WHAT IS A HOUSE FOR住宅所为何

Tibor Joanelly: Shortly before starting work on Shinoharistics, I had intended to write an essay about three architects and three houses they had designed. The collection was to be Kazuo Shinohara, Luigi Moretti and a third one. At the time, I was never sure, whether to write about Jože Plečnik or Sigurd Lewerentz. In the end I figured out that Shinohara’s gravity was just too strong to combine with others, so I decided to write specifically about him and Tanikawa house. Nevertheless, Plečnik remains a very interesting subject and one day, I can imagine writing Plečnikistics.

WHAT DO KAZUO SHINOHARA AND JOŽE PLEČNIK HAVE IN COMMON?

Most obviously, their research resonated strongly with a national tradition and consequently influenced the sense of identity of each of their respective countries. Shinohara looked for the Japan-ness of space, whereas Plečnik defined the character of the most important public spaces in his capital city, Ljubljana and became the author of many symbols taken up by a then young Slovenia.  Another important similarity between their characters is the cult of the master that they created around themselves, establishing schools and movements founded on their own ideas, with significant numbers of devoted followers. However, apart from these things, I think, they were overall rather different. 

IS PLECNIK’S HOUSE PART OF THE SURROUNDING SYSTEM OF OLD HOUSES THAT IT IS FOUND AMONGST, OR IS IT A NEWCOMER, AN INTRUDER IN THE EXISTING TIGHT NIT CONTEXT?

Well, that depends which version you refer to, for instance, the first design was very close to Shinohara’s House in Yokohama, a kind of moon lander. It was very centralised, very singular. In the later versions, the project, thanks to some additional elements, became more linked to the surroundings. I believe this made the building much better.

Today, you enter through a very narrow alley and arrive to a courtyard flanked by the old building and closed on the front side by the volume of the later addition, designed by Plečnik. If you pass by the winter garden, the courtyard opens towards a big piece of land. The new part, where Plečnik used to live, is oriented towards the garden, adjacent to the yard of the church. This is the first, very basic reading of the situation.

The story goes, that he bought the plot for himself, his brother and sister. Unfortunately, their cohabitation didn’t really work out because the architect was very sensitive and could not be disturbed. Although he depended on both the presence and work of others, Plečnik really needed a concentrated, secluded life in order to work and think.

The house itself reflects this paradoxical situation. It blends contextual integration - formally and functionally melding the old with the new, and an ambitious autonomy - building a space for a very particular individual, taking into account many personal fascinations and preferences.

The house relates not only to its immediate context. It is also connected to the wider city. Beautiful parts of Ljubljana, the whole promenade following the Ljubljanica, the library etc. were all conceived in this house, and the house itself became a testing ground for architectural fragments. Once designed, elements were mocked up and placed in the garden to check how they looked and if they worked or not. Plečnik also used to keep the models of his projects for the city, displaying them in the staircase and in the drawing room upstairs. Through these models the city became very present within the house. And he obsessively collected antiques, often related to his own experience. These influences were in turn spread all over Ljubljana. Plečnik really established a kind of metabolism between house and city, between present and past.

WAS THE HOUSE THE EPICENTRE OF A CULTURAL EARTHQUAKE, SHAKING THE WHOLE CITY? 

 It has a quality like that, although I don’t know too much about the cultural transitions that Ljubljana and Slovenia went through at that time. But in this context, the house must have become a kind of medium by which the cultural transformation was gaining momentum.

Although a private man, ultimately, Plečnik’s personal interests became extremely public – and vice versa, the city became present in the house. It is for this reason that the house remains, for me, interesting. At the same time the house is both unique, and in dialogue with completely diverse contexts.

Plečnik consciously cut himself off from the publicness of the street and decided to live towards the garden, in an intimate relationship with the adjacent church yard. Before, the garden was ordinary, utilitarian, as one finds everywhere in the east, in the yards of old villages or petty bourgeois houses. The garden served for growing food or keeping animals, it was an essential resource. But Plečnik completely changed its meaning by ennobling both, the yard, and existing houses. 

This attitude is well expressed in the garden at the side of the house which exudes a classicist castle-like attitude and creates a strange dichotomy – at once being a very closed world, known only to itself, whilst, through the architect’s lived commitment towards the city, opening to a much broader context. Interestingly, the garden was still used for growing plants, for which neighbours were welcomed to cultivate for their own purpose.

It’s important to mention, that the main access to Plečnik’s house was, at that time, along a path that follows the border of the church yard and not through the old house from the street. His guests, students and for that matter, clients had to symbolically cross the domain of the church to access the architect’s house. There they had to wait on a veranda, sometimes for hours until he came to the door and greeted them. I think, it’s a very architectonic approach to staging everyday life - very theatrical. As a young student this is what attracted me to it. You cannot really move around the house without practicing a kind of enforced ritual, choreographed by the architectural arrangement. And I feel a strong pull – like a tractor beam – towards such a religious commitment, although I consider myself an atheist (I’m not even baptized).

WHAT DO YOU REFER TO WITH THE WORD RITUAL?

Ritual was omnipresent in all classical cultures before modernism. Plečnik was deeply rooted in them and understood the potential of rituals in the sequencing of his architecture. 

For instance, the entrance veranda is much more than just an entrance. It’s like entering the Acropolis, you have a sort of Propylaea, entering becomes a procession. The propylaeum is a topic that Plečnik used almost everywhere to differentiate the reality he built from everything around. It introduced a suspense, a tension and set a solemn place of transition. 

In almost every building he drew, you have the large, heavy, black columns and a sacred path that both frame and lead you into the plan.

WHY DO YOU THINK THE MAIN ROOM IS CIRCULAR? 

 There is surely a reference to the main hall in a baroque castle, projecting towards the garden. Together with the three windows, the circularity creates a very strong symmetry and a very strong axis towards the outside. And, beyond that, the house, with the rectangular roof, reminds a free-standing column with strange proportions… An architect with a fascination for columns himself inhabits a column – what a striking, witty image!

The circular shape is also a very concentrated form. He used it to explore the close connection between different activities. It is interesting, because even if your ambition is to completely dissolve your life in a discipline or dedicate yourself completely to something, the opposition of bodily needs and the creative process remains. Plečnik concentrated his whole life, his whole creativity within this one space. I assume, that’s why he introduced a heavy beam, resting above the door frames. Symbolically, it separates the space for rest and the space for work.

Another reason that comes to my mind is more formal. He was strongly influenced by both high Italian architecture and the more rudimentary peasant architecture of Ljubljana and its surroundings. He travelled and visited many local villages. The cylinder could be seen as the tower of a castle, typical of that region. I guess, it also had something to do with spirituality. The stronghold of faith was a popular metaphor in the times of Plečnik.

I FIND THE CONTRAST BETWEEN TWO COMPLETELY OPPOSITE SPACES INTERESTING. NAMELY, THE COMBINATION OF THE CENTRAL CIRCULAR ROOM, A PLACE OF WORK AND SLEEP, WITH THE VERANDA - A RECTANGULAR COMPLETELY GLAZED AND ELONGATED SPACE.

A central space in architectural history was usually meant to be a space of cult, of dedication to divinity, of perfection. Less symmetrical, less concentrated geometries were often more exposed to the nature or to the city, working in a less ceremonial, more relaxed way. Here the two types of rooms are connected along one straight line, you can just switch from one to another very quickly. 

Plečnik believed that a house should always be built according to the design principles of a church. It means, that the primary architectural form of his house is meant to be a sacred space. It’s not directed, it’s not even a space to be together. It has the absolute form of the circle, which gives it autonomy, therefore makes it resemble the space of a church. The classical approach to design tells us that it needs to be connected to its surroundings by other, so to speak, less absolute elements, which, in my opinion, makes the house very interesting from the point of view of composition. You have the main space and the surroundings, kept at a distance, or filtered through a series of intermediate spaces.

These external spaces link the house to its context, like an anchor. They establish close relationships to the entrance path, to the church, to the garden, and to the field full of experimental mock-ups. They make the house a kind of ecosystem. The house doesn’t really fall into parts, everything is fused, but you can still read the individual elements. They keep their own substance, and their own character, like organs of an organism where each one plays a supportive role.

SHINOHARA TOO WORKED WITH BRINGING TOGETHER CONTRADICTORY FEATURES OF SPACE, STRESSING THE CONTRASTS AND ABRUPT CHANGES, PLEČNIK, AS WE CAN SEE EVEN NOW, ALSO COMBINED SPACES OF RADICALLY DIFFERENT CHARACTERS, BUT THERE IS A GREATER ENDEAVOUR TO ACHIEVE HARMONY, A STATE OF REST BETWEEN THINGS.

Shinohara also distinguished between “symbolic” and “functional” spaces. But the conceptual clarity with which he did that, separates him from Plečnik. I think it’s a question of taste or personality. Shinohara was a very „sushi” kind of person. In sushi you leave everything as it is, you combine fish with rice without any mediating element, without sauce. Soy sauce is added afterwards when you pick the Sushi piece by piece and dip it. 

Personally, I think Plečnik was completely different. He searched for a Gesamtkunstwerk, for a building conceived and composed to the last detail and seamlessly coherent, all relying on tradition and symbolic relations. Shinohara relied on concepts of contradiction, fissure etc. 

To understand the way how Plečnik was designing, the reception room on the first floor of his house is important. Only very close friends were invited there – the architect seems to have been very selective. Others had to wait. The reception room had a special and different atmosphere than the rest of the house. However, it was embedded within a total design concept. I would say, there are no strong contrasts between the spaces, experiencing them happens fluidly because they are so much shaped by one architect’s hand. And the word „hand” is crucial here. With Shinohara, it’s much more conceptual, I would say, it’s more about mind and intellect and much less about craft or drawing. With Shinohara, he is always searching for oppositions, divisions, differences, as if a house was doing mathematics.

In Plečnik there is rather a kind of spiritual idea behind his moves, that holds everything together, which is, of course, embedded in religion and related to the idea of Secession Gesamtkunstwerk, where he comes from. The building slowly acquires its integrity, not through formal concepts, but more by the effort invested in the exquisite detailing, precise use of materials, proportions between the elements etc. I’d say that Plečnik is a draughtsman, contrasting Shinohara the mathematician – although sketches played a crucial role in Shinohara’s designs.

IS IT A HOUSE EVERY GRANDMA WOULD LOVE TO LIVE IN?

Yes, of course. I think this has to do with the expression. It is really an architecture that uses architectural elements to directly address your presence. You see a column, you start to talk with the column, you see a sculpture, your eyes interrelate with it. Plečnik was never interested in abstraction, his house is easy to understand, simple to live in. And it’s even homely.  

Having said that though, I think the house would still work without decoration and without many of the objects placed within it. It would even work without the classical vocabulary. It’s just cleverly done in terms of proportions, materiality, thresholds, and comfort.

DO YOU THINK THAT THIS ASPECT IS SOMETHING THAT MAKES PLEČNIK A MODERNIST OR IS HE A PART OF A CONSERVATIVE, EVEN SENTIMENTAL TRADITION? 

