试译 | 沃尔访谈——海杜克《美杜莎的面具》

Wall: Let’s talk about Italy-Texas. The one thing that seems to elude me is what happened between the Cooper Union days, Cincinnati and Harvard where the student work was completed and Texas. If I compare the student-produced work, it seem to lack the extreme categorical rigor, the categorical reductiveness, the concentration on a theme, that the Texas Houses exude. There is a dependency in the Cooper Union work on given programs, also at Cincinnati-Harvard; no such dependency exists at Texas. There is a decorative quality in the Cooper work; no such inclination are evident in the Texas Houses. The intervention device seems to be your journey to Italy. It seemed that before you went to Italy you were thinking one way; after Italy a more than slightly different Hejduk exists.

Hejduk: Except that the early work was reductive and abstract. 

Wall: Wasn’t the work typical of the architectural education of that time, in the sense that it was a blend between 1930s derived “abstract composing” loosely correlated to functional requirements?

Hejduk: No. I would argue that. The work was not the run-of-the-mill work that was being done at schools during those years. We are talking 1947-50. We are speaking about a time in American education that was the tail-end of the Bauhaus with Gropius at Harvard. Harvard was still having its influence felt. You also had Black Mountain. Albers was down there. Some Cooper students left and went down to study at Black Mountain. Then there was the Catalano-Caminos group at North Carolina under Kamphofner. That was a very active and viable school. They were investigating shell structure primarily. I imagine one must list Oklahoma and Bruce Goff. They were the link between the future to Herb Green and the past from Wright.
Wall: Were you aware of these alternatives at the time you were at Cooper? 

Hejduk: No. As a student, I certainly was aware of Wright. He was number one. The impact of Wright was heavy during 1947-1950. I became aware of Aalto at the end of that period of time, through a teacher who had worked for Aalto. And I certainly became aware of Le Corbusier through Richard Stein. Stein was dropping Corb books on students’ desks. That was interesting; there were maybe two or three volumes on the complete works of Corbusier. And I reached. I was very anti-Corbusier. Very. I was empathetic to Wright, somewhat to Aalto. But the probings of the early projects all come from the two-dimensional design class. They are all interlocking, centralized conditions, moving out towards the edges. So the Cooper period was not typical . . . the later student work become more typical, especially at Harvard. More restraints were put on by the faculty : Alfred Roth, Kay Fisker.That period was different from Cooper. It was, in comparison, more ordered. 

The Cooper period was less structured. There was never, ever a frame at Cooper . . . a structural frame. That’s an important point: the Cooper work never had a structural frame. The frame was not used. The work was poured out, felt out. One sketched them out, drew them out, without a structural frame. 

Wall: In the sense of being more emotionally based, intuitive?

Hejduk: Yes.
Wall: What about the anti-rectilinear impulse during Cooper as soon through your heavy reliance on biomorphic shapes, exuberant color, which can be translated to mean a move towards decoration? I recall that at one point in our conversations you had mentioned that you had to be on guard against the decorative, the literal, because you have a propensity towards it.

Hejduk: Yes, the tendency was towards a Klee-like condition. Paul Klee was quite popular at the time. I was attracted to Klee’s tactility. One liked the surface characteristics of his work. But I was very suspicious of that even though I was doing it. So, there was an inclination towards Klee. Then going to Italy, all those Italian sketches had a sense of place, a sense of tactility, some were Klee-like, graphic representations, some tried to capture the mood of the place, the tactility of Italy, and then there was the classicizing, symmetricizing Italy . . . the gardens, the architecture. So, there were the aspects of Italy that were being unearthed, and went with me to Texas. The big Cathedral, the violin shaped one, I never finished. It was the last projected before Texas. At Texas, I had to teach for the first time; that let me to the invention of the nine square problem. It was always an architectonic problem. Parallel with the formation of the nine square problem I moved into the Texas House. And the Texas Houses were a compilation, certainly not of Palladio . . . Palladio never entered into it. Italy entered into it, coming back from Italy, the drama of the symmetrical classicizing tradition enters into the Houses. Then, my utter despair of detail. Utter despair. That I was not really competent enough in understanding architectural detail. So the Texas Houses were started with these problems in mind: to re-inform myself about construction at a conceptual level, at a real level; detail, the methodologic development of construction conditions: columns, piers, walls, beams, edges, and so forth. 

Wall: From where do you attribute the origins of the methodological approach since this was not evident at Cooper?

