Eleven Eleven Journal of Literature and Art (An Interview with Fritz Haeg / By Erika Figel Roliz / Volume #2 / Spring 2005)
Fritz Haeg was born in ST. Cloud, Minnesota in 1969. He studied architecture at the Istituto Universitario di Archietettura di Venezia and Carnegie Mellon University, where he received his B.Arch in 1992. He has been a faculty member at Parsons School of Design in New York, U.S.C. School of Architecture and Art Center College of Design. Since establishing fritz haeg studio in 1995 in New York City and later moving the practice to Los Angeles in 1999, a wide range of his architectural, landscape and design projects have been realized.
{1111} WHAT WAS
THE FIRST PIECE OF ARCHITECTURE THAT INTERESTED YOU?
When I was little, I was always attracted to the weird houses in our neighborhood.
I was like "I love that house! That’s my favorite house!" And
it's funny because when I sent my parents pictures of this house after I bought
it, the first thing my mom said is that it looked like houses I drew when I
was little. I would stay in my room after school and just draw houses all afternoon
and all night. You wouldn't call it architecture. But the first serious piece
of architecture were the shows at the Walker Art Museum. The curators Martin
and Mildred Friedman were running the Walker at the time, and they started putting
on architecture shows, which is really unusual for a contemporary museum. They
showed Frank Gehry, and Ted Tokio Tanaka, Steven Holl, Todd Williams, and Billy
Tsien. But the Frank Gehry show in particular.
{1111} WHAT KIND
OF AN IMPACT DID GEHRY’S WORK HAVE ON YOU?
That was when I was in high school. It probably affected me the same way that
his early work affected a lot of people when the modernism movement was in its
last gasp. People understood that something else was going to happen, but they
weren't sure what. Gehry’s work was like that moment of recognition where
you realize there’s something else; there’s another way of making
architecture.
{1111} DURING
COLLEGE, WHAT WAS INFLUENCING YOU?
I was totally on my own on some level. My first three years of college, I was
going to Carnegie Mellon. We were all in one building: fine arts, graphic design,
drama, and architecture. All my friends were on the top floor. They were all
the fine artists, and I would go up to their studios a lot. In my last year
of college, I took more fine arts classes, and I was doing a lot of installations.
Many of those friends from my last year of college are still my closest friends
here in L.A.
{1111} IS THAT
WHEN YOU STARTED PAINTING?
No. I moved to Italy for a year and studied architecture at the Venice School
of Architecture in Italy. And then I went back to Italy later on to Tuscany
to kind of run away from architecture, and I was just kind of in a farmhouse
painting. I think they’re pretty horrible paintings. I’m sure they’re
pretty horrible paintings. When I finally moved to New York, I would kind of
alternate between making paintings and making buildings or doing architecture.
Painting was this place I could be. In architecture, you’re really dependent
on other people. You’re dependent on clients and budgets, and there’s
so much crap between you and getting a project done, and I think painting was
a way of doing something totally independent where you feel like you have total
control over your world. I liked the solitude of it, and I liked the control
of it. And it was just those five years in New York that I painted.
{1111} WHY DID
YOU LEAVE NEW YORK?
I don’t know. I loved New York. I was really happy there, and I had a
lot of close friends. I think New York was an interesting time for my work because
I was doing all these things simultaneously, and I had no idea how they connected
or if they connected at all or what the hell I was doing. I was really consumed
by each one of them independently, but I was really confused about why I was
doing all of them. I think I felt like I was getting stuck in a rut where I
wasn’t thinking about new things in new ways anymore. It was this oppressive
familiarity. I really loved being in New York, but as a designer dealing with
space and environment, I felt kind of oppressed there. I didn’t have any
plans when I left New York. I just knew that what I needed to be doing in my
work probably wasn’t in New York, and it seemed to make sense here. I
didn’t know why. There was something exciting about moving to Los Angeles
where there was this uncharted terrain for me, and there was just something
about it that drew me to it. It’s only since the last few years being
in L.A. that I feel like things are starting to come together, like my interest
in gardening and ecology and art and design. They’ve all naturally woven
themselves together in some way.
{1111} HOW IS
YOUR WORK INTERDEPENDENT?
The GardenLab project that I started deals with issues of ecology, art, and
design and informs the design work that I do. The salons are about creating
this free open environment to make and experience art in a social way. I think
architecture and design feeds that because I’m interested in creating
environments that nurture these kinds of experiences with art, like communal
social experiences with art. And I’m more interested in my practice going
in this direction of using design as a way to create environments that nurture
those kinds of experiences.
{1111} HOW DO
YOU INITIATE THESE PROJECTS?
