hysolar institute 1 - a photo on Flickriver

We were quite surprised to arrive at the Hysolar Institute, early champion building of deconstructivism, and find it in a state of advancing ruin, clearly abandoned, leaky, and in need of a new paint job. Who knows what happened? It certainly colored impressions of the building - spruced up, on a pretty day, I imagine it could look quite nice. The same firm, ten years later, produced the grammar school in Dresden that was a moderate hit with the group* - and in between, that art academy in Berlin, which while not a major subject of conversation, seemed to go over well.

While Jackie pleaded with us to appreciate this thing as a period piece, if nothing else, she also took the middling reception of this thing as an opportunity to open a discussion on the status of 1980s architectural thinking in today's archi-culture. Are postmodernism and deconstructivism dead beyond dead? Jackie believes it's only a matter of time before this stuff is retro-cool again, but she may have to wait a little longer, given the tepid reception by the group of so many buildings from this period.

I think the issue goes beyond a change in aesthetic tastes (ie, "red is out this year, pink is in") and has to do more with a shifting sense of what the project of architecture is. Both postmodernism and deconstructivism are very cerebral approaches to architecture - you have to know the language that's being played with (postmodernism) or follow the sequence of displaced/crunched-up parts (decon) in order to appreciate the building fully. While there are contemporary stars working in basically intellectual modes, the emphasis is on self-explanatory forms that broadcast a "so simple I can't believe I didn't think of that!" charm. The other major strand of contemporary work deals with phenomenon and effect. We've seen a lot of work, for example by Herzog and de Meuron, which focuses on the production of weird optical conditions and unusual surface textures. Think as well of the gauzy-but-heavy curtain of the Dresden Synagogue. Obviously these are lucrative inquiries, but the question is, what place does the intellect have? Can architecture climb past the optic nerve? Is there a future for literary/metaphorical approaches to architecture? The Dresden Synagogue itself would seem to say yes.

There is, certainly a taste factor in all this. In my view, this has a lot to do with generational demographics. For certain, the low stock of postmodernism has to do with the ubiquity of bad postmodern buildings that went up in the 80s and 90s, obscuring the better examples of the style. Those of us who grew up in those years can't ever imagine what it was like to be working in the 70s and early 80s on this stuff and thinking "This is the wave of the future!" We've just been exposed to it too much, too continuously - it's background. This strengthens Jackie's position as far as retro goes, because there's going to be someone like me who finds the tacky stuff kind of charming - who has a fondness for all manner of 1970s taste fabrications now considered horrible and regrettable. So we'll see what we're faced with in a few years.

* - I want to say it was Kristi and AmyH who made the point that to a huge degree the problem with Hysolar versus the St. Benno school is simply one of scale. You can take the Hysolar institute in pretty easily, size it up, grasp the deconstructive moves (if you're so inclined) and decide it's ugly. The St. Benno school is too big to be appraised this way, and so you end up evaluating it on the merits of the interior spaces, which are great, so it gets a thumbs up. We couldn't go inside Hysolar, so the deck is stacked in this way also. Jackie, meanwhile, thought that the program of "grammar school" was a freebie in the same way that Delaney complained the Jewish Museum was getting a free pass. When you know something's an elementary school, this makes it immediately more cute and endearing than knowing something is an abandoned research building...

Taken in: Deutschland / Baden-Württemberg / Stuttgart / Dachswald (show map)

Taken on: August 26, 2007

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Stuttgart

Behnisch & Partner

architecture

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Sets appears in: • Behnisch • 07 Adventure: Last Days In Europe more » • Lofty Discourse « less

Groups appears in: • Deconstructivism and Related Architecture

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