{"id":22530,"date":"2014-09-08T23:01:06","date_gmt":"2014-09-08T21:01:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.area-arch.it\/antologia-manuel-gausawes-jones-ilhyun-kim-kengo-kuma-luca-molinari-juan-purcell-denise-scott-brown-vittorio-sermonti-james-wines-2\/"},"modified":"2016-01-28T18:50:50","modified_gmt":"2016-01-28T17:50:50","slug":"antologia-manuel-gausawes-jones-ilhyun-kim-kengo-kuma-luca-molinari-juan-purcell-denise-scott-brown-vittorio-sermonti-james-wines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.area-arch.it\/en\/antologia-manuel-gausawes-jones-ilhyun-kim-kengo-kuma-luca-molinari-juan-purcell-denise-scott-brown-vittorio-sermonti-james-wines\/","title":{"rendered":"antologia: Manuel Gausa,Wes Jones, Ilhyun Kim, Kengo Kuma, Luca Molinari, Juan Purcell, Denise Scott Brown, Vittorio Sermonti, James Wines"},"content":{"rendered":"

Manuel Gausa<\/strong>
\nFrom public space to relational space: we have made the transition from a monumentalistic traditional concept \u2013 representative or symbolic \u2013 to a more active, operative concept. We have abandoned the old public space for a rational one. An authentically collective space, open to use, enjoyment, stimuli, surprise: to activity. A space where the dynamic is not pre-defined, where active and passive users \u2013 activating players \u2013 are interchangeable. In other words, not a space featuring \u201curban furniture\u201d based on the subtle figurative evocation of ancient historical paradigms (the Italian \u2013 or we may say Mediterranean \u2013 piazza, the rambla, the boulevard, the garden etc.) as aesthetic and aesthetizing aspiration of a civic space, between domestic and neo-micro-monumental, fixed and stabilized: painstakingly finished and planned with an eye to composition. In other words, not a space for a precise and as such finite recreation (purist and\/or autistic aesthetics aimed at the enjoyment of occasional rebels-vandals) but a space of new landscapes \u2013 or landscapes of landscapes \u2013 which rely on more open approaches, sensitive to change and interaction, to more open approaches: generators of energy and activity. Spaces that are not only based on formal designs, but also on informal relations. Not on the civic model, but on hybrid situations. Not so much domestic salons as active landscapes \u2013 multi-programmatic \u2013 where the manipulation of the land is combined with a plastic, direct, expressive, changeable manifestation, open to the appearance of installations (permanent or ephemeral) for free time, sport, culture, gastronomy, consumption, socializing; in short, the projection of the citizen.
\nBut also with a new concept of the conceived \u2013 and developed \u2013 uses \u201cin negative\u201d or in virtual \u201cfolds\u201d of the ground: new \u201cdense topographies\u201d of activity. In any case, new environments appreciative of the incorporation of auxiliary constructions, of natural and artificial vegetation, of more casual, expressive \u2013 and economic \u2013 solutions, conceived on the basis of alternative \u201crecyclable\u201d materials, but also on the saving of energy and its recovery in the form of illumination, electricity, irrigation, etc. A relational space which is not just public, not just \u201cregenerating\u201d but also playful; operative rather than representative, conceived for strolling and contemplating but also for use and enjoyment, or for a true social exchange. Basically, a space that is inspiring rather than \u201celegant\u201d. At one time we coined the expression lands in lands: \u201coperational landscapes\u201d on \u201chost landscapes\u201d.
\nIt enabled us to reflect on the surpassing of the old concepts which had characterized actions on the landscape based on the traditional \u201cfigure-background\u201d \u2013 \u201cbuilding figure against background\u201d hierarchy, and the replacement of these concepts with new interpretations that were more open to a merger of the edges, to a dissolution of the borderlines (as in those fields of pixels used in digital representation where the silhouette which is gradually zoomed in ends up by being diluted into more abstract and interconnected plots). On an architectural scale this intersection could also be conceived on the basis of possible encounters and operative \u201ctales\u201d, not just programmatic but also \u201ccategorical\u201d, capable of transforming the existing conditions of a place into new movements of relief, virtual \u201cnature-buildings\u201d characterized by a hybrid configuration. In fact, it would not be a matter of being \u201cdiluted\u201d in (or before) nature but to interact with it, also favouring \u201cother\u201d types of nature(s). Topographic and topological. The force of the term \u201clandscape\u201d and its rapid and diffused inclusion in our recent conceptual baggage is rooted, precisely \u2013 rather than in its manifestation as mere scenario \u2013 in the fact that it is an operational instrument capable of favouring the delineation of new open yet structuring systems.
