Hi, everyone.
Thanks for coming.
So tonight's lecture
marks the conclusion
of women and designs
events celebrating
International Women's Day.
The focus has been
feminine power
sidestepping the normative
assumptions about what
success and agency look like
within the design fields
and instead searching
for alternative ways
to understand power.
Events circled
around three themes--
feminist epistemologies
in design,
foreground women's
work, and workshopping
emergent practices.
We strove together members
from our own GSD community
to celebrate and cultivate
new ways of thinking
about gender and power.
Tonight's lecture
is no exception.
Women in Design is
delighted to welcome
Beatrice Colomina to our school
as the concluding keynote
speaker.
Beatrice is professor
of history and theory
in the School of Architecture
and founding director
of the program in
Media and Modernity
at Princeton University.
She has written extensively on
questions of architecture, art,
sexuality, and media.
Her books include
Are We Human, Notes
on an Archeology of
Design, i Century
of the Bed, Manifesto
Architecture-- the Ghost
of Mies, Clip Stamp, Fold,
Domesticity at War, Privacy
and Publicity, Modern
Architecture's Mass Media,
and Sexuality and Space.
She has curated a number
of exhibitions including
Clip Stamp Fold in 2006,
Playboy Architecture in 2012,
and Radical Pedagogies in 2014.
She was curator with Mike
Quigley of the third Istanbul
Design biennial in 2016.
She has been the recipient of
diverse awards and fellowships
including the Samuel
H Cress Senior
Fellowship at the Center for
Advanced Studies in the Visual
Arts, SOM Foundation, La
Corbusier Foundation, Grant
Foundation, the Canadian
Center for Architecture,
the American Academy in
Berlin, and the Getty
Center in Los Angeles.
Tonight we welcome
her as an authority
on gender and sexuality
in the built environment.
Some of the seeds of today's
intense and immersive
conversations,
especially in the GSD,
can be found in her
work, particularly
Sexuality and Space from 1992.
I would have loved to have
gone to the conference,
but I was three, and of
which she was the editor.
In it, we can learn that
the politics of space
are always sexual.
Architecture must be thought of
as a system of representation
in the same way that we think of
drawings, photographs, models,
film, or television, not
only because architecture
is made available to
us through the media,
but because the built
object is itself
a system of representation.
Likewise the body
has to be understood
as a political construct,
a product of such systems
of representation rather than
the means by which we encounter
them.
We here now find our
interests and intentions
in this particular
moment shifting.
We accept that architecture
is a system of representation
but of whom and by whom.
We accept the body as
inherently political,
but who's calling
the shots here?
We pull back the veil
to shift our gaze
from architecture as object
to architecture as practice.
Tonight's lecturer is
framed thusly with and not
and is the way in
which women are usually
credited alongside men
in the official records
if they're credited at all.
Women are the ghosts
of modern architecture,
everywhere present crucial,
but strangely invisible.
Architecture is
deeply collaborative,
more like movie making than
traditional visual art.
But unlike movies, this is
hardly ever acknowledged.
Until recently, it's been
a secret carefully guarded.
So tonight, we make
space to represent
that which has been
previously rendered invisible.
Please welcome
Beatrice Colomina.
Thank you very much for
your generous introduction
and for your invitation.
It makes me really, really happy
to be invited here precisely
by the women in design.
Not that Harvard has ever
been not generous to me.
One of the first lectures--
I was just mentioning--
this I gave it here when
I was absolutely nobody.
And not that I'm anybody now,
but I was absolutely nobody,
like totally a kid
in '86 I think.
I started to work
on my dissertation.
I gave three lectures
here in this very room.
They're very much the beginning
of my thinking of what
could become
privately and publicly
the modern architecture
mass media.
And even if I didn't have the
title or anything like that,
I did, but I have always enjoyed
coming here and discussing
things with you.
So the question of
collaboration, of course,
has become I think
an increasingly
important and urgent,
you can say, question.
On the one hand, you
can say that it's
central to contemporary
discussions in general
of architecture.
If you want ever deeper
engagement with SEER software
programs that allow
a large number
of people in different
locations and disciplines
to work together on
the same project.
On the other hand,
I think it's also
crucial to historians
trying to understand
the way in which architecture
has been traditionally
produced.
Architecture is increasingly
a collaborative field.
We all know that,
and yet it has been
very difficult to acknowledge
this simple fact to architects.
It's much more
difficult than Phil.
Phil has always
recognized these.
Why are we so stuck
up with this question?
At the end of a film, you
have-- even the makeup people,
the hair people, the
catering people are credited.
And we credit nobody.
I mean, we were out of their way
to credit just one person even
in situations
like, for example--
and this is pertinent to the
women in design in Harvard
that they started that famous
and really urgent petition
to acknowledge Denise Scott
Brown as part of the Pritzker
Prize.
And it was still denied.
How is it possible that an
architectural firm acknowledge
in their name Denise Scott
Brown and institution
has said the Pritzker Prize
decided that that's irrelevant.
And this is I think
some of the things
that we need to think about.
And precisely I was going
to start with this question
that you just read the
paragraph of how women
in architecture and in general--
this is an alternative title--
the with and without you, the
growth of modern architecture.
Because in fact with and not and
is precisely the way in which
women architects
are more frequently
credited alongside men
in the official records.
And that is if they
are credited at all.
And this is a woman
builder in 903
repairing the roof of
the city hall in Berlin.
So women had been
in architecture
for a very, very long time.
It's just we don't see them.
In that sense, I say
that women are the ghosts
of modern architecture.
Here is a ghost for example.
This is photograph of
the Barcelona Pavilion
There are very few
photographs of the Pavilion.
Has anybody bothered
to ask themselves,
who is this woman standing at
the edge of the carpet looking
into the Barcelona Pavilion.
Of course it's Lily Reich,
that not only collaborated
with Mies van der
Rohe in the pavilion,
but she was the one that was
there the whole time where
he kept going to Berlin.
And so, she's not only that.
She did more than 23 exhibitions
in industrial exhibitions seen
in Barcelona at the
same time that they
did they the pavilion--
a fantastic exhibit
and she was crucial to
the Barcelona Pavilion.
But we still continue to
say about Barcelona Pavilion
of Mies van der Rohe of course.
And the pavilion has
not been inaugurated,
and she's inspecting the setup.
So women are the ghosts
of modern architecture.
This is a self portrait
of a Lotte Beese.
And this is a photograph of Otti
Berger, a Bauhaus student who
actually dying at
a concentration
camp and a photograph
of Lotte Beese.
Also, we don't know enough
about all these women
that were part of the Bauhaus.
And when the Bauhaus, the tragic
stories of many of these--
all these remains to be undone.
But returning to the
question of the ghost--
and I guess I put this picture
because it suggests this idea
of the ghosts because women
are really the ghost of modern
architecture--
everywhere pressing, crucial,
but strangely invisible,
unacknowledged.
I think they are destined
to haunt the field forever.
But correcting the record
is not just a question
of adding a few names
or even thousands
to the history of architecture.
It's not just a matter of human
justice or historical accuracy,
but a way to more fully
understand architecture
and the complex ways in
which it is produced.
Architecture is
deeply collaborative,
more like movie making than
visual arts for example
but unlike all traditional
visual arts at least.
But unlike movies, this is
hardly ever acknowledged.
Until recently it has been
a secret carefully guarded.
So I guess what I'm conjuring
is this idea that we are going
to get very far by simply adding
women architects to the history
of modern architecture.
