JOHN HEJDUK: 7 HOUSES
Peter Eisenman [introduction], Massimo Vignelli [Designer]
Peter Eisenman [introduction], Massimo Vignelli [Designer]: JOHN HEJDUK: 7 HOUSES. New York: Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies, 1980. First edition [IAUS Catalogue 12: January 22 to February 16, 1980]. Quarto. French folded glossy printed wrappers. 122 pp. Illustrated essays. Wrappers lightly soiled. spotted and creased. A well-handled, but very good copy.
8.35 x 9.85 softcover book with 122 pages published as anExhibition catalog for a show that ran January 22 through February 16, 1980. Series Editior Kenneth Frampton, introduction by Peter Eisenman, and designed by Massimo Vignelli. Features a look at 7 of Hejduk's houses with numerous black and white plans along with text by him and statements of his from 1964 and 1979. Also includes a biography, selected bibliography, previous exhibitions, works, and awards and grants.
Artist, architect and architectural theorist John Hejduk (New York, 1929 - 2000) introduced new ways of thinking about space that are still highly influential in both modernist and post-modernist architecture today, especially among the large number of architects who were once his students. Inspired both by darker, gothic themes and modernist thinking on the human psyche, his relatively small collection of built work, and many of his unbuilt plans and drawings, have gone on to inspire other projects and architects around the world. In addition, his drawing, writing and teaching have gone on to shape the meeting of modernist and postmodern influences in contemporary architecture and helped bring psychological approaches to the forefront of design.
Born in New York to Czech parents, Hejduk graduated from the University of Cincinnati in 1952 and rapidly added a Master's degree from Harvard a year later. Unlike most prominent architects, who would attempt to join a practice or apprentice under a contemporary master, Hejduk jumped right back into university, but this time as a teacher at the University of Texas - where his unusual teaching style had him join the "The Texas Rangers," a group of young architects who created an innovative school curriculum. After the entire group was fired, Hejduk briefly worked under I M Pei in New York and taught at Cornell, before eventually settling at Cooper Union, where he became a professor in 1964.
After many years of hopping around, working at Cooper gave Hejduk the stability and position he needed to make waves. Winning a research grant in 1967, he began exploring his early, radical curriculum of exercises involving creating space using geometric shapes placed in various square, diagonal and curving grids in more rigorous detail, but he soon moved away to a more "free hand" approach. He began exploring new influences: psychology, mythology and later in his career, religion.
Publishing his first book in 1969, he embarked upon a career as an artist and theorist, teaching that elements were loaded with emotional context. His drawings often considered themes of architecture through a rather dark lens, and his most famous, the New England Masque (1981) charted alienation within a marriage and was inspired, of all things, by the film version of Stephen King's "The Shining."
That's not to say Hejduk wasn't a practical architect as well as a theoretical one. Many of his drawings were detailed, buildable architectural plans, such as Wall House I, where he used a single wall to divide the space in hopes of investing it with emotions of division. He built several projects in Berlin, including Cooper Union's Foundation Building (1975) which he reconstructed, Wall House II, which was built posthumously in the Netherlands, and the famous Kreuzberg Tower, built in 1987 and designed as part of a competition to provide new forms of low and middle income housing in West Berlin. A quietly regimented design, it stands out against the other more post-modern designs of the competition with its reduced color palette and focus on shape.
The Institute For Architecture And Urban Studies was founded in 1967 as a non-profit independent agency concerned with research, education, and development in architecture and urbanism. It began as a core group of young architects seeking alternatives to traditional forms of education and practice. Peter Eisenman was appointed as the Institutes first executive director followed by Anthony Vidler (1982), Mario Gandelsonas (1983) and Stephen Petersen (1984). In 1985 the Institute ceased to exist. ... Like tears in the rain.
The 1982 AIGA MEDAL citation: “Upon the occasion of the major retrospective of the Vignellis' work exhibited at Parsons in 1980, The New York Times critic Paul Goldberger characterized Massimo (Italy, 1931 – 2014) and Lella Vignelli (Italy, 1934 – 2016) as “total designers.” They and their office have indeed done it all: industrial and product design, graphic design, book design, magazine and newspaper design, packaging design, interior and exhibit design, furniture design. Massimo and Lella work together in two ways: he concentrates on what they call the “2D”; she handles the “3D”. He's the visionary: “I talk of feelings, possibilities, what a design could be.” She the realist: “I think of feasibility, planning, what a design can be.”
The Vignellis were both born and educated in the industrial, more-European north of Italy, he in Milan and she in Udine, 90 miles away. Massimo's passion was “2D”—graphic design; Lella's family tradition and training were “3D”—architecture. They met at an architects' convention and were married in 1957. Three years later, they opened their first “office of design and architecture” in Milan and designed for Pirelli, Rank Xerox, Olivetti and other design-conscious European firms. But their fascination with the United States, which took root during three years spent here after they were married, eventually grew strong enough to lure them away from Italy permanently. “There is diversity here, and energy, and possibility,” recalls Massimo, “and the need for design.” He cofounded Unimark in 1964, which ballooned and collapsed as the corporate identification boom of the late 1960s hyperventilated, then ran out of breath. In 1972, their present office was formed: Vignelli Associates for two-dimensional design, Vignelli Designs for furniture, objects, exhibitions and interiors.
Not only do the Vignellis design exceeding well, they also think about design. It is not enough that something—a chair, an exhibition, a book, a magazine—looks good and is well designed. The “why” and the “how,” the very process of design itself, must be equally evident and quite beyond the tyranny of individual taste.
“There are three investigations in design,” says Massimo. “The first is the search for structure. Its reward is discipline. The second is the search for specificity. This yields appropriateness. Finally, we search for fun, and we create ambiguity.”