John Hejduk Soundings Lecture: Jacques Herzog in Conversation with Grace La

If I told you that one of the world's most celebrated architects, Jacques Herzog, has publicly stated that “architecture books are useless,” would you believe me? Yet he really did say it, in front of a room full of students and colleagues: “There is not a single historical text on architecture that still plays a role today. It's all dead. Books are dead. Buildings remain.” This is just one of the provocative statements that come to light when you listen to Herzog talk about his work. His argument—and here comes the twist—is that the true power of architecture lies not in an abstract idea, a theory, or a recognizable style. It lies in the process: in experimenting, making mistakes, changing direction, and accepting that each project is a different answer, every time. While many believe that a great architect must have a recognizable style, Herzog argues the opposite: “I get allergic when I see architects who carry a style around like a ghost.” And when asked if he tries to reinvent the wheel every time, he replies: “I don't necessarily want to do something different; it's the questions that change each time. And today, I'm not the same person I was when I designed Ricola.” Behind this indifference to the “trademark” lies a way of experiencing time and matter that is reflected in each project. Take the Ricola warehouse in Mulhouse: an industrial building from the 1990s, its façade screen-printed with giant leaves. It's not just an aesthetic quirk. Herzog explains that the real protagonist is time: the leaves are abstract photographs by Blossfeldt, enlarged to the point of becoming almost unsettling; the façade changes with the light, the rain, and the moss that grows on it. The building “ages,” acquires character, and becomes something that was not intended. And here is another twist: beauty is not planned; it happens, often thanks to humble materials. “If we had used luxurious materials, it would have been stupid. The great thing is that the façade is printed on polycarbonate, which is very inexpensive.” One scene makes all of this unforgettable: when they installed the panels, Herzog realized that the leaf had to be the size of a person, no bigger and no smaller. If it was too small, it became mundane; if it was too large, it appeared menacing. The secret of its allure lay right there, in the physical relationship between the human body and the image. And what about matter? For Herzog, matter has “a hidden geometry.” The Dominus Winery in California is built using gabions—simple metal cages filled with stones collected on-site. No marble, no decoration: just “stupid” stones, as he calls them, thrown into the cages. From the outside, the wall appears to be a solid mass; from the inside, light filters through the gaps, transforming the wall into a lacework of shadows and reflections. No premeditated aesthetic choices: “We didn't know it would turn out this way. We experimented; we let ourselves be surprised.” The result? A building that at night becomes almost invisible among the fields, and that has saved a million dollars in air conditioning costs thanks to the thermal inertia of the stones. The same logic can be found in the Schaulager in Basel: when excavating the foundations, they used local gravel to build the walls. “The ideal would be for each building to use the materials it finds when excavating the site.” Here, too, the detail that sticks in your mind is the shape of the windows, which resembles a “groove” made in the gravel, like a fingerprint in the sand—more a gesture than a design. And when the discussion shifts to the relationship between abstraction and phenomenon, Herzog dismisses the question: “I'm not interested. Architecture just has to work, not disturb you, not be pretentious. Other people's thoughts and theories? All dead.” The true test is the body, the physical sensation, the character that each building develops over time. Herzog is not concerned with leaving his mark, but with leaving space. Space for change, for error, for surprise. And when a project changes midway, often for financial or technical reasons, he doesn’t cling to the original idea: “If you truly love the process, you’re willing to start over. And sometimes it turns out better.” Here’s a phrase you can repeat to anyone, even outside the world of architecture: Architecture is not a signature; it is a process that changes those who create it and those who experience it. If you identify with rejecting labels or with the idea that true strength lies in trying and changing, on Lara Notes you can press I'm In – it's not a ‘like,’ it's saying: This way of thinking is now mine. And if this conversation inspires you to tell someone how a stone wall can be more radical than a thousand theories, on Lara Notes you can mark who was there with Shared Offline—because some ideas only live when they are passed from person to person. This Note is based on a public conversation between Jacques Herzog and Grace La at Harvard GSD. By listening to it here, you've saved yourself a whopping 104 minutes of lecture time.