WHAT DOES ART BRING TO ARCHITECTURE THAT ARCHITECTURE ITSELF

CANNOT EXPRESS?

Over the last forty years or so we have seen architecture becoming wilder, using
more colour and breaking away from past constraints of what architecture should look like.
While this change has occurred there has been an upsurge in artists using architecture as
a source for their work, though a lot of the time their projects are is based on more
traditional buildings and housing. Perhaps this is because the architects have already
pushed the artistic boundaries of their buildings with work such as the honeycomb
apartments in Slovenia made by Ofis (Image 1). This building pushes the norm of
expectations for housing, while being very appealing, expensive and modern looking,
these apartments were designed for low budget lodgers, such as young couples and
families. The interdisciplinarity of art becoming part of architecture - with such sculptural
buildings as the honeycomb apartments – continues to grow, where architects work is
taking on artistic, sculptural qualities. In the light of architects taking on these artistic
qualities, I want to look at the other side of this relationship – artists who take on
architecture as a source or medium for their work, this is a trend that has also seen an
upsurge over recent decades. I will do this by looking at artists that directly reference
architectural forms, mainly based around the idea of housing. I will also look at artists that
interact with buildings, using them for more than a site for their work. I want to investigate
the combining of two disciplines and their interplay, what does art bring to architecture that
architecture doesn't contain in it's own original form?
One answer to this question is sentimentality. Do Ho Suh is the first and main artist I
will look at to illustrate the presence of sentimentality in art that is based on architecture. I
will begin with the piece Fallen Star 1/5 (Image 2). This piece is a scaled down replica of
two houses that the artist has lived in. One of the buildings is the house where he grew up
in Korea and the other is the first house he lived in when he moved to New York. His
childhood house colliding with the house where he dealt with the stress and sadness of
leaving his former home behind to create a new life for himself. The functionality of the
buildings - housing people being their main objectives when built - are not the focus for the
artist. What these buildings mean to him and what the buildings hold in terms of all his past
experiences are what are being presented to the viewer. The artist moving from Korea to
America is a topic that is dealt with, the aesthetic characteristics of the houses are
simulated perfectly and a contrast is visible. They invoke a feeling for the viewer that the
departure from his old home, as well as the entry into his new home were turbulent. There
is no sign of the people in the buildings, as I mentioned, the original function of the
buildings are not important. The new function of the buildings as symbols, as objects that
signify his sentimentality and a way for the artist to speak of his own identity as someone
who has moved away from his home, someone who has been displaced is what is at stake
in the work.
When the artist moved to New York he found it very difficult to sleep at night, he
thought to himself that the last time he got a really good sleep was when he was back in
Korea. The sense of longing for home, but knowing that if he did return home that his
career would always be overshadowed by that of his father – a successful painter - was a
conflicting feeling within the artist. Instead of 'sitting down and crying for home'1 he decided
that he wanted to make a replica of his house in Korea, that he could pack into a suitcase
and bring wherever he traveled. Ho Suh did this with the piece Seoul Home/LA Home/NY
Home/Baltimore Home/ London Home/ Seattle Home/ LA Home (Image 3) where he made
his Korean house out of transparent coloured fabrics like nylon. The artist made the
interior of the house in a way that was transportable but still managed to look beautiful and
perfectly measured as his previous work mentioned. The artist says that it was when he
started taking measurements to make the work that it was then he started noticing all the
marks on the walls that he had made as a child and all the memories started flooding back
to him. This sentimentality and memory are all captured in the work, the choice of
materials, the transparency give a sense of memory and recollection, that there is no solid
physical presence of the Korean home, but a representation of it as Adrian Searle
describes 'as much a reconstruction of a space as it is an image of a memory'2. Do Ho Suh
says that the 'space becomes part of you'3 and it is this sentimentality and a building being
not just a house for people but also a home for personal emotion and recollection that
shows through in his work. An architect can't input these things when he creates a new
building, he gives the owner a chance to endow the space with all these things and this is
what an artist captures and takes on when making art about buildings.
These two pieces have been included in the exhibition Psycho Buildings: Artists
Take on Architecture at the Hayward in London. In an essay written by Ralph Rugoff, the

1 Ho Suh, interviewed by Art:21

2 Searle, 2008
3 Ho Suh, interviewed by Art:21
director of the institution, he states that in the exhibition 'we find architecture not in its
functional guise but as a site of desire, memory and doubt, home to personal
contingencies and collective histories, the clashing of cultures and coalescing of
subjectivities' 4 he states these things that a building only collects once it has had people
using it. An architect can't put these things into a building before it has been lived in or
used but an artist can remake the building and portray these things through their own
medium. In a way picking up from where the architect left off.
The success of a building created for housing is judged by how it looks in relation to
it's function. An architect is restricted by things like scale, materials used and whether they
can bear loads, how much the building costs to make also contributes to how much the
house will be bought for, and if this is too expensive and the houses aren't sold or used,
the whole project is a failure – even if it is beautiful. When an artist gets their hands on a
building and uses it as a source in their work they are limitless in what they can do
compared to an architect. Their form doesn't have to be functional or safe to live in. Also,
when an architect has created a house it only shows their design creativity to an audience
on some visible levels. The artist Olafur Eliasson is well known for such work as the
Weather Project (Image 4), a lesser known work by the artist is Your House (Image 5). For
this work the artist took the architect's drawings of the artist's own house in Copenhagen
and created an inverted model of the house in the form of a book. The pages of the book
were laser-cut to create a zero dimensional negative form of his house in paper. As the
viewer flips through the book they can see through the house, getting a cross section or a
tour of the different rooms. Though this piece of art work has very similar aesthetic
parallels to an architect's model, it inverts the display and the work bears the personal
aspect to the artist that it is his home, not just any house. It is where he lives his life. The
artist highlights the beauty of this house and presents it in a way that shows all the details
and perhaps crediting the house more than one could ever do by viewing the architect's
creation in the flesh. As an artist approaching the building as a source to create an
artwork, there are allowances to expose everything about a building that was designed by
an architect. This piece also makes architecture look at itself and be aware of itself. It does
this by looking at what architecture is: creating a space for people to use, out of materials.
Eliasson changes this around and makes a space that looks like a building, that can't be
used by people and is made out of nothing. As Jane Rendell explains in her piece Art's
Use of Architecture: Place, Site and Setting that contemporary art often shows the
potential of architecture, when taken out of it's original context, redeveloped and