What do we have to
rethink fundamentally
is the question of how
architecture is being produced
and the privileging
of one single figure
that we continue to--
to [inaudible] our problem.
That's what I'm trying to say.
I'm not saying that
it's not important to do
a specific exercise of women
that has not been acknowledged.
I'm just saying with this,
we will not get very far.
To better understand the
field of architecture,
I think we liberate
new potential.
The gap between the
words and and with,
which as you will see,
institutions so vigilantly
guard, needs to be rethought.
With implies a helper, a
secondary source of energy,
and implies partnerships
and equality.
What is positive
about the and is
that it feeds on
difference and complexity
and may encourage more and may
encourage more nuanced forms
of production and discourse.
And I will tell
you a story of how
I got into this whole
question of the collaboration.
It's almost 20 years
ago, and I was invited
to give a lecturer in Madrid.
And by the way,
Madrid is incidentally
the place where I was--
the city where I was born.
It was kind of an
interesting occasion
because, by then,
as I was already
a professor at Princeton, I have
lectured everywhere-- at Yale,
at Harvard, at Princeton, etc.
at the [inaudible].
I don't know.
But you know, you never are
anybody in your own country.
So finally, they decided that
maybe I was worth their while.
And the Colegio de
Arquitectos, which
is very much a male kind
of completion institute,
and they invited me to
give a lecture there.
And I was working at that time.
So for those of you
who know my work--
not that it's way in my career--
I was working on Charles
and Ray Eames at the time.
So I gave this lecture on the
work of Charles and Ray Eames,
and particularly I was
working on the Eames House.
And to my surprise, most of
the discussion at the dinner
afterwards centered on the
role of Ray's background
as a painter, how he
studies with Hans Hofmann.
They knew everything.
So of course, I
have mentioned, when
I was showing
images of the house,
how the Hans Hofmann paintings
were hanging horizontally
from the ceiling and how Ray
had a study with Hans Hofmann.
But otherwise, I had not really
focused on the role of Ray.
I had not brought up
to this theme at all.
And I was also surprised that
they brought this question,
that they were so interested
in the significance of Ray
in the partnership because I
was surrounded by very, very
well-known Spanish
architects, some of whom
even teach around here.
But they were all men.
There was not even a woman
on the table and also,
because as I say,
I had not brought
the subject of
Ray's contribution
at all in the lecture.
I had thought it was not
a climate or an interest
or an audience for that kind
of topic in Spain at that time.
The conversation
drifted as usually
happens in this occasion.
And before we know, we are
talking about Lily Reich
and what enormous,
massive roles she
might have played in
development of Mies van
der Rohe's architecture.
They were saying
about the importance
of such products of the
Silk and Velvet Cafe
in Berlin, the collaborative
project of Mies
with Lily Reich for
the Exposicion de la
Mode in Berlin in 1927, when
draperies in velvet and silk
hang from metal rods
to form the space.
And everyone, to my surprise,
agreed that there was nothing,
nothing in Mies work previous
to that collaboration
with Lily Reich that will
suggest this radical definition
of a space, by,
let's say, suspended
surfaces, which
could become actually
his trademark, as exemplified
of course in the Tugendhat
and the Barcelona
Pavilion of 1929.
Of course, Stoney's
because where
I have always thought
that was obvious,
I had never brought myself--
I mean, I have said things
like these in seminars,
but I have never brought myself
to write something like that,
that they were also aware
of this incredible influence
of Lily Reich.
And then one these famous
architects say something that
has stayed with me ever since.
He says it is like a
dirty little secret
that we-- that is, we,
meaning all architects-- keep,
something that we all
know, that we all see,
but we don't bring
ourselves to talk about it.
That's amazing.
So these guys are all
guys, are controlling
the entire situation in Spain,
the schools of architecture,
the institute--
they know, they see,
they are in a kind of
spontaneous situation
after dinner, able
to talk about it.
But as he himself
admitted-- and I
thought it was really beautiful
that he will say it that way--
that this is like a little,
dirty secret that we all know,
that we all see.
So in fact, that made me
think that the secrets
of modern architecture
are really
like the secrets of a
family, in which, of course,
everybody knows that
something has happened,
but nobody wants to talk about
it, all this little secret.
And it is perhaps because of
our current culture fascination
with exposing the intimate,
that these secrets have not
been unveiled little by little.
They wanted to adjust the
publication of recent years
or even of recent days.
There is an increasing
interest on the way
in which architectural
works, so to speak.
It is as if we have become
more concerned with the
how than with the what.
And how is less about structure
or building techniques,
which was of course the
interest of an earlier
generation of
historians, and more
about interpersonal relations.
The previous marginal details
of how things actually
happen in architecture practice
are now coming into the light.
The focus is shifting from the
architect as a single figure
and the building as an object to
architecture as collaboration.
This for example is Charles
Eames with John Entenza.
But how can anybody think about
Charles Eames and his Eames
House without thinking
about Entenza, that was,
of course the great
promoter of all the cases
studies in California?
So collaborations are
multiple and complex.
Attention is today
starting to be
paid to all professionals that
are involved in the project--
the partners, the engineers,
the landscape architects,
the interior designers, the
employees, the builders, etc.,
even photographers, graphic
designers, critiques, curators.
He's more of a
curator than a critic.
And all of those who produce
the work in the media
are being considered.
It's no longer
possible to ignore
how much modern architecture
is produced both in the media
and as media.
And these, of course, are
the famous photographs
of Julius Shulman of the Richard
Neutra House on Palmer Street,
or the Pierre Koenig house.
Without these pictures,
the work will not exist.
As Richard Neutra himself said
about his photographer Julius
Shulman and Julius
Shulman, he was a kid
when Richard Neutra hired him.
He was a fashion photographer.
He had no idea how to
photograph architecture.
He trained him.
But then he says, this work
will always survive me.
Film is stronger,
and glossy prints
are easier to see than brute
concrete, stainless steel,
or even ideas.
So he acknowledged the
significance of this work.
Today, even the clients,
who were previously
treated as a problem for
architecture or as witness
to the effects of architecture,
are being considered
as the active collaborators.
They are, as for example, in
Farnsworth, the famous doctor
in Chicago and client of the
Farnsworth House of Mies.
So of course, many of the
best work of architecture
owe their strength
to the client.
And this is something
that, of course,
Alice Friedman
studied very well.
The post-war inaugurated
a new kind of-- here
you have, for example,
Alice in the office of Mies
actively working with
Mairon Goldschmitt
in the design of her own House.
The post-war period
inaugurated a new kind
of collaborative practice
that has become increasingly
difficult to ignore
or to subsumed
between a heroic conception
of an individual figure.
MOMA, for example, held this
exhibition on the Chiga firm,
SOM--
Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill--
in 1950 acknowledging
him for the first time
a corporate office.
So here we have
individuals giving way
to a more anonymous collective,
even in the exhibition of 1950.
But when finally
the names are put--
this is the cover
of the catalog--
when the names are
finally written,
then symptomatically a
very significant woman
in the firm, Natalie de Blois,
was systematically left out.
So when they have to
put all the names,
all the male names appear,
but Natalie de Blois,
who was actually
the great architect
of all these projects--
the LeBer House,
the Pepsi Build, the Hilton
International in Istanbul,
she is never acknowledged to the
point that, at a certain point,
she left the firm.
She was never
promoted, et cetera.
I brought this Fortune
magazine because I
think we are worse
architects, as the institution
of architecture are worse
than the popular press
because here you see
Fortune magazine that
has no trouble acknowledging
that Natalia de Blois is
the senior designer that
did the preliminary drawings
for the Union Carbide
Tower, et cetera.