I know for sure, and I’ve known for a long time that I would never be
the kind of designer that waits for clients to come to me to do
projects, for example private residences. I like the idea of actively producing
them. I like to do the kind of work that nobody asks me to do but that I seek
out on my own because I feel like it needs to be done. And I think, in that
way, I’ve been really inspired by Buckminster Fuller who invented the
geodesic dome because at a certain point in his life he decided that he was
going to identify the problems that exist in society and then create solutions
to them, not just as a designer but as a human being that was extremely intelligent
and capable on all these different levels. He would design maps, buildings,
and cars. He was an inventor. He was a speaker. I’m really inspired by
this idea of being an active agent in the world -- not passive in waiting for
people to ask you to do things. But instead being a person that looks for problems
and solves them. He had this faith that if the problems he was solving were
important enough, the support would come for them. And I think that’s
such a beautiful way of operating the world, and I think it’s really foreign
to young people. Students today are trained to have this trade, this craft,
and then you go out and you sit around and wait for people to ask you to do
that for them and to pay you to do it. I like this idea of going out and actively
identifying the places in need and then proposing things for them.
{1111} IS THERE
A CONSISTENT IDEOLOGY BEHIND EVERYTHING THAT YOU DO?
I don’t know if I set out an ideology, or if it slowly reveals itself
to me. I think what I’ve done, at least since I’ve left New York
maybe, kind of without questioning it, is go to what I’m drawn to and
then let that take me wherever it is I'm supposed to go. For example, I moved
to L.A. $10,000 in debt with no jobs and no prospects. But, in that moment,
of all things, I took a scrappy piece of dirt in my yard at Silver Lake and
went more into debt by buying plants everyday and experimenting. I was out in
the yard every morning, day and night, for two months planting and gardening.
Meanwhile, I was unemployed and in debt. And at the time I felt like this is
absurd, this is ridiculous. What the hell are you doing out here’ You
should be hustling for work. But in retrospect, those were two of the most important
months of my life because it was really reflective and meditative. It was exactly
what I should have been doing and wanted to do in L.A. -- which was, be outside
exploring plants and gardening and my connections to these natural cycles. You
can’t really put a price on that. That wasn’t an important job for
me to do at the time, but I felt like it was something I needed to do. And I
think ultimately those two months are the seeds for what I’m doing now.
So have this attitude towards my time: doing what I feel I should be doing.
I’ll put some thing off for months and I just won’t be feeling it,
and, then when I think I’m ready for it, I’ll do it.
{1111} HOW DO
YOU FEEL YOUR WORK CAN AFFECT POLITICAL IDEAS?
I believe in the potential of gardening as a radical political act. I don’t
think I’ve managed to practice in that way. But I do think that gardening
represents an intense connection to our natural cycles, and I think the way
we live today as a society is so disconnected from that. The woman who just
won the Nobel Peace prize, Wangari Maathai, has her whole work based on this
idea that most wars and most violence and bloodshed today is a direct result
of our environmental policy. If we solved our environmental problems, if everyone
had enough to eat, and if we solved our energy problems, most wars wouldn’t
be fought. And her ideas were that peace and the environment are related, and
they are if you look at it. I mean, look at what we do for oil. You look at
what we do for basic resources, and then you start to understand that that’s
true. I just feel like that is the most important issue of our time. To me,
it’s the most exciting thing today, and I feel like in my work I’ve
only begun to scratch the surface.
{1111} ARE THESE
IDEAS A LARGE PART OF WHY YOU TEACH?
Oh yeah. I’m totally militant about it. That’s something in all
my classes. It’s the same thing in all of my work. I get fed by it, and
I get very inspired around students because I think it’s a very fertile
environment that can’t exist in a commercial world or design practice.
I’m interested in students telling us what they need, and I don’t
think today’s generations of designers are prepared to deal with the problems
we have in our society. And it’s going to be up them. I’m concerned
about the state of education today in our schools. I don’t know if it’s
preparing students properly in a design practice sense. And I don’t even
know if I’m prepared as a designer to deal with it in a sophisticated
way.
{1111} HOW DO
YOU DISCIPLINE YOURSELF WHEN YOUR STUDIO AND HOME ARE ONE?
Lately it’s been important for me to have office hours, which I’ve
never had before. So from 8-5 that’s office hours, and I need that because
otherwise I get distracted and I can just go and wander out to the garden and
start planting or something like that. It’s an issue that you have when
your studio and your house are connected because basically I’m always
working. And I think that’s part of who I am, but it gets exacerbated
when you’re studio and home are together. I have a feeling on some level
that’s just going to be my life...they’re just so connected they’re
hard to pull apart.
{1111} HOW IS
COLLABORATION IMPORTANT TO YOU?
Well doing architecture is extremely collaborative. With most projects like
the GardenLab project or a design project, I start out with some rough kind
of armature of what the controlling aspects are going to be, but it’s
always loose enough that it allows other people to get inside of it and participate
to have an effect on it, too. I think people that think they’re in control
of their work are always fooling themselves. I think there’s something
kind of twisted about thinking that you’re always in control of things
because you’re not. I think it’s innately human to be collaborative,
and I think everything we do is collaborative. If anyone thinks they’re
not working collaboratively, they’re kind of swimming upstream. Even painters
that come against the blank canvas are placing themselves in the story of painting,
and they have to understand what that story is. If they plan on having that
hang in a museum someday they have to understand that they are speaking about
their time, and they have to understand the time they are living in. And they’re
not living in it alone. No matter what you’re doing, you’re always
at some level engaged.
