CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Heaven and Hell, Belgrade 1996 Essay by Michele Saee
Introduction by Claude ParentLife’s Work, Work Process, and Philosophy by Michele Saee
Coincidences & Accidents, 1981–1985 Superstudio- Morphosis
ON MY OWN
1985
SPRECHER HOUSE
Pacific Palisades, CA, USA
1984–1985 (built)
Single family House
Chair 1985, Coffee Table
Los Angeles, CA, USA
1985 (built)
Furniture
I had difficulties
Shedding influences
Angeli Tattoria
Los Angeles, CA, USA
1986 (built)
Restaurant
-
Borgen street house
Los Angeles, CA, USA
1986 (not built)
Single family House
Ecru Melrose
Los Angeles, CA, USA
1987 (built)
Clothing Store -
434 Apartments
Los Angeles, CA, USA
1986–1989 (built)
20-unit Apartments
Capitaine Restaurant
Los Angeles, CA, USA
1987 (not built)
Restaurant -
Chapman Jones House
Brentwood, CA, USA
1988 (built)
Single family House
Design Express
Los Angeles, CA, USA
1988 (built)
Furniture Store
-
Sun House
West Covina, CA, USA
1989–1990 (built)
Single family House
Body, Essay by Nick Gillock, 1990
Meivsanah House
Los Angeles, CA, USA
1990 (not built)
Single family House
Piazzale Roma
Venice, Italy
1990 (not built)
Urban Design proposal
Ecru Marina
Marina Del Rey, CA, USA
1990, (built)
Clothing Store
Angeli Mare
Los Angeles, CA, USA
1991 (built)
Restaurant
Pave Jewelry
Brentwood, CA, USA
1991 (built)
Jewelry Store
Cosmetic
Dental Clinic
Beverly Hills, CA, USA
1992 (built)
Dental Clinic
Atwater Tea+Coffee
Atwater, CA, USA
1982 (built) Café
Hides Sketches of Space
Paris, France
1993
Proprioception
Tallahassee, Florida, USA
1994 (built)
Student Meeting Place
Art Works For Children
Beverly Hills, California, USA
1994 (built)
Exhibition Space -
Life in Transition 1994
Golzari house
Malibu, California, USA
1996 (not built)
Single family House
Petrosino Park
New York City, New York, USA
1996 (not built)
Urban Park -
Michele Saee is not part of the conventional parlance
Essay by Eric Owen Moss
Turku Library
Turku, Finland
1996 competition (not built)
Library, Residential, Commercial
Artist Studio
Los Angeles, California, USA
1997 conceptual (not built)
Work Studio, Gallery and Living
Hermes, International Cultural Center
Sinalunga, Italy
1999–2002 (not built)
Cultural Center for Comparative Studies among Cultures
Linnie House
Venice Canal, California, USA
2000–2005 (built)
Single family House
Cellular Fantasy
Santa Monica, California, USA
2001–2001 (built)
Retail and Offices for a Wireless Company
Publicis Drugstore
Paris, France
2000–2004 (built)
Multi-Functional
Retail, Commercial, and Communication Space
Café Nescafe
Paris, France
2000–2002 (built)
Café prototype for Nestle, France
-
SCI-Arc Exhibition
Los Angeles, California, USA
2003 (built)
Sculpture
Santa Marinella
City Hall
Santa Marinella, Italy
2004 competition (not built)
City Hall, Offices, and Social Center
-
Pathé Cinemas
Paris, France
2004 (not built)
Multiplex Cinema and Entertainment Complex.
The Template house
Beijing, P.R. China
2004 (built)
Model Apartment
Via De La Paz house
Pacific Palisades, California, USA
2005 (built)
Single family House
Banda Ache
Banda Ache, Indonesia
2006 (not built)
Prefabricated Housing
Paris Landmark
Paris, France
2005 (not built)
Olympic Landmark, and Event Space -
Museum of Antiquity
Beijing, P.R. China
2006 (built)
Exhibition of Antique Buildings, Furniture, and Objects
Piazza Brunelleschi
Florence, Italy
2005 (not built)
Humanities Library at the University of Florence, ItalySky
Beijing, P.R. China
2006 (built)
Exhibition and Multifunctional Space -
Golden Terraces of Alexa
Inner Mongolia, P.R. China
2006 (not built)
Residential, Commercial, and Entertainment
Shakespearean Theater
London, England
2006 (not built)
Experimental Theater -
FPT Tower
Hanoi, Vietnam
2007 (not built) Office Building
BIDV Tower
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
2007 (not built)
Commercial Office Building
Shanghai Aquarium
Shanghai, P.R. China
2007 (not built)
Aquarium and Theater
Xiamen Aquarium
Xiamen, P.R. China
2009 (not built)
Aquarium and Park
Vision
Beijing, P.R. China 2009 (built)
Vision Magazine Offices, and Studios
Baycities
Beverly Hills, California, USA
2009 (built)
Kitchen Cabinets, and Appliances Store
CRLand Mountain
Beijing, P.R. China
2010 (not built)
Residential Garden
Community
Nanchang Center
Nanchang, P.R. China
2010 (not built)
Community Center
Pedestrian Bridge
Amsterdam, Netherlands
2011 (not built)
Pedestrian Bridge
Glenroy House
Bel Air, California, USA
2012 (built)
Single family House
Pedestrian Bridge
Qingdao, P.R. China
2011 (not built)
Pedestrian Bridge
Guanyin Center
Shanghai, P.R. China
2013 (not built)
Cultural, Entertainment, and Commercial Center
Tahiti Marina Apartments
Marina Del Ray, California, USA
2011–2014 (built) Apartment Building
Vietnam Tower
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam 2016 (not built)
Mixed-use Commercial, Hotel, and residential
Ghaleh Morghi
Tehran, Iran
1980 (not built)
Independent Community
Michele Saee is, therefore, like the platypus...