In the case of his house, the attitude of implementing architecture within a certain context and completely remodelling it, is extremely modernistic. If we then look at individual rooms, there is always the relation to outdoor space, again, a very modern preoccupation. But then he used classical forms, classical compositional schemes, traditional elements, the list goes on. 

Somehow it is both. He intuitively started to remodel Ljubljana without any direct commission from the city. There were maybe two or three people sitting together drinking a beer or a bottle of wine and discussing issues of faith, the city of Ljubljana and Slovenia’s identity as whole. They worked together on improving and embellishing the city. Plečnik just started designing. He himself, took the responsibility of remodeling of the city. This was a very progressive approach because he was never commissioned by the authorities. He just did it, never asking to be paid.

On the other hand, Plečnik was extremely old-fashioned as a person. He accepted progress and change. But in the end, he was rather reluctant to make them important. I think it boils down to his faith. He really stayed old-fashioned in the way he believed in God. Very similar to Gaudí. Still, at work they both were able to come up with cutting edge ideas. 

Plečnik seems to have been reluctant against the modernist dogma of avantgarde with paradoxically the same determination as he was open to shaping his surroundings totally, by newly arranging known forms – which again is very modern in essence.

I cannot precisely trace this to his faith, but the connection to it was extremely productive. With a side look to Gaudí, it seems that the word “creation” – not the “creativity” of our times – might stand at the very epicenter of their will against the world. And creation is related to our times in a more credible way if it is understood as something coming from our very human and natural nature – if you allow for such a tautology. I’m referring here to creation as a concept related to the terrestrial, the earth-bound, as Bruno Latour would say. 

IF YOU HAVE TO THINK ABOUT THE HOUSE THAT YOU KNOW AND LIKE VERY MUCH, BUT IN ITS PROPERTIES, ITS FUNDAMENTAL WAY OF BEING CONCEIVED IS OPPOSITE TO PLEČNIK HOUSE, WHAT COMES TO YOUR MIND?

If we look for an opposition, I guess, it should be disconnected from its surroundings. I think this is the main point. An architecture that is only there for architecture - maximally autonomous. And among the houses I know from visiting, then it would be something like Konstantin Melnikov’s own atelier and house in Moscow, a building in splendid isolation between its neighbours from the end of 19th and beginning of 20th century. It’s designed more as an ideal type than for a specific place or context; context doesn’t play any role.

Or, maybe more precise: there is context too, of course: a social context, even a political one of great impact, also a concrete material one – but ex negativo, as if the house directly came from the future. 

What is interesting in Plečnik’s house is that it is really a kind of a household. It’s more than a dwelling like Villa Saracena or La Petite Maison of Le Corbusier or Tanikawa house. I will always come back to that - it’s an ecosystem. The architect was living there. He was testing the expression of his style, the elements of his architecture, in and around the house, maybe like Aalto did in his Atelier. Plečnik first started to reshape the surroundings of the house, then he reshaped the surroundings of the garden and the relation to the churchyard. Then, the architect started to work on the relation to the city. This house is both homely and a kind of a node within a much broader network – intimate and public in its very sense.

04.12.2021

蒂伯尔-乔内利:在开始《筱原学(Shinoharistics)》的工作前不久,我曾打算写一篇关于三位建筑师和他们设计的三所住宅的文章。这个系列将是筱原一男、路易吉-莫雷蒂和第三位建筑师。当时,我一直不确定,是否要写乔泽-普莱切尼克(Jože Plečnik)或西格德-卢埃伦茨(Sigurd Lewerentz)。最后我发现,筱原的引力实在是太强了,无法与其他人结合,所以我决定专门写他和谷川家。尽管如此,普莱切尼克仍然是一个非常有趣的主题,有一天,我可以想象写普莱切尼克学(Plečnikistics)。

筱原和乔泽-普莱切尼克有什么共同点?

最明显的是,他们的研究与民族传统产生了强烈的共鸣,从而影响了他们各自国家的认同感。筱原寻找空间的日本性,而普莱切尼克则定义了他的首都卢布尔雅那最重要的公共空间的特征,并谱写了许多取自当时还年轻的斯洛文尼亚的符号。他们之间的另一个重要的相似之处是,他们围绕自己创造了对大师的崇拜,建立了以自己的思想为基础的学派和运动,拥有大量的忠实追随者。然而,除了这些之外,我认为,他们总体上是相当不同的。

普莱切尼克自宅是它所处的周围老住宅系统的一部分,还是它是一个新来者,一个在现有的狭小环境中的入侵者?

嗯,这取决于你指的是哪个版本,例如,第一版设计非常接近于横滨的筱原之家,像一种月球登陆器。它是非常集中的,非常单一的。在后来的版本中,由于一些增加的元素,这个项目变得与周围的环境联系更紧密。我相信这使得房子变得更好。

今天,你通过一条非常狭窄的小巷进入,来到一个院子,两侧是老建筑,正面被普莱切尼克设计的后增的体量所封闭。如果你经过冬季花园,院子会向一大片土地开放。新增的部分,也就是普莱切尼克曾经居住的地方,是面向花园的,与教堂的小园相邻。这是对情况的第一个非常基本的解读。

故事是这样的,他为自己、他的兄弟和姐妹买了这块地。不幸的是,他们的同居生活并没有真正实现,因为建筑师非常敏感,不能被打扰。虽然他依赖于他人的在场和工作,但普莱切尼克真正需要的是一种集中的、隐蔽的生活,以便工作和思考。

住宅本身反映了这种矛盾的情况。它融入了文脉整合——在形式和功能上熔接了新旧,以及有抱负的自主性——为一个特定的个体建造一个空间,考虑到许多私人的兴趣和偏好。

这座住宅不仅与它周围的环境关联,它还与更广泛的城市相联接。卢布尔雅那那些美丽的地方,沿着卢布尔雅那河的整个长廊、图书馆等都是在这所住宅中构思的,住宅本身也成为建筑片段的实验场。

一旦设计完成,一些元件就会被实体模拟出来,并放置在花园里,以检查它们的外观和效用。普莱切尼克还经常保留他城市项目的模型,把它们展示在楼梯和楼上的休息室里。通过这些模型,城市在住宅中富于存在感。他还痴迷于收集古董,往往与自身的经历相关。这些影响反过来又传遍了卢布尔雅那。普莱切尼克确实在住宅和城市之间,在现在和过去之间建立了一种新陈代谢。

这所住宅是否是文化地震的震中,撼动了整座城市?

它有这样一种特质,虽然我对卢布尔雅那和斯洛文尼亚当时经历的文化转型了解不多。但在这种情况下,这所住宅必然成为了一种媒介,通过这种媒介,文化转型的势头越来越大。

虽然是一个内向的人,但最终,普莱切尼克的个人兴趣变得极其公开——反之亦然,城市在住宅中变得有存在感。正是由于这个原因,这所住宅对我来说,依然很有趣。这所住宅同时既是独特的,又与完全多样的文脉进行了对话。

普莱切尼克有意识地将自己与街道的公共性隔绝开来,并决定住在花园里,与相邻的教堂院子建立亲密的关系。以前,花园是普通的、实用的,就像人们在东部随处可见的旧村庄或小布尔乔维亚住宅的院子里一样。花园用于种植食物或饲养动物,它是一种基本资源。但普莱切尼克完全改变了它的意义,使院子和现有的住宅都变得高贵起来。

这种态度在住宅边上的花园中得到了很好的体现,它散发着古典主义城堡般的姿态,并创造了一个奇怪的二分法——既是一个非常封闭的世界,只为自己所知,同时,通过建筑师对城市生活的承诺,向一个更广泛的背景开放。有趣的是,花园仍然被用来种植植物,欢迎邻居们为自己的目的进行栽培。

值得一提的是,当时通往普莱切尼克家的主要通道是沿着教堂院子的边界走的,而不是从街上穿过老房子。他的客人、学生和客户不得不象征性地穿过教堂的领域,进入建筑师的住宅。在那里,他们不得不在长廊上等待,有时要等上几个小时,直到他来到门口迎接他们。我认为,这是用一种很建筑学的方式来上演日常生活——非常戏剧化。作为一个年轻的学生,这就是它吸引我的地方。你需要被迫练习一种仪式,才能真的在住宅中走动,这种仪式是由建筑布局来编排的。我感到一种强烈的牵引力——就像一道牵引光束——指向这样一种宗教承诺,尽管我认为自己是无神论者(我甚至没有接受洗礼)。

你说的 "仪式 "是指什么?

仪式在现代主义之前的所有古典文化中无所不在。普莱切尼克深深地扎根于其中,并理解仪式在其建筑排序中的潜力。

例如,入口处的长廊远不止是一个入口。就像进入卫城,你有一种卫城山门的感觉,进入成为一种游行。卫城山门是普莱切尼克几乎到处使用的一个主题,以区分他所建立的现实和周围的一切。它引入了一种悬念,一种紧张,并设置了一个庄严的过渡场所。

在他画的几乎每一栋建筑中,你都会看到巨大的、沉重的、黑色的柱子和一条神圣的道路,它们既是框架,又引导你进入方案。

你认为主房间为什么是圆形的?

这肯定是参考了巴洛克式城堡中的主厅,向花园突出。与三个窗户一起,圆形创造了强烈的对称性和强烈的指向外部的轴线。而且在上面,一个有着长方形屋顶的住宅,让人联想到一个具有奇怪比例的自立的柱子......一个对柱子着迷的建筑师自己居住在一个柱子内——多么惊人又诙谐的形象啊!

