This article appeared in Dialogue, April 2003, No. 68
Gaetano Pesce was born in La Spezia, Italy in 1939. He was trained at the University of Venice Faculty of Architecture. He has lived and worked in New York since 1980 and is the principal of the architecture and design firm Pesce Ltd. He has taught for a number of years at the Cooper Union School of Art and Architecture in New York. In more than 30 years of practice, Pesce has designed public and private projects in the United States, Asia, Europe, and Latin America, from residences to gardens and corporate offices. In addition, Pesce has designed numerous objects that have gone into production by companies such as B&B Italia, Cassina, and Vitra. His work has been the subject of numerous publications and exhibitions, including the retrospective in 1996 at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. Some of Pesce’s designs have become part of the permanent collections of major museums, including the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Musée des Arts Décoratif and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.
MF You have often been cited by young designers working today as being a major influence on their works. Who were the people that influenced you when you were young?
GP When I studied architecture in Venice, Italy my influence was history, not only the history of architecture, but also the history of western art and history in general. Studying how one can build the cupola in Florence six hundred some years ago was very interesting. I was not interested in the issue of style but studied the cupola from the point of view of structure, construction, and engineering. Starting from that time I became very interested in innovation. So Brunelleschi was an influence. Another is Mies van der Rohe. Mies not only invented a language, but also found a way to realize his ideas with the right materials and techniques. I always believe that it is not enough just to have a new language in architecture or design. It is equally important to have innovations in materials and techniques and to use them to express the new ideas.
MF I am surprised that you mentioned Mies as an influence since your work seems very different.
GP You have to be able to see behind the form. I believe design and architecture are not really about form, but more to do with philosophical and technical ideas and the knowledge of materials. Form comes later. Some of the architecture produced today are not really innovations from the point of view of technology and material. You have to realize that most of the architects today are still using materials and technologies that were discovered in the nineteenth century, such as reinforced concrete, metal, and glass; these are not our discoveries.
MF You once said that when you were in school, none of the teachers had much influence on you except for Bruno Zevi. What sort of influence did he have on you?
GP He was the first to tell us the importance of innovation and that you are a witness of your time with your expression, technique and use of material. For instance, stone is not the witness of our time; it is the expression of an old time. He explained to us that the gothic cathedral was at a certain moment new or modern. We have to be able to see these structures not as monuments but as forms of inventions.
MF The performance piece, Pièce per una fucilazione, which you did a long time ago seems to be more about politics than design. What was the significance of the gunshot and the violence in the performance?
GP Innovation is always something that disturbs, in one way it is a form of violence. Before that piece I was working in an expression called optical art, which was influenced by science and math. The works were very abstract and more about geometry and formulas. I stopped when I understood that I was not able to express the reality. I was working with abstraction while the reality was about political issues. So I stopped for a number of years and started again with that performance piece. 1967 was the year when I did the Pièce per una fucilazione. It was the time of the Vietnam War and when communism was a movement that tried to take over a large part of the world. Communism was a machine that suppressed the local people and I wanted to express that. The piece was 27 minutes long and there was a sound similar to someone making a political speech. The speech was not understandable because it was in Russian and heard upside down, but you have the sense that it was a political speech. Then there was the shooting and the blood. 500 liters of blood flowed down from the scene and under the audience feet. Nobody could move until a group of young people came with sponges to soak up the blood. I was saying there was a violence that comes front political issue; the violence was millions of people without political freedom. That was the beginning of my desire to use architecture and design to express political, philosophical, existential, and religious issues. The performance was done at the invitation of the architecture organization in Finland. So the audience was mostly architects. Finland was very close to Russia and many people in the audience understood my intentions.
In fact, in that year I was questioning the meaning of art. Instead I chose to work as an object designer, because it was more actual and more related to our time than traditional art. In 1968 I made my first chair with a company in Italy where I expressed myself politically. The chair was an image of a woman connected by a string to an ottoman shaped like a ball. This was the image of non-free woman in certain societies in the past and the present time. That was the beginning of my attempt to innovate in the field of design, to use new technology and material, and to express myself not just formally, not form follow function, but in a political way. Perhaps the reason that some young designers are interested in my work is that they realize there are different ways to design other than just the modern tradition.
MF The furniture pieces you mentioned are UP 5 and UP 6 are part of the collection of seven pieces. What was the reason for making UP 7, which is a foot?
GP The foot is a symbol for walking and represents forward moving. The piece is basically unusable, but the company actually sold a quite a number of them.
MF So you did it for symbolic reasons. Why put the chair in a vacuum pack?
GP The materials of our time provide us with performances that are exceptional. When the chair is put in the vacuum package the volume is one tenth of the original chair. Imagine storing and transporting the chair in its original form. So it was partly a practical reason. Also it gives the buyer the pleasure of opening up that package and see the transformation.
MF In an article you wrote in 1971 for l’architecture d’aujour d’hui, you talked about the necessity for objects to embody meaning and the notion of freedom. What does freedom mean for you? What kind of freedom?
