egundo

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1. entry/intermission deck

2. outdoor performance te T Ice

3. scene dock loading

4. sloped entry plaza/event space

5. administration level

6. retail

7. open office

8. box office

9. rep shop

10. electrical shop

11. costume shop

12. balcony

13. restroom

14. front-of-house storage

15. visiting technical staff office

16. "axis" lounge 17 VIP lounge

18. green room

19. fitting room

20. rack room

21. director's booth

22. sound control

23. stage manager

24. managing director

25. art director

26. marketing director

27. casting

28. conference

29. telemarketing

30. open to scene dock below

31. open to stage below

32. spray booth

33. stage and traps

34. transformer vaull

35. minimal profile high-strength columns

36. acoustic door to scene dock

37. vertically rotating curtain wall

38. theatrical poster frame

39. screened mechanical area

40. rehearsal/outdoor performance lighting

41. elevator overru n

42. Phantom's window

43. rigging grid

44. rehearsal hall

45. flyloft

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1

quantities of material in each case renders a consistent connection impossible. However, the consistency of the work over time ensures that no juxtaposition will be contradictory, and that unexpected resonances may be revealed.

The texts here in the lower zone of the book represent the issues that have most consistently informed the work, but are

not exhaustive. Rather than trying to knit them all together into

a seamless argument (as in Instrumental Form), which would necessarily reflect only the attitude of the firm at the time of this publication, the words have been preserved in their more or less original state as a historical record of the evolution of the ideas driving J,PA While one of the hallmarks of the practice has been

the consistency of its work and its attitudes over time, there are nonetheless clear differences between earlier and later projects, and between the first and most recent words in this volume. These differences may not be as extreme as those between the work as a whole and, say, the blob, but they are illustrative of the way the practice has tracked the larger discourse.

The firm's earliest texts are deconstructions of deconstruction in defense of an unpopular technophilia, while the latest use deconstructive arguments against the unexamined privilege of the new. In fact, the firm has generally discussed its design work in opposition to whatever is currently popular, expressing a deepseated distrust of the "mediation" of the field. This is also a reflection

Introduction

As with our previous book, Instrumental Form, the layout of the present volume is organized into three horizontal bands, each carrying different types of information. This lower band presents the words-essays and lectures from the period covered by this book, arranged more or less chronologically. The middle band carries the work from this period and its supporting material-the illustrated projects and the texts related specifically to them. The upper band holds supplemental material only-captions, legends, and additional illustrations. The relationship between the lower and upper two bands is not direct; while the words and the work are presented chronologically, the constraints of the layout and the differing

64

north perspective

A generation after the heyday of urban renewal, San Jose seems stuck at the halfway point in Its search for urbanity. Perhaps best known as a place where peace of mind might be found, thanks to Dionne Warwick's 1960s hit, It does not appear to be a place where urbanism would be a big concern. But surprisingly, San Jose is the third-largest city in California and the eleventh-largest in the country, and for this reason the absence of an urban core could

be seen as a cause for some embarrassment. Although it is not for lack of trying.

Four decades of suburban development and annexation have propelled San Jose toward the title of most extensive city in the realm. Los Angeles was its ideal and its closest competitor in this race. The resulting sprawl, with Its proliferation of mega-mailS and commercial strips, has reduced the old downtown to the spaces between commuter corridors. Exhibiting the entire range of obligatory Icons-convention center, arena, museums, hotels, parks, etc.-the current redevelopment efforts are striving to win back these corridors from the automobile, aspiring to the kind of cleansed urban environment that balances public amenity and European prototypes with the commercial development practices that pay the bllls-a basic textbook vision of contemporary ~rbanlty. This emerging (sub)urb forms the physical and cultural context for this project.

