In the mirrors of mirrors
Interview with Petr Hájek about the September exhibition Principles
Are architects reacting in any way to the current global catastrophe? When we recently arranged today's interview, I raised this question among others. Architects have reacted to floods or earthquakes, for example, by designing various mobile cells, etc. You said that the periscopes in the square in front of the gallery in Budweis are your response…
P. Hájek: In spring, I had no idea what restrictions regarding the spread of Covid-19 would come. During the preparation of the exhibition, we considered whether we should postpone it to 2021 for safety. We were concerned that if the situation worsened, the gallery would have to close. I thought about how it could be possible to make the exhibition accessible in an alternative way. This meant finding a way for those who would have to stand outside to see what was closed inside.
And it occurred to me that we could utilize the principle of a periscope. In the House of Arts, the situation was favorable for the project: the gallery is located on the first floor, the main exhibition spaces are oriented towards the square, there is a colonnade and a sufficiently wide sidewalk to place something like that. But we still didn't know how strict a possible closure of cultural facilities would be; at one point, I even began to consider the idea of a certain construction modification – I wanted to block off the entrance. It would have been a kind of manifesto of this era. However, it didn’t go through. Today I know, fortunately. That idea was not good. The opening actually took place outside. The indoor spaces were overcrowded, and we didn't want to take the risk. We started with singing. The soloist, Denis Kutý, an about eleven-year-old boy, sang up in the gallery. The sound passed through the periscope and was distorted or rather modeled by the beautiful voice and melody – as well as a special echo. And so the resulting impression was amazing. Besides the visual aspect, an auditory bridge was also created. At the opening, I wanted to use the tubes as noise machines invented by the Italian futurist Luigi Russolo and play his legendary piece The Awakening of a City, but the pandemic measures thwarted that. There are three periscopes in total. One led from the outside to each exhibition room facing the square. They are red from the outside and black from the inside. The tubes were made of plywood and had reinforced outer ribs. Those were placed outside the tube: inside they could disturb the image...
Before we get to the content of the exhibition, what influenced the decision about the title Principles?
To answer, I have to go back a long way. My training at the Prague Technical University and then at the Academy of Fine Arts was based on finding a strong concept as a foundation on which the design would then be built. Later, we experimented with this design approach in practice and refined a working method based on inspirations. We often relied on inspirations from fields outside architecture. The inspirations then served to write an imaginary script, to which the resulting design submitted. In my most recent designs, natural sciences have predominated as sources of inspiration. From them, I realized what I had probably known for a long time but hadn’t perceived as clearly, that the main ingredient of inspiration is the principle. Something that contains lasting value and retains it regardless of the artistic form you attribute to it.
Principles seem to be a return to the beginning. To some roots. And perhaps to order... (The word principle originally from Latin also means order or even indirectly architecture itself – if we consider the Greek synonym arché… - note by the editor.) However, let's stop at your exhibition. Could you briefly guide the readers through it?
We placed the main part of the exhibition in three exhibition rooms towards the square. In each one, we presented a model representing one of the principles. Between the exhibits, we hung paintings by the artist Josef Duchan based on the principle of optical illusions. I am interested in inspirations between fields and Josef's work has been very inspiring for me for a long time, and I am glad that he accepted the invitation for a joint exhibition. Through the periscopes, the constellation of images and models could then be observed directly from the square.
The first project exhibited was for the hall of the Karlovy Vary Symphony Orchestra. How would you describe the model of its functioning?
We placed an object – a transformer – into the protected historical building of the Imperial Baths. It is essentially a device that integrates a number of functions. Using hydraulically controlled components, it can transform its shape and thereby change the spatial configurations of the hall and the parameters of spatial acoustics. The space of the historic hall, which is to be converted into a concert hall, is under strict heritage protection. We had to maximize separation from the new constructions and concentrate everything into a sophisticated compact solution. And that was what I also enjoyed.
The solution seems to remotely resemble your somewhat older reconstruction of the concert hall in Litomyšl – still as a commission of the HSH office. But there must have been differences between the solutions...