GP The freedom of research is very important for architecture and design. For instance, Le Corbusier was researching the ways people like to live with the Unite d’habitation. So research is the base of our work and profession. We are supposed to serve the society and solve real problems: how people can live and work better and how they can use objects better. If we don’t do that then the society can do without us. Today the society can live and progress without architects, because we work for a very small elite. Progress is very important. In medicine we know people are looking for new cures for diseases. But in our profession we don’t have this idea about researching into something that people can use and benefit from. That is why I spend a lot of time and effort in research.
MF After the UP series you started using resin. Did you start with the Golgotha chairs?
GP Golgotha was an innovation in the way one makes table and chairs. At the same time it was a series of objects trying to talk about religion; I come from a Catholic country. The table and desks were made out of small bricks of black glass foam held together by red polyester resin. The table itself was talking about the history of Jesus Christ and the crucifixion.
MF Plastic provides you with a way to produce randomness in your work. Is randomness and customization mainly an issue of appearance?
GP No, it is more related to very practical reasons. If I want to do something that is elastic, translucent, and non-fragile, I have no other material to do it with than resin. If I want to have a chair packaged in a vacuum, I have to use polyurethane foam. It is very important to remember that a creative person should find the most intimate quality of a material. For instance when you use polyurethane foam and take away the air inside, you have a much smaller body of material. So immediately you are showing the quality of this material that nobody knew at that time. It is a practical reason, not a question of randomness. You can do things with contemporary materials that are not possible with traditional materials.
MF While you are interested in new materials, you also seem to be interested in an old form, by that I mean the human body, and for the most part the female body. Why the interest in the human form?
GP You know better than me that we come from an abstract tradition. Architecture and design are expressed with abstract geometry. A long time ago I wanted to do something to remember that our work is done for the others. The human figures is a symbol that people can recognize, it is not abstract. It helps the people understand your will to express. It’s true I use the figure, which is old, but it is also quite new. As I have said, we work for a future society that is done by people. The presence of human is very important. Abstraction is the past and the figuration is the future.
MF Tell us a little about the Sansone table and Dalila chairs. Did the Dalila chair come from the Golgotha chair?
GP No. The Sansone table was produced with a new technique that I developed with a company in Italy. It was the first time that I was trying to manufacture a series of objects where every one is an original. Our time is not a time of copy; standardization is behind us. I invented a way to pour resin into a simple mold so every table is unique. The shape and the composition of the resin are always different. I called the table Sansone, which relates to the story of Sansone’s love for Dalila and his vengeance for her treachery. Sansone was so strong that he was able to shatter the columns of the Philistine temple. There was a moment when columns of the temple are inclined in many different ways, similar to the legs under the table. For Dalila I used another innovation. The chairs are molded out of rigid polyurethane and the surface is finished with epoxy resin. With Sansone and Dalila I tried to express another point of view. Usually around the table, the chairs are all the same; this is something I never understood. If you look at the people sitting on the chairs, they are all different. So why have all the same chairs? The Dalila chairs are similar but each of them is slightly different.
MF Later on you made the Pratt chairs, a series of nine that started as a very soft chair and ended with a very hard chair. What was the reason making this set of chairs? Also, what was the reason for casting the various details in the chairs?
GP I was trying to express the fact that a functional object could be a piece of art. I chose to express this concept with nine chairs. The shapes are the same, but they change from one to nine as I changed the chemical composition of the material. The resin used for the first chair is very soft. When the chair is taken out of the mold it collapsed. At that point it is just an expression, like a body without bones. Number two was a bit harder but very unstable. As soon as you touched the chair, it collapsed. Number three was not secure but was able to support the body of a child. Number four can support an adult but not completely stable; this gives insecurity. Number five is comfortable and the structure is safe. From number five to nine, the chairs became harder and harder and more uncomfortable. Number one was just a piece of art you can only look at it. Number four and five are starting to be functional. Then the sculpture changed with the quantity of the material changed and you can sit on the sculpture. Then it becomes uncomfortable and unusable again. This was a paradigm on the non-difference between art and objects. The details in the chairs talked about what was the meaning of the making an object like that. One was about mathematical formula that talked about the fact that making a chair was like a science experiment. There was a symbol of a piece of bread that is about making a chair to make money to survive. There was an image of sex to show that making a chair is an act of love…etc.
MF The chair you are sitting on now, the Felt chair, was made in 1987. What was the interest in making this chair?
GP The Felt chair is talking about the absence of border between cloth and object. There is no other structure except the felt itself. The polyester resin at the lower part hardens the felt where they become the structure. At the top part of the chair the felt is soft.
MF In terms of customization how much input would you allow the buyer to have in your objects? Ultimately wouldn’t you just have the buyers design their own things?
GP Factory can be a place for art. People in the factory that are making my objects used to work elsewhere and make the same things everyday. Now they get to use their creativity and express themselves.
MF Does this mean the architect or designer simply defines an ambiguous boundary and allow things to happen? Don’t you give up control over the objects?