\nThis transferral of the background of the scenario to the centre of action proves ever harder to circumscribe to the concrete context of a specific or complementary activity \u2013 i.e. \u201clandscapism\u201d \u2013 with hazy and general environmental connotations, unless it also involves the authentically architectural dimensions. The scope of a present-day work on the idea of landscape must be identified precisely in its ability to capture new dimensions, to go beyond the limits, to blur the silhouettes and to give a new outline to the familiar profiles of what we previously considered to be town planning and (or) architecture. As we have already observed, this dynamic is not foreign to the idea of considering the void as \u201carchitectural material\u201d of the first order, not so much by virtue of its possible \u201cnatural\u201d value as for its fundamental abstract and diffused component, which goes beyond the predomination of the form (as mentioned, this ambiguous quality of the \u201cvacant\u201d, \u201cnegative\u201d space, which owes its form more to the \u201cabsences\u201d than to the \u201cpresences\u201d). An \u201carchitecture of the void\u201d may therefore assert itself in resonance with the qualities of a \u201clandscape-free space\u201d exploited precisely through its peculiar spatial manifestations, as \u201cfield\u201d of open forces. An architecture made of \u201cpresences-absences\u201d capable of being built on foundations made from a \u2013 paradoxical \u2013 combination between densification and disappearance, and where the surfaces, horizons, meetings of sky and earth are forcefully manifest. Just like the borders separating the city from the ancient territories beyond its walls have been dissolved, the architectural plan may see its profiles blurred into new \u201chybrid geographies of transition\u201d.
\nTopography rather than volume.
\nArtificial landscape rather than host landscape. Yet again. Untreated, functional surfaces rather than free and receptive ones. New, dense surfaces rather than possible extended ones.
\nThe project which centres on the surface will therefore be understood as a work on an \u201carchitecturalized\u201d void. A \u201cvide fa\u00e7onn\u00e9\u201d in which the design is not based on the configuration of masses erected in height \u2013 architecture as \u201cbuilding\u201d \u2013 but on the reorganization of its horizontal dimensions: peaks, dunes, trenches, furrows, folds etc., will be understood as topomorphic manifestations of a possible artificial geography that is not very distant \u2013 in terms of its spatial image \u2013 from the more natural one. Reliefs and level surfaces, folds and cuts \u201care impressed\u201d in a new way on the territory, mineral landscapes where movements and flows are organized \u201cbelow the surface\u201d and \u201cinside the surface\u201d, in chiselled surfaces that are (almost) level with the ground. It is therefore not a matter of continuing to create pretty \u201cvolumes of light\u201d, but \u201chybrid landscapes of sky\u201d. Hybrid enclaves capable of autonomously generating their own energy.
\nFields within other fields.
\nLands in lands.
\nWe define devices \u201coperational topographies\u201d (Quaderns 220) when they are conceived as, on the basis of, strategic movements of folds in the territory. These movements define platforms and (or) enclaves of an almost geographic nature developed as \u201cprogrammatic revesas\u201d (using the term revesa in its dual meaning of \u201ccurrent or movement of flow and reflux deriving from a principal source\u201d and of \u201castuteness in acting\u201d): that is to say functional \u201creliefs\u201d or \u201csurfaces\u201d whose condition of \u201coperating landscapes\u201d is intensified, both as smooth or extended (dynamic grounds) or as extruded surfaces (localized reliefs). In both cases it is a matter of virtual manipulated \u201clandscapes\u201d where the \u201clandscape\u201d is defined as \u201cbackground\u201d, as \u201cscenario\u201d or as \u201cconstruction\u201d, that is to say, \u201clandscapes within other landscapes\u201d. The \u201csurfaces\u201d are the result of a pursuit of \u201cmultilayer superimposition\u201d, a context within which we find many of the architectures which have played an important role in landscapes in the new century: the works of Actar Arquitectura of Graz Maribor (2000) and Bruxelles Change (2003) or the famous memorial of Chi chi (2005), the well-known memorial for Oscar Peterson (Soweto) by Fran\u00e7ois Roche (1997) or the Terminal of Yokohama by FOA (1996-2003) and the previous works of OMA but also the multimedia studio of Kazuyo Sejima in Gizo (1996) represent some of the first graphic intuitions of this potential.
\nThe \u201creliefs\u201d are the result of a desire for localized \u201caccentuation\u201d and in this sense it is to the point to mention both the famous project for the auditorium of Pamplona by Eduardo Arroyo (1998) and the \u201cmountains\u201d designed by Vicente Guallart for Denia (2003) or by MVRDV in Stockholm (2000), both of whom are indebted to projects as that by OMA in Agadir (1990) or the one of Jussieu (1992)\u2026Whether it is a matter of level extruded surfaces \u2013 reliefs or enclaves \u2013 or chiselled ones \u2013 grounds and platforms \u2013 these topographies will in every case come to form new \u201cgeographies\u201d above the territory. Built geographies, rather than architectures.
\nInterview June 16 2010.<\/em><\/p>\n

