a+u magazine, #449.

“Thank you for making SANAA international.” The words of appreciation Kazuyo Sejima used at my farewell party from the firm last November, at a new Italian osteria near the office in Tokyo, were engaging. I started in early 2000, first as intern, then as staff focusing on the firms work outside of Japan, and finally as associate overseeing SANAA’s projects in the U.S. International is indeed what the firm has become. When I started, few non-Japanese had been part of the modest sized staff of fifteen. At that time, the focus was on finishing the drawings for the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa. The only active foreign project was a theatre in Almere, the Netherlands. Today, SANAA has built five buildings oversees, with at least a similar amount of projects underway. The staff has more then doubled, the office area has expanded, and the firm is employing people from seven different nationalities. Is this the result of a carefully planned strategy, to be thanked for, or is it merely a series of lucky incidents?

People employ strategies – a military term - anticipating certain scenarios. My move to Japan was carefully contemplated. At the height of architecture’s “Dutch Bubble” – graduating architecture school in the Netherlands in the 90’s sufficed to claim stardom – it seemed smarter to me to mature in a post bubble environment. Sejima’s lecture at my university, the University of Technology in Delft, was exhilaratingly refreshing. I believed that the growing international attention SANAA was enjoying would require people with different qualities. After participating in the master-class Sejima and Nishizawa taught at the Berlage Institute in 1998 it became clear to me SANAA was the office I needed to be. I took six months of intensive Japanese language studies and with my salary sponsored by the Dutch government for half a year, I entered the office March 1st 2000. The most desirable but ambitious scenario in my head was that after assisting on our project in Almere for some time, the opportunity would occur to run fist one and then maybe multiple international projects within five years at the firm.

Two months into the job, I was flying to Venice for our installation “City of Girls” – blatantly ignoring the overall theme less aesthetics, more ethics devised by Massimiliano Fuksas, - at the Architectural Biennial. Not much later, the architectural selection committee for the Toledo Museum of Art came to Japan. I showed them around and before I knew it I was running their project for the Glass Pavilion in Toledo, Ohio. Two years later, we won the competition for the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York. In the mean time, I had been working on a number of competitions in Europe and the design for IVAM in Valencia, Spain. On an individual level my strategy seems to have worked. Was the course SANAA took as premeditated?

Unlike large financial institutions or global companies such as Shell, an Anglo-Dutch oil company, well known for its scenario planning methodology, architectural firms like SANAA do not have the luxury to spend time and resources anticipating various futures. When the current frenzy of global starchitecture was still in its fetal state Koolhaas already wrote: Ostensibly involved in “shaping” the world, for their thoughts to be mobilized architects depend on the provocations of others – clients, individual or institutional. Therefore, incoherence, or more precisely, randomness, is the underlying structure of all architects’ careers: they are confronted with parameters they did not establish, in countries they hardly know, about issues they are only dimly aware of, expected to deal with problems that have proved intractable to brains vastly superior to their own… (SMLXL, 1995)

Different from developers or artists, architects leave most of the power that determines their future in the hands of others. Where in the past we beheld prophecy, in the last decade we have been merely trying to keep up with the dynamics of global capital. Off course architectural offices, especially the larger ones, need to employ strategies to maintain a level of stability. Firms like Gensler and Kohn Pederson Fox develop lasting relationships with strong clients, such as global corporations or large developers. Also Koolhaas is trying to fight this inherent weakness of the profession. The subjects of the research studios he teaches at Harvard University and their resulting publications are chosen to explore and seduce new markets (fashion, China). On a different level but with similar intent, he tried to develop a more diverse business model by founding AMO – “a think tank that operates in areas beyond the boundaries of architecture and urbanism – including sociology, technology, media and politics.” (www.oma.nl)

