prototype for a maison-bulle, in tourrettes-sur-loup, late 1960's or early 1970's
architect (or habitologue): antti lovag 1920-2014
partly hidden in the forest is the model of an entire house. its scale is difficult the judge, but it is big enough to crawl into.
from the outside, this model house is less than impressive, still closely related to the french school of organic architecture with its vague and ambiguous geometries, slightly too handmade to form a convincing argument.
jacques couëlle's houses come to mind, his works were a starting point for antii lovag, but the way individual spaces are articulated in this model represents a big step towards lovag's later spherical clarity, best experienced in his own house nearby.
and it shows on the inside. the real lure of lovag's experimental work is not found in its reflection of the hedonistic macho bullshit of 1970's cote d'azur. nor is it in the barbapapa exteriors. it is spatial.
there is an enigmatic utzon quote which goes something like 'the door is an inopportune moment in a room'. in its complex spatial intersections, this large-scale model shows us what utzon likely meant.
the riches of architecure are barely touched upon when the primary means of connection is a mere doorway. oh, we protestants know the joys of self-limitation, and our hairs stand on end when lewerentz lifts a wooden door eighty centimeters off the ground without placing steps in front of it.
it's great art, no doubt, but there is another route to take as shown here by our finnish-russian-jewish-hungarian guide, our swedish-trained naval engineer, ecole des beaux-arts schooled architect, winter-war soldier, soviet prisoner of war, our habitologue, master of alternate routes, antti lovag.
when you let go of the door, discrete spaces may in the right hands connect to form a whole, a rhythmic flow of expansion and contraction, of light and dark, coldness and warmth. you never meet the rood screen which separates the clergy from the scum, the boss from the workers, the one percent from the ninety-nine, as these categories are suppressed or even rendered meaningless.
we knew this, right? the roman baths, mies' barcelona pavilion, the great mosques, kiesler's endless house, utzon's underground museum. yet, we are as a species caught up in perpetual forgetting unless our artists remind us of our pains and potentials.
and here is my point, my tiny point: antti lovag was such an artist and must be taken seriously.
what a nightmare to be adopted by the cartoonists of barbapapa; what a sad fate to depend on accidental millionaires to fund your research, wanna-be roger moores with stick-figure wives deciding the fate of your work. it is all so easy to dismiss. but anything may hide under the guise of pop art, even art.
now look again, does this picture not draw you in? is the pull not real? I certainly felt it, and I hope just a bit of that translates into flat photography.
it was also there to be felt in lovag's own house as I stood on the threshold of his living room, the old master pretending to be asleep on the couch while his exhausted daughter told of a recent fall after guests had brought alcohol, and unceremoniously kicked us out. who was I to argue as I stood there with two bottles of very decent gigondas in my hands? her pain was real and my goals were selfish.
still, my selfishness won me a few minutes inside and that was what I needed to see what I had otherwise only read, that lovag's system of building was never intended for the millionaires. it was developed for auto-construction, humble self-build houses like this one.
antti lovag and his crew would even roll around the spherical meshes of rebar to find the best position before spraying on concrete, letting landscape trump construction documents, just like the spaces were designed to support the everyday lives of his clients rather than convention - be it the conventions of provincial france or the soulless limitations of speculative investment that ruin our trade as architects.
sure, there is a kitsch aspect to the high-concept architecture of les maisons bulle that won't wash off no matter how many words I use. but there is also a great sense of play and space, and a profound respect for people and landscape. how much of the frigid stuff, we celebrate, achieve all that?
Tags: antti lovag maison bulles prototype experimental architecture tourrettes-sur-loup france maison gaudet maison du rouréou bubble house architect habitologue jenskristianseier seier+seier creative commons CC
prototype for a maison-bulle, in tourrettes-sur-loup, late 1960's or early 1970's
architect (or habitologue): antti lovag 1920-2014
Tags: antti lovag maison bulles prototype experimental architecture tourrettes-sur-loup france maison gaudet maison du rouréou bubble house architect habitologue jenskristianseier seier+seier creative commons CC
architect's own house / maison-bulle, tourrettes-sur-loup, 1970's
architect (or habitologue): antti lovag 1920-2014
Tags: antti lovag maison bulles prototype experimental architecture tourrettes-sur-loup france maison gaudet maison du rouréou bubble house architect habitologue jenskristianseier seier+seier creative commons CC
architect's own house / maison-bulle, tourrettes-sur-loup, 1970's
architect (or habitologue): antti lovag 1920-2014
Tags: antti lovag maison bulles prototype experimental architecture tourrettes-sur-loup france maison gaudet maison du rouréou bubble house architect habitologue jenskristianseier seier+seier creative commons CC
prototype for a maison-bulle, in tourrettes-sur-loup, late 1960's or early 1970's
architect (or habitologue): antti lovag 1920-2014
not entirely sure of the scale of this thing. it is big enough to enter.
Tags: antti lovag maison bulles prototype experimental architecture tourrettes-sur-loup france maison gaudet maison du rouréou bubble house architect habitologue jenskristianseier seier+seier creative commons CC