Hejduk: With the beginning of teaching, I had to get things into order. To order one’s teaching, on a rational basis. 

Wall: Rational? Renaissance?

Hejduk: No. I want to get to this issue: I developed it from a methodological condition. Method. Method. Do you know what I mean? Basic architectonic construction method: am I making myself clear? Each of those Houses started that way. They built up, from single storey to two stories to three, then in detail the same way. Always abstract, not literal, that’s why the Houses have no style. Because the nine square problem was more abstract than the Texas Houses. The teaching problem, the nine square, had more authenticity. It was even more abstract. It wasn’t Bauhaus, it wasn’t Renaissance. It just was.

Wall: It wasn’t even a House.

Hejduk: The overtones and overtures of the Texas Houses was getting Italy out of the system. Not getting rid of the place aspect, but getting rid of the classicizing aspect, by working it out.

Wall: Working it out? How so? By domination? You controlling it rather than it controlling you ?

Hejduk: I am terribly old-fashioned. Here was someone working (1954) in an old-fashioned method: the Texas Houses. They were not modern.

Wall: the Mies overtones, “God is in the detail,” the parallels as well in configural outlines, automatically make the Houses “modern” and “of its time.”

Hejduk: No. Mies was inherent only in one project: the 49-foot by 49-foot house, where the walls began to float. But the Fourth House, of all those Houses, is the closest to method: there is no style there. The other Houses, some of them, have the feel of the Renaissance, but not really. That Fourth House predates Kahn. 

Wall: Can you characterize each of the Houses as, for instance, this one is closest to Mies, this one is closest to . . .

Hejduk: Sure. The first one is an Italian garden situation. Symmetrical, the house is below entry eye-level, Tivoli, any of those kind of place # 1, that’s the Italian Garden. The second house is even more classicizing, more rigid, in an Italianate plan and I’m not talking about Palladio. The third one is a syncopation. It appears to refer to Mondrian. So there was the conflict between the Italian from Mondrian’s Broadway Boogie Woogie and Victory Boogie Woogie. There was the conflict between two worlds: the modernist world, so called, and the classicizing world; America and Europe. It was already there in the verandah. Verandahs are American; loggias are European. Then the Fourth House was closest to Leger. Just a block. The Fifth House was a Mies exercise. The Sixth House was like the Fourth, was another stoery added. The Seventh House dealt with an inversion of scale – Renaissance scale, where the sill of the window was above your head. So after ten years I exorcised the Italian thing. Two occurrences: digging out and filling in. I dug out that which I had to get through and not use anymore. Like the Italian situation, symmetries in a certain way, and so forth. Then, certain things had to be filled in. In intellectual terminology. There was another education taking place beginning in 1954. I had finished my formal education and started another. Then I exorcised Le Corbusier in the Diamond Houses. The Diamond Houses, outside of their conceptual basis always annoyed me. Like the first Texas Houses annoyed. There were the Italian overtones. Then there were the Corb overtones. I didn’t like that. I liked the isometric systems at work but I didn’t like the fact that it reminded me of Le Corbusier. So I had to get rid of that, by working it out, by exorcising the images. Corbusier, and then Mondrian in a way, then I took on the Cubists, which was the Out of Time and Into Space article, which took care of Gris and Léger in the Wall Houses, in tableaux. So, there it is: always being attached with an umbilical cord to all these things, in compressed time. The real break, the Wall House can be compared to the Fourth House, maybe. The ¾ House, the ½ House, they had slighe overtones of Wright(but not entirely).

Wall: Can’t we add here Neutra’s desert houses, Mies’s wing wall houses?

Hejduk: No. There was something else going on. In retrospect it has always been an elimination of histories but I had to know history in order to dispense with it. It is an intentional absorbing of all those past things, zooming it, compressing it.

Wall: That takes you through one large cycle ending with the Cemetery For the Ashes of Thought (1975), which begins the next and most recent stage in your development.

Hejduk: Well, no and yes. All these houses were objects, singular objects.

Wall: Place was inherent within the object?

Hejduk: Yes. They are all places but singular objects. I never touched city planning because I wasn’t ready for it. So the first real shift in the work was political. The Cemetery for the Ashes of Thought is a city plan.

Wall: The Cemetery was intended for a specific site. Except for the Bye House, none of the previous work was site related.

Hejduk: Not even the Bye House. It was done separate from the site. I did the Bye House and he had the site. It worked. They worked together.

