The architecture of Tod Williams and Billie Tsien has been characterized as one that is preoccupied with the craft of making. Working together in practice in New York, these two architects have developed particular interests in the inherent qualities of materials that they have combined with investigations of the details of the physical and philosophical nature of construction. They have explored these interests through a range of projects that originated in designs for exhibitions and performance and that have subsequently developed to embrace more conventional architectural commissions that have included houses, educational facilities, and civic buildings.
After studying architecture at Princeton University and working for Richard Meier for six years, Tod Williams opened his own office in 1974. Billie Tsien’s first degree was in fine arts, and she went on to study architecture at the University of California, Los Angeles, before joining Williams. Together they have developed a practice that has been significantly influenced by their backgrounds in architecture and fine art. However, theirs is also a practice that reflects a collaborative effort that grows out of their relationship as a married couple, and they have frequently spoken of their interest in “bringing together the issues of life and architecture.”
In their early work, Williams and Tsien experimented with materials in the designs for installations at the Museum of the Chinese in the Americas in New York and elsewhere. They used unconventional materials and also reconsidered how familiar materials could be used in unfamiliar ways. For an exhibition of Noguchi’s Akari lanterns, they used obsidian with lit fiberglass screens, and a project that was developed with the Elisa Monte Dance Company in New York advanced the ideas of large screens to create a dynamic backdrop for the staging of dance productions.
These investigations informed their subsequent architectural work. The design for new galleries at the Phoenix Art Museum explored the use of glass and metal and of different aggregates in the making of the concrete for the building. The systems of construction were also developed to define paths of movement that organize the new galleries and link them into an existing building. This consideration of the path as an organizing element in architecture and also as a place of meeting and social interaction has become increasingly influential in their work. In the planning of the Neurosciences Institute in La Jolla, California, a theoretical and clinical research campus for the study of the brain, Williams and Tsien designed places of informal meeting that are integrated with spaces for work by creating a series of paths that become meandering walks through the building. These paths also integrate the institute into a surrounding natural landscape framed by the Santa Rosa Mountains.
In the development and design of the Cranbrook Estate in Michigan, the architect Eliel Saarinen, together with his client George Booth, established a strong relationship among landscape, art, and architecture. It was a relationship that was also reflected in the organization of a curriculum that sought to connect the mental and the physical through the integration of academic and athletic activities there. Increases in enrollment at Cranbrook prompted the need for new and improved facilities, and Williams and Tsien were commissioned to prepare a plan for new buildings there to provide gymnasiums, exercise rooms, and a swimming pool. Their design developed ideas of movement and path embodied in their earlier designs for academic buildings in California, at Princeton, and at the University of Virginia. The coeducational natatorium at Cranbrook has been planned to connect to existing buildings, and large occuli and doors enable the building to be opened up during spring and summer. These devices successfully connect the building to the landscapes of the Cranbrook Estate. The first building in this phased development, which was completed in 1999, is one of the most successful new educational buildings in the United States.
Commissions to design houses for sites in New York City, Long Island, and Phoenix have enabled Williams and Tsien to explore these issues of materiality, path, and the integration of building with site at another scale. These explorations are particularly successful in the houses in Phoenix and Long Island, which were completed in 1997 and 1999, respectively.
In 1998 Williams and Tsien received a commission to design the Museum of Folk Art in New York. This project develops these ideas within the confines of a restricted site on Fifty-third Street. Of necessity the scheme organizes the galleries as a series of spaces that are linked vertically. An elevator is itself designed as a gallery. Internally, a series of shafts are also cut through the building to link spaces and define the paths that connect them with natural light. The facade on the 40-foot-wide street front-age, proposed as a folded plane of white bronze panels, is mainly solid. Not only does the fold give the museum a greater presence on the street, but the material was selected to reflect the dynamism of changing light throughout the day. This new museum opened in 2001.
In its preoccupation with materials and the details of fabrication, the work of Williams and Tsien recalls that of Charles and Ray Eames. By working closely together, they have been able to develop interests in the craft of making architecture and shaping space to a level that articulates an important alternative to corporate practice and the overwhelmingly generic buildings that frequently result from industrial production.
BRIAN CARTER |
