Redefining Art has been a popular preoccupation for decades. Redefining architecture is a relatively new phenomenon, which has been given more urgency in the current climate when the definition of Architecture as the design of a building has been challenged, especially now that fewer buildings are being commissioned.

Redefining is a good preoccupation; don’t be content with pigeonholes. While engaging in the process of redefining for this article, I would like to explore the proposition where there is total immersion and convergence between Public Art and Architecture, to the extent that there is little distinction.  

When I think about Architecture, I don’t just think about buildings, I think about spaces and objects in spaces; ones that can be both physical and theoretical or occupied and debated or deconstructed and conceptualised or demolished and constructed. I think about Architecture as happenings within a realm that is public. I think about Public Art in the same way.

In order to connect both art forms I use the definition of Architecture in its very broadest form; by this I mean not solely focusing on Architecture as a permanent functional object, but also as a temporary intervention, containing both the software and the hardware of creativity.

Temporary architectural interventions reflect tendencies within new Architectural practice, together with strategies in contemporary Pubic Art that focus on the urban or rural realm. The intention behind this intersection is to reveal a practice, which both informs, and transforms the way in which one perceives, interacts with, and understands the other.

I am referring to a practice that is neither defined as Art nor defined as Architecture. I particularly see this notion expressed in the work of artists Gordon Matta Clark, Lucy Orta, Simon Pope, Thomas Demand, Marjetica Portrc, and architects Culturestruction, Peanutz Architekten, Office of Subversive Architecture, Diller Scofido Renfro, Rem Koolhaas, and I could go on. You can call them architects or artists, it doesn’t matter what you call them, but what does matter is that they have all delivered Public Art.

Anthony Vidler theorist Dean and Professor of Architecture at Cooper Union, has written extensively on the convergence of art and architecture. Vidler states way back in 1984 that, ‘Artists, rather than simply extending their terms of reference to the three-dimensional, take on questions of architecture as an integral and critical part of their work in installations that seek to criticise the traditional terms of art. Architects, in a parallel way, are exploring the processes and forms of art, often on the terms set out by artists, in order to escape the rigid codes of functionalism and formalism. This intersection has engendered a kind of ‘intermediary art’. Comprised of objects that, while situated ostensibly in one practice, require the interpretive terms of another for their explication.’

It is evident therefore from Vidler’s point of view, all those years ago, that the interdisciplinary within both Art and Architectural practices makes the distinction between the fields permeable and always shifting.

This is a very positive and creative position to be in. This position allows us reject tradition, assemble new ideas, interpret our findings, test these ideas and develop a new way.  We can become cultural innovators, inventors, we can catch up and evolve.

Studying the public realm opens up multiple discourses, we can no longer think in a traditional way about the different roles each protagonist plays in creating and experiencing the public realm. Art and Architecture as we know it has become more problematised in the latter 20TH and now 21st Century, we have therefore a myriad of issues to deal with when it comes its collaborative status.

Within contemporary situations such as accelerated technology, surveillance and CCTV, globalisation and capitalism, wealth and recession, private/public division, socioeconomic in-equality, and so on so forth, I ask how then do the people who create Public Art, Architecture or something in-between tackle these issues head on and deal with them in their work, how do they contextualise the situation and deliver it as a 3 dimensional evocation though a public display: permanent, temporary, invisible, real or virtual.

How does this exploration relate to the proliferation of Public Art enterprises?  How can Public Art and/or redefined Architecture facilitate the physical and the social? Can we think beyond the limitations of the ‘one per cent’ schemes? Can we challenge existing social dynamics? How do we include the users of public space in our collective programme strategies? Is there an imbalance of power between the various characters that create the built environment? Are the public, the architects, the artists, the developers and the policy makers equally significant/powerful in creating the space we what to live in, work in and play in? These are not questions to be answered, quite the contrary but rather can be responded to and used to ignite debate and creativity.

Author's Biography
Nathalie Weadick is Director of the Irish Architecture Foundation.

Links

www.potrc.org
mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=3755
www.studio-orta.com
culturstruction.wordpress.com