installations as temporary and critical models bilu blich

Short introduction: The models to them I relate, learn and research are those that are situated behind the scenes as anti thesis to the direct models found in the conventional use (for example at architect’s office – scale models). My works - installations and objects - are somewhat like models, mainly because of the ability of the model to be laden with ideas and to respond, the temporary effect of the model, and the broad selection of elements that can serve as model. My occupation with models is long lasting. It includes clarification of definitions, documentation, studying and testing of different models. This presentation is built from three parts: A. An introduction in which I define characteristic of basic models; I show examples of the use of models by different creators and define urban environs as a model for special issues. B. I present some of my works that were made in the 80’s, which donate, amongst, definitions for different types of models. C. In the last part of this presentation there is a discussion about four installations which refer to the urban environmental surroundings and criticize mainly urban issues. The installations act, among other, as experimental processes for architectural practice that would lead to different results based on intra-cultural trends. Short definitions to the models: A. General: * Anything can be a model of another thing on the condition that they have a communal thing to share, relevant qualities for the relations between them, and is situated in the background of our thinking. * The model is a unique object, a mediator, laden with knowledge and passes knowledge. * The model accumulates and passes an idea, is likely to be a tool for a limited time, changeable, and this is his advantage. * The model is an object that approximates a situation and predicts and describes different events (past, present, future). * The model is a tool for representation, explanation and clarification. It deals with the reference and significance and is likely to be a replacement to reality.

* Every time that we describe an idea we do it with the help of a model, and the model can be visual, numerical, hollow or mechanical. * The compound of the model, the media and the form depends on the specific goal which the model is intended for. * Iconic model – icon of… similar, profile or image. Representation that appears in a photograph, a drawing, a sculpture and toys. * Analogy model – accommodates, describes, parallels and passes information. For example maps of boundaries and streets, graphs that demonstrates properties like time and distance. B. Architecture: * Realistic Model – destined to demonstrate an idea as realistic in its appearance and by its materials. It shows accurately qualities and features of the reality – in details, material and in scale. Visual tool that his role, like photograph, to pass accurately information on any reality. * Abstract model - an object without a clear scale. His basic characteristic is to show form and structure, in order to inquire the relations between form, structure, composition, proportions, movement and space. * Conceptual model – a representation of a concept or situation. It can represent an utopian idea, a philosophical and a ideological position or a story. The model activates thought, memory, and the imagination. * The human body as anthropomorphic model - similar to a person, proportions of the human body, measurements that are made by the human body. For example, ornaments according to the human organs. Note: A. The border between the types of the models is not unequivocal. For example the abstract model is at times also a conceptual model, depending on the idea and the source to which the model relates. B. At times, a number of different categorical models are required to represent an event or an environment. For example, in case of learning from movies about different issues in architecture.

Models as precedents of different uses A list of selected models, mainly conceptual, part of them remained as critical documents, others acted as a phase in the process of creating an architectural statement, and additional models were a reaction to a defined situation. Le Corbusier Models from within the book “towards new architecture “(1927). The book is an important document from the early years of the 20 th century, as a collection of articles and critical reactions of the young Le Corbusier to the period, the culture and architecture in general. The book is mainly a trial to draw a new manifest for a new architecture, with the help of conceptual models. 01 – A photograph of a temple (Parthenon, Athens) alongside a photograph of a new car, the Citroen. The page in the book is designed to create contact and a comparison between the pictures. The model raises a critical question - what happened to the sumptuous architecture of the past? (Le Corbusier is enthusiastic from the technology, proportions, and the position of the temple and doesn’t discuss the period, worship etc. . . ). The car – a glory of design – a combination of imagination, creation, technology, and an ability to construct (both the temple and the car are built from parts). The architects lost along the periods their abilities and their advantages. They had to enter into the competition with the engineers. 02 - Two objects: Ship and pump – created by the hands of the engineers. The ship is for Le Corbusier is floated architecture, which includes everything. A model that represents the right formulation of a problem which brings to the right solution. The section of the pump acts as a model for shapes and forms. It studies the movement and flow and analysis the relationship between in and out. 01 02

