BARBARA JAKOBSON may/june 1997

When asked, “Just what is it that you do?,” Barbara Jakobson usually says, “As little as possible, thank you.” Despite its playful sincerity, her reply couldn’t be farther from the truth. She has organized several important architecture exhibitions; serves as a Board Member of The Museum of Modern Art and the Architectural League; is a contributing editor of i-D magazine; has worked with Frank Gehry to design bentwood furniture for Knoll; and published the libretto for the Robert Wilson-Philip Glass opera, Einstein on the Beach.

You may spot her at the flea market, hunting her current passion, industrial design — and good luck getting to the Braun electric shavers before she does.

Peter Halley:  I’d love to find out which cars you like, and why you like them.

Barbara Jakobson:  I’m pretty conventional in my car lust.  I love the Jaguar XKE.  I like certain early Ferraris.  

PH:  Do you collect?

BJ:  I would love to collect cars.  I own one car, a 1973 Volkswagen Beetle convertible, which I take care of as if it were a pet.  I love the car.  I go to the Automobile Show every year, and I pray for a new car that I really would want.  You know, there’s a great scene in Hitchcock’s Notorious, where Ingrid Bergman is driving in a convertible with Cary Grant, with the top down, and her hair blowing in the wind.  I have this image embedded in my memory, and the idea of driving along some gorgeous road in a convertible with Cary Grant at your side is something I find very compelling.

PH:  Walker Percy writes about that in The Movie-Goer.

BJ:  That is a very powerful desire.  Because in the end, isn’t it all about desire?  Isn’t it about where you desire to find yourself?  There is this lust to embark on a train, in high heels and a fur coat, with a matched set of alligator luggage, and be ushered into a compartment where someone comes and turns down the bed — that I find absolutely overwhelming.  I would like to experience that at some point in life.  And so the containers that hold desire, like gorgeous cars ... you know, technology is there to kind of satisfy lust.

Bob Nickas:  There’s the possibility that something can happen,  and you can project that onto a car or a train.  But when we’re talking about a building, which is basically not going anywhere, where do you introduce that sense of possibility?

BJ:  On the stairs.  You have to understand how important stairwells are to public spaces.  And one of the things that a great many of us bemoan at The Museum of Modern Art is the loss of a stairwell.  I personally long to restore the sense of ceremony that came from the stairway, and I believe that it would be one of the things we would ask an architect to think about.

BN:  Absolutely.

PH:  Have you seen any of the new airport mega-structures?  Are there any you like?

BJ:  Well, I haven’t seen Kansai in Osaka — the Renzo Piano airport — and I definitely want to visit.  The image of architecture that we get is mostly from magazines, but you cannot feel or know architecture unless you go.  That’s why pilgrimages are totally wonderful.  And that’s why I say that architecture to me is like my spectator sport.  Some people go to soccer matches; I go to look at buildings.  The biggest kick in the world is to approach a building, look at the outside, go inside, and just devour it that way.

BN:  It’s the only way.

BJ:  Right, and now there are these mega-structures that have come along in the last few years, like the Tokyo Forum by Rafael Vinoly.  These buildings are staggering feats of engineering, they control vast spaces, and you just have to go to see them.

PH:  With all the serious, intellectually-minded architects getting involved with these kinds of capital-intensive structures, is that a sell-out to the current social status quo?

BJ:  Well, there are architects for whom the engineering must show.  For them, the primary excitement is to expose the structure of the building.  And I think that began with architects like Piano and Rogers, with Beaubourg.  I think Beaubourg is a totally seminal work.

PH:  I do too.

BJ:  Of course, the antecedent of Beaubourg is a project called the Fun Palace, which was designed in 1966 by Cedric Price.

PH:  What was that?

BJ:  The Fun Palace was the building he designed for Joan Littlewood, who was a theater person, and it was just a pleasuredome.  People were moved up and down the building by escalators on the outside, and there were elevators and little platforms where they got off and experienced theater, and other amusements.  It was a great project, but it never got built.  Piano and Rogers admit its influence, and Beaubourg is what got built.  Beaubourg absolutely gave this kind of building a validity.  So that you now have these buildings where the engineer is as important as the architect.  Peter Rice was this kind of great architect/engineer who worked on a lot of these very technical buildings.  He worked with Piano and Rogers.  And he died, tragically, rather young.  It will be interesting to see what Norman Foster, Richard Rogers and people like that do now.  Because Peter Rice was an integral part ...