圆形也是一种非常集中的形式。他用它来探索不同活动之间的密切联系。这很有趣,因为即使你的野心是将你的生活完全溶解在一门学科中,或将自己完全奉献给某件事情,身体需求和创作过程的对立仍然存在。普莱切尼克把他的整个生命,他的整个创造力集中在这一个空间中。我想,这就是为什么他引入了一根重梁,放在门框上方。象征性地,它把休息空间和工作空间分开。

我想到的另一个原因是更加正式的。他受到高级意大利建筑和卢布尔雅那及其周边地区更原始的农民建筑的强烈影响。他旅行并访问了许多当地的村庄。圆柱体可以被看作是城堡的塔楼,是那个地区的典型。我想,这也与精神信仰有关。信仰的堡垒在普莱切尼克时代是一个流行的隐喻。

我发现两个完全相反的空间之间的对比很有趣。即,中心的圆形房间,一个工作和睡眠的地方,与长廊的结合——一个长方形的完全装了玻璃和拉长的空间。

建筑史上的中心空间通常意味着是一个空间崇拜,对神性的奉献,完美。不那么对称、不那么集中的几何形状往往更多地暴露在大自然或城市中,以一种不那么仪式化、更轻松的方式工作。在这里,两种类型的房间是沿着一条直线连接的,你可以很快地从一种房间切换到另一种。

普莱切尼克认为,住宅应该始终按照教堂的设计原则来建造。这意味着,他的住宅的主要建筑形式旨在塑造一个神圣的空间。它不是指向性的,它甚至不是一个可以在一起的空间。它具有圆的绝对形式,这给予它自主性,因而使得它类似于教堂的空间。古典的设计方法告诉我们,它需要通过其他的,可以说是不太绝对的元素与周围的环境相连接,在我看来,这使得住宅从构图的角度来看非常有趣。你有主要的空间和周围的环境,保持着一定的距离,或通过一系列的中间空间过渡。

这些外部空间把房子和它的环境联系起来,就像一个锚。它们与入口处的小路、教堂、花园和充满试验性实体模型的场地建立起了密切的关系。它们使房子成为一种生态系统。这座房子并没有真正地分成几个部分,所有的东西都是融合在一起的,但你仍然可以读懂各个元素。它们保持着自己的实质,和自己的特性,就像一个有机体的器官,每一个都发挥着支持性的作用。

筱原也致力于将矛盾的空间特征结合在一起,强调对比和突然的变化,普莱切尼克,正如我们现在所看到的,也结合了完全不同特征的空间,但用更大的努力来实现和谐,一种事物之间的休止状态。

筱原也区分了 "象征性 "和 "功能性 "空间。但他在概念上的明确性,使他与普莱切尼克区分开来。我想这是一个品味或个性的问题。筱原是一种很 "寿司 "的人。在寿司中,你让一切保持原样,把鱼和米饭结合起来,没有任何中介元素,没有酱汁。酱油是事后添加的,当你逐一夹起寿司去浸泡的时候。 

就个人而言,我认为普莱切尼克是完全不同的。他寻找的是一个整体艺术作品(Gesamtkunstwerk),一个构思和组成到最终细节的建筑,而且是无缝连接的,全部依赖于传统和象征的关系。筱原依靠的是矛盾、裂隙等概念。

要了解普莱切尼克的设计方式,他家一楼的接待室很重要。只有非常亲密的朋友被邀请到那里——建筑师似乎是非常有选择性的。其他人不得不等待。接待室有一种特殊的不同于住宅其他地方的氛围。然而它被嵌入到整体的设计概念中。我想说,这些空间之间没有强烈的对比,体验它们的过程是流畅的,因为它们是由一个建筑师的手塑造出来的。而 "手 "这个词在这里是至关重要的。对于筱原来说,它更多的是概念性的,我想说的是,它更多的是关于头脑和智力,而更少的是关于工艺或绘画。对于筱原来说,他总是在寻找对立面、分裂、差异,就像住宅在做数学题一样。

在普莱切尼克身上,他的举动背后有一种精神理念,将所有的东西凝聚在一起,当然,这是在宗教中嵌入的,与他所来自的分离派整体艺术(Secession Gesamtkunstwerk)的理念有关。这座建筑慢慢地获得了它的完整性,不是通过形式上的概念,而是更多地通过在精致的细节设计、材料的精确使用、元素之间的比例等方面投入的努力。我想说普莱切尼克是一个绘图员,对比与筱原像个数学家——尽管草图在筱原的设计中起着至关重要的作用。

这是每一位祖母都喜欢住的房子吗?

是的,当然了。我认为这与表达方式有关。这确实是一个使用建筑元素直接定位你的存在的建筑物。你看到一根柱子,你开始与柱子交谈,你看到一尊雕塑,你的眼睛与它相互关联。普莱切尼克对抽象的东西从来不感兴趣,他的房子很容易理解,很简单就能住进去。而且它甚至是家庭式的。

尽管如此,我认为这所住宅在没有装饰,没有那么多放在其中的物品的情况下,仍然可以运作。它甚至在没有古典语汇的情况下也可以成立。它只是在比例、材料、界限和舒适度方面做得很巧妙。

你认为这一方面是使普莱切尼克成为现代主义者的原因,还是他是一个保守的、甚至是感性的传统的一部分?

就他的自宅而言,在一定的文脉下落实建筑,并完全重塑它,这种态度是非常现代的。如果我们再看一下各个房间,总是有着与室外空间的关系,这也是一个非常现代的关注点。但他又使用了古典的形式、古典的构成模式、传统的元素,不一而足。

某种程度上兼而有之。他凭直觉开始改造卢布尔雅那,没有得到城市的任何直接委托。也许有两三个人坐在一起,喝着一瓶啤酒或葡萄酒,讨论信仰问题、卢布尔雅那市和斯洛文尼亚的整体身份。他们一起努力改善和美化这座城市。普莱切尼克就这样开始设计。他自己承担了改造城市的责任。这是一种非常进步的方法,因为他从来没有受到当局的委托。他只是做了这件事,从未要求得到报酬。

另一方面,普莱切尼克作为一个人是极其守旧的。他接受进步和变化。但最终,他相当不情愿让这些事变得重要。我认为这可以归结为他的信仰。他在信仰上帝的方式上确实保持了老派的风格。与高迪非常相似。尽管如此,在工作中,他们都能提出最前沿的想法。

普莱切尼克似乎抗拒现代主义的前卫教义,但矛盾的是,通过重新安排已知的形式,他对塑造他的环境持完全开放的态度——这在本质上又是非常现代的。

我不能准确地把这一点追溯到他的信仰上,但与信仰的联系是极具生产力的。从侧面看高迪,似乎 "创造 "这个词——而不是我们这个时代的 "创造"——可能就站在他们对抗世界的意志的中心。如果创造被理解为来自我们人类和自然本性的东西——如果你允许这样的赘诉——那么创造与我们的时代有更可信的联系。我在这里指的是创造作为一个与陆地有关的概念,地球表面的,正如布鲁诺-拉图尔所说的。

如果你必须想起一个你了解且非常喜欢的住宅,但以其属性来看,它的基本构思方式与普莱切尼克自宅相反,你会想到什么?

如果我们寻找一个对照,我想,它应该与周围的环境脱节。我想这是最主要的一点。一个只为建筑而存在的建筑--最大限度地自主。在我所知道的访问的房子中,那么它将是像康斯坦丁客梅利尼科夫(Konstantin Melnikov)在莫斯科的工作室和自宅,一个在19世纪末和20世纪初的邻居之间的华丽隔绝的建筑。它的设计更多的是作为一种理想的类型,而不是为一个特定的地点或文脉;文脉不发挥任何作用。

或者,也许更准确地说,当然也有文脉:一个社会文脉,甚至一个有巨大影响的政治文脉,也是一个具体的物质背景——但从否定的方面(ex negativo),仿佛房子直接来自未来。

普莱切尼克的房子的有趣之处在于,它确实是一种家庭住宅。它超出于像萨拉切纳住宅或勒-柯布西耶的母亲住宅,或谷川之家那样的住宅。我将永远回到这一点——它是一个生态系统。建筑师在那里生活。他测试他的风格的表达,他的建筑元素,在住宅里和周围环境中,也许就像阿尔托在他的工作室所做的。普莱切尼克首先开始重塑房子的周围,然后他重塑花园的周围和与教堂院子的关系。然后,建筑师开始着手处理与城市的关系。这座房子既是家庭式的,又是一个更广泛的网络中的一个节点--从其本身的意义上来说,是亲密的,也是公共的。

20211204

Tibor Joanelly: Shortly before starting work on Shinoharistics, I had intended to write an essay about three architects and three houses they had designed. The collection was to be Kazuo Shinohara, Luigi Moretti and a third one. At the time, I was never sure, whether to write about Jože Plečnik or Sigurd Lewerentz. In the end I figured out that Shinohara’s gravity was just too strong to combine with others, so I decided to write specifically about him and Tanikawa house. Nevertheless, Plečnik remains a very interesting subject and one day, I can imagine writing Plečnikistics.

WHAT DO KAZUO SHINOHARA AND JOŽE PLEČNIK HAVE IN COMMON?

Most obviously, their research resonated strongly with a national tradition and consequently influenced the sense of identity of each of their respective countries. Shinohara looked for the Japan-ness of space, whereas Plečnik defined the character of the most important public spaces in his capital city, Ljubljana and became the author of many symbols taken up by a then young Slovenia.  Another important similarity between their characters is the cult of the master that they created around themselves, establishing schools and movements founded on their own ideas, with significant numbers of devoted followers. However, apart from these things, I think, they were overall rather different. 

IS PLECNIK’S HOUSE PART OF THE SURROUNDING SYSTEM OF OLD HOUSES THAT IT IS FOUND AMONGST, OR IS IT A NEWCOMER, AN INTRUDER IN THE EXISTING TIGHT NIT CONTEXT?

Well, that depends which version you refer to, for instance, the first design was very close to Shinohara’s House in Yokohama, a kind of moon lander. It was very centralised, very singular. In the later versions, the project, thanks to some additional elements, became more linked to the surroundings. I believe this made the building much better.

Today, you enter through a very narrow alley and arrive to a courtyard flanked by the old building and closed on the front side by the volume of the later addition, designed by Plečnik. If you pass by the winter garden, the courtyard opens towards a big piece of land. The new part, where Plečnik used to live, is oriented towards the garden, adjacent to the yard of the church. This is the first, very basic reading of the situation.

The story goes, that he bought the plot for himself, his brother and sister. Unfortunately, their cohabitation didn’t really work out because the architect was very sensitive and could not be disturbed. Although he depended on both the presence and work of others, Plečnik really needed a concentrated, secluded life in order to work and think.

The house itself reflects this paradoxical situation. It blends contextual integration - formally and functionally melding the old with the new, and an ambitious autonomy - building a space for a very particular individual, taking into account many personal fascinations and preferences.

The house relates not only to its immediate context. It is also connected to the wider city. Beautiful parts of Ljubljana, the whole promenade following the Ljubljanica, the library etc. were all conceived in this house, and the house itself became a testing ground for architectural fragments. Once designed, elements were mocked up and placed in the garden to check how they looked and if they worked or not. Plečnik also used to keep the models of his projects for the city, displaying them in the staircase and in the drawing room upstairs. Through these models the city became very present within the house. And he obsessively collected antiques, often related to his own experience. These influences were in turn spread all over Ljubljana. Plečnik really established a kind of metabolism between house and city, between present and past.

WAS THE HOUSE THE EPICENTRE OF A CULTURAL EARTHQUAKE, SHAKING THE WHOLE CITY? 

 It has a quality like that, although I don’t know too much about the cultural transitions that Ljubljana and Slovenia went through at that time. But in this context, the house must have become a kind of medium by which the cultural transformation was gaining momentum.

Although a private man, ultimately, Plečnik’s personal interests became extremely public – and vice versa, the city became present in the house. It is for this reason that the house remains, for me, interesting. At the same time the house is both unique, and in dialogue with completely diverse contexts.

Plečnik consciously cut himself off from the publicness of the street and decided to live towards the garden, in an intimate relationship with the adjacent church yard. Before, the garden was ordinary, utilitarian, as one finds everywhere in the east, in the yards of old villages or petty bourgeois houses. The garden served for growing food or keeping animals, it was an essential resource. But Plečnik completely changed its meaning by ennobling both, the yard, and existing houses. 

This attitude is well expressed in the garden at the side of the house which exudes a classicist castle-like attitude and creates a strange dichotomy – at once being a very closed world, known only to itself, whilst, through the architect’s lived commitment towards the city, opening to a much broader context. Interestingly, the garden was still used for growing plants, for which neighbours were welcomed to cultivate for their own purpose.

