John Hejduk - Generelt

John Hejduk designed this house in the 70s, but it was built much later, in 2001 on the outskirts of the City of Groningen in the northernmost province of the Netherlands. The house was a radical conceptualization of the idea that work and living space should be separated, in this case by an over sized concrete wall. Recent research about the detrimental effects of the growing intermingling of working and living, suggest that Hejduk had the right idea.

http://www.sphericalpanoramas.com/blog/places/372

John Hejduk considered the Wall House 2, an architectural meditation on the passage of time, to be his most important work. Originally designed in the early 1970s for a rural site in Connecticut, it now rises on a lakefront in Groningen, the Netherlands. In the mid-1990s town planners there asked Hejduk--whose highly theoretical work exists mostly on paper--which of his designs he would like to see built. He chose the Wall House. The Dutch site changes one's perspective of the building. "The flatness of the land and the lake brings even more attention to the idea of the wall," says his daughter, Renata Hejduk, a professor of architectural history at Arizona State University.

The building is a hit: in the month following its September 5 dedication it drew 13,000 visitors. Hejduk, dean of the Cooper Union's school of architecture for 25 years, died on July 3, 2000. His designs dealt with basic universal concerns: time, the social contract, how to make an idea into a reality. "Passing through the wall is a representation of presence--one side is the past, the other the future," says Hejduk colleague Steven Hillyer, of Cooper Union.

http://www.metropolismag.com/html/content_0102/ob/ob01.html

Originally designed in 1973 for Ed Bye, in Ridgefield, Connecticut USA, for a long time it only existed as a concept until Groningen decided to actually build the house. Designed to place living in the context of time by means of a Wall which symbolizes the physical transition from past to future through the present, a transition between back and front, closed and open. The Wall, one-and-a-half m. thick, forms the basis of the house. The entrance and living elements literally hang from it. To reinforce this idea, a narrow gap is left between the Wall and the elements. Hence the Wall is not directly manifest in the interior but can only be perceived visually. It is a theoretical house, based on the idea of the physical confrontation between space and time, elaborated in separate elements. It is a museological manifestation of an important architectural concept. Although it wasn't designed for this particular site, it does enter into a dialogue with its 'everyday' surroundings.

http://www.mimoa.eu/projects/Netherlands/Groningen/Wall%20House

John Hejduk (b. New York, N.Y. 1929; d. New York, N.Y. 3 July 2000) John Hejduk was born in New York in 1929. He studied at the Cooper Union School of Art and Architecture and at the University of Cincinnati. He graduated from the Harvard Graduate School of Design with an Masters in Architecture in 1953. He worked in several architectural offices in New York including the office of I. M. Pei and

Partners and the office of A.M. Kinney and Associates. He established his own practice in New York in 1965. Hejduk explored the harmonic possibilities of architecture in his work. He resolutely pursued a narrowly defined set of themes and variations. At first, he studied cubes, grids, and frames. Next he examined square grids placed within diagonal containers with an occasional curving wall. Finally, he evolved into experiments with flat planes and curved masses in various combinations and colors. His architecture in the early stages was brutalist in style. Hejduk created attractive objects with little or no socially redeeming value. He detached himself from context, materials, structure, and climate to create artistic environments. In doing so he often ignored the pragmatic considerations that share no part in their exotic surroundings. While his renderings easily side step the more utilitarian issues of design, his buildings may have failed to overcome the realities of pedestrian requirements. He seemed to be content to allow his explorations to be ends in themselves. References Muriel Emmanuel. Contemporary Architects. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1980. ISBN 0-312-16635-4. NA 680-C625. p352-354. "Mr. Hejduk was Dean of the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art from 1975 until his retirement last month. He was an architect who largely abstained from conventional practice, and the bulk of his work consisted of theoretical projects, executed in the form of drawings that were combined into poetic, often highly personal narratives." — Herbert Muschamp, John Hejduk, an Architect And Educator, Dies at 71 (registration required), New York Times, July 6, 2000. "Like many gifted architects, he was a contradictory figure: a solitary artist who chose

to work in a highly social form of art. But he had a particular way of living out the contradiction. Instead of constructing social spaces with bricks and mortar, he fashioned one from ideas and emotions and peopled it with students and faculty members of the school he led for 25 years. " — Herbert Muschamp, Solitary Performer on a Crowded Stage (registration required), New York Times, July 16, 2000. http://www.greatbuildings.com/architects/John_Hejduk.html

Gode billeder: http://www.coffeewithanarchitect.com/2011/04/10/architecture-week-day-1-johnhejduk/ http://www.renaissancesociety.org/site/Exhibitions/Images.John-HejdukMasques.139.html http://www.architectureweek.com/2000/0726/news_2-2.html

Video: http://rasmusbroennum.wordpress.com/2011/09/18/words-of-wisdom-fra-johnhejduk/ dikotomi - en todeling af elementer, hvor intet kan tilhøre de to dele samtidigt.