Wall: Let’s talk about Italy-Texas. The one thing that seems to elude me is what happened between the Cooper Union days, Cincinnati and Harvard where the student work was completed and Texas. If I compare the student-produced work, it seem to lack the extreme categorical rigor, the categorical reductiveness, the concentration on a theme, that the Texas Houses exude. There is a dependency in the Cooper Union work on given programs, also at Cincinnati-Harvard; no such dependency exists at Texas. There is a decorative quality in the Cooper work; no such inclination are evident in the Texas Houses. The intervention device seems to be your journey to Italy. It seemed that before you went to Italy you were thinking one way; after Italy a more than slightly different Hejduk exists.

Hejduk: Except that the early work was reductive and abstract.?

Wall: Wasn’t the work typical of the architectural education of that time, in the sense that it was a blend between 1930s derived “abstract composing” loosely correlated to functional requirements?

Hejduk: No. I would argue that. The work was not the run-of-the-mill work that was being done at schools during those years. We are talking 1947-50. We are speaking about a time in American education that was the tail-end of the Bauhaus with Gropius at Harvard. Harvard was still having its influence felt. You also had Black Mountain. Albers was down there. Some Cooper students left and went down to study at Black Mountain. Then there was the Catalano-Caminos group at North Carolina under Kamphofner. That was a very active and viable school. They were investigating shell structure primarily. I imagine one must list Oklahoma and Bruce Goff. They were the link between the future to Herb Green and the past from Wright.
Wall: Were you aware of these alternatives at the time you were at Cooper??

Hejduk: No. As a student, I certainly was aware of Wright. He was number one. The impact of Wright was heavy during 1947-1950. I became aware of Aalto at the end of that period of time, through a teacher who had worked for Aalto. And I certainly became aware of Le Corbusier through Richard Stein. Stein was dropping Corb books on students’ desks. That was interesting; there were maybe two or three volumes on the complete works of Corbusier. And I reached. I was very anti-Corbusier. Very. I was empathetic to Wright, somewhat to Aalto. But the probings of the early projects all come from the two-dimensional design class. They are all interlocking, centralized conditions, moving out towards the edges. So the Cooper period was?not typical?. . . the later student work become more typical, especially at Harvard. More restraints were put on by the faculty : Alfred Roth, Kay Fisker.That period was different from Cooper. It was, in comparison, more ordered.?

The Cooper period was less structured. There was never, ever a frame at Cooper . . . a structural frame. That’s an important point: the Cooper work never had a structural frame. The frame was not used. The work was poured out, felt out. One sketched them out, drew them out, without a structural frame.?

Wall: In the sense of being more emotionally based, intuitive?

Hejduk: Yes.
Wall: What about the anti-rectilinear impulse during Cooper as soon through your heavy reliance on biomorphic shapes, exuberant color, which can be translated to mean a move towards decoration? I recall that at one point in our conversations you had mentioned that you had to be on guard against the decorative, the literal, because you have a propensity towards it.

Hejduk: Yes, the tendency was towards a Klee-like condition. Paul Klee was quite popular at the time. I was attracted to Klee’s tactility. One liked the surface characteristics of his work. But I was very suspicious of that even though I was doing it. So, there was an inclination towards Klee. Then going to Italy, all those Italian sketches had a sense of place, a sense of tactility, some were Klee-like, graphic representations, some tried to capture the mood of the place, the tactility of Italy, and then there was the classicizing, symmetricizing Italy . . . the gardens, the architecture. So, there were the aspects of Italy that were being unearthed, and went with me to Texas. The big Cathedral, the violin shaped one, I never finished. It was the last projected before Texas. At Texas, I had to teach for the first time; that let me to the invention of the nine square problem. It was always an architectonic problem. Parallel with the formation of the nine square problem I moved into the Texas House. And the Texas Houses were a compilation, certainly not of Palladio . . . Palladio never entered into it. Italy entered into it, coming back from Italy, the drama of the symmetrical classicizing tradition enters into the Houses. Then, my utter despair of detail. Utter despair. That I was not really competent enough in understanding architectural detail. So the Texas Houses were started with these problems in mind: to re-inform myself about construction at a conceptual level, at a real level; detail, the methodologic development of construction conditions: columns, piers, walls, beams, edges, and so forth.?

