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Valley
News, May 23, 2004
Donald Maurice Kreis
When
future historic preservationists try to pinpoint the quintessential
American architecture of our era, what they describe will look a
lot like the work of architect and Dartmouth College artist-in-residence
James Cutler.
The
Bainbridge Island, Washington architect is best known for using
natural materials – most often wood – to create homes in the Pacific
Northwest that foster a love of, and respect for, the land on which
they sit. But he also worked with artist Maggie Smith to design
the Salem Witch Trial Tercentennary Memorial in Massachusetts. It
is as simple as the historic graveyard it adjoins, as eloquent as
Arthur Miller’s play about the witch trials and all the more haunting
for being right next to Salem’s garish witch-tourism district.
The
duo achieved a comparable feat in Norfolk, Virginia with as military
memorial built around letters from soldiers. Cutler
calls it a representation of “the emotional history of the United
States.”
Cutler’s
pop culture notoriety arises out of a commission he shared with
architect Peter Bohlin to design the vast (50,000 square feet!)
home of Bill Gates near Seattle. At
50,000 square feet, this complex can be rightly compared to the
Palace at Versailles – but where the edifice of France’s king was
grandly public, the edifice of Microsoft’s king is inwardly focused.
But
In any event, Cutler is much
more than Bill Gates’ architect. His tools are art rather than
artifice – when working in wood or stone, the results look like
the materials employed and the structure of the buildings – what
holds them up and keeps them together – are delightfully visible.
Lately he has been extending his reach beyond the residential
to projects in the public realm.
When
the Valley News caught up with Cutler in his temporary Hopkins Center
digs, he mentioned that a work in progress is a rehab of an 18-story
Portland, Oregon building for the federal government. He envisions
a 280-foot foliage-covered “living wall” that he says will save
$450,000 a year in energy costs. Price? $13 million. “It might
not happen,” the architect concedes.
VN:
A group of Dartmouth students went to Salem and walked past the
Witch Trial Memorial four times before they found it. Does this
suggest the project is succeeding or failing?
JC:
It doesn’t suggest very much to me one way or the other. The
question of success or failure of the project is more dependent
on how one feels when they go in it. The
value of all of our work is dependent upon the emotional response
of the viewer. . . . If when they found it they thought
it was just a pile of rocks, then it would be a failure. But if
when found it they said: “Whoa, this is sort of a place where
we whisper,” then it would be a success. It’s that simple .
. . . Actually I think that memorial ranks among the two best
things I’ve ever designed
and built. Because people did
cry at
the opening. . . . .
VN:
Do we need to wait 300 years before we can craft an appropriately
under-stated and therefore moving memorial to our honored dead?
I’m thinking here of memorials commemorating the destruction of
the World Trade Center or even the Vietnam war .
.
JC:
I think that’s a really good question. I don’t know! My guess
is: Yes, you probably should wait a little bit to really fully
understand what’s happened and the scope of our history. . . .
We’ve already been contacted by the City of Norfolk to add a 21
st letter for people who have died in Iraq to the 20 letters that
are blowing across that plaza. We said it’s too early. We don’t
know what letter should be picked to best reveal the emotional nature
of that war.
VN:
“Green” architecture has had a reputation over the years for sacrificing
beauty in the name of energy efficiency. How can these two things
be reconciled?
JC:
I’m not a green architect. . . . Years ago, another architect
I know built a solar house on the Bainbridge Island . A ,
on a site where the views are to the north and east, and the solar
energy is from the south and west. So he designs this building
where a ll the windows and all the glass look uphill into
his neighbor’s bedroom to the south and west he puts no windows
on the side facing spectacular views. Then he takes me out to
look at it, to tell me about solar architecture. He asked me what
I thought. I said: This is kind of like chrome-plating your
toilet and putting it in your front yard. It’s the mechanical
system that’s driving the design. . . .
If
I do a building that generates a general love for the land on which
the building is placed, and the building exemplifies that in every
way by minimal destruction of the landscape and the maximum visual
connection to the landscape, then the building will have more glass
than will necessarily be appropriate for energy saving.
VN:
Isn’t less glass an appropriate trade-off in that situation?
JC:
But then you wouldn’t be connected to anything alive, would you?
So the bottom line is: I’m not necessarily a green architect,
technically. I believe strongly in the sanctity of all life and
that this world is so phenomenally, stunningly beautiful that it’s
ignorant to damage it.
It’s
been almost 20 years that we’ve been trying to connect to landscapes.
I don’t have many colleagues who follow. You’d think by now
that greed would take over and they’d realize they’d have a much
stronger market if they would just start apprenticing the land,
looking at the land, inspecting everything. These are not intellectual
things I’m talking about. They’re romantic simple notions. It’s
not rocket science.
VN:
What do you mean by ‘apprenticing the land’?
JC:
Well, on almost all of our projects I go out and survey the land
myself. I get the owners if possible. I shoot the grades, I
spot all the trees. You go and you spend two or three or five
of six hours in the rain and the wind on the property. And you
see things that you would never see if someone just gave you a contour
map and you went out for a half hour and took some snapshots.
Your clients are not just the people paying you. Your client is
also the land, you have a responsibility to the land and the place.