Wes Jones<\/strong>
\nTo understand the proportion that there can be an un-volumetric architecture, it is necessary to belive that architecture may be divided away from a simple limiting congruency with the necessarily spatial, that is, with buildings. This possibility may noticed today for two reasons: first, because technology has leapfrogged beyond the limits that architecture traditionally helped to establish, and gained a vantage, point from which to see those limits as provisional rather than absolute. And second: because a generation of architects has come of age that were raised with this viewpoint \u201coutside the discipline\u201d. The consideration of architecture from an un-volumetric perspective might be an important first step toward strategizing architecture\u2019s survival in a future where these traditional underpinnings are missing or uncertain\u2026We can consider the term \u201cthe architectural\u201d (rather than simply \u201carchitecture\u201d) might be advanced to refer positively to a general case of architecture-ness, one not ferred to specific, isolated products that might be prompted by a greater variety of object-stimuli, or variety of stimuli within a single object. Thus, not specific instances of architecture, invariably buildings, but a broad, and exportable sense of the architectural, that could be applied to or explain a wider range of experience.
\nFrom Aldo Aymonino, Valerio Paolo Mosco, \u201dContemporary Public Space. Un-Volumetric Architecture\u201d, Skira, 2006.<\/em><\/p>\n

Ilhyun Kim<\/strong>
\nThe architectural objects of the public space, the un-volumetric architectures, underline the same ontological rules of futurist and minimal sculpture. The reason for these objects travels substantially along two channels: on one hand the permanence of the same, on the other its mask, its aspects \u201cfor the occasion\u201d. Most times the mask prevail over the more intimate reasons and the reasons of the objects are expressed as signs and codes of an instant, as pure communication. It was on these principles that Christo, Matta Clark and Whiteread worked, on how the involvement of the observer could be exported to the architectural dimension and linked to the concept of public space.
\nThe notion of un-volumetric architecture not only proposes a critical category regarding the current multi-valences of contemporary architectural objects and interventions, but even attempt to retrace an alternative epistemological basis for the theories and history of architecture\u2026an object matters if architecture embraces the entire atmosphere in which human activities are engaged.
\nFrom Aldo Aymonino, Valerio Paolo Mosco, \u201dContemporary Public Space. Un-Volumetric Architecture\u201d, Skira, 2006.<\/em><\/p>\n