The difference lies precisely in the principles. In Litomyšl, the stage can move along a rail back and forth. It acts like a piston and regulates the amount of acoustically active air – space. The hall is, in a factual sense, a musical instrument that can be tuned for a specific production. The hall in Karlovy Vary is a robotic transformer. A robot that carries the audience chamber and the orchestra pit on its back. It has robotic arms that take various devices and acoustic tools out from its imaginary pockets and adds or removes them from the hall. Even organs. It is like a Swiss army knife. You open it to find what you need at the moment.
The second exhibit is a family home – House of the Periscope. The plot is located near the Šárecké Valley. For the client to have a view of the beautiful valley from his house, he would have to figuratively climb over the chimney. However, the living room was to be located on the ground floor – in connection to the garden behind the house. We designed the house so that it has a hall that runs the entire height, spanning four floors, in which mirrors are placed. One fixed at the top and one movable, which can be shifted to all floors using a manual mechanism, along with which the view into the landscape also shifts.
As the third model, you exhibited the Museum of Film...
The design of the object on this principle came about by coincidence. The Museum of Film is a transcription of a two-dimensional image from a so-called sound camera into the volume of the house. The sound camera was previously used to record sound optically on film. A few years ago, the company NaFilm invited us to create a design for a new film museum. In the end, two designs were created. One titled Galegion in our studio at the Faculty of Architecture and the other, presented at this exhibition Principles. When we first met at the museum in Nerudova Street regarding the assignment, I was intrigued by one of the exhibits. I didn't know it was a sound camera. We jokingly voiced a wish into the microphone for a film museum to be created. And from a box, a strip with an optical transcription emerged. I realized we had a finished design. I took a piece of the tape with the image of this wish – as a keepsake. According to the recording, we then accurately created the geometry of the floor plan. In its shape, the voice thus fossilized. Poetically, you can hear it again. You can conjure it up backward... When you take the floor plan of the house and inversely convert its image into sound, you hear the distant wish.
The principle of the periscope
Let's stop at the mechanism of the physical phenomenon that conditions the functioning of this originally military device.
I think everyone knows this. A periscope allows for the transport of an image and uses reflections on flat mirrors for that. ... The ray reflects from the first mirror to the second and from there to the retina of the observer. The image is not laterally inverted because the inversion from one mirror is canceled by the reflection from the other. So, constructing a periscope is actually simple. The first one we realized in our work during the reconstruction of the Water Tower in Letná. We returned to the tower, metaphorically speaking, its eyes after a hundred years, as I have mentioned somewhere. At the time the water tower was built, the surrounding buildings were lower, so the tower offered a view from the balcony up to the horizon of the Prague landscape. Thanks to our periscope, you have this possibility today as well.
The idea in its birth stage is always fascinating. I’m talking about the moment when a key to the idea comes to mind. Can you recall this crucial moment during the design of the Water Tower? How did the idea of placing a periscope on the tower come about?
It's been a while. But if I remember correctly, we were looking for a use for a non-functional chimney from a steam engine. Imagine a chimney that runs from the ground floor up to the roof through the center of the tower. What to do with that? You can leave it as is, but I was bothered that we couldn’t come up with anything, except perhaps an elevator. Then someone in the studio said: why not put your periscope there! It was an ironic joke, but suddenly it hit you in an instant that this is exactly the solution you need. And that's the moment. It often happens that a solution comes to you when you are not thinking about it. It’s a mystery of the mind. We do not know what initiated the moment when Rudolf Laban thought of creating notations for dance or Otto Lindsted of the drawing pin. But it happened. Suddenly everything connects. And it sparks. And it is.
The mirror itself is a simple but infinitely amazing invention...
The mirror itself and mirroring have fascinated throughout history. One of the most interesting texts is by Michel Foucault in his book Outside Thought. In the chapter On Other Spaces, where he deals with utopia and heterotopia, the mirror says something like this: In the mirror, I am where I am not. And perhaps this magic continues to attract us.
