Marjan Colletti (MC) Interview by
Nahed Jawad-Chakouf (NJC)
Lobbying for the Spectacular in Architecture
Lobby Magazine #1: Un/Spectable, pp. 96-8
Between recently
publishing his latest book Digital
Poetics, running his 14-year-old London-based office (marcosandmarjan), and
teaching at the Bartlett School of Architecture at UCL and at the University of
Innsbruck, LOBBY is delighted to have had a quick chat with Marjan Colletti – in addition to his eventful
schedule.
Join me on this momentous
journey to see his view on un/spectacular architecture, life, architectural
influences and other issues, regarding his practice, teaching, and, most
importantly, his own crit experience!
MC: There is no clear division between the
various roles. They complement each other; their boundaries are very fluid and
blurry. I am a practitioner interested in education, an educator concerned with
writing, an author investigating design research, and a researcher striving to
bridge the gap with practice and the industry.
However, ‘architect’ is certainly the
umbrella term that distinguishes my disciplinary affiliation and feeling of
belonging. In research, writing and education, I strive for hybrid feedback
mechanisms of transferring knowledge, fostering communication, and debate. You
may say that I am therefore a generalist, OK, but I would like to believe that
I am somehow a specialist in managing the transition from line (that is,
drawing) to pen (writing) to word (educating).
NJC: What do you feel is ‘spectacular’
now in architecture? And what is not?
MC: A thesaurus suggests the following
synonyms for spectacular: ‘remarkable, huge, great, enormous, mighty,
outstanding, almighty, stunning, impressive, amazing’. However, I would prefer
to link the word to spectacle and therefore performance: to be understood as
show as much as task. Something ‘spectacular’ therefore arouses and satisfies
sense (intellect) and senses (desire). In my opinion, such spectacular tendency
in contemporary architecture as described above provides one additional
testimony for today’s Neo-Baroque tendency in various disciplines.
NJC: When did you realise that you
wanted to be an architect?
MC: I believe in autobiographical
influences. It makes some sense that I became a digital architect: my dad was a
self-taught software programmer for Italian banks; my mom worked in a technical
office with many drafting tables.
NJC: How did the city that you grow up
in affect your architectural awareness?
MC: I was born and grew up in a bilingual
(Italian-German) town in Northern Italy: Bolzano-Bozen, which taught me about
hybridity and how to accept impurity. Listening to me suffices to understand
what I mean: I speak English with an Austrian accent, Italian with an English
intonation, and German with an Italian, South Tyrolean dialect…
NJC: In your opinion, what is the task
of architecture nowadays? What is its distinctive role? What are architects
contributing to society?
MC: Architecture is (production of) culture
and communication. It is the culture of communication (and production). Architecture
is a team sport and a good arena for creating, transferring and hybridizing
knowledge and technologies between disciplines. Architecture is also the
communication (and production) of culture: it reflects and shapes our way of
living, and individual and societal behaviour.
NJC: You are the co-founder of the
London-based architecture studio marcosandmarjan, founded by yourself and
Marcos Cruz in 2000. Does your university teaching feed into marcosandmarjan
and its research?
MC: Vice versa. It would be fairer to say
that we ‘feed’ our personal research, professional expertise and individual
interests into the teaching (although I am a bit disturbed that the term
‘feeding’ lets me think of mommy bird and daddy bird regurgitating food to their
chicks). I would prefer to think of a two-way feedback system: let students/scholars
push and develop ideas and concepts further to open up new streams of
investigations, which get us going again. Like ping-pong (table tennis). If you
play a rookie (or your young son), initially it is frustrating as the ball hardly
gets back to you, as it ends everywhere else but your table side. But if you
are a dedicated teacher or parent, you keep up the spirit as you are looking
forward to a good match – and even being beaten. Design education is more
coaching than teaching, really.
NJC: It has been 14 years since you
founded your practice. How did the work mature and the studio evolve over this
course of time?
MC: If you are suggesting that the work is
as mature as a 14-year-old teenager you are probably right...
MC: The system, the people, the students,
the briefs, the context, the fees (no tuition fees, but, interestingly, partly
the same instructors who teach in expensive renowned EU, UK and US
universities) are different, but the intention remains the same: to open
students’ eyes and to make them do architecture more intelligently, more
sensually, and more spectacularly.
NJC: We are reviewing the ‘crit space’
in this section of LOBBY. It is a
place where students exhibit, pin up and post their work and simply get
feedback about it. Marjan, in which do you find more pleasure: in giving or
receiving criticism?
MC: Seriously, who gets pleasure from being
criticised or being misunderstood? On the other hand, receiving advice, or
annoying someone, is sometimes fun but also necessary (a lot of critical
writing is so generic and flat because nobody wants to irritate anybody else).
It is true that you have to be cruel to be kind, to open someone’s horizon. It
is part of the job.
NJC: I am sure in your teaching
involvement you have attended countless crit sessions in different crit spaces.
How do you find architecture students take criticism these days? Similarly, how
do you find that practicing architects take criticism?
MC: It is noticeable that high fee-paying
students have higher expectations in receiving a fair amount of propositional
criticism and suggestive coaching. A delicate balance between tuition fees,
service provision, facilities and expectations should be guaranteed.
There is an issue of self-referential, scale-related
indifference involved with practising architects. Local architects are criticised
(sometimes congratulated) locally; otherwise, they mostly obtain total
indifference. Commercial architects are criticised commercially (and
politically) but they appear indifferent to it all as long as the business runs.
Signature architects are criticised globally for their work – but at least it
is a stylistic, qualitative and intellectual debate – relevant, and not
indifferent, to the discipline.
NJC: Can you take us down memory lane,
and tell us about one particular impression that you remember during a crit in
your earlier years when you were an architecture student? And how about from
the other end, as a tutor during a crit?
MC: Well, I remember my first and last crit
as a student at the Bartlett. In my first crit I wrapped a few soft toys in a
blanket and velcroed them on to my freshly shaved head. The tutors (Sir Peter
Cook in their midst) enjoyed it as much as I did. My last crit, my PhD Viva,
was less enjoyable. I was well prepared and relatively agile on my
(argumentative) feet, but the external examiners immediately asked a really
difficult and aggressive (so I thought) question. Feeling unbalanced, I mumbled
away and immediately thought I would fail. After a while I regained equilibrium,
and I was now hoping for major revisions. Then I managed to respond to their
blows: maybe I might get away with minor revision, I thought. Eventually it
turned into a good debate and it was over relatively soon: no revision
required. What a relief! Retrospectively, I am thankful for the hard time: it
made me think about the research and the work, and I trust that it had a good
influence on me. However: it was not nice at the time…
As a critic. Last year, Steven A. danced
his way through his final crit in a 3D printed costume. Certainly entertaining
– it attracted quite an audience. And a few days later Zack S. did a
vivisection of a mouse: it was extremely smelly. Disgustingly smelly…
Everybody: please do not do that again. Not to me.
