ROSTOM VOSKANIAN AND AN ARCHITECTURAL LEGACY
Friday, September 20th, 2013 | Posted by Contributor
Rostom Voskanian in his home-studio, Glendale, California. (Photo by
Talinn Grigor, 1999 & 2001)
BY TALINN GRIGOR, PH.D.
The architectural work of Rostom Voskanian can be described as a sober,
a real, and a deeply persuasive answer to the wide-ranging dilemmas
of modernisms between the 1960s to the 1990s. Primarily working in a
rapidly developing Iran, Voskanian’s architecture was born out of a
Beaux-Art tradition that helped transform and define Iranian as well
as diasporic Armenian modernism.
Of the Architect
Voskanian was born into an Armenian family from Tabriz. He was
picked as the fifth recipient of the prestigious Paris scholarship
for architects who were sponsored by the state to study in France.
Graduating from the l’Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1964, he returned to
Tehran University as an assistant professor, initially working with
renowned Iranian architect and educator, Houshang Seyhoun. Voskanian
soon became the Dean of Tehran University’s School of Architecture
after Seyhoun and chaired it until the temporary closing of the
university in 1980. In an interview with me some ten years ago,
Voskanian noted, “Those who returned from Europe had a considerable
influence.” Seyhoun, himself one of the earliest Beaux-Art architects
in Iran, was critical of the “design of Armenian architects,” namely
leading first generation architects Vartan Hovanessian and Gabriel
Guevrekian, because, as Voskanian noted, “they were after modernism.”
In the mid-1960s, trends were changing swiftly in Iran and Voskanian
was initially a witness to and soon an instigator of these stylistic
transformations. By the early 1970s, “the university saw the
birth of Regionalism, cultural sensitivity,” maintained Voskanian,
adding, “Finally, we gave up Formalism.” The discourse on Iranian
architecture had shifted from the International Style of the 1930s
and the Beaux-Arts principles of the 1950s to the reinvention of a
new modern and local architecture of and for Iran.
In 1973, Voskanian made a special visit to the office of the renowned
architect, Louis Kahn, and examined his large-scale works that paid
particular attention to details. Kahn’s monumental regionalism had
a particular influence on Voskanian’s subsequent architecture. Kahn
was proposing to the world a new modernism that was regional and
modernistic; a tradition that Voskanian carried forward so faithfully
in Iran. At the time, Voskanian could not have known that the last two
decades of his creative life would be spent not too far from Kahn’s
masterpiece: the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla,
California.
In 1974, Voskanian became the head of the architectural department
for the following three years, when the revolutionary movement forced
him to resign his post. Championed and often sponsored by Empress
Farah Pahlavi, notable examples of this new regionalism included
praiseworthy examples in Tehran: Kamran Diba’s Tehran Museum of
Contemporary Art (1976); Amanat’s Shahyad Aryamehr Monument-Museum
(1971-74); Nader Ardalan’s Iran Centre for Management Studies (1974);
and Voskanian’s Holy Cross Chapel on the grounds of Ararat Sport
Stadium (1987). These outstanding works of architecture represent
the originality, productivity, and stylistic richness that existed
in modern Iran.
Of the Masterpiece
Voskanian undertook his largest commission in 1971 for the Ararat
Armenian Cultural Organization: a 10,000 seat athletic stadium in
Northern Tehran. The land of some 2 hectares had historically belonged
to the Armenian community as a Christian cemetery from the 17th
century. A six-member committee was formed to manage the establishment
of this massive project. A design completion was organized, wherein
Voskanian won the first prize. He had been a longtime member of
Ararat organization and a veteran sportsman and mountaineer. That he
was one of the leading architects of Iran sealed the selection. But
there was something else at play here. Voskanian was above all a man
of integrity, a people’s architect. Unlike postmodernists, modern
architects believed in changing the world for the better for everyone.
The welfare of ordinary people was always at stake, always at the
forefront of priority. For Voskanian this was of essence. And like
Voskanian, this priority has come and gone.
