ANTOINE PREDOCK: architecture and time

BY WESLEY PULKKA | PHOTOS BY ROBERT RECK
I
ANTOINE PREDOCK:
architecture and time
Architect Antoine Predock works through a series of efforts
before coming to a final architectural solution. In his studio,
above, he works with his 1990 drawings of the Agadir Palm
Bay Resort and Casino in Agadir, Morocco (left).
nternationally renowned architect Antoine Predock moves through his life and work
like a romantic time traveler, incorporating geology, geography, cultural artifacts, current events, weather patterns, astronomical cycles, personal experiences, and the history
of architecture into each design.
Though he maintains satellite studios in Los Angeles and Taipei, Taiwan, Predock has
been living and working in New Mexico for more than 50 years. His 12th Street studio near
downtown Albuquerque is a complex of interconnected rooms, a large patio, and outbuildings filled with computer workstations, an array of printers, three-dimensional replicating
machines, a 20-member design team, a museum-quality collection of restored antique
and classic motorcycles—all in running condition—and countless clay, plastic, balsa, and
foam-core models, drawings, and collages.
Predock’s physical surroundings reflect his complex romantic vision, reliance on intuition,
and openly intellectual approach to collaborative and meticulous creativity. All these factors
have made him, at a youthful 73, the recipient of countless architectural commissions, honors, and awards, including the prestigious American Institute of Architects 2006 Gold Medal
for his lasting influence on the theory and practice of architecture, and the 2007 Smithsonian
Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum’s Lifetime Achievement award.
From his iconic La Luz Community project (1970) on Albuquerque’s West Side to the New
School of Architecture + Planning Building on the University of New Mexico’s Albuquerque
campus (1999–2007), Predock has shared his inspiration garnered from the desert.
“New Mexico has formed my experience in an all-pervasive sense. I don’t think of New
Mexico as a region. I think of it as a force that has entered my system, a force that is composed of many things,” Predock says. “Here, one is aimed toward the sky and at the same
time remains rooted in the earth with a geological and cultural past. In Australian Aboriginal
dreamtime, song lines traverse the land and describe the geography in a way that is totally
rational and yet mystically poetic. Similarly, the elemental power of this place is inescapable.
Lessons learned in the American Southwest apply anywhere in the world—my ‘regionalism’
is portable.”
To Predock, the spirit of his work is the enigmatic quality of the desert. “You think you’ve
got it; you think you understand,” he says. “Then you turn over a rock or crawl under a
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The collage allows us to focus our
attention while embracing a new set
of problems and challenges,” says
Predock. “Following the cultural
and geographical immersion, quick
sketches will emerge, leading to
the clay model, which becomes
the actual building.”
Predock’s love of choreographed movement explains a bit of his passion for motorcycles—
he’s been riding since the 1960s. Here, his 1929 Indian Scout.
larger rock and you discover other worlds,
other realms within.”
In a section cut from a highway, for
example, a sectional diagram of the earth
is revealed: At the bottom is pre-Cambrian
granite, overlaid with limestone. In geologic time, other sedimentary strata such
as sandstone and ocean-bottom fossils turn
up. Then cultural artifacts emerge in just
a fraction of an inch—compared with miles
of geologic datum. In the Southwest, this
cross section first offers traces of the Anasazi, followed closely by remnants of later
cultures: the Spanish conquistadors, 1930s
hubcaps, then beer cans, McDonald’s
wrappers, and the residue of future tech-
Predock creates great
collages for each project,
exploring the history
of the site, its factors,
its cultural roots, and
current issues and
events. Here, a collage
prefaces the building
of the Museum of
Science and History
in Tampa, Florida.
nologies. For Predock, that cut is a poetic
diagram of time and the impetus for an
investigative process leading him to his
creations.
Predock began his studies in engineering
at the University of New Mexico’s School
of Architecture and Planning, which was
just beginning to grow into the major component of the university that it is today. At
the time, professor of architecture Don
Schlegel was also teaching engineering
and caught Predock’s attention with his
absolute passion for architecture. Predock
credits Schlegel with lighting the flame that
moved him into architecture. Eventually,
Predock left UNM, with Schlegel’s bless-
ing, for more intensive studies at Columbia
University’s graduate architecture program
in New York. After that, he returned permanently to New Mexico.