From a broader perspective, what also comes to mind is: The periscope is based on the mechanics of ordinary reflection – yet today, sophisticated digital technologies reign over the entire planet...
When you transport an image over a short distance, reflecting is the simplest; so why complicate it? I would use digital technology where it brings me an advantage. It cannot be said that one method is better than the other. It’s more about precision in its application.
I saw a beautiful exhibition by architect Peter Zumthor in his gallery in Bregenz. It consisted of exhibiting his realizations from different parts of the world projected onto large screens online. The image appeared static, yet it wasn't. Flies flew around, clouds drifted in the sky, and the draft slightly moved the curtains. It was magical.
You used mirrors, as is well known, in one other realization as well. In a crematorium for animals... but no longer as the principle of the periscope.
Yes. That crematorium is called Eternal Hunting Grounds and is currently undergoing trial operation. In a beautiful landscape with wild rose bushes, we placed a large mirror – about nine meters high and about twelve meters long. The mirror is designed as a surface composed of the same small hexagonal pieces. Behind it, the operation of the crematorium is hidden. So when someone walks into the crematorium and looks into the mirror, they are actually looking into the future – given the speed of light. Before the reflection reaches them, it already represents an old image in terms of the passage of time; the observer is looking at something from the past. Although we cannot perceive this process in terms of time flow with our senses and thus feel it, it represents a physical principle that symbolically evokes the atmosphere of remembering. Because remembering is, in essence, turning back to the past. You cannot perceive it with human senses, but for me, it has a symbolic meaning that I wanted to apply in the design... Moreover, the mirror itself is visually striking in the landscape. It reflects everything around it. Each mirror piece is slightly differently oriented. The image seems to shimmer. You have the feeling that you are approaching a portal to another dimension. It is a surreal experience. And it cannot be precisely described. It must be experienced.
In the mirror of childhood
By some steps, perhaps also by bringing some concepts back into play, it seems as if you have set a mirror to the creativity of the field – through various innovations and experiments or utopias... Let us recall, for example, the Anastomosis or the recent exhibition Galegion at Dox, etc. Can you recall when you found this exploratory string within yourself?
When I was a little boy, I wanted to be an inventor. My role models were Thomas Alva Edison or Nikola Tesla. Perhaps this doesn't belong here, but I brought a book about Tesla from an antique shop some time ago. I flipped through it and suddenly froze. When I was first in New York 25 years ago, I stayed at the New Yorker hotel – where Tesla also spent the end of his life. I think it was on the 32nd floor.
That sounds like an incredible coincidence...
… That's not all. I received that book by coincidence as a gift with a purchase at the antique shop. Which is a bit spooky...
Not only because of the periscopes but also due to the simple presentation of the exhibits, your exhibition was attractive to a wide audience; was that an intention?
Yes. The exhibition was intended for the general public as well. We want to popularize the field, and we do it in a way that captures interest with the theme. Sometimes you just need to look at things differently. We wanted the exhibition to show, among other things, that architecture doesn't have to be just about working with typology, construction, or form. But that it is also an adventure. And exploration. You never know if a boy or girl walks by and suddenly gets inspired and becomes an architect. How many Le Corbusiers have we perhaps missed just because they didn’t find out that they were one?
The Fourth Space
Finally, let’s return to the very beginning. You organized the installation in four exhibition spaces of the House of Arts. However, you have only mentioned three so far. What about the fourth? Or did you not exhibit anything there?
Originally, I did not want to exhibit anything in that space. The reason was the concept of three exhibits in three rooms. Moreover, an exhibit in this part would not be visible from the square through the periscope. I wanted to simply skip this fourth space and put nothing in it. However, the director of the House of Arts and the curator of the exhibition, Michal Škoda, disagreed. So I was searching for a solution to get out of it. Somewhere, I read some historical text that generally describes the emptiness of the universe. And that memory helped me now. It said something like: The void is a state that allows everything else to happen. So we wrote this sentence on the wall – in the empty space. But it wasn't empty. That word gave it meaning.
