LH  This series, Art + Space, focuses on architects who design specifically for the viewing of art. I’m particularly interested in your building for the Contemporary Art Museum in St. Louis. This was your first institutional project outside of Oregon. In a lecture at Architectural Association School of Architecture London, you said in working on this project, that you were “confronted with the limits of what architecture could communicate” and that what you had discovered was that “the things that I wanted the architecture to do would need to be completed by the art.”  What had you hoped for the architecture that you realized would need to be fulfilled by the art?

BC  These questions are such gifts to consider. In architecture we are creating open and empty vessels - vessels with a clear intention, and many possible futures. I’m working on an essay entitled “Anticipation”, where I speak of empty rooms: 

“Rooms resonate with possibility and when right, are as finely tuned as a piano awaiting pressure on the keys. Anticipation is the charge of space, the energy spaces set in motion.”

I visited The Clyfford Still Museum right before it opened and the art had not been hung. I was devastated: I thought the architecture had utterly failed. It was pretty. Refined, but lifeless to me. A month later I came back for the opening and was moved to tears. The building now made sense, its character amplified by the relationship with the art.

Buildings at their best are frames of reference and inspiration for life. Art, by contrast, manifest life itself. Buildings are intended to be occupied by the other – they are melancholy in a way, as they long to be filled. Filled by light, art and people.

LH  You also said that the scaling devices for the building would be the art and that sometimes the relationship between art and architecture doesn’t work and at other times, “the space would snap together.” I was interested in how you described this relationship, “the architecture sets up a condition that necessitates the occupation of art for it to really make sense and to bridge that scale between urban to a place of repose where you can have a physical relationship with the art.”  What makes a relationship between the scale of a building and the scale of art “work?”  

BC  The rooms of a museum must be scaled to two things: art and visitors. At the Met and MoMA, the rooms are large to accommodate a constant flow of people. In smaller museums there is the luxury to create rooms that hold the artwork and the individual together in an embrace. It can be a very intimate experience, one that relies on a particular proportion, scale and detail. It is truly magical when it works.

“I think the goal of all art space is immediacy, breaking down the barriers between the ‘real world’ and art.”

LH  Your Dutchess County Residence was a very interesting project for me as well, especially because, at some point during the process, you understood that Doug Aitken would be commissioned to create projections on the exterior of the building once the sun set.  You talked about how you came to the realization that “architecture has limits,” and that the idea of the architecture could be transformed and extended by the art.  You seem excited and open about the possibility of your buildings in collaboration with art—are there ever conflicts between what you would like to do with a space and programmatic needs or flexibility required in spaces for the art?

BC  The Dutchess County house was designed in specific response a very beautiful rural site. It attempted to bind itself to the earth through its folding form and the courtyard spaces it created. Then, by modeling the existing light through reflection, translucence and shadow, the building merges with the landscape. Doug Aitken saw all of this, and used the building as HIS site – the house forming the beginning of a conversation on place that he extended through his work – using tools of imagery and time in his video projections, tools that architecture could not access. It is incredible to see and experience. I was awe struck.

Flexibility is a charged term when applied to museum spaces. The desire to be “everything to every art” usually results in technically overwrought or neutral and banal galleries. I don’t think flexibility is what is needed for museums as much as variety. Rooms that are dark and light, large and small, white walls or concrete – a range of spaces for curatorial exploration and for the artists to respond to in their work.

LH  You reference in a few interviews how some of the existing buildings you’ve worked with felt introverted (in particular at the University of Michigan, MAD and National Music Center), and that you wanted to make them more extroverted.  The CAM building in St. Louis feels the opposite to me and it’s something that I actually love about it, that there are those weighty concrete exterior walls and the building’s interior continues to open up as you move more deeply into the building (especially as you approach the courtyard). Can you speak a bit about the differences between introverted and extroverted architecture?

BC  I’m fascinated by the idea of “invitation” – what a building offers, what hand it extends, to culture and community. At various times in the history of museums, that invitation was quite exclusive. Over the course of my career everything has changed. Still, each site and institution is different. St. Louis, especially when we began, was a very difficult urban context. Our site was surrounded by emptiness and abandonment – there was a profound sense of boundlessness. We attempted to create a sense of here and there in the city and on a street.  Then drawing people into the Museum – literally, with transparency through to the courtyard and through the reach of the concrete ribbons that gather and enfold space. 

“I don’t think flexibility is what is needed for museums as much as variety. Rooms that are dark and light, large and small, white walls or concrete — a range of spaces for curatorial exploration and for the artists to respond to in their work.”