03 - DOM-INO 1914. The idea of the model “DOM-INO” is realized from the play of the words Domino and Domus (house) and their significance. The model in a form of a naked construction. It acts as a concept which describes in a drawing the freedom between the components of architecture that give shape to the house. There is a minimum of steady elements. The model offers the creation of architecture as an assemblage. It is a basic preliminary model, towards changing the perception and the habit from heavy architecture to the light and flexible architecture. Venturi 04 - The Main Street as a Model. The main street of the 60 th “is all right” for Robert Venturi (continuance in his book: “learning from Las Vegas”). The main street is a source to the creation of a model for architectural language that draw his components from communication, colors, signs, noises, decorations and vernacular symbols. Venturi talks about the changeable and the complex that are composed of – "both - and ", "destroyed forms", "vague forms alongside order". 05 – A model as a drawing and a schematic diagram. The model rises the question - what is preferable a building as a little house with a big sign (decorated shade), or a building like a duck, as a sign. (Venturi chooses the decorated shade, because it’s easier to build). In both cases Venturi offers to return to a symbol an image and a representation. 03 04 05

Hollein 06 – A photograph of an aircraft carrier situated in the fields of Austria, 1969. The use of photomontage as a model that demonstrates criticism on the modernism and of Le Corbusier. Hollein produced a city by use of an aircraft carrier, a machine of war as a ready made object. For him it is the absolute technology for urban use. The result will be a concentrated city that carries in her everything. The model is a criticism on the architecture that is not able to manufacture the absolute. This is an ironic model, which exhibits architecture with its incapability. Koolhaas pictures 07 and 08 from the book Delirious N. Y (1977). Koolhaas proposes the city of (that caught) the world – a global city. A capital of the ego. Koolhaas creats provocation. His city is built from important models that were designed by important creators in the 20 th century. Koolhaas knows that the city offers other relations between the outside and the interiors. Every block in the city exists as a little city. The size of the city changes the definitions and the perception of the place. It’s impossible to discuss the concepts of a city according to the tools of the past. There is no complete entire facade or a whole architectural object to observe in the city. The front does not inform of what happens inside the building. 06 07

For Koolhaas the site of Rockefeller Center is the ideal model to the miniature city. There is everything in Rockefeller Center. Koolhaas is in favor of congestion that creates the size – BIGNESS. The solitary skyscrapers can do, for his part, “additional things ". The enterprisers, developers, contractors, and the architects (office of Hood), all of them are satisfied in the communal photograph with the model of Rockefeller Center. Koolhaas ridicules them, but is interested to join them. Tschumi 09 - from Manhattan Transcripts (1977). A book and manifest, which contains conceptual models as an offer to the development of architectural language. Tschumi operates a process of inquiring the contact of the human with the urban environment. The movements of the person in the city in the different situations create a friction, a collision and an event. Tschumi searches for a model that gives an expression of the interconnection between the person and his activity to the architectural elements. Tschumi uses the storyboard of movies for his analytic models. He discovers, with the help of the models, the paradox in the connection between everyday reality and architecture. Tschumi directs the models to the search for another reality. 08 09

Friedman pictures 10 and 11 are models that were created in the late 50 th. The models are offering the megastructure as a place for the new city. It's going to be a spatial city, built from layers and nets, that will be situated upwards. A new city in the air, over existing cities (Paris for example), above remote places, deserts, seas etc. The architectural objects in the city like houses, institutions and businesses are situated in the megastructure with a “Plug – In” system. In this model everything can be decomposable, and modifiable according to the demands. There is no one center in the city, and the qualities of the environment depend also on the creativeness of the dweller. The proposal is for a city that creates a freedom of choice, movement and shifts. 10 11

Kiesler 12 – The model “the city in space" was built as an installation in the exhibition of decorative art, in Paris, 1925. The installation acts as a model for the future city which is characterized by three dimensional spatial spaces. The “the city in space” was built from straight lattices which meet in a ninety degrees angle. The model “the city in space” offers continuity, and interrelations between the elements. Its idea is for a collective, universal future. Kieselr was influenced by the De-Stijl and the Russian constructivism. The model is also an idea to the modern life in the new city. This is an abstract model – free and multidimensional – describing movements in all directions, flexibly, vertical and horizontal at the same time. 13 - Model for the Endless House 1950 - 1963. The model provides the idea of harmony between the human body and the house. The house is a symbol to the person organism. This is a conceptual model that demonstrates the person’s feelings, and his physical and spirituality condition. The effects of the Surrealism on Kiesler concerned the dimension of reality as opposed to the dream and subconscious. The model renews the definition of the relationship between the inside to the outside of the house. There are not straight lines or clear division between the spaces. There are no walls, columns or a roof. It looks as if everything is made from peels. For Kiesler, most of the models in this period are conceptual and anthropomorphic. 12 13

