At what point does a cultural obsession — food, celebrity gossip, fashion — become pornographic? Whatever that point is, it's safe to say that architecture has passed it. The building-obsessed, who once had to settle for a few scant pages of the Sunday paper, now have a selection of websites, props and online communities to feed their obsession. They even have a token pornographer, as described in this New York Times film review: "The kind of New Yorkers likely to see a Woody Allen movie reserve their true lust for real estate, and the long hallways, high ceilings and open kitchens on display in this movie are likely to keep local audiences sighing and moaning for the full ninety-nine minutes."
Hooksexup spoke to architect Christophers Egan in an attempt to understand "sexy" buildings, celebrity architects and the mechanics of Steven Spielberg's bedroom. — Gwynne Watkins
Charles Gwathney's new Astor Place building is being advertised as "curvaceous and undulating" with "bold, sensual spaces." What's going on here?
promotion
What happened is there's been a change in the work of architects themselves, and a change in the language of those who write about architecture. Someone can do really dumb, boring work, but if the writer is excited, then they will talk about the "curvaceousness" of a piece.
So critics are looking at architecture in a fundamentally different way?
Yes. In the early part of the twentieth century, the architecture before World War I was really dynamic, a little bit out of control, but very passionate — like the Eiffel Tower, a lot of the art nouveau, some of the art deco. After World War I, the mood of architects tended to be overly intellectual and political and Communist and international, and they moved toward a more cold-blooded, engineering-based architecture. There was a movement in the 1920s in which the engineer was the new architect, because architects were considered corrupt and decadent. Then in the late '60s and early '70s, people began to realize that was bogus and that there had to be another way. What you're getting in the last twenty years in architecture is very exciting. I'm not completely at peace with a lot of the great masters, but I love what they're struggling with.
What do you think makes a building sexy?:
I'll tell you what I think is sexy. If I do a piece of work, and I think it's the coolest in the world, that doesn't mean anything. If instead I've made a place where a human being — who is used to light and dark, being excited, being tempted, being teased, wanting to dominate or to be dominant — if I make a place that appeals to those fundamental human qualities, so when people walk into the place they go, "Oh!" without having a book tell them to go, "Oh!" then I've made a place that's working somehow. Sex involves excitement, novelty, danger, risk, the possibility of security, the risk of losing it . . . The building has to excite the person, give them a sense of grounded-ness at the same time as they're feeling elevated. The architect's job is to speak those things in architectural terms of space, of physical form, of light, of darkness, of shadow, maybe the sound of water . . .
Does a building being sexual have something to do with certain features or shapes?
Personally, I've always found some mix of curves and straight lines very appealing. If I can get something that combines curving and straight lines, I feel a cool tension. They balance each other and sometimes the curve dominates the straight and sometimes it's the other way around. A fundamental domed space with a round space and very shallow source of light is fundamentally feminine. A tall obelisk is fundamentally masculine, and I think the two sitting next to each other are fundamentally, humanly sexual.
Like the Taj Mahal?
Perfect! It's the ultimate in human sexuality, because it's that kind of that powerful female and powerful male form. Another great building that does that quite well is Saint Sophia. Usually I would say it's not cool to add minarets to a Catholic church, but when the Turks overran Istanbul and changed the name from Constantinople, they put up these carefully placed four minarets, and they made it a more interesting space, and a more complete space, sexually and in every way. The domes in Istanbul look like they grow from the earth. They're beautifully engineered. Each one could be a breast, a womb.
In ancient Greece or Rome, were there any buildings designed for a specific sexual purpose?
Actually, there's a place just outside Rome in the little town of Tivoli called Hadrian's Villa. There's a little island that's round, with all these cool curved forms, surrounded by a moat, and it's connected by a bridge that can only be removed from inside the island. It was clear that Hadrian used to have very, very private parties on that little island with his dearest friends, who themselves had lots of curves.
I'm sure people build sex rooms now, or build their bedrooms with that in mind.
Peter Eisenman did a house for a husband and wife who were both marriage counselors, and in their bedroom he gave them two beds six inches apart. If one of them wanted to have sex with their spouse, they would have to bridge the gap and get in the other's bed, which I think is pretty cool. For a house in the Poconos with twenty acres of woods around it — clothing was not an issue — I designed a staircase with places for intimacy along the way. But I've almost never been asked to design a space purely for intimacy.
No?
I've more often designed for the occasional intimacy. For instance, I got the great opportunity to assist, briefly, on Stephen Spielberg's apartment. One of the things I got a kick out of was the use of remote control to adjust the lighting, adjust the curtains, adjust the music, all while sitting on a big, beautiful, homemade leather sofa. You could go from general lighting to a softly lit glow from below. Lighting from above is more direct, from below is more sensual. And just so Spielberg wouldn't have to worry, we preset, like, twelve different conditions for him. He could just push a button and get the mood he wanted. We did the same thing in the bedroom.
If someone said, "I want a really good room to have sex in," what would you suggest?
The more specific a challenge, the easier it is. My first question is, is it you and your spouse, or is it you and whomever you're with at that particular time? In other words, do you need to include seduction? In a place where seduction is an issue, I would include a balcony with a nice big heavy rail where you could have some privacy. I might ask them how they feel about their own body. Do they feel turned on by the way they look? If they don't, I'm probably not going to have a lot of mirrors. But if they do, I may have a wall of mirrors, or maybe, just to be really sneaky, a wall of glass that becomes a wall of mirrors with a change in lighting.
There's a group on Flickr called "architecture porn" made up of pictures of buildings and parts of buildings.
That's a weird phrasing, but let's just say that if they wanted to put one of my buildings on there, I would send a thank-you note. n°
