Neil Denari

After a yearlong search that spanned the globe and, at times, seemed overwhelming in its scope, the Southern California Institute of Architecture appointed Neil M. Denari as its new director this past June.

In appointing Denari, the school reasserted a tradition of youth. When it was founded 25 years ago, SCI-Arc fostered the careers of many of Los Angeles’ architecture stars, including Thom Mayne of Morphosis and Eric Owen Moss, who as twentysomething avant-gardists both taught at the school when it first opened. Since that time, SCI-Arc, located in Marina del Rey, has grown from a radically spontaneous collective of 44 students to a more established institution of 450.

Denari, 39, is striking for his youth and willingness to pursue experimental work, even if it has meant he has built little. Although he began his architectural practice in 1988, his only significant commissioned work is a renovation of the Arlington Museum of Art in Texas. Denari, who taught at SCI-Arc from 1988 to 1996, is known more for his designs of machine-like structures, some of which evoke the work of ‘60s-era firms like Archigram, which once designed mechanized walking cities.

In the end, the school rejected an older generation of more established architects to lead it, though some of them--like Robert Mangurian--have played key roles in SCI-Arc’s recent history. SCI-Arc has always been marked by its radical independence. But the question today is what kinds of architects it is producing, and how the school will adapt to current technological changes as we turn the corner into a new century. In an interview at his office, Denari addressed these issues and spoke about his vision for the school’s future.

*

Question: What role do you expect SCI-Arc to play in the cultural landscape of Los Angeles in the future?

Answer: What I want to do is try to raise the level of SCI-Arc’s original mission, which was to be forward-thinking. And let’s face it, if you’re forward-thinking and you’re dealing in concepts of new ideas, history has told us that new ideas are not always wanted by everyone. . . . So SCI-Arc’s mission is that we will be doing things that won’t be readily understood or maybe consumable by the public, because we will be dealing with new ideas.

Q: Well, there’s novelty and there’s the issue of when you cross the line and it becomes a retreat into academia.

A: Exactly. I think that all the new issues that we will be looking at are actually ones that are going to be fostered by the world that we’re living in today: cultural, political, economic, aesthetic--all those things. . . . Now, science is fused with technology in such a huge way that that’s the most popular discourse: computers, the Internet and so forth. And now we’re turning back from issues of the scientific and the technological to cultural ones like communities on the Web. . . . And that means both technological territories and cultural territories like Latin America, like the Pacific Rim. How can we incorporate that into the school? But the original question was how are we going to play a role in the city?

Q: That might be too broad, but how about the architectural culture of the city?

A: Maybe in three ways. One, I think that SCI-Arc will continue to be a place where the discourse of architecture, as a discipline, will be thought of in a critical manner. The second thing would probably be the . . way in which SCI-Arc will deploy its resources into the city, [perhaps through] various outreach programs and building projects. Thirdly-- and a big one--is going to be to help redefine what the architecture culture is.

In L.A., cinema and television might be seen as more interesting places for architecture than ever before. I actually think that through the communication and entertainment industries, we’ll see a shift away from the purely cynical notion that [business is] antagonistic to the fine art of architecture. I think SCI-Arc will be one of the first schools to break down that kind of antagonism, because of the way in which we want to work with corporations in developing new ideas about space and new ideas about communications.

Q: Do you want the school to support differing points of view? Everyone, it seems, wants to reproduce a model along the lines of London’s Architectural Assn. in the ‘70s, which was so successful because it fostered so many competing factions.

A: I don’t think that SCI-Arc, despite its independence, would be able to operate in a monolithic way, because it just wouldn’t be as relevant. . . . To be able to participate at SCI-Arc means that you agree to disagree pretty strongly, because that’s what the vitality of the work is about. Likewise, it will be a place where, hopefully, there will be people and organizations from outside our school who will participate in the debate as well.

I can see symposiums and other forms where we’ll [discuss] these issues--of form-making or urban design or ecology or whatever. My sense of being inclusive doesn’t come exclusively from generosity of spirit, it comes from [wanting] critical debate and strong discourse about lots of positions. . . .

[Architect Peter Eisenman] kind of plays a game with the idea that architecture is empirical. But I like that. . . . It’s meant to probe the weakness of everyone else. . . . SCI-Arc hasn’t known that for a while and I’m going to create that at SCI-Arc; that’s why I was given the job.

Q: You haven’t had that much experience in building. Will that have an effect in the direction the school will take? Will you push a more theoretical position?

A: My aspirations are to build and to operate my practice in many ways conventionally. . . . [Yet] what I’m drawing on is 15 years of thinking and research. I can say that in my building and design projects that haven’t been built, I’ve made the same kinds of mistakes that somebody might make if they had built the project. I haven’t dealt with as many jerky contractors, but I’m aware enough about how to deal with that. And I could be wrong, but I don’t think anybody perceives me as being a theoretical architect who plans to spend the rest of his life sequestered away, drawing.

Q: Do you identify with any particular generation of architects? How does your age affect the attitudes you will bring to the school?