Kengo Kuma<\/strong>
\nI want \u201cerase\u201d architecture. This is how I\u2019ve felt; this is how I will continue to feel\u2026architecture will be kept dissembled. We shall have an age of architecture without cubic volume. The time is moving forward rapidly, and the way architecture needs to be is also changing. In my sense, public space (or architecture), is a place to inspire communication between people. Indeed architecture is changing so. Near my office in Tokyo there is a cemetery called Aoyama Bochi, which is popular and known for cherry blossoms surrounding it. In spring, people get together there to celebrate the blooming of the cherry trees and have nice time drinking and eating under the trees. These cherry trees are exactly my image of \u2018space-less\u2019 architecture, which I myself also aim at.
\nInterview June 10 2010.<\/em><\/p>\n

Luca Molinari<\/strong>
\nPublic space is today assuming a new fundamental strategic dimension for the future of the metropolis. The profound metamorphosis of the social corpus carries with it new desires, ways and uses of the collective space, which becomes carrier of a demand for new spatial realities and visions. In a dimension of coexistence of social, racial, cultural and religious differences, rethinking the public space today means to deal with an idea of collective place as mediator of potential conflicts and, at the same time, as place of community life. In a condition of profound structural crisis experienced by the Western society and from a viewpoint of a profound revision of metropolitan welfare, the design of the public space will become increasingly decisive and strategic.
\nAll forms of design of the public space which consciously play with the absence of territorial consumption and new resources represent a political and cultural choice that is not only necessary but also economically relevant. In these cases the design of the collective space with \u201czero cubic volume\u201d also becomes a \u201cdidactic\u201d instrument for creating a social awareness and building a consciousness that is vital for the life of our metropolises. I think of all the squares in central and southern Italy, along the Apennine ridge, where a view of the open landscape represents the \u201cfourth side\u201d; I remember the hanging garden of the Palazzo Ducale in Urbino, designed by Laurana with the complicity of Francesco di Giorgio and the way in which Giancarlo De Carlo, five centuries later, has evoked it in his University Colleges and city venues. I have been very impressed by the projects for a cogeneration station by Modus on the outskirts of Bressanone, of which roof has become the favourite site of the skater community, and the roof cum basket field of the university bar designed by NL architects in Utrecht. The centripetal void of San Pietro in Montorio in Rome by Bramante, but also the archaic and sacral periurban void of the cemetery of Igualada designed by Enric Miralles. However, the void has always been a conscious material of architecture, and we must perforce supplement this very ancient art with the necessity of avoiding to consume more territory and, at the same time, to use the few remaining resources in a conscious and experimental way.
\nInterview June 14 2010.<\/em><\/p>\n

Juan Purcell<\/strong>
\nCooperativa Amereida come about, therefore, as a public group and we have the public as our destiny. The destiny of being Latins, which does not means the power of the public, but the public as uneliminable human condition. Faithful to this vision, in the seventies we started the Ciudad Abierta project, inaugurated with the construction of agoras, open-air spaces where the words flows and decides on the public affairs of the city. Subsequently we built the guesthouses, the music room to come together, the chapel, the cemetery and other buildings. All these works came about as poetic experience. This experience made us understand that the relationship with the terrain must be light\u2026 their location is decided upon each time by a poetic act that involves understanding, first of all the understanding of the destiny of the work in relation to its natural location, discovering and proclaiming the positivity of lightness.
\nThe works in Ciudad Abierta give life to an inside space lived in the open air, in a natural environment in which architecture acquires the dimension of lightness and availability; all of this through a lived architectural experience. A type of experience that combines the lightness of poetry, of what comes from within, with the availability of nature, which is found outside. This is our interpretation of un-volumetric architecture in the Ciudad Abierta.
\nFrom Aldo Aymonino, Valerio Paolo Mosco, \u201dContemporary Public Space. Un-Volumetric Architecture\u201d, Skira, 2006.<\/em><\/p>\n

