PHILOSOPHY CREATIVITY, ART & ARCHITECTURE

CLOSER TO NATURE

Architecture is not a finished piece from which the artist backs off and says 'ah, it's finished', but it's more than that - it becomes a building process. The original building of it is important and is expressed as part of the aesthetic. And then the very fact that you can have interchangeable parts means that it loses its set composition, it is no longer a composed thing and has a new power of organization, which can change from season to season or climate to climate. And you come across it and maybe you don't even recognize it when you come across it on another occasion. That's an idea that delights me. And that's a matter of improvisation, which brings the client into the picture as one of the members of the design team.

I believe that as technology advances in architecture, the closer it comes to nature. This is a central statement for me. And of course, the ultimate is molecular engineering, which is an indication of growth itself. It is mechanical, but it is an imitation of a biological happening. And of course, it is a joining of nature and technology as we've never seen it before. It's almost one and the same thing. It's not bio-morphism in the sense that it is imitation of natural form, better it is learning how nature organizes, and in the same way we can organize our buildings and our cities. Then with all the transportation, all the distribution of services, all the structures that come and go and change, we'll be closer to nature than ever before and how it does it. 

-  John M Johansen in interview with Hans Ulrich Obrist

RETURN TO THE COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS

Some architects in the United States are searching for beauty. I am not one of them...  I started out under Bauhaus training, but as a 'functionalist expressionist,' never losing hold of what I first learned but expressing it more dramatically. So I am not fighting function as have so many who turned against the Bauhaus towards formalism. I am interested in a return to basic fundamental experiences and processes - not caring whether they are modern or not. They are always with us. I am interested in the collective unconscious, which we must return to and find a place for our collective lives... 

-  John M Johansen

POETICS OF TECHNOLOGY

...One of my central phrases is the 'poetics of technology', in which I see poetry - poetic aspects of architecture - in the building technologies, going back right the way through to ancient buildings. It is a parade of technical achievement, moving from one building technology to the next, from (tr)aviation to the arch to the vault, to iron and glass and now to even more sophisticated methods. Each one of them is a major factor in deciding what the aesthetic is.

So I think history backs up my view on this. I am very upset these days by artists who assume they are pure artists and have no regard for technology, for building structures or for art as a service. This is very central to my position and is one I have had for a long time.

Now, of course, in my latest projects I bring up building technologies that are just about to appear - known about but not yet in the stages of research and development. The most advanced of these is molecular engineering. In my book I try to give a very clear position on this subject.

I don't believe in Utopias. I don't think nature is utopian, I don't think the universe or Creation or even God is that. It's a false state, only manufactured by the human mind - it's something that might be. I guess that puts me off, and I don't really refer to it. But molecular engineering and nano-technology is a breakthrough that is seriously being investigated now in California at the Foresight Institute. On the strength of that there is promise that we can develop things in architecture, which I find very difficult to wait for: I want to rush into it. I think that architecture is in trouble now, particularly among those who are playing with forms, because we are waiting for a new building technology. If we could go into nano-architecture now, we'd really be producing something new. I think that's going to be a revolution in manufacturing, and an evolution in the history of man-made things that we are waiting desperately to conquer.

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SYMBOLISM           PHILOSOPHY           RESIDENTIAL DESIGNS  -  MAJOR PUBLIC BUILDINGS           EXPERIMENTAL           THEORETICAL          OTHER WORKS          BOOKS & DVDS          SITE MAP          CONTACT

HOME          CHRONOLOGY          ABOUT THE ARCHITECT          CHILDHOOD          EDUCATION          EARLY WORKS          ARCHITECTURE          NANOARCHITECTURE          TEACHING POSITIONS          AWARDS

Molecular engineering would produce anything you want, as long as you tell it what to do - an automobile, a marine engine, but I think when we come to architecture and art, we're interested in expressing what the molecules want to do themselves. The process of growth is so exquisite and important that my buildings then take on the forms and spaces that could have only have been built by growth itself. The test is when you come to one of these buildings and you say right away 'it had to be grown, it couldn't have been cast or put together', it has to have been expressed by its process. So back to the forms. The forms I give you are somewhat like vegetables or flowers - not self-consciously - but they somehow end up being closer to the nature of natural things. So you find the house and the other elements have stems and haunches. Nothing meets at right angles, but rather everything fuses from one to the other, into a continuous entity, as in nature, where you can't separate the tissue of bone from ligament, from ligament to muscle and from muscle to nerve. That's what we're moving into - buildings with different substances that fuse into each other with seamless continuity.   -  John M Johansen in interview with Hans Ulrich Obrist