LH  Art museums have gone through a growth spurt over the last decade as they try to accommodate larger artworks and crowds.  Do you think there is a need for intimacy in these very large museums?

BC  In thinking they need to endlessly grow collections many museums have become bewildering – too large to offer a personal relationship with the art. The large museums are primarily movement systems where art becomes notational, a checklist item, as one moves by on the conveyor belt. They offer exposure – and that is good – but not a relationship. Even more problematic is that they don’t allow time. The invitation is one of commodity, not dwelling or introspection. Many large museums seem to have adopted a strictly consumer definition of museum – more is more.

LH  You asked an important question about what the role of a museum is and the difference between the building and the programming.  I was interested in the project room you created on the ground floor at the University of Michigan, which you described as a “glass box.” Do you think architects should incorporate more art spaces like this one into the ground floors, entry areas and large public spaces in museums?

BC  That particular gallery at the University of Michigan was designed in response to its site on the “Diag” – a path that leads to the Student Union, where literally tens of thousands of students pass by. Its transparency was created to assert art into the daily experience of the pedestrians. The window on the corner of the CAM St. Louis has a similar intention. It provides a way to see into the building on the way to the mini mart down the street. I think the goal of all art space is immediacy, breaking down the barriers between the “real world” and art. I attempt to pull people into buildings that are inherently walled off and controlled by their need to provide control, context and safety for what is inside.

LH  You were talking about Renzo Piano’s mastery of proportion and described an experience you had of viewing an Agnes Martin show at the Menil, saying “…you couldn’t tell if they were lit electronically or by daylight. It’s almost like the paintings emanated light. Now that’s the kind of work it is, but it was unbelievable in that space.”  Do you think that when architecture and art work well together in a space that they create a third kind of thing, an environment that transcends the individuals?

BC  I suppose that is the ultimate goal. Not that there is a loss of identity or purpose, but that the experience becomes so bound and unified that it does become something new. This thing, the unnamable – for me, it is the goal of architecture. To create spaces where one cannot distinguish between the building, its purpose and the immediate experience. Not to seek transcendence, but quite the opposite, to concentrate and compress the experience and energy of a place so that it opens up your mind and perception of things. Immediacy is also a good term for this. The space creates an immediacy of experience that is consuming.

LH  You are now doing more work with landscape/installation/objects.  You did the entire landscape design for the Sokol Blosser project and I really loved your proposal for the UK Holocaust Memorial, where the ground is peeled up in the shape of a tallit, creating a sacred space for reflection and understanding. Are you interested in doing more of this kind of work, or even doing a site installation like Maryhill Overlook?  How do these kind of projects differ from your architectural work?

BC  The power and nuance of landscape has always been primary to me. We started the office with the Maryhill Overlook and the Sitings project. To me, every project has a site – whether a street, meadow or tabletop. The building or design gathers the forces of the site to find its form and voice. Or rather, find what the voice of architecture can add to the existing conversation of a place. There are many places and instances where a building or thing can add very little. I remember the first time I met Ann Hamilton when she was invited to produce a piece for the Sun Valley residence in Idaho. She walked the building and later told me that she wasn’t sure there was anything her work could add. It has stayed with me for 20 years. Landscape is still and always will be my primary inspiration. I would love to do more landscape investigations. I have dreams of a moss and lichen pavilion – projects where the language of landscape and building merge.

LH  The Wieden + Kennedy building opened 20 years ago. Looking back and looking forward—what are some of the takeaways you’ve had professionally and personally and what are your hopes for the next chapter of Allied Works?  

BC  The Wieden + Kennedy project was such a gift. Dan Wieden offered a young architect with 2 employees the chance to completely rethink the nature of work place. And it has become an inspiration for workspace all over the world.

The spirit of inquiry, the process of looking deeply into the nature of a problem to discover the possible architecture, remains the primary inspiration of the office and for myself. We have worked on many different types of projects, and are constantly looking for the next interesting question to be engaged with.  Partnering with people and institutions that want to explore what they do, or want to do what they do better, is what drives us.

Personally I want to be involved in conversations around the possibility of spiritual space - space that inspires introspection and reflection. Many people have lost or never had a relationship with organized religion, often for good reasons. Now, in having lost these communities, spaces and teachers we have also lost the place for ethical, moral and intellectual conversations that deeply matter to the future of humanity. I want to assert the power and possibility of architecture to provoke and support those conversations. So many wonderful possibilities.