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Willem-Jan Neutelings: "how to Design an Icon" (Archinect : Features)

I found this via http://www.ceosforcities.org/conversations/blog/, and have had it open in a tab for DAYS now, wondering how to annotate/ sum it up, and I can't seem to do it justice. Here's Archinect's introduction: A conversation with Willem-Jan Neutelings about the tradition of architecture and the way iconography should be applied in architecture." Just that bit: how "iconography should be applied in architecture" is amazing. Who speaks of such things cogently these days? Dares to? At the same time, I find myself in agreement with commentator Ivo, at the end of this blog entry, who writes: "I don't know about Neutelings-Riedijk. It's too simple for me, almost cartoonish. A harbour college that looks like stacked shipping containers, an earth-sciences building that looks like covered in dirt, a TV and media centre is clad in blurred tv images. No offence they make nice sculptures, but I expect my architects to come up with something more than the first (obvious) idea that springs to mind while being faced with a client/project."

Tags: archinect, architecture, icon, interview, theory, willem_jan_neutelings on 2008-02-08 -All Annotations (0) -About

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“The axis Columbia – AA – Berlage Institute is the axis of evil,” Willem-Jan Neutelings laughs. Then serious again: “For ten years the American architecture schools, in combination with a couple West-European schools, have promoted the idea that new means give birth to a new architecture. I find it evil that this is being explained to the youth, because the youth doesn’t understand how architecture works anymore, and that keeps on getting worse. There is no writer that would say, that because books are now typed on computers, he makes a different literature. But that is what architects say.”
because the French philosophers have thought it that way
“These are all decoys to position oneself in a contemporary debate, but the essence is that Ben van Berkel is just a Beaux-Arts architect, because he handles the architectural instruments incredibly well. We all use a very old set of instruments, in the sense that a building is driven by composition, tectonics, partie and pochet, arrangement, light and dark, material skills, all those matters that make up the classic, 5000 year old methodologies to design architecture.”
“We are now planning to create a school, in the office, where we invite old teachers to explain color-theory, composition, or perspective, because nobody knows that anymore. They all have knowledge that is completely useless to create architecture.”
The advocated message? You just read it: after the end of theory, after all emergent blobs have popped, the tradition of the architectural practice is back.

Instead of hoping for a revolution that will never come, the agenda has refocused on a cultural conservatism. But, “our call for tradition is not about style, it’s about methodology”, Mr. Neutelings assures me.
Highly significant is the reoccuring pointing by Mr. Neutelings to the nineteenth century, not by coincidence the moment just before Modernism interupted that tradition. It was also the moment representation blossemed like never before in the neo-styles. When studying ornament and iconography the nineteenth century is the place to be, even though it looks like a paradox: Look back to move forward.
The question I did ask was: Since the nineteenth century the themes in architectural representation have broadened enormously, as shown in the work on Neutelings Riedijk. The exterior cladding of the Shipping and Transport College in Rotterdam refers explicitly to the stacked containers in the harbor. The interior features ceilings like sails, windows like portholes, and a lecture room with square, red ‘life jackets’ for acoustics. It’s a building that echoes maritime industrial products. How can that still be connected to the tradition of our profession?
First Mr. Neutelings denies: “Let’s say that when the old Greeks used an Acanthus-leaf for a theatre, it was just because they were inspired by an Acanthus-leaf. Nothing has changed.”

But then he agrees: “The themes are different. A writer still uses the same grammar as 150 years ago, but he writes a book about a very different theme, because different things are happening now.”

The metaphor of the writer is smart: Iconography translates as ‘image writing’. That’s is the direction I aim for.
In the contemporary debate I think three positions on the use of iconography can be distinguished:

First there is Charles Jencks who advocates the ‘enigmatic signifier’. Only an icon that allows multiple readings grasps and keeps the attention of the public. Take the Swiss Re tower from Norman Foster: Is it an egg, a cigar, a dick, or a gherkin? That is success, Mr. Jencks says.

Then there is Alejandro Zaero-Polo who put back the old element of ‘truth’ in representation: A façade should not just be an image, but should represent, in honesty, what kind of construction and organization a building has. Iconography should have a ‘double agenda’. His Yokohama Cruise Terminal applies the image of the Hokusai wave, a tsunami, in such an integral way that it enhances the flow of passengers, and the load-bearing steel structure. Iconography, organization and construction should come simultaneously, Mr. Zaero-Polo says.
After the Yokohama Terminal Mr. Zaero-Polo has not realized a similar integral building – it’s an agenda that seems too ambitious. Neutelings Riedijk on the other hand seems ti represent a far more pragmatic approach: The appliance of a singular, deliberately chosen iconography for the form and texture of a building, without a direct connection to the construction or functional organization behind the facade.
It is important that the meaning is layered. In general, one takes out the things with a very singular meaning. That also goes for a book, a film, anything. Pieces of art that are rich with meaning last longer.”
As Mr. Neutelings talked further though, a more unconscious concern with readability comes up, a concern that contradicts the idea of the multi-layered iconography: “The funny thing with buildings with a lot of layers… Our Tax office in Apeldoorn is very layered, but because of that a lot of people find it hermetic and hard to understand. So it happens that currently, in our image culture, an easier understandable form is faster absorbed.”

“I don’t say that’s better”, he adds. But you hear him thinking: We want our buildings to be popular, to be part of society – without becoming totally uncritical, or fully banal.
“The misunderstanding of our time is to think all buildings should be icons. We don’t think that. A building should only be an icon when it’s nature allows it. The reason to actually want iconography is, because it is an important building, you think it could have a specific expression, and should not conform to anonymity.”
The most mentioned word in the interview is ‘nature’: The nature of the building, its character, its essence. The iconography of a building should represent that nature.

As an architect Mr. Neutelings doesn’t theorize the representation in architecture, but talks more on how he designs the iconographic thing: “We want buildings to have a great sculpturality, one that could possibly represent something. Iconography is in the first place tectonic.”
“The iconography of our buildings doesn’t express the function, it doesn’t display how the building works”, Mr. Neutelings further explains, “We search for an expression that connects to what’s inside, but also links with the context. For instance the harbor.”

In the case of the Shipping and Transport College those two representations match: It’s a harbor building in the harbor. It’s the kind of ‘reinforced’ strength in image that features the best work of Neutelings Riedijk.

The chosen reference, like the harbor, is abstracted into architecture by tuning it with functionality and building technology, but also by following the irrationality of the sculpture: “We do that by making a lot of models, to try a lot of sculptures, and choose from that.”
In four steps:

0. If it is a contemporary monument,

1. You have to make a distinct building,

2. That represents the nature of the building in its form and cladding,

3. While still connecting to the context,

4. And following the logic of the sculpture.

That’s how one designs an icon.

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