And here she is with Phillip
Johnson and Mario Salvadori.
And you see that Phillip
Johnson knows perfectly well who
she's dealing with.
But the firm itself would
never fully acknowledge her,
and MOMA did not include
her in the credit either.
Actually, in this period
of the post-war year,
all the great masters
associated for the first time
with other architectural on
key projects-- for example,
Mies van der Rohe worked with
Philip Johnson on the Seagram
Building, was the
crucial intervention
as client of Phyllis
Lambert as both patron
and the own architect.
That was Phillip Lambert that
convinced her father, Seagram,
that wanted to hire a very
conventional architect
that Mies will do the building.
So again, the Seagram
Building will not
exist without Phyllis Lambert.
In 1943, Walter Gropius founded
the architect collaborative
tadt with a group
of young architects.
And in 1963, he collaborated
with the corporate office
of Emery Roth and Sons
for the Pan Am building.
Many other examples--
Wallace Harrison is told, if
you want, from the corpus here,
the forms for the new
headquarters of the United
Nations in New York.
Rem Koolhaas has
actually suggested
that such partnerships
are always overlooked,
even they often contribute the
more idiosyncratic features
of the buildings.
Here still is the
United Nations.
And Koolhaas' point is that
those of the perversion
of the masters.
From the 1930s
Koolhaas wrote in 1996,
when he began working
with Lily Reich,
on Mies left the theatrical to
others-- perversoin by proxy
from her silk and velvet to
Johnson's chain mail in the
in the fourth Seasons.
What is the connection?
Who took advantage?
Once again, it's
symptomatic to me
that it takes an architect and
not a critic or a historian
to point to the obvious,
even if in fact he
gets the facts wrong, Lily
Reich having being collaborating
Mies since the mid 20s.
But the question is the
question of collaboration
is what he gets right.
Collaborations, to return
to the initial point,
is the secret life of modern
architecture, the secret life
of architects, in a way,
the domestic cultural life
of architecture.
And nowhere is this more
evident than in architects
who live and work together.
With couples for whom there's
a complete identification
between home life
and office life--
precisely, I think the
sensitivity Koolhaas
to the question of
collaboration is
also personal or
autobiographical in as much
as OMA was also two couples.
And of course, there is Zada
Hadid, that at some point
joined the office only for one
year, who was terribly unhappy
and actually, in this
collage, it's also interesting
that this is practically at
the door in a I'm leaving,
two you guys can.
So of course, Madelon
Vriesendorp, Rem Koolhaas,
and Elia Zenghelis and Zoe.
Zenghelis were part
of the practice.
And many times, at least
in the initial years--
I haven't been heard him
complaining so much recently--
he complained in the
early years so much
that, despite the huge
effort of naming his practice
Office of Metropolitan
Architecture,
the press tended to
prefer only one name.
So they will continue to
talk about Rem Koolhaas
and not about OMA
and not acknowledging
fully the rest of the partners.
So as I say, nowhere
is this more emblematic
that with architects that
work and to live together
with couples for whom there's
a complete identification
between home life
and office life.
Ray and Charles
Eams in the 1950s
provided actually a
model for couplings
in following generations.
By couplings, I mean
collaborations in which
there is also some intimate
relationship, in particular
for Alison and Peter Smithson,
whose partnership in turn
provided a model for Robert
Venturi and Denise Scott Brown,
believe it or not, and for
Enric Miralles and Carme Pinos
a generation later.
So a couple in a way identifying
themselves with other couple.
These guys were absolutely
obsessed with the Smithsons,
whom they had made when they
were very young kids studying
in Urbino Urbino was a school
in Italy, a summer school, where
students from different parts
of school of architecture
all over Europe will go there
for two months with Giancarlo
De Carlo.
And they found themselves with
the Smithsons teaching there,
and they formed a
longtime relationship.
The couplings actually
reached an enormous level
of resentment and
nervousness from all camps,
and that includes women.
The phallic myth of the solo
architect, the isolated genius,
is one of the most regressive
and reactionary understanding
of architecture.
But unfortunately it's
still the more pervasive.
In this climate,
I think there is
much to learn from the
Smithson's if only to remind
ourselves that it
took more than half
a century before
women architects were
on equal footing in
partnership with man.
Margaret McDoland collaborated
with Charles Rennie Mackintosh,
Lily Reich with Meis,
Charlotte Perriand,
with Le Corbusier, Aino
Aalto with Alvar Aalto.
But their extraordinary
influences
was never completely
acknowledged.
Only Charles and
Ray Eames, we did
for the first time have a firm,
which at least in the name,
would recognize the
two partners as equals.
And only with the
Smithsons did we have that
a woman puts her name first
and her work is finally
fully acknowledged by all.
Of course, institutions,
particularly eastcoast
institutions, I must say-- the
Museum of Modern Art, the New
York Times, Harvard University,
I'm sorry, were in denial.
A devastated Esther McCoy
wrote to the Eams apologizing
for an article that had just
appeared in the New York Times
where the name of Ray had
been erased from the article.
And she says, Dear Charles
and Ray, the Times story
was an embarrassment
to me, as it
must have been painful to you.
It was originally, as
requested, a 5,000 story
and was cut, at their
request, to 3,500.
And when Paul Goldberger, he
called and said it was fine.
Then he turned me over to
an editorial assistant,
and Barbara Williams, who
had endless complaints--
I won't bore you,
but the two things
we settled down on
a death struggle--
death struggle-- were that
Ray's name must be included.
Imagine that you have
to fight for that,
that Ray's must be included
and that a [inaudible] must not
be called a casting couch.
For 20 years, of course
the article appears
and Ray has disappeared and
[inaudible] is called a casting
couch, right?
For 20 years, I have worked
faithfully with editors.
Now already in 1973, I have
come up against two editors--
he's 73--
who are unbelievably arrogant,
the basis of their complaint
being that I don't understand
the broad audience.
This is sheer nonsense.
The broad audience does
not object to a woman
being credited for work.
So this is the kind of thing
that critics like Esther McCoy
had to deal with.
But I mean, if the New
York Times was terrible,
the Museum of Modern
Art was even worse,
they never were able to
acknowledge Ray Eams.
Only Charles was credited in the
institutions for the exhibition
of their work.
One that presented
that as one man saw
and the title, new
furniture designed
by Charles Eames in 1946.
Now this is particularly
tragic because older members
of the Eams office were also
not credited for their work,
including-- and you see
the whole team there--
Gregory Aime, Coliver
Toya, Herbert Matter,
and Griswold Raphael.
And all of them resigned from
the office as a consequence.
So MOMA may have thought that
they were doing something very
nice by credited
only Charles, but it
had enormous
consequences for the firm
because this was one
of the more, actually,
fruitful and productive
moments of the office.
And they all left.
And the relationship
was even personal.
You have, for example,
here Alexander Matter
who was the son
of Herbert Matter,
and was also here on top
of this plywood elephant.
So there an intimate and
also personal relationship.
And all of this was sent to
garbage by this stupidity.
The exhibition-- sorry--
the exhibition and catalogue
of the good design
exhibitions of the 1950s,
where also Charlers and
Ray Ears were a part,
did not again give
credit to Ray,
who is in fact seen in
many photographs installing
the saw next to the
creator, Edward Hofmann Jr.
So to my knowledge,
she is the one really
that is there
doing all the work.
But she doesn't
appear in the credit.
