Hejduk's narratives

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/John+Hejduk.+%28Reviews:+New+York%29-a095676031


http://www.architectureweek.com/2000/0726/news_2-1.html

The Poetics of Architecture
from Mask of Medusa, by John Hejduk

I was interested in the poetics of architecture, in that which only the architect can give.
Everyone else can give everything else, but it's the only thing thay can't give that interests me. I'm not an ambiguous architect; I deal with fabrications, with clarities.... the forms are there, they don't have double meanings, they're singular, any one should be able to look
at them. The wall itself is the most "present" condition possible. Life has to do with walls; we're continuously going in and out, back and forth and through them. A wall is the quickest, the thinnest, the thing we're always transgressing, and that is why I see it as the
"present," the most surface condition. The painter starts with the real world and works toward abstraction, and when he's finished with a work it is abstracted from the so-called real world. But architecture takes two lines. The architect starts with the abstract world, and
due to the nature of his work, works toward the real world. The significant architect is one who, when finished with a work, is as close to that original abstraction as he could possibly be... and that is also what distinguishes architects from builders.