Thank you for the interview.
Jiří Horský
P. Hájek: In spring, I had no idea what restrictions regarding the spread of Covid-19 would come. During the preparation of the exhibition, we considered whether we should postpone it to 2021 for safety. We were concerned that if the situation worsened, the gallery would have to close. I thought about how it could be possible to make the exhibition accessible in an alternative way. This meant finding a way for those who would have to stand outside to see what was closed inside.
And it occurred to me that we could utilize the principle of a periscope. In the House of Arts, the situation was favorable for the project: the gallery is located on the first floor, the main exhibition spaces are oriented towards the square, there is a colonnade and a sufficiently wide sidewalk to place something like that. But we still didn't know how strict a possible closure of cultural facilities would be; at one point, I even began to consider the idea of a certain construction modification – I wanted to block off the entrance. It would have been a kind of manifesto of this era. However, it didn’t go through. Today I know, fortunately. That idea was not good. The opening actually took place outside. The indoor spaces were overcrowded, and we didn't want to take the risk. We started with singing. The soloist, Denis Kutý, an about eleven-year-old boy, sang up in the gallery. The sound passed through the periscope and was distorted or rather modeled by the beautiful voice and melody – as well as a special echo. And so the resulting impression was amazing. Besides the visual aspect, an auditory bridge was also created. At the opening, I wanted to use the tubes as noise machines invented by the Italian futurist Luigi Russolo and play his legendary piece The Awakening of a City, but the pandemic measures thwarted that. There are three periscopes in total. One led from the outside to each exhibition room facing the square. They are red from the outside and black from the inside. The tubes were made of plywood and had reinforced outer ribs. Those were placed outside the tube: inside they could disturb the image...
Before we get to the content of the exhibition, what influenced the decision about the title Principles?
To answer, I have to go back a long way. My training at the Prague Technical University and then at the Academy of Fine Arts was based on finding a strong concept as a foundation on which the design would then be built. Later, we experimented with this design approach in practice and refined a working method based on inspirations. We often relied on inspirations from fields outside architecture. The inspirations then served to write an imaginary script, to which the resulting design submitted. In my most recent designs, natural sciences have predominated as sources of inspiration. From them, I realized what I had probably known for a long time but hadn’t perceived as clearly, that the main ingredient of inspiration is the principle. Something that contains lasting value and retains it regardless of the artistic form you attribute to it.
Principles seem to be a return to the beginning. To some roots. And perhaps to order... (The word principle originally from Latin also means order or even indirectly architecture itself – if we consider the Greek synonym arché… - note by the editor.) However, let's stop at your exhibition. Could you briefly guide the readers through it?
We placed the main part of the exhibition in three exhibition rooms towards the square. In each one, we presented a model representing one of the principles. Between the exhibits, we hung paintings by the artist Josef Duchan based on the principle of optical illusions. I am interested in inspirations between fields and Josef's work has been very inspiring for me for a long time, and I am glad that he accepted the invitation for a joint exhibition. Through the periscopes, the constellation of images and models could then be observed directly from the square.
The first project exhibited was for the hall of the Karlovy Vary Symphony Orchestra. How would you describe the model of its functioning?
We placed an object – a transformer – into the protected historical building of the Imperial Baths. It is essentially a device that integrates a number of functions. Using hydraulically controlled components, it can transform its shape and thereby change the spatial configurations of the hall and the parameters of spatial acoustics. The space of the historic hall, which is to be converted into a concert hall, is under strict heritage protection. We had to maximize separation from the new constructions and concentrate everything into a sophisticated compact solution. And that was what I also enjoyed.
The solution seems to remotely resemble your somewhat older reconstruction of the concert hall in Litomyšl – still as a commission of the HSH office. But there must have been differences between the solutions...