Denise Scott Brown<\/strong>
\nReyner Banham suggested that primitive living arrangements could be non-volumetric and linked this to the tempering of environment in our day by mechanical systems. At the other end of the spectrum was the cave and between these, we might insert Laugier-like structures\u2026some non volumetric categories (canopies, skin structures, and technological and micro-structure) seem to originate conceptually with the skins and branches of primitive hut. They go back, too, to early Modern architects\u2019s fascination with Costructivism and transparency, and to 1950\u2019s experiments with thin-slab of engineers. Despite our scepticism about lightweight structures, the concept of non-volumetric architecture became important to us through our studies of Las Vegas in the 1960\u2019s. This urbanism \u2013 so different from Las Vegas today \u2013 was dominated not by buildings, but by sign. In a general way, desert buildings face the quandary that they are small relative to the vast space around them. A solution as old as Karnak was to project lines across the vastness: sightlines, defined by points of various kinds, set in the desert. At Karnak the points were rows of crouched lions. They helped to modulate the approach and direct the view to relatively small Temple of Khons. In the 1960\u2019s Las Vegas followed this example. The scale of the Mojave desert and of the desert of parked park of the Strip swamped even the largest casinos. Their walls could not define the boundaries of the street. As at Karnak, space had to be modulated by vistas projected across it. The \u201cpoints\u201d that marked the vistas were signs, large and small. Their walls could not define the boundaries of the street. As at Karnak, space had to be modulated by vistas projected across it. The \u201cpoints\u201d that marked the vistas were signs, large and small. Their function was to communicate with people driving and riding, giving them messages about casino hotels and others establishments set back from the Strip. On the 1960\u2019s Las Vegas Strip the signs were much more prominent than buildings. They were what was seen first. Their high readers guided visitors to the buildings, then their low readers gave information on event to be found inside. Approaching Las Vegas, one understood (as in any city) that density was increasing as one neared the center. But here the perception had to do not with the larger size and closer spacing of buildings, but with a greater intensity in the rhythm of communication. This was a non-spatial, non-volumetric form of definition, far form the traditional city. Planned as carefully as scientific equipment, these neon giants were visible from the air. They inspired our slogan: \u201csymbol in space before form in space\u201d. And in the process of making and advertising private buildings, they defined the public identity, formal and symbolic of the Strip and, to a considerable extent, of the city.
\nBy enlarging archirtecture\u2019s scope and conceptual categories, by accepting that our field is involved in both more and less than the making of space, this book can bring new dimensions and added richness to what we do.
\nFrom Aldo Aymonino, Valerio Paolo Mosco, \u201dContemporary Public Space. Un-Volumetric Architecture\u201d, Skira, 2006.<\/em><\/p>\n

Vittorio Sermonti<\/strong>
\nI think about public space not so much through concepts as through mental images. I come to think of an aphorism by Hugo von Hofmannsthal: \u201cthe depth must be hidden on the surface\u201d, which helps us understand the phenomenology of contemporary public spaces and architecture with zero cubic volume, understood as a succession of countless horizontal plots. I also come to think of Borges who dreamed of a map as big as the world: a mental image which suggests the idea of a world that is completely accessible. A concept prefigured by Dante, in the 27th canto of the Inferno, the one on Guido da Montefeltro, in which the description of Romagna is entrusted to a concrete, physical cartographic symbolism which is elevated to poetic narration.
\nThe public space is therefore a tale whose nature is inseparable from its narration. There are those who have interpreted the Divine Comedy as a building, or rather as a cathedral, a prescriptive construction (a volume) perfectly retraceable to laws of proportion and symmetry. As to me, I interpret the Divine Comedy in a different way: not volumetric, as a fluid, continuously flowing tale: a story which has the character of life, and not that of the necropolis, in which the predominance of the symbol on reality is evident. Also Baudelaire has seen Paris, its physical reality and public spaces, in their symbolic meaning, as a complex sequence of horizontal plots and correlated mental associations. The city described by Baudelaire is very different from that told, for instance, by Victor Hugo: it is no longer made of stone, it is no longer volume and representative spaces. It is already the city of today, with its public spaces. I see contemporary public spaces as a tale from below, which seems to be casual and unpredictable in its expressions, but which in actual fact implies the laws of the consumer society. The result is what I may define as \u201caleatory decorum\u201d, ephemeral, vital, but sometimes noisy, chaotic, graceless and unseemly. In the worst cases calls to my mind the image of the Turks encamped at the gates of Vienna.
\nInterview June 17 2010.<\/em><\/p>\n

