Emilio ambaz’s green buildings
Emilio ambaz?s green buildings
A few weeks ago I received a press release titled ?The world?s first ?green? hospital designed by the pioneer of green architecture, Emilio Ambasz.? Included were impressive photos of the hospital and an adjacent building - an innovative eye transplant and research lab.
The del?Angelo Hospital in Venice-Mestre, says the text, is the first hospital in the world conceived architecturally as an aid to the healing process: its grand entrance hall functions as a winter garden, with trees, flowers, and aromatic plants welcoming all patients and their visitors. The reverse ziggurat section of the building ensures that every inner room has a direct view of the winter garden, while the external ones have a view to outside scenery, or to alternative shielded terraces. To avoid dispersing the auxiliary buildings all over the site, the supporting functions - administration, operation rooms, chapel, mortuary and parking - are all covered with earth to form a ?natural? continuum to the landscape.
As flora-enriched buildings do not always adhere to the accepted criteria of green architecture, I delicately asked the veteran architect to clarify his attitude to the matter.
His answer came swiftly: ?Dear Ami: I am familiar with your magazine and flattered by your interest in my work. In the last 30 and some years I have tried to give back to the community as much as possible of the land covered by the building's footprint, in the form of gardens accessible to all. I presume to be the precursor of the by now faddish (and to me irritating) slogan ?green architecture?. I have children, grandchildren and not a few little bastards doing 'green architecture'. I am sure my paternal destiny has been predicted by Freud. Do I prescribe 'green' as a cure to it all? NO! I only hoped my building would not depress the patients further, and if possible contribute, in some small, but visible way, to their well being and recovery.
I am sending you a number of books that relate to my work. But so you don?t think I?m avoiding your questions, included is an interview I held between me and myself.?
Naturally, not all of the interesting self questioning is salient to this context, but here is what is: ?I was born in Chaco, a subtropical province of Argentina, almost 1,500 km north of Buenos Aires. Its never failing afternoon rain could be used to adjust one's watch to 4 pm. Clouds of vapor, evaporating half an hour later, stood as metaphors for the impermanence of all things.
?When I was seven years old my parents moved to Buenos Aires. My room, on the first floor of a new apartment house, opened directly onto the leafy branches of a street tree. With my bed placed against the window it was as if I lived in a tree house. I used to stay up late, in the darkness of my room, looking at the reflection of the streetlights on the tree. I never ceased to marvel at the brightness of a raindrop as it held on to a leaf. I still remember shivering as if caressed by celestial fingers when the rustling leaves made their music. I was entranced by that tree. To this day I revere its brethren.
?The stars of Buenos Aires: there are so many more visible in the southern hemisphere. Standing on a deep balcony projected onto the sidewalk I felt they cast a dome whose perimeter was nowhere but its centre was everywhere, while I was nothing. One felt so, but so, lonely in such an overbearing universe.
?Buenos Aires has always been seen by the Argentines as the incarnation of everything the provinces thought ideal. We knew it was to be a disappointment, but we cherished its pretence to perfection. I have sung to that flawed Buenos Aires, as one would to a beloved son who did not live up to expectations, in an essay I wrote 40 years ago: 'Anthology for a Spatial Buenos Aires.' Its words and meanings still ring true, only the plaintive sounds have vanished.
Why should an Argentinean architect divide his time between Italy and New York?
?If Emilio could not re-enter Italy he would feel as if he had been thrown out of Paradise. If Ambasz could not return to New York he would feel excluded from what was the Capital of the 20th century. As for me, I need both places: my feet on the garden's earth, and my head on those constantly changing clouds, suggestive of things to come.
When an architect is asked what his best building is, he usually answers, ?The next one?. Which of my projects do I consider best?
?One of the most important is La Casa de Retiro Espiritual. With it I actually wanted to ?re-examine? architecture. The only thing above ground was the fa?ade, which would be like a mask - a surrogate for architecture. Behind it one can see only the earth, since the building is underground. You might say that by this device I rhetorically sought to reformulate architecture as a culturally-conditioned process and return to the primeval notion of the abode.
?Another important project for me is the one in Fukuoka, because it demonstrates that the green and the grey can reside one on top of the other. And - to Hell with Hegel and his antithesis - the notion that 'the cities are for the buildings and the outskirts are for the parks' is proved to be mistaken. The Fukuoka building demonstrates, once and for all, that you can have a building and a garden not at each other's expense.
Could you elaborate on the relation between plant covered buildings, and all the new technologies - some maybe valid, some superficial - claiming to produce 'green architecture'?