It’s important to mention, that the main access to Plečnik’s house was, at that time, along a path that follows the border of the church yard and not through the old house from the street. His guests, students and for that matter, clients had to symbolically cross the domain of the church to access the architect’s house. There they had to wait on a veranda, sometimes for hours until he came to the door and greeted them. I think, it’s a very architectonic approach to staging everyday life - very theatrical. As a young student this is what attracted me to it. You cannot really move around the house without practicing a kind of enforced ritual, choreographed by the architectural arrangement. And I feel a strong pull – like a tractor beam – towards such a religious commitment, although I consider myself an atheist (I’m not even baptized).

WHAT DO YOU REFER TO WITH THE WORD RITUAL?

Ritual was omnipresent in all classical cultures before modernism. Plečnik was deeply rooted in them and understood the potential of rituals in the sequencing of his architecture. 

For instance, the entrance veranda is much more than just an entrance. It’s like entering the Acropolis, you have a sort of Propylaea, entering becomes a procession. The propylaeum is a topic that Plečnik used almost everywhere to differentiate the reality he built from everything around. It introduced a suspense, a tension and set a solemn place of transition. 

In almost every building he drew, you have the large, heavy, black columns and a sacred path that both frame and lead you into the plan.

WHY DO YOU THINK THE MAIN ROOM IS CIRCULAR? 

 There is surely a reference to the main hall in a baroque castle, projecting towards the garden. Together with the three windows, the circularity creates a very strong symmetry and a very strong axis towards the outside. And, beyond that, the house, with the rectangular roof, reminds a free-standing column with strange proportions… An architect with a fascination for columns himself inhabits a column – what a striking, witty image!

The circular shape is also a very concentrated form. He used it to explore the close connection between different activities. It is interesting, because even if your ambition is to completely dissolve your life in a discipline or dedicate yourself completely to something, the opposition of bodily needs and the creative process remains. Plečnik concentrated his whole life, his whole creativity within this one space. I assume, that’s why he introduced a heavy beam, resting above the door frames. Symbolically, it separates the space for rest and the space for work.

Another reason that comes to my mind is more formal. He was strongly influenced by both high Italian architecture and the more rudimentary peasant architecture of Ljubljana and its surroundings. He travelled and visited many local villages. The cylinder could be seen as the tower of a castle, typical of that region. I guess, it also had something to do with spirituality. The stronghold of faith was a popular metaphor in the times of Plečnik.

I FIND THE CONTRAST BETWEEN TWO COMPLETELY OPPOSITE SPACES INTERESTING. NAMELY, THE COMBINATION OF THE CENTRAL CIRCULAR ROOM, A PLACE OF WORK AND SLEEP, WITH THE VERANDA - A RECTANGULAR COMPLETELY GLAZED AND ELONGATED SPACE.

A central space in architectural history was usually meant to be a space of cult, of dedication to divinity, of perfection. Less symmetrical, less concentrated geometries were often more exposed to the nature or to the city, working in a less ceremonial, more relaxed way. Here the two types of rooms are connected along one straight line, you can just switch from one to another very quickly. 

Plečnik believed that a house should always be built according to the design principles of a church. It means, that the primary architectural form of his house is meant to be a sacred space. It’s not directed, it’s not even a space to be together. It has the absolute form of the circle, which gives it autonomy, therefore makes it resemble the space of a church. The classical approach to design tells us that it needs to be connected to its surroundings by other, so to speak, less absolute elements, which, in my opinion, makes the house very interesting from the point of view of composition. You have the main space and the surroundings, kept at a distance, or filtered through a series of intermediate spaces.

These external spaces link the house to its context, like an anchor. They establish close relationships to the entrance path, to the church, to the garden, and to the field full of experimental mock-ups. They make the house a kind of ecosystem. The house doesn’t really fall into parts, everything is fused, but you can still read the individual elements. They keep their own substance, and their own character, like organs of an organism where each one plays a supportive role.

SHINOHARA TOO WORKED WITH BRINGING TOGETHER CONTRADICTORY FEATURES OF SPACE, STRESSING THE CONTRASTS AND ABRUPT CHANGES, PLEČNIK, AS WE CAN SEE EVEN NOW, ALSO COMBINED SPACES OF RADICALLY DIFFERENT CHARACTERS, BUT THERE IS A GREATER ENDEAVOUR TO ACHIEVE HARMONY, A STATE OF REST BETWEEN THINGS.

Shinohara also distinguished between “symbolic” and “functional” spaces. But the conceptual clarity with which he did that, separates him from Plečnik. I think it’s a question of taste or personality. Shinohara was a very „sushi” kind of person. In sushi you leave everything as it is, you combine fish with rice without any mediating element, without sauce. Soy sauce is added afterwards when you pick the Sushi piece by piece and dip it. 

Personally, I think Plečnik was completely different. He searched for a Gesamtkunstwerk, for a building conceived and composed to the last detail and seamlessly coherent, all relying on tradition and symbolic relations. Shinohara relied on concepts of contradiction, fissure etc. 

To understand the way how Plečnik was designing, the reception room on the first floor of his house is important. Only very close friends were invited there – the architect seems to have been very selective. Others had to wait. The reception room had a special and different atmosphere than the rest of the house. However, it was embedded within a total design concept. I would say, there are no strong contrasts between the spaces, experiencing them happens fluidly because they are so much shaped by one architect’s hand. And the word „hand” is crucial here. With Shinohara, it’s much more conceptual, I would say, it’s more about mind and intellect and much less about craft or drawing. With Shinohara, he is always searching for oppositions, divisions, differences, as if a house was doing mathematics.

In Plečnik there is rather a kind of spiritual idea behind his moves, that holds everything together, which is, of course, embedded in religion and related to the idea of Secession Gesamtkunstwerk, where he comes from. The building slowly acquires its integrity, not through formal concepts, but more by the effort invested in the exquisite detailing, precise use of materials, proportions between the elements etc. I’d say that Plečnik is a draughtsman, contrasting Shinohara the mathematician – although sketches played a crucial role in Shinohara’s designs.

IS IT A HOUSE EVERY GRANDMA WOULD LOVE TO LIVE IN?

Yes, of course. I think this has to do with the expression. It is really an architecture that uses architectural elements to directly address your presence. You see a column, you start to talk with the column, you see a sculpture, your eyes interrelate with it. Plečnik was never interested in abstraction, his house is easy to understand, simple to live in. And it’s even homely.  

Having said that though, I think the house would still work without decoration and without many of the objects placed within it. It would even work without the classical vocabulary. It’s just cleverly done in terms of proportions, materiality, thresholds, and comfort.

DO YOU THINK THAT THIS ASPECT IS SOMETHING THAT MAKES PLEČNIK A MODERNIST OR IS HE A PART OF A CONSERVATIVE, EVEN SENTIMENTAL TRADITION? 

In the case of his house, the attitude of implementing architecture within a certain context and completely remodelling it, is extremely modernistic. If we then look at individual rooms, there is always the relation to outdoor space, again, a very modern preoccupation. But then he used classical forms, classical compositional schemes, traditional elements, the list goes on. 

Somehow it is both. He intuitively started to remodel Ljubljana without any direct commission from the city. There were maybe two or three people sitting together drinking a beer or a bottle of wine and discussing issues of faith, the city of Ljubljana and Slovenia’s identity as whole. They worked together on improving and embellishing the city. Plečnik just started designing. He himself, took the responsibility of remodeling of the city. This was a very progressive approach because he was never commissioned by the authorities. He just did it, never asking to be paid.

On the other hand, Plečnik was extremely old-fashioned as a person. He accepted progress and change. But in the end, he was rather reluctant to make them important. I think it boils down to his faith. He really stayed old-fashioned in the way he believed in God. Very similar to Gaudí. Still, at work they both were able to come up with cutting edge ideas. 

Plečnik seems to have been reluctant against the modernist dogma of avantgarde with paradoxically the same determination as he was open to shaping his surroundings totally, by newly arranging known forms – which again is very modern in essence.

I cannot precisely trace this to his faith, but the connection to it was extremely productive. With a side look to Gaudí, it seems that the word “creation” – not the “creativity” of our times – might stand at the very epicenter of their will against the world. And creation is related to our times in a more credible way if it is understood as something coming from our very human and natural nature – if you allow for such a tautology. I’m referring here to creation as a concept related to the terrestrial, the earth-bound, as Bruno Latour would say. 

IF YOU HAVE TO THINK ABOUT THE HOUSE THAT YOU KNOW AND LIKE VERY MUCH, BUT IN ITS PROPERTIES, ITS FUNDAMENTAL WAY OF BEING CONCEIVED IS OPPOSITE TO PLEČNIK HOUSE, WHAT COMES TO YOUR MIND?

If we look for an opposition, I guess, it should be disconnected from its surroundings. I think this is the main point. An architecture that is only there for architecture - maximally autonomous. And among the houses I know from visiting, then it would be something like Konstantin Melnikov’s own atelier and house in Moscow, a building in splendid isolation between its neighbours from the end of 19th and beginning of 20th century. It’s designed more as an ideal type than for a specific place or context; context doesn’t play any role.

Or, maybe more precise: there is context too, of course: a social context, even a political one of great impact, also a concrete material one – but ex negativo, as if the house directly came from the future. 

What is interesting in Plečnik’s house is that it is really a kind of a household. It’s more than a dwelling like Villa Saracena or La Petite Maison of Le Corbusier or Tanikawa house. I will always come back to that - it’s an ecosystem. The architect was living there. He was testing the expression of his style, the elements of his architecture, in and around the house, maybe like Aalto did in his Atelier. Plečnik first started to reshape the surroundings of the house, then he reshaped the surroundings of the garden and the relation to the churchyard. Then, the architect started to work on the relation to the city. This house is both homely and a kind of a node within a much broader network – intimate and public in its very sense.

04.12.2021

蒂伯尔-乔内利:在开始《筱原学(Shinoharistics)》的工作前不久,我曾打算写一篇关于三位建筑师和他们设计的三所住宅的文章。这个系列将是筱原一男、路易吉-莫雷蒂和第三位建筑师。当时,我一直不确定,是否要写乔泽-普莱切尼克(Jože Plečnik)或西格德-卢埃伦茨(Sigurd Lewerentz)。最后我发现,筱原的引力实在是太强了,无法与其他人结合,所以我决定专门写他和谷川家。尽管如此,普莱切尼克仍然是一个非常有趣的主题,有一天,我可以想象写普莱切尼克学(Plečnikistics)。

筱原和乔泽-普莱切尼克有什么共同点?

最明显的是,他们的研究与民族传统产生了强烈的共鸣,从而影响了他们各自国家的认同感。筱原寻找空间的日本性,而普莱切尼克则定义了他的首都卢布尔雅那最重要的公共空间的特征,并谱写了许多取自当时还年轻的斯洛文尼亚的符号。他们之间的另一个重要的相似之处是,他们围绕自己创造了对大师的崇拜,建立了以自己的思想为基础的学派和运动,拥有大量的忠实追随者。然而,除了这些之外,我认为,他们总体上是相当不同的。

普莱切尼克自宅是它所处的周围老住宅系统的一部分,还是它是一个新来者,一个在现有的狭小环境中的入侵者?

