The Meaning and Value of the ‘Voided Center’ in John Hejduk’s Architecture
Na In-Hye
keywords:
John Hejduk, voided center, void, masque, authentic program, New England House, Lancaster/Hanover Masque, Wall House
Abstract
Na In-Hye is a researcher cum architect in OAA architects, who works on both architectural practice and research. She has dedicated herself to performing the architects’ social role and cultural practice through architecture. She is also the editor of ACA, the magazine of the Architectural Critics Association.
1. Introduction
This study was triggered by the following statement by Hejduk, made during a talk with Don Wall in the mid-1980s: ‘All my projects have voided centers. The center has been eliminated [...] No center. Void. Maybe my contribution to architecture is the voided center.’ ▼1 What is this voided center mentioned by Hejduk? And what is the architectural achievement that he claims? Put differently, what is the architectural meaning and value of the voided center? Hejduk frequently mentions the aspect of a void, which he found inspiring in novels and paintings, when describing some of his projects, and yet he never explains its precise meaning, leaving only intermittent and fragmentary references to it in his drawings and writings. This paper seeks to elucidate the architectural meaning and value of his concept of the voided center in his works.
Artists are concerned with the world around them. They interpret the world from their own perspectives and make interventions through their own work. As the world changes over the course of history, their work changes accordingly. Hejduk’s works spans 50 years, with a few leaps, resulting in a maturation of his thought accompanied by a change in the guiding forms of his architecture. It is also only logical to assume that the meaning of the voided center must also have changed or expanded. This paper, therefore, examines the meaning of the voided center by focusing on selected works from across his entire architectural career, beginning with the emergence of the concept and culminating in his later works. This effort attempts to avoid a dogmatic approach of definitive judgment by keeping the overall background to his investigations and works in consideration.
First, this study will clarify the meaning of the voided center through a reading of his works dealing directly with the concept. Second, the idea of the voided center is further extrapolated through the context of Hejduk’s time. And third an effort will be made to consider the meaning and value of this concept of the voided center within the context of our own time.
As a poet, architect and educator born in 1929, Hejduk worked without pause for more than 50 years from 1947 to his death in 2000. Throughout a dynamic period ranging from modernism to postmodernism, and finally to deconstructivism, he was able to devote himself to architectural works without interruption with his focus on ‘paper architecture’, or as ‘architecture as thought’. Almost all of his works, which span a wide range of poetry, essays and paintings, were made manifest in his teachings, books and exhibitions, remaining mostly unrealised in built form. At the time when the concept of the void emerged, he declared that both modern and postmodern architecture had fulfilled their architectural destinies. He then sought an authentic program ▼2 in architecture, which this study considers in direct relationship to the voided center at its core. ▼3
Describing himself as a ‘methodologist’, ▼4 Hejduk never completed his work within a predefined goal or framework, but rather constantly explored and developed methods to cope with and respond to the problems of his time. The manner of his inquiry is cumulative and at the same time vaulting. For instance, he left the Texas House project unfinished and moved on to the Wall House (1968 – 1974) project, and at some point was immersed in a completely new project known as a