The difference lies precisely in the principles. In Litomyšl, the stage can move along a rail back and forth. It acts like a piston and regulates the amount of acoustically active air – space. The hall is, in a factual sense, a musical instrument that can be tuned for a specific production. The hall in Karlovy Vary is a robotic transformer. A robot that carries the audience chamber and the orchestra pit on its back. It has robotic arms that take various devices and acoustic tools out from its imaginary pockets and adds or removes them from the hall. Even organs. It is like a Swiss army knife. You open it to find what you need at the moment.
The second exhibit is a family home – House of the Periscope. The plot is located near the Šárecké Valley. For the client to have a view of the beautiful valley from his house, he would have to figuratively climb over the chimney. However, the living room was to be located on the ground floor – in connection to the garden behind the house. We designed the house so that it has a hall that runs the entire height, spanning four floors, in which mirrors are placed. One fixed at the top and one movable, which can be shifted to all floors using a manual mechanism, along with which the view into the landscape also shifts.
As the third model, you exhibited the Museum of Film...
The design of the object on this principle came about by coincidence. The Museum of Film is a transcription of a two-dimensional image from a so-called sound camera into the volume of the house. The sound camera was previously used to record sound optically on film. A few years ago, the company NaFilm invited us to create a design for a new film museum. In the end, two designs were created. One titled Galegion in our studio at the Faculty of Architecture and the other, presented at this exhibition Principles. When we first met at the museum in Nerudova Street regarding the assignment, I was intrigued by one of the exhibits. I didn't know it was a sound camera. We jokingly voiced a wish into the microphone for a film museum to be created. And from a box, a strip with an optical transcription emerged. I realized we had a finished design. I took a piece of the tape with the image of this wish – as a keepsake. According to the recording, we then accurately created the geometry of the floor plan. In its shape, the voice thus fossilized. Poetically, you can hear it again. You can conjure it up backward... When you take the floor plan of the house and inversely convert its image into sound, you hear the distant wish.
The principle of the periscope
Let's stop at the mechanism of the physical phenomenon that conditions the functioning of this originally military device.
I think everyone knows this. A periscope allows for the transport of an image and uses reflections on flat mirrors for that. ... The ray reflects from the first mirror to the second and from there to the retina of the observer. The image is not laterally inverted because the inversion from one mirror is canceled by the reflection from the other. So, constructing a periscope is actually simple. The first one we realized in our work during the reconstruction of the Water Tower in Letná. We returned to the tower, metaphorically speaking, its eyes after a hundred years, as I have mentioned somewhere. At the time the water tower was built, the surrounding buildings were lower, so the tower offered a view from the balcony up to the horizon of the Prague landscape. Thanks to our periscope, you have this possibility today as well.
The idea in its birth stage is always fascinating. I’m talking about the moment when a key to the idea comes to mind. Can you recall this crucial moment during the design of the Water Tower? How did the idea of placing a periscope on the tower come about?
It's been a while. But if I remember correctly, we were looking for a use for a non-functional chimney from a steam engine. Imagine a chimney that runs from the ground floor up to the roof through the center of the tower. What to do with that? You can leave it as is, but I was bothered that we couldn’t come up with anything, except perhaps an elevator. Then someone in the studio said: why not put your periscope there! It was an ironic joke, but suddenly it hit you in an instant that this is exactly the solution you need. And that's the moment. It often happens that a solution comes to you when you are not thinking about it. It’s a mystery of the mind. We do not know what initiated the moment when Rudolf Laban thought of creating notations for dance or Otto Lindsted of the drawing pin. But it happened. Suddenly everything connects. And it sparks. And it is.
The mirror itself is a simple but infinitely amazing invention...
The mirror itself and mirroring have fascinated throughout history. One of the most interesting texts is by Michel Foucault in his book Outside Thought. In the chapter On Other Spaces, where he deals with utopia and heterotopia, the mirror says something like this: In the mirror, I am where I am not. And perhaps this magic continues to attract us.
From a broader perspective, what also comes to mind is: The periscope is based on the mechanics of ordinary reflection – yet today, sophisticated digital technologies reign over the entire planet...