Only on the last
page of the catalog,
there are a few
lines crediting her
with assistance in preparing
the show and the book,
but not really for
the work itself.
Even as late as
1973, the same year
of the New York Times article
Arthur Drexler's introduction
to the exhibition on Charles
Eams for the design collection
did not properly credit
Ray, which is only
mentioned as an assistant.
If institutions have
difficulties acknowledging
the Eams partnerships, the
Smithsons, on the other hand,
could identify.
They were absolutely
fascinated with the Eams.
They followed them
everywhere, and they
keep writing to them
these affectionate notes.
At one level, their born
with their elder couple
was personable.
Their standard form of
address in correspondence--
this is is all from the
archives-- is from RC to--
to R and C from A and
P, and they usually
closed with effusive
displays, like [inaudible]
very affectionately, or we think
of you often, and much love.
Their writings are also full
of expressions of admiration.
One by one of all of the
pieces of the Eams work
are treated as precious
icons, magical tokens,
that are presented as pardigms
for their own practice.
Of the Eams chair, the Smithsons
will write, for example,
that the chair was
like a message of hope
from another planet, that it's
the only chair that one could
put in an interior today-- they
say, the only one they will
put in their own living room.
Eams chairs, they say, they
belonged to the occupant,
not-- well, this one, they
belonged to the [inaudible]
only.
But the Mies chairs
belonged to the occupant,
which I think is a very
interesting observation.
Mies chairs are
especially of the building
and not of the occupant.
I think everybody
will agree with this.
No, when you look at
the Barcelona chair,
you think, I mean, who
is this chair made for.
I was fascinated
when the [inaudible]
did that beautiful installation
in the Barcelona Pavilion.
And I saw them sitting in
one of the stools assigned
in the book, and
they perfectly fit.
I mean, whose bodies that
will feel comfortable
in these chairs of Mies?
In any case, of the Eams
select and ranged technique,
the award, the award of the
Smithsons, the Smithsons says,
as a design method it's
closer to flower arrangement
and to good taste in
the function of rooms
with collectors pieces.
And then they claim to
have to used the method
themself in designing and
equipping our own houses.
The Eams, they write,
had made the respectable
to like pretty things.
This seems extraordinary.
But in our world, pretty
things are equated
with social irresponsibility.
Now of the Eams unique
photographic technique,
the Smithsons write,
we who ourselves
are very attentive listeners
and watchers of everything
the Eams have made-- you
see this complete obsession
with everything, right?
We have taken their invention
of the flat on color
documentation of objects as part
of the way we now also work.
So you can see that,
in every instance,
we are presented with something
with an acute, actually,
observation of an
aspect of the Eams work.
And then at the same
time with the way
in which they, the Smithsons,
appropriated it and made
it theirs.
Take, for example,
this smooth transition
from using in the Eams
chairs, as they say before,
to designing their
own furniture.
And they write, with the
first interiors years
sketches of this
project [inaudible],,
we realized we had a problem.
What was to be put
in our furniture?
We needed objects that
achieve a culture or feat.
They could not be falling
back on the Thonert
chair sold in France and
used by Le Corbusier.
As a response to
this realization
came the [inaudible],,
a chair which
looked as if it might follow
you, or follow its owner
room to the room
and on to the beach.
So here is the chair that
the Smithsons designed.
And incredibly enough, was
appropriated immediately
by the Miralles.
Enric Miralles and Carme Pinos,
they reproduced this house,
and then they installed
in their house.
The Smithsons chairs
take on precisely
the same characteristics they
ascribe to the Eams chairs.
They occupy the space
vacated by the Thonet.
They are from the same
period as the architecture,
as for example in
the Smithsons house
of the future, where they are
clearly inspired by the Eams.
But at the same time,
it's also different.
And very important, they
belonged to the occupant
and not to the building.
So the Smithsons put themselves
in the place of the Eams,
absorbing their
mode of operation
rather than the specific
details of their form.
But the key symptoms
of identification
between the Smithsons
and the Eams
are not just there the endless
reference to particular aspects
of the Eams.
They are also in the
couple's techniques
of presenting
themselves and the kinds
of obsessions they manifest.
And above all-- and perhaps
this is not surprising when one
couple bonds with another--
the symptoms are in
the pervasive sense
of domesticity, literal
domesticity as when
Peter Smithson reflects on
the Eams breakfast table,
and of course he saves that
for the Eams, the table.
The breakfast table is a form
of architecture only then
in the same movement to go
back to Walter Gropius and Ise
Gropius breakfast table in
the home in Massachusetts
near here.
And we end up with
an imagine of Alison
at breakfast on a snowy day in
their country house in Funhill.
So they trade this
domesticity in all this.
And actually
conceptual domesticity
as when, in the
same article, Peter
organizes the history
of architecture
from the Renaissance to the
present as that of our family,
as more a family of
only six members.
[inaudible] Alberti
Francisco de Giorgo
represented the generation
of the Renaissance,
and Mies, the Eams,
and the Smithsons
represented three generations
of modern architecture.
Do you see what is says there?
Piper Editorial.
This is a lecture here.
And the poster was done
by a student from Harvard,
apparently under instructions
from Peter Smithson
in a telephone call from London.
So there are three
areas of the Renaissance
and the three generations
of the present.
The Smithsons made many,
many, many family trees.
But what is incredible is
the couple's insistence
on the inclusion on themselves
in these family trees.
In the modern architectural
genealogy within [inaudible]
and which they were
able to communicate
in such brilliant ways
in their writings,
the Smithsons wanted
to see themselves
as following the
tradition of Mies.
Peter, for example, to
write my own debt to Mies
is so great that
it's difficult for me
to disentangle what I
hold as my own thought.
So often they have
been the results
of insights received from him.
So he cannot even know what he
thought himself or what he got
from Mies.
But if Mies was the architect
of the heroic period
that they most
admired, the Eams were
like their favorite cousins,
the ideal for the second, less
heroic generation, the
generation straddling World War
II.
And it was with them, in
fact, that the Smithsons
felt closer alliances.
They keep producing
these geneologies.
For example, on the occasion of
our lecture of Alison Smithson,
where she goes the see
the Farnsworth House,
she makes these genealogy,
which goes from the Farnsworth
House to the Eams house to
their own pavilion in Fonthill.
Or then Villa Savoye on another
occassion is Villa Savoye.
So the Eams are the thing that
stayed, do you realize that?
So the Eams is
always in the middle
or, in this particular case,
that with Reedbull House,
the Eams House, and again,
their house in Fonthill.
In a lecture by
Peter in connection
with the reconstruction
of the 1956
exhibition of the
independent group,
he links the party on
pavilion with the Eams house
points out that the Eams
two had been familiar
with the Mies sketch of
the glass house of 1934,
and again different projects
produce different genealogies.
And this is interesting--
again, to return to the question
of women--
because Peter Smithson--
what a kind of [inaudible],,
I because that could not be
more separated from this idea.
And he [inaudible].
Never mind.
Peter Smithson was significantly
one of the first architects
to point to the significance of
women in modern architecture.
He keep emphasizing women in
what he calls the female line.
And he writes, much
of the inheritance
reaches us through
the female line.
And he mentions [inaudible],,
who collaborated of course
with [inaudible] for
the [inaudible] House.
Lily Reich, Charlotte
Perriand, Ray Eams--
those are the four
names he mentioned.
And of course, the line
continues all the way,
in his view, to Alison
Smithson, in what
Peter calls a conscious homage
to the founding mothers.
Now we have talked a lot
about the founding fathers.
In architecture, it's always
talking about the founding
fathers.
