Environmental & Architectural
Phenomenology Newsletter
Norberg-Schulz’s Interpretation of Tadao Ando’s Vitra Conference Center: A Critique
M. Reza Shirazi
Shirazi is an Iranian architect who taught and practiced in his home country for five years. He recently completed his doctorate in the L.S. Theorie der Architektur, Brandenburgische Technische Universität Cottbus [Brandenburg University of Technology] in Cottbus, Germany, under the supervision of Prof. Eduard Führ. Shirazi’s dissertation is entitled, “Architectural Theory and Practice and the Question of Phenomenology: The Contribution of Tadao Ando to Phenomenological Discourse.” He is co-editor of Cloud-Cuckoo-Land, an international journal of architectural theory. See his earlier article on architectural theorist Juhani Pallasmaa in the spring 2009 issue of EAP. He would like to thank EAP editor David Seamon for editorial assistance with this essay. m.shirazi@mail.tu-berlin.de. © 2011 M. Reza Shirazi. Originally published in EAP, vol. 22, no. 1 (winter 2011), pp. 16-19.
Norwegian architectural theorist Christian Norberg-Schulz (1926–2000) is a central figure in the phenomenological discourse on architecture (e.g., Norberg-Schulz 1971, 1980, 1985, 1988, 2000). In his interpretations of buildings and places, phenomenology has always been the main point of departure—an interpretive journey largely fueled by the phenomenological philosophy of Martin Heidegger (Norberg-Schulz 1988, 39–48).
In spite of the central importance of his work to architectural theory, one can argue that Norberg-Schulz’s manner of interpretation sometimes suffers from both conceptual and applied shortcomings (Shirazi 2008). Here, I examine some of these shortcomings by focusing on his interpretation of Japanese architect Tadao Ando’s Vitra Conference Center. I consider to what extent Norberg-Schulz is successful in applying his phenomenological thought to one realized building.
Ando’s
Vitra
Conference Center
In the last chapter of his
posthumously-published Architecture: Presence, Language, Place,
Norberg-Schulz (2000) presents a critical analysis of two
buildings—the Vitra Museum by American architect Frank Gehry and
the Vitra Conference Center by Ando (photographs,
below). Both buildings are part of the Vitra complex, which
includes furniture factories and related corporate buildings in
Weil am Rhein, Germany.
Vitra is the Swiss
manufacturer and retailer of the works of many
internationally-admired furniture designers such as George Nelson
and Charles and Ray Eames. In
addition to the buildings by Gehry
and Ando, the Vitra complex includes work by other major
architects—e.g., a fire station by Zaha Hadid and factory
buildings by Alvaro Siza and Nicholas Grimshaw.
Criticizing contemporary architects’ frequent failure to design buildings evoking the art of place, Norberg-Schulz (ibid., 229) writes:
Sadly what dominates the world of building nowadays is gimmick and novelty. It also happens that many architects allow themselves to be swept away by self-expression instead of interpretations of place, and so confusion takes the place of interaction.
This passage suggests that much of current architecture is not essential, original, or authentic but superficial, artificial, and fashion-based. Norberg-Schulz indicates that many new buildings fail in generating a thorough connection with place and evoking genius loci. Instead of fostering an experience grounded in genuine architectural elements, these designs project a sense of “confusion.” Norberg-Schulz continues in a more hopeful vein:
Fortunately, there are also [architects] capable of developing [a] “new tradition,” but their contribution disappears among the exhibition of symbolic figures of well being and sensational forms. In other words, the lack of quiet predominates and this probably depends on the lack of comprehension of the very nature of architecture (ibid.).
Norberg-Schulz’s dissatisfaction with the current state of architecture is partly expressed in his interpretation of Ando’s conference center. He begins with a “tour” of the Vitra complex. Note that he places the word “tour” in quotation marks, an odd designation intimating a discussion that might not be as thorough as it could be. He points out that Ando’s conference center expresses itself much differently from Gehry’s museum, which he claims has no sense of centeredness or spatial regularity but instead evokes a “restless indifference” (ibid., 348).
Norberg-Schulz argues that, in considerable contrast, Ando’s conference center incorporates a “well defined and clear” appearance expressing a “static composition in which nothing is accidental” (ibid., 349). The building includes “known” architectural elements such as directional walls, defined spaces, and obvious roofs; its parti is organized around an “elementary geometry” grounded in the square, rectangle, and circle.
