Dizaina Studija. Telpa Forma Laiks

From Page to Public Space
The work of Vito Acconci has been among the most influential of the last 35 years. The provocative and often radical art-making practices have earned him international recognition. Acconci has been a vital presence in contemporary art since the late 1960s and his confrontational and ultimately political works have evolved from writing to conceptual art, bodyworks, performance, film, video and multimedia installation. He already was an art-world legend when in the late 1980s he set out on a new path – design – that he has continued to follow to this day. Around this time his work has turned towards experimental architectural projects. In 1988 he set up the architectural practice, Acconci Studio, which has public commissions around the world and was featured at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2001. Today, his work remains of vital importance not only to conceptual art and performance, but also to contemporary architectural theory and practice, making critics recognize that “Acconci made architecture crazy in a way that no architect has ever been able to. One might say that he seeks to achieve for architecture what de Sade and Genet did for literature – to transform the world-prison-house into the privileged place from which to conceive and to invent freedom”.

Acconci’s artistic career reveals an interesting transition process through various stages of space, comprising several episodes of varying lengths. These episodes follow the inherent logic of Acconci’s work, indicating evolution from the space on a page to the space of the body, to the imitation of the public space, via installations in the gallery, and, finally, to the real public space. As Acconci himself notes, it took him long twenty years to come to the architecture and it was not such a direct path. In the early sixties, working as a writer and a poet, he used language to describe location in space through placement of words on a page: “my involvement with poetry was with movement on a page, the page as field for action… [to] use language to cover a space rather than uncover meaning.”  His texts were addressing physicality of the language. In the late sixties, he switched scenes, moving from paper and text to space and bodies. In the early seventies, he was a performance artist, followed by a phase that lasted into the eighties during which he specialized in site specific installations. A critical work of this time, marking an important transition point from gallery space to public space, was his installation of 1976, Where We Are Now (Who We Are Anyway). The installation consisted of eight pairs of stools lined up along wooden table that extended out a third-story window. An audio track posed questions to invisible characters seated at the table, challenging them to draw conclusions. Here the artist was trying to treat the gallery as if it was a town square, plaza or community meeting place. As Acconci notes, the piece was an important artistic revelation: “I started wondering if I was kidding myself. Here I am, doing these pieces in a gallery or museum, trying to pretend the gallery is a plaza, a public space. It is never going to be a public space. If I really want a public space, I better find a way to get there.” It still took him more than a decade to get there, but it was, however, a very important development conceptually. During the eighties, he began concentrating on architecture, furniture, and public space.

Acconci Studio: to the Public Space via Discussion
After Acconci’s symbolic architectural games or “dramatic acts of architecture”  of the 80s, involving installation series of domestic or faux-domestic structures that were not architecture per se, but repeatedly referred to the image of architecture, and specifically after his exhibition, Public Spaces, at the MoMA in 1988 there was no turning back. As artist himself remembers: “once that statement was there, I had to find a way to really do things in public spaces. In order to do that I had to start a studio with people because I knew I could not do it alone. I needed architects to work with me on those ideas. Also, I both assumed and wanted the design to be publicly available. I thought that if something begins private I do not know if it could ever become public. I had to start working the way architect works – with people.” The establishment of the studio in 1988 was a strong announcement and recognition of importance of collaborative work. There is always this assumption in the art context that the artist has the idea and somebody else carries it out. Referring to his installation works of the 80s that combined aspects of furniture, industrial design, and assemblage, Acconci admits that those were other people who built them for him: “I started to think that I am not sure if I would have some of those ideas if it was not for the fact that I had met these two fabricators who could do these kinds of things. These people were not building for me, they were collaborating with me. One of the reasons for establishing the studio was that I wanted to recognize publicly the fact that these things are not done alone.”

There are eight people working at the studio: five architects, Acconci himself and two administrators, forming something like a mini or quasi-society, for which a collaborative activity, discussion and argument are some of the most important fundaments in the process of conceiving a project. “The attempt of the studio is to be a collaborative, non-hierarchical activity,” acknowledges designer. For him a miniature public starts with the number three because the third person usually initiates the argument and “public probably starts when an argument starts. When people are thinking together and working together and arguing together, there is more of a chance to suspect what people at large would think.”