But this is the first
time that I have
heard the founding mothers.
The Smithsons, who were very
sensitive to women's presence
in the history of
architecture for our century
more than any historian or
critique of that period,
but the women they
identify are always
symptomatically in couples.
And this may have
been, for example,
the symptomatic absence of
significant figures like
[? guile ?] Ingrid, not of
interest to them because they
cannot put her in a partnership.
So they refer to my Margaret
McDonaold, and Mackintosh.
Probably you have never hear
about Margaret McDonaold.
Have you ever heard
about Margaret McDonaold?
I mean, for Mackintosh,
he spent his entire life
saying that he was normal,
that he was a genius.
Nobody seemed to have
believed retroactively.
But the thing is
that, in many ways,
I think we are going backwards.
Because the other day,
I was doing research
on something else,
and I came upon this
a moment in the early 20th
century when Margaret McDonaold
goes with Mackintosh,
and they put together
an exhibition in Vienna.
And all the newspapers
and all the magazines
talk about Margaret McDonaold,
and the red haired women,
this is strong woman that
has done this great project,
and they practically
don't mention him.
So what's wrong with us?
What's wrong that the journalist
and the critics of the time
have no problem recognizing her,
and one hundred and-- and what
is it--
18 years later, we are
stuck with Macintosh.
And we don't know that
he spent his entire life
saying that he was actually
quite a regular guy,
that she was actually
unbelievable.
Why will he say that?
Why will we say that?
It has to be something, right?
So what was I saying?
So he refers to Margaret
McDonald and Rennie Mackintosh,
Charlotte Perriand, and
Le Corbusier, [inaudible]
Lily Reich and Meis and so on.
So a couple in a way identifying
themselves with other couples,
perhaps identifying
other couples,
perhaps identifying
themselves with other couples.
As Alison put it, I can see the
part played by Ray Eams in all
that they do, the perseverance
in finding what exactly
is the one thing wanted,
although the secret may not
even know the exact object
until finally it's seen.
Or when writing about Mies,
Peter suddenly remarks,
as if talking to himself, I want
to know more about Lily Reich.
And in a footnote to this--
because this a [inaudible] and
he writes a footnote to this
very blunt comment--
I want to know more
about Lily Reich.
You normally don't write that
in a scholarly book, right?
You won't write that.
I think it's kind of fresh.
I want to know more
about Lily Reich.
In a footnote, he points out
to this picture of [? meet ?]
and Lily Reich in 1933 published
in this book of Ludwig Glasser,
this silvery book
on Mies furniture
in the collection of the
Museum of Modern Art.
But he says nothing about it.
It's this picture
of Mies and Reich
on a boat where they each
look in the other's direction,
but their gaze
symptomatically never cross.
But it's also not
just heterosexual
couples that interest
this [inaudible]..
And this is fascinating to me.
When discussing Johanes
Duiker in the heroic period
of modern architect,
Peter writes,
it is not for me to deal with
the relationship between Duiker
and Bernard Bivjoet.
I speak of them as one eminence.
In fact, Duiker Bivjoet
have collaborated
in many projects including
the famous Zonnestral
Sanatorium in
Hilversum, the open area
schools in Amsterdam, etc.
Do we know these projects
as a collaboration?
No, we tend to think about
as the projects of Duiker.
Same thing happened
when Bivjoet goes
to parties and collaborates
with [inaudible]
in this beautiful
[french] in Paris.
Last year there was a
beautiful exhibition
in the US museum,
extensive documentation,
and great material.
And this poor Bivjoet that had
collaborated on the project
was not even in the record.
And you go like,
how is it possible
that they make such a big deal
about how this was the best
project of [inaudible] and
how nothing else that he do
was anywhere closer to this.
And could it be that Bijvoet had
have something to do with it?
Because it's the same
guy that also did this,
that collaborated this.
Duiker never did anything better
than when he was with him.
So actually something
that Alison told me--
actually, she was very
upset when Enric Miralles
split with Carme Pinos.
They were very upset.
It was like they were breaking
themselves apart, too.
And they happened
to be in New York.
I have invited them to
give a lecture in Princeton
this is 1992.
And he said, Beatrice, there
is something in collaboration--
what did he say?
Something the addition is higher
than the sum of the parts.
Something else happens,
that [inaudible]
would each of us contribute.
And he says, they would
never do, neither of them
will rise to the same level
that they did together again.
And that was actually
a good prediction.
Anyway, so Bijvoet-- yes,
and speaking of soap operas,
Bijvoet arrived in Paris
with his wife and his child
and was the wife of Dukier.
I mean like, what?
And they were all living
together in the same flat
and eventually Bijvoet
divorced his wife
and married the wife
of Duiker, Erminne.
So anyway, looking at the--
because it's also interesting
that the whole history
of modern architecture
is full of soap
operas that we don't talk about.
But it's also, we have
to look into that.
That's super interesting.
Why would we not look into that?
That explains a lot
about what happens.
Anyway, going back to this
cover of the heroic period,
I think it's evident
just by looking
at the corner of this book
on modern architecture--
one of my favorite books
on modern architecture--
that it's evident already
that the Smithsons are
interested in collaborations.
For them, the history
of architecture
is the history of
a conversation.
You can see that it's not a
heroic architect in the core,
but Mies and Le Corbusier in
the grounds of the Wiesenhof
discussing this project here,
Le Corbusier and Gropius
in a cafe in Paris,
again, arguing, talking.
CIAMs and Team 10s
were for them occasions
for a wider conversation, if
you want a family conversation.
And think about the difference
between these photographs
of the CIAM people are
all kind of like soldiers
in the kind of new situation
that the Team 10 is creating.
So Alison also wrote Team
10 is a small family group.
And this very much
suggests these kind
of pictures that you
have of the Team 10s,
very, very different
of these ones.
Alison wrote, Team 10
is a small family group
who knows each
other so well that
can begun to work together
with a better mind
that each school achieve alone.
Again, the question
of collaboration--
that they could work together
better than they could
each of them work alone.
And on the occasion of
Pierre Jeanneret's death,
Alison broad a very
moving report here,
Alison and Peter,
where they write,
we have a various [inaudible]
significant houses,
and indeed, there is
Farnsworth, a few early Rudolf
houses and very little else.
The earliest document is from
the architects journal June 27,
1946.
It is these with the thought
of on the death of Pierre
Jeanneret.
The house on here embodies the
sweetest collaboration with
Jean Prouv , who really
has been unfortunate in his
architects' collaborators.
So look at what is happening.
The Smithsons are paying tribute
to Pierre Jeanneret by showing
his house with Prouv .
So they removed him from Le
Corbusier's gigantic figure,
but only to pair
him again right away
in the sweetest collaboration.
And in the process, they
introduce the question
of Prouv  and happy
marriage, so to speak.
For example, when
they say the same.
The suitor is going with Jean
Prouv  who really has to be
unfortunate in his
architects collaborators.
I mean, I think he's kind of
opening a possibility of us
to study here about what
is going on with this
collaboration
because, of course,
Prouv  had collaborated with
a succession of architects
including Tony Garnier,
[inaudible] Le Corbusier,
[inaudible] for the
Freie University, etc.
But since the
[inaudible] remember
that to Jeanneret bringing
up the matter of partnerships
raises questions
about what is perhaps
the most unexplored, the
most unknown partnership
of the century and
asks the question
of what generally
may have contributed
to the work of Le Corbusier.
Nobody knows this
Paul Pierre Jeanneret
I have worked a lot
on Le Corbusier.