Through his studies, Predock was
inspired by the projects of Frank Lloyd
Wright and worked during the summer
of 1958 in Texas with Charles Adams, a
Wright associate. From Adams, Predock
learned to pursue details born of larger
ones. Predock was also inspired by architects Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier
and wished he’d learned more about Alvar
Aalto. Louis Kahn became a focus and,
eventually, along with Wright, Predock’s
strongest influence. But, he says, nothing
would have happened without Schlegel’s
early inspiration.
While studying at Columbia, Predock
became a student of dance greats Jennifer Masley, Merce Cunningham, Yvonne
Rainer, and later Anna Halprin. Through
the profound experience of witnessing and
participating with bodies moving in space,
Predock learned to see his buildings as pro-
cessional events, or choreographic events
that become an accumulation of both perceptual and experiential vantage points.
Predock’s love of choreographed movement explains a bit of his passion for
motorcycles, too. He has ridden bikes since
the 1960s and has been known to take trial
runs aboard full-bore racing bikes on the
highway. Predock owns, among many other
wonderful machines, a 1929 Indian Scout
that is nearly identical to one highly modified by New Zealander Burt Munro, who
set the unbroken 1967 world record for an
Indian motorcycle on the Bonneville Salt
Flats in Utah. Predock has a photograph
hanging in his studio of another Bonneville
record attempt, which shows the rider lying
prone on the motorcycle at top speed with
his legs outstretched behind him to reduce
wind drag.
“Architecture is a fascinating journey
toward the unexpected. It is a ride—a
physical ride, and an intellectual ride. I
like to think about machines and technology in relation to landscape and architecture,” Predock said during a discussion of
his design of the Nelson Fine Arts Center
on the Arizona State University campus in
Tempe. “The idea of a motorcycle in the
landscape confirms a kind of closure for
me, a technological, experiential closure.”
It is that collapse of time and compression of cultural history in Predock’s work
that makes his buildings instant classics
no matter how modern, contemporary, or
Mesa del Sol reflects the community it was built to
serve in Albuquerque.
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“Lessons learned in the
American Southwest apply
anywhere in the world—
my ‘regionalism’ is portable.”
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the raw material with which they interact.
Two of Predock’s latest projects are the
World Mammoth and Permafrost Museum
in Yakutsk, Republic of Sakha, part of the
Russian Federation; and the National Palace Museum branch in Chiayi, Taiwan.
An excerpt from Predock’s Mammoth
and Permafrost Museum proposal explains,
“The museum is a landscape abstraction
from myths of Sakha cultures and their spiritual predecessors. The building expresses
the seasonal cracking and shifting of the
ground plane that continually reawakens the
memory of previous epochs beneath. The
silhouette of the building suggests the sheer
power and bulk of the mammoth and marks
the vast Siberian landscape with an iconic
and lasting symbol.”
Predock’s museum design includes
transparent walls and ceilings that appear
to be made of ice, referring both interior
and exterior to the environment of the
mammoths, the permafrost that preserves
COURTESY OF ANTOINE PREDOCK ARCHITECT PC (3)
futuristic they might appear at first glance.
To begin architectural designs, Predock
creates a great collage to illustrate the history of the site, its cultural roots, and current events. Predock and his team consider
the topography, geology, climate, political
history, and every other aspect of the site.
“The collage allows us to focus our
attention while embracing a new set of
problems and challenges,” he says. “Following the cultural and geographical
immersion, quick sketches will emerge,
leading to the clay model, which becomes
the actual building.”
Predock explains that when he and his
team are working on projects—he asserts
the importance of the collaborative component in his work—they remind themselves
that the project is a timeless encounter with
another place, not just a little piece of land.
All the readings accumulated and assimilated there, even those imagined in the past
or the future, collapse in time and become
BOTTOM: KIRK GITTINGS
Predock designed the New School of Architecture + Planning at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque,
providing spaces for classrooms, lectures, and events—and inspiration for architectural students.
Top: A long walkway across water leads into the Palace Museum
in Chiayi, Taiwan. Above and right: Drawings and ideas for the
New School of Architecture + Planning at UNM.
