Caruso St John are guest editors of Baumeister's annual curated issue. The issue is conceived as a reader, presenting a series of texts that have influenced the practice's recent thinking, including writing by Material Cultures, Grace Ndiritu, Barbara Buser, and David Holmgren.
A Baumeister Reader
The architectural project shifts every decade or so, the productive turn of the 1950s gives way to the social in the 1960s and 70s, and the formal in the 1980s and 90s. Each change is a reaction to what came before it, and is a response to the present. A few good ideas and buildings come out of each epoch, and much emerges that is of less interest and quality. The last thirty years have seen an unprecedented production of building at a global scale, as architects have aligned their practices ever closer to the economies of extraction. I believe that the only response to this outpouring of resources, at least in the west, is to stop new building.
The new turn will be one of circularity. This new paradigm has enormous potential for architecture, but to engage with these new possibilities we will have to develop new ways of seeing the world and new capacities within our metier. In the early1970s work of artists like Robert Smithson and Hilla and Bernd Becher, a delicacy as well as a sense of the sublime is revealed in the sites and processes of late western industry. Contemporary architecture needs to develop comparable sensitivities to the residue of late capitalism in order to find new kinds of beauty and to fall in love with what today we disparage; new forms of knowledge that enable us to mobilise the material that we presently discard. References to existing architecture have to be expanded to include a much wider sense of the social and the material, in existing situations. We are being presented with an opportunity to engage in a much wider and more substantial way with the world around us.
The contents of this Baumeister Reader touch on different aspects of the challenges that lie ahead for our discipline. Some of the texts are explicitly about architecture while others are more historical and tend to talk around the subject. Some are texts that I read many years ago and have long been part of discussions in the office and my teaching, others I only discovered recently. To be sure, this list is partial and personal, but it is a starting point and hopefully will motivate the reader to add new and different subjects and ideas to their own, personal readers.
Adam Caruso, Caruso St John
Related news
Owen Hatherley takes an in-depth look at the first two volumes of Caruso St John's Collected Works for Sidecar, the blog of the New Left Review, charting the practice's origins in 1990s London and its 'principled refusal' of the tenets of the so-called starchitects that rose to prominence during that decade.
A+U magazine has published a second issue dedicated to the work of Caruso St John. The publication covers projects undertaken since 2015, with a particular focus on the practice's work with existing structures.
This second volume in Caruso St John’s Collected Works is published this month by MACK. The publication traces an interlacing set of themes through the practice’s work over the first twelve years of the twenty-first century. Its unique approach to history is revealed as a rejection of the myth of relentless novelty in favour of an understanding of the past as present and an interest in working with the existing. The influences of Milan, Chicago, and Rome on understandings of the city are explored, as well as the use of ornament and the place of Switzerland in shaping the practice’s evolving trajectory. Throughout these contexts, collaborations with contemporary artists including Thomas Demand and Damien Hirst continue to shape the practice's relations to the materiality and drama of space.
Published by Mack Books, The Triple Folly presents an account of the collaboration between Thomas Demand, Caruso St John, and textile manufacturers Kvadrat, which led to the construction of the new pavilion at Kvadrat's headquarters in Ebeltoft, Denmark.
Publication
Mount Royal
Adam Caruso
In a publication presented by ETH Studio Jan De Vylder, Adam Caruso reflects on his experiences growing up in Montreal and family visits Mount Royal, the mountain located directly west of downtown and one of the city’s largest green spaces.
The Swiss Life Arena is featured in Casabella 944. Federico Tranfa introduces the project and discusses its key references – the ruins of an ancient mosque in Syria and the 18th century Guards Tent in the gardens of the summer palace at Drottingholm in Stockholm.
The Swiss Life Arena is reviewed in the March edition of Werk, Bauen Wohnen. Benjamin Muschg takes in the atmosphere at a sold-out game, as the ZSC Lions triumph over HC Davos, and describes the building's unconventional organisation and approach to minimizing energy consumption in use.
Marco Biagi explores the approach of international practices to decommissioned industrial buildings. Citing a range of recently completed projects, including Caruso St John's Veemgebouw, he discusses the rise of adaptive reuse. Biagi explains through our urgent environmental crisis, the reuse of industrial plants and depots is more necessary than ever, offering a new challenging creative outlet for contemporary architects.
Profile
Der Standard
A visit to the pioneers of adaptation in Zurich
Vienna, Austria
17th December 2022
Maik Novotny visits Caruso St John's Zurich office to discuss the new arena for the ZSC Lions ice-hockey team and, despite the scale of its most recently completed project, discovers the practice's long-term interest and growing commitment to projects that prioritise renovation and adaptive re-use over new construction.
Casabella issue 940 features a review Caruso St John's Complete Works, Volume I, published by Mack Books. Federico Tranfa commends the book's thematic collation of projects, found texts and commentaries, stating it is a 'courageous way to come to terms with the past, because it is not analysed a posteriori, but instead with the cultural context of the epoch of pertinence'.
Edmund Fowles, director of Feilden Fowles Architects, reviews Caruso St John's monograph published by Mack books. Discussing the books openness, he praises the presentation of projects and references alongside commentaries, a 'constellation of culture, memory, construction and emotion'.
Caruso St John's newly opened Swiss Life Arena is reviewed in Hochparterre. Deborah Fehlmann explores the project's materiality and composition, touching on its fabric inspired façade and efficient internal organisation.