Patrik Schumacher ( Partner at Zaha Hadid Architects) posted the following statements on his facebook page this morning in responce to the Pritzker Prize's announcement that Shigeru Ban has been awarded the prize. While everybody these days seem to be outraged by the flurry of bizzare statements Schumacher has been posting on his page I thought I would just stay clear of it. It just seems to feed him the attention that he is desperately trying to get in any way shape or form. On the other hand, when someone of incredibe public influence makes confunding statements (that brands humanitarin work or charity as someting lowley or scornful) it is important to rebut them publicly. There are young impressionable minds out there that believes this crap. So I thought what the hell. Here is what he said and see my reply below:
Patrik Schumacher :
"it is Ban's humanitarian work that the Pritzker jury emphasized in announcing the prize"
I congratulate Shigeru Ban ... love his work, especially the Metz project ... however, I worry if the criteria of the Pritzker Prize ... architecture's... most prestigious prize ... are now also being diverted in the direction of political correctness .... I would wish that architectural innovations that upgrade the discipline's capacity to cope with and facilitate the great urban develpment and restructuring tasks we are facing would dominate choice here ... I am afraid that if criteria shift towards political correctness great iconoclast-innovators like Wolf Prix or Peter Eisenman wont ever stand a chance to be recognized here ...
does this mean that those who aspire to win the Pritzker - or the nobel prize in physics - have to add humanitarian charity work into the mix?
Conrad Newel: The purpose of the Pritzker prize is as follows:
To honor a living architect/s whose built work demonstrates a combination of those qualities of talent, vision, and commitment, which has produced consistent and significant contributions to humanity and the built environment through the art of architecture.
Notice that it clearly states CONSISTENT AND SIGNIFICANT CONTRIBUTIONS TO HUMANITY.
This has always been a part of the Pritzker mandate.
The Pritzker committee has normally overlooked this aspect when awarding the prize as evidenced by its selection of laurites.
Giving the prize to Sheru on these grounds is perhaps a baby step in honoring that clause.
You should note that the Nobel Prize in Physics according to Alfred Nobel's will is to be awarded as follows:
"To the person who shall have made the most important discovery or invention within the field of physics ...” So there is no need to worry that the Physics prize will suddenly require its lauriets to do humanatarian work.
In logic and critical thinking, your argument above Patrick, is a classic fallacy called a slippery slope - a form of pseudo-argumentation in which a person asserts that some event must inevitably follow from another without any rational argument or demonstrable mechanism for the inevitability of the event in question.
By the very same logic you made, I could argue (the day after Zaha Hadid won the Pritzker) I congratulate Zaha Hadid ... love her work, especially her design for Muammar Quadafi's conference center in Tripoli. ... however, I worry if the criteria of the Pritzker Prize ... architecture's most prestigious prize ... are now also being diverted in the direction of empty curvy shapes .... I would wish that architectural innovations that upgrade the discipline's capacity to cope with and facilitate the great urban development and restructuring tasks we are facing would dominate choice here ... I am afraid that if criteria shift towards flashy pseudo rational from manipulation then great Humanitarian-innovators like Cameron Sinclair or Architects without borders won’t ever stand a chance to be recognized here ...
Does this now mean that those who aspire to win the Pritzker - or the Nobel Prize in physics - have to add superficial curvy shapes in to the mix?
Patrick, you have nothing to fear than fear itself - the old world order will prevail. So chill out man! Sounds like you need a hug :)
Instead of using this post to talk about how being a creative original will lead you to architectural fame, I will simply show you.
I would like to also ask you to take a moment to join me in supporting a fellow architect.
The pace of genuinely interesting developments that have positively influenced our profession has hurt a lot of our starchitects. Starchitects who have had no choice than to turn to extra-ordinary means to remain relevant. However, they can only do so much.
That’s why I am asking you to reach into your pockets right now and lend a hand. In the coming years, Kickstarter will be launching a series of projects to help a lot of attention needy starchitects to remain in the spot lights.
There are only three days left for you to help fund the most highly-anticipated documentary film about the legendary Rem Koolhaas: REM - Directed by the architect’s son, Tomas Koolhaas. Please go to the kickstarter website and give generously!
Now, I know what you are thinking:
Rem is already famous, he and his works are on the covers and insides of most architectural magazines, he is already relevant in the architecture world, and I have already bought a number of books and magazines about him.
...and I know you did!
But even though you have supported him in the past, give some more!... it will make you feel smart!