4 Rugoff, 2008, p19

reconstructed architectural forms can say a lot more than they often get the chance to say
in their original environment. Art provides other functions for architecture such as 'self –
reflection, critical thinking and social change”5. It is only when a building is taken out of it's
original context that all it's possibilities structurally can be recongnised, when an artist can
use these structures to create something new.
As an artist can show many different aspects of a building, they can also show what
a building looks like from a viewers perspective, making architecture look at itself from
another point of view – exactly how our eyes see it. Artists like Eric Olofson take the
structural formations of buildings and present them from the perspective of a viewer from
the street. His State of Delusion project is all about perception and you can see from
(Image 6) that he warps the perspective as it would be seen by a viewer on the street. He
applies this view to the building, an artist can do this because they are without limitations,
an archtect is confined to making buildings that can function and are real. Artists are not
bound by their knowledge of limits, there is no “this can't be built, this is not possible” and
artist can let their imagination run wild with architectural forms. An artist can create an
uncompromised, architecturally-inspired artistic vision.
As I mentioned before, an architect can only show their designing abilities when
they create a home or any other building. An artist has the ability to show the structure of a
house but also show whether the building has housed good experiences inside it and what
their own feelings towards a building is. They can intentionally provoke a reaction from a
viewer towards a building, and they get to decide whether this will be a good or a bad
reaction. As Do Ho Suh created an airy, light and positive depiction of his house in Korea,
there are artists who create negative delineations of houses and buildings also. Such an
artist is Gregor Schneider. Schneider does not have the limitations of an architect in
creating a space, the constraints of having to create a pleasant and livable area.
Schneider can load his source with negative meaning and connotation. His work 'Dead
House u r' (Image 7) looks like a normal house from the outside but it is only when you
enter into the house that the viewer can see that it in fact has been modified. The house,
which Schneider started working on at sixteen belongs to his family, he has built walls
beside and behind other walls, the house incorporates windows which face out onto walls
or open out onto other windows. It contains low ceilings, a series of tunnels, a kitchen
covered in mould and has been described as a 'chilling installation where few of us would
ever want to live'6 by Jessica Lack of the Guardian. She explains how the artist alludes to

5 Rendell, 2008, p39

6 Lack, 2009
sex and death in his work, calling it 'gruesome'7. The artist has created a space that is
intentionally dark and disconcerting. A space with an eery feel that is designed to make a
visitor feel uncomfortable. These would all be considered as bad design if presented as a
piece of architecture but when seen as a piece of art the house becomes an amazing feet
in creating an atmosphere and a loaded scene to the viewer, in an architectural setting.
Whether the sentiment is good or bad an artist can and is allowed to apply this to a
building where an architect cannot.
In conclusion, I have pointed out several ways in which art can contribute to
architecture; by bringing to architecture, what architecture itself cannot express.
Sentimentality is one aspect of architecture that cannot be shown in the creation of a new
building. Artists such as Do Ho Suh can present the sentimentality that architecture holds
for people, as buildings are mainly where we live our lives. Art can make us step back and
look at buildings in a different light, artists like Olafur Eliasson are not held back by
functionality and scale. His work as well as Erik Olofson's make architecture look at itself,
as not being able to show a) all of it's own layers and details and b) how it is actually
perceived by viewers and does this for architecture. Artists like Gregor Schneider can also
show and provide negative atmospheres in architectural situations, which is something
that an architect should not do. I have shown some of art's many contributions to
architecture and by doing this answered the question of what can art bring to architecture
that it itself can not express.

7 Lack, 2009
 Image 1
Honeycomb Apartments
– Ofis

[http://www.ofis-a.si/default.cfm?Kat=0309&ProdID=26]

Image 2
Fallen Star - Do Ho Suh

[http://www.lehmannmaupin.com/#/artists/do-ho-suh/]
 Image 3
Seoul Home/LA Home/NY
Home/Baltimore Home/
London Home/ Seattle Home/
LA Home - Do Ho Suh

[http://www.studio-international.co.uk/studio-
images/elegance_of_silence/elegance01_b.jpg]

Image 4
Weather Project
– Olafur Eliasson

[http://www.olafureliasson.net/works/the_weather_project_5.html]
Image 5
Your House – Olafur Eliasson
[http://www.olafureliasson.net/publications/your_house_1.html]

Image 6
State of Delusion – Erik Olofsen
[http://www.erikolofsen.com/statebilbo.html]
Image 7
Dead House u r – Gregor Schneider
[http://www.gregorschneider.de/galleries.htm]
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