VN:
Your recent Capitol Hill Library project in Seattle is designed
so that climbing plants will eventually cover a steel mesh attached
to much of the building’s façade. Can we infer that your vision
of urban architecture is essentially one of making cities look more
like nature?
JC:
Well, let’s say that fostering life is not a negative -- That it’s
really valuable to make life, other than human life, become part
of our daily experience in ways that we really notice.
VN:
That whole notion is encapsulated in the phrase “Ivy League,” isn’t
it? Generations of people have chosen schools because they liked
the site of an old building with a lot of foliage growing up the
side of it.
JC:
[Laughs.] Possibly. The library is built in the most densely
populated area of the northwestern United States, Capitol Hill in
Seattle. And we had to take up the whole property for the building.
So we thought we would do a vertical garden. When that thing
is fully grown in, it will be two feet off the brick and at night
it will be lit from behind. That building at night is going to
glow green. It’s going to be this glowing lantern of life in the
middle of the city. We’re taking life
and were sculpting it to be memorable and emotionally impacting
in the city.
VN:
You were one of the last students to participate in a studio conducted
by Louis Kahn, who happened to design the best building in New Hampshire
(the library at Philips Exeter Academy). What was Kahn like as
a teacher?
JC:
I took that course for all the bad reasons
you can imagine. I was not well-off financially. I thought:
If I take Kahn’s studio, I’ll get a better job! I think there
were a thousand applicants for 20 positions. In the end I learned
more that year than I had in the previous six years of my education,
by far.
Kahn
comes in the first day of class a . nd
says . . . He’s got this really high-pitched
little voice : “I’m thinking of a room. If a great painter
came into this room it would inspire him to do a great painting
on the wall.” And he left. So we assumed that was our project.
. . .
For
the first two weeks, Kahn didn't find anything worth talking about
in any of the students' work. Finally, I realized that buildings
are just garments. They are clothing that’s worn by human institutions.
You first have to have an institution to clothe before you can
create a building. And therefore the project he had given us was
specious and shallow – there was no institution to house. It was
just shape for shape’s sake. . . .
So
I chose an institution and hoped to design a building that might
inspire a painter to do a great painting on the wall. I picked
marriage as an institution, because I’d just been married. And
it hit me: I can’t do this in one room, because there’s got to
be this room that’s really formal and axial, that represents the
formal contract between you and another person, and then there’s
the rest of your life, that’s different, less formal, more loose.
. . . So I did two rooms, I went to class, and I told Kahn what
I had discovered -- that in the end, I think this is a ridiculous
project. I had to do two rooms to house an institution. And
his answer was: “For you, it is two rooms.” And that
was it.
Each
project he gave us was like that. Each one, you had to dig down
and find the beginnings. It changed everything for me.
VN:
Kahn seemed to have a gift for getting big institutional clients
to take real risks and build in an innovative way. Did he share
the secret of how he did this?
JC:
He had such a profound comprehension of the human condition . .
. He could speak almost poetically about things – it was mesmerizing.
He died during my year. There were four weeks of class left;
we had to do something to finish our year out. . . . One of the
guys noticed in the New York Times that Jonas Salk was
in New York City.
VN:
You mean the renowned scientist who discovered the cure for polio?
And who commissioned Kahn to design the famous Salk Institute
building in California?
JC:
Yes. Kahn had always talked about this phenomenal relationship
he had with Salk. So we called Salk up and asked if he could teach
us for a week. He said “sure!” So we’re presenting our work
and he’s talking about it. And all of a sudden, not only me but
a couple of guys in the studio started to get an eerie feeling that
Lou was back in the studio. Salk was saying the same things that
Lou would say. The only difference was that all his metaphors
were biological as opposed to architectural. A light bulb went
on: Here are two guys who had so assiduously followed his craft
to its very beginnings, and understood it, that they had both achieved
some sort of transcendent knowledge on totally different paths in
life. Pretty cool!
VN:
Does it ever get on your nerves to be known as Bill Gates’ architect?
JC:
Yeah, it does. But it’s okay. In winning Gates with Peter Bohlin,
I learned a lot from Peter – so there were lots of good things that
came out of it. It almost destroyed my practice because I was
perceived as being an architect who worked for the really rich.
But, at the same time, Bill allowed us to experiment on a lot
of things.
VN:
Now that you’ve been in and around Hanover for a few weeks, is there
a building on the Dartmouth campus that you particularly admire?
JC:
The [Rauner Special Collections Library] that Robert Venturi did
– the glass box. It’s a little heavy handed – he was going to
contrast this beautiful glass box with the existing [neo-classical]
library. I probably would have forced the issue and made everything
as thin as possible – really make those books just float there.
But that’s my opinion. Who am I to criticize Robert Venturi?
VN:
How do you account for the fact that Rauner is so much better than
the Berry Library that the Venturi firm also designed?
JC:
It just depends on whether Bob was concentrating or not. It depends
on what else was in the office.
VN:
The work of yours that has been shown to the public consists of
houses, memorials, libraries and a church – all with clearly virtuous
programs. Would you ever consider doing commercial or industrial
projects?
JC:
I’d love to do a strip mall. It would be the best one in the country.
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