James Wines<\/strong>
\nI have written repeatedly on the subject of public space since the 1970\u2019s and my books (\u2018De-architecture\u2019 of 1986 and \u2018Green Architecture\u2019 of 2000) make extensive references to the issue of \u2018not seen\u2019 (or invisible) factors in the public domain. As a writer and designer, I have continuously credited these elements because they engage participants on a social and psychological level that is often outside the realm of conventional formalist design. In fact, Modernist and Constructivist influenced traditions have frequently perpetrated some of the most aggressively intrusive, opaquely physical, environmentally irresponsible and sociologically oppressive public spaces in history. Since I have covered the topic so extensively over the years, I have tried to answer Area\u2019s immediate questions; but also include quotations from other texts that cover the \u2018zero volume\u2019 subject from different perspectives. Duchamp referred to his most important work as \u2018non-retinal,\u2019 even though you could obviously \u2018see\u2019 his objects optically. The point he was making is that truly conceptual ideas affect the viewers\u2019 attitudes toward a situation \u2013 and this would include public space \u2013 based on viewers\u2019 social\/psychological\/aesthetic response.\u00a0 In other words, the physical existence of certain enclosures and\/or open spaces are not necessarily significant as a result of their identifiable physicality; but, rather, because of \u2018what they make you think about.\u2019 Area publication\u2019s notion of \u2018spaceless architecture\u2019 (at least as I see it) should be much more concerned with how well the aesthetic ingredients of a public space tap into the spectators\u2019 subliminal associations with their environment. Again, like Duchamp\u2019s achievement, the goal is to change people\u2019s minds about something, rather than reinforce what they already know. As Austrian architect Frederick Kiesler once wisely observed; \u201cNo object, of nature or of art, exists without environment. As a matter of fact the object itself can expand to a degree where it becomes its own environment.\u201d From a purely environmental and practical viewpoint, underground architecture has obvious advantages in being easier to heat and cool, less physically aggressive in the cityscape and more ecologically responsible. It also provides green roof opportunities and more amenable space devoted to people\u2019s outdoor pleasures. Viewed from a green standpoint \u2013 in addition to the merits of troglodyte lifestyle \u2013 this kind of construction offers the potential for widespread urban agriculture, which will be essential for city survival in the future. As global warming and air pollution increasingly threaten human health, it will become expedient to limit the long distance transport of food and hard goods \u2013 especially if they can be produced locally. Olmsted\u2019s Central Park in New York City. Tivoli Gardens in Italy, Michaelangelo\u2019s Campidoglio in Rome \u2013 there are many; sometimes because of their impact on participants, sometimes because of the ecological factors, sometimes because of pure, un-designed idiosyncrasy.
\nInterview June 14 2010.<\/em><\/p>\n

There are a number of bothersome questions related to the sources of imagery in contemporary architecture. For example, why are the most sophisticated mechanisms of the cybernetic and environmental era \u2013 in particular, computer aided design and greater knowledge of ecological phenomena \u2013 used primarily to describe buildings that are stylistically rooted in the early Machine Age? Why, instead, aren\u2019t electronic communications and nature\u2019s processes utilized as inspirational resources for a new visual language? Part of the answer lies in the fact that 1920\u2019s Russian Constructivist architects did not have the luxury of software to articulate their complex formal innovations; so, as a result of architects\u2019 style-scavenging tendencies, they feel obligated to finish the job. Still, it seems oddly regressive to resurrect ideas from the 1920\u2019s, simply because they can be built today. And finally, why have so few architects made the obvious conceptual and aesthetic connections between the integrated systems of the Internet and their ecological parallels in nature? These questions point to the need for a visionary, \u201ceco-digital\u201d based imagery in the building arts. By incorporating ideas from both informational and ecological sources, it suggests new design concepts that echo the mutable\/evolutionary changes found in nature and the fluid\/interactive flow of data through electronic communications. In spirit, this seems to indicate something more like trying to capture the intangibility of the wind passing through the trees than expressing the cumbersome mechanics of construction technology. It seems more like the quest for an invisible or virtual architecture, as opposed to celebrating the weight and density of industrial materials.
\nMundaneum Conference Papers, San Jose, Costa Rica, 2009.<\/em><\/p>\n