The city as a model The city provides events without limitation, part of them might serve as components for a model. A model that is a mediator between different ideas. It is in the hands of the observer to decide, from the events in the city, what can be a source for creation or criticism. It requires from the observer contemplation to prevent any distraction from intervening the process. The city evokes the senses like taste, feeling, sound and smell, in addition to the sense of vision; it can be at the same time, in tandem or in a collision. I have special interest in urban cases that happen as a result of action by residents, guests and shop owners. Results that were created from within intervention and in the same time of interpretation of the city as a complex urban environment. In most of the cases this intervention is in contrast to the instructions of the institutions and different organizations that dominate the city. Instruction for reading the city according to: * Documents that show and describe the city – drawings, maps, postcards and photographs including air photographs. * Descent to the city from above the roofs, to the yards and the streets. * Inquiry of the city including aberrant streets and comparing to the preliminary planning. Examine different city areas as an antithesis to the programs of the administration. * Observe the city as a changeable environment. The city that is built up from layers, signs, imagery and symbols. * Testing different issues which are determined by human behavior. * Inquiry of the improvisations, the changes, and solutions for the creation of the space. * Testing the notation of the environment, the definition of bound areas and territories that are made by residents of the city. * Examine the relations between outside and inside of the city. View the congestion and interchange between elements and functions of different buildings. * Observe the streets as a source of forms, colors and textures. * Examine the street with noises, smells, sights and movement.

urban cases - tel aviv

Early works Model The first works that combined architectural concepts with formal and plastic aspects were presented in 1980 at Dugit Gallery, Tel Aviv. These were three-dimensional models with a fixed composition of elements, accompanied by drawings. The motif in one group of works ran along a single linear axis, whereas in another group it centered on a square form. The models in both bodies of work created a place devoid of specific architectural functioning, while defining a specific environment and striving to combine intellectual interest with emotional response. The forms, volumes and coloration were intended to trigger an association, a memory, an experience in the viewer. The models contained routine elements of architectural language: levels, stairs, walls, rooms, openings and passageways. The models were accompanied by precise drawings, views, sections and axonometry, expanding the sense of space and the illusive dimension. The juxtaposition of familiar, rational architectural elements and a purposeless model was intended to spark interest in the architectural discourse. The model created a personal feeling with physical and psychological value that generated an intimate affinity with the viewer. Many questions arise from observation of an architectural model. The most prominent among them indicate that the model’s reception is as a representation of a defined situation. The viewer can infuse the model with content, without a clear directive concerning function and purpose. Interpretation of the model can stem from another familiar reality, from a cognitive response, from the imagination, or from a narrative source. These models, as aforesaid, had no representative purpose and a given architectural function, although they could have been built in reality, on a real-life scale, as buildings in situ. The model in this case resembles a functional model that represents a defined practical purpose. This raises questions concerning architectural form: Does it “really” have to result from the function? What is that function and is it possible to separate the architectural concept from a conventional, useful concept?

Dugit Gallery, Tel Aviv 1980

Image Subsequent to the exhibition at Dugit Gallery, a new group of works evolved in the 1980 s. The smallscale models became a whole, self-sufficient unit that took up room in the space. The dimensions, compositions, proportions and materials hinted at specific buildings with temporal, stylistic, functional and environmental significance and links to society and culture. These works reflected an affinity to a local social and architectural reality, and presented a diverse composition of materials and forms. Discussion of the spatial object and local architectural issues helped penetrate the rigid frame of pure artistic questions, and expanded the artistic discussion to interdisciplinary issues. The transition from small conceptual models to work on a real-life scale and with a material composition extracted from the immediate surroundings, such as tin, plaster, wood and plastic, was intended to divert the abstract questions to concrete lines, and pinpoint the link between idea and place. These works were underlain by a criticism of standard architecture, devoid of images and metaphors, which lost the spirit of freedom that typified it at the outset. A search was made here for the local image that draws on marginal structures such as bomb shelters, sheds, chicken houses, water pumps, industrial structures, utility poles, Jewish Agency type of houses, and market stalls. The image is an element within an environment and a culture; it is identified according to form, volume, matter, color, structure and location. We perceive the place’s identity through the images on site, and this identity is more than just similar form as the essence of an object or an environment, as in children’s drawings or a communication signal. In these works, the images present states of defense, concealment, deconstruction and transience. These are abstract images extracted from the existing surroundings, stratified in terms of forms and materials, underlain by dichotomies such as flux versus stasis, silence versus violence.

