For Tampa Museum architect, the art's inside, not out
Stanley Saitowitz is clear about his vision and his design for the new Tampa Museum of Art. His philosophy: function, then form.
By Lennie Bennett, Times Art Critic
Published July 8, 2007
TAMPA - Stanley Saitowitz can stand the heat and is not getting out of the kitchen. Not literally - he loves to cook - or figuratively - he is the new architect for the famously troubled Tampa Museum of Art, which has seen one marquee architect and three plans scuttled in the last several years.
Saitowitz, 58, who lives in San Francisco, sees a lot of similarities between cooking and architecture. He is serenely confident that he can deliver a new museum that is palatable to a community not known for sophisticated architectural preferences, stay within his budget and remain true to his form of modernism. He spoke recently by telephone with the St. Petersburg Times.
You come from a bay area. Tell me some of the similarities and differences you see between San Francisco and the Tampa Bay area.
I think what's different in Tampa is the water's edge is much more extensive. In San Francisco it's just like a big pond and it's a simple shape, whereas in Tampa there are all of these inlets and so there's actually much more of a water's edge and the city takes advantage of that. So many people have access to the water in different ways. What compensates a little bit in the San Francisco Bay area is that we have hills, so people actually can look down to the water and have visual access. But the kind of surface of water and land in Tampa is really interesting.
We are not known as a place with distinctive architecture.
Yeah, but I think one of the nice things about the site where the museum is located is that it does have some very good buildings, probably the best modern buildings that I've seen in that area compared to the immediate context of the Poe Garage.
You have said, "I don't like to think of architecture as art because it objectifies it and, worse, makes it visual."
It's a little blunt, and what I'm actually trying to (imply) is that architecture is spatial and experiential, and it involves more than just the visual. Art is just about what you see. Architecture is not just about what you see; it's about what you feel, and that has to do with tactility and the spatial. That quote goes on to say that I think of architecture more like cooking.
I was going to ask you about that.
The difference is that with cooking, your body's directly engaged in all dimensions. It's visual but it also has many other sort of dimensions to it. So I'm trying to broaden the point of view of what architecture is - that it goes beyond just visual experience; it's something that's very primary. You know that shelter and food are the two most basic needs.
I have this feeling that you enjoy cooking.
I do, and the act of cooking and the way that buildings are made I find very related. The essential aspect of a good meal is finding the best ingredients and putting them together. And that's also how I like to think about making buildings. They're usually a bit like shopping for food. You find windows and you find floors and you find ceilings and you find the walls and then you put them together and that's what the building is.
It's a wonderful metaphor. What I've seen in many of your projects, and what I know to be true of the Tampa Museum project, is that often you don't get to buy the Kobe beef on your shopping trip.
Right. It's a difference, I would say, between Julia Child and Alice Waters. Julia would go to Safeway and buy a chicken, whereas Alice Waters has to have the chicken specially bred. It's quite true that most of the time, on many of the projects that we've done, you've got a budget that you have to go shopping with and so you choose to spend it on . . . I mean, maybe you pick a very, very expensive appetizer that sets the tone and then you have to be practical about how you use the rest of your budget.
And what are the splurges with this building?
I think the skin is very important but I also think the organizational pieces are. The way the building's structured, it's two buildings with a building which is about the public and the experience of art, and then there's the support building that is about the administration and preparation and storage of art. And each of those buildings is arranged around a courtyard, and those two courtyards, I think, are in a way the splurge because they're not the cheapest way to use space.
All architects will say that they are site-sensitive but you seem to be preternaturally so.
The strong elements of this site are obviously the water and the park, which are two things that we've tried to work with. Museums are very internalized and curators prefer not having daylight. So the way we've given access to the museum is we bring people right down to the water to enter, and then in terms of the park we have this large overhang so that the park is sort of sucked into the building, and it's a kind of shelter that becomes an extension of the park in some ways. And then in a more detailed way, the whole ground part of the building is very reflective so that you'll see the green of the landscape in the building itself.
And then the surfaces of the building . . . The material itself is a layered mesh that produces moire patterns so as you move around the building, there's this flickering surface, and it connects to the way the water moves or the clouds.
Many of your designs reference Le Corbusier.
Yeah, Le Corbusier was the kind of Leonardo of modern architecture. My work is also connected to Mies van der Rohe and Louis Kahn.
And you have been a vocal critic of some contemporary architects, especially postmodernists such as Robert Venturi.
Architecture is not art. That began with Venturi's kind of visual analysis of architecture, where architecture before that was really seen in terms of a structural and spatial object. The experience that I had of going to Venturi's buildings . . . They were no more interesting than the photographs. You'd already seen it all in the picture, whereas when you go to see a Le Corbusier building, it's constantly a surprise - like every corner you turn, there's a new experience.
Do you feel that same way about the Frank Gehry buildings such as the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles?
They definitely have that experience of constantly unfolding, but my feeling about them is that they indulge themselves in being objects and art. I've always tried to describe architecture as an instrument that is a support for other activities. To me, Bilbao as a building overshadows its purpose of being a container for art. Bilbao's enormously successful in the way that it's transformed the town. But in terms of what I believe architecture's role is, I think that misappropriates it. Architecture is a facilitator rather than a thing in itself.
Are you familiar with the Rafael Vinoly design that was first proposed for the Tampa Museum?
A little bit. I didn't want to see too much of it.
Could you comment on it?
I can only say it had a very strong presence and the thing that made it very, very significant was the huge cantilevered roof, which, apparently, in the later iterations of the museum, had to be removed because of cost and so maybe it lost some of its initial attraction. We've really had to start from a different kind of perspective, to not have elements in our design that are extraneous and could simply vanish. Ours is based on a pragmatic attempt to accommodate the need but then also to make it powerful and beautiful.
Here's another quote: "The palm tree's form describes its growth, new leaves sprout out of the top, turn brown, break off, and solidify to become the trunk. Form is the process of becoming. The object is witness to its materialization." You liken a building to an ever-changing, dying, organic object. Isn't it supposed to be a solid thing?
What I like about the palm tree is that its visual form is a description of its process of making. And I like buildings where you can understand how they were made, which is again going back to the idea that postmodernism started with a picture and then found a way to make that picture. The difference that I'm interested in is where you would start with the pieces and you would put them together and the object is actually the result of that selection and assembly. In a postmodern building you would start with, say, a classical temple and then you would have to decide between stucco or Styrofoam or whatever to build a classical temple. That's what I'm using the palm tree to clarify.
The final product is the materials.
Right, so the selection of the materials becomes so important because that's what it is, rather than with stucco, which you can paint in any color or shape in any form.
Do you have any color in your own home?
I'm actually just in the process of building my own house, and it has two colors. The day part is all black, and the night part is all white.
Some people would call those the noncolors.
Yeah, but they're the assembly of all colors.
What do you do to relax?
I love movies and I read the New Yorker from cover to cover. It takes almost all my spare time to get through it every week.
I confess, I do not get from cover to cover.
You know what you have to do? You have to take a trip at least every two weeks on a plane to catch up.
Lennie Bennett can be reached at (727) 893-8293 or lennie@sptimes.com.