In spite of its architectural clarity, however, Norberg-Schulz describes his first encounter with the conference center as “disappointing” (ibid., 349). He claims that, in Ando’s building, any expression of freedom and movement originally underlying the modernist tradition has stiffened into static perfection devoid of any dynamic sense. The conference center entails a remote formalism that stymies inspiration and says little about “what a conference centre should be.” The building is devoid of any “Stimmung,” or atmosphere.
On the other hand, Norberg-Schulz argues that the building’s extreme formalism moves beyond Mies van der Rohe’s dictum that “less is more,” since Mies’s “less” was not a “nothing” but an “almost nothing” as originally expressed in the German “beinahe nichts.” But Norberg-Schulz argues that this “almost nothing” becomes “nothing” in the conference center—a “boring” entity as in the sense of Robert Venturi’s “less is a bore.” Because of this “nothingness,” Norberg-Schulz claims that the conference center is an “expression of modern-day nihilism” and a common theme in Ando’s conference center and Gehry’s museum. The two buildings are the “same” though not “identical,” with the difference that “Gehry hides the void, while Ando displays it” (ibid., 350).
Norberg-Schulz also claims that Gehry and Ando’s designs evoke the “same sort of solution” for any building site, no matter where. The buildings are fundamentally the “same” response to economic power and “have become representatives of a global consumer society” (ibid.). He reads these buildings as the dying splendor of two architectural-media stars and as largely devoid of any architectural depth or importance.
Norberg-Schulz contrasts this superficiality with Rome buildings by Bramante and Michelangelo, both invited to that city as the creative stars of their time “to solve tasks… intrinsically bound up with the place” (ibid.). These men became architects for Rome even though they were not natives. Norberg-Schulz draws the same parallel with Mies van der Rohe in Chicago and Jørn Utzon in Kuwait. In short, Norberg-Schulz claims that neither Gehry nor Ando’s Vitra buildings are successful in evoking the particularity of place and genius loci.
An Evaluation
To present my critical
reading of Norberg-Schulz’s analysis of Ando’s Vitra conference
center, I challenge his conclusions in two ways: first by
referring to Ando’s architectural ideas as presented in his
writings; second, by pointing out shortcomings in Norberg-Schulz’s
own architectural understanding.
As explained above, Norberg-Schulz claims that “everything appears well-defined and clear” in Ando’s conference center. He writes that the building’s configuration comprises “known architectural elements,” using the simple geometry of square, rectangle, and circle. He concludes that the building’s geometric regularity evokes a “static” character much different from the formal restlessness of Gehry’s museum.
In his architectural writings, Ando acknowledges much of what Norberg-Schulz describes in his critique. For example, Ando believes that the “pure geometry” of the Plantonic solids plays an important role in architectural design (Ando 1995a, 456). He has pointed to the importance of the circle and square in designing Japan’s Naoshima Museum, for which he toured Naoshima Island to find a suitable building form, which eventually incorporated a cylinder and rectangular solid (Ando 1993a, 25).
In regard to the Vitra conference center, Ando has stated directly the importance of an elementary geometry in the design of the building: “I created a composition of volumes and voids from pure geometrical forms such as squares and circles and enclosed within that composition spaces characterized alternately by tension and the relaxation of tension” (Ando 2002, 166). In this sense, Ando’s design inspiration and Norberg-Schulz’s architectural interpretation involve similar understandings.
As already emphasized, however, Norberg-Schulz finds Ando’s conference center “disappointing” because of a distancing formalism that cannot answer the question of “what a conference center should be.” The result, Norberg-Schulz contends, is a placeless, nihilist “nothing” representing global capitalism. But when one examines Ando’s comments on the relationship between architecture and the world economy, one finds that he is highly critical, contending that global standardization threatens good design in that economic rationality requires a pure functionality devoid of aesthetic power. As he writes, “The principle of simple economic rationality does away with the rich, cultural aspect of architecture” (Ando 1995b, 450).
Ando suggests that, if economic rationalism supersedes cultural values, “Cities worldwide will be full of uniform buildings” (Ando 1990, 15). In this sense, Ando resists global-capitalist society and aims to express design difference and uniqueness rather than similarity and uniformity. As a result, he is deeply interested in “place” and its singular “requests” and “forces.” He uses such descriptions as the “construction of place,” the site as a “field of forces,” and architects responding to the “demands of the land.” These phrasings all confirm Ando’s concern for a given place and its particularities.