PH:  Oh, when did he die?

BJ:  Last year.  And I recently visited the Channel Four building in London, a relatively new Richard Rogers building.  It was the last Peter Rice building.  And it is a really good building that fits into its little urban site, it’s got a glass facade that looks like it’s held up by cables, and you see the ribs of the steel work on the outside.  I think those buildings are very exciting, however, I have problems with buildings where all the flash of the engineering gets in the way of the interiority.

BN:  I’ve rarely seen art look very good in Beaubourg.  Sometimes the shows weren’t good, which is not a problem with the building, but the two combined — a not very good show in a not very sympathetic space.  And over the years the building became a kind of wreck, and it looked old pretty fast.

BJ:  It’s being renovated for the third time now.  Because no one ever expected this building to be used by the hordes of people who go there.

BN:  Most of the time the escalators weren’t even working.  You had to walk to the top.

PH:  But Bob, I have to disagree with you.  What they did was they simply created an open plan, which to me is ideal.

BN:  Are you proposing that there should be an ongoing architecture that happens inside the museum, that is determined by the artists and the curators?

PH:  Look at the Whitney, which I think is probably my favorite museum in the United States.  It’s just an open plan, and they can do whatever they want.

BJ:  I happen to love the Whitney.

PH:  It’s perfect.

BJ:  It’s one of my favorite buildings in New York.  The Whitney does what I feel architecture needs to do.  The outside is a stunning piece of architecture, and the inside is utterly usable.  And it’s 25 or 30 years old, and it’s aged quite well.  Okay, the floors are hard, they’re uncomfortable to walk on, but they’re very beautiful.  They’ve acquired a kind of patina ...

BN:  And they got rid of the carpeting.

BJ:  You know how found spaces are very sexy and wonderful to us,  buildings that were something else in the beginning, then converted to other uses.  They have this romantic aura that is all about memory.  I feel memory plays a very important part in the way you experience architecture.  And you remember what you love.  If you love industrial buildings like I do, then you look at a building like the Temporary Contemporary, and you get this charge.  What you get when you experience a building like that is a memory of something you love combined with a sensitive readaptation.

BN:  Can we talk about your favorite buildings?

BJ:  That’s a long list.  

PH:  What’s your favorite building in Paris?

BJ:  You know, Paris is such a piece of architecture, the whole place.  I love the Maison de Verre, just like we all do. 

BN:  And New York? 

BJ:  I worry about the beauty of ... that the buildings will last.  That we won’t tear down what’s of value.  Let’s take Columbus Circle.  I am in a panic about what might happen to this wonderful place.  Everything proposed to date sounds so loathsome to me, so I’m very nervous about who may get the nod.  There’s not one proposal that I like so far.  And I personally would like to keep the Huntington Hartford.  Everybody makes terrible jokes about that building ...

BN:  The one with those arches?

BJ:  The little Edward Durell Stone Venetian Palazzo that was transformed into the New York Cultural Center.

PH:  He designed the original Museum of Modern Art.

BJ:  The Huntington Hartford was absolutely wonderful when it first opened.  I’m quite fond of that building.  Barney Newman once said to me, “The only trouble with that building, Barbara, is that they put a door in it.”  And it’s true.  It’s a little live facade, behind which nothing happened.  And you know what?  I like the telephone company buildings that are totally blank.

BN:  The Darth Vader buildings?

BJ:  Yeah, buildings like that are potentially great pieces of architecture.  I have architectural fantasies about things that I would like to see happen in the city.  I think about urban space, and how open space is very scarce.  I would jokingly talk to developer friends about my vision of the Hudson River with a kind of floating man-made island, a cemetery, with a high-rise building that was only to house the dead.  There’s not enough land left to bury people, and I thought it could be an extraordinary project, because, just think, you sell it by the square inch, and it could be very beautiful ... the Island of the Dead.

BN:  Have you seen the cemetery in Venice?  I think that’s really special.

BJ:  I love cemeteries.  The cemetery in New Orleans is one of the most spectacular places I’ve ever visited, the cemetery in Milan, which is full of amazing statuary.  If I hit a city, and I know it has a great cemetery, you will find me there.  Tombs are amongst my favorite architectural events.  St. Louis has this great Louis Sullivan tomb, and the spectacular Busch family tomb is there.  I mean, it bespeaks a kind of life after death that I find extremely comforting.

