CG: The site of my parents’ house was the top of the mountain, the plateau on which I
could make the consummate object. This California site makes the consummate object
possible, but it also becomes a counterpoint of ground and building. The two have a
different way of integrating and a dynamic that is different from that of any other houses
we have done so far. It could never have happened without the formal precedent of the
Bechtler (Zumikon) and Katzenberg houses; all those other houses were only partially
informing, self-determined exclamation points of a reconciliation of a series of
investigative strategies that have been edited over the years, eliminated, and then
reconsolidated. When I reconsider something, I have to
do it in a pragmatic and soul-searching way that allows
me to get free. I’m always trying to free myself in the
sense that I don’t want to repeat.
CD: In fact, the phrase “permissible to make use of
precedent” seems to question all of architecture. One
could argue that all of architecture is in some sense based
on some sort of precedent.
CG: I agree. This question of the repetition of form also
uses only one example of repetition. There is repetition of
principle, repetition of an ordering idea, repetition of an
ideal. Repetition of form is the easy demonstration of
what Rowe is talking about. For Rowe, form is meaning,
not what makes it, how it got to be, and its relationships.
If you understand precedent as the manifestation of form,
then you’re denying the implications of precedent, the overlays, and the
interrelationships. If form is the ultimate definition or ultimate reading, I think that’s too
simple. For example, if you had a pediment and columns and you placed them in a
condition of subversion, they would not be about precedent or repetition, they would be
about a context which questions their legitimacy or their right to be. I really think this
question is about style. In other words, is a transparent cylinder the same as a translucent
cylinder or the same as a solid cylinder?
Image (above) – Gwathmey & Henderson Architects, Cooper Residence, axonometric.
CD: Yes and no.
CG: Exactly. Rowe’s question doesn’t allow for transformation. I think transformation is
a huge issue both in terms of precedent and of repetition. It allows for authenticity to be
partial – a partial authenticity that allows for an ideal that considers precedent and new
possibilities.
CD: What is partial authenticity?
Copyright Anyone Corporation 2009 9
CG: If repetition diminishes authenticity, I would say that transformation, which has to
do with both repetition and authenticity, can be partial or fragmentary. The question of
authenticity then is relevant because it does not have to be holistic. Transformation
allows a much denser set of strategies that can argue that repetition does not necessarily
destroy authenticity, and that it is permissible to use precedent because precedent is the
establishment of a kind of ideal ordering in a particular situation that then must be
reinterpreted for a new situation. In this case, precedent informs rather than dictates form.
All images courtesy of Gwathmey Siegel & Associates Architects
See Log 17 (Fall 2009) for Kenneth Frampton’s “In the American Vein: The Domestic
Architecture of Charles Gwathmey”, pp. 138-15