Ando’s account of designing the Vitra conference center acknowledges the site and its unique qualities, especially in placing the building: “The principal focus was the positioning of the building and its path of approach on the site, which is extremely flat” (Ando 1993b, 130). In addition, he worked to carefully harmonize the building with Gehry’s museum and a nearby Claus Oldenburg sculpture “without disturbing the trees on the site.” (ibid.). He writes: “Gehry’s building, with a design based on the free manipulation of form, and my simple restrained building confront each other across a space featuring [the Oldenburg] sculpture... My idea was to have two buildings with contrasting forms of expression enter into a stimulating dialogue” (Ando 2002, 166). This explication suggests a careful attention to place and its forces and particularities.
Ando’s statements suggest, on one hand, that Norberg-Schulz was unaware of the design process through which Ando created the Vitra conference center. On the other hand, one might argue that an architect’s written claims in regard to a building’s design are less important than the impact of the realized building. Architecture is what is built, and we should be able to encounter through direct architectural experience the architect’s vision and aim.
Unfortunately, Norberg-Schulz provides only minimal secondhand evidence—one exterior photograph of the conference center [see photograph above]—to provide the reader with a vicarious sense of Norberg-Schulz’s own firsthand experience. A series of photographs illustrating each point in his interpretation would allow readers some independent confirmation of interpretive claims that, as things stand, seem arbitrary and potentially out of touch with Ando’s stated design aims.
Shortcomings
in Understanding?
One might also argue there
are problems in Norberg-Schulz’s architectural thought itself.
Remember that Norberg-Schulz begins his analysis with a “tour” of
the site. If “tour” here means “looking around” in a quick,
superficial way, like a tourist, then how can one grasp genius
loci or recognize how a building might be the architectural
expression of that genius loci? On one hand, “touring,” in
its lifeworld meaning, denies phenomenological understanding. On
the other hand, if by “touring,” Norberg-Schulz means the
importance of “moving” around and through a building, there is
still a problem in that his interpretation involves fixed
perspectives and no discussion of movement from outside into the
building’s interior.
All that Norberg-Schulz offers is a partial architectural interpretation from outside the conference center. The result is selective and limited in the sense that he seems apart from the architectural work and never moves inside. His only image of the building is the one exterior photograph that he never refers to directly in laying out his interpretation. He does not consider walls, roofs, apertures, courtyard, and other building elements in a thorough, organized way.
In contrast to his other
architectural interpretations that typically begin with a careful
reading of the natural and
human-made particularities of a building site, Norberg-Schulz
largely ignores these qualities in his analysis of Ando’s
conference center. He does not refer to the special character of
the site or suggest how Ando’s design is out of touch with that
character. Rather, all he offers is the arbitrary claim that
Ando’s building is a “nothing” and a “scheme devoid of
localization.” For this writer at least, Norberg-Schulz’s
interpretation of Ando’s Vitra conference center is questionable
and unconvincing.
A Critical Dialogue
Norberg-Schulz is a central figure in architectural phenomenology.
My critique here is not intended to undermine the significance of
his interpretive work but to point to its shortcomings as a means
toward betterment. What is needed is a generative but critical
dialogue that advances phenomenological description and
clarification (Shirazi 2008).
References
Ando, T., 1990. Nature and
Architecture, in W. Blasser, ed.,
Sketches (Basel: Birkhauser).
_______, 1991. Tadao Ando (Tokyo: Shinkenchiku-sha).
_______, 1993a. In Dialogue with Geometry: The Creation of Landscape, GA Architect, vol. 12.
_______, 1993b. Tadao Ando 1988–1993 (Tokyo: ADA).
_______, 1995a. Material, Geometry and Nature, in F. D. Co, ed., Tadao Ando: Complete Works (London: Phaidon).
_______, 1995b. Facing up to the Crisis in Architecture, in F. D. Co, ed. Tadao Ando Complete Works (London: Phaidon Press, 1995).
_______, 2002. Tadao Ando, Inside-Outside (Tokyo: a+u).
Norberg-Schulz, C., 1971. Existence, Space and Architecture (London: Studio Vista).
_______, 1880. Genius Loci: Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture (NY: Rizzoli).
_______, 1985. The Concept of Dwelling (NY: Rizzoli).
_______, 1988. Architecture, Meaning and Place (NY: Rizzoli).
_______, 2000. Architecture: Presence, Language, Place (Milan: Skira).
Shirazi, M.
R., 2008. Genius Loci: Phenomenology from Without,
Wolkenkuckucksheim: International Journal of Architectural Theory,
12 (2); accessed Nov. 28, 2010, at:
www.tu-cottbus.de/theoriederarchitektur/Wolke/wolke_neu/inhalt/en/issue/issues/207/Shirazi/shirazi.php