The film takes a little from Bjarke Ingels Group's earlier film My Playground, by using parkour as a narrative element. What’s not cool about people jumping around in your building? This is how it is used 0.0001% during the building's lifespan, but so what? It’s really cool.
Hey! Louis Kahn's son made a film about his famous father My Architect, why wait till you are dead? What kind of stupid rule is that? Have your son make a film about you now! That's soo cool! Why not take a little from Natheniel Kahn as well?
this was published on archinect in response to this article-image:
there is something wrong with the article and the image.
it isn't merely zaha who worked with gadafi's and qatar's regimes. everyone and their uncle worked with them. zaha is equally as "guilty" in that sense. no one bothered to collage their image with their building like penises.
did the person who make this image ask permission from zaha hadid first and get it? i assume not. in which case, i assume that they have taken advantage of her image and manipulated it to their end.
which means that, in the name of a so-called feminism (that is an exaggerated pathological direct outcome of sexism -other side of its coin-and not an actual independent feminism that respects women's/people's individual images and bodies), she's being abused by being collaged into an image that - i strongly believe- would contradict with her wishes.
the author and fabricator of the image fall into the same hole -truly no puns here- that this image is employed to counter.
furthermore, there is a strong suggestion that this is was taken from some terrorist attack/military zone - perhaps in iraq. the inversion of victims into suggested violators now being violated by a vagina is completely tasteless.
everyone in this image is being used for a single minded purpose trampling on quite a few people - inverting them for its own whimsical and perverse end.
Hi Tammuz,
Thanks for the feedback.
Sure there are other starchitects that work for
dictatorial regimes, and I have been critical of them before (see note #56 & 57). I am
not singling out Zaha because she is a woman. I have targeted quite a few other
starchitects for criticism before.
I have criticized Peter Zumthor for being disingenuous several times,
but no one bothered to ask why I didn’t criticize any disingenuous female
architects or any other disingenuous starchitects for that matter.
I have criticized Wim Wenders for making a masturbatory film that basically is Zumthor pornography for Zumthor fans to jerk off to, but
no one bothered to accuse me of being sexist because I was referring to his
manhood as a tool for criticism. I have posted pictures of Rem Koolhaas breast-feeding Bjarke Ingels, Joshua Prince (REX), Foreign Office Architects and a bunch of his other prodigies, but no one bothered to say "if
it was a female starchitect they wouldn’t have depicted her body in such a perverse
way to make a point. It’s just because he is a man!"
I am pretty sure that neither Rem, nor Bjarke
nor any of the other architects who were featured in that image would approve
of it, but again no one asked if Rem was being abused or exploited when his image
was used in that way?
Besides giving evidence that I have a very outlandish sense of humor, do you see where I am going with this?
I am not singling her out for this type of
criticism because she is a woman. I am singling her out because she is a
starchitect with very low moral bearings. Zaha and her allies have a habit of
calling every male criticism of her sexist and every female criticism of her
jealousy; a quixotic attempt to make herself inscrutable. It has never stopped
me before and it’s not going to stop me now.
The intention with the image was to illustrate
an alternate universe where Zaha is actually a super action heroine standing up for the repressed women in Qatar. She is
depicted as a poised, powerful woman in control. She is smoking a cigar which
she has in one had as if to celebrate a victory. In the other had she is
holding up the middle finger, like a driver who has successfully cut off an
opponent in a traffic dispute and leaving them in the dust. The stadium (looking
like a giant steel vagina) is re-imagined not so much as an accidental Freudian
hiccup to be ashamed of, but as an intentional powerful act of defiance and symbol of
female prowess and strength. It is not accidental that the image chosen for
Zaha's face has an expression of conceit and composure that stands in stark
contrast to the horror on the faces of the crowd below. In a way, I was channeling Bruce Willis' expression in the Die Hard movie, that moment right after saying "yippie-kye-yae mother fucker!"
The little men in the street below her represent
the strictly male power class of Qatar led by the Emir; they stand behind the
oppressive system of de-facto slavery and mass female imprisonment. Behind them
in the background stands "the cock crammed" skyline - tall sky
skyscrapers resembling a forest of male phalluses. This is testament to the highly patriarchal
society in which women make up only 1/4 of the population and are diminished in
power. If they feel it is necessary to incarcerate and suppress women in their
society in such a radical way, one can only conclude that they are afraid of them.