Function vs. Art vs. Design
By the time Acconci established the studio, he had already achieved absolutely legendary status in the art world, yet in relation to his new endeavor an important question of identity had arisen: who is this Vito Acconci? Is he an artist or designer, or might be both? As Acconci describes this new transition or evolution, then “the main reason of work of mine in gradually turning from art to architecture was that I never wanted viewers in a traditional sense. Art, however, is always about the position: the viewer – here and the art – there. I, on the other hand, have always wanted to have users, participants, inhabitants.” This interaction and communication with the space later will form a critical feature of his designs where the main desire is for people to happen upon something, rather than just to look at something presented, where the imperative is change and movement, rather than some pre-defined and static set up.

Acconci’s confidence about his identity, however, is definite – he has removed himself from the hierarchy or pedestal of art and announces himself just a designer who wants things to be part of the ordinary everyday world. Here usability and function become crucial components of the new equation. If such seminal works of Acconci as Convertible Clam Shelter (1990) and Adjustable Wall Bra (1990 – 1991) are still lingering in between art and design, then Studio’s Fluorescent Furniture pieces of 1992 already mark an important transition from one context to another. Its reductive, minimalistic, linear, but elegant language is quite different from the studios flowing, twisting, morphing, warping and shifting modes of design yet to come. The fluorescent furniture carry an artistic reference to Dan Flavin’s works with the exception that now they have acquired function. This is “furniture that functions also as light; light that functions also as furniture.”  Using slotted aluminium panels to house ordinary fluorescent light tubes, Acconci made simple illuminated furniture series – such as bed, chairs, table and sofa – that surround the person with light. Studio has carried out this same idea of self-illuminating, minimal and linear seating form into a series of cut-into-sphere-benches made for Klapper Hall Plaza at Queens College, New York. Here seven new spheres of different sizes were built to match two existing concrete spheres at the entrance of the English Department building. Similarly to the previous project, the spheres are fulfilling two functions at a time: they can be used as furniture and as lighting, illuminating the plaza at night.

In comparison to the simple and linear solution of the previous furniture projects, Möbius Bench in Fukuroi City, Japan (2001) is revealing entirely different stylistic language, illustrating studio’s interest in topology, which is different from Euclidean geometry where sphere is always a sphere or rectangle is always a rectangle. In topology something can maintain its nature even though it is twisted or warped and this is quintessentially demonstrated by the shape of the möbius strip. Its homeomorphic qualities are featured by a continuous stretching and bending of the object into a new shape. This development towards topology reveals an important focus of the studio towards the movement in architecture where such properties as connectedness, compactness and continuity are fundamental, allowing to stretch the space without tearing it apart or sticking distinct parts together. In Möbius Bench “a seat outside the circle becomes the back of a seat inside the circle, which becomes the back of the seat outside, which becomes a seat inside, which becomes the bottom of a seat outside, which becomes the bottom of a seat inside.”

Stages of Architecture
Acconci Studio’s designs of furniture, however, were not accidental. Already in 1983 designer had articulated some of his reasons why he was interested in developing furniture, describing several stages of architecture: “furniture is midway between clothing and architecture. The way the skin covers the bones, clothing contains the body: a chair, then contains the body-contained-by clothing – a room, then, contains the body-contained by-clothing-contained-by-chair. Furniture is one move out of privacy, one small step toward going public.”  Clothing, according to Acconci, is a first architecture and studio is really interested in designing clothing. “What interests me in design, coming from an art context, is that in design you can potentially deal with all the everyday occasions that person goes through. We want to design everything from a spoon to a city. Now, we have not done either a spoon or a city, but we are fortunate to have done many things in between.”

