THESIS ABSTRACT VARIATIONS ON THE BYE HOUSE BY JOHN HEJDUK The subject matter of this thesis, called Variations on the Bye House by John Hejduk, is Wall House 2. It was designed between 1972 and 1974 for the city of Ridgefield in Connecticut (USA), and built about the year 2000 in Groningen (Holland). An initial task of compilation of data relating only to the house is carried out and included within the thesis. There are two chapters devoted to analysing Wall House from the material published in Mask of Medusa1 and Five Architects2, and which have been titled Introduction to Wall House 2 (Bye House) by John Hejduk and A visit to the paper Wall House 2. In these two chapters, the information gathered on Wall House is organised and a first exploration is performed based exclusively on the material collected. In Mask of Medusa we can find the house plans, draft drawings, photographs of the scale models, and texts about the house written by its own author. In Five Architects, Manfredo Tafuri writes about Hejduks work. Together with some other projects, Wall House is presented, including plans and preliminary drawings. In these two first chapters the paper house is visited through the books that talk about this project. The third chapter, "A visit to Wall House 2, built in Groningen contains a description of the house located in Holland. This description is built from the memories of a visit made to the building: approaching the entrance, entering the door, going up the stairs and walking its corridor, getting into every single room up and down the spiral staircase, stepping into the study and going down the stairs to exit the house through the same door you use to come in. The explanations about the experience of being inside the house are compared with Hejduks explanations on the architectural experience. The house is thought to arise from a project and from a design process that originates it. The documents that have been gathered together to write this thesis do not only deal with Wall House, but also with other projects by Hohn Hejduk3 and other related authors. In chapter 4, called Wall House 2 as a musical instrument, the Wall House project is compared with some drawings of musical instruments that Hejduk showed to his students at the Cooper Union School of Art and Architecture (New York). This comparison comes from what Hejduk writes about the spirituality of music in relation to the house, I think that in the form of a musical instrument4. This chapter starts from the interpretations on music drawn from looking at the drawings made by the students at Cooper Union, and introduces the concept of house as a musical instrument. It is, in part, a prologue to the approach followed in this PhD thesis, a preface to the exposition, where Wall House is first introduced considering the singularity of the house when comparing it to music. The following chapter analyses the relationships that link the transformation process of a square, on which the house builds its foundations, to other previous projects, such as the Texas Houses, the Diamond Houses and other Wall Houses. This chapter suggests a journey through some of Hejduks projects, from which the formalisation process of Wall House is interpreted. As a precedent, Dag Hammarskjld Memorial is studied. This project by Hejduk relates to Les Maisons en Srie pour Artisans5, designed by Le Corbusier in 1924, and which can be regarded as a precursor to this design, almost 50 years before Hejduk's theory on the transformation of the square. Nevertheless, Hejduks vision of the square is not only found in the formalisation process of the house, but it also establishes a possibility for interpreting the proposal from the sense of the interior and exterior of the house since, according to the transformation process of the square, the interior of the house becomes the exterior. For this reason, the interior of the house is addressed in relation to the task about the cigar box given by Hejduk to his students at Cooper Union. The house is studied through concepts such as privacy and intimacy and, in order to explain this relationship, we analyse some films by director Michael Haneke, Michelangelo Antonionis Blow up, and the texts written by Hejduk on the sense of a mystery when it is solved. The last chapter, House for Inhabitant Who Refused to Participate and Wall House 2, is a continuation of the previous one. They are interpretations of Hejduks projects from what has been said. As a final climax, the Still life museum/museum for still life, designed by Hejduk, provides a way of ending the thesis from a project carried out twenty years after Wall House 2. Besides, Wall House is presented as a proposal which is capable of being articulated together with other later projects by Hejduk and, in turn, those later projects offer another interpretation of Wall House. There is an appendix that includes two texts written and published6 during the course of this PhD thesis, and which has been titled From Le Corbusier to John Hejduk, or from John Hejduk to Le Corbusier. In this text, Hejduk's work is analysed as a basis to study the work of Le Cobusier. 1 Mask of Medusa is an essential source of data for this PhD thesis. Apart from Wall House, it also contains numerous designs carried out by Hejduk between 1947 and 1983. This publication is divided into seven different periods: In the first period, called Frame I and running from 1947 to 1954, 15 projects were published. 19 were published between 1954 and 1963 (Frame II). 3 between 1963 and 1967 (Frame 3). 21 between 1968 and 1974 (Frame 4). 10 between 1974 and 1979 (Frame 5). And, finally, 9 between 1979 and 1983 (Frame 7). In total, 77 designs by Hejduk were published here in the period between 1947 and 1983. J. Hejduk, Mask of Medusa. Works 1947-1983, Rizzoli, New York 1985. 2 In Five Architects, Hejduks work is published together with the designs of architects Peter Eisenman, Richard Meier, Michael Graves and Charles Gwathmey. M. Tafuri, Five architects N.Y., Roma, 1976, Officina. 3 It is worth mentioning, for the time being, the Texas Houses and the Diamond Houses designed by Hejduk between the fifties and the late sixties. Published in J. Hejduk, Mask of Medusa. Works 1947-1983, cit., pp.222-251. 4 J. Hejduk, Dos conferencias, cit., p. 18. 5 This project can be found published in Le Corbusier et Pierre Jeanneret, uvre complte 1910-29, Ed.dArchitecture Girsberger, Zurich, 1934. p.54. 6 C. Barber, Sobre una experiencia de John Hejduk en la casa La Roche, Massilia 2003, Associaci didees, Sant Cugat del Valls 2004; and C. Barber, Un dibujo de John Hejduk sobre La Tourette y la transformacin de un cuadrado, Massilia, 2005. Annuaire detudes corbuseennes, Col.legi Oficial dArquitectes de Catalunya, Barcelona, 2005, pp. 210-221. --------------- ---------------------------------------- --------------- ----------------------------------------