John Quentin Hejduk (July 19, 1929 – July 3, 2000) was an American architect, artist and educator of Czech origin who spent much of his life in New York City. Hejduk is noted for having had a profound interest in the fundamental issues of shape, organization, representation, and reciprocity. Hejduk studied at the

Cooper Union School of Art and Architecture The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art (Cooper Union) is a private college at Cooper Square in New York City. Peter Cooper founded the institution in 1859 after learning about the government-supported École Polytechnique in ...

, the

University of Cincinnati The University of Cincinnati (UC or Cincinnati) is a public research university in Cincinnati, Ohio. Founded in 1819 as Cincinnati College, it is the oldest institution of higher education in Cincinnati and has an annual enrollment of over 44,00 ...

, and the

Harvard Graduate School of Design The Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) is the graduate school of design at Harvard University, a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It offers master's and doctoral programs in architecture, landscape architecture, urba ...

. He worked in several offices in New York including that of I. M. Pei and Partners and the office of A.M. Kinney and Associates. He established his own practice in New York City in 1965.

Career

As a professor

Hejduk was Professor of Architecture at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, School of Architecture from 1964 to 2000 and Dean of the School of Architecture from 1975 to 2000. His arrival including the cooperation of many other influential professors (including Raimund Abraham, Ricardo Scofidio,

Peter Eisenman Peter Eisenman (born August 11, 1932) is an American architect. Considered one of the New York Five, Eisenman is known for his writing and speaking about architecture as well as his designs, which have been called high modernist or deconstructive ...

Charles Gwathmey Charles Gwathmey (June 19, 1938 – August 3, 2009) was an American architect. He was a principal at Gwathmey Siegel & Associates Architects, as well as one of the five architects identified as The New York Five in 1969. Gwathmey was perhaps bes ...

Diana Agrest Diana I. Agrest (born 1945) is a practicing architect and urban designer and an architecture and urban design theorist, in New York City. From the beginning of her career, while still a student, she started developing critical work on urban disc ...

, Diane Lewis, Elizabeth Diller, David Shapiro, Don Wall and many others) transformed the practice and critical thought of architecture in ways that might be compared to Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's transformation of the Armour Institute into the

Illinois Institute of Technology Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Tracing its history to 1890, the present name was adopted upon the merger of the Armour Institute and Lewis Institute in 1940. The university has pro ...

Approach

His early work and curriculum grew from a set of exercises exploring cubes, grids, and frames, through an examination of square grids placed within diagonal containers set against an occasional curving wall, towards a series of experiments with flat planes and curved masses in various combinations and colors. To aid his research he was awarded a grant from the Graham Foundation in 1967. Eventually, John Hejduk's "hard-line" modernist space-making exercises, heavily influenced by

Frank Lloyd Wright Frank Lloyd Wright (June 8, 1867 – April 9, 1959) was an American architect, designer, writer, and educator. He designed more than 1,000 structures over a creative period of 70 years. Wright played a key role in the architectural movements o ...

and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, moved away from his interests in favor of free-hand "figure/objects" influenced by mythology and spirituality, clearly expressing the nature of his poetry. The relationship between Hejduk's shape/objects and their surroundings is a controversial subject, raising questions similar to those raised by the early houses of

. The architectural historian K. Michael Hays has described Hejduk's architecture as one of "Encounter", describing Hejduk's objects as seeming "impossibly, to be aware of us, to address us. And yet we see not the gratifying reflection of ourselves we had hoped for but another thing, looking back at us, watching us, placing us", articulating Hejduk's work from a post-modern Lacanian perspective as more "literary" than that of his peers.

Legacy

Hejduk is associated with several schools, including the

New York Five The New York Five was a group of architects based in New York City whose work was featured in the 1972 book ''Five Architects''. The architects, Peter Eisenman, Michael Graves, Charles Gwathmey, John Hejduk and Richard Meier, are also often refe ...

(with architects

Richard Meier Richard Meier (born October 12, 1934) is an American abstract artist and architect, whose geometric designs make prominent use of the color white. A winner of the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1984, Meier has designed several iconic buildings ...

Michael Graves Michael Graves (July 9, 1934 – March 12, 2015) was an American architect, designer, and educator, as well as principal of Michael Graves and Associates and Michael Graves Design Group. He was a member of The New York Five and the Memphis Gr ...

, and

) whose early works are described in ''Five Architects'' (1973), and the Texas Rangers, a group of innovative architects and professors at the University of Texas School of Architecture, Austin, whose other well-known participants include Colin Rowe and

Werner Seligmann Werner Seligmann (March 30, 1930 – November 12, 1998) was an architect, urban designer and educator. Biography Werner Seligmann was born on March 30, 1930, in Osnabrück, Germany. His father, Fritz, was born December 31, 1902, in Krefeld, German ...

. Contemporary theorists, researchers, and academics publishing work and research by and about John Hejduk include

K. Michael Hays Kenneth Michael Hays (born October 18, 1952) is an American architectural historian and professor. He currently serves as Eliot Noyes Professor of Architectural Theory at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design. He is also co-director of ...