My dissertation was
on Le Corbusier.
I spent years in the
Fundacion Le Corbusier.
I never knew that
it was so short.
It's not that Le
Corbusier is a giant.
He's really little.
And I had to go with
my students to--
I taught a class on Chandigarh.
I took the students to
Chandigarh in Chandigarh.
On my god, in Changdigarh,
they adored Jeanneret
because he was there.
He was the one that built
Changdigarh.
He went there.
He had spent years there.
He wanted to be buried there.
He died there.
He loved India.
And then I started paying
attention to Jeanneret
and realized how little
we know about this figure
here on the beach--
I don't know-- boxing
with Le Corbusier.
And then finally, there
is the love affairs.
Here is a Lotte Beese,
that we mentioned before--
first a student in
the Bauhaus to be
admitted in the architecture.
They were all put into
the textile section.
All the women, they were not
allowed to be in the metal--
I mean, it's a whole history.
So Lotte insisted on
being in architecture
and had actually an affair with
Jonanes Meyer, who had finally
agreed that she will enter into
the School of Architecture,
but also told her that,
if he were to do that,
she probably would have
to associate herself
professionally with
a male architect
because otherwise she will
never be able to do anything
in her life.
She did exactly that.
She associated herself with
him, as he was married.
And then he's made
head of the Bauhaus.
And she was a student
was asked to leave.
Why?
Because it wouldn't look good
that the director of the school
was having a story
with a student,
one that's in [inaudible].
She have to leave.
But anyway, so here
you have Lotte Beese,
and I don't who is this guy,
this creep in the background.
But that's that.
I don't know about--
I mean, I think Lotte
Beese is super fascinating.
As you know, then
she married Mart Stam
and became Lotte
Beese Stam, and she
the head of the reconstruction
of the hall of Rotterdam.
And she's an force.
She's an unbelievable
in architecture.
And she really was interested
in any of these guys.
Anyway you think about it,
all she's in this Bauhaus,
she's always photographing this
Lotte Beese and other women
in the Bauhaus,
amazing photographs.
Annie and Joseph Ahlberg,
but particularly I want to--
from other love
affairs but I want
to particularly talk about
the affair of Catherine Bauer
with--
what's his name-- Lewis
Mumford, which you see here.
Catherine Bauer was a social
historian who married,
by the way, William Worster,
Lewis Mumford in 1940
and in a way politicized
him, infusing
his domestic science with hard
social and unpolitical ideas.
But before that, he had
also radically changed
the work of Lewis
Mumford by inspiring
him to take on the grand themes
of technology and community,
which will become the basis
of his best known books.
And Mumford in turn
encouraged Bauer
to contemplate aspects of
the sign that could not
be quantified to
broaden and humanized
the definition of
housing reform doing
the several years
of the rove affair
while he was married
to someone else.
Mumford had met Bauer in 1929.
Listen to this because you
have read a lot about Mumford
but you haven't
read these I'm sure.
We were drawn together
by our common interesting
in modern architecture.
From the beginning, we were
excited by each other's minds
and plunged and leaped in a
sea of ideas like two dolphins,
even before our bodies
had time for one another.
Wow.
Catherine's challenging
in mind, particularly
during the first two
years of our intimacy,
had a stimulating
and liberating effect
upon my whole development.
In effect, she played the
part of of Hilda Wangel
in Ibsens play, the voice
of younger generation,
bidding the Master
Builder to quit
building modest,
commonplace houses
and to erect, instead,
an audacious tower, even
if, when he has reached the
top, he might fall to his death.
OK, wow.
So There: you have another
Mumford from the one
that you normally talk.
Anne Tying one of the
first women architects
to graduate from Harvard
University, from this place,
became Louis Kahn, a
lover, as you know,
were working in his office
and collaborating closely
in the designs.
In a letter to Tyng where
she was in Rome in 1954--
you want to know
why he was in Rome?
Because she got pregnant and
then, of course, because she
was married to someone else.
She was told to go to Rome.
It was better because otherwise
it was kind of embarrassing.
And she says in a letter,
I'm waiting anxiously
for us to be together again
in our wonderful ways of love
and work, which again
is nothing really
but another form of love.
Louis Kahn.
And Anne Tying writes,
we were both workaholics.
In fact, work had become
a kind of passionate play.
We were able to bring out
each other's creativity,
building on each other's ideas.
The full of tragedy
of the relationship
that you probably know well
even if you have seen--
I don't know whether
you have seen the film.
Anne Kahn's ultimate
selfishness unfolds.
The letters between them, which
are all published in a book
that was done by
[inaudible] a few years ago,
remain filled with the
details of design--
so published designs
and private soap operas
are here inseparable.
As the institutions of
records for the field,
the Museum of Modern
Art found itself
in the middle of many questions
on disputes of attribution.
Tyng, for example, who had
ended her relationship with Kahn
in 1960, shortly before the
museum's visionary architecture
exhibition was surprised
not to be credited
for her work in the
exhibition and particularly
for the city tower in
Philadelphia, which
is a really hard project.
She says, I did not get an
invitation to the opening.
When I ask our
secretary about it,
he say my name might not
even be on the credit label.
I merely asked Lou if
my name was credited.
He answered no.
So I suggested yesterday it may
be better if he called museum
than if I called.
There was no Strurm and Drang.
He simply called and
my name was added.
I was profoundly shocked that
Lou would do such a thing,
especially since [inaudible]
progressive architecture,
the Atlas, and a number
of other publications
already have given
credit to both of us.
I could not believe that
his desire for a recognition
will erode his integrity
since sharing credit
with me will not necessarily
diminish his fame.
In the end, the
city tower appear
as Lou Kahn and Anne Tyng
architects associated
in the exhibition at MoMA.
Kahn publicly, if
inadequately, as you will,
acknowledged Anne Tyng when in
1973, a year before his death,
he gave the National Academy
of Design a self-portrait
of himself along with a portrait
he had made of Anne Tying
in 1946 inscribed with
the following sentence--
this is a portait of
Anne Tying architect,
who was the geometry conceiver
of the Philadelphia Tower.
Well, that's not
exactly so because I
thought of the essence,
but she knew its geometry.
To this day, she
pursues the essence
of constructive geometry and
now at the university of Penn
and other places like Harvard.
We worked together
on my projects
from a purely conception
base, December 27, 1972.
So even in the moment of
acknowledging her contribution
to this project, he draws
the line between the essence
that apparently he thought
about and the geometry
that she figured out.
And this makes no
sense in [inaudible]
that obviously, as anybody
can see, is all geometry.
So what is the
essence exactly here?
Well, anyway, to conclude
perhaps the new fascination
with collaboration is actually
part of a new voyeurism.
Television, the internet,
and social media
have brought a new
sense of limits.
Talks shows, blogs, social
networking sites, etc.,
are changing the standards
for what we consider private.
Can we expect architecture
to remain immune.
We don't care anymore so
much about the heroic figure
of the modern architecture,
of an architecture,
about the facade, but about
their internal weaknesses.
Architectures themselves
having started,
or have been doing
it for a while
actually, to tell
us private stories
about their desperate
attempts to get jobs,
about their
pathological experiences
with clients, about falling
in the street, and even
about the [inaudible].
And we pay more
attention than they
were trying to dictate to
us what their work meant.
On the one hand, there
is a concerted effort
to demystify architectural
practice and debunk heroes.
On the other hand, all the
details of private life
are being incorporated
into a kind of heroic image
as in a kind of therapy.
And finally, who has been
keeping all these secrets
for so long?