?Green is at present an attitude, not yet a principle. However, it may yet create its own cultural reality. Every act of construction is a defiance of nature. Building inevitably changes Nature as found and turns it into a Man-made nature. To that end technologies are being developed, but they have not yet created a reliable body of methods. I have no doubt that in time it will happen. The key point is not to confuse technological pyrotechnics with architecture. To make a green building you need technology, to create architecture you need art.
?The goal should be to reduce, and if possible, compensate, for our intrusion of the Vegetal Kingdom. Building an individual energy-economical house is not the best way to produce energy; social investment in a communal method for producing solar, sea, or aeolian energy is a far more productive and efficient method.
Do I believe in the Gaia Theory?
Gaia is to me not a theory, but a poetic hypothesis, and I am all for poetry. Although it is a metaphor, it provides a temporary structure on which to affix many seemingly unrelated questions. When seen from a certain distance, that frame of reference may help us to connect some of those disparate points into a cohesive theoretical structure.
Where do I place myself among those heralding contemporary architecture?
?I know it sounds presumptuous, but I claim to be one of the precursors of contemporary architecture concerned with environmental problems. If there is any strength to my architectural ideas, it comes from the fact that I believe that architecture has to be not only pragmatic but also move the heart. I rejoice immensely when I come upon somebody else?s work that touches me, even if it is the architecture of someone like Gehry, whose work is so different from mine. What matters to me is that he hums his own melody. His birds may not alight often in my garden, but I?m sure that when they do, they will pollinate even my flowers. As for those who practice my architectural credo, I am not interested in whether they cover their work with salad or cabbage, as long as their work can strike an emotional cord.
How does an Argentinean like me relate to local aspects of Italy, Japan, or the USA?
?The architecture I create is steeped in mysticism. On the one hand, I am playing with the pragmatic elements that come from my time, such as technology. On the other hand, I am proposing an alternative mode of existence. My work is a search for giving architectural form to primal things - being born, being in love, and dying - that is with an emotional, passionate, and essential level of existence. I seek to develop an architectural vocabulary outside the canonical tradition of architecture. It is an architecture that is neither here nor there. With it I hope to place the user in a new state of existence, a celebration of human majesty, thought, and sensation.
And a concluding sentence?
?The Modern movement has advanced the idea that urban redemption will come by locating the building in the garden - for instance, 40% building and 60% garden. In this manner, there is a distinction between the built and un-built. I propose to have 100% of the garden and 100% of the house, thus saving space by an organic overlapping between them. Is that not sufficiently green?
A few weeks ago I received a press release titled ?The world?s first ?green? hospital designed by the pioneer of green architecture, Emilio Ambasz.? Included were impressive photos of the hospital and an adjacent building - an innovative eye transplant and research lab.
The del?Angelo Hospital in Venice-Mestre, says the text, is the first hospital in the world conceived architecturally as an aid to the healing process: its grand entrance hall functions as a winter garden, with trees, flowers, and aromatic plants welcoming all patients and their visitors. The reverse ziggurat section of the building ensures that every inner room has a direct view of the winter garden, while the external ones have a view to outside scenery, or to alternative shielded terraces. To avoid dispersing the auxiliary buildings all over the site, the supporting functions - administration, operation rooms, chapel, mortuary and parking - are all covered with earth to form a ?natural? continuum to the landscape.
As flora-enriched buildings do not always adhere to the accepted criteria of green architecture, I delicately asked the veteran architect to clarify his attitude to the matter.
His answer came swiftly: ?Dear Ami: I am familiar with your magazine and flattered by your interest in my work. In the last 30 and some years I have tried to give back to the community as much as possible of the land covered by the building's footprint, in the form of gardens accessible to all. I presume to be the precursor of the by now faddish (and to me irritating) slogan ?green architecture?. I have children, grandchildren and not a few little bastards doing 'green architecture'. I am sure my paternal destiny has been predicted by Freud. Do I prescribe 'green' as a cure to it all? NO! I only hoped my building would not depress the patients further, and if possible contribute, in some small, but visible way, to their well being and recovery.
I am sending you a number of books that relate to my work. But so you don?t think I?m avoiding your questions, included is an interview I held between me and myself.?
Naturally, not all of the interesting self questioning is salient to this context, but here is what is: ?I was born in Chaco, a subtropical province of Argentina, almost 1,500 km north of Buenos Aires. Its never failing afternoon rain could be used to adjust one's watch to 4 pm. Clouds of vapor, evaporating half an hour later, stood as metaphors for the impermanence of all things.
?When I was seven years old my parents moved to Buenos Aires. My room, on the first floor of a new apartment house, opened directly onto the leafy branches of a street tree. With my bed placed against the window it was as if I lived in a tree house. I used to stay up late, in the darkness of my room, looking at the reflection of the streetlights on the tree. I never ceased to marvel at the brightness of a raindrop as it held on to a leaf. I still remember shivering as if caressed by celestial fingers when the rustling leaves made their music. I was entranced by that tree. To this day I revere its brethren.
