The ArchRecord Interview: Vito Acconci
A 1976 installation at the Sonnabend Gallery in the Soho neighborhood of New York.
Photo courtesy Acconci Studio
A 1976 installation at the Sonnabend Gallery in the Soho neighborhood of New York.
Photo courtesy Acconci Studio
A view of the specially constructed floor and ramp at the Sonnabend Gallery. During a three-week exhibition/performance in 1972, Acconci was positioned beneath the ramp, speaking his sexual fantasies aloud, broadcast through the speaker in the corner.
Photo courtesy Acconci Studio
From Oct. 3-25, 1969, Acconci would choose a person at random and follow him/her until that person entered a private space (car, home, office). Some of these "pursuits" lasted as long as seven or eight hours.
Photo courtesy Acconci Studio
A three-hour performance in 1971 in a two-level space, street-level and basement. From Acconci's statement on the piece: "Where viewers enter, on street-level, there's a video monitor next to the door that leads downstairs to the basement. The video monitor functions as an announcement, maybe a warning: seeing and hearing what's going on in the basement, a viewer decides whether or not to open the door and come downstairs. . Whenever I hear someone coming down the stairs, I swing my lead-pipe, I swing my crowbar, out in front of me, claiming my space."
Photo courtesy Acconci Studio
"A housing complex: the structure is made of I-beams, joined like the frames of three peaked-roof houses, one raised off the ground in the middle and one perpendicular to it at each side. Each house-frame holds a housing-unit made up of two stacked cars attached bottom to bottom." Material: Junk cars, zinc coating, steel, wood, glass flicker-sign.
Photo courtesy Acconci Studio
"A housing complex: the structure is made of I-beams, joined like the frames of three peaked-roof houses, one raised off the ground in the middle and one perpendicular to it at each side. Each house-frame holds a housing-unit made up of two stacked cars attached bottom to bottom." Material: Junk cars, zinc coating, steel, wood, glass flicker-sign.
Photo courtesy Acconci Studio
"A housing complex: the structure is made of I-beams, joined like the frames of three peaked-roof houses, one raised off the ground in the middle and one perpendicular to it at each side. Each house-frame holds a housing-unit made up of two stacked cars attached bottom to bottom." Material: Junk cars, zinc coating, steel, wood, glass flicker-sign.
Photo courtesy Acconci Studio
"A housing complex: the structure is made of I-beams, joined like the frames of three peaked-roof houses, one raised off the ground in the middle and one perpendicular to it at each side. Each house-frame holds a housing-unit made up of two stacked cars attached bottom to bottom." Material: Junk cars, zinc coating, steel, wood, glass flicker-sign.
Photo courtesy Acconci Studio
"A housing complex: the structure is made of I-beams, joined like the frames of three peaked-roof houses, one raised off the ground in the middle and one perpendicular to it at each side. Each house-frame holds a housing-unit made up of two stacked cars attached bottom to bottom." Material: Junk cars, zinc coating, steel, wood, glass flicker-sign.
Photo courtesy Acconci Studio
"A housing complex: the structure is made of I-beams, joined like the frames of three peaked-roof houses, one raised off the ground in the middle and one perpendicular to it at each side. Each house-frame holds a housing-unit made up of two stacked cars attached bottom to bottom." Material: Junk cars, zinc coating, steel, wood, glass flicker-sign.
Photo courtesy Acconci Studio
"A mound of stones that rises up out of the ground and forms a face: at the bottom of the hill, a strip of corten steel functions as a retaining wall for the stones and forms the upper half of an open mouth. Further up the hill, holes are hollowed out in the middle of the stones, two of the holes in the shape of eyes and one in the shape of a nose." Material: Steel, stones, dirt, grass, ivy.
Photo courtesy Acconci Studio
"A twist in the river, a node in the river: the node is an island. The island is a circulation-route: a dome that morphs into a bowl that morphs into a dome. The bowl functions as a theater. Bleachers wave in and out; when the bowl isn't used as a theater, it's a plaza; you sit face-to-face, in everyday conversation." Material: Steel, glass, rubber, asphalt, water, light.
Photo courtesy Acconci Studio
"A twist in the river, a node in the river: the node is an island. The island is a circulation-route: a dome that morphs into a bowl that morphs into a dome. The bowl functions as a theater. Bleachers wave in and out; when the bowl isn't used as a theater, it's a plaza; you sit face-to-face, in everyday conversation." Material: Steel, glass, rubber, asphalt, water, light.