The development of umbruffla is one of the projects that studio is working on at the moment, in a way fulfilling the first stage of designer’s theory mentioned above. This project started from a fact that a fashion magazine Black Book proposed to the studio that the umbrella has not been redesigned in years. Could Acconci Studio make a new umbrella; could they make an umbrella that would have certain kinds of advantages over the old umbrella? At this stage the umbruffla still exists just in theory because the prototype has not been made for it yet; however studio is working on it. “We want it to be more than a theory; we are trying to make a prototype now and make it un-theoretical. I love something being both – being real and a theory,” explains designer.

The name of the object comes from English – ‘ruffle’. When it is closed, “the ruffles are gathered into a ruffle”, but, when opened, “the ruffles unfold, fan out, spring out, into an umbruffla.” The advantages of this new kind of umbrella are that a person now has both hands free – one end of it is fixed to the waist and the other to the wrist. It is very malleable - one can almost wrap this umbrella around oneself and if there is another person – this person could be wrapped up too. As Acconci comments on this new design, “umbruffla is something between umbrella and a piece of clothing that is made from two way mirrored mylar. From outside the surface is mirrored, so you become almost anonymous to the city, you become camouflaged by reflections of the city, but from inside you can see through.”

The Outside in and the Inside out
Bringing the outside in and the inside out and turning the upside down and the down side up has been repeatedly challenged in various architectural and design projects of the studio. Among other projects, Walkways through the Wall and Flying Floors for the Ticketing Pavilion should be mentioned in particular for they are most vividly dealing with the notions of in/out and up/down. The ticketing area at the Philadelphia International Airport now has acquired a science fictional and rather unusual look – here the floor peels up, forming loops, and slides curvily down from a mezzanine above. “These new forms do make seating areas on both levels, but they also make less predictable interior shelters, where travelers might find a moment out of the ordinary flow of traffic, and they seem to open up the space.”  In a convention center in Milwaukee, designer has allowed the exterior sidewalks and paths to penetrate the building’s façade and gain access to the interior spaces, ignoring the rule of the wall and creating a continuous space without tearing it apart or sticking distinct parts of it together. In certain instances the sidewalks, once inside, fold themselves into furniture shapes to provide seating. Conversely, inside walkways continue outside onto the plaza to create benches and a bus shelter.
Proposal for a New World Trade Center, 2002  deals with the notion of in/out in even more radical and unexpected way. As Acconci comments, “this was a proposal that we always new would never have a chance to be done. We thought, if a building in 21st century is going to be exploded anyway, may be a building should come already exploded?” The studio has exploded it almost in a literal sense, blowing away the extra volume and then merging the rather fixed barrier between public and private, interior and exterior thus, once again, creating quite a science fictional and futuristic image of the skyscraper. In this private building, public space is going through it rather than being in front of it: “now that there are holes in the building, now that there are tunnels through the building, the outside comes inside: you see through the building – light streams through the building, like spotlights – it rains and snows through the building. The interior of each cone is lined with walkways, ramps and stairways; these passages are parks and plazas and streets.”  Proposal for a New World Trade Center is a kind of prototype of mixed spaces that are embraced within a single 110 story building thus replicating a whole block of a city that now exists in layered holes, cones and tubes. Here, once again, the studio has made its point, suggesting that architecture need not just be what we have come to expect.

Totalitarianism of a Designed Environment
Removing himself from the hierarchy of art, has freed designer from the alienated here and there positioning of an art object and the viewer and has allowed him to work with things that are part of the ordinary everyday world, however, now his new endeavor has confronted another kind of concern, namely, totalitarianism of a designed space. It would be difficult to challenge the notion that architecture is that in relation to which bodies are organized, made, and unmade free, in relation to which our movement in the designed space is choreographed. Talking about studio’s designs, Vito Acconci agrees that it is probably impossible to escape the predefined aspects of design: “as soon as you design the space, you inherently are designing people’s behavior in that space. Architecture is a kind of totalitarian activity, but there are people, including us, who desperately want to find a way around that. So, the goal of our work is to make a mix – a mix of possible routes, a mix of alternate routes, alternate channels. We obviously want spaces that work as biology. We want space to live, to live no as a monster that overtakes the person, but as something that reacts. Action is great, but transaction is better. Action is ultimately private; transaction lets other things in as well. We would love to make spaces that would actually react to people, as people react to those places. I do not know really how to do that yet.”