It is no wonder then that any building that resembles a female vagina would be a frightening
proposition - Super action heroine Zaha has just delivered them their worst nightmare. So yes you are right, I wanted to invoke an image of what would be
terror for such a society: A powerful woman that can stand up to or at least
outwit them. That was the main point!
However there is another layer of meaning and intension to
this image of terror. If you remember the days leading up to the fall of the
Quadafi regime that Zaha worked for, you might recall the violent images of
civilians and militia in the streets being attacked by her former employer's
solders. As I mentioned Zaha was hired as part of the regime's propaganda wing in an elaborate plan to give the
regime an air of sophistication that would help mask the atrocities that he was
committing.
THE REALITY: The images in the video above shows the reality of Quadafi's Lybia and the terror he inflicted on the people there.
THE MASK: People's Conference Hall (above) in Tripoli designed by starchitect, Zaha Hadid, but was 'put on hold' causing her firm to lay off many of its employees. The project was clearly an attempt by Gaddafi to rebrand his image and fumigate the stench of Lockerbie and other adventures of his dictatorship
With my image I also wanted to place the mask
(Zaha Hadid and her work) and the reality behind the mask (the image of violence
and terror) together on the same image as a way for my audience to see both the
mask and the reality in one image. This was the secondary point.
The third point was to create an image that was outrageous, humorous and offensive as possible to draw attention and spark debate. I wanted to shake my audience from their complacency of looking at starchitects who willingly participate in embellishing violent regimes as a trivial matter. By getting my audience emotionally engaged by either laughing or being disturbed by it, my hopes are that they will remember it and help to create a culture where this kind of behavior is no longer acceptable.
Some say it is tasteless. Sure, I expected that response. What is tasteless? That varies along cultural, religious, and personal value lines. In some societies complete nudity is normal and acceptable; for them no part of the human body is taboo or can be seen as tasteless and that includes both the male and female genitalia. For some religions any flesh visible above the knee of a woman is indecent, others find it tasteless for a woman to show her ankles or require that the woman is covered so that only the eyes are visible. So no matter what I do, someone will consider it tasteless by some standards. Therefore, you may have noticed that trying not to offend anyone isn't anywhere on my list of intentions above.
To answer some of your specific concerns
though; Why choose the vagina and not some other body part, or something else as a mode of criticism? Well you my have to ask Jon Stewart, or whoever started the Internet meme. By the time I saw that stadium it was already branded as a vagina. All that was left for me to do was to contextualize it, which i did - both visually with the image and politically with the accompanying article. As for the alleged victims, No! The collage is not taken from images of actual terror victims; they
are from a street protest - demonstrators running from tear gas thrown by police, another is of Arabic men running away at the start of a camel race in Rash al Khaimah, and the third (not sure) probably an Arab comedy skit featuring
men screaming. I commend you though for at least thinking about them. Most of the complaints I get condemns the tasteless victimization/exploitation of Zaha without any mention of the thousands of women or slaves who are victims of the system she works for.
In short, I belive you (as well as others) have misinterpreted my
intention and inflated it with some incorrect assumptions. As you mentioned, the image comes with other messages. You interpreted
it as a tasteless exploitation of Zaha and victims of terrorism that tramples
on people for my own whimsical and perverse end. To this I say, that this is
part of what makes art/comedy so interesting and wonderful: Because it can be interpreted
in so many different ways. Like a Rorschach test, a psychoanalyst may put an ink splash in
front of you and you will see one thing and I will see another. In these scenarios,
the meanings we find in the images are more a measure of us and our world view than the actual
image itself.
It draws to mind the case when former NY mayor
Rudolph Giuliani threatened to withdraw funding from the Brooklyn museum
because it showed the artist Chris Ofili’s painting of the Holy Virgin Mary
that he didn’t like. Ofili's painting depicted the Virgin Mary with dark skin, African
features, and was collaged with close-ups of female genitalia cut out from pornographic
magazines and real elephant dung. Ofili's intention was to use the dung and the vagina images as symbols of fertility.
Giuliani saw it differently. He thought it was offensive to Catholics and famously exclaimed,
"There’s nothing in the First Amendment that supports horrible and
disgusting projects!” Ironically though, it was Hillary Clinton who came to
Ofili's defense arguing the freedom of expression and cultural tolerance. This
is the nature of symbols in art. It can provoke a conversation about the
meanings we extract from things between two strangers who know nothing about
each other than the values we bring to an image.
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