"Attraverso i piani. Gli elementi e lo spazio dalla pittura di Juan Gris all’architettura di John Hejduk" "Through the Planes. The elements and spaces from the painting of Juan Gris to the architecture of John Hejduk"

“Do a building in the intention of Juan Gris!”. With this request John Hejduk (1929-2000) challenged his students at Cooper Union in New York to solve the “Juan Gris Problem”, an architectural composition exercise based on an analogy between art and architecture. Hejduk, educated in the post war years in architecture, bases his research on the necessity of bringing order to the discoveries of modern architecture, with particular attention to the consequences caused by the spatial “revolution” of Cubist painting. According to the hypothesis of this article, with the series of projects from 1968 to 1974, Hejduk carried out an operation of translation of spatial meanings from Cubist painting to architecture, with a particular affinity to the work of Juan Gris. Thanks to the analysis of original materials from Hejduk’s collection preserved at the Canadian Center of Architecture in Montreal (CCA), this article focuses on Hejduk’s theoretical hypothesis and the design outcomes to which it led, demonstrating the importance of the use of analogy as a means of interrelation between the arts, which can lead to the overcoming of disciplines boundaries, and to the discovery and advancement of knowledge.