Wall: when you study the works of Corbusier, Legér Gris, Mies and read their writings, what are you looking for? How do you process information which is historical?

Hejduk: It’s strange. This is a good question. Well fundamentally I read them but I don’t read them. I’ll give you an example using Corb. From 1953 to about 1963, I would take Corb books and just pour over them, looking at them, night after night, literally, just going through the books, a thousand times, until I had absorbed Corbusier . . . absorbed the images, the organizations, into me as an organism, like blotting paper. Now I don’t have to look at them. I haven’t looked at them for ten years.

Wall: Yes, we have a “focused yet unfocused vision” that is working globally – that I understand. Yet how do you go from such an overall view to a very precise analysis of specific paintings and architecture in the Out of Time Into Space article, which is not at all global?

Hejduk: That article was a spinoff from Rowe and Slutzky’s Transparency # 1 article. Well, the painting lineage was always there, even at Cooper. I had always been empathetic to painting. I start with the modern paintings – Mondrian – and work backwards. Modernism ends with Mondrian. I don’t go beyond that, as I have told you. So there’s only one way to go. So now I’m back into the fourteenth century, from Mondrian to Ingres, Hooper, Sassetta and Italian primitives. So the painting is moving back into time and space. The literature line is more ecumenical, goes back and forth. Not the same. More flexible.

以下为尝试翻译稿，请谨慎阅读。如有误导，概不负责。

沃尔：让我们来谈谈意大利-德克萨斯。有一件事一直使我百思不得其解：库伯联盟时期以及完成那些学生作品的辛辛那提和哈佛与德克萨斯之间到底是什么关系。如果拿学生作品作比较，它们似乎缺少德克萨斯住宅所散发的那些特征：严谨、抽象还原、主题集中。库伯联盟作品的作品与实际项目有关，辛辛那提和哈佛的作品也是，然而德克萨斯住宅研究却不是。库伯联盟的作品有一定的装饰性，而德克萨斯住宅却没有明显这样的倾向。你的意大利之旅似乎是一个“干涉装置”。在你去意大利之前，你似乎以某种方式思考，而意大利之旅之后却变成了极其不同的海杜克。

海杜克：除了早期的作品是还原和抽象的。

沃尔：算是那个时代建筑教育的典型吗？从某种意义上说，它不正是20世纪30年代派生的“抽象构成”与功能性需求的“轻率”组合吗?

海杜克：不，我不怎么认为。这项工作并不是那些年在学校喝喝茶泡泡咖啡一般的普通工作。我们是在讨论1947-1950年代。我们谈论的是关于格罗皮乌斯仍在哈佛的那段“包豪斯末期”的美国教育。哈佛仍有其影响力。我们也讨论黑山（学院），阿尔伯斯在那儿教学。有一些库伯联盟的学生离开到那儿学习。而且那里有Kamphofner为首的北卡罗莱纳州Catalano-Caminos 学派。那是一个非常活跃和有前途的学校，他们主要研究壳结构。我认为也无法越过讨论俄克拉荷马和布鲁斯·高夫，他们是连接赫博·格林与赖特之间的桥梁。

沃尔：当你在库伯的时候，你是否意识到这些选择?

海杜克：不。学生时期，我当然了解赖特。他是最好的建筑师。在1947-1950年间，来自赖特的影响是十分重大的。我在那段时期的末端通过一位老师开始了解到阿尔托，他曾为阿尔托工作。而我了解到勒·柯布西耶则是通过理查德·斯坦。他把柯布西耶的书落在学生的课桌上了。这是件有趣的事，那差不多有柯布西耶全集中的二或三册，凑巧被我撞到。我那时非常不喜欢柯布西耶。真的！我崇拜赖特，也有些喜欢阿尔托。但早期探讨的项目都来自二维设计室。他们是相关联的，条件相对集中，然后向外探索边界。所以库珀时期并不典型...而后来的学生作品则变得更加典型,特别是在哈佛大学时期。更多的限制来自于教师：阿尔弗雷德·罗斯，凯·菲斯克。

那段时期不同于库珀。相比之下，这一时期的工作更有秩序一些。库珀是少有框架的。库伯联盟从来没有一个明确的框架--结构框架。这是非常重要的一点：库珀联盟的工作并没有架构可循，即使有也不曾使用。那些作品是喷涌而出，凭感觉的，是一点一点勾勒一点一点画出来的，而非依据结构性框架。

沃尔：更多出于感性？直觉吗?

