Archive of previous interviews
Craig Brandt
11 / 07 / 2000
Craig Brandt is an architect in Chicago, USA, winner of the Burnham Prize Competition 2000. He is Architect Associate for Hammond, Beeby, Rupert, Ainge, Architects Incorporated.
Pat: Can one feel at Home in the Internet?
Craig: Home is basically where you've established most of your relations, where you're most related to. You could have a place that has been your home all your life - for 30 or 40 years - but you may not relate to it any more. You could actually feel distanced from it. I think home is where you relate the most.
Given that theory, I think that one could feel at home in the Internet. Theoretically, one could create a space in the Internet...it would be a different way of existing, but I think it's possible.
As far as the challenge to make it, if I were to do that, the question would be: How do you do successful architectural space in the Internet?
I think that architects are dealing with it in the "artificial intelligence" or "presentation" realm. They are always trying to make it more real, trying to make the graphic programs better so that people walk through things instead of always seeing things from one angle. I don't know if it's ever going to be as architectural as the real, built item.
Pat: Can we talk about technology and parasites in relation to architecture?
Craig: In some ways I like that you mention parasites. I like to think of some of the architectural types that I work with as "parasites". In the fact that there is a host and a parasite. One is maybe existing and one is maybe new and both work off each other to come forth with a new type of space or function.
This architectural type introduces a piece that wasn't there before, one that might actually go away. The piece could be temporary, or it could be permanent, but it's attached and it's leaving an effect on the support for itself.
Pat: By the same definition, do you think the Internet is Parasitic.
Craig: Regarding your organic metaphors in Home Transfer, what I would ask about this analogy or this motif is: What do the weevils do for the bowls?...
If you just look at their physical existence, they're not really adding anything to their physical existence, but maybe there's a third party that gets something from it...like...the holes that are in the bowls. Or maybe what the bowls become because of that. This phenomenon is just another part of the outcome. It's known as a dual, symbiotic relationship.
The symbiotic relationship is the key element in the analogy of the parasite that I've used in my architectural projects and I guess the test is always - in the end do both parties really benefit from the relationship?
How is the Internet parasitic, really...I guess you would say because it invades your space, possibly your privacy, but you're also interacting with it in terms of space...The question I would ask is: Do both parties really benefit from the relationship?
James (Rusty) Smith
10 / 27 / 2000
James (Rusty) Smith, is an independent architect working in Chicago, USA.
Pat: How would you define the contemporary notion of Home?
Rusty: Home is the place where I want to be in? Home is the place I want to go to.
I think nowadays, there are many ways to live in a structure that has nothing to do with the notion of being at home - maybe thatıs the difference. Home hasnıt changed, but we now have a lot of alternatives to home. Home is not a physical environment, it is our relationship to it.
Pat: Could we talk about weevils, bread-bowls and architecture?
Rusty: The bread-bowls consumed by weevils become a way for me to physically think about the parasitic erosion of architecture. In that in many ways we are left with nothing but hole. It gets eaten away, and yet we're fascinated by that! We're fascinated by the destruction of one system and supplanting of another. This makes me think about our present position, a position to choose to some degree what part we keep and what part can go.
With regards to these choices, I think architects and designers have an over - inflated idea about what they do insofar as creating the future - I think we certainly can weigh these questions and concerns, recognize what they may be, image those futures to enable us while not invent them - at least, rather, choose them.
Jamie Horwitz
10 / 24 / 2000
Jamie Horwitz Ph.D. is Associate Professor at the Department of Architecture, College of Design in Iowa State University (USA).
Pat: What does "being at Home" mean to you?
Jamie: I think there are a lot of things that are very close to the body that have to do with being at home - it is not dwelling per se, at home is an affective condition.
Pat: Could we talk about how new technologies impact the home?
Jamie: I think housing is where ideas are born, where culture occurs. Through my work, I try to understand how these different forces, these relationships between people and objects, people and technologies, people and their memories keep being woven.
I think that home is an orbit, and technologies have always shaped that. I don't think that the house is invaded by technologies, I think that homes and domestic spaces, are places where ideas brew and things happen that are very much about the creation of culture and most technologies amplify whatever your purposes are, not that they couldn't be used against your purposes, but knowing what your desires are, you can use technologies accordingly.