嗯,这取决于你指的是哪个版本,例如,第一版设计非常接近于横滨的筱原之家,像一种月球登陆器。它是非常集中的,非常单一的。在后来的版本中,由于一些增加的元素,这个项目变得与周围的环境联系更紧密。我相信这使得房子变得更好。

今天,你通过一条非常狭窄的小巷进入,来到一个院子,两侧是老建筑,正面被普莱切尼克设计的后增的体量所封闭。如果你经过冬季花园,院子会向一大片土地开放。新增的部分,也就是普莱切尼克曾经居住的地方,是面向花园的,与教堂的小园相邻。这是对情况的第一个非常基本的解读。

故事是这样的,他为自己、他的兄弟和姐妹买了这块地。不幸的是,他们的同居生活并没有真正实现,因为建筑师非常敏感,不能被打扰。虽然他依赖于他人的在场和工作,但普莱切尼克真正需要的是一种集中的、隐蔽的生活,以便工作和思考。

住宅本身反映了这种矛盾的情况。它融入了文脉整合——在形式和功能上熔接了新旧,以及有抱负的自主性——为一个特定的个体建造一个空间,考虑到许多私人的兴趣和偏好。

这座住宅不仅与它周围的环境关联,它还与更广泛的城市相联接。卢布尔雅那那些美丽的地方,沿着卢布尔雅那河的整个长廊、图书馆等都是在这所住宅中构思的,住宅本身也成为建筑片段的实验场。

一旦设计完成,一些元件就会被实体模拟出来,并放置在花园里,以检查它们的外观和效用。普莱切尼克还经常保留他城市项目的模型,把它们展示在楼梯和楼上的休息室里。通过这些模型,城市在住宅中富于存在感。他还痴迷于收集古董,往往与自身的经历相关。这些影响反过来又传遍了卢布尔雅那。普莱切尼克确实在住宅和城市之间,在现在和过去之间建立了一种新陈代谢。

这所住宅是否是文化地震的震中,撼动了整座城市?

它有这样一种特质,虽然我对卢布尔雅那和斯洛文尼亚当时经历的文化转型了解不多。但在这种情况下,这所住宅必然成为了一种媒介,通过这种媒介,文化转型的势头越来越大。

虽然是一个内向的人,但最终,普莱切尼克的个人兴趣变得极其公开——反之亦然,城市在住宅中变得有存在感。正是由于这个原因,这所住宅对我来说,依然很有趣。这所住宅同时既是独特的,又与完全多样的文脉进行了对话。

普莱切尼克有意识地将自己与街道的公共性隔绝开来,并决定住在花园里,与相邻的教堂院子建立亲密的关系。以前,花园是普通的、实用的,就像人们在东部随处可见的旧村庄或小布尔乔维亚住宅的院子里一样。花园用于种植食物或饲养动物,它是一种基本资源。但普莱切尼克完全改变了它的意义,使院子和现有的住宅都变得高贵起来。

这种态度在住宅边上的花园中得到了很好的体现,它散发着古典主义城堡般的姿态,并创造了一个奇怪的二分法——既是一个非常封闭的世界,只为自己所知,同时,通过建筑师对城市生活的承诺,向一个更广泛的背景开放。有趣的是,花园仍然被用来种植植物,欢迎邻居们为自己的目的进行栽培。

值得一提的是,当时通往普莱切尼克家的主要通道是沿着教堂院子的边界走的,而不是从街上穿过老房子。他的客人、学生和客户不得不象征性地穿过教堂的领域,进入建筑师的住宅。在那里,他们不得不在长廊上等待,有时要等上几个小时,直到他来到门口迎接他们。我认为,这是用一种很建筑学的方式来上演日常生活——非常戏剧化。作为一个年轻的学生,这就是它吸引我的地方。你需要被迫练习一种仪式,才能真的在住宅中走动,这种仪式是由建筑布局来编排的。我感到一种强烈的牵引力——就像一道牵引光束——指向这样一种宗教承诺,尽管我认为自己是无神论者(我甚至没有接受洗礼)。

你说的 "仪式 "是指什么?

仪式在现代主义之前的所有古典文化中无所不在。普莱切尼克深深地扎根于其中,并理解仪式在其建筑排序中的潜力。

例如,入口处的长廊远不止是一个入口。就像进入卫城,你有一种卫城山门的感觉,进入成为一种游行。卫城山门是普莱切尼克几乎到处使用的一个主题,以区分他所建立的现实和周围的一切。它引入了一种悬念,一种紧张,并设置了一个庄严的过渡场所。

在他画的几乎每一栋建筑中,你都会看到巨大的、沉重的、黑色的柱子和一条神圣的道路,它们既是框架,又引导你进入方案。

你认为主房间为什么是圆形的?

这肯定是参考了巴洛克式城堡中的主厅,向花园突出。与三个窗户一起,圆形创造了强烈的对称性和强烈的指向外部的轴线。而且在上面,一个有着长方形屋顶的住宅,让人联想到一个具有奇怪比例的自立的柱子......一个对柱子着迷的建筑师自己居住在一个柱子内——多么惊人又诙谐的形象啊!

圆形也是一种非常集中的形式。他用它来探索不同活动之间的密切联系。这很有趣,因为即使你的野心是将你的生活完全溶解在一门学科中,或将自己完全奉献给某件事情,身体需求和创作过程的对立仍然存在。普莱切尼克把他的整个生命,他的整个创造力集中在这一个空间中。我想,这就是为什么他引入了一根重梁,放在门框上方。象征性地,它把休息空间和工作空间分开。

我想到的另一个原因是更加正式的。他受到高级意大利建筑和卢布尔雅那及其周边地区更原始的农民建筑的强烈影响。他旅行并访问了许多当地的村庄。圆柱体可以被看作是城堡的塔楼,是那个地区的典型。我想,这也与精神信仰有关。信仰的堡垒在普莱切尼克时代是一个流行的隐喻。

我发现两个完全相反的空间之间的对比很有趣。即,中心的圆形房间,一个工作和睡眠的地方,与长廊的结合——一个长方形的完全装了玻璃和拉长的空间。

建筑史上的中心空间通常意味着是一个空间崇拜,对神性的奉献,完美。不那么对称、不那么集中的几何形状往往更多地暴露在大自然或城市中,以一种不那么仪式化、更轻松的方式工作。在这里,两种类型的房间是沿着一条直线连接的,你可以很快地从一种房间切换到另一种。

普莱切尼克认为,住宅应该始终按照教堂的设计原则来建造。这意味着,他的住宅的主要建筑形式旨在塑造一个神圣的空间。它不是指向性的,它甚至不是一个可以在一起的空间。它具有圆的绝对形式,这给予它自主性,因而使得它类似于教堂的空间。古典的设计方法告诉我们,它需要通过其他的,可以说是不太绝对的元素与周围的环境相连接,在我看来,这使得住宅从构图的角度来看非常有趣。你有主要的空间和周围的环境,保持着一定的距离,或通过一系列的中间空间过渡。

这些外部空间把房子和它的环境联系起来,就像一个锚。它们与入口处的小路、教堂、花园和充满试验性实体模型的场地建立起了密切的关系。它们使房子成为一种生态系统。这座房子并没有真正地分成几个部分,所有的东西都是融合在一起的,但你仍然可以读懂各个元素。它们保持着自己的实质,和自己的特性,就像一个有机体的器官,每一个都发挥着支持性的作用。

筱原也致力于将矛盾的空间特征结合在一起,强调对比和突然的变化,普莱切尼克,正如我们现在所看到的,也结合了完全不同特征的空间,但用更大的努力来实现和谐,一种事物之间的休止状态。

筱原也区分了 "象征性 "和 "功能性 "空间。但他在概念上的明确性,使他与普莱切尼克区分开来。我想这是一个品味或个性的问题。筱原是一种很 "寿司 "的人。在寿司中,你让一切保持原样,把鱼和米饭结合起来,没有任何中介元素,没有酱汁。酱油是事后添加的,当你逐一夹起寿司去浸泡的时候。 

就个人而言,我认为普莱切尼克是完全不同的。他寻找的是一个整体艺术作品(Gesamtkunstwerk),一个构思和组成到最终细节的建筑,而且是无缝连接的,全部依赖于传统和象征的关系。筱原依靠的是矛盾、裂隙等概念。

要了解普莱切尼克的设计方式,他家一楼的接待室很重要。只有非常亲密的朋友被邀请到那里——建筑师似乎是非常有选择性的。其他人不得不等待。接待室有一种特殊的不同于住宅其他地方的氛围。然而它被嵌入到整体的设计概念中。我想说,这些空间之间没有强烈的对比,体验它们的过程是流畅的,因为它们是由一个建筑师的手塑造出来的。而 "手 "这个词在这里是至关重要的。对于筱原来说,它更多的是概念性的,我想说的是,它更多的是关于头脑和智力,而更少的是关于工艺或绘画。对于筱原来说,他总是在寻找对立面、分裂、差异,就像住宅在做数学题一样。

在普莱切尼克身上,他的举动背后有一种精神理念,将所有的东西凝聚在一起,当然,这是在宗教中嵌入的,与他所来自的分离派整体艺术(Secession Gesamtkunstwerk)的理念有关。这座建筑慢慢地获得了它的完整性,不是通过形式上的概念,而是更多地通过在精致的细节设计、材料的精确使用、元素之间的比例等方面投入的努力。我想说普莱切尼克是一个绘图员,对比与筱原像个数学家——尽管草图在筱原的设计中起着至关重要的作用。

这是每一位祖母都喜欢住的房子吗?

是的,当然了。我认为这与表达方式有关。这确实是一个使用建筑元素直接定位你的存在的建筑物。你看到一根柱子,你开始与柱子交谈,你看到一尊雕塑,你的眼睛与它相互关联。普莱切尼克对抽象的东西从来不感兴趣,他的房子很容易理解,很简单就能住进去。而且它甚至是家庭式的。

尽管如此,我认为这所住宅在没有装饰,没有那么多放在其中的物品的情况下,仍然可以运作。它甚至在没有古典语汇的情况下也可以成立。它只是在比例、材料、界限和舒适度方面做得很巧妙。

你认为这一方面是使普莱切尼克成为现代主义者的原因,还是他是一个保守的、甚至是感性的传统的一部分?

