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Interview with Alvin Boyarsky - Part IX

ZH: Of course, the same can said of English architects. They haven’t always given themselves time to develop their sensibilities, so when it’s come time for them to make buildings, they’ve needed an easy way out. They’ve simply gone to the nearest source and appropriated from it. I find that disappointing.

AB: What do you think of the notion of worldliness?

ZH: It’s very important. Let me give you give an example. I ran into a former classmate the other day. He’s a Greek citizen and had to return to Greece for military service, but apparently he’d just been dismissed six months early. “That’s great,” I told him. “It’s like being given six months as a present.” But when I said this to him, he looked at me as if I was out of my mind. Yet I know what travel has done for me personally. There comes a point when you have to become worldly. Of course, if you’re painting flowers, you can sit in an isolated hut in the middle of nowhere, but if you’re an architect you have an obligation to understand how the world operates. A thousand pounds can be made or lost in an instant, but it’s always worth the investment. I told this friend that he should go to New York for six months. He’s in the third year of architecture school and he still hasn’t seen New York. That’s a problem.

AB: Yesterday, I was talking with Peter Cook, Ron Herron, David Greene, and a few others about Warren Chalk. We were trying to figure out how to understand his legacy. I reminded them that in 1966 Warren became the first of the Archigram people to see the U.S. I invited him to teach in Chicago for a month and he sent a wire that began, “I’ll be touching down Wednesday.” Very English. He didn’t say what airline or what time. A total lack of worldliness.

ZH: I think you eliminate a lot of conversation if you haven’t seen or experienced things. For a young architect, the Manhattan experience is fundamental. When I first went there as a student, I saw things that I didn’t think were possible. The city has to be seen.

AB: It’s the great city of the first part of the twentieth century.

ZH: Yes, but it’s also very old, almost medieval. Parts of it are like the third world. It’s a very layered city, not like anywhere else.