Wall: From where do you attribute the origins of the methodological approach since this was not evident at Cooper?

Hejduk: With the beginning of teaching, I had to get things into order. To order one’s teaching, on a rational basis.?

Wall: Rational? Renaissance?

Hejduk: No. I want to get to this issue: I developed it from a methodological condition. Method. Method. Do you know what I mean??Basic architectonic construction method:?am I making myself clear? Each of those Houses started that way. They built up, from single storey to two stories to three, then in detail the same way. Always abstract, not literal, that’s why the Houses have no style. Because the nine square problem was more abstract than the Texas Houses. The teaching problem, the nine square, had more authenticity. It was even more abstract. It wasn’t Bauhaus, it wasn’t Renaissance. It just?was.

Wall: It wasn’t even a House.

Hejduk: The overtones and overtures of the Texas Houses was getting Italy out of the system. Not getting rid of the place aspect, but getting rid of the classicizing aspect, by?working it out.

Wall: Working it out? How so? By domination? You controlling it rather than it controlling you ?

Hejduk: I am terribly old-fashioned. Here was someone working (1954) in an old-fashioned method: the Texas Houses. They were?not modern.

Wall: the Mies overtones, “God is in the detail,” the parallels as well in configural outlines, automatically make the Houses “modern” and “of its time.”

Hejduk: No. Mies was inherent only in one project: the 49-foot by 49-foot house, where the walls began to float. But the Fourth House, of all those Houses, is the closest to method: there is no style there. The other Houses, some of them, have the feel of the Renaissance, but not really. That Fourth House predates Kahn.?

Wall: Can you characterize each of the Houses as, for instance, this one is closest to Mies, this one is closest to . . .

Hejduk: Sure. The first one is an Italian garden situation. Symmetrical, the house is below entry eye-level, Tivoli, any of those kind of place # 1, that’s the Italian Garden. The second house is even more classicizing, more rigid, in an Italianate plan and I’m not talking about Palladio. The third one is a syncopation. It appears to refer to Mondrian. So there was the conflict between the Italian from Mondrian’s?Broadway Boogie Woogie?and?Victory Boogie Woogie. There was the conflict between two worlds: the modernist world, so called, and the classicizing world; America and Europe. It was already there in the verandah. Verandahs are American; loggias are European. Then the Fourth House was closest to Leger. Just a block. The Fifth House was a Mies exercise. The Sixth House was like the Fourth, was another stoery added. The Seventh House dealt with an inversion of scale – Renaissance scale, where the sill of the window was above your head. So after ten years I exorcised the Italian thing. Two occurrences: digging out and filling in. I dug out that which I had to get through and not use anymore. Like the Italian situation, symmetries in a certain way, and so forth. Then, certain things had to be filled in. In intellectual terminology. There was another education taking place beginning in 1954. I had finished my formal education and started another. Then I exorcised Le Corbusier in the Diamond Houses. The Diamond Houses, outside of their conceptual basis always annoyed me. Like the first Texas Houses annoyed. There were the Italian overtones. Then there were the Corb overtones. I didn’t like that. I liked the isometric systems at work but I didn’t like the fact that it reminded me of Le Corbusier. So I had to get rid of that, by working it out, by exorcising the images. Corbusier, and then Mondrian in a way, then I took on the Cubists, which was the?Out of Time and Into Space article, which took care of Gris and Léger in the Wall Houses, in tableaux. So, there it is: always being attached with an umbilical cord to all these things, in compressed time. The real break, the Wall House can be compared to the Fourth House, maybe. The ? House, the ? House, they had slighe overtones of Wright(but not entirely).