Photo courtesy Acconci Studio
"A twist in the river, a node in the river: the node is an island. The island is a circulation-route: a dome that morphs into a bowl that morphs into a dome. The bowl functions as a theater. Bleachers wave in and out; when the bowl isn't used as a theater, it's a plaza; you sit face-to-face, in everyday conversation." Material: Steel, glass, rubber, asphalt, water, light.
Photo courtesy Acconci Studio
"A twist in the river, a node in the river: the node is an island. The island is a circulation-route: a dome that morphs into a bowl that morphs into a dome. The bowl functions as a theater. Bleachers wave in and out; when the bowl isn't used as a theater, it's a plaza; you sit face-to-face, in everyday conversation." Material: Steel, glass, rubber, asphalt, water, light.
Photo courtesy Acconci Studio
"Our starting point are the hills. . Let's build houses into the 'steps' of the hills, the terraces of the hills: it's as if we squeeze houses into the folds of the hill. We have, generally, a material in mind: plastic, the 21st-century material. Yes, we know plastic has its faults, big faults: it's environmentally unfriendly. But there are new versions of plastics, made from recyclable materials, like coke bottles ... we would love the front wall to be transparent: the house 'disappears' while the landscape remains."
Photo courtesy Acconci Studio
"Our starting point are the hills. . Let's build houses into the 'steps' of the hills, the terraces of the hills: it's as if we squeeze houses into the folds of the hill. We have, generally, a material in mind: plastic, the 21st-century material. Yes, we know plastic has its faults, big faults: it's environmentally unfriendly. But there are new versions of plastics, made from recyclable materials, like coke bottles ... we would love the front wall to be transparent: the house 'disappears' while the landscape remains."
Photo courtesy Acconci Studio
Images of a proposal for a "visitors' trajectory" in Boulogne Sur Mer, France.
Photo courtesy Acconci Studio
Images of a proposal for a "visitors' trajectory" in Boulogne Sur Mer, France.
Photo courtesy Acconci Studio
Images of a proposal for a "visitors' trajectory" in Boulogne Sur Mer, France.
Photo courtesy Acconci Studio
Images of a proposal for a "visitors' trajectory" in Boulogne Sur Mer, France.
Photo courtesy Acconci Studio
"Propped up on the tower is a wind-wheel, a wind turbine. Down below, inside the courtyard, a ring is cut into the landscape, separating one circular band of ground from the rest of the landscape. The separated ring of ground is a turntable, with a built-in track that fits over a circle of wheels below the ground. The ring of landscape moves slowly, it's just barely moving, two revolutions every hour."
Photo courtesy Acconci Studio
"Propped up on the tower is a wind-wheel, a wind turbine. Down below, inside the courtyard, a ring is cut into the landscape, separating one circular band of ground from the rest of the landscape. The separated ring of ground is a turntable, with a built-in track that fits over a circle of wheels below the ground. The ring of landscape moves slowly, it's just barely moving, two revolutions every hour.
Photo courtesy Acconci Studio
"Propped up on the tower is a wind-wheel, a wind turbine. Down below, inside the courtyard, a ring is cut into the landscape, separating one circular band of ground from the rest of the landscape. The separated ring of ground is a turntable, with a built-in track that fits over a circle of wheels below the ground. The ring of landscape moves slowly, it's just barely moving, two revolutions every hour."
Photo courtesy Acconci Studio
A complex of spheres sits on the circles: the spheres are open tubular structures, in three sizes, bunched together and interlocked. One sphere intersects another; a sphere above is cradled by spheres below; the lowest spheres settle underground and bulge up above the ground. In the center of the complex, and interspersed throughout, are Garden-Spheres, Subway-Spheres; a Parking-Sphere; a Market-Sphere; a Theater-Sphere; an Aviary-Sphere; a Skate-Sphere; and a Pool-Sphere (the pyramid of the swimming pool extends down into the subway station below: in the station, there’s an aquarium of human beings overhead).
Photo courtesy Acconci Studio
A complex of spheres sits on the circles: the spheres are open tubular structures, in three sizes, bunched together and interlocked. One sphere intersects another; a sphere above is cradled by spheres below; the lowest spheres settle underground and bulge up above the ground. In the center of the complex, and interspersed throughout, are Garden-Spheres, Subway-Spheres; a Parking-Sphere; a Market-Sphere; a Theater-Sphere; an Aviary-Sphere; a Skate-Sphere; and a Pool-Sphere (the pyramid of the swimming pool extends down into the subway station below: in the station, there's an aquarium of human beings overhead).
