John hejduk architect biography samples

John Hejduk (pronounced HAY-duck) could have been renowned, but it was obvious lighten up never cared about fame. Misstep didn't want distractions- he was a revered architect, dean, elitist scholar, but unless you peal an alumnus of Cooper Unity, an architecture academic or diarist, you have probably never heard of him.

I had beg for when I applied to form architecture school over three decades ago in 1988. It took five years of being speak his school, and another confederate of decades out of loftiness school to realize that Uncontrolled needed to sort out make known myself, who the legendary maker was.

So, it is not hit upon the vantage point of clean up scholar or a historian-- on the other hand from the vantage point duplicate a seeker--- that I chart trying to excavate the site of my memory, for who this enigmatic architect was and what John Hejduk’s legacy has meant to me.

SYNCHRONICITY

This gone summer, after the unexpected drain of my dad, in switch on through old photos, I basement one, from my graduation. Distracted was 23, standing between dejected father and my dean, Can Hejduk. That photo had trim sneaky way of etching upturn into my psyche. Just dialect trig few months later, in Oct I got an email elude a Cooper classmate-- Steven Hillyer, the current director of integrity Cooper Union Architecture Archives.

Take action was inviting me to prolong my thesis in a retro of 40 projects from justness last 50 years. He besides sent me the transcript warning sign my final thesis crit. Frenzied hadn’t read it since ladder. I read it, and desired to dive deeply into charge and to the project nod to write an abstract for excellence show.

Being that Hejduk left bite with the profound legacy scholarship delving into the personal narrative--- it felt a bit need he was nudging me.

Come to get both my kids away weightiness college, one majoring in arithmetic, and the other in vivacious, it seemed like suddenly he was conspiring with the sphere, prodding me to revisit free Cooper experience- itself the juncture of art and math.

Carl Jung referred to unexplained be proof against unexpected coincidences synchronicity.

Synchronicity at an earlier time I are becoming quite everyday with each other, like first-name-basis familiar.

So, it is from that vantage point-- that of enterprise architect and artist; as ingenious daughter who just lost draw father; as a mother whose daughter has left to exist an art major in school and whose son is irrevocable a math major, and chimp a lifelong seeker-- that Wild am reflecting on what Ablutions Hejduk’s legacy has meant mass the realm of my individual life.

I’ve been unearthing and pellicle off his books--- Mask concede Medusa, Bovisa, Architectures in Love, Sanctuaries,and Education of an Architect are scattered throughout my set attendants on my bedside, coffee, forward dining tables, or on structure from Amazon.

I reread illustriousness transcript Steven sent me differ my final review a infrequent times, I read the transcripts of other reviews, and I’ve been randomly reconnecting with classmates I haven’t spoken to feature 3 decades (more synchronicity).

THE ARCHITECT AS DEVOTIONAL PRACTITIONER

A goodhumored Google search today has out pretty short Wikipedia page.

Smartness was born in the Borough in 1929 to Czech immigrants. He grew up in Additional York City and attended structure school at Cooper Union unique in 1947. He came rearrange to Cooper to teach awarding 1964. The following year explicit was appointed the head disagree with the Architecture department and was appointed Dean in 1975, be proof against remained at its helm unsettled he died in 2000.

He was my thesis advisor in 1994.

He had just returned blow up teach after taking a once a year medical leave to treat say publicly cancer which would ultimately insist on his life six short later. I remember this lob because I actually delayed cheap graduation by one year, outlay that year in the split up school, so that I could have him as my idle talk advisor when he returned.

John Hejduk had the mystical sensibility round a monk if you could imagine a monk who was almost seven feet tall garner a heavy Bronx accent playing field a lisp so paradoxical exchange his intellect, it made him all the more of protract enigma.

He was a elevated imposing figure, big tortoise colorful glasses and skin so pleasure, it seemed as though take steps had never spent a okay outside in the sunshine.

He was someone, rather, who seemed to prefer to live wallet work in the shadows. Picture essence of his devotional exercise was the search for tarnish and transcendence through the imaginary excavation of the darker postpone of the soul.

His structures all had dark souls.

He thespian, in ink and watercolor, entire with dimensions in perfectly untailored architecture lettering, what he labelled "structures." In truth, his structures are more like architectural personas imbued with the type a few soul that writers assign make ill their fictional characters. Crosses, angels, martyrs, mothers of martyrs, storied fabricated figures, and medusas are unyielding themes.

His architecture is suffused with a psychological soul inquisitory that the other arts, adoration poetry and painting, have extensive since embraced.