Invisible architecture refers to a symbiotic relationship between buildings, communications systems, psychology of situation, and a concern for protecting the natural environment. This term also proposes that contemporary architects\u2019 absorption of ideas from context can be seen as a far more progressive goal than the traditional emphasis on \u201cobject thinking.\u201d This alternative proposes much less emphasis on sculptural form, exotic materials, and convoluted construction technology. Earth-centric design philosophies today, which were once seen as marginal or irrelevant, are rapidly becoming the progenitors of a new conceptual forefront and the basis for a declining interest in the conventional celebration of physical mass in architecture.
\nFrom Aldo Aymonino, Valerio Paolo Mosco, \u201dContemporary Public Space. Un-Volumetric Architecture\u201d, Skira, 2006.<\/em><\/p>\n

In this new millennium, architecture has one primary mission \u2013 to progress from ego-centric to eco-centric. This evolution refers to a mental state of transference where the habitual notions of an insulated psyche (detached from ecological awareness) are exchanged for the re-awakening of an expansive sense of oneness with nature.
\nFrom \u201cGreen Architecture\u201c, Taschen Verlag, 2000.<\/em><\/p>\n

De-architecture is a way of dissecting, shattering, dissolving, inverting and transforming certain fixed prejudices about buildings, in the interest of discovering revelations among the fragments.
\nFrom \u201cDe-architecture\u201c, Rizzoli International, 1987.<\/em><\/p>\n

The imagery that a building generates as an extension of its own functions or formal relationships is never as interesting as the ideas it can absorb from the outside. An edifice should be like an environmental sponge, soaking up the most interesting fragments of social and psychological information from its context. In this way, a structure can be seen as a \u201cfiltering zone\u201d \u2013 as the nucleus of an assimilative process \u2013 which can transform the entire definition of architecture into a new form of public art.
\nFrom \u201cGreen Architecture\u201c, Taschen Verlag, 2000.
\n<\/em>
\nA successful work of public art today should not be treated as an object sitting in the environment; rather, it should be interpreted as the environment. From this perspective, art can have an integrative role in the urban\/suburban context. It can absorb its communicative content from the surroundings. It can invert, transform, comment on, and question the meaning of all those ubiquitous design conventions associated with architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design. This calls for a new kind of \u201cambient sensibility\u201d on the part of the artist \u2013 meaning a much more inclusive concept of public art.
\nFrom Public Art Review \u2018Integrative Thinking\u2019 (essay) \u2013 Fall\/winter edition, 2008.<\/em><\/p>\n

Public art, architecture, landscape, and urban space can only become fully integrated when their academic definitions have been challenged, their distinctions as separate entities have been discarded, and it finally becomes difficult to determine where one art form begins and the other ends.
\nFrom Public Art Review \u2018Integrative Thinking\u2019 (essay) \u2013 Fall\/winter edition, 2008.<\/em><\/p>\n

SITE treats the design of public space as if it were a living ambience. In fact, one of our primary motivations for creating environments is to include people as intrinsic \u2018physical elements\u2019 in the design process \u2013 almost as though they were actors on a performance stage. In this way, we show our commitment to \u201cprosthetic architecture,\u201d where the occupants are seen to be as much a part of the construction process as masonry, glass, steel and landscape. Unlike many architects \u2013 who, for example, exclude people when photographing their buildings with the usual attitude \u2018God forbid some human presence might distract from the sculptural qualities of my architecture\u2019 \u2013 SITE tries to conscientiously include participants in pictures of our buildings and spaces, just to demonstrate how necessary they are to the full social and aesthetic experience.
\nFrom the Catalogue for the Victoria and Albert Museum Post-Modern Exhibition in 2011 \u2018Arch-Art\u2019 (Foreword essay) \u2013 (not yet published), 2010.<\/em><\/p>\n