The heart of the redevelopment effort, physically and symbolically, Is the eight-block San Antonio Plaza Redevelopment Area. This area once housed a vital Immigrant Chinese population, but in Its present unfinished state, It stands as a relic of the urban renewal craze of the 1960s, when It was bulldozed to create a superblock of pedestrian-oriented linked plinths over structured parking that would stretch across the entire downtown. Only a single block's worth of that Initial wave of planning has been realized. Another artifact of that particular renewal effort, a Halprln-esque fountain of epic proportions located on the project site, encapsulates

in Its own tumultuous history the dreams of that period and its foundering against the contemporary situation. The fountain,

a symbol for downtown, adorning phonebooks and displayed

proudly during nightly newscasts, was fenced off In 1990 to keep

65

1. dining area

2. living area

3. kitchen

4. pool

5. garage

6. entry

7. entry frame

8. entry facade

9. sliding privacy screen

10. structural steel cage frame

11. thrust impost footing

12. uphill privacy envelope

13. uphill landing screen

14. downhill privacy screen

15. drainage culvert

16. negative ion/water ground trough

17. halogen floodlight

18. utility shelf

19. fixed louvers

20. sliding louvers

21. interior landscape step

22. entry stair

23. outdoor deck

24. privacy screen

\

J,P:A would like to imagine itself as one day playing in the big Two ways that J,P:A approaches the legitimate uses of the new,

leagues against the giants like Mies and Corbu, instead of the media that it thinks of itself as innovating, are through souping up existing

circus tent, against biological freaks and crumpled paper bags. precedents and working with the expectations and iconography of

It is already established as a fact that the major figures of what might movement. Souping up something forges a link between the good

be called the high modern tradition were good, and the standards and the new and creates out of any single example a tradition within

they set are there for all to measure themselves against. There are which traditions of goodness may be legitimately made.

no standards in the contemporary big top, however; the measure Movement, considered a matter-of-tact part of architecture,

of value has nothing to do with goodness and everything to do with opens up a new dimension for design and makes the experience

novelty. This is not to say that such standards might not one day of the object continually fresh. The new also finds a place in the

develop, and a tradition form around the work in the three rings, practice through the reinvention of wheels as an act of reinvigoration.

but that is certainly the last thing with which this contemporary work In keeping with a mechanistic view of the world, J,P:A starts any

seems to be concerned. design by expanding and elaborating the program to identify all

possible things that the design could do, all the problems it could solve.

J,P:A's design is grounded in that specific service of intentionality and program, but broadly considered and loosely defined, rather than any personal whim or idiosyncratic desire. Despite this, J,P:A believes that work should be exemplary. Work should be offered as an example of the way things should be, not as proof of its own uniqueness. The architect should stand behind the work, not in front of it. and any signature that the work develops through its own consistency should be emblematic of its goodness, proven in each example, rather than simply its difference, or its designer's fame.

Excerpted from a talk delivered first to the Hillier Group in Philadelphia in 1996 and later delivered to the LA Forum for Architecture, at the Brill Residence, 2004.

86

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1. existing retaining wall

2. double-hung balcony window

3. balcony

4. louvers

5. entry

6. rolling bridge platform

7. deployable guardrail/platform extension

8. hand crank

9. steel shelves

10. dock light

11. horizontal columnlbrace

12. stair

13. sliding partition system

14. stainless steel soaking tub

15. toilet

1 :160

16. sink

17. mirrored medicine cabinet

18. towel storage

19. steel bathroom frame

20. shower pan

21. kitchen islands

22. kitchen cabinets

23. deployable kitchen counter

24. clerestory window

25. clerestory opener mechanism

26. backlit corrugated fiberglass panel

27. patio

28. garage beyond

29. universal bathroom fixture

first-mezzanine

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1. public plaza area

2. private plaza area

3. sun-control louvers

4. gallery space

5. moving gallery partitions

6. adjustable stadium seating

7. circulation zone

8. support zone

9. cinematheque

10. demonstration studio

11. artist-in-residence studio

plaza-floor plan 1 :1200

12. school area

13. visitor facilities wing

14. foyer

15. cafe

16. gift shop

17. administrative offices

18. collection storage

19. technical support

20. service/truck area

21. bulk-easing flood berm

22. gallery car park

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