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Feature 1:
John Hejduk, Reprint
Who is John Hejduk?, a first year architecture student asked. We were in studio, year 2009, browsing through the Mask of Medusa: Works, 19471983, admiring the drawings, sketches, texts; appreciative of the line weights, the layout of the drawings, the narrative, and the exploration of the language of architecture.
I replied that he is an inspiration, someone who opened a world of imagination, extended the boundaries of architecture beyond built architecture to the realm of dream, poetry and creation. He is a role model in the pursuit of finding expressions of the language of architecture; an influential educator, Dean of the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at the Cooper Union from 1972 to 2000, where he opened the path for conversation of various people and disciplines.
Feature 2 :
Perceptual Space
One of the defining characteristics of architecture, one that makes it what it is, is that people can touch it and go inside it. It is fair to say that architecture is what it is because it has interior spaces, and that interior spaces exist because of architecture. Also, compared to architecture itself, interior spaces are closer to human bodily perceptions.
Recently we are seeing more interior designs that represent crystallizations of interactive relations between people and space. These designs reveal the poverty of the view that regards interiors as nothing more than decoration. Looking outside architecture, we also see a transition away from the previous emphasis on materials and visuals and toward designs that stimulate all five of our senses. Instead of closure as the goal, we see designs that leave something open to explore in the future an approach that resonates with the recent trend toward sustainability and lessening the burden on the environment.