Wall: Can’t we add here Neutra’s desert houses, Mies’s wing wall houses?

Hejduk: No. There was something else going on. In retrospect it has always been an elimination of histories but I had to know history in order to dispense with it. It is an intentional absorbing of all those past things, zooming it, compressing it.

Wall: That takes you through one large cycle ending with the Cemetery For the Ashes of Thought (1975), which begins the next and most recent stage in your development.

Hejduk: Well, no and yes. All these houses were objects, singular objects.

Wall: Place was inherent within the object?

Hejduk: Yes. They are all places but singular objects. I never touched city planning because I wasn’t ready for it. So the first real shift in the work was political. The Cemetery for the Ashes of Thought is a city plan.

Wall: The Cemetery was intended for a specific site. Except for the Bye House, none of the previous work was site related.

Hejduk: Not even the Bye House. It was done separate from the site. I did the Bye House and he had the site. It worked. They worked together.

Wall: when you study the works of Corbusier, Legér Gris, Mies and read their writings, what are you looking for? How do you process information which is historical?

Hejduk: It’s strange. This is a good question. Well fundamentally I read them but I don’t read them. I’ll give you an example using Corb. From 1953 to about 1963, I would take Corb books and just pour over them, looking at them, night after night, literally, just going through the books, a thousand times, until I had absorbed Corbusier . . . absorbed the images, the organizations, into me as an organism, like blotting paper. Now I don’t have to look at them. I haven’t looked at them for ten years.

Wall: Yes, we have a “focused yet unfocused vision” that is working globally – that I understand. Yet how do you go from such an overall view to a very precise analysis of specific paintings and architecture in the?Out of Time Into Space?article, which is not at all global?

Hejduk: That article was a spinoff from Rowe and Slutzky’s Transparency # 1 article. Well, the painting lineage was always there, even at Cooper. I had always been empathetic to painting. I start with the modern paintings – Mondrian – and work backwards. Modernism ends with Mondrian. I don’t go beyond that, as I have told you. So there’s only one way to go. So now I’m back into the fourteenth century, from Mondrian to Ingres, Hooper, Sassetta and Italian primitives. So the painting is moving back into time and space. The literature line is more ecumenical, goes back and forth. Not the same. More flexible.

以下為嘗試翻譯稿，請謹慎閱讀。如有誤導，概不負責。

沃爾：讓我們來談談意大利-德克薩斯。有一件事一直使我百思不得其解：庫伯聯(lián)盟時期以及完成那些學生作品的辛辛那提和哈佛與德克薩斯之間到底是什么關(guān)系。如果拿學生作品作比較，它們似乎缺少德克薩斯住宅所散發(fā)的那些特征：嚴謹、抽象還原、主題集中。庫伯聯(lián)盟作品的作品與實際項目有關(guān)，辛辛那提和哈佛的作品也是，然而德克薩斯住宅研究卻不是。庫伯聯(lián)盟的作品有一定的裝飾性，而德克薩斯住宅卻沒有明顯這樣的傾向。你的意大利之旅似乎是一個“干涉裝置”。在你去意大利之前，你似乎以某種方式思考，而意大利之旅之后卻變成了極其不同的海杜克。

海杜克：除了早期的作品是還原和抽象的。

沃爾：算是那個時代建筑教育的典型嗎？從某種意義上說，它不正是20世紀30年代派生的“抽象構(gòu)成”與功能性需求的“輕率”組合嗎?

海杜克：不，我不怎么認為。這項工作并不是那些年在學校喝喝茶泡泡咖啡一般的普通工作。我們是在討論1947-1950年代。我們談論的是關(guān)于格羅皮烏斯仍在哈佛的那段“包豪斯末期”的美國教育。哈佛仍有其影響力。我們也討論黑山（學院），阿爾伯斯在那兒教學。有一些庫伯聯(lián)盟的學生離開到那兒學習。而且那里有Kamphofner為首的北卡羅萊納州Catalano-Caminos 學派。那是一個非?；钴S和有前途的學校，他們主要研究殼結(jié)構(gòu)。我認為也無法越過討論俄克拉荷馬和布魯斯·高夫，他們是連接赫博·格林與賴特之間的橋梁。

沃爾：當你在庫伯的時候，你是否意識到這些選擇?

