Zaha

Interview with Alvin Boyarsky - Part VII

AB: In the pragmatic world you’re describing, architecture becomes applied information, applied allegiances.

ZH: Compare the scenes of 1987 and 1975. Back then, so-called thinkers invested time in experiments. It was a respectable line of enquiry. Today, there is no respect for that.

AB: Shall we go back a little and talk about the tradition of the self-determined research project, through which you’ve made significant contributions to architectural knowledge. It’s a very important strand of the English scene in the 1950’s and 60’s, right up until the early 70’s. Think of the input of people like Alison and Peter Smithson, whose work was topographical. Peter was interested in organization devices, and in the organization of the city through its circulation. He worked with Team 10 in opposition to CIAM and its abstract breakdown of things.

Then there are people like Cedric Price with his projects of the early 60’s - it’s almost impossible to believe that the Thinkbelt and Fun Palaces were designed in those years. Nobody paid them; they were actually working out interesting issues. Cedric worked out the issues relating to the flexibility that comes from cybernetics, where things can be controlled and changed according to what’s required. Archigram (headed by Peter Cook) was also making a point - you may not like the depth of their research, but they were acting like artists.

The reason one thinks of OMA (Office of Metropolitan Architecture) as being part of that glorious tradition is that their early work was fighting the world, making a comment, introducing a whole new criterion. There are a few other people - Bernard Tschumi has opened up a whole new territory of discourse. When it comes time to operate, all of these people have found sufficient funding and done enough research to actually solve the problem that’s required. In a sense your work has been in that tradition, and that’s why you’re full of contempt for a lot things, as I would be. But the difficulty right now is that society is in bad shape. It has so little ambition. People rarely expose themselves to the ridicule that goes with theoretical projects.