就他的自宅而言,在一定的文脉下落实建筑,并完全重塑它,这种态度是非常现代的。如果我们再看一下各个房间,总是有着与室外空间的关系,这也是一个非常现代的关注点。但他又使用了古典的形式、古典的构成模式、传统的元素,不一而足。

某种程度上兼而有之。他凭直觉开始改造卢布尔雅那,没有得到城市的任何直接委托。也许有两三个人坐在一起,喝着一瓶啤酒或葡萄酒,讨论信仰问题、卢布尔雅那市和斯洛文尼亚的整体身份。他们一起努力改善和美化这座城市。普莱切尼克就这样开始设计。他自己承担了改造城市的责任。这是一种非常进步的方法,因为他从来没有受到当局的委托。他只是做了这件事,从未要求得到报酬。

另一方面,普莱切尼克作为一个人是极其守旧的。他接受进步和变化。但最终,他相当不情愿让这些事变得重要。我认为这可以归结为他的信仰。他在信仰上帝的方式上确实保持了老派的风格。与高迪非常相似。尽管如此,在工作中,他们都能提出最前沿的想法。

普莱切尼克似乎抗拒现代主义的前卫教义,但矛盾的是,通过重新安排已知的形式,他对塑造他的环境持完全开放的态度——这在本质上又是非常现代的。

我不能准确地把这一点追溯到他的信仰上,但与信仰的联系是极具生产力的。从侧面看高迪,似乎 "创造 "这个词——而不是我们这个时代的 "创造"——可能就站在他们对抗世界的意志的中心。如果创造被理解为来自我们人类和自然本性的东西——如果你允许这样的赘诉——那么创造与我们的时代有更可信的联系。我在这里指的是创造作为一个与陆地有关的概念,地球表面的,正如布鲁诺-拉图尔所说的。

如果你必须想起一个你了解且非常喜欢的住宅,但以其属性来看,它的基本构思方式与普莱切尼克自宅相反,你会想到什么?

如果我们寻找一个对照,我想,它应该与周围的环境脱节。我想这是最主要的一点。一个只为建筑而存在的建筑--最大限度地自主。在我所知道的访问的房子中,那么它将是像康斯坦丁客梅利尼科夫(Konstantin Melnikov)在莫斯科的工作室和自宅,一个在19世纪末和20世纪初的邻居之间的华丽隔绝的建筑。它的设计更多的是作为一种理想的类型,而不是为一个特定的地点或文脉;文脉不发挥任何作用。

或者,也许更准确地说,当然也有文脉:一个社会文脉,甚至一个有巨大影响的政治文脉,也是一个具体的物质背景——但从否定的方面(ex negativo),仿佛房子直接来自未来。

普莱切尼克的房子的有趣之处在于,它确实是一种家庭住宅。它超出于像萨拉切纳住宅或勒-柯布西耶的母亲住宅,或谷川之家那样的住宅。我将永远回到这一点——它是一个生态系统。建筑师在那里生活。他测试他的风格的表达,他的建筑元素,在住宅里和周围环境中,也许就像阿尔托在他的工作室所做的。普莱切尼克首先开始重塑房子的周围,然后他重塑花园的周围和与教堂院子的关系。然后,建筑师开始着手处理与城市的关系。这座房子既是家庭式的,又是一个更广泛的网络中的一个节点--从其本身的意义上来说,是亲密的,也是公共的。

20211204

Tibor Joanelly: Shortly before starting work on Shinoharistics, I had intended to write an essay about three architects and three houses they had designed. The collection was to be Kazuo Shinohara, Luigi Moretti and a third one. At the time, I was never sure, whether to write about Jože Plečnik or Sigurd Lewerentz. In the end I figured out that Shinohara’s gravity was just too strong to combine with others, so I decided to write specifically about him and Tanikawa house. Nevertheless, Plečnik remains a very interesting subject and one day, I can imagine writing Plečnikistics.

WHAT DO KAZUO SHINOHARA AND JOŽE PLEČNIK HAVE IN COMMON?

Most obviously, their research resonated strongly with a national tradition and consequently influenced the sense of identity of each of their respective countries. Shinohara looked for the Japan-ness of space, whereas Plečnik defined the character of the most important public spaces in his capital city, Ljubljana and became the author of many symbols taken up by a then young Slovenia.  Another important similarity between their characters is the cult of the master that they created around themselves, establishing schools and movements founded on their own ideas, with significant numbers of devoted followers. However, apart from these things, I think, they were overall rather different. 

IS PLECNIK’S HOUSE PART OF THE SURROUNDING SYSTEM OF OLD HOUSES THAT IT IS FOUND AMONGST, OR IS IT A NEWCOMER, AN INTRUDER IN THE EXISTING TIGHT NIT CONTEXT?

Well, that depends which version you refer to, for instance, the first design was very close to Shinohara’s House in Yokohama, a kind of moon lander. It was very centralised, very singular. In the later versions, the project, thanks to some additional elements, became more linked to the surroundings. I believe this made the building much better.

Today, you enter through a very narrow alley and arrive to a courtyard flanked by the old building and closed on the front side by the volume of the later addition, designed by Plečnik. If you pass by the winter garden, the courtyard opens towards a big piece of land. The new part, where Plečnik used to live, is oriented towards the garden, adjacent to the yard of the church. This is the first, very basic reading of the situation.

The story goes, that he bought the plot for himself, his brother and sister. Unfortunately, their cohabitation didn’t really work out because the architect was very sensitive and could not be disturbed. Although he depended on both the presence and work of others, Plečnik really needed a concentrated, secluded life in order to work and think.

The house itself reflects this paradoxical situation. It blends contextual integration - formally and functionally melding the old with the new, and an ambitious autonomy - building a space for a very particular individual, taking into account many personal fascinations and preferences.

The house relates not only to its immediate context. It is also connected to the wider city. Beautiful parts of Ljubljana, the whole promenade following the Ljubljanica, the library etc. were all conceived in this house, and the house itself became a testing ground for architectural fragments. Once designed, elements were mocked up and placed in the garden to check how they looked and if they worked or not. Plečnik also used to keep the models of his projects for the city, displaying them in the staircase and in the drawing room upstairs. Through these models the city became very present within the house. And he obsessively collected antiques, often related to his own experience. These influences were in turn spread all over Ljubljana. Plečnik really established a kind of metabolism between house and city, between present and past.

WAS THE HOUSE THE EPICENTRE OF A CULTURAL EARTHQUAKE, SHAKING THE WHOLE CITY? 

 It has a quality like that, although I don’t know too much about the cultural transitions that Ljubljana and Slovenia went through at that time. But in this context, the house must have become a kind of medium by which the cultural transformation was gaining momentum.

Although a private man, ultimately, Plečnik’s personal interests became extremely public – and vice versa, the city became present in the house. It is for this reason that the house remains, for me, interesting. At the same time the house is both unique, and in dialogue with completely diverse contexts.

Plečnik consciously cut himself off from the publicness of the street and decided to live towards the garden, in an intimate relationship with the adjacent church yard. Before, the garden was ordinary, utilitarian, as one finds everywhere in the east, in the yards of old villages or petty bourgeois houses. The garden served for growing food or keeping animals, it was an essential resource. But Plečnik completely changed its meaning by ennobling both, the yard, and existing houses. 

This attitude is well expressed in the garden at the side of the house which exudes a classicist castle-like attitude and creates a strange dichotomy – at once being a very closed world, known only to itself, whilst, through the architect’s lived commitment towards the city, opening to a much broader context. Interestingly, the garden was still used for growing plants, for which neighbours were welcomed to cultivate for their own purpose.

It’s important to mention, that the main access to Plečnik’s house was, at that time, along a path that follows the border of the church yard and not through the old house from the street. His guests, students and for that matter, clients had to symbolically cross the domain of the church to access the architect’s house. There they had to wait on a veranda, sometimes for hours until he came to the door and greeted them. I think, it’s a very architectonic approach to staging everyday life - very theatrical. As a young student this is what attracted me to it. You cannot really move around the house without practicing a kind of enforced ritual, choreographed by the architectural arrangement. And I feel a strong pull – like a tractor beam – towards such a religious commitment, although I consider myself an atheist (I’m not even baptized).

WHAT DO YOU REFER TO WITH THE WORD RITUAL?

Ritual was omnipresent in all classical cultures before modernism. Plečnik was deeply rooted in them and understood the potential of rituals in the sequencing of his architecture. 

For instance, the entrance veranda is much more than just an entrance. It’s like entering the Acropolis, you have a sort of Propylaea, entering becomes a procession. The propylaeum is a topic that Plečnik used almost everywhere to differentiate the reality he built from everything around. It introduced a suspense, a tension and set a solemn place of transition. 

In almost every building he drew, you have the large, heavy, black columns and a sacred path that both frame and lead you into the plan.

WHY DO YOU THINK THE MAIN ROOM IS CIRCULAR? 

 There is surely a reference to the main hall in a baroque castle, projecting towards the garden. Together with the three windows, the circularity creates a very strong symmetry and a very strong axis towards the outside. And, beyond that, the house, with the rectangular roof, reminds a free-standing column with strange proportions… An architect with a fascination for columns himself inhabits a column – what a striking, witty image!

The circular shape is also a very concentrated form. He used it to explore the close connection between different activities. It is interesting, because even if your ambition is to completely dissolve your life in a discipline or dedicate yourself completely to something, the opposition of bodily needs and the creative process remains. Plečnik concentrated his whole life, his whole creativity within this one space. I assume, that’s why he introduced a heavy beam, resting above the door frames. Symbolically, it separates the space for rest and the space for work.

Another reason that comes to my mind is more formal. He was strongly influenced by both high Italian architecture and the more rudimentary peasant architecture of Ljubljana and its surroundings. He travelled and visited many local villages. The cylinder could be seen as the tower of a castle, typical of that region. I guess, it also had something to do with spirituality. The stronghold of faith was a popular metaphor in the times of Plečnik.

I FIND THE CONTRAST BETWEEN TWO COMPLETELY OPPOSITE SPACES INTERESTING. NAMELY, THE COMBINATION OF THE CENTRAL CIRCULAR ROOM, A PLACE OF WORK AND SLEEP, WITH THE VERANDA - A RECTANGULAR COMPLETELY GLAZED AND ELONGATED SPACE.

A central space in architectural history was usually meant to be a space of cult, of dedication to divinity, of perfection. Less symmetrical, less concentrated geometries were often more exposed to the nature or to the city, working in a less ceremonial, more relaxed way. Here the two types of rooms are connected along one straight line, you can just switch from one to another very quickly. 

Plečnik believed that a house should always be built according to the design principles of a church. It means, that the primary architectural form of his house is meant to be a sacred space. It’s not directed, it’s not even a space to be together. It has the absolute form of the circle, which gives it autonomy, therefore makes it resemble the space of a church. The classical approach to design tells us that it needs to be connected to its surroundings by other, so to speak, less absolute elements, which, in my opinion, makes the house very interesting from the point of view of composition. You have the main space and the surroundings, kept at a distance, or filtered through a series of intermediate spaces.

These external spaces link the house to its context, like an anchor. They establish close relationships to the entrance path, to the church, to the garden, and to the field full of experimental mock-ups. They make the house a kind of ecosystem. The house doesn’t really fall into parts, everything is fused, but you can still read the individual elements. They keep their own substance, and their own character, like organs of an organism where each one plays a supportive role.

SHINOHARA TOO WORKED WITH BRINGING TOGETHER CONTRADICTORY FEATURES OF SPACE, STRESSING THE CONTRASTS AND ABRUPT CHANGES, PLEČNIK, AS WE CAN SEE EVEN NOW, ALSO COMBINED SPACES OF RADICALLY DIFFERENT CHARACTERS, BUT THERE IS A GREATER ENDEAVOUR TO ACHIEVE HARMONY, A STATE OF REST BETWEEN THINGS.