海杜克：不。學生時期，我當然了解賴特。他是最好的建筑師。在1947-1950年間，來自賴特的影響是十分重大的。我在那段時期的末端通過一位老師開始了解到阿爾托，他曾為阿爾托工作。而我了解到勒·柯布西耶則是通過理查德·斯坦。他把柯布西耶的書落在學生的課桌上了。這是件有趣的事，那差不多有柯布西耶全集中的二或三冊，湊巧被我撞到。我那時非常不喜歡柯布西耶。真的！我崇拜賴特，也有些喜歡阿爾托。但早期探討的項目都來自二維設(shè)計室。他們是相關(guān)聯(lián)的，條件相對集中，然后向外探索邊界。所以庫珀時期并不典型...而后來的學生作品則變得更加典型,特別是在哈佛大學時期。更多的限制來自于教師：阿爾弗雷德·羅斯，凱·菲斯克。

那段時期不同于庫珀。相比之下，這一時期的工作更有秩序一些。庫珀是少有框架的。庫伯聯(lián)盟從來沒有一個明確的框架--結(jié)構(gòu)框架。這是非常重要的一點：庫珀聯(lián)盟的工作并沒有架構(gòu)可循，即使有也不曾使用。那些作品是噴涌而出，憑感覺的，是一點一點勾勒一點一點畫出來的，而非依據(jù)結(jié)構(gòu)性框架。

沃爾：更多出于感性？直覺嗎?

海杜克：是的。

沃爾：在庫珀聯(lián)盟時期，通過你的嚴重依賴生物形態(tài)和豐富的顏色所表現(xiàn)出來的反直線的傾向，是否意味著走向裝飾的傾向?我記得有一次在我們的談話中你有提到你不得不提防裝飾，文字，因為你有那樣的傾向。

海杜克：是的，趨向于克利式前提。保羅·克利在當時是相當受歡迎的。我被克利的觸感所吸引。比如他的作品的表皮特征。但即使我在這么做，我仍舊心懷疑慮。所以，曾有克利克利式的傾向。之后去了意大利。意大利那些草圖大都很有場所感和質(zhì)感，其中一些是克利式的，繪圖表達，一些試圖捕捉場所精神以及意大利的質(zhì)感，其中包括古典的，對稱式的意大利…花園，建筑等。所以，有一些意大利的特征被發(fā)掘出來，并隨我?guī)チ说轮?。小提琴形的大教堂我最終也沒有完成。那是德克薩斯前的最后一個作品。在德州，我第一次不得不教授，這使我發(fā)明了九宮格問題。它一直是一個建筑學的問題。建立九宮格問題的同時我轉(zhuǎn)向了德克薩斯住宅研究。德克薩斯住宅是一個系列，當然并不是帕拉第奧式的...帕拉第奧從來未曾進入它。意大利進入了它。當我從意大利回來，意大利對稱式古典傳統(tǒng)的特征被帶入到了那些房子。然后，是令我絕望的細節(jié)。徹底的絕望。我沒有足夠的能力理解建筑細節(jié)。所以德克薩斯住宅時刻謹記這些問題：在概念層面上和在現(xiàn)實層面上重塑自身的建造，細部，建構(gòu)前提的方法論式發(fā)展：柱子、板、墻、梁、邊緣，等等。

沃爾：你認為這種研究方法的起源在哪里？因為這在庫伯時期還不明顯。

海杜克：在我開始教學之后。我不得不把事情變得有秩序。在理性的基礎(chǔ)上規(guī)制教學。

沃爾：理性?文藝復興式的?