Studio’s ideal is for architecture to be “in the hands of people” and to make such architecture that change according people’s wishes – to design space that would have some kind of skin – “skin that lives on its own power and that can be adjusted by the people using it.”  In this case the person is controlling the space rather than a space controlling person. Acconci’s hope is that one day somebody is going to make a kind of condition “where you do not have a chair until the person wants a chair, then you push the wall in and it becomes a chair. When you do not need it anymore, you get up and now it becomes a wall again. Ideally, we would like to do architecture like that.”

When talking about architecture as skin that could be adjusted by the people using it, in mind comes one of the studios designs in Milan, Italy where a new mesh-like-façade was laid over the old one, giving the building a new face or a new skin. The flexible, metal fabric mesh would react to a person pushing button inside each office, making the new façade to either roll in and out or stretch. Together with its double skin the building has acquired not just a new face, but also a new life: “now that the façade rolls in and out, now that the façade breathes in and out, now that the façade bulges, people can fit inside the façade. Under the skin of the building, on each office floor, extend a platform, a ramp, a balcony, across the building.”

Designing Freedom for Public Space
Henri Lefevre is making a distinction in his Production of Space between representational space, which is appropriated, lived space or space in use by people and representations of space, which is planned, controlled and ordered space. Regarding this distinction, public space is thus socially produced through its use as public space. Similarly, also Vito Acconci is distinguishing between place where the public gathers because it has a right to the place and a space that is made public by force. When discussing the contemporary public space, designer is quite pessimistic: “I come from a generation whose ideas started to form at the end of the 60s and for me the public space means the place where a change can occur, the space where revolution can occur. If that can happen today, I am not so sure. I wonder if today a public space exists somewhere else.” In one of his writings about the subject, Acconci has even argued that “public space is a last gasp of the civilized world; public space is the Great White Hope; public space is belief and religion; public space is wishful thinking.”

Project, Island on the Mur, in Graz, Austria probably comes closest to the ideal model of public space that the studio is intending to design because it offers a desired mix of inside and outside: “the space that I do not want is a space where you are solely concentrated on space. If you grin or laugh, when using the space, may be that is a sign that second thoughts have occurred. Ideally, I want our users to have second thoughts about the spaces we design. When you have second thoughts, it means you do not necessarily believe something else gets in the way. I think that kind of thing happens in Graz.” The Graz project is one of the most spectacular and also the largest project to date. It also clearly demonstrates studio’s inclination towards the studies of topological space as described above.
Here, on the river Mur, the studio had to design an artificial, floating island that would function as a theater, a playground, and a café. In this project the studio has very successfully achieved the much desired continuity and twistability of a form without breaking it anywhere as passage ways from the both sides of the river morph into the island in the middle of the river: “the island is a circulation route: a dome that morphs into a bowl that morphs into a dome.”  The bowl functions as a theater and, when not being used, as a public space or plaza. The dome functions as a restaurant/café and “the water pours down the shell of the dome; up on the terrace. You sit under a waterfall. Where dome and bowl intersect, and where the dome is transformed into a bowl and vice versa, a playground is formed by the collision and by the melting. This in between space is a three dimensional grid like space frame that functions as monkey bars; a tubular slide cuts through the grid. Functions are mixed on this island: the playground doubles as the backdrop of the stage and as a wall and ceiling.”  Acconci’s desire is to design a space that liberates people or at least place where people could feel freer than they could before: “I think people feel freer when they have options, when they can have second thoughts. Space with one direction can never be free; multidirectional space at least has possibilities of freedom.”
There are still lots of questions that have not been answered yet and lots of unfulfilled theoretical desires that are awaiting for creative solutions in the future, however, when evaluating the process that the studio has evolved through, it is sure that Acconci with his mini-society have succeeded in transforming the rules of the architectural game of today. Designer himself laughs, however; he does not believe that the studio has been radical enough – “we are making a lot of little changes, I do not know if we have made a big change.”