Photo courtesy Acconci Studio
"Since the gallery is meant to be temporary, with a life of three to four years, and since the gallery is part of a home, the walls are not changed but only camouflaged, 'screened.' The walls, both the existent walls and the new walls, are covered with expanded metal; downstairs, in the rear room, the top half of expanded metal twists off the wall and stretches over the ceiling in the front room; in the front room, expanded metal shifts away from the wall to screen the bathroom and basement; in the stairwell, expanded metal rises up the wall and twists across the ceiling of the gallery upstairs."
Photo courtesy Acconci Studio
"Since the gallery is meant to be temporary, with a life of three to four years, and since the gallery is part of a home, the walls are not changed but only camouflaged, 'screened.' The walls, both the existent walls and the new walls, are covered with expanded metal; downstairs, in the rear room, the top half of expanded metal twists off the wall and stretches over the ceiling in the front room; in the front room, expanded metal shifts away from the wall to screen the bathroom and basement; in the stairwell, expanded metal rises up the wall and twists across the ceiling of the gallery upstairs."
Photo courtesy Acconci Studio
"Since the gallery is meant to be temporary, with a life of three to four years, and since the gallery is part of a home, the walls are not changed but only camouflaged, 'screened.' The walls, both the existent walls and the new walls, are covered with expanded metal; downstairs, in the rear room, the top half of expanded metal twists off the wall and stretches over the ceiling in the front room; in the front room, expanded metal shifts away from the wall to screen the bathroom and basement; in the stairwell, expanded metal rises up the wall and twists across the ceiling of the gallery upstairs."
Photo courtesy Acconci Studio
"Since the gallery is meant to be temporary, with a life of three to four years, and since the gallery is part of a home, the walls are not changed but only camouflaged, 'screened.' The walls, both the existent walls and the new walls, are covered with expanded metal; downstairs, in the rear room, the top half of expanded metal twists off the wall and stretches over the ceiling in the front room; in the front room, expanded metal shifts away from the wall to screen the bathroom and basement; in the stairwell, expanded metal rises up the wall and twists across the ceiling of the gallery upstairs."
Photo courtesy Acconci Studio
"Since the gallery is meant to be temporary, with a life of three to four years, and since the gallery is part of a home, the walls are not changed but only camouflaged, 'screened.' The walls, both the existent walls and the new walls, are covered with expanded metal; downstairs, in the rear room, the top half of expanded metal twists off the wall and stretches over the ceiling in the front room; in the front room, expanded metal shifts away from the wall to screen the bathroom and basement; in the stairwell, expanded metal rises up the wall and twists across the ceiling of the gallery upstairs."
Photo courtesy Acconci Studio
Done in collaboration with Steven Holl Architects: “The wall is divided into segments. Vertical seams separate the wall into panels that pivot side to side, like revolving doors. Horizontal seams separate the wall into panels that pivot up and down; like louvers; the lower panels function as tables and benches, or as pedestals for models or sculpture.
Photo courtesy Acconci Studio
Done in collaboration with Steven Holl Architects: "The wall is divided into segments. Vertical seams separate the wall into panels that pivot side to side, like revolving doors. Horizontal seams separate the wall into panels that pivot up and down; like louvers; the lower panels function as tables and benches, or as pedestals for models or sculpture."
Photo courtesy Acconci Studio
Done in collaboration with Steven Holl Architects: "The wall is divided into segments. Vertical seams separate the wall into panels that pivot side to side, like revolving doors. Horizontal seams separate the wall into panels that pivot up and down; like louvers; the lower panels function as tables and benches, or as pedestals for models or sculpture."
Photo courtesy Acconci Studio
From the original site, the building is extruded to a height of 110 stories; the unnecessary office footage, the extra volume,is blown away; the holes/cones/tubes are the structure of the building .One tube intersects another; you spiral around the interior of one tube and then meander into another, in the middle of offices but outside them. The interior of each cone is lined with walkways, ramps and stairways; these passages are parks (plantings, waterfalls, benches) and plazas and streets (food-stands, markets, performance areas).
Photo courtesy Acconci Studio
From the original site, the building is extruded to a height of 110 stories; the unnecessary office footage, the extra volume,is blown away; the holes/cones/tubes are the structure of the building .One tube intersects another; you spiral around the interior of one tube and then meander into another, in the middle of offices but outside them. The interior of each cone is lined with walkways, ramps and stairways; these passages are parks (plantings, waterfalls, benches) and plazas and streets (food-stands, markets, performance areas).