Shinohara also distinguished between “symbolic” and “functional” spaces. But the conceptual clarity with which he did that, separates him from Plečnik. I think it’s a question of taste or personality. Shinohara was a very „sushi” kind of person. In sushi you leave everything as it is, you combine fish with rice without any mediating element, without sauce. Soy sauce is added afterwards when you pick the Sushi piece by piece and dip it. 

Personally, I think Plečnik was completely different. He searched for a Gesamtkunstwerk, for a building conceived and composed to the last detail and seamlessly coherent, all relying on tradition and symbolic relations. Shinohara relied on concepts of contradiction, fissure etc. 

To understand the way how Plečnik was designing, the reception room on the first floor of his house is important. Only very close friends were invited there – the architect seems to have been very selective. Others had to wait. The reception room had a special and different atmosphere than the rest of the house. However, it was embedded within a total design concept. I would say, there are no strong contrasts between the spaces, experiencing them happens fluidly because they are so much shaped by one architect’s hand. And the word „hand” is crucial here. With Shinohara, it’s much more conceptual, I would say, it’s more about mind and intellect and much less about craft or drawing. With Shinohara, he is always searching for oppositions, divisions, differences, as if a house was doing mathematics.

In Plečnik there is rather a kind of spiritual idea behind his moves, that holds everything together, which is, of course, embedded in religion and related to the idea of Secession Gesamtkunstwerk, where he comes from. The building slowly acquires its integrity, not through formal concepts, but more by the effort invested in the exquisite detailing, precise use of materials, proportions between the elements etc. I’d say that Plečnik is a draughtsman, contrasting Shinohara the mathematician – although sketches played a crucial role in Shinohara’s designs.

IS IT A HOUSE EVERY GRANDMA WOULD LOVE TO LIVE IN?

Yes, of course. I think this has to do with the expression. It is really an architecture that uses architectural elements to directly address your presence. You see a column, you start to talk with the column, you see a sculpture, your eyes interrelate with it. Plečnik was never interested in abstraction, his house is easy to understand, simple to live in. And it’s even homely.  

Having said that though, I think the house would still work without decoration and without many of the objects placed within it. It would even work without the classical vocabulary. It’s just cleverly done in terms of proportions, materiality, thresholds, and comfort.

DO YOU THINK THAT THIS ASPECT IS SOMETHING THAT MAKES PLEČNIK A MODERNIST OR IS HE A PART OF A CONSERVATIVE, EVEN SENTIMENTAL TRADITION? 

In the case of his house, the attitude of implementing architecture within a certain context and completely remodelling it, is extremely modernistic. If we then look at individual rooms, there is always the relation to outdoor space, again, a very modern preoccupation. But then he used classical forms, classical compositional schemes, traditional elements, the list goes on. 

Somehow it is both. He intuitively started to remodel Ljubljana without any direct commission from the city. There were maybe two or three people sitting together drinking a beer or a bottle of wine and discussing issues of faith, the city of Ljubljana and Slovenia’s identity as whole. They worked together on improving and embellishing the city. Plečnik just started designing. He himself, took the responsibility of remodeling of the city. This was a very progressive approach because he was never commissioned by the authorities. He just did it, never asking to be paid.

On the other hand, Plečnik was extremely old-fashioned as a person. He accepted progress and change. But in the end, he was rather reluctant to make them important. I think it boils down to his faith. He really stayed old-fashioned in the way he believed in God. Very similar to Gaudí. Still, at work they both were able to come up with cutting edge ideas. 

Plečnik seems to have been reluctant against the modernist dogma of avantgarde with paradoxically the same determination as he was open to shaping his surroundings totally, by newly arranging known forms – which again is very modern in essence.

I cannot precisely trace this to his faith, but the connection to it was extremely productive. With a side look to Gaudí, it seems that the word “creation” – not the “creativity” of our times – might stand at the very epicenter of their will against the world. And creation is related to our times in a more credible way if it is understood as something coming from our very human and natural nature – if you allow for such a tautology. I’m referring here to creation as a concept related to the terrestrial, the earth-bound, as Bruno Latour would say. 

IF YOU HAVE TO THINK ABOUT THE HOUSE THAT YOU KNOW AND LIKE VERY MUCH, BUT IN ITS PROPERTIES, ITS FUNDAMENTAL WAY OF BEING CONCEIVED IS OPPOSITE TO PLEČNIK HOUSE, WHAT COMES TO YOUR MIND?

If we look for an opposition, I guess, it should be disconnected from its surroundings. I think this is the main point. An architecture that is only there for architecture - maximally autonomous. And among the houses I know from visiting, then it would be something like Konstantin Melnikov’s own atelier and house in Moscow, a building in splendid isolation between its neighbours from the end of 19th and beginning of 20th century. It’s designed more as an ideal type than for a specific place or context; context doesn’t play any role.

Or, maybe more precise: there is context too, of course: a social context, even a political one of great impact, also a concrete material one – but ex negativo, as if the house directly came from the future. 

What is interesting in Plečnik’s house is that it is really a kind of a household. It’s more than a dwelling like Villa Saracena or La Petite Maison of Le Corbusier or Tanikawa house. I will always come back to that - it’s an ecosystem. The architect was living there. He was testing the expression of his style, the elements of his architecture, in and around the house, maybe like Aalto did in his Atelier. Plečnik first started to reshape the surroundings of the house, then he reshaped the surroundings of the garden and the relation to the churchyard. Then, the architect started to work on the relation to the city. This house is both homely and a kind of a node within a much broader network – intimate and public in its very sense.

04.12.2021

蒂伯尔-乔内利:在开始《筱原学(Shinoharistics)》的工作前不久,我曾打算写一篇关于三位建筑师和他们设计的三所住宅的文章。这个系列将是筱原一男、路易吉-莫雷蒂和第三位建筑师。当时,我一直不确定,是否要写乔泽-普莱切尼克(Jože Plečnik)或西格德-卢埃伦茨(Sigurd Lewerentz)。最后我发现,筱原的引力实在是太强了,无法与其他人结合,所以我决定专门写他和谷川家。尽管如此,普莱切尼克仍然是一个非常有趣的主题,有一天,我可以想象写普莱切尼克学(Plečnikistics)。

筱原和乔泽-普莱切尼克有什么共同点?

最明显的是,他们的研究与民族传统产生了强烈的共鸣,从而影响了他们各自国家的认同感。筱原寻找空间的日本性,而普莱切尼克则定义了他的首都卢布尔雅那最重要的公共空间的特征,并谱写了许多取自当时还年轻的斯洛文尼亚的符号。他们之间的另一个重要的相似之处是,他们围绕自己创造了对大师的崇拜,建立了以自己的思想为基础的学派和运动,拥有大量的忠实追随者。然而,除了这些之外,我认为,他们总体上是相当不同的。

普莱切尼克自宅是它所处的周围老住宅系统的一部分,还是它是一个新来者,一个在现有的狭小环境中的入侵者?

嗯,这取决于你指的是哪个版本,例如,第一版设计非常接近于横滨的筱原之家,像一种月球登陆器。它是非常集中的,非常单一的。在后来的版本中,由于一些增加的元素,这个项目变得与周围的环境联系更紧密。我相信这使得房子变得更好。

今天,你通过一条非常狭窄的小巷进入,来到一个院子,两侧是老建筑,正面被普莱切尼克设计的后增的体量所封闭。如果你经过冬季花园,院子会向一大片土地开放。新增的部分,也就是普莱切尼克曾经居住的地方,是面向花园的,与教堂的小园相邻。这是对情况的第一个非常基本的解读。

故事是这样的,他为自己、他的兄弟和姐妹买了这块地。不幸的是,他们的同居生活并没有真正实现,因为建筑师非常敏感,不能被打扰。虽然他依赖于他人的在场和工作,但普莱切尼克真正需要的是一种集中的、隐蔽的生活,以便工作和思考。

住宅本身反映了这种矛盾的情况。它融入了文脉整合——在形式和功能上熔接了新旧,以及有抱负的自主性——为一个特定的个体建造一个空间,考虑到许多私人的兴趣和偏好。

这座住宅不仅与它周围的环境关联,它还与更广泛的城市相联接。卢布尔雅那那些美丽的地方,沿着卢布尔雅那河的整个长廊、图书馆等都是在这所住宅中构思的,住宅本身也成为建筑片段的实验场。

一旦设计完成,一些元件就会被实体模拟出来,并放置在花园里,以检查它们的外观和效用。普莱切尼克还经常保留他城市项目的模型,把它们展示在楼梯和楼上的休息室里。通过这些模型,城市在住宅中富于存在感。他还痴迷于收集古董,往往与自身的经历相关。这些影响反过来又传遍了卢布尔雅那。普莱切尼克确实在住宅和城市之间,在现在和过去之间建立了一种新陈代谢。

这所住宅是否是文化地震的震中,撼动了整座城市?

它有这样一种特质,虽然我对卢布尔雅那和斯洛文尼亚当时经历的文化转型了解不多。但在这种情况下,这所住宅必然成为了一种媒介,通过这种媒介,文化转型的势头越来越大。

虽然是一个内向的人,但最终,普莱切尼克的个人兴趣变得极其公开——反之亦然,城市在住宅中变得有存在感。正是由于这个原因,这所住宅对我来说,依然很有趣。这所住宅同时既是独特的,又与完全多样的文脉进行了对话。

普莱切尼克有意识地将自己与街道的公共性隔绝开来,并决定住在花园里,与相邻的教堂院子建立亲密的关系。以前,花园是普通的、实用的,就像人们在东部随处可见的旧村庄或小布尔乔维亚住宅的院子里一样。花园用于种植食物或饲养动物,它是一种基本资源。但普莱切尼克完全改变了它的意义,使院子和现有的住宅都变得高贵起来。

这种态度在住宅边上的花园中得到了很好的体现,它散发着古典主义城堡般的姿态,并创造了一个奇怪的二分法——既是一个非常封闭的世界,只为自己所知,同时,通过建筑师对城市生活的承诺,向一个更广泛的背景开放。有趣的是,花园仍然被用来种植植物,欢迎邻居们为自己的目的进行栽培。

值得一提的是,当时通往普莱切尼克家的主要通道是沿着教堂院子的边界走的,而不是从街上穿过老房子。他的客人、学生和客户不得不象征性地穿过教堂的领域,进入建筑师的住宅。在那里,他们不得不在长廊上等待,有时要等上几个小时,直到他来到门口迎接他们。我认为,这是用一种很建筑学的方式来上演日常生活——非常戏剧化。作为一个年轻的学生,这就是它吸引我的地方。你需要被迫练习一种仪式,才能真的在住宅中走动,这种仪式是由建筑布局来编排的。我感到一种强烈的牵引力——就像一道牵引光束——指向这样一种宗教承诺,尽管我认为自己是无神论者(我甚至没有接受洗礼)。

你说的 "仪式 "是指什么?