BN:  The last big chunk of New York real estate is Governor’s Island, and it’s going to be up for grabs.  What would you like to see happen there?

BJ:  Well, it’s an island, and it’s hard to think about integrating an island into Manhattan life.  Because you know how we Manhattan islanders are.  For god sakes, it’s easier for us to go abroad than to go to Queens.  So what could you put on Governor’s Island that would make it a living, breathing thing?  Look at Roosevelt Island, which also has spectacular views of Manhattan.  Do you ever go over there?  It’s kind of like, social housing in Scandinavia.  I think it was a good idea, but the people who live there are very, very isolated.  So I don’t know what I would do.  Anything that goes onto Governor’s Island that is created from scratch is going to be pretty weird. 

BN:  I wouldn’t want it to be a prison.

BJ:  Yeah, well, why not?

BN:  Because that was already a movie ... Escape from New York.

BJ:  Let’s think about our society, the way it is now.  What are people spending money on?  Their houses.  On the domestic environment.  Why are they doing this?  What is this house-mania?

BN:  You have to live somewhere.

BJ:  I am fascinated with how the nature of domestic life is changing, and how architecture will address the problem.  The modern house, which was developed in the post-war era, was based on the kind of international-style box.  Houses were small.  Furniture got smaller.  Everything got scaled down.  But now parents come back to live with their children, or children come back home.  More people are working at home, sitting there at their computers.  Garages have to house all these big vans.

BN:  Everything is getting scaled back up.

BJ:  Exactly.  And I want to see great houses that satisfy these needs.  But the developer houses that have come along are totally hideous.      Look at a place like Celebration, Florida, the Disney town.  It’s riveting.

BN:  Do people want to live in a town called Celebration?

BJ:  I question that, but they do.  Celebration, Florida is a fascinating project because it’s trying to load up the American dream into the re-creation of a new town.  All the public buildings are based on these imaginary fantasies of what banks should look like.  What stores should look like.  The houses are based on that memory of the American house with the peaked roofs, the front porches, the this-and-that.  And very strict rules.  Apparently there are rules like, you can only have a yard sale once every two years.  I mean, can you imagine ... “Because we don’t want mess!  We don’t want your stuff out there!”

BN:  What you’re describing is like a theme park where people can live, but only if they don’t disrupt its theme.  What’s happening now with people closing out the world in gated communities is incredible.  It’s almost like a wealthy, conservative version of those militia-type people who don’t pay taxes and want everybody to leave them alone.

BJ:  Well, I think that the house is meant to be a sanctuary for daily life.  It’s supposed to be a safe place.  And I don’t care if you’re very poor or very rich.  This is what the house says, from the first little primitive hut to the cybermansion of Mr. Gates.

BN:  But what happens to public space?

PH:  Forget public space.

BJ:  You know, very interesting work is being done by people like Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk on the re-use, for instance, of the mall.  There are malls that have failed.  And they are going into towns and trying to teach them how to re-use these malls and make them work.  I think re-use is a great thing for cities and towns.  I want Main Street back.  I think the loss of Main Street in American life is tragic.  When I travel outside of New York, through any small town, you go through beautiful deserted towns, and they’re all sitting there, desperately empty while everybody’s at the Walmart. 

PH:  How did you start collecting 20th century furniture?

BJ:  I grew up in a small house full of 18th century English furniture, classical Chippendale, Sheraton, and a bit of Regency.  Every child finds its own means of rebellion, and I found mine in modernism.  From the minute I became aware — and this is, let’s say, in the early ’40s — that there was something modern, I wanted it.  It was all I wanted.  Raymond Loewy was one of the first modernists I was aware of, because he designed china for Rosenthal.  He designed buses for Greyhound.  He designed trains.  And I used to beg my mother to get rid of our vintage china.  “Buy this!”  And she would say, “No way.”  And so it was a total imperative that anything I attached to my person would be modern.  I think that life is a quest, and I always look for more of what I wanted, when I first started wanting. 

PH:  You’re pretty well known for the rediscovery of French and Italian furniture.

