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comment The ArchRecord Interview: Vito Acconci
BR: What have you discovered to be some of the pleasures in architectural work which aren’t there in art?
VA: The beautiful thing about architecture, it does have the anticipation of renovation always built into it, which I find so refreshing from art because art is supposed to be unchangeable. The only things that are unchangeable are tombstones. We would like to provide the seeds of something, but we’re not going to provide the whole thing. Hopefully someone will take clues from us and bring it further.
This slideshow includes images from the Acconci Studio projects discussed on this page: Mur Island; the Beaumont (France) village project; and the bridge proposal in Boulogne Sur Mer, France.
Listen as Acconci talks about architecture and revolution—and shares what kind of impact he wants his work to have on those who experience it (0:53).
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BR: There isn’t much doubt that your place in the history of art is secure: You’re widely seen as one of the most important and influential of all Conceptual artists. You’re No. 98 on the ArtFacts list of the top 100 artists of all time—one notch ahead of Edvard Munch and a few slots behind Georges Braque. Do you think your design work will come to be held in anything near the same esteem? Do you care?
VA: I do care. I don’t know if I want the design work to be held in esteem. I might not be so interested in esteem, but I am very interested in influence. Not that I want people to do copies of work we do, but I want it to be a starting point for others. Through the years there have been so many things in different fields that I felt just changed my life. Whether it was first reading William Faulkner, whether it was the Sex Pistols, whether it was reading [Robert] Venturi’s Learning from Las Vegas, seeing Archigram for the first time, seeing David Kronenberg’s Video Drone. If that happened to me, I want what we do to happen to somebody else.
BR: How do you think your reputation as an artist affects, for good or bad, your reputation as an architect? Does it make it easier to acquire clients, with people saying, “I want a building by the famous Vito Acconci”? And how do you think other architects perceive you?
VA: We’ve very rarely done projects for private clients, though it is starting more. There’s an eye doctor in Winter Park, Fla. who wants us to re-do his house, and I know the main reason is he’s an art collector so that probably drew him.
With regard to other architects, it’s a different matter. A lot of architects, especially architects of my generation, refuse to take us seriously as architects. I wonder if sometimes they think once an artist always an artist. Or why doesn’t he stick to his own field. I don’t find that so much in younger architect firms like Asymptote or Foreign Office Architects. But people in my generation, it’s very different, even people that I know well. Steven Holl, Bernard Tschumi: They will never accept that I’m an architect.
BR: Is that frustrating?
VA: It really, really bothers me. I always feel that this has a lot to do with the work we’ve done. I don’t think we’ve had the right programs. [Mur Island in] Graz was fine, but it’s still a kind of entertainment space. One of the downsides about the fact that there is whimsy in the work, maybe the whimsy can become such a keynote. I want our stuff to be serious fun. But maybe the fun takes over sometimes. That might be our fault.
BR: Will we see then over the next few years a change in the type of programs you’re doing?
VA: I’d like to think that. Some of the recent projects we’re starting on: We were asked to do some new housing for a village of about 400 called Beaumont in the mountains of the south of France. The mayor seems to have decided that the village is part of the mountain, part of the landscape, but not part of his time. And he specifically asked us to bring Beaumont into the 21st century. Not a bad mission.
And we’re doing a kind of visitors’ trajectory through a fishing port in the north of France in a city called Boulogne Sur Mer. It doesn’t involve anything like housing, but it does involve making a bridge over a lock. We wanted the bridge to double in function, so we’re designing a bridge that’s a restaurant. But every once in a while a boat comes in so the bridge can’t be there anymore. We’re working on a bridge that starts to wind up like a snake. We’ve all seen retractable bridges, but people always have to get off when it changes, and we want to try and do something that people can still stay on.
Now if those two projects get built, and right now they’re supposed to get built, it does seem that these and some other projects we have are more like real architecture.
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