A: I don’t identify with my generation as an age group that much. . . . I worked with [Museum of Modern Art curator] Terry Riley at [James Stewart] Polshek’s office. I was roommates with [San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s] Aaron Betsy. Tom Hanrahan is the dean at Pratt, and he was a classmate of mine at Harvard. . . . So I’m a part of that, de facto. . . . I’m probably as interested in youth culture as much as I am in history, even though youth culture is not my generation. But I’ve actually changed my feeling about it since 10 years ago, when . . . I felt a need to articulate a generational position like we’re going to kill everybody above us and so forth. . . . I don’t have the same kind of generational terrorism.

Q: The search for gurus goes back pretty far in Modernism. Do you think that you can avoid that at SCI-Arc and still maintain that intensity?

A: I do. I think that there’s still a lot to say in architecture schools about really powerful architects who deal in doctrinaire approaches. . . . But I don’t believe that you build a whole school around a single person. I might refer to a term that Brian Eno invented. He calls it the “scene-ius,” which is a group of people, or a scene, that together is a genius. . . . I like the whole idea of that. Maybe you have people who are really strong and powerful, who have eccentric ideas--I might even have to throw myself into that category as well. . . . But I feel that I’m just one part, and all the other professors are another part [in creating] this scene which asks the generations to not be so, I don’t want to say, divisive.

There’s a whole other political agenda behind how we might share knowledge and interact, rather than feel like it’s a system of gurus. . . . But I really want to try to carve out a new thing that hasn’t happened before [in] the relationship between the collective and the individual.

Q: What new voices do you intend to bring in?

A: We’re going to draw on people in Southern California. We’ll have [urban writer] Mike Davis return to the school this year. . . . But I’d also like to bring in people from an international context, to bring in people to study and talk to us about urbanism in large European cities and how they relate to L.A.

Where you can go in 45 minutes in a car in Holland is pretty interesting in relation to where you can go in 45 minutes in L.A. Or where you can go 45 minutes by plane. I want SCI-Arc to be like Pan Am. That’s what I want SCI-Arc to be. Not Southwest [Airlines].

Q: Some members of SCI-Arc’s faculty have fretted that the school became more institutionalized, less inventive, as it became more established. Do you think that something has been lost as the school has grown up?

A: SCI-Arc is historically a small, eccentric institution that I think will change into a small, independent, mobile and very intelligent school. It will play a big factor in interacting with corporations, local politics, forms of research and endowments which previously the school hasn’t endeavored to go toward.

There might have been a lingering idea that that wouldn’t be right--that it might challenge one’s sense of integrity. And I just believe that you can talk to anyone you want, and you have your own sense of ethics in relation to corporations or institutions. . . .

Q: What sort of corporate partnerships are you talking about specifically?

A: Probably in the first year or 18 months [it could be] with the digital industries. It could be Microsoft, it could be Silicon Graphics, it could be the entertainment industry. If it plays out with Playa Vista and DreamWorks, we could have relationships with them.

Q: I assume you’re not just talking about equipment, but research. What kind of examples can you imagine?

A: Let’s say Boeing, because they’re so big now. How can we take their technology and translate it into a house, and make it mass-produced, however crazy that seems right now? But that’s a project that is about exploring a territory with [Boeing’s] knowledge that only [architects] would have the ability to do, or the incentive to do. That might be something very, very specifically architectural. If you can design an airplane completely on a computer, like the 777, and build it, then why couldn’t you do it with prototype spaces via transferring their technology?

And I’m more optimistic about dealing with companies that are interested in a return on their investment than I am with the Clinton administration suddenly saying, let’s devote $50 million to housing. . . . As long as our mission and our agenda at SCI-Arc are met, I think that we’ll be willing to work with the corporate world. I think that if Ralph’s and ARCO and Times Mirror are willing to put in lots of money for a civic building [Disney Hall], that’s a good sign for SCI-Arc.

Q: In what sense exactly?

A: I think that SCI-Arc will be a place where people will just want to work out ideas with us. We did have a preliminary meeting with Microsoft’s Virtual World. They want to work with us in developing new ideas . . . and, basically, [they] understand that architecture schools are probably right now the best place to think about how to develop new spaces for communities on the web or in the computer. . . .

But I mentioned Boeing. That itself isn’t about making digital space, it’s about making buildings cheaper, better, lighter, which is a 20th-century issue.

Q: There are obvious connections between your focus on computers and technology and your own work over the past few years. Will that be a principal focus for the school?

A: The computer and the issues that surround it seem to represent a new paradigm. [But] I think that it will actually become a much, much more integrated kind of process. Not to say that the computer will quickly become just a transparent tool, but it will certainly become that inevitably, like any other means of working, and then it will return the field back to the issues of design. . . .

Clearly, Im not the only one thinking in that way. I’ve learned a lot from contemporary architects like [Toyo] Ito, for example, who’s always tried to suggest that technology was like a cultural layer rather than a specifically formal reference. I’m so enthusiastic about that, and I’m enthusiastic about a younger generation of students who are already knowledgeable and enthusiastic and are beginning to merge with people my age.

I think the worst thing about technology in the past has been the usual Luddite versus blind-faith position, and ideas about technology are so much more supple and complex now. I want to train SCI-Arc students to be sophisticated enough to think about it that way. . . . A lot of the issues are already out there. It’s up to us to find incredibly persuasive ways to talk about it. It’s about bringing difficult ideas into the public eye.