?The stars of Buenos Aires: there are so many more visible in the southern hemisphere. Standing on a deep balcony projected onto the sidewalk I felt they cast a dome whose perimeter was nowhere but its centre was everywhere, while I was nothing. One felt so, but so, lonely in such an overbearing universe.
?Buenos Aires has always been seen by the Argentines as the incarnation of everything the provinces thought ideal. We knew it was to be a disappointment, but we cherished its pretence to perfection. I have sung to that flawed Buenos Aires, as one would to a beloved son who did not live up to expectations, in an essay I wrote 40 years ago: 'Anthology for a Spatial Buenos Aires.' Its words and meanings still ring true, only the plaintive sounds have vanished.
Why should an Argentinean architect divide his time between Italy and New York?
?If Emilio could not re-enter Italy he would feel as if he had been thrown out of Paradise. If Ambasz could not return to New York he would feel excluded from what was the Capital of the 20th century. As for me, I need both places: my feet on the garden's earth, and my head on those constantly changing clouds, suggestive of things to come.
When an architect is asked what his best building is, he usually answers, ?The next one?. Which of my projects do I consider best?
?One of the most important is La Casa de Retiro Espiritual. With it I actually wanted to ?re-examine? architecture. The only thing above ground was the fa?ade, which would be like a mask - a surrogate for architecture. Behind it one can see only the earth, since the building is underground. You might say that by this device I rhetorically sought to reformulate architecture as a culturally-conditioned process and return to the primeval notion of the abode.
?Another important project for me is the one in Fukuoka, because it demonstrates that the green and the grey can reside one on top of the other. And - to Hell with Hegel and his antithesis - the notion that 'the cities are for the buildings and the outskirts are for the parks' is proved to be mistaken. The Fukuoka building demonstrates, once and for all, that you can have a building and a garden not at each other's expense.
Could you elaborate on the relation between plant covered buildings, and all the new technologies - some maybe valid, some superficial - claiming to produce 'green architecture'?
?Green is at present an attitude, not yet a principle. However, it may yet create its own cultural reality. Every act of construction is a defiance of nature. Building inevitably changes Nature as found and turns it into a Man-made nature. To that end technologies are being developed, but they have not yet created a reliable body of methods. I have no doubt that in time it will happen. The key point is not to confuse technological pyrotechnics with architecture. To make a green building you need technology, to create architecture you need art.
?The goal should be to reduce, and if possible, compensate, for our intrusion of the Vegetal Kingdom. Building an individual energy-economical house is not the best way to produce energy; social investment in a communal method for producing solar, sea, or aeolian energy is a far more productive and efficient method.
Do I believe in the Gaia Theory?
Gaia is to me not a theory, but a poetic hypothesis, and I am all for poetry. Although it is a metaphor, it provides a temporary structure on which to affix many seemingly unrelated questions. When seen from a certain distance, that frame of reference may help us to connect some of those disparate points into a cohesive theoretical structure.
Where do I place myself among those heralding contemporary architecture?
?I know it sounds presumptuous, but I claim to be one of the precursors of contemporary architecture concerned with environmental problems. If there is any strength to my architectural ideas, it comes from the fact that I believe that architecture has to be not only pragmatic but also move the heart. I rejoice immensely when I come upon somebody else?s work that touches me, even if it is the architecture of someone like Gehry, whose work is so different from mine. What matters to me is that he hums his own melody. His birds may not alight often in my garden, but I?m sure that when they do, they will pollinate even my flowers. As for those who practice my architectural credo, I am not interested in whether they cover their work with salad or cabbage, as long as their work can strike an emotional cord.
How does an Argentinean like me relate to local aspects of Italy, Japan, or the USA?
?The architecture I create is steeped in mysticism. On the one hand, I am playing with the pragmatic elements that come from my time, such as technology. On the other hand, I am proposing an alternative mode of existence. My work is a search for giving architectural form to primal things - being born, being in love, and dying - that is with an emotional, passionate, and essential level of existence. I seek to develop an architectural vocabulary outside the canonical tradition of architecture. It is an architecture that is neither here nor there. With it I hope to place the user in a new state of existence, a celebration of human majesty, thought, and sensation.
And a concluding sentence?
?The Modern movement has advanced the idea that urban redemption will come by locating the building in the garden - for instance, 40% building and 60% garden. In this manner, there is a distinction between the built and un-built. I propose to have 100% of the garden and 100% of the house, thus saving space by an organic overlapping between them. Is that not sufficiently green?