Photo courtesy Acconci Studio
From the original site, the building is extruded to a height of 110 stories; the unnecessary office footage, the extra volume,is blown away; the holes/cones/tubes are the structure of the building .One tube intersects another; you spiral around the interior of one tube and then meander into another, in the middle of offices but outside them. The interior of each cone is lined with walkways, ramps and stairways; these passages are parks (plantings, waterfalls, benches) and plazas and streets (food-stands, markets, performance areas).
Photo courtesy Acconci Studio
From the original site, the building is extruded to a height of 110 stories; the unnecessary office footage, the extra volume, is blown away; the holes/cones/tubes are the structure of the building .One tube intersects another; you spiral around the interior of one tube and then meander into another, in the middle of offices but outside them. The interior of each cone is lined with walkways, ramps and stairways; these passages are parks (plantings, waterfalls, benches) and plazas and streets (food-stands, markets, performance areas).
Photo courtesy Acconci Studio
"A wall separates some of you from others; no, the wall connects you. The material of the wall is a mix of mirror and transparency, in different gradations. You see yourself-you see a person on the other side of the wall-and now your head is on another person's body. This wall doesn't deserve the name 'wall,' it's fluid-it swerves first into one corridor, and then, into the other corridor. The top of the wall curves over you to become a ceiling, which in turn curves down around you to become a parallel wall on your other side; it makes a cocoon, a tunnel."
Photo courtesy Acconci Studio
"The screens are like Venetian blinds: the surrounding ramps and their retaining walls, the traffic on the ramps, the surrounding buildings - it's all turned into flickers of images, as if in a movie, a kaleidoscope, a flipbook."
Photo courtesy Acconci Studio
"The screens are like Venetian blinds: the surrounding ramps and their retaining walls, the traffic on the ramps, the surrounding buildings - it's all turned into flickers of images, as if in a movie, a kaleidoscope, a flipbook."
Photo courtesy Acconci Studio
A mix of park and parking: the up-&-down strips of park let sunlight down into the parking garage (at night, artificial light from light from the parking garage comes up onto the park).
Photo courtesy Acconci Studio
A city stored in a truck: six housing units telescoped into one, a semi-trailer hooked up to a tractor. When the truck is parked, a line of housing-units can be pulled out of the trailer. Fold down the legs of the smallest unit, drive the truck forward, fold down the legs of the next unit, etc. The houses are sheathed in corrugated steel, cut into sections that can hinge down inside and out. A gangplank folds down to make a doorway, a ladder folds from the gangplank down to the ground for access. Inside each house, wall panels pivot down to make a table, a bench, a bed, a shelf.
Photo courtesy Acconci Studio
A city stored in a truck: six housing units telescoped into one, a semi-trailer hooked up to a tractor. When the truck is parked, a line of housing-units can be pulled out of the trailer. Fold down the legs of the smallest unit, drive the truck forward, fold down the legs of the next unit, etc. The houses are sheathed in corrugated steel, cut into sections that can hinge down inside and out. A gangplank folds down to make a doorway, a ladder folds from the gangplank down to the ground for access. Inside each house, wall panels pivot down to make a table, a bench, a bed, a shelf.
Photo courtesy Acconci Studio
Each house-module holds a corrugated metal roof and a floor of metal grating. Threaded rod extends from the end of the roof to the edge of the floor; attached to the metal rod is the furniture for each module. Each roof overlaps the next, and extends out over the furniture and floor below, to provide shade and shelter from rain; a line of cable connecting the threaded rod provides a railing. In the original installation, at Alvaro Siza's Centro Gallego de Arte Contemporanea in Santiago de Campostela, Spain the house provided, on the outside wall of the museum, a shelter for people who might not want to go inside the museum.
Photo courtesy Acconci Studio
If you don't want to walk or drive across the bridge, you can come to the island by boat; you dock your boat in a crater. The largest craters are occupied: they're filled with transparent capsules, that function as hotel rooms. The Performing Arts Center proper is rotated on the floodable base of the island; it's cantilevered off the base, it escapes floods, it hovers above the water like a spacecraft.
Photo courtesy Acconci Studio
"The library spurts up here, like a geyser, from the depths of the whirlpool; this is the library of accessible books. If the space below ground is a labyrinth, the space coming up out of the ground is like an attic, a garage sale; the books are up for grabs here. Bumps of books, globes of books, like tiny worlds, like disco balls-books above you and below you, books jutting out at you from all sides. You're in an air of books."
Photo courtesy Acconci Studio
Tunnels and ramps: a lot of your projects have a lot of them.