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Hybrid Concurrent to the works containing local allusions, another group of works evolved, featured in part in exhibitions held between 1983 and 1985 at the Ahad Haam 90 Gallery, Tel Aviv. These works synthesized models from the first phase and works addressing the image from the second phase. The conceptual models merged with an objectal reality on real-life scale. These works seek the connection between historical tendencies and the current reality. In narrative terms, the models employ environmental historical signs, constructive and destructive, such as a Greek tympanum, a Doric column, a fascist color code, weapons, etc. They connect to the object’s actual contemporary roots manifested via form, matter and structure. In addition, rigid geometric forms and volumes intended to represent the ideal of the right structure are combined in the works. The juxtaposition of historical and current motifs and an ideal representation forms the moral critical examination of a given situation, reinforcing the desire for a realistic structure that would offer a concept of truth. These works fuse mundane objects that reinforce the narrative aspect of the spatial object. War games, screws, lampshades and other industrial elements describe a story of war, occupation, defense, monuments and tombs on the one hand, and modern life of mass production, cheap materials and industrialization on the other. The composition operates in the space, combining contextual elements with threedimensional plastic form, emphasizing a conflict between a concrete state and an abstract state, between definition and implication, formula and intuition. The composition in the works distinguishes between the elements comprising the objects, generating an atmosphere of distance and detachment. Some of the works in this group face the viewer frontally, forcing him into a given point of view.

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Structure My works from 1987 to 1992 scrutinize architectural elements unseen at first sight, mainly the structure as an invisible element with a presence of its own. The structure contains the invisible element of architecture of all times, and is made of supporting, clinging, leaning and stretching components that uphold the structure. The structure articulates thoughts and feelings, through position, motion, strength or weakness. It signifies stability or transience. Its constituent elements are interdependent, each conveying an existing physical truth that reflects a quest for rational truth. Each part and element in the works, whether a screw or a column, has a function that is “used” for the building’s growth and formation. The structure “attests” to the way in which it was built and manifests its construction process. The structure is primal, simple, unadorned, at times improvised, containing errors and contradictions. It indicates the exploration of an environment, a city and a place in relation to man. The structure contains basic, archetypal, historical and deeply-rooted values corresponding with the affinity between the tree and the natural plane, with the essence of being rooted in the land of a place, with shelter and protection. Presented in exhibitions at the Israel Museum, Jerusalem in 1987, at Ami Steinitz Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv, at the Art Gallery in Kibbutz Kabri, and in other venues in Israel, these works convey values of structure, relating to the physical space in which they transpire. They bridge the space with one of its defining elements: wall, floor, corner, or ceiling. “Disruptive” powers and hovering elements that undermine the physical stasis are in operation in the structures. These are forces that shift and change, operating as “foreign agents, ” pretending to be useful, raising questions about the definition of stability, harmony and unity. As a result, relations between additive and subtractive, accepted and rejected are formed. The objects incorporated into the structure come from the street, from indefinite wanderings; elements charged with “linguistic” and cultural meanings that can convey thoughts and feelings. These objects originate in another, indistinguishable function and experience. The objects bring the context, the general and local idiom into the structure; they bring the street into the work, but at the same time return the work into the environment. They do not belong to tradition, but stem from daily needs, from the fragmentary nature of the city, which rebels against its plan.