Historians and critics have
felt more confident, I think,
even re-assured responding
to the idea of an individual
author and the former qualities
of the building as an art
object than to the messiness--
because it's very messy--
of architectural practice.
Paradoxically, as we have
seen, practicing architects
have tended to be more
sensitive to the subject
perhaps because they know
from their own experience what
goes on really in an
office and are endlessly
curious about what's happening
in other people's practices.
Architects in partnerships
from Denise Scott Brown to Rem
Koolhaas have publicly
complained about the opposition
of critics and the media
with the single figure,
despite their offices at efforts
to provide precise credit.
Since Denise Scott Brown
talked to the Alliance of Women
in Architecture in
New York in 1973--
1973 seems to be a date
that we keep coming back to.
On sexismo and the star
system in architecture
that became the subsequent
article room at the top.
Sexismo on the star
system in architecture,
but that circulated
privately for many years
before it was finally
published in that book,
Architecture, a Place
for Women in 1989.
A number of women
architects had been
raising issues of their own.
It's not by chance that
women and gay scholars
have been leading the way.
The ease of collaboration
is of course
indebted to feminist
criticism with its focus
on the veiling of contributions
and the domesticity of power.
More recent scholarship
on areas of race,
sexuality, cultural studies,
post-colonial studies, etc.,
has also a crucial resource.
Architecture history is starting
to absorb many of its lessons
and opening research
to new questions.
And my prediction is many more
secrets are bound to come out.
Thank you very much.
[side conversation]
Hi, does anybody
have a question?
I actually have a
question if anybody would
you like to keep thinking.
And I don't intend it
to sound cheeky at all,
but this is an incredible
amount of archival research.
And I'm wondering
almost what duration
and how many collaborators
it requires to pull together
this much information?
This much information?
You mean my own research?
Actually, in this
particular case, as I say,
I was fascinated with
this question for a while,
and there were a number of
occasions in which this was
put together over the years.
So it looks like a lot,
but in fact Alison Smithson
died in 1992 or something.
And there was an
event at [inaudible],,
and this is the first time that
I thought about the Smithsons
obessions with the Eams.
And so, because I have
been doing all that work
for domesticity at war, I had
a lot of archival material
from the Library
of Congress, which
included personal letters
between the Smithsons
and the Eams.
And I knew about
their relationship.
And then I interviewed
Peter extensively
for an issue of
October magazine,
and the issue of the
Eams and their travels
to California and their
obsession with the Eams.
So I kept make
making notes, where
I was doing something
else, which of course
they end up in a group
interview for October.
So it's a project that it's
been with me for a long time,
and I have been adding things.
Then what happened?
Most recently at the Museum
of Modern Art, first they
had a conference that
about MoMA women,
all the women that are in
the Museum of Modern Art.
They budget only one
person in architecture.
It was a two day
conference, right?
So then they were
doing the book.
And I said to them,
if you're going
to be inviting me like
a token architect,
maybe I'm not going to do it.
And so, they invited
a few other people.
But I ended up looking
into the archives.
And a lot of what I
found is not here.
But now I'm thinking
about putting it together
in a book about
the these stories.
There's a lot in the Museum
of Modern Art archives,
about questions of attribution.
It's not only Tying.
And it's not only
this a lot of prom.
So as the institution
of record, they
have been deliberately
keeping women
out in such a way that I think
they were themselves scared
if I were to put all these
details into their MoMA women--
I don't know whether
you have ever
seen this big, fat book of
MoMA women, most art world.
And because it was
MoMA, I thought
that I should just deal with
what is in the archives.
And so, they didn't want
that I wasn't going so--
they wanted a little
bit more diffuse.
So it ended up being
a combination of some
of those things of the Smithsons
and a little bit about MoMA,
but not really
totally everything
that I have I found
in the archives.
That's an interesting
development.
I'd love to see the book.
We'll start down here.
Beatrice, thank you so much.
This is like the highlight
of my year that you're here.
It's super exciting.
We have a new dean--
chair, sorry.
New chair, Mark.
Sorry, my bad.
I'm still new.
We have a new chair, Mark
Lee, and I just was wondering
if the fact that we have Mark
Lee instead of the Johnston
of Johnson Mark
Lee as our dean--
the GSC's never
had a female dean--
if there's maybe an
echo of the ventur--
chair, did I do it again?
Sorry.
Have we had a--
oh, Toshiko Mori.
But we've never
had a female dean.
You've never had a dean,
but you did have a chair.
Toshiko Mori, actually, Toshiko
Mori was in way, I will say,
don't take that bad.
But I will say you are now
behind because a [? whole ?]
course is like
Columbia University,
is run by is a dean, at
Yale University [inaudible]..
Princeton, the dean
is a woman, Penn.
And instead, you were ahead
when Toshiko Mori was chair.
That was the first
time that a woman
in such an important
position, wasn't it?
I think historically.
So the question
of how woman have
entered into a leadership
position in academia
is very interesting.
But I don't know whether
you were going there
or with the collaboration.
I mean, I was just
thinking about Veturi Scott
Brown and the Pritzker
Prize, and then just thinking
about Johnston Mark Lee
and a new chair, sorry.
And I don't know.
It just feels relevant, and I
wanted to just throw it to you.
Right, no, that's
super interesting.
It's another collaboration.
And I hope she will
also be around.
I suppose-- if they are
going to have the firm here
and in Los Angeles, but I don't
know how it's going to work.
But this is an interesting
question that you are bringing.
It could also deanships be
thought in a different way,
in a more collaborative way.
Or do we still have to
have the hero architect?
I mean, we come from--
the generation is the generation
that Mies was running this
and Gropius was the ta da da.
And now we're in a
different moment.
We don't need
another hero maybe.
We need something else, right?
So yes, even in education,
the question of collaboration
is of course super important.
Hi, Beatrice, I'm really
interested in your talk
and your research.
But I'm wondering
if you have ever
come across criticism
of intellectual life
versus private life
that we're more
interested in the real,
actual life of this person
this figure than the private
life, and the private life
becomes--
it's serious, it's
not scholarly enough.
And I mean, you compared
movies with architecture.
But the movies, the real
credit is the director.
The editor, the
cinematographer sometimes
doesn't get mentioned.
The make up person, nobody
ever knows what that name is.
It's a name.
It doesn't get attention.
So there is a difference
between a credit line
and the public's attention,
who's getting the attention.
So I wonder what your
thoughts are on that.
Yeah, but at least
they are credited.
At least they are acknowledged.
At least there are Oscars for
all kinds of different things.
Are there prizes in
architecture for all kinds
of-- not so much, right?
How about the intellectual
and the private?
I suppose what I'm trying to
say is that you cannot make that
separation.
I think that's a polemic,
but that's what I'm saying.
And you know with Jacqueline
[inaudible] I mean, come on,
you do did your thesis
your thesis at Princeton
on the question of
Jacqueline [inaudible],,
and her intimate
relationship with Gideon.
I mean, how can we think--
since I've read
your dissertation,
I cannot think of
Giedion the same way.
I just cannot.
And of course, again, Giedion
is a super significant hero.
How many people here know how
incredible was Carola Gideon?
Impossible to understand
Sigried Giedion
without understanding
Carola Giedion,
who put him into a
lot of differences.
But then also the personal
affairs are also important.
The affair with
Jacqueline brought him
into different areas as well.
And it's very, very significant,
the relationship and the impact
that it had on the world.
Those things cannot
be separated.
This project that
we just saw of Kahn
is inseparable from their
personal relationship.