That interests us in ramps is yes, it’s a floor, but it’s a floor that takes you to another level in either direction. Either you’re going up or you’re going down. Yes, you have this stable place to walk on, but you’re going to something, you’re going from something. We’re not as interested in places as passages.
I wonder also if tunnels interest us because of a kind of nostalgia for a science fiction space-and-time tunnel. If you’re in a tunnel, maybe you can see through to the outside but usually you can’t. So I wonder if as you go through a tunnel you’re transformed from being in one kind of space to being in another.
Let’s jump to portability which is certainly a key concern of the practice: allowing people to carry architecture with them or creating portable parks, housing that can be moved from site to site.
When we start to work on a project, we certainly consider site. That doesn’t necessarily mean we want something to totally fit into a site. We want a project to have a conversation with the site and sometimes that can be an argument. We want a project to exist almost as if wow, it could have been there from all time. But other times we want a project to exist almost as if it’s a spaceship has landed on the site.
Portability allows you to not have to think of site. You can go through many sites, you hook on to one for the time being. Lately I’ve thought it’s probably deeper than that. For us portability comes from some kind of conviction that George W. Bush—and a kind of ultra-conservative tendency not just in the U.S. but in a lot of countries, a lot of renewed barriers against immigrants—is all a sign that some old world is really dying. That this kind of conservatism, this idea of a country for people who belong there or were born there, is on its last legs, so it gets so desperate.
So what I hope this conservatism is a sign of is that at some point, I don’t how soon it will happen, but national boundaries, countries, aren’t really going to exist anymore. There probably is going to be a world of nomads, people are going to carry their own space with them. There’s no place that’s necessarily home because you can make any place home. So portability is the idea of space on the run, life on the loose. Portability is important to us because it means you can always change the space around you. You can always change your environment. Again environment is great, but it’s also a trap.
Who are some of the architects you most admire?
Greg Lynn is important to me. Foreign Office Architects. Francois Roche. UN Studio. Asymptote. I still retain an interest in Rem Koolhaas probably more than anybody else in my generation. Maybe not so much for the architecture, or not only for the architecture, but because he is almost a kind of Marshall McLuhan of the 21st century. I don’t know if he would approve of that. But there’s this urge with him to get at the tenor of the time that I’m interested in.
What about your own works. I know it’s always difficult but can you pick one or two or three works that you feel have most accomplished your vision?
Of built projects, probably Graz [Mur Island] and the United Bamboo Store [in Tokyo]. For some unbuilt projects, we did a proposal for a performing arts center in Seoul, Korea. We did a library proposal in Guadalajara where the brief talked about how there should be an expansion principle because the library would need more books. We tried to take this literally, and our proposed library goes up and goes out; there’s a highway nearby so the library crossed the highway, so it could spread out into the city. I liked the way we started with the very simple idea that books are dangerous.
Speaking of built and unbuilt, does unbuilt have in some way more appeal than built because you can be more free, creative, imaginative?
When we do a proposal, we have this incurable optimism, and we want to assume that we’re going to propose something that will be built. At the same time, being built is far from the most important thing for us. When we design a project, we’re trying to design a theory of the space: What can the space do? What can be done in this space? At the same time, we love a theory of a space, but sometimes theories seem a little cheap. It’s easy to have a theory. But can this theory really be proven until it’s built?
When I think of the architecture that has formed me or turned me toward being an architect, I would probably mention Giovanni Piranesi, Pierre Boulet, Archigram. No built projects there. But a lot of theses.
What kind of meaning, if any, do your buildings have?
The meaning of a building comes from the people using it. You can set up the incentive for a meaning. Even when I thought of myself in an art context, I always felt like I could talk about my intentions better than anybody else since I was the person who had those intentions. But I don’t think I could ever talk about the meaning of a piece. Meaning changes. I have no more privileged ownership of the meaning of the piece than any other viewer or participant does.
Let’s imagine that a student at Pratt or Cooper Union with a lot of talent in both art and architecture comes to you and says, “Vito I’m torn. Which career path is ultimately going to give me more creative satisfaction?”
Remember, I have a loaded view because I pretty much did make this decision for better or worse, and I do think it was for better. I would ask, what do you think you’re more concerned with: other people and a possible future? Or yourself? And if the answer is yourself, then maybe art is the better choice. If you want an anticipation of a future and if you want the necessity of having to think about the public, then it’s architecture. Public is this composite of many privates, and you’re never going to know who they all are, you can’t anticipate them, but wow, it’s incredibly thrilling to try to guess at frames of mind.