Predock recently designed the World Mammoth and Permafrost Museum in Yakutsk, Republic of Sakha, part of the Russian Federation, to suggest the sheer power
and bulk of the mammoth and to mark the vast Siberian landscape with an iconic, lasting symbol.
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Predock is fascinated with the
sudden and long-term cultural
changes that might completely
alter the use of a building,
such as ancient pagan Greek
and Roman temples being
converted to Christian churches
virtually overnight.
ceived as a building that would not only
provide space for classrooms, lectures, and
related events but also provide inspiration
for architecture students.
Predock believes students can be engaged
and actively learn from the intrinsic qualities
of the spaces in which they work. His UNM
building features solar apertures that align
with equinox and solstice events throughout the year. With its exposed infrastructure
and built-in cosmic clock, the building might
COURTESY OF ANTOINE PREDOCK ARCHITECT PC
The Logjam House, in Rio Blanco, Colorado, rises from
a grove of ponderosas, providing shelter and referring to
the future when the trees are gone and will appear
to have sprung new life.
their remains, and the crystalline glaciers
that led to their demise.
In the design of the Palace Museum,
Predock amplifies the meeting of water
and land with a long walkway across water
leading into the building. And the structure
itself seems to rise from the morning mists
in its symbolic linking of the Mountain of
Longevity and the Sea of Happiness.
Predock is fascinated with the sudden
and long-term cultural changes that might
completely alter the use of a building, such
as ancient pagan Greek and Roman temples being converted to Christian churches
virtually overnight.
“Once a structure is built, one loses control over how it may be used sometime in
the future,” he explains. “If designed well
enough, one hopes a building will retain
enough of its original content and aura to
maintain its original presence.”
Predock takes those initial design parameters very seriously. The New School of
Architecture + Planning at UNM was con-
also teach future architects to collapse time
and compress cultures as they spend creative hours within its walls.
Predock is married to sculptor and painter
Constance DeJong, whose work echoes, in
the broadest sense, Predock’s penchant
for romantic monumentality and time transcendence. DeJong sculpts in a variety of
metals and in sizes described as reductive
minimalist. She enjoys an austerity of form
with a deadpan presentation. Her ambitious, architectonic works are often lit from
within by carefully placed polished surfaces.
That radiant inner glow beckons viewers to
suspend thoughts of scale and place, and
even the consideration of overall design. She
wants the viewer to surrender to the fleeting
yet timeless moment that allows one to fill
the occupied space, no matter how grand or
diminutive, with a contemplative silence.
DeJong’s sculpture and chemical “paintings” on metal integrate organic and geometric patterns, shapes, and lines in a way
that activates the viewer’s eye, lending the
work, though physically static, a sense of
movement.
In a 2003 interview with Gus Blaisdell for
his book Constance DeJong Metal, the artist
described meditation as a conduit to reality.
She said her meditations are neither spiritual nor religious. She finds the practice to
be a way to see through the nonstop fiction
of one’s thoughts to what is actually occurring.
Both DeJong and Predock seek a truth in
their chosen art forms and approach creativity with a strong sense of integrity and
respect for the entire process. To assimilate their work, the artists truly embrace
the tactile and visceral experiences inherent in their methods.
“When I am involved in making something, an object, the making has a quality
of innocence,” says Predock. “The gestural
aspect of, say, making a clay model has
an affinity to one’s handwriting with the
presumed innocence of one’s signature.
That signature is part of the physiology of
making something. In my case, whether it
is a painting, a clay model, or a collage, it
becomes the beginning, the source of the
project. My process remains connected to
spirit through the body and to the personal
space that the body defines.
“The trick,” he continues, “is to get
through the thicket of what [Louis] Kahn
called ‘the measurable in the making of a
building’ to come out the other side so the
built work expresses that initial physical
and spiritual impulse.”
Predock’s complex philosophies and
his treatment of time are both fleeting and
expansive. That roar you hear fading into the
background? That’s Predock as he accelerates toward his 1950 Vincent Black Shadow’s top speed of over 150 miles per hour,
hugging the gas tank as he goes. It’s just
another wind-in-the-hair ride through desert
microclimates, geological time, enervating
hairpin turns, and long straightaways for
New Mexico’s favorite “regional” architect.
Ride on Antoine, ride on. R
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