海杜克：不。我想討論這個話題：我從方法論的角度來發(fā)展它。方式。方法。你明白我的意思嗎?基本的建筑學的建造方法：這樣說你明白嗎?所有這些房子以這種方式開始。它們從單層到兩層、三層，逐步建立，然后細部也以同樣的方式。它們大多是抽象的，非文本式的，這也是為什么這些房子都沒有風格。由于九宮格問題比德州的房子更抽象，所以教學問題，九宮格問題更具現(xiàn)實性。它甚至是更抽象的。既不是包豪斯式的也不是文藝復興的。它只是（它本身）。

沃爾：那甚至不是一個房子。

海杜克：德州住宅的弦外之意是要將意大利從系統(tǒng)中抽離出來。通過抽離來擺脫其古典的一面而不丟棄場所特點。

沃爾：抽離？怎么抽離？通過控制？你控制它而不讓它主導你？

海杜克：我是非常傳統(tǒng)的。這只是有人在用古老而傳統(tǒng)的方法(1954)工作：德克薩斯住宅。它們是非現(xiàn)代的。

沃爾：密斯聲稱，“上帝存在細節(jié)之中，”平行線以及構(gòu)型輪廓自然而然地使房子獲得“現(xiàn)代性”和“時代特征”。

海杜克：不。只在一個項目內(nèi)在是密斯的：那個49英尺見方的墻體開始流動的房子。但所有這些房子中第四座是最接近方法的，沒有風格。其他房子中有幾個有文藝復興的感覺，但不夠真。第四個房子先于路易斯·康。

沃爾：你能像“這個是接近密斯的，這個是最接近...的”這樣描述每一個房子嗎？

海杜克：當然可以。第一座是意大利花園式。對稱、房屋低于入口視平線、蒂沃利以及同類型的場地，這就是意大利式花園（的特征）。第二座房子更加古典，更為嚴謹，意大利式平面。但我并不是在談論帕拉第奧。第三座是切分音。它似乎指向蒙德里安。參考蒙德里安的《百老匯爵士樂》和《爵士樂的勝利》，意大利存在著沖突。那是兩個世界之間的沖突：所謂的現(xiàn)代世界與古典世界的沖突；美國與歐洲的沖突。這種沖突在柱廊處就已經(jīng)體現(xiàn)，柱廊（房屋外帶屋頂?shù)淖呃龋┦敲绹?，而涼廊（敞向花園的走廊）是歐洲的。然后，第四個房子類似于萊熱。就是個盒子。第五個房子是密斯式練習。第六個房子與第四座相似，但增加了一層。第七座住宅處理比例的倒置——文藝復興式比例，窗戶的窗臺高過頭頂。所以十年后我祛除了意大利的東西。做了兩件事情：挖去和填補。我挖去那些我要舍棄不再使用的部分，比如意大利的場地，某種方式的對稱，等等。然后，必須填入一些其他東西。用學術(shù)術(shù)語。另一種教育始于1954年。我完成了我的學業(yè)，開始另一種教育。之后，我在菱形住宅中擺脫了柯布西耶。菱形住宅除了其該概念基礎(chǔ)外總是令我煩惱。像第一座德克薩斯住宅那樣讓我煩惱。它們大都有意大利的意味，然后還有柯布西耶的意味，我不喜歡這一點。在工作中我喜歡軸測體系，但是我不喜歡它使我想到勒·柯布西耶。所以我必須通過研究它，通過祛除意向來擺脫掉它。首先是柯布西耶，然后是蒙德里安，以某種方式。再然后我開始了立體主義，比如那篇《走出時間進入空間》，比如墻宅和舞會有關(guān)注格里斯和萊熱。所以，就是這樣：總是在有限時間內(nèi)保持這與所有這些事物臍帶般的連接。也許墻宅可以比作“第四代”住宅，它真的打破了那些。四分之三住宅和四分之一住宅還帶有一點點賴特的意味(但并不完全)。

沃爾：我們不能加入諾伊特拉的“沙漠別墅”和密斯的“墻宅”嗎?