仪式在现代主义之前的所有古典文化中无所不在。普莱切尼克深深地扎根于其中,并理解仪式在其建筑排序中的潜力。

例如,入口处的长廊远不止是一个入口。就像进入卫城,你有一种卫城山门的感觉,进入成为一种游行。卫城山门是普莱切尼克几乎到处使用的一个主题,以区分他所建立的现实和周围的一切。它引入了一种悬念,一种紧张,并设置了一个庄严的过渡场所。

在他画的几乎每一栋建筑中,你都会看到巨大的、沉重的、黑色的柱子和一条神圣的道路,它们既是框架,又引导你进入方案。

你认为主房间为什么是圆形的?

这肯定是参考了巴洛克式城堡中的主厅,向花园突出。与三个窗户一起,圆形创造了强烈的对称性和强烈的指向外部的轴线。而且在上面,一个有着长方形屋顶的住宅,让人联想到一个具有奇怪比例的自立的柱子......一个对柱子着迷的建筑师自己居住在一个柱子内——多么惊人又诙谐的形象啊!

圆形也是一种非常集中的形式。他用它来探索不同活动之间的密切联系。这很有趣,因为即使你的野心是将你的生活完全溶解在一门学科中,或将自己完全奉献给某件事情,身体需求和创作过程的对立仍然存在。普莱切尼克把他的整个生命,他的整个创造力集中在这一个空间中。我想,这就是为什么他引入了一根重梁,放在门框上方。象征性地,它把休息空间和工作空间分开。

我想到的另一个原因是更加正式的。他受到高级意大利建筑和卢布尔雅那及其周边地区更原始的农民建筑的强烈影响。他旅行并访问了许多当地的村庄。圆柱体可以被看作是城堡的塔楼,是那个地区的典型。我想,这也与精神信仰有关。信仰的堡垒在普莱切尼克时代是一个流行的隐喻。

我发现两个完全相反的空间之间的对比很有趣。即,中心的圆形房间,一个工作和睡眠的地方,与长廊的结合——一个长方形的完全装了玻璃和拉长的空间。

建筑史上的中心空间通常意味着是一个空间崇拜,对神性的奉献,完美。不那么对称、不那么集中的几何形状往往更多地暴露在大自然或城市中,以一种不那么仪式化、更轻松的方式工作。在这里,两种类型的房间是沿着一条直线连接的,你可以很快地从一种房间切换到另一种。

普莱切尼克认为,住宅应该始终按照教堂的设计原则来建造。这意味着,他的住宅的主要建筑形式旨在塑造一个神圣的空间。它不是指向性的,它甚至不是一个可以在一起的空间。它具有圆的绝对形式,这给予它自主性,因而使得它类似于教堂的空间。古典的设计方法告诉我们,它需要通过其他的,可以说是不太绝对的元素与周围的环境相连接,在我看来,这使得住宅从构图的角度来看非常有趣。你有主要的空间和周围的环境,保持着一定的距离,或通过一系列的中间空间过渡。

这些外部空间把房子和它的环境联系起来,就像一个锚。它们与入口处的小路、教堂、花园和充满试验性实体模型的场地建立起了密切的关系。它们使房子成为一种生态系统。这座房子并没有真正地分成几个部分,所有的东西都是融合在一起的,但你仍然可以读懂各个元素。它们保持着自己的实质,和自己的特性,就像一个有机体的器官,每一个都发挥着支持性的作用。

筱原也致力于将矛盾的空间特征结合在一起,强调对比和突然的变化,普莱切尼克,正如我们现在所看到的,也结合了完全不同特征的空间,但用更大的努力来实现和谐,一种事物之间的休止状态。

筱原也区分了 "象征性 "和 "功能性 "空间。但他在概念上的明确性,使他与普莱切尼克区分开来。我想这是一个品味或个性的问题。筱原是一种很 "寿司 "的人。在寿司中,你让一切保持原样,把鱼和米饭结合起来,没有任何中介元素,没有酱汁。酱油是事后添加的,当你逐一夹起寿司去浸泡的时候。 

就个人而言,我认为普莱切尼克是完全不同的。他寻找的是一个整体艺术作品(Gesamtkunstwerk),一个构思和组成到最终细节的建筑,而且是无缝连接的,全部依赖于传统和象征的关系。筱原依靠的是矛盾、裂隙等概念。

要了解普莱切尼克的设计方式,他家一楼的接待室很重要。只有非常亲密的朋友被邀请到那里——建筑师似乎是非常有选择性的。其他人不得不等待。接待室有一种特殊的不同于住宅其他地方的氛围。然而它被嵌入到整体的设计概念中。我想说,这些空间之间没有强烈的对比,体验它们的过程是流畅的,因为它们是由一个建筑师的手塑造出来的。而 "手 "这个词在这里是至关重要的。对于筱原来说,它更多的是概念性的,我想说的是,它更多的是关于头脑和智力,而更少的是关于工艺或绘画。对于筱原来说,他总是在寻找对立面、分裂、差异,就像住宅在做数学题一样。

在普莱切尼克身上,他的举动背后有一种精神理念,将所有的东西凝聚在一起,当然,这是在宗教中嵌入的,与他所来自的分离派整体艺术(Secession Gesamtkunstwerk)的理念有关。这座建筑慢慢地获得了它的完整性,不是通过形式上的概念,而是更多地通过在精致的细节设计、材料的精确使用、元素之间的比例等方面投入的努力。我想说普莱切尼克是一个绘图员,对比与筱原像个数学家——尽管草图在筱原的设计中起着至关重要的作用。

这是每一位祖母都喜欢住的房子吗?

是的,当然了。我认为这与表达方式有关。这确实是一个使用建筑元素直接定位你的存在的建筑物。你看到一根柱子,你开始与柱子交谈,你看到一尊雕塑,你的眼睛与它相互关联。普莱切尼克对抽象的东西从来不感兴趣,他的房子很容易理解,很简单就能住进去。而且它甚至是家庭式的。

尽管如此,我认为这所住宅在没有装饰,没有那么多放在其中的物品的情况下,仍然可以运作。它甚至在没有古典语汇的情况下也可以成立。它只是在比例、材料、界限和舒适度方面做得很巧妙。

你认为这一方面是使普莱切尼克成为现代主义者的原因,还是他是一个保守的、甚至是感性的传统的一部分?

就他的自宅而言,在一定的文脉下落实建筑,并完全重塑它,这种态度是非常现代的。如果我们再看一下各个房间,总是有着与室外空间的关系,这也是一个非常现代的关注点。但他又使用了古典的形式、古典的构成模式、传统的元素,不一而足。

某种程度上兼而有之。他凭直觉开始改造卢布尔雅那,没有得到城市的任何直接委托。也许有两三个人坐在一起,喝着一瓶啤酒或葡萄酒,讨论信仰问题、卢布尔雅那市和斯洛文尼亚的整体身份。他们一起努力改善和美化这座城市。普莱切尼克就这样开始设计。他自己承担了改造城市的责任。这是一种非常进步的方法,因为他从来没有受到当局的委托。他只是做了这件事,从未要求得到报酬。

另一方面,普莱切尼克作为一个人是极其守旧的。他接受进步和变化。但最终,他相当不情愿让这些事变得重要。我认为这可以归结为他的信仰。他在信仰上帝的方式上确实保持了老派的风格。与高迪非常相似。尽管如此,在工作中,他们都能提出最前沿的想法。

普莱切尼克似乎抗拒现代主义的前卫教义,但矛盾的是,通过重新安排已知的形式,他对塑造他的环境持完全开放的态度——这在本质上又是非常现代的。

我不能准确地把这一点追溯到他的信仰上,但与信仰的联系是极具生产力的。从侧面看高迪,似乎 "创造 "这个词——而不是我们这个时代的 "创造"——可能就站在他们对抗世界的意志的中心。如果创造被理解为来自我们人类和自然本性的东西——如果你允许这样的赘诉——那么创造与我们的时代有更可信的联系。我在这里指的是创造作为一个与陆地有关的概念,地球表面的,正如布鲁诺-拉图尔所说的。

如果你必须想起一个你了解且非常喜欢的住宅,但以其属性来看,它的基本构思方式与普莱切尼克自宅相反,你会想到什么?

如果我们寻找一个对照,我想,它应该与周围的环境脱节。我想这是最主要的一点。一个只为建筑而存在的建筑--最大限度地自主。在我所知道的访问的房子中,那么它将是像康斯坦丁客梅利尼科夫(Konstantin Melnikov)在莫斯科的工作室和自宅,一个在19世纪末和20世纪初的邻居之间的华丽隔绝的建筑。它的设计更多的是作为一种理想的类型,而不是为一个特定的地点或文脉;文脉不发挥任何作用。

或者,也许更准确地说,当然也有文脉:一个社会文脉,甚至一个有巨大影响的政治文脉,也是一个具体的物质背景——但从否定的方面(ex negativo),仿佛房子直接来自未来。

普莱切尼克的房子的有趣之处在于,它确实是一种家庭住宅。它超出于像萨拉切纳住宅或勒-柯布西耶的母亲住宅,或谷川之家那样的住宅。我将永远回到这一点——它是一个生态系统。建筑师在那里生活。他测试他的风格的表达,他的建筑元素,在住宅里和周围环境中,也许就像阿尔托在他的工作室所做的。普莱切尼克首先开始重塑房子的周围,然后他重塑花园的周围和与教堂院子的关系。然后,建筑师开始着手处理与城市的关系。这座房子既是家庭式的,又是一个更广泛的网络中的一个节点--从其本身的意义上来说,是亲密的,也是公共的。

20211204

TIBOR JOANELLY

Tibor Joanelly, born 1967, lives and works in Zurich. He graduated as an architect from the ETHZ in 1993, and worked in various offices. He holds publications in numerous professional journals, is engaged in several book projects as well as in architectural practice, and he teaches architectural criticism at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences in Winterthur. Joanelly is an editor of the Swiss architecture journal werk, bauen + wohnen; in 2020, he published Shinoharistics, a book about the Japanese architect Kazuo Shinohara.

www.wbw.ch

TIBOR JOANELLY

Tibor Joanelly, born 1967, lives and works in Zurich. He graduated as an architect from the ETHZ in 1993, and worked in various offices. He holds publications in numerous professional journals, is engaged in several book projects as well as in architectural practice, and he teaches architectural criticism at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences in Winterthur. Joanelly is an editor of the Swiss architecture journal werk, bauen + wohnen; in 2020, he published Shinoharistics, a book about the Japanese architect Kazuo Shinohara.

www.wbw.ch

TIBOR JOANELLY

Tibor Joanelly, born 1967, lives and works in Zurich. He graduated as an architect from the ETHZ in 1993, and worked in various offices. He holds publications in numerous professional journals, is engaged in several book projects as well as in architectural practice, and he teaches architectural criticism at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences in Winterthur. Joanelly is an editor of the Swiss architecture journal werk, bauen + wohnen; in 2020, he published Shinoharistics, a book about the Japanese architect Kazuo Shinohara.

www.wbw.ch