, Mark Linder,

R.E. Somol Robert E. Somol Jr. is an architectural theorist currently serving as the director of the School of Architecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His writing has been centrally-linked to "post-critical" architectural theory at the turn of ...

Anthony Vidler Anthony Vidler (born July 4, 1941, in Salisbury Plain, United Kingdom) is Professor at the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at The Cooper Union. He is an architectural historian and critic. Education Anthony Vidler received a B.A. and Dipl ...

, Renata Hejduk, and Catherine Ingraham A large portion of his work is archived at the

Canadian Centre for Architecture The Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA; french: Centre Canadien d'Architecture) is a museum of architecture and research centre in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It is located at 1920, rue Baile (1920, Baile Street), between rue Fort (Fort Street ...

Montreal Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the second-most populous city in Canada and most populous city in the Canadian province of Quebec. Founded in 1642 as '' Ville-Marie'', or "City of Mary", it is named after Mount Royal, the triple- ...

, Canada.

Important buildings

*House For a Musician (1983) *House of the Suicide and House of the Mother of the Suicide (Prague, monument installed 2016) *Kreuzberg Tower and Wings (Berlin, Allemagne, 1988) *Tegel Housing (Berlin, 1988) *House of the Quadruplets / House for two Brothers (Berlin, Tegel, 1988) *Gate House (Berlin, 1991) for the IBA 87 *La Máscara de la Medusa (Buenos Aires, 1998) *

Wall House II Wall House II (also known as Bye House) is an historic building in Groningen, Netherlands, that was designed by John Hejduk. it is one of his few realized designs. Heiduk originally designed Wall House II as a residence to be built in Ridgefield ...

(Groningen, 2001) File:HejdukKreuzbergTower1.jpg, Kreuzberg Tower and Wings
(Berlin, Germany, 1988) File:HejdukKreuzbergTower2.jpg, Kreuzberg Tower and Wings
(Berlin, Germany, 1988) File:Wall House2.JPG,

design from the 1970s, built posthumously (Groningen, The Netherlands, 2001) File:2013. Torres Hejduk. Cidade da Cultura. Santiago de Compostela - Galiza-2.jpg, In

Santiago de Compostela Santiago de Compostela is the capital of the autonomous community of Galicia, in northwestern Spain. The city has its origin in the shrine of Saint James the Great, now the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, as the destination of the Way of S ...

, Spain

The Rolling House

In 2019, students of the Faculty of Architecture of the Czech Technical University in Prague led by Hana Seho built the object ''The Rolling House'' according to drawings by John Hejduk. The project was created in the studio during the Summer School of Building on the topic of minimal mobile building. The realization took place in October and November 2019. The building was unveiled on November 11, 2019, as a celebration of the 30th anniversary of the

Velvet Revolution The Velvet Revolution ( cs, Sametová revoluce) or Gentle Revolution ( sk, Nežná revolúcia) was a non-violent transition of power in what was then Czechoslovakia, occurring from 17 November to 28 November 1989. Popular demonstrations agains ...

and as a gift to

Alena Šrámková Alena is a feminine given name from the origins Russia and Czechia. People Alena is a variant of Helen. People with this name include: * Saint Alena (died 640), born in Dilbeek, Belgium, and martyred c. 640 * Alena Douhan, Belarusian diplom ...

for her 90th birthday.

Conceptual works

* Diamond Houses (1962) * Identity Card Man (Victim Series, 1986) * Cemetery for the Ashes of Thought (1975) * Berlin Masque (1981) * Cathedral (1996) * Chapel, Wedding of the Sun and Moon (1998)

Bibliography

* ''Lines: No Fire Could Burn'' (1999) * ''Education of an Architect a Point of View'' (1988, 1999) * ''Pewter Wings Golden Horns Stone Veils: Wedding in a Dark Plum Room'' (1997) * ''Adjusting Foundations'' (1995) * ''Architectures in Love'' (1995) * ''Security'' (1995) * ''Berlin Night'' (1993) * ''Soundings'' (1993) * ''Aesop's Fables'' with Joseph Jacobs. Illustrations by John Hejduk. (1991) * ''Práce (Practice)'' (1991) * ''The Riga Project'' (1989) * ''Vladivostok'' (1989) * ''Bovisa'' (1987) * ''Victims'' (1986) * ''Mask of Medusa'' (1985) * ''Fabrications'' (1974) * ''Three Projects'' (1969)

References

External links

Georgia Tech Sculptures to Appear in Hejduk Retrospective at Whitney Museum

Finding aid for the John Hejduk fonds

digitized items

Wohnhaus „Tor- und Uhrenhaus

Find and Tell: Michael Meredith on the John Hejduk fonds

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hejduk, John 1929 births 2000 deaths 20th-century American architects 20th-century American male writers 20th-century American non-fiction writers American architecture writers American male non-fiction writers Architects from New York City Architecture educators Cooper Union alumni Harvard Graduate School of Design alumni University of Cincinnati alumni