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Susan Lanier Interview - Page 3
v5 - I know that your work has a real sense of "materialness" to it. The residential projects that we saw have a real honesty about how architecture is made.
SL- I'm glad to hear you say that. I think we both feel that the best work is really something to which you can't add anything, or take anything away from it necessarily. Not that we've arrived at that point with all the things we do, but how a thing is made should basically render its detailing, and not be something that's kind of added on to it.
That gives it that other level of scale complexity that is revealed as a result of its making or its coming together. It's a much more
interesting task, and it seems more honest and straightforward. I think materials offer that in conjunction and in play with each other, because certain things have to happen when you have unlike materials joining.
v5 - Also it seems to imply that there has to be a complete
understanding in that process of making. The process of making this block wall is this; the process of doing this kind of ceiling is that. So there are layers of information in the building. Archaeology of visual information, a story, a non-fiction story.
SL- Yes, definitely. It's funny because people that walk into some
places, Ray Kappe's house is a good example, can know nothing about "the architectural language." But there's real recognition and understanding of the physical phenomenon of
gravity and the kind of flotation element, the access to openness and light and even a basic understanding of structure.
I don't know whether our work is going to get more complex as we develop, but I seem to appreciate somehow the simplicity of that understanding. It may become much more layered in terms of its complexity as things progress. But I’d like to think that we'll still be interested in making those kind of connections in terms of materials and ideas.
There is one idea, which I'm hoping will get published or photographed substantially enough to be able to look at soon. It's about assuming that the larger room really is in the garden, in the environment. The architecture itself sort of loosely makes the pieces within. It's always hard to explain to someone else that the most important space of their house is going to be the space outside! Yes... this is the best room we've got, you know!
As a kid, it was funny because I knew somebody who talked to me about this, the idea of making architectural elements this sort of independent set of pieces that just happened to circle, like a chain of wagons, to make a space interested me. So it's a simple notion but we seem to keep doing it over and over again (laughs), so I guess we are wedded to a lot of those ideas. It would be fun to be able to have an opportunity to explore that at a much more sophisticated level and see what happens. Just throw it up in the air!
v5 - In a way, you're bringing something extra to the project that way. As an architect and as a designer, you're taking simple things, and by arranging them you're creating something greater. There's a level of alchemy that architects could offer, that adds value. If it's positioning wagons or chairs or those mundane things, you are able to create this bigger idea somehow. I think a lot of times in design people forget that making something greater is a fundamental necessity. That is why we are on the "team." It's not just about solving the problem.
SL- Many are trained to be very committed to solve the problem. But it's the...
v5- It's the next five things...
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SL- Yes. I think that's really at the heart of it. I think it's true for
me and the teachers that I had at SCI-Arc at the time. When Thom Mayne and Eric Moss were around. (I never had him as an instructor, but I had him in reviews. He was a killer, I'm serious! (laughs))
But the focus was always about those larger questions and issues how you made decisions about what you were making. Ultimately that's what gives strength to any work that you see in architecture, by far. To embrace the larger set of ideas.
v5 - In one of the photographs that you submitted to the "101" we saw a series of objects in front of the field of glass...
SL- What became really exciting for us was the idea of just taking this simple rectangular form of a room, that's usually pulled tightly together by wall, roof and the forms that make it. Then we had a very long deep sight, and wanted to maintain this kind of scale within a garden setting, making those series of elements around the space. Separating them, pulling them out and away from each other. Allowing them to express their own kind of individuality as pieces, and their own materiality as well. This allowed for something I've always been curious about, where there's a tension that's created by the space in between two things - there's an excitement in terms of a joining but somehow there's a resonance that happens as a result of sort of letting them duel off against each other.
v5- Right - a Mannerist relationship of elements in tension.
SL- They're in the play of light and shadow as a result of that. It's
unpredictable, but you can anticipate some of that when it's finally built. The landscape of those pieces actually moved into the interior as well.
v5 - A middle ground set of architectural elements that are joined in a compositional relationship to the exterior. This is very different than a Neutra-like setting where you have devices like framing and reflective surfaces that project one out onto this garden-like space. There is no development of middle ground as subject in Neutra's work.
SL- I always like to think of it as editing away parts of the building to let the flow of spaces kind of borrow from each other. Everything sort of steps down as it moves outwards, and now the piece that begins to respond to it is the bathroom shower that's in the inside. They're both the same scale and they sort of talk to each other. It's funny because it took a while to get used to being in there and using that shower. The client went away on a few trips and said that Paul and I could come and stay there...
v5 - That's the nice thing about being an architect, you get to stay in your own projects every now and then. No one talks about that! (laughing)
SL- Yes, and it was wonderful. It was really a surprise because there was this whole thing about exposur. When I was a kid, we went back to Georgia to visit some relatives, and their shower was out behind the barn overlooking the corn fields. You were out there in the buff, which was a glorious feeling, but you kind of you run up against the feelings within yourself that you don't expect to have.I had similar feelings using the shower I designed in the house. But after a few days it felt totally fine. But it's not something I lived with daily, in my everyday life. There's something inside me that would very much like to have more of that.
v5 - During your stay in the house when it was completed, were there things that surprised you? Were there surprises in the design once it was built?
SL- Yes, the quality of the spaces at different times of day was really an eye opener. I didn't anticipate a lot of it. There was the light that would move across that concrete wall. As the daytime passed the whole materiality of that wall begin to change. One thing I think I'd been most concerned about was the rawness of the materials, because they were just left in their natural form. They tend to be a little hard and tough. I was afraid that it was going to be too cold, or too much like a mausoleum or something, because it was so spare. But the bringing of light into the space, and the exposure to the outside, all that softened the roughness of its surroundings. Really, the space is surprisingly
warm in terms of the way it feels. That was more than I had actually anticipated, and that was a wonderful surprise.
It's funny, because a lot of the things we thought of for the project seemed so right and so simple to both of us at the time, and we didn't necessarily anticipate some of the qualities that would be there. We just didn't really expect that it would feel as good as it did.
The other little house that you mentioned, I think of it as a poor man's version of this house. Some of the ideas in there are the same. But there was a smaller budget, it was a lot tougher, you know. I think it needs more of that softening. Eventually that project will be going into a second stage to get the garden aspect.
v5 - How do you and Paul explore and develop your designs? As the design progresses, is it in model, drawings, computer models?
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