海杜克：是的。

沃尔：在库珀联盟时期，通过你的严重依赖生物形态和丰富的颜色所表现出来的反直线的倾向，是否意味着走向装饰的倾向?我记得有一次在我们的谈话中你有提到你不得不提防装饰，文字，因为你有那样的倾向。

海杜克：是的，趋向于克利式前提。保罗·克利在当时是相当受欢迎的。我被克利的触感所吸引。比如他的作品的表皮特征。但即使我在这么做，我仍旧心怀疑虑。所以，曾有克利克利式的倾向。之后去了意大利。意大利那些草图大都很有场所感和质感，其中一些是克利式的，绘图表达，一些试图捕捉场所精神以及意大利的质感，其中包括古典的，对称式的意大利…花园，建筑等。所以，有一些意大利的特征被发掘出来，并随我带去了德州。小提琴形的大教堂我最终也没有完成。那是德克萨斯前的最后一个作品。在德州，我第一次不得不教授，这使我发明了九宫格问题。它一直是一个建筑学的问题。建立九宫格问题的同时我转向了德克萨斯住宅研究。德克萨斯住宅是一个系列，当然并不是帕拉第奥式的...帕拉第奥从来未曾进入它。意大利进入了它。当我从意大利回来，意大利对称式古典传统的特征被带入到了那些房子。然后，是令我绝望的细节。彻底的绝望。我没有足够的能力理解建筑细节。所以德克萨斯住宅时刻谨记这些问题：在概念层面上和在现实层面上重塑自身的建造，细部，建构前提的方法论式发展：柱子、板、墙、梁、边缘，等等。

沃尔：你认为这种研究方法的起源在哪里？因为这在库伯时期还不明显。

海杜克：在我开始教学之后。我不得不把事情变得有秩序。在理性的基础上规制教学。

沃尔：理性?文艺复兴式的?

海杜克：不。我想讨论这个话题：我从方法论的角度来发展它。方式。方法。你明白我的意思吗?基本的建筑学的建造方法：这样说你明白吗?所有这些房子以这种方式开始。它们从单层到两层、三层，逐步建立，然后细部也以同样的方式。它们大多是抽象的，非文本式的，这也是为什么这些房子都没有风格。由于九宫格问题比德州的房子更抽象，所以教学问题，九宫格问题更具现实性。它甚至是更抽象的。既不是包豪斯式的也不是文艺复兴的。它只是（它本身）。

沃尔：那甚至不是一个房子。

海杜克：德州住宅的弦外之意是要将意大利从系统中抽离出来。通过抽离来摆脱其古典的一面而不丢弃场所特点。

沃尔：抽离？怎么抽离？通过控制？你控制它而不让它主导你？

海杜克：我是非常传统的。这只是有人在用古老而传统的方法(1954)工作：德克萨斯住宅。它们是非现代的。

沃尔：密斯声称，“上帝存在细节之中，”平行线以及构型轮廓自然而然地使房子获得“现代性”和“时代特征”。

海杜克：不。只在一个项目内在是密斯的：那个49英尺见方的墙体开始流动的房子。但所有这些房子中第四座是最接近方法的，没有风格。其他房子中有几个有文艺复兴的感觉，但不够真。第四个房子先于路易斯·康。

沃尔：你能像“这个是接近密斯的，这个是最接近...的”这样描述每一个房子吗？

海杜克：当然可以。第一座是意大利花园式。对称、房屋低于入口视平线、蒂沃利以及同类型的场地，这就是意大利式花园（的特征）。第二座房子更加古典，更为严谨，意大利式平面。但我并不是在谈论帕拉第奥。第三座是切分音。它似乎指向蒙德里安。参考蒙德里安的《百老汇爵士乐》和《爵士乐的胜利》，意大利存在着冲突。那是两个世界之间的冲突：所谓的现代世界与古典世界的冲突；美国与欧洲的冲突。这种冲突在柱廊处就已经体现，柱廊（房屋外带屋顶的走廊）是美国的，而凉廊（敞向花园的走廊）是欧洲的。然后，第四个房子类似于莱热。就是个盒子。第五个房子是密斯式练习。第六个房子与第四座相似，但增加了一层。第七座住宅处理比例的倒置——文艺复兴式比例，窗户的窗台高过头顶。所以十年后我祛除了意大利的东西。做了两件事情：挖去和填补。我挖去那些我要舍弃不再使用的部分，比如意大利的场地，某种方式的对称，等等。然后，必须填入一些其他东西。用学术术语。另一种教育始于1954年。我完成了我的学业，开始另一种教育。之后，我在菱形住宅中摆脱了柯布西耶。菱形住宅除了其该概念基础外总是令我烦恼。像第一座德克萨斯住宅那样让我烦恼。它们大都有意大利的意味，然后还有柯布西耶的意味，我不喜欢这一点。在工作中我喜欢轴测体系，但是我不喜欢它使我想到勒·柯布西耶。所以我必须通过研究它，通过祛除意向来摆脱掉它。首先是柯布西耶，然后是蒙德里安，以某种方式。再然后我开始了立体主义，比如那篇《走出时间进入空间》，比如墙宅和舞会有关注格里斯和莱热。所以，就是这样：总是在有限时间内保持这与所有这些事物脐带般的连接。也许墙宅可以比作“第四代”住宅，它真的打破了那些。四分之三住宅和四分之一住宅还带有一点点赖特的意味(但并不完全)。