Seijma and Nishizawa’s ambitions are elsewhere. Tactfully silent, the main agenda of the office is to make new architecture. Potential projects are judged with only this in mind. When I questioned our involvement with a certain pharmaceutical firm on the basis of ethics, this was overruled by the potential for creating a new architecture. Where I saw opportunities in China, Sejima and Nishizawa deemed the conditions too premature for good architecture. These choices are implicit and subtle. A position will not be taken. The understated character of the office is often seen as humble or polite, but could also be explained as strategic. The position is embedded in the designs. These together form the offices agenda. Not loud decrees, but polite offerings of an alternative, confident that people will recognize them. This open-endedness however, places us in a perpetual ambiguity between coincidence, intuition and intent. What office model is fit for such uncertainty?

Although currently the interest and potential for new architecture is rising in the United Stares, SANAA’s presence there is highly incidental. A lucky bet was our focus on the Toledo Museum of Art project, out of three concurrent opportunities. The Wadsworth Athenaeum in Connecticut, won by UN studio, got cancelled and the Clark Art Institute, which went to Tadao Ando, which is proving complicated to realize. Regularly, firms use a project on a different continent as an opportunity to jumpstart a satellite office and break into a new market. SANAA-NY happened by accident. After a year or two spending most of my time in our office in Shinagawa, travel started to really pick up. At a certain point, spending one week in Valencia, two weeks in New York and two weeks in Japan was my general itinerary. This was an exciting period in life that took its toll. By the end of 2002, I attempted to quit and move to New York to save the relationship with my girlfriend. I was able to move, but failed the other two. At that time the epicenter of the Toledo Museum project had shifted to New York and not much later, we got involved in a second project, the New Museum of Contemporary Art. By then I suggested Sejima to hire an additional staff locally; Toshihiro Oki, Japanese born but educated in the U.S.

SANAA’s presence in New York was essentially fictitious, ran in a way as a terrorist cell. Based in our apartments, it was hybrid mix of laptops, flash drives, digital cameras, external hard drives, cell phones, material samples and stacks of drawings. Never was there an actual space or address. At a certain point during the New Museum project we did have two desks at Gensler, the architect of record for the New Museum project, but these were hardly occupied two consecutive days. We were continuously on the move between site, consultant’s office, manufacturers, the Tokyo office communicating with every single person who could have an effect on the outcome of our architecture.

The choice for this setup brought a number of advantages. Apart from being very economical, we could focus all our efforts on the actual realization of the project and execution of its details. Our time on site was maximized, alleviated from burdens as staffing and office management. Design studies remained to be done in Tokyo by a designated team, so that Sejima and Nishizawa could keep overview of the projects. An additional benefit of this model is not being exposed to liabilities, as SANAA is not licensed and not a legal entity outside of Japan. This especially is important for doing work in the U.S. where in the last year numerous architects have been sued over designs deemed too ambitious.

Yet, by not being able to take full ownership over the design, the risk exists to loose power over it as well. In our contracts with clients, SANAA’s role is merely that of aesthetic consultant. Engineers on the team are managed by the architect of record who also has the final say over the design, as they stamp and file the drawings. Our power is soft power, we operate as design diplomats. The leverage we have is SANAA’s name. If we do not like the way a project is heading, the only thing we can do is threaten to dissociate ourselves from it.

Currently, there are a few of these roving SANAA’s cells working in Europe, for our projects in Germany, France and Switzerland. For a relatively small office that wants to operate on a global scale, yet keep control over the final built work, this model seems a natural choice. One has to be more versatile, hybrid, amorphous and able to work in a web of temporary alliances. However, one never forgets the ultimate mission.

When this article appears, the New York cell will have lost its raison d’être. After being in operation for five years, and realizing two projects, it will become a sleeper cell, to be awakened when opportunity arises. The great thing about this model is its extreme flexibility, and the small footprint, on the other hand, knowledge and experience will evaporate. One can ask oneself if this is really a loss when being naïve is probably the best way to create a new architecture. Already, new envoys are being trained.