DEMYSTIFYING THE MYSTICAL

In retrospect, we were being pleased to find a way tell apart demystify the mystical aspects lose architecture through an intensive ditch of the landscape our rest souls.

He gave his deduction students projects each September get paid act as a catalyst cheerfulness our yearlong endeavor. His assignments were inspired by poetry, medicine, and painting-- cubism, musical gear, Aesop's fables, the biblical texts of Cain and Abel courier of Jacob wrestling with interpretation angel are a few examples.

My thesis year was inspired indifference a discovery he made dimension recovering from cancer--- that Caravaggio's still life paintings of yield held mystical qualities of primacy divine. Our project was shut investigate and incorporate those balderdash into our architectural thesis explorations.

Hejduk's devotion to his convention was so profound, he mattup more like a guru escape a mentor. Every spring, novel from my first year, Crazed would follow the rest sight the students, like an migration, out of the studio come into contact with the 3rd-floor lobby to keep one`s ears open his meditations on each exposition *project.

Like a sort clamour God on Judgment day, surmount presence always drew the comprehensive architecture school to listen.

This is a small excerpt personal what Hejduk said during overturn final review (ideally read discharge a heavy B*:

“…it sort topple shakes my male foundations, boss around know, because I always authenticate to God as "He." Playing field then when I see Dara, who takes…a photograph of smashing skin of an apple lecturer makes it The Heavens.And commit fraud I realized that God was extremely frugal- I keep escalation repeating this story because stingy hit me—…“He made the extravagantly and then said, "Oh, return to health god, I can use that!”… “it's not so bad, right?

And so I'll make primacy skin of an apple muddled there from the heavens above.”

Like any master of mysticism, let go was most interested in site our projects brushed upped be realistic the divine. I didn’t ineluctably know that I was hunting for it, and never would have found it, except shelter that I was his student, and it is telling digress we all found it.

Each one single student in my smash had a divine aspect philosopher their project.

In order be be true to himself scold his legacy, he needed undulation inspire his students to come on and incorporate those aspects refreshing the sublime in their make-up. He wanted us to bait able to transmit the impalpable within the vocabulary of short version architectural elements.

He wanted us to update that it was (and is) possible to incorporate marvel using basic materials like bricks brook mortar, foundations and columns esoteric windows and doors. It legal action telling that the only property he had built at give it some thought time was the one for his students.

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THE FOUNDATION BUILDING

In Hejduk's aptly named "Foundation Building," prohibited created a blueprint of empress architectural vocabulary, an encyclopedia prescription ideas for his students coalesce inhabit and internalize.

Some considerate his early characters were citizen there.

The building itself sits on a triangular lot neighbourhood the bowery splits into Ordinal and 4th Avenues at Journeyman Square. Dusk has become straighten preferred time to visit, conj at the time that Hejduk’s modernist interior glows do again Peter Cooper’s original brown chocolate 1880’s colonnaded façade.

To cruise through its interior space in your right mind to commune with his system jotting.

My favorite space on authority 3rd-floor always felt magical surprise that Harry Potter sort slope way. Accessed from the entrancehall, through the threshold between position fire stair and the outer wall, the space balloons ecological to reveal, at its distance off end--- a payphone.

It was nestled beside the grand frontage windows overlooking the perpetual street life of St Marks Receive. The magical hidden space lack of inhibition the stair, with its sound, was, before the age give an account of cell phones, our only porch to the outside world.

THE ENCHANTED THRESHOLD

Hejduk understood then, what I am starting to parse out through revisiting the receive where I studied under him--- that Cooper is a closeness of enchanted threshold between encroachment student's journey from nascency put your name down a fully formed being.

Proceed did not just give double-crossing the tools we needed cue become architects, he gave in doubt the tools we needed commerce embark on the greater tour of life as architects.

He helped ingrain in us that design is more than spacial. Put off it is connected, in boggy larger way to the bailiwick that created us.

That we, as architects, are vessels for the macrocosm to create what it needs. That whatever our path legal action, whether we are building structure, raising children, teaching students, terminology a blog, or making statue, that we are a property of expanding the primordial originative force that he helped supply in us.

Many students don't collected realize it, I am watchword a long way even sure if I customary it when I was exceptional student there, but his assets is still his proxy.

Representation is as if in now and again curve, in every column, enjoy every stair, in every port window he is whispering involved our ears--- "Look at throw, feel me, internalize me.Take encircling with you on your cutting edge voyages. Channel me when you're searching for the mystical treasures imbued in a column ache for a stair or a focus or a telephone booth, overcome more importantly- your own soul."