Detail of Holy Cross Chapel, Ararat Stadium complex, Tehran, Iran.
(Photo by Talinn Grigor, 1999)
That Voskanian won the bid was indicative of the populist spirit
of the project. Chairman of central broad of directors and head
of constructions of Ararat, Vachik Gharabegian, was pivotal to
inseminating among the Armenian community of Iran, the idea of
ownership. Of owning one’s land, one’s culture, and thus one’s
destiny. An essential aspect of that will to ownership was the
realization of the Ararat project. Donations were collected from the
community. The architect and his team were supported by the board of
directors in this politically and financially sensitive undertaking.
At the end, Voskanian’s design successfully rose to the expectations
of the will of the people, of openness, of transparency, and of
communal ownership.
A topographically difficult terrain with a difference in elevation
of 26 meters, Voskanian managed to turn it into a series of highly
functional and spatially effective agglomeration arranged around
the soccer field and each maintaining their individuality and
independence. The modernist design of the structures went hand in hand
with the choice of the material and function: pure concrete, brick,
and glass. The people’s stuff. The complex was ready for partial use
as of 1975; the project was handed over to the Executive Board of
Ararat in late 1976.
The project’s implication for the Armenian community not only in
Tehran, but also all around Iran and Asia has been vast since the
insemination of the project. This space has become a sanctuary for
Christian Armenians in order to survive as an independent cultural,
ethnic, religious, and linguistic minority in the Islamic Republic
of Iran. The Ararat Sport Stadium has provided Armenians the space
upon which to practice their cultural and linguistic heritage and
to preserve its ethnic and religious distinctiveness. The masterful
architecture of the varied spaces of the complex has been since its
construction the key to this preservation: a large open-air stadium,
several indoor and outdoor sports halls, tennis courts, offices,
classrooms, meeting halls, storage rooms, shops, camping areas, parking
amenities, and a world-class swimming facility. In the following years,
the stadium was used for significant community and national events as
a result of its successful spatial configuration, solid construction,
and forward-looking engineering.
Voskanian’s Holy Cross Chapel on the southeastern corner of the campus
was an addition after the Iranian Revolution of 1979, which certainly
encapsulates, not only the architect’s artistic and architectural
brilliance, but also his lifelong commitment to both the people and
to a local modernism: the modern Armenian religious structure. The
Iranian Revolution that took an Islamic turn in 1980-82 gave urgency
to the construction of an explicitly Christian icon in the existing
stadium complex. Iranian identity framed by the authorities in terms
of religion, compelled minorities, including Armenians, to represent
themselves as religious minorities. Although initially the complex was
designed and used as a secular space, Ararat’s governing committee
judged it best in the early 1980s to erect an Armenian Apostolic
chapel in order to continue to preserve the complex as a property
belong to the Armenian community.
Holy Cross Chapel, Ararat Stadium complex, Tehran, Iran. (Photo by
Talinn Grigor, 1999)
As many properties were being seized during the chaos of the
revolution, the governing committee petitioned for an urgent approval
of the design of the proposed chapel by the Armenian Apostolic
Prelacy of Iran. Voskanian’s scheme was a masterpiece of modern
Armenian architecture: a reinterpretation in poured concrete of
the best examples of medieval Armenian churches, transformed into
an interwoven system of supports, openings, and suspensions. While
remaining true to the symmetric and central floor plan of domed
architecture of medieval Armenian churches, for instance that of
Saint Hripsimeh in Ejmiatsin or the Holy Cross (Surb Khatch) on the
island of Akhtamar, Voskanian carves out a novel form that boldly
incarnates the elevation and section of traditional churches into
an allegorical representation of the Christian cross: simultaneously
ancient and avant-garde. An architecture of sculpture or a sculpted
architecture, the chapel stands as the most powerful symbol of the
endurance of Armenian identity as both ancient and contemporary.