Thank you for the talk.
It seems the history ended
it at OMA, if I'm correct.
And I'm curious,
taking these themes
of private and
public, dirty secrets,
and even where I guess
partnerships become
seen as domestic issues, I'm
curious if you could maybe
make some comments on how
these historic lines bring us
to today, where these
themes have a lot
to do with the MeToo
movement, with the shitty men
of architecture list.
Is there a line to be drawn,
I mean, to connect these?
Yeah, probably, I'm not
so sure that the history
finishes with OMA.
Ray was important
to me in as much
as he at least was able, when
looking back historically
and paying attention to the
question of the partners that
had emerged in the 50s, even if
it was in person that he made
this reference to the perversion
by proxy, even if it was kind
of--
I thought it was super
interesting that somebody
was paying attention that,
yeah, who is taking advantage,
I ask people.
And the fact that he
got-- but I didn't
go into their relationship.
I didn't go into
the relationship.
But of course I'm fully aware
of how Rem, also went many times
to see Bob Venturi in the
beginning of his career,
went to visit Bob Venturi and
Denise Scott Brown repeatedly
and was fascinated by them.
And it's inevitable
that, when you
are in that kind of
personal relationship,
you also look at all the--
so whole thing
about role models,
I think the couples also
see other role models
in other couples.
I think it is very significant
that it's always other couples
looking at other couples.
And that's what
I'm trying to say.
But I don't know
whether I finish
in Enric Miralles
[inaudible] Carmen Pinos
is much younger than Rem.
So I guess that's the
last people I mention.
It's very hard to talk
about the present.
I'm a historian myself.
So in this particular
case, I would
say the work is
totally influenced
by what is happening now.
And it has been,
as I said before,
in gestion for a long time.
So I was already sensitive
to a lot of things
because now all of this
is coming to the surface.
But it's not that we haven't
been thinking about it
for all these years.
Marissa mentioned
sexuality and space.
I can tell you a million
stories from myself from others.
I was in this very
room when there
was a conference in which
Denise Scott Brown was speaking.
And there were all the
big boys of architecture--
Peter Eisenman and Michael
Graves and so and so on.
And then Peter Eisenman
got up and complained
that Robert Venturi had
not come and that he always
says the surrogate.
The surrogate was Denise.
So until very recently,
these kinds of things
were being said in public,
and everybody laughed,
like how funny is that,
the he sends the surrogate.
The surrogate was Denise.
So of course, many
other stories--
and to his credit,
Moneo, who was chair--
told Peter that that
was not was not right.
But most of the time,
people just laughed--
They didn't laugh actually.
People booed him resoundingly.
This room, I was here,
the whole audience--
Yeah, all the women were
in the back like screaming.
So no one laughed.
I mean, they was shouting.
Moneo stopped him, right?
So it was boo.
It was boo.
Wasn't really laughed about.
I don't know.
I don't know.
Some people were close
to me, other boys.
Anyway, yeah, we were super mad.
That's true.
But these things still happen.
And it's not that long ago.
It was 1990 whatever,
91, 90 whatever.
It's just-- the
surrogate, I mean.
So how do we go into-- it's
very touchy business, right?
It's a different--
as a scholar, I
find it more difficult to go
into the details of previous
of practices.
But it doesn't have to be--
I suppose it changes as
we go on into the present.
And I suppose, if I were to take
this and turn it into a book,
then I will start thinking about
how we are collaborating today
differently, not
just in architecture,
but in other aspects
of our life and how
in this culture of sharing,
the idea of this single
is completely bankrupt
and perhaps also thinking
about more positive
models of things
that we see around
ourselves, of ways in which
people are collaborating today.
It would be more interesting.
Because this is more
of historical, or more
looking back at all these
collaborations that have taken
place in the 20th
century and the way
in which we have systematically
ignored for whatever reason.
And I suppose the question
of the private, yeah.
I don't know.
I have to think about it, too.
Yes.
Hi, thank you.
So to jump on the question
about private life
and why is it being overshadowed
by the intellectual.
And this might be a little
raw and hard to talk about
at the present.
But what about personal
character of architects
and how that influences?
I'm thinking about Richard
Meyer and some people,
including Paul
Goldberger, debating
whether the moral compus
that overshadows his work.
So I was wondering what
you think, and this is all
coming to the surface.
And it seems that there's a lot
of accomplices also over time
in letting this persist.
Right.
Again, once again,
we can separate
what is happening
in architecture
with what is happening
in the rest of the world.
When the Harvey
Weinstein story happened,
I turned around to a friend
and I said to him actually,
I wonder how long it will
be before things emerge
in architecture because we
have known these stories
for our very, very, very long--
not with a level of detail.
I was shocked myself
with some of the things
and also kind of the
crudity of all of them.
And what is the bathrobe?
I mean, what is wrong
with these guy, right?
The bathrobe, I
mean, what is wrong--
But I have heard my share of
stories at Columbia University
when I was teaching
there and at Princeton.
And of course, those were
things that we-- again,
like the secret of the family
that I was talking about that
we all knew about it, that
we knew who was more that--
why you shouldn't
get into an elevator
alone with certain
characters or why you should
be careful with certain people.
But we didn't bring
ourselves to--
among ourselves, I suppose
among women we will say,
that guy is bad news.
But I mean, until recently this
was happening to all of us,
right?
I think there's
time for one more.
If anybody would like to ask?
Hi, in terms of other fields--
I'm thinking of
literature or science--
is there a league of
Colomina's and Colomino's that
are doing you what
you do in other areas
and that you're
in contact with--
to know more of these
stories that we don't know
about other heroes of the past?
It's so interesting that you
say that because of course there
must be.
Of course, literature is
a much more lonely field.
I mean, you can be a
really great writer
and you are not collaborating
with many people.
I mean, that's possible.
But science, science has
always been entirely open
about the idea that
they are collaborating.
Of course, there's a
lot of shitty stories
about appropriating credit when
a lot of people are involved.
But in the field of science--
and that it comes always
to the surface in tenure
cases, in the humanities
versus the sciences in
places like, I suppose,
Harvard or Princeton
because in the humanities,
if you are, of course, writing
a paper with someone or a book,
you have written a book
with someone else--
that doesn't count.
That's how amazing it is.
Even if you apply to the
Guggenheim for a fellowship
and you have written a book with
someone, don't send that book.
They say that especifically
because they couldn't
tell what it is that
you did and what it
is that the other person did.
You're like, what?
In the science,
on the other hand
it's perfectly acceptable
for tenure cases,
for all kinds of promotions
for even [inaudible]
the collective authorship.
We have not achieved
this in architecture.
But I suppose what you're
saying is also, have there been
in studies on this question.
I should look into that.
I should look into
that as I work
more into the question of
collaboration in architecture
and how the issue is changing.
And the feminine-- like
for example, with Kafka,
and worked hand by hand
with his secretary, that was
the one who typed the thing.
And most of us, we
don't know that.
And I'm sure there are thousands
and thousands of stories
in all the fields that--
I don't know--
I wish there was like a
league of people like you
that just bring--
No, I don't.
But I will look into it.
That is a good point.
It still is different.
But, yeah, it's like the
client in architecture
is super significant and we
owe it to Alison Freidman
to have brought that story.
But there are so many
actors in architecture.
That is very important
to pay attention to,
all the different contributions
that make such a complex thing
as architecture.
If anybody would like to join
the league of Colomina's, we
can have a sign up sheet.
Thank you so much
for your lecture.
Thanks, too, everybody.
[applause]