{1111} DOES ANYTHING
INTIMIDATE YOU?
I’m still intimidated by making big buildings. I’m in a strange
moment of feeling like I’m always amazed by architecture and making buildings.
It’s extremely overwhelming to me. I’m really impressed by my friends
who are building things. I’m still so much in the beginning of practicing
as a designer and making buildings. Practicing as a designer is a marathon.
I think if you’re going to be a pop singer, that’s like the sprint
because it’s this youthful thing. You reach a certain age and you’re
past your prime. Whereas, as an designer of buidlings, you only really hit your stride in
your 50s, 60s, or 70s. And maybe when you’re in your 70s people really
start to recognize your work at a certain level. Or when you get hired to do
projects of a certain size. It takes a long time to really understand your craft
as a designer. I think that all these other things that I do is like biding
my time. Like I said, I don’t think I’m ever going to be practicing
as a conventional designer. But, I don’t know. I’m surprised I
live in L.A., and I’m surprised that I’m in between these crazy
things. There are all these things I never would have anticipated either.
{1111} DO YOU
FEEL LIKE YOU’RE PART OF A TRADITION THAT RUDOLF SCHINDLER STARTED IN
THE 20s AND THEN ANDYWARHOL CONTINUED IN NEW YORK IN THE 60s?
Yeah, that’s interesting to me. Gosh, I’m so obsessed with Andy
Warhol. I went to Carnegie Mellon where he went, and I never really thought
of him when I was there. But when I got into New York, I went into a serious
Andy Warhol phase where I just read everything and saw all the films, and I
was just overwhelmed. If you really study him and look at him you just feel
like he did everything. What is there left to do anymore’ He was such
a prophet of our time. I really think that in a hundred years, he’s going
to be one of the geniuses that we look back on. So, yeah, Andy Warhol, sure
I feel like definitely I have to reckon with him, you know. I want to be a part
of that tradition. I think it’s important.
{1111} HOW DO
YOU VIEW THE IDEA OF DAMAGE WITH REGARD TO ARCHITECTURE?
As an designer of buildings, you always think you design something, you build it, and that’s
it, it stands forever. And everyone’s happy. I think I maybe lived in
like seventeen apartments in the course of seven years from moving around a
lot. And it was only being in New York in one place for a while and now owning
a house in L.A. that I start to see things fall apart before me. And I understand
that things need maintenance and that without someone there they fall apart
really fast. I understand that even more in the garden where I would arrange
things very specifically in the garden, and then I would see them deteriorate
before my eyes in weeks. I would start to understand this play between control
and the desire to create things, and to see them deteriorate and having to think
as a designer and a gardener about those issues. If you look at primitive dwellings
and primitive structures, they tend to address flux and change. They are actually
pretty dynamic and kinetic. It’s only within the last few hundred years
that we’ve forgotten about that, and we’ve designed dwellings and
structures that are more static and they don’t address the natural environment.
But I think we see today smarter designers creating environments that are more
active and engaging with the environment around them. They change with the environment
around them.
{1111} WHAT KEEPS
YOU INSPIRED?
It’s mostly my friends. When you’re younger you get everything from
magazines and books, and that’s what feeds you and inspires you. Hopefully,
when you get older your community and the people around you replace that. So
I really get inspired by things that I see as much as people that are around
me, and I think that’s part of what the salons are: surrounding myself
with the people that inspire me and feeding off of each other’s work.
That’s what I want to really encourage and nurture. I think I had this
idea that I’m was going to be an designer, and then said: what’s
the path to being an designer’ What do I need to do that’ And then
I jump through those hoops and wind up an designer. I realized at some point
that that path wasn’t going to keep me happy, inspired, or challenged
for some reason. I’m this kind of crazy person that likes to sit between
things and connect things rather than being in any one place in particular.
Because I think most people can and should be happy in that path of an artist
or in that path of an designer or whatever. We need that. People have to do
that. We can’t have a functioning society with everybody sitting between
everything. It would be a mess. But for some reason, I think I do well sitting
between things. And that’s something I’m starting to realize about
myself.
{1111} THAT IDEA
OF COMMUNITY IS REALLY IMPORTANT TO YOU, AND I WAS WONDERING IF IT WAS SOMETHING
HELD OVER FROM WHEN YOU WERE YOUNGER OR IF IT’S SOMETHING YOU WERE CREATING
BECAUSE YOU WERE LACKING SOMETHING.
I think about that a lot. I think, I mean I grew up in a very busy household
like seven people, like five kids. I’m sure on some level that must have
something to do with it because I’m sitting somewhere between the extremes,
like I love withdrawing and being totally alone but at the same time I love
having that activity. So I think that’s probably related to that.