GP The control that you are talking about is an issue of the past. Control is not our problem anymore. Today we can do a piece of architecture without the traditional control by the architect. I tried to do a project in Avignon, France with a simple mold and a machine that was projecting silicon on it. There is no control of the appearance of the wall; it is just the material itself. This expression is much closer to the reality than some fancy architecture that is related to another moment in the history of architecture where the ideas of beauty was different. The Avignon pavilion is small, not too different than the Barcelona Pavilion. The walls are translucent and the finish of the wall is badly done with defects. This is our concept of beauty today. The faults are a human condition, so why do we want to express perfection?
MF You designed a bar in Fukuoka, Japan. How did that project come about?
GP A Chinese businessman was investing in Japan at the time. He built a hotel in Fukuoka and asked four architects to design four bars at the corners of the hotel. I was thinking that people go to bars for two reasons: you go there because you are alone and want to meet someone, or you go there with people and want to be there with some privacy. I designed a space that provide some privacy and another space that allow people to socialize. From what I know, my space is still there while two of the other bars have closed a long time ago. I was told that my space was very popular and you need a reservation to go to the bar. The space is warm, joyful and a bit mysterious. It is not stylish. In general, I think architect and designer should give people a sense of joy, sensualities, and warmth, not just practical things or style.
MF What do you mean by the word “stylish”?
GP Style is something that nobody really created but there are many people who follow it because it is in fashion. The modern movement has been revisited by generations and generations of architects who didn’t invent that movement. I think many of the works today are a bit stylish, not real expressions.
MF You did another building in Japan, an organic building in Osaka. How did you come up with the idea of the vertical garden?
GP The client was a Japanese businessman that came from a family that makes seaweed. He asked me to design a very innovative office building. The office building is ten stories high. I suggested a vertical garden on two walls of the building. Because of pollution and the human activities, the city needs more gardens. However, the ground is very expensive. I thought what if we are able to do a garden without using much of the ground? I really liked the idea and researched it with engineers and specialists to see what kinds of plants could be used. We concluded that it was possible to have plants as part of the panel of the wall. We also integrated a system of pipes, which was controlled by a clock. So at night the pipes will water the plants. This project shows it is always possible to have real innovation instead of formal innovation.
MF How did Jay Chiat come to you for the design of the Chiat/Day office? To what extent did he want to reinvent the office?
GP Jay saw an apartment I did in Manhattan and enjoyed the atmosphere very much. So he asked me to design the office in New York. He was convinced that with the computers he didn’t need all the people in the office. At that time I was thinking the office is not a physical space anymore. The office is anyplace where the workers are; you can work in the toilet or on the beach. So the office has exploded to everywhere. We came up with the idea that the office is more of a club rather than a place you go every morning. If you want sit next to the window because you like to look outside, you are able to do that. You just take your computer and plug it in there and you can work. If you want to work more by yourself, then you can choose another space. There is bar and a coffee shop. The office can change everyday if you want. It was called the first virtual office. Jay Chiat was very satisfied. He told me the office was a joy to go to in the morning and he was not happy to leave in the evening. When you do an innovation there are always conservative people that attack you. People said that the office was not the best way to work and people like to have their own space. I don’t think so. When the company merged with another company, I was asked to do another floor. As an innovation it was a real working space for our time. People are very mobile now.
MF How did the people react to the colors in the space?
GP Certain people reacted badly while others were very enthusiastic. It depends on whether people are scared by colors or not. In my view if there are no colors then there is no life and no energy.
MF What is the difference between Open Sky and Fish Design? I assume they are cheaper and allow more people to buy them.
GP Yes, that was the intention. We were always told that design is for the rich, but I don’t believe that’s true. I started Fish Design that consists of complimentary objects: frames, baskets and vase. The other one was more about lighting. I wanted to show that with very innovative materials and techniques, you can make things very inexpensively and allow more people to buy them. I am no longer doing this because I am not motivated anymore. My curiosity is satisfied.
MF It seems that in your interiors, there is an old notion of the total work of art. You always seem to design everything. How do you balance your design with providing choices for the occupants?
GP When I do something there is a market value. So my clients often ask me to do everything. You have to understand that when you let people express themselves, they typically express something very conservative. In that moment you have to push them to try to experience something else. I will give you an example. A lady once asked me to do a house. In the living room, she wanted to have a piano. I asked her if she was a pianist and she said no. So I asked why do you want to have a piano? She thought it was nice to have a piano. I said no, you lose space and you don’t use it. She said she could put picture frames on the piano. She was projecting something she saw in the past or in some movies. People are always attached to the past and unsure and scared about the future. It’s good to remember that one of Mies van der Rohe’s first clients was a butcher who asked for a neo-gothic house. Mies accepted the commission but slowly changed the client’s mind. We have to educate people to trust and understand the future and not the past. In the schools you had plenty of teachers of history but probably no teacher of the history of the future. If you just have one professor of the history of the future, it would open up people’s mind about the future, and make people be confident that everything is possible in the future. The future will become the present with the things you are making. You have to transform the future with your present. With my projects I am able to make my work more feminine than masculine. The history is full of masculine architecture, very dogmatic, sad, formal, rigid, and cold. I would like to convince people that if we use the femine part of our brain, the architecture will become more sophisticated, elastic, warm, and sensuous. How do I do that? The only way is to make things to allow the future become the present.
No comments:
Post a Comment