Landscape – Great Idea! X-LArch III - Department für Raum ...

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a large extent the Japanese development from a culture
“closely attached to the earth” (Hara 1966:90) to high-rise
megastructural urban approaches 17. Raised by Tange
in his speech at the WoDeCo the question of mobility,
seen as a conquest of space and as a “combination of
scale and speed”, has been equated with the problem
of the distance between the “naked human being and
the results of ever developing technology” (cf. WoDeCo
1960:180) - so to speak a sociological urban issue. In the
case of Bayer’s constructions the growth in size not only
enables to ‘consume’ art while driving past but is also
creating Bayer’s aspired social infrastructure, a museum
in motion.
Fig.4 Arata Isozaki Clusters in the Air 1960-1962
© Osamu Murai
tured by the artist. But it is not until the mid-1950s that
Bayer refers to linear-structure paintings as “architectural”,
which treat space as “rationalization of volumes”
(cf. Cohen 1984:78) 13. Bayer’s later projects such as
the Roswell emanate out of these considerations. The
spectator is integrated into a flux of constructed spaces
and his walk-in-through becomes part of the perceptionprocess.
Bayer’s future maquettes change into a pictorialized
space-structure, where space is symbolically visualized
and structuralized, and access denied. Repetitive
geometric unit-constellations enable various symbolic
cosmic or religious connotations like in the so-called
Maya or Shinto (1971) studies. The compact clusters act
as gigantic architectural art-constructions of the environment
and vice versa on the environment.
Urban Megastructures – Poetry in Motion
One main criterion in this respect is the matter of size.
Although the intended size of numerous maquettes is left
unclear 14, the studies must be understood in Bayer’s
sociological aim to “carry art and design from the privacy
of the museum to the public realm” (Bayer n.d.:3) 15. An
emphasis therefore is the beautifcation of the highway as
photo collages such as of the ARCO refinery project in
Philadelphia (1972) 16 [Fig.5] give evidence of.
Conclusion
Bayer is certainly highly aware of the Japanese debates
on architecture, first mainly through Gropius, but also
through the Aspen Design Conferences and his trips to
Japan. The World Design Conference, he participated in,
not only gives him an insight into the changing Japanese
society and environment, the philosophical metabolist
urban studies, which were nearly unrestricted in scale
and size, seem to have provided Bayer impulses for a
broad, wide-scale urban integration of art in everyday life,
in terms of an architect 18.
Fig.5 Herbert Bayer model for ARCO refinery, Philadelphia c.1972
© Emil Nelson Gallery
Tiered or undulating wall elements contrast with (industrial)
architecture, attracting the spectator’s view and
distracting from high-scale industry. In order to keep up
with these architecture-constructions Bayer’s sculptureconstructions
equally ‘need’ to expand. The positioning of
the ARCO walls however also highlights a second aspect
of the sculptures’ scale, the meaning of cognition. First
considered in the Articulated Wall, which is also sited
along a highway, Bayer resumes the
construction’s appearance, congruently changing by
approaching and finally by passing it (cf. ibid.:2). Consequently,
the low-scale of sculptures had to rise to
“monumental size” (cf. ibid.). This development reflects to