The Stone Hill Center is something of a tease. I was
hoping for a building such as the Carpenter Center,
where Corbusier designed a sort of late-career glossary.
continued from page 84 new pond at the foot of a treasured hillside meadow—a major intervention that
will tie together the Clark’s existing Berkshire
campus. As of now, though, only a single, rather
minor outbuilding has been realized, up the hill
in the woods.
The Clark is a fine little museum with a varied
collection, about which I knew absolutely nothing
before visiting its lonely corner of northwestern
Massachusetts last summer, despite a lifetime in or
near the state. For the next 25 years or so, a visit
there can be paired with a stop at the must-see Sol
LeWitt installation at Mass MoCA, the work of a
team of 60 artists and students who re-created the
murals according to recipes provided by the artist
before his death. By the time that exhibit closes—
the rights to the LeWitts are only on long-term
loan—the whole Ando plan for the Clark may be
completed; it could be among his best work.
What stands there now, just opened, are two
small galleries, a classroom, and a conservation
facility. The Stone Hill Center is something of
a tease. I suppose I was hoping for a building such
as Harvard’s Carpenter Center, where Corbusier
designed a sort of late-career glossary, a compendium of all his moves. But Ando doesn’t have that
many moves. He thinks in walls, and when he gets
really inspired he may curve one. More often, he
cuts one of his walls into a “seven” shape, grabbing
or penetrating an otherwise unbroken box, as he
did at the Church of the Light. If you’re going to
have so few moves, it’s not a bad one to lean on.
A pair of “seven” walls at the Clark does a lot:
accommodating the grade of its forested hillside
site, forming a large terrace with nice mountain
views. What more should walls do? The press conference to celebrate the opening last summer was
staged in a room with a gracious window looking
out over a very narrow court (and a cluster of Noguchis on loan) to one such wall. Someone asked
Ando why he put it there. The obvious answer was
to screen the parking lot from view. But he seemed
genuinely flummoxed, speaking fewer Japanese
words than usual in response; when the translation
of his answer spooled back (even though, people
who have spent time with him confirm, Ando
speaks very good English), it was revealed that the
great architect placed the wall there to “divide one
space from another.”
Such is the use to which any wall might be put.
But to do so in concrete gives the gesture the power
of certainty, and thus a great dignity, even in a
building so minor and compact. Though the walls
may crumble in places and reveal their rebar
bones, though these may rust out and the whole
blow away in time, at the scale of human life spans,
at least, they are permanent. Or at least a bitch to
move. A metalworker friend of mine once told me
of the superhuman rush of joining metal to metal
with heat, the godlike appeal. Building in concrete
must offer a similar feeling to the architect. It is
forever, almost. Nothing goes to ruin better. And,
while we wait for the Clark to build out its Ando
plan, the Stone Hill Center, °whole or ruined, is certainly an asset to the land. T