海杜克：不能，有一些別的原因?；赝^去，往往是對歷史的消弭，但為了擺脫歷史我必須了解歷史。它只是有意地汲取那些過去的東西，抓大、濃縮。

沃爾：它帶你“兜了很大一圈”直到“思想家之墓”項目，然后開啟了你下一個也是最近的發(fā)展階段？

海杜克：嗯...是也不是。這些房子都只是單一的對象。

沃爾：場地內(nèi)在于對象之中？

海杜克：是的，他們都有場地但卻都是單一的對象。我從來沒接觸過城市規(guī)劃,因為我還沒做好準備。所以這個作品的第一個真正轉(zhuǎn)變是政治上的?！八枷爰抑埂笔且粋€城市方案。

沃爾：這個墓園是為特定的基地設(shè)計的。除了“臨終住宅”，沒有一個之前作品與特定基地有關(guān)。

海杜克：甚至“臨終住宅”也沒有（特定的基地）。它是獨立于基地完成的。我設(shè)計了“臨終住宅”，而它自帶了基地屬性。它們相互依存。

沃爾：當你研究柯布西耶、萊熱·格里斯、密斯，閱讀他們的作品時，你在尋找些什么?你怎么處理歷史性信息?

海杜克：這是一個很好的問題。說起來也許會奇怪。從本質(zhì)上講，我翻閱他們，但我也并不讀他們。我拿柯布來舉例。從1953年到1963年左右，我會拿出柯布西耶的書，攤開，然后看它們，瘋狂地看，夜復一夜地看。（這里的看）就只是字面上的——翻看，成百上千次，直到我完全吸收了柯布西耶的作品...像紙吸收墨汁一樣，我將那些圖像，構(gòu)造全部吸收進我的身體里、機體里。如今我再不需要看它們了。我已經(jīng)有10年沒再看了。

沃爾：據(jù)我了解，我們有一個全球通用的“聚焦當前非聚焦的視角”。然而，你是怎樣從這樣一個總體的視角轉(zhuǎn)向在《走出時間進入空間》一文中精確分析特定的繪畫和建筑？這可一點也不具全球性。

海杜克：那篇文章是從柯林·羅與斯拉斯基的《透明性》中第一篇衍生而來的。繪畫的傳承一直都在，即使是在庫伯聯(lián)盟。我一直對繪畫有共鳴。我從現(xiàn)代繪畫-蒙德里安開始，然后向后看?，F(xiàn)代主義以蒙德里安結(jié)束。就像我告訴過你的那樣，我不會超出這個范圍。于是我只有一條路可以走。所以我現(xiàn)在是在回溯到14世紀，從蒙德里安到安格爾、霍普、薩塞特和意大利早期繪畫。所以那些繪畫是退回到時間和空間。其文學線是更加普世的--來回往復。不太尋常，更為自由。

1. 本篇英文原稿來自Mask of Medusa，by John Hejduk；

2. 關(guān)于B面（九宮格問題及德克薩斯住宅），This section is dedicated to Colin Rowe and Robert Slutzky, men of intellect and creation. 獻給柯·林羅和羅伯特·斯拉茨基。他倆是《透明性》的作者，其中斯拉茨基對于九宮格的研究甚至早于海杜克。而他們?nèi)齻€又同屬于“德州騎警”——1950s美國德州大學奧斯汀建筑學院一批先鋒教員組織。

3. Black Mountain, 黑山學院。一所極富影響力的藝術(shù)學院，于1933年在美國北卡羅來納州布萊克山（Black Mountain）成立。曾聘請包豪斯創(chuàng)始人Josef Albers以及格羅皮烏斯任教，于1953年關(guān)閉。

4. 更多相關(guān)翻譯見個人公眾號IDsCeLeee。