They seek a short, succinct, basic “phrase” that relates to values of structure and architecture and reflects the values of both individual and society. The structures consist of elements with various qualities that combine in a definition of envelope and shelter. The latter marks boundaries; it is open and implied, offering a dialogue between man and his activity. The works strive to interfere, to disrupt the architect’s routine work, to explore options of a different architectural language. The composition of objects and structure calls for a use of the existent in everyday life, of simple, prevalent materials, wondering where has simplicity gone? This illustrates a never-ending process that one can always add to or subtract from, as opposed to the linear development of a plan, a section, a model and a building in conventional architecture. 150 X 140 X 235 H 1987

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Ami Steinitz Contemporary Art 1990 280 X 200 X 235 H 1990

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350 X 80 X 220 H 1991 Kabri gallery 1991

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Four installations as models for urban ideas Installation: Untitled City, 1994. Haifa Museum of Art The installation Untitled City operates as an environment that responds to the vital urban constituents generating the city’s form. Ironic in spirit, the installation is also a concept antithetical to current planning laws, bringing together economy, politics, pressure groups from within and from without the city, and entrepreneurs. It is a critique of a process of planning by means of sketching on white paper, and an overview of the sterile and hygienic distribution of areas and plots of land. A condensed proposal of the city’s components, the installation is akin to a genetic sample capable of growing. It consists of elements and objects that are signs and codes of the city, as a game with models in the initial phase of its planning. The qualities of the proposed city are transience, resilience and variability, an interplay of light and temporary structures and forms. This city has a familiar arrangement and iconography, in keeping with ordinary cities. Autonomous environments such as a gate to the city, residential areas (neighborhoods), amusements, a tower, a building for spiritual and cultural activity, a commercial and shopping center, have undergone conceptual and formal abstraction. The entrance gate is a transparent skeletal structure with colorful, contoured Formica surfaces, and a sealed, enclosed volume at its center serving as a passageway to the entrance. The neighborhood and residential area consists of pieces of cardboard painted red, folded into rounded forms and perpendicular sections that generate divergent spaces and volumes. It is a transient, hovering environment in motion, at once dense and spacious, into which straps of road signs leading nowhere were inserted. The tower is a representation of a monumental, collective structure that belongs to the city and connects the wills of its inhabitants and their unfulfilled visions. Objects in diverse shapes and colors are located between two vertical black colored wooden surfaces, among them rounded domestic appliances and kitchenware, alongside a square box and a plaster shell. This pile protrudes upward, maintaining an inner life in the interrelations between sealed sections and spaces, large scale and small scale, closed and opened. At the pinnacle of the tower is a large volume, inviting yet sealed; a symbol of the city seen from afar. A structure for spiritual activity – a lampshade whose outline follows the skeletal contours of a dome is laid atop four colorful ping-pong balls, with its round side placed on a cable pulley. The pulley is placed on a central three-dimensional trapezoid metal skeleton, with arched straps running through its bottom section.

The geometrical and symmetrical abstraction inherent in allusions to places of worship and cultural venues is intended to represent the human desire for a stable, clear place. A business and shopping center is located in the corner of the space as a representation of a typical commercial area, consisting of various spaces and located on the outskirts of the city. Inside the horizontal structure, boxes of Dutch cigars imprinted with the image of an unknown king form a street and a main artery. At once commercial and “qualitative, ” these packs are juxtaposed by aerial photographs of Tel Aviv, documenting traffic, noise, streets and junctions of bustling urban life. A large metal wheel hovers above the entire setting, containing an organically-shaped abstract element that “sets in motion” the energy flowing in situ. Untitled City represents a city embodying an alternative for the existent, the static, the patterned and routine; an alternative associated with the disappearing flowing nature, instead introducing a proposal that highlights transience and randomness in the changing city.

Untitled City, Haifa Museum of Art 1994

Installation: City-Settlement I, 1994. Contemporary Art Meeting, Tel Hai A city in the Galilee that commences from basic work tools – four ladders in a tent. A city as an artificial man-made object, a fiction that is a reality in code and sign: a site of urban signs that challenges the city’s history, memory and everyday life. The installation consists of objects that generate the city, some of them “right, ” others – “imitative” and “simulative. ” This is not a representation of reality, but rather an environment comprising reality signs of settlement; not a prediction and proposal for the city’s construction, but rather a specific site in its self-identity and the simulation of its representation. It is a city intended for a society of rapid changes and rotation. The signs contain reality; the tent and its constituent elements are autonomous, possessing a life of their own as a place.