沃尔：我们不能加入诺伊特拉的“沙漠别墅”和密斯的“墙宅”吗?

海杜克：不能，有一些别的原因。回望过去，往往是对历史的消弭，但为了摆脱历史我必须了解历史。它只是有意地汲取那些过去的东西，抓大、浓缩。

沃尔：它带你“兜了很大一圈”直到“思想家之墓”项目，然后开启了你下一个也是最近的发展阶段？

海杜克：嗯...是也不是。这些房子都只是单一的对象。

沃尔：场地内在于对象之中？

海杜克：是的，他们都有场地但却都是单一的对象。我从来没接触过城市规划,因为我还没做好准备。所以这个作品的第一个真正转变是政治上的。“思想家之墓”是一个城市方案。

沃尔：这个墓园是为特定的基地设计的。除了“临终住宅”，没有一个之前作品与特定基地有关。

海杜克：甚至“临终住宅”也没有（特定的基地）。它是独立于基地完成的。我设计了“临终住宅”，而它自带了基地属性。它们相互依存。

沃尔：当你研究柯布西耶、莱热·格里斯、密斯，阅读他们的作品时，你在寻找些什么?你怎么处理历史性信息?

海杜克：这是一个很好的问题。说起来也许会奇怪。从本质上讲，我翻阅他们，但我也并不读他们。我拿柯布来举例。从1953年到1963年左右，我会拿出柯布西耶的书，摊开，然后看它们，疯狂地看，夜复一夜地看。（这里的看）就只是字面上的——翻看，成百上千次，直到我完全吸收了柯布西耶的作品...像纸吸收墨汁一样，我将那些图像，构造全部吸收进我的身体里、机体里。如今我再不需要看它们了。我已经有10年没再看了。

沃尔：据我了解，我们有一个全球通用的“聚焦当前非聚焦的视角”。然而，你是怎样从这样一个总体的视角转向在《走出时间进入空间》一文中精确分析特定的绘画和建筑？这可一点也不具全球性。

海杜克：那篇文章是从柯林·罗与斯拉斯基的《透明性》中第一篇衍生而来的。绘画的传承一直都在，即使是在库伯联盟。我一直对绘画有共鸣。我从现代绘画-蒙德里安开始，然后向后看。现代主义以蒙德里安结束。就像我告诉过你的那样，我不会超出这个范围。于是我只有一条路可以走。所以我现在是在回溯到14世纪，从蒙德里安到安格尔、霍普、萨塞特和意大利早期绘画。所以那些绘画是退回到时间和空间。其文学线是更加普世的--来回往复。不太寻常，更为自由。

1. 本篇英文原稿来自Mask of Medusa，by John Hejduk；

2. 关于B面（九宫格问题及德克萨斯住宅），This section is dedicated to Colin Rowe and Robert Slutzky, men of intellect and creation. 献给柯·林罗和罗伯特·斯拉茨基。他俩是《透明性》的作者，其中斯拉茨基对于九宫格的研究甚至早于海杜克。而他们三个又同属于“德州骑警”——1950s美国德州大学奥斯汀建筑学院一批先锋教员组织。

3. Black Mountain, 黑山学院。一所极富影响力的艺术学院，于1933年在美国北卡罗来纳州布莱克山（Black Mountain）成立。曾聘请包豪斯创始人Josef Albers以及格罗皮乌斯任教，于1953年关闭。

4. 更多相关翻译见个人公众号IDsCeLeee。