Architectural Monsters: John Hejduk

•

Architectural Monsters: John Hejduk Victims and Monsters

Figure 1: John Hejduk's dark and rigorous drawings Figure 2 : House of Painter (1986)

John Hejduk is an American artist, an architectural specialist and an architect widely known for his book ‘Victims’ which explored in the influence of the modern and postmodernist architectural style. His practice mainly inspired and aligned with characterization which appeals in the aspect of animalistic sphere, with a touch of alienation sense and also gives the impression of dystopian themed. Throughout his attempt in constructing those approach, Hejduk wanted to significantly enhance the portrayal of different ‘characters’ of the building through his thinking of repertoire, which represents each of the architecture as in collective perspective. His most notable way in using representational characters was projected purposely to help people connect and understand his architectural discipline, such as the gardener, musician, house of suicide, house of painter. I decided to accentuate the ‘Victims’ conceptualization through some of the well-known buildings around Sydney, such as the ICC building, MLC Centre, Sydney Tower and Harbour Bridge. As what John has stated in regards to his approach, ‘a method of practising architecture in the way of independent things, like a repertoire of different roles’ (Kanopy 2005). I initiated in making certain characters as a representational context of each building through a narrative perspective, which in collective demonstration such as the antagonist, the protagonist, the wheeler. I also wanted to create a city in a story setting of the monstrous world, which represents different roles, in this context is with buildings. Similar to Hejduk's approach in labelling the buildings, I named and identified each of the structures to build a social perspective of the city and indicated that each of the buildings is purposely designated as in the act of social contribution.

Through his way of scratchy, dark, rough with the predominantly black colour of his illustration also deliberately conveys those dark, monstrous, nightmare-ish effect to his architecture. Being adapted from his method, I also attempted to emphasize the context of Victims into my work. My drawings started off with the outline of the building's form as the very first step of my work process; after that, I try to implicate those rough, scratchy illustration using pencil. Besides, the scratchy techniques have effectively given the aesthetic quality into my drawings as it has also given the effect of a very texturous appeal into my drawings which inclined to the notions of Architectural Monsters. During the process, I also realised that I was progressively engaged in my drawings and kept expanding the monstrous quality given to its expressive drawing. Drawing itself are capable in communicating the idealization of our concept through the expressive measurement as one quoted ‘drawings and tracings are like the hands of the blind touching the surfaces of the face in order to understand a sense of volume, depth and penetration’ (Hejduk 1986).

Figure 3 : The unbalance, slender, long forms Figure 4 : First drawing draft before processing it to digital

The contribution of Hejduk’s geometric forms also plays a vital role to create a stronger context to its Architectural construction. Inspired by Hejduk’s approach, I accentuated in experimenting with the unbalance and uncommon structure in some of my buildings. Besides that, I also reconstruct the original form which I combined with the animal's shape, just like how Hejduk does in his drawings. Both of this techniques makes the presentation of the structure itself looks more animalistic by its ‘slenders and long forms like animals and insects’ (Lee 2017), just like how the long passage could likely be referenced to an animal’s long neck and the spiral shape also appears like snake's form. With its anthromorphic qualities that I try to adapt by little bit exaggerating the esoteric feature, I also accentuates some of the building structure around the city to balance out the construction as in keeping it to its ‘moral of architectural’ (Lee 2017). To finalise the work, I further develop my drawings by using Illustrator to focused on the darkness and the sharp edge appearance to deepen the monstrous quality.