City-Settlement I, Contemporary Art Meeting, Tel Hai 1994

Installation: One on Top of the Other, 1998. Ha. Midrasha Art Gallery, Beit Berl College The installation consists of intentional disorder that echoes the dubious control of modern city planning. The urban reality consists of a street, a building, a shop, dwellings, play facilities, objects, traffic and other functions taken from a long list of definitions. The environment, in reality and in everyday life, destroys and rebels against the primary planning laws that are detached from intricate human behavior. Disobedience to the law stems from active need, such as shifting products from warehouse to store and movement from place to place. Role reversal, such as roads on the sidewalk and vice versa, is a natural situation in a reality that plans and builds its place. The city in reality consists of clusters of structures and various zones, and it is not a homogenous object. The installation is comprised of major sites, one on top of the other, in a method of association, erection, penetration, contradiction and weakness that results from renunciation, transformation, and the transience of the place. All the elements are derived from the street, the home, work and storage spaces, and are linked by means of a simple, immediate technique. These are elements and objects of mundane activity at work, on the street, in play, among them ladders, fabrics, a broom, kitchenware, cardboard boxes, play balls, storage trolleys; all of them are imitations of a forgotten origin insignificant to the social and cultural consciousness. The title, One on Top of the Other, characterizes flawed behavior, used as a proposal for an initial, basic component for city planning and construction.

One on Top of the Other, Ha. Midrasha Art Gallery, Beit Berl College 1998

Installation: A Tender City - A Critical Installation after Wandering in Wadi Salib. 2005. PYRAMIDA - Center for Contemporary Art, Haifa Wadi Salib is a place that smacks of the past, of distant strata and occurrences. Today the place is emptied, stricken, closed, and dilapidating. Sealed buildings and ruins are strewn throughout the Wadi, as well as scraps and junk. For some time now the authorities have been waging an assault on the place via three major channels: 1. Passive conduct: slow, continuous neglect of the area. Poor maintenance, dissociation of the place and its desertion. 2. Active assault: destruction, leveling, digging, transformation. 3. Destruction resulting from a construction process: building a wide main road that passes through the place, reaching from a distant location, with walls, ditches, subterranean passageways. A large scale road made of "strong" materials: stone, iron, concrete. Wadi Salib is currently in a suicidal state. It has no defense mechanisms. Its floating memory is a weakening value. The place that was organic and lively years ago, has suffocated to death. The city and the neighborhood have no "fortifications" or "protective walls" of their own. Over the years the signs of the past have been violated; buildings, paths, vegetation, and nature have been erased. The bulldozer has operated here. Those who stayed were punished by dissociation, by intimidation. The strong rule identity and alter it. Priority is clearly given to the location of the road, in favor of the motorized traffic and the convenience of speedy passage. The inhabitants and pedestrians are insignificant. The road is the tool, the sword, the dragon that tears the environment. The place becomes an arena of absorption in motion and speedy emission. The authorities account for these measures by the logic of "market forces" of savior and offender. They prepare the infrastructure for entrepreneurs, for capital; highrises and commercial architecture of entrepreneurs on the way to the Wadi, from east and west alike. The erasure of the past has obliterated the poetics, the mystery, time, the pain, identity, history, the colors, the people. This assault on the environment is also known as "urban development, " essentially denoting construction of roads, walls, levels, passageways. Concrete-lined fenced gardens denote progress. The planner takes part in the assault and conquest by means of his design and drawing tools, his computer screen; he is the manufacturer. Planning and implementation form a component of control and supervision. Clearing the environment and applying another structure comprising a grid of obstacles perpetuates the ruler's advantage over the rules subject.

This urban scheme was spawned by the modern concept that strove for the real, the finite. The question is: who are the consumers of this new environment? Was a new space for new purposes really created here? The installation Tender City is the fragment of a lost dream combined with a focused view of reality. It analogizes a final soft stroke before complete strangulation, embedding signs of fantasies and phantoms that dissolve with the area's final clearing. We have been briefly left with a soft, feeble, dissolving, servile, disappearing city. My wandering in the area started in the winter of 2003/04 and continued intermittently for over a year. It was documented in a protocol where the road is the protagonist.

Wadi Salib Haifa 2004

A Tender City, PYRAMIDA - Center for Contemporary Art, Haifa 2005