When you transport an image over a short distance, reflecting is the simplest; so why complicate it? I would use digital technology where it brings me an advantage. It cannot be said that one method is better than the other. It’s more about precision in its application.
I saw a beautiful exhibition by architect Peter Zumthor in his gallery in Bregenz. It consisted of exhibiting his realizations from different parts of the world projected onto large screens online. The image appeared static, yet it wasn't. Flies flew around, clouds drifted in the sky, and the draft slightly moved the curtains. It was magical.
You used mirrors, as is well known, in one other realization as well. In a crematorium for animals... but no longer as the principle of the periscope.
Yes. That crematorium is called Eternal Hunting Grounds and is currently undergoing trial operation. In a beautiful landscape with wild rose bushes, we placed a large mirror – about nine meters high and about twelve meters long. The mirror is designed as a surface composed of the same small hexagonal pieces. Behind it, the operation of the crematorium is hidden. So when someone walks into the crematorium and looks into the mirror, they are actually looking into the future – given the speed of light. Before the reflection reaches them, it already represents an old image in terms of the passage of time; the observer is looking at something from the past. Although we cannot perceive this process in terms of time flow with our senses and thus feel it, it represents a physical principle that symbolically evokes the atmosphere of remembering. Because remembering is, in essence, turning back to the past. You cannot perceive it with human senses, but for me, it has a symbolic meaning that I wanted to apply in the design... Moreover, the mirror itself is visually striking in the landscape. It reflects everything around it. Each mirror piece is slightly differently oriented. The image seems to shimmer. You have the feeling that you are approaching a portal to another dimension. It is a surreal experience. And it cannot be precisely described. It must be experienced.
In the mirror of childhood
By some steps, perhaps also by bringing some concepts back into play, it seems as if you have set a mirror to the creativity of the field – through various innovations and experiments or utopias... Let us recall, for example, the Anastomosis or the recent exhibition Galegion at Dox, etc. Can you recall when you found this exploratory string within yourself?
When I was a little boy, I wanted to be an inventor. My role models were Thomas Alva Edison or Nikola Tesla. Perhaps this doesn't belong here, but I brought a book about Tesla from an antique shop some time ago. I flipped through it and suddenly froze. When I was first in New York 25 years ago, I stayed at the New Yorker hotel – where Tesla also spent the end of his life. I think it was on the 32nd floor.
That sounds like an incredible coincidence...
… That's not all. I received that book by coincidence as a gift with a purchase at the antique shop. Which is a bit spooky...
Not only because of the periscopes but also due to the simple presentation of the exhibits, your exhibition was attractive to a wide audience; was that an intention?
Yes. The exhibition was intended for the general public as well. We want to popularize the field, and we do it in a way that captures interest with the theme. Sometimes you just need to look at things differently. We wanted the exhibition to show, among other things, that architecture doesn't have to be just about working with typology, construction, or form. But that it is also an adventure. And exploration. You never know if a boy or girl walks by and suddenly gets inspired and becomes an architect. How many Le Corbusiers have we perhaps missed just because they didn’t find out that they were one?
The Fourth Space
Finally, let’s return to the very beginning. You organized the installation in four exhibition spaces of the House of Arts. However, you have only mentioned three so far. What about the fourth? Or did you not exhibit anything there?
Originally, I did not want to exhibit anything in that space. The reason was the concept of three exhibits in three rooms. Moreover, an exhibit in this part would not be visible from the square through the periscope. I wanted to simply skip this fourth space and put nothing in it. However, the director of the House of Arts and the curator of the exhibition, Michal Škoda, disagreed. So I was searching for a solution to get out of it. Somewhere, I read some historical text that generally describes the emptiness of the universe. And that memory helped me now. It said something like: The void is a state that allows everything else to happen. So we wrote this sentence on the wall – in the empty space. But it wasn't empty. That word gave it meaning.
Thank you for the interview.
Jiří Horský
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