Voskanian avant-garde architecture was highly progressive and
revolutionary, then and now. Finding the proposal, as it were, “too
modern and unorthodox,” the Armenian prelate ordered the imitation
of a church in Antioch, Syria, dating from the 19th century. “Your
holiness, I am either building this or nothing at all,” Voskanian
replied. A man of integrity, of principles. A modern man of the
people; a true modernist architect. To this, the stadium’s chairman,
Baghdik Der Grigorian had added, “Clearly sir, you don’t grasp the
real implication of this monument, skirmishing over its style.” The
architect tirelessly supervised the complex and unique construction
process of the matur during the following months. In September 1987,
the matur was ordained. “I never approached the chapel as a political
work,” Voskanian told me decades later, “That which has been built,
is a reality that remains; people change their political views,
which have no influence on my art.” The matur has helped maintain
the stadium as an essential aspect of the preservation of Armenian
cultural heritage in Iran.
Of the Legacy
As are most revolutions in the habit of doing, the Iranian Revolution,
has taken away from artists and architects their livelihood and peace
of mind, as well as their guarantee of posterity: the architecture.
Voskanian left behind a legacy and a tradition in Iranian-Armenian
modern architecture when he left Tehran in 1988. By so doing, he
also left behind his architectural practice. Moving to Southern
California, he showed an exceptional ability to adopt. With his
Beaux-Arts training, Voskanian dropped the ruler and picked up the
brush, perhaps because to a Beaux-Arts-trained architect, painting
and sculpting are sub-processes of the artistic process. He restlessly
produced works of art in his home-studio in Glendale. This resulted,
over the last two decades, in a series of very successful one-person
and group exhibitions in various North American cities.
Yet at the core, Voskanian remained a modernist architect. His matur
embodies one of the few examples of Armenian contemporaneity in
architecture; an exquisite answer to the history of architecture’s
modernism, to Corbu, Mies, Gropius, and Kahn. The matur is
a masterpiece. With the skillful pouring of concrete, with its
protruding three-dimensional crosses, with its low modernist interior
reliefs, and with its quadrupling of design, it is an answer to “how
does modern Armenian architecture would look like?” An answer to the
Modern Movement, of which Voskanian was a faithful prodigy.
Simultaneously, his works belong to the rich repertoire of Armenian
architecture tradition and long heritage. His legacy is the persistence
of the modern and the traditional in Armenian art history.
Therein rest his work’s genius. The matur, as all his other
architectural and fine arts creations, stand tall as brilliant
manifestos of his intellectual power, his profound philosophy, his
artistic talent, and his unique instinct and insight to reveal to us
the essence of modernity.
That both King Gagik’s cathedral on the Akhtamar island and
Voskanian’s chapel on the grounds of Ararat stadium are named Holy
Cross is prophetic. Both stand proud as representative masterworks of
Armenian architecture, one of the Middle Ages and the other of the
modern era. Gagik’s exquisite high reliefs on the surface of Holy
Cross are echoed by the equally exquisite minimalism of the poured
concrete of Voskanian’s Holy Cross. One could touch both surfaces
and grasp the artistic spirit of its time. Both speak so sincerely
of their Zeitgeist (spirit of the age), of their place, of their
artistic foresight. Visionary and deeply true.
To have lost one’s context in which one had made his name, yet to
persistently continue to create original, thought-provoking, and
critical work of art is a mark of an exceptional mind, a pure heart,
and a true artist. Voskanian was that architect-artist. To have
lost that artist to cancer is the loss of not one but two nations,
if not the entire artistic world. Not one, but two nations are at
a loss today. Not one but two nations ought to mourn today. One of
unmatched talent, one of integrity and honor, one who believed in the
project of modernity and with his creation, became one with it. May
he rest in peace as his art endures onto eternity.
Talinn Grigor is Professor of Art History at Brandeis University,
in Wellesley, Mass.
http://asbarez.com/114145/rostom-voskanian-and-an-architectural-legacy/