steel columns, it fluctuates in the surrounding landscape, totally immersing the inhabitant in the natural environment it is constructed in.

Many other projects are exhibited and architectural experimentation, as the exhibition conveys, often occurs through different art fields. The Casa para el Poema del Ángulo Recto by Chilean architect Smiljan Radić is designed in a process steered by several art practices, including DIY and Hans Hollein uses a picture of engine parts in the drawing of his Beach House. The surreal proposal for a house by the sea exhibited is presented via magazine cuttings. In the case of Raimund Abraham, poetry is also part of the creative process and numerous verses in prose, written by the architect, accompany his designs for imaginary houses and spaces. Beside the model of the Endless House are the pencil drawings of the House without Rooms and the print of the Universal House. Frederick Kiesler himself firmly believed in the relationship between the figurative arts and architecture, asserting the need to rediscover the original unity that binds them in ancient art [4]. His work demolishes the boundaries between art and architecture, becoming a point of reference for subsequent generations.

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Notes
1. F. Kiesler, Pseudo Functional in Modern Architecture, in “Partisan Review”, July 1949, p. 733.
2. F. Kiesler, “The Art of Architecture for Art”, Art News, 56 (October 1957), p. 41.
3. M. Bottero, “Frederick Kiesler, Arte Architettura Ambiente”, 1996, p. 18.
4. M. Bottero, “Frederick Kiesler, Arte Architettura Ambiente”, 1996, p. 22.

until 6 March 2016
Endless House
MoMA, New York