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By John E. Czarnecki, Assoc. AIA
Photo courtesy Lindy
Roy/Roy Inc.
This year, with New York architect Lindy Roy
[News, May 2001, page 50], Mau has developed a brand
identity program, marketing, and signage for Access
Storage Solutions (above), a British storage company.
Working with Koolhaas on the Seattle Public Library,
which has yet to begin construction, Mau has designed
signage and environmental graphics (Below).
.
For the identity of the University of Toronto's
Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design in 1999,
Mau conceptualized variations (line, stack, and mark)
of text components.
All images courtesy
Bruce Mau Design except where noted.
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AR: Does this closer collaboration
between architect and designer point to the importance of
image?
BM: The realm of the image
is more important than ever, but it’s a very complex
realm. People still make a distinction between a building
and an image, and I think that distinction is less and less
supportable.
AR: You’ve collaborated
with architects like Rem and Frank Gehry on certain projects.
Are you extremely selective in who you work with?
BM: Yes. Because we have such
an intimate collaboration, we’re pretty selective. We
make sure that they have a kind of sympathy for the ambitions
of our work, and that, frankly, we have sympathy for the ambitions
of theirs.
AR: When you collaborate with
Rem, for example, what exactly is your role? I assume that
it may be different on each project, but why does he need
another designer with him early on?
BM: Well, Rem typically has
a lot of designers with him on projects, but the methods that
we’ve evolved have to do with rigorous analysis and structure
of content—a method that could be applied to almost anything.
It’s this method that is really critical. The first sort
of significant work has to do with conceptualizing the project
in the world. Then [with this method] we can produce a park,
a book, an institution, a business, or whatever.
AR: You’ve suggested that
industrial designers are, in some ways, the model of the future
and that architects are going to be following the way industrial
designers do things. How so?
BM: Well, I would suggest that
it’s going to be a kind of hybridization [of designers],
and the sooner we can get to the advantages that that offers,
the more fun we’re going to have. The way it works now
is that an engineer often does structure, an architect does
skin, a space planner does interiors, and an industrial designer
does product. It’s a nasty mess. The quality of life
that it produces is also a nasty mess, and we all suffer.
The problems are where those things rub up against one another.
AR: There’s lots of talk
these days about architects and designers collaborating, but
they’re not always good at it.
BM: The reason that I got interested
in architecture is that I saw it as a field of synthesis—basically
a place where you bring into play all these different things.
And I think that’s Rem’s real genius—his ability
to pull talent into play on projects and let things evolve.
AR: You’re working with
Koolhaas on the design of the Seattle Public Library. It’s
a rather public project with a lot of input from a very interested
constituency.
BM: Yes, the library has an
incredible process. I’ve never seen anything quite like
it. The public interest is phenomenal—literally 2,600
people in a huge auditorium for a design presentation.
AR: What residual impact does
the public process have?
BM: The process can have a
profound effect on the discourse of the city. People can be
introduced to a whole other language and level of thinking
that can shape many other things in the city that have nothing
to do with the library.
AR: On a broader urban scale,
you are working with a team that includes Koolhaas on the
design of Downsview Park, a 322-acre urban park on a former
military base in Toronto [News, July 2000, page 28]. What’s
the significance of this project for you?
BM: It’s a civic project,
and the civic is under siege at the moment. Anything public
ought to be aggressively promoted. So to take our place in
a kind of civic discourse and to begin to engage in these
things is really important.
AR: Can you explain the design
process for Downsview?
BM: Basically, what we did
was map out a series of concepts that we thought would be
significant for the work. Those eventually became the kind
of formula for the project.
One of the distinctions between this park and any other that
I know about is that it’s not really a design for a park;
it’s a formula or an algorithm for producing an environment
like this. One of the things that we still have to figure
out is how to control it. So we’re going to design a
process or a method or a recipe—it’s quite a different
kind of strategy. We designed a vector, basically, and it’s
a question of how to define the vector.
AR: You’ve said that typography
and urban planning are one in the same. Can you explain that?
How is that informing what you’re doing at Downsview?
BM: Well, they’re one
in the same in that if you approach it with a method, the
problems are more or less the same. Of course, there are different
techniques that you have to deploy to be successful. One of
the arguments about the global image economy is that, as an
environment, design is scaleable. So we pour the same kind
of design focus into typography as we do into urbanism. In
some ways, it’s a transposable method. You have a set
of different questions or issues or objectives [for typography
versus urban design], and you want to achieve certain effects.
When you abstract the method, the method is in fact very similar.
Of course, it’s different scales of complexity, but
in a certain way it’s not. You can understand the complexity
of the world in letter forms and you can understand the complexity
of the world in a park design, too.
AR: You were going to work
with Frank Gehry on the New York Times headquarters, had he
won the competition [News, october 2000, page 44]. Can you
comment on why Gehry dropped out before Renzo Piano won the
commission?
BM: The New York Times wanted
the product without the process, which is really a tragedy.
They just wanted to buy the product like you could just get
it off the shelf, and it’s not a shelf-made product.
It’s a process. I think it was incredibly brave of [Gehry]
to say to the New York Times, "I can’t deliver.
I can’t guarantee for myself that I’ll deliver the
quality that I need if you squeeze the process." And
I think he did absolutely the right thing. We had a beautiful
scheme, which is such a shame.
AR: You’ve designed publications
and exhibitions, have collaborated with architects on buildings
and a park, and have even designed the uniforms for the Canadian
Olympic team. Are you open to any design project?
BM: I’m pretty open, but
I need a certain level of complexity to feel challenged. I
need problems.
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