Craig Dykers

On the eve of the debut of the ‘new’ SFMOMA, Snøhetta co-founder Craig Dykers talked with John King about what it’s like to be a manifesto-free architect and how it felt to be joined at the architectural hip with Mario Botta.

Blueprint: Is there an underlying design theory that links Snøhetta’s work?
CD: Our polemic is about process, it’s not about object. We’re developing processes rather than making forms. That’s what we represent.

I gave a talk recently at the Architectural League of New York and afterwards I was told ‘You know Craig, we don’t trust you. You present your work camouflaged as a series of episodic events,’ as if the focus should be a theatrical capacity for making form. There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s just not what we do. But sometimes I think that until we come up with a manifesto, people are going to shrug us off.

Craig Dyker says the socialising of space is a key part of Snøhettas’ oeuvre

Blueprint: What would your manifesto be?
CD: Over the years we’ve been focusing on the socialisation of space. At first we didn’t know it, but now we’re conscious of it, and the whole idea of social impact. Creating place is about reimaging the diverse public — you bring all these people together into space that socialises you.

If you can’t categorise this then either don’t, or come up with another category. It’s not our responsibility to fit into a preordained polemic… I’m not knocking architects who want to do that.

But after all that [generations of form-based modernism] what do we have left?

Blueprint: At SFMOMA, the new entry procession is unusual – down a path off a sidewalk and then up a staircase, with the doors directly on your left when you reach the top. Why not put the doors in the line of sight?

CD: One thing was that we wanted to create a small plaza up there, with space for a work of art - for you to see art, not a door. Beyond that, anything that you do to force somebody to change direction, turning 90 degrees - that forces a commitment. Changing the relationship of somebody to architecture is very important - though you don’t want to keep everything changing, because then it becomes a pain in the ass.

Blueprint: What was it like to work with Mario Botta’s original museum, which is so much a product of its times?
CD: Everyone asks, what’s it like to work with the Botta building? Well, it’s lot easier than working with a boring building. Were we too deferential, should we have been more radical? We had a lot of discussion — ‘Why not put a weird box on top of Botta?’ - but it’s still an important building.

The new entrance ‘down a path off a sidewalk and then up a staircase’

Blueprint: In the models that show the development of your design [on view in a small alcove at the remade SFMOMA] there are several that show your addition with an atrium in the middle. Then it gets smaller and then it’s gone.
CD: That concept came and went pretty quickly. In retrospect, I’m glad we didn’t have an atrium. Then there’d be two giant atria. Botta’s is enough.

Blueprint: You have a New York office, you’ve just finished working on SFMOMA, and you’re a finalist for the Obama library in Chicago. How would you compare the three cities?
CD: San Francisco is known for its grass-roots activism. New York is almost the opposite. Chicago, it’s a tough city… But every project I work on we end up confronting the same three issues: parking, the weather and elevators. Sometimes I describe my job to people as a parking consultant. I do architecture on the side, as a hobby.