The act of creating architecture, whether it is a monumental structure or a simple dwelling, involves a transformation of the natural environment and a reconfiguration of the relationship between humans and nature.

Furthermore, representations of nature—in particular the Picturesque as a traditional way of making and portraying landscape architecture—have had a profound impact on our understanding and experience of the world. In this interview, British architect Sam Jacob joins Marie Coulon, Director of Betts Project—a London-based contemporary architecture gallery—to discuss the ideas and fascinations behind his forthcoming exhibition and whether “nature” is a constructed image rather than as an objective reality, one that reflects constantly evolving ideas shaped by different cultural, social, and historical forces, including architecture.

KOOZ Sam, Against Nature is both an exhibition “about architecture, landscape and nature” but also about the “guilt, power, loss and hope intrinsic to architecture.” What prompted the agenda and line of enquiry of the show?

SAM JACOB I always found the following quote by Julian Cope, as an amateur observing the stone circles throughout the United Kingdom and Europe, extremely compelling:

"Setting up great stones was an enormous psychological act, further removing the agriculturalists from their formerly harmonious relationship with the earth. And it is that initial separation from the earth, over 5,000 years ago, which has opened up into such a great cleft over the ensuing years and caused so great a feeling of cultural dispossession and hopeless guilt." - Julian Cope, The Modern Antiquarian

I was particularly intrigued by how these initial forms of architecture, which revolved around the shifting of a stone by 90 degrees, could swiftly transform a natural artefact into a completely artificial structure. It is quite fascinating how these single movements were somehow tied to an idea of remaking nature, whether this was at the scale of the land or the cosmos. Cope’s phrase “dispossession and hopeless guilt” suggests that those acts were as destructive as constructive, as nihilistic as optimistic. I think it’s interesting to think of these sentiments as intrinsic to architecture today, because architecture is a process that is always both the destruction and remaking of the world.

The show also portrays the picturesque as both a tradition of paintings and landscape making. Particularly, how the picturesque landscape is a strange concoction formed at the intersection between images, land, botany, power and myth. An abstract idea about nature projects onto the land with such power that it becomes a heightened image of nature. A kind of high-fidelity simulation of nature made out of nature, the picturesque shows how representations of nature have acted to transform the world itself.

Against Nature uses antique prints of neolithic monuments and found landscape oil paintings as sites with abstract geometries painted into and onto them. These ‘found’ representational sources come freighted with their own cultural meanings and histories so the new additions work against that ground. The works, I think, are about the ways in which different ideologies, different conceptions of reality—as expressed through arrangements of stones or images of landscape—fundamentally change the nature of the world. “Nature” itself is as much an ideological construct as it is a found condition.

KOOZ How does this second solo exhibition relate to Empire of Ice Cream—the first show at Betts back in 2019—and to your wider architectural practice?

SJ As an architect, I like to investigate the practice through drawing, writing, and building. I try to keep all three approaches stylistically open to avoid a visual signature. Nonetheless, what ties all these media together is my interestin the reuse of elements, a fascination which can be traced back to a curiosity for the relationship between history and the contemporary. For example, in Empire of Ice Cream, the drawings were done with felt tips on available graph paper and stitched together elements which referenced structures from the Pantheon to football pitches, from Greek temples to doubly loaded corridors. Within this second exhibition at Betts, this motivation is explicitly evident in the use of the found prints as canvasses for the works. Against Nature also features a three-dimensional neon Stonehenge hanging in the centre of the gallery. It’s both a model and a drawing, a representation of architecture and architecture, a sign and a thing itself. I think this embodies an idea that runs through my practice—exploring representation as something which does not stop at the page, something that becomes the project. Not representation of something but representation as something: architecture itself as a form of representation.

KOOZ The project stems from the premise that “Architecture is always against nature.” To what extent is the exhibition a research into the declinations of this antagonistic relationship? What is the power of these works as visual commentaries on the contemporary imbalance in between the built and the un-built?

SJ The project argues that our understanding of nature is formed ideologically. In a sense, it is a direct response to current debates framing architecture in particular ways in relation to the climate crisis. The exhibition claims that there is no such thing as “natural”, no Edenic era pre-existing the Industrial Revolution, exactly the way Julian Cope describes it. The paintings recall architecture and landscape that even in pre-history—physically and spatially—re-organised the world in dramatic ways. The abstract projections inserted within the neolithic monuments and landscape oil paintings exaggerate and recontextualise this tension between human inhabitation of the land and the land itself. How that occupation inevitably means nature has been continuously imagined and recreated. Our relationship with the environment is more complex, difficult and intertwined than contemporary discussions often allow. Sustainability is a cultural and ideological question as much as it is a technical one and the questions raised by the climate crisis are questions about humanity. As the title suggests, we are always against nature in both problematic and optimistic ways:

Against as in next to. Against as in contrasting. Against as in protecting. Against as in anticipating. Against as in resisting. Against as in facing. Against as in touching. Against as in challenging. Against as in opposing. Against as defending. Against as defying. Against as a debit. Against as towards. Against as before. Against as comparison. Against as compensation. Against as contradicting. Against as preparation. Against as in supporting.

KOOZ Marie, Betts project seeks to both “introduce a specialist audience and wider public to new ways of discovering and thinking about architecture.” What interests you about architecture?

MC As a non-architect, I am very much interested in the drawings produced by architects as I see these as insights into their brain and as an unveiling of their ideas. These collages, drawings, sketches, models are the “before”. I see these un-built moments as sites for research and, most importantly, as the grammar and language through which architects can articulate their visions.

Bio

Sam Jacob is principal of Sam Jacob Studio for architecture and design, a practice whose work spans scales and disciplines from urban design through architecture, design, art and curatorial projects. Current and recent projects include a gallery in south London, a new mixed use building in Hoxton, and the National Collections Centre in Wiltshire. He has worked internationally on award winning projects and has exhibited at major museums such as the V&A, MAK, and The Art Institute of Chicago as well as cultural events including the Venice Architecture Biennale. He is Professor of Architecture at UIC, Chicago, and has been visiting professor at the University of Hong Kong, Yale School of Architecture and ABK Stuttgart he is a columnist for Art Review. Previously he was a founding director of FAT Architecture.

Betts Project is a London based commercial gallery specialising in contemporary architecture. Founded in 2014 by Marie Coulon, the gallery looks to introduce both a specialist audience and wider public to new ways of discovering architecture through the exhibition and promotion of its drawings and sculptures. Typically these images are not the technical illustrations of a building’s design or construction, but more personal and often more artful artefacts generated by architects as a way to stimulate ideas, reveal obsessions or simply as a form of intellectual diversion. The gallery’s aim is to support and promote work by established and emerging international architects, as well as lesser known or overlooked practices still very much relevant to the contemporary discourse.

Federica Zambeletti is the founder and managing director of KoozArch. She is an architect, researcher and digital curator whose interests lie at the intersection between art, architecture and regenerative practices. In 2015 Federica founded KoozArch with the ambition of creating a space where to research, explore and discuss architecture beyond the limits of its built form. Parallel to her work at KoozArch, Federica is Architect at the architecture studio UNA and researcher at the non-profit agency for change UNLESS where she is project manager of the research "Antarctic Resolution". Federica is an Architectural Association School of Architecture in London alumni.