BJ:  But that was something I wasn’t aware of until the ’70s.  I did not know who Carlo Molino was until I bought a book called Stil Novo, written by a German art historian named Christian Born Graber.  That’s where I first saw pictures of Molino furniture, and it was an instant thing.  And of course, I love to do research.  I called information in Berlin and got the number of the guy who wrote the book.  I always look for teachers.  And Christian was brilliant.  We eventually became close friends.  And when I went to visit him in Berlin, I noticed that on his tables were Braun appliances from the ’60s — razors, lighters.  And now I’ve been buying all these Braun appliances from that period.  Stuff that never worked.  That toaster that everybody thought was beautiful, but didn’t work.  But I don’t care if these things work.  I could care less.  I just want them to look good.  I have an amazing toaster, it looks like a truck.  It doesn’t work at all, but I love it. 

PH:  You also have American pieces from the ’50s and ’60s that used to be considered sort of outré science fiction.  That’s another kind of movement, like the New York architecture that Koolhaas talks about, and was helpful in revitalizing.  I mean, for a modernist, one might be suspicious of things like that.

BJ:  Well, New York is full of great buildings.  And I’m very attracted to two aspects of modernism.  One is the building that we’re looking at, the Starrett-Lehigh Building, which is an interpretation of great Dutch modernism, De Stijl design, where you see these beautiful thin membranes in windows, and bands of horizontal brick work that express the structure.  These things are too wonderful.  Buildings like the McGraw-Hill Building.  I’m a sucker for any building that’s clad in green tile.  

PH:  That’s a short list.

BJ:  Right.  There aren’t too many of those.  But the kinds of things that Rem has taught us all to look at again.  You know, Wally Harrison’s buildings.  Rockefeller Center.

PH:  The last time we met we talked about how the struggle for an architect is particularly compelling.  It’s not an easy job.

BJ:  What makes architects so interesting is that, in order to realize their work, they must transact with society in a way that a painter does not need to.  A painter can finish a painting and it’s done.  It exists in the world.  An architect is simply unable to do that, unless there’s a client.  The architect must be a seducer.  Architects must project their personality as well as their work.  They must find someone to make what they’ve imagined.  And all along, they have to deal with the real politik, with the time in which they live.

PH:  And it can be such an ephemeral art form.  Some of the great architects are only represented by a handful of buildings.

BJ:  There’s a kind of existential angst that the architect must live with.  And it creates, on the one hand, the need to be incredibly sophisticated.  On the other, this childlike need for approval that is kind of endless.

PH:  Or even love.

BJ:  Architects are anxious about how you feel about what they’re up to.  And it’s inspiring to give architecture what it wants.  You get back an amazing amount of pleasure.

PH:  Now, you’ve been close to Frank Gehry for years.  In a way, he sort of personifies all that.

BJ:  Frank Gehry is a marvelous embodiment of the dilemma of the architect.  The great thing about Frank is this generosity in letting you in on his intelligence and his neurosis at the same time.  He doesn’t pretend that he doesn’t need love and approval.  He does, and I think his life has been a quest for getting it. 

PH:  And he started with schlocky bank buildings in LA.

BJ:  Well, you have to start somewhere.  But I love the fact that Frank has allowed his psychoanalysis to influence his dialogue with the public and with his colleagues, and with himself. 

PH:  How do you deal with not getting any real confirmation until you’re fifty? ... which isn’t uncommon for architects.

BJ:  Last weekend we went to see Louis Kahn’s Salk Center in San Diego, and I promise you, if you haven’t seen it, it really is a sacred site.  It is utterly ravishing.  So when architecture is there, and for a very long time, and doesn’t lose any of its power or its magic, and it hasn’t been corrupted, it never ceases to move you.  Louis Kahn is someone whose buildings do that.  And look, this guy barely built anything of note until he was damn near sixty.  Architects wait a long time.  In large part, if you look at the architects we consider young, they’re fifty, a lot of them, and just beginning to get into the major part of their work.

BN:  We talk a lot to directors, and we’re always struck by how long they have to wait between projects.  Sometimes, they’ll have a big star and that’s what gets the okay to make the film.  But an architect can’t say, “I’ve got Tom Hanks.”  And if you think it costs a lot to make a movie, try building an airport.  People have to be able to live and work in them, inhabit buildings.  The stakes are just about as high as it gets.

BJ:  I guess it’s one of the reasons that I find architects potentially heroic.  I think that if it works, they just change the face of our everyday lives, and our spiritual lives.  And so from the smallest domestic room to the largest public space, they are able, if they succeed, to transform experience.