Channelbeta - interviews - Kurt W. Forster

Kurt Forster is the new Director of The Architecture Biennale in Venice, the international event that will open on June 2004. Kurt Forster was Born in Zurich. He taught at Yale, Berkeley and Harvard before taking up the position of director at the Getty Institution of Research in Los Angeles from 1984 to 1993. Following this, he taught for nine years at the Zurich Polytechnic (ETH), then took the position as director of the Canadian Center for Architecture in Montreal, one of the most important center for architectural research. In 2003 he was appointed the Gropius professorship at the Bauhaus Universität in Weimar. His publications focus on Italian Reinassance and modern architecture: Palladio, Giulio Romano, Schinkel, Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, gehry, Libeskind amongst the others.
Here a brief interview:

LPP: After the experimental Fuksas¹ Biennale and the realist Sudijc's Biennale, how will be the one directed by yourself?

KF: If you consider the last two exhibitions of architecture "experimental" and "realistic," then the next will likely be "hyper-realistic" in the sense that the current transformations occurring in the profession are its main subjects. Today, architecture has reached both prominence and critical depth, opening itself up to enormous cultural diversity and technological potential. As an instalment in the disciplinary discourse that has propelled architecture from a fairly closed professional status into its current role as a catalyst of cultural ideas and experiences, the Biennale 2004 will center on precisely these "metamorphoses". The transformations of energy, of historical time, of all aspects of structure, envelope, and impact place architecture at the forefront of technological and cultural evolution. I shall organize the exhibition in such a way as to make the long perspective of the Arsenale a corridor of discourse, the Padiglione Italia the site of immediate experience: that is to say, while the Arsenale retraces the major stages in the recent evolution and transformation of architecture, the cluster of spaces in the Padiglione Italia will offer visitors immediate contact with the key phenomena of this transformation. Naturally, we hope that the various national pavilions will add their voices to the polyphony already programmed for 2004."

LPP: The Forster's Biennale will focus on social and geopolitical issues ( ecology, habitat, metropolitan areas, third world cities, east/west contrasts )or on formal research?

KF: All the themes that come together in the Biennale 2004 will have fundamental and critical character rather than belong to separate typological or sectorial categories. By addressing the phenomenal transformations that have left virtually no aspect of architecture untouched, the Biennale shall retrace both the itineraries that have brought us to the current moment and offer up key instances of these transformations. There can be no doubt that the new scale of what one might call hyperprojects, as well as the mutations of the landscape, the processes of urban growth and rehabilitation will have their place. But instead of running in many directions at once, the Biennale is to focus on the fundamental changes that are occurring almost on the scale of natural evolution that brought about the emergence of new and the extinctions of older species. There are many areas in which architecture can make only a limited contribution (or may even have a negative effect upon social and cultural evolution), whereas others cannot be organized without its participation. The old controversy that used to set formal values in conflict with social ones is itself a relict of ideology. There cannot be gain of one at the price of other: this is the sort of conflict arising in the question of who shoots the other first in a double suicide. The only gain comes from the way by which architecture changes the processes of its invention and execution, enabling itself to operate under radically changing conditions and learning to fulfill its demanding role as cultural catalyst.

LPP: How much space in your Biennale for experimentation and young talents?

KF: The entire Biennale 2004 is predicated on a hypothesis, that is to say, on the supposition that we are witnessing a phenomenal metamorphosis of its very nature, a transmutation so deep that, as a result, all conventional problems of architecture appear in altered guise. The challenges of information society and of conflicts among and within nations are only some of the most glaring manifestations of this process. For architecture, the main challenges lie in the methods of collaboration and realization, a process that cannot do without information science and without making the fullest use of computers. This is neither a fad, nor a capitulation to technocracy, but the only way to overcome the divisions that have taken hold among the professions engaged in realizing buildings. Technological progress in architecture may no longer be measured by the quality of individual crafts and contributors to construction, but by the level of integration among them. There will certainly be ample room given to the swift developments of digital technology. This is a domain in which young architects have the lead. The overall theme of the Biennale has built into it attention to to the latest (and youngest) tendencies and accomoplishments.

LPP: What do you think about architectural research and production now ? Are you optimistic or pessimistic? Three words that summarize architecture now.

KF: In certi paesi l'architettura sembra affatti trovarsi incastrata in trappole di natura governativa, educativa e culturale [ instinctively I answer in Italian to questions that looks very Italian... excuse me] On a global scale, architecture has a presence that far transcends its publically recognized importance during much of the twentieth century. By contrast to the conflicts in which it was caught then, architecture today is passing through an almost unprecedented period of expansion, gaining new territory and improving its ways of exercising a paramount cultural role. Engineering need no longer be the antagonist, industry the harness, and society the dictator. Architecture has begun to advance its own disciplinary discourse while stimulating new ways of shaping sites, creating experiences and lasting memories. A genuine poetic capacity need no longer be seen as irreconcilable with industrial organization and entrepreneurial interests. No question that there are places chuckfull of the worst architecture--they are as frequent in highly advanced nations as in areas remote from Europe--and that more of it is built every day, but it is also clear that imagination, tough thinking and unprecedented possibilities abound. Three words that might capture qualities of the present moment? How can I avoid 'invention, indulgence, intelligence?'.

Interview by

Luigi Prestinenza Puglisi

Translated by Michela Lucchini

Publish on:

The Architect¹s Newspaper, n.1 2003