An interview with Herman Hertzberger

Herman Hertzberger, the renowned Dutch architect, received this years Royal Gold Medal for Architecture, presented in London in February. Rob Gregory talked to him on behalf of WAF. Rob Gregory: When I was at college your book, Lessons for Students in Architecture, became our manual for the year. For us it was a very significant. Herman Hertzberger: This was the first edition, and we have now the fifth RG: In1991, Norman Foster and British High Tech was almost the only thing being taught. And then our tutors introduced your book. It has stayed with me ever since, and I know for lots of students, it radically affected their careers. HH: That is interesting to hear. RG: The student crits you are engaging with as part of the Gold Medal programme, may also produce something interesting. In this months AR, Patrick Schumacher criticises . . . HH: His own work? RG: No, the work of students that you are going to see. Patrick says that architectural education in the UK is unrealistic and disconnected with reality, with students creating apocalyptic and dystopian narratives to test architectural ideas. He asks why we cant just look at the real world. It strikes me that my education, based in part on your book, was fundamentally connected with the real world. HH: It is interesting that it is Patrick Schumacher who is the one telling us this, as he is the one who has created that sort of myth. So I am surprised, but of course it is never too late change your sail. In fact I think it is sympathetic that he is also coming down to what I would call things that work. And not just about architecture as an aesthetic instrument or as a reality in itself. [To some] architecture became an autonomous system, which is not related to reality. And this is what he is saying now. Of course, I have been to Maxxi in Rome, and I must say that it is a beautiful and interesting building; but it is so interesting that it doesnt really need art, as the building itself has become the focus. That is a kind of reality of today, of the consumer world, which always needs to be excited. But it is not about the realities of the practical world in which things have to work. And this has created a distance between things that work and things that are beautiful that is a mean trick. The point is to make things that work, and that are beautiful at the same time. Beauty should be the result of the work, not the other way around. RG: So do you think the world has drastically changed since you were writing in 1991, in terms of the demands society places on architecture?

HH: Absolutely. Not because of the book, of course. But the book coincided with a drastic change. I think I was lucky to be just in time. Modernity had as its ideology the idea that you could make the world better through architecture as Le Corbusier stated. But around 1980, to be precise 1979, the French philosopher Lyotard wrote his book about Post-modernism; this tried to end Modernity, by saying (in my words) that our culture produced concentration camps, and that this was proof enough that Modernity didnt work. And more or less at the same time, Charles Jencks wrote h is book about Post-modern architecture, in which he mentioned my work in a curious way, stating that the cruciform concrete structure on the Drie Hoven nursing home, Amsterdam was a reference to death. Of course this was a funny interpretation for him. But to me the cross was a very clear sign of the column and beam structure, as a tectonic idea. But he interpreted it as being a way that architecture could signify death! Anyway I was delighted to be mentioned . . . But back to your question: from that moment on there was no longer the idea that architecture could make a better world, there was a kind of liberation from Modernity, allowing architects to do what they want. The moment that Modernity finished you got Modernism, it was transformed into an - ism, meaning a way to do, so you could do it in this way. Or you could do it in other ways. And then the world was open to funny and stupid and classical architecture. Everyone suddenly became free and liberated from modernity. And that was the moment that I was starting to think about what we should do and then writing this book, strongly influenced by structuralism and also by the lessons I got ten years previously in the 60s, from Aldo van Eyck. The book was trying to redefine architecture in terms of may I say daily-life science. By this I am not saying daily life, or science, but as van Eyck told me, when you bridge two words you make a new things. So daily-life science is about the common and not about the special, and this is important. We should liberate architecture from the special. What structuralism was saying was that the same things come back in another guise. Evolution happens over tens of thousands of years, not in 1,000 years super-evolution. The same things in another guise, in another way. This is what the structuralists are saying. RG: If super-evolution happens in 10,000-year cycles, presumably the shelf life of your book occupies one of those cycles. HH: Well I am amazed that we now have five editions of the book. I am pleased. Its not a Gold Medal, but its a type of medal to have your books re-printed. RG: There is something unique in your career in terms of the balance between the buildings and the book. Some architects have no theories, they never teach and they never write. Their buildings just exist. But your writing and your buildings are strongly connected and meshed together. HH: Well for me it is a logical thing because I propose to first think, then design and then build. Many architects I suspect I am not in their heads but I suspect their brains work in a slightly different way because they start to conceive something and then maybe afterwards they think, or perhaps not think at all. Because once you have conceived something it is difficult to think, because you are already seduced by

what you have put on paper or on the screen. You must be able to use your brain, to think before you have the conception. This is what should be changed in education. You really must ask yoursel f W hat do we need to make?, before you conceive an oval or a rectangular table. You have to think. And then in recent decades there comes something else. Our society is so unstable that you cant make buildings like the RIBA, where every space is specifically dedicated to one function. Functionalism does not work anymore; maybe in the technical sense it can work, in the way that a column is column and a beam is a beam. But functionalism in the sense of making spaces for pre-determined functions does not work. So we have to think in a more generic way. And then you feed in the idea of people as the most important building material; their conditions in the sense of protection, outlook, size, conditions of entry . . . this is all in the book. And in the second edition, which was supplementary. By the way I am trying at this moment to make a third book, which focuses on what we have been talking about, about sustainability, durablilty. I am not quite acquainted with the difference between sustainability and durability. And also, about what the programme is for the programme-less building. RG: I wanted to ask you about architectural language because there is a consistency that gives the work coherence, but the language isn t so precious that it defines the meaning of the buildings; as you have said, people are the best building material. I wonder about the influence of structuralism and, in your earlier work, the adoption of precast concrete and blockwork that have a background quality, while being authentic in their own right. HH: The language of simple blockwork is the idea of daily life. The daily-life quality, not trying to be special. I mean this was a statement against the special and in favour of using common things. Its a bit like what the Italian painters do with arte povera, but poverty is not the right word, because what you want to do is express the richness of daily life and not its poverty. Daily life is the programme for your work and not the special. This feeds into democracy because architecture is for everyone. RG: Thank you very much.