Cloepfil's artistic inspirations

Arcy Douglass has an extensive interview with architect Brad Cloepfil on the PORT website today, focusing on how modern and contemporary art has affected his designs. Cloepfil is a big art fan, and he cites works by Richard Serra, Sol Le Witt, Robert Irwin and others:

Douglass: How did your early experience with art feedback into your own creative process as an architect?

Cloepfil: When I was younger, I tended to be influenced by the raw experience of the work itself. At first, I wasn't even aware of who created a work, whether it was Richard Serra or Robert Irwin, it was the experience of the work itself that was important. The experience makes you ask yourself about the spatial quality of that type of work and about the ideas that those artists are exploring. It just resonates with you. 

I wasn't seeing anything comparable in buildings. It just seems like those guys understood more about the intentions of the 19th and 20th century architecture than the architects did. They had clarity of thought and a practice that was built on the exploration of material that became very important to me. The singular act of focus to create a work of art was really impressive. 

I saw Richard Serra's Circuit at MoMA and it is just four pieces of steel propped up in the corners of the room. The physical presence and the mass of the steel and its ability to radiate space into the small gallery was for me a very architectural experience that I could relate to much easier than the so-called "architecture" that was being produced at that time. The experience is about the material and the way that the material is made. It was also easier to learn from the artists because their work is so pure. By that I mean, the work that I was interested in was focused on the exploration of only one or two ideas. 

Buildings tend to be more complicated. It is hard to understand buildings when you are young unless they are a pure pavilion or something. A building is full of program, structure, stairs and support spaces that are necessary for the function of the building but very different than the direct experience of seeing work by Serra or Irwin. As a young student, art was more accessible. It was easier to understand what the artists were thinking about and what they were pursuing in their work.

What art has affected and influenced the rest of you architects out there? Is it an all-black painting that captured your fancy, like Cloepfil, or is there some closet Thomas Kincaide lover out there eager to cite his influence on their quaint English cottage?

As much as art, I also remember Cloepfil talking in a previous New York Times story I wrote about how he was inspired by the landscape of Oregon. ''It's a very romantic perception of space,'' he explained. ''I think it frees you up, and allows you to think of architecture as something more than objects.''

Comments

[Double J]

We kinda double teamed Brad and had a lot of fun... the next part on buildings for artists is mine, then the third part is a kind of free for all.

On landscape, I also think Brad's Clyfford Still Museum is more like the Keller Fountain than the Seattle Art Museum.

[Ryan Sullivan]

Great interview. It underscores the fact that Brad is really a neo-modernist, focused on the compositional and artistic qualities of Modernism, rather than the social and political components. His firm's work is fantastic, but I think it's unfortunate that it sets the standard for Portland practices.

It's the 21st century. Who really believes in "total-design" anymore? Can't Portland, being the progressive and ambitious city that it is, explore other methodological approaches to architecture that result in projects that are just as significant as Brad's work?

[matt]

I am in the Richard Serra camp of influence as well. After seeing the power of his piece in St. Louis and the conversation/controversy it created, and then seeing the installation at the Theaterplatz in Basel I was hooked. The power and simplicity of his work can't be overstated for me.
The other two I would say as having been of considerable influence are:
Robert Rauschenberg and his urban found art abstract expressionism, and Andy Goldsworthy and his natural found art.

[Brian Libby]

Among architects who are modern art fans, Donald Judd also seems to be a huge name. I once did a Dwell magazine article on Wim Wenders' house in Los Angeles, and the architects cited Judd as their biggest influence on the design, which was a 12-car parking garage renovated into a house.

[Double J]

Judd is a monster, you can't be living in a 1st world country and not feel his omnipresent influence on architecture and design.

Also, Cloepfil is hardly about "Total Design"... his St. Louis museum is practically the antithesis of that idea (just wait for part II though his statement about architecture not doing too much in part I pretty much gets that idea across). I think Rem Koolhaas comes much closer to the total design tag.

I appreciate them both but Cloepfil is a very American architect... I'd even go as far to say that the American West looms large in his thinking (also see CS Peirce and philisophical pragmatism). Looking at his influences he got away from European modernism like De Stijl... it's guys like Irwin, Judd and Michael Heizer that have a really open ended way of addressing/articulating space. It's less controlling.

[EdgarP]

For what it's worth, these artists are some of my faves, all working today (encountered in NY). They deal with perception, projectional systems, fabrication, and interiority in ways fascinating to architects like me. Sort of an optical counterpoint to the muscular, haptically based land-art work you are discussing:

Ricci Albenda
http://www.andrewkreps.com/albenda.html

Robert Lazzarini
http://www.robertlazzarini.com/

Josiah McElheny
http://www.donaldyoung.com/mcelheny/josiah_mcelheny_index.html
http://www.andrearosengallery.com/artists/josiah-mcelheny/

[Ryan Sullivan]

Double J, regarding "total design" - intentions are one thing and actions another.

Although Brad's work might be considered "less controlling" in a very abstract and perceptual way, it's certainly all about control in terms of its attention to every last detail of material, space and experience. More importantly, his working methodology/process is downright autocratic.

Koolhaas might be considered a hedgehog at first glance, but really his interests and projects are all about assembling a series of disparate utopias into a messy, unresolved whole. He's really not about total-design at all, although he might like to be.