A House is a House is (not) a House
“Sometimes the building is the sign: The duck store in the shape of a duck, called “The Long Island Duckling,” is sculptural symbol and archi- tectural shelter.“ 1
For Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour, symbols dominate space and the relationships therein, with architecture itself often being more symbol than merely form.2 The house, reduced to the essentials of its simplest shape in a stylised, geometrical representation, serves the artist Jürgen Bauer as the point of departure for his work. As handled by him, the house becomes a formalistic, socio-cultural and politi- cal symbol replete with tensions.
It would scarcely be possible for the geometrical abstraction of a house with gabled roof to be more charged with levels of meaning. In the German language, the term ‘house’ (Haus) is often diverted from its customary meaning so as to become a synonym for both the external per- ception of persons and their own self-awareness: to be a cool dude (ein cooles Haus sein); to come from a respectable family (aus gutem Hause stammen); to be beside oneself with excitement (aus dem Häuschen sein).3 In the opposite direction, human characteristics can be projected onto facades, such that the phenomenon of pareidolia causes us to see faces in the arrangement of windows, doors, balconies and awnings.
The house as an identifier, representative and symbol for our existence. Social structures are immanent to this architecture. In spite of economic and climatic crises, even today there seems to be no disruption to the myth of the ‘satisfaction of owning one’s own home’, which defines a social norm and a concomitant status. But adhering to social norms and thinking in terms of status only function when they delimit and exclude: the single-family dwelling and all its variations solidify a clearly hierarchi- cal social order whose normative character is marked by gender-specific, classifying and racializing mechanisms. Coupled with the fatal ecological impacts of the suburban lifestyle, the simple symbol of a house with gabled roof—the unique feature of mediocrity—simultaneously becomes an image of enmity.
As a counterpoint, however, this ‘satisfaction of owning one’s own home’ can not only be embodied through the silhouette of the house but can also be reinterpreted as a ‘roof over one’s head’ and thereby be read as a symbol for security and withdrawal.
Thus it becomes clear that this apparently simple, formal gesture of an in- herently appealing geometrical object assembled out of two basic shapes simultaneously gives rise to enormous contradictions. Jürgen Bauer appropriates these contradictions. He plays with them and invites viewers to question their own associations with the symbol of the house.
Bettina Siegele
Directress Künstler:innen Vereinigung Tirol and architectural theorist
1 Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour, Learning from Las Vegas: The Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural Form, Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1977, 13.
2 Ibid.
3 Hartmut Kraft, ‘HAUS = PERSON. Anmerkungen zu einer Psychologie des Hauses als Bildthema’, in Kunst- forum International 182 (2006), pp. 74–89.