Essay by Luigi
Prestinenza Puglisi
The city is dead and no amount of examining the body will tell you anything about the life it once had or where that life has gone. The form of industrial production that fed the city, as a life form, can no longer be maintained when the forms of production of its capital have been changing. This was how I discovered Belgrade after the tragedies of war in 1996. I was invited to a conference called “PROJEKT X” where one of the organizers was my Sci-Arc colleague and friend Mark Hawker.
As a student in Florence, I visited the old Yugoslavia during President Tito’s administration—hailed as a glorious period of communism. It saddened me to see it again in its post-war condition. The image of the war-ravaged city is still vivid in my memories. There were artists, designers, performers, thinkers, and philosophers gathered from different parts of the world in solidarity. All looking for clues to why it was almost effortless to lose our collective humanity, to get engaged in the destruction of ourselves and others in just a few years.
I invited my class from SCI-Arc to join me. Nick, Emil, and Maryanne accepted with enthusiasm. I was uncomfortable leaving my wife Arezou, who was pregnant with our son, with our daughter, but she insisted I go. I missed our group flight because of a mistake in the ticket booking, so I had to leave the following day, which meant we’d meet in Belgrade. This was an intensely emotional time in my life because of the birth of my son, my financial difficulties, and the lack of satisfaction with my work.
I got on the plane the following day and the torturous trip began. The airports in Yugoslavia were shut down, so we had to fly to Budapest via Berlin. Once in Budapest, I had to find my way to the train station to make it to the border of Yugoslavia, and then from there who knew. My thoughts were flying aimlessly. The images of war I’d seen from the media became more and more realistic as I got closer to my destination. A force was pulling me and I could not identify it. I was filled with a sense of melancholy.
I arrived in Budapest without feeling or experiencing it. One of the most beautiful and historical cities left no impression on me. I ran to the train station and before I knew it we were traveling to the countryside. The mood aboard the train changed quickly as we were getting closer to the border. I soon realized that I was being watched and followed. Moving from one cabin to the next confirmed I was right. A middle-aged woman approached me with her thick accent and broken English asking me if I was American. I replied, “No, I am Iranian.” She was curious about where I was headed and I told her I am going to Belgrade to meet friends. She cautioned me not to trust anyone and I laughed for the first time since the trip began.
The weather was piercing cold with no heat in the train. Looking out of the window I imagined people running in the opposite direction, away from the war, yet here I was going in. My fellow travelers dwindled the farther we got away from Budapest, but a handful of people took their place when we reached the border city. I got out and walked through the station searching for friendly eyes. Ultimately, that was all I could do. If I follow my destiny, eventually I’ll get to Belgrade I thought.
I was walking up to people asking, "Belgrade? Belgrade?” hoping that someone would direct me to the right place. Finally, a young man pointed to an area where a group of people were gathered and responded, "Belgrade." I waited there for some time until a station wagon came by. After a few confusing exchanges and help from the young man, I got a ticket and was on the bus. It was a strange feeling not being able to speak with people in a common language, but liberating to interact with feelings, gestures and eyes. My friend, I never got his name, was a student at the University of Belgrade and was going to Hungry to buy supplies for his family. Not long after we started our trip we stopped at a border station and the guard peeked inside, gesturing that we could go.
The frigid night on the bumpy, dirt roads caused discomfort for most of our trip, but that didn’t stop me from passing out for a few hours. We arrived in Belgrade early in the morning. The bus dropped us off at a piazza and a taxi then took me to the conference site where I united with my team. It was obvious that they were also in shock after their trip to Belgrade. The reality was much darker than any of us could imagine. We were witnessing lifeless, hopeless, and desperate people amongst destruction where there once stood a vibrant city filled with kind, caring, and loving people. This moment in history gave us a glimpse of the human capability to destroy the self and others.
I wanted to scream, but what would that have accomplished? I felt hopeless just like them. On the other hand, looking to the students of the University of Belgrade put fire in my belly and gave me faith. They were the hope in this terrible circumstance, working tirelessly to send a message to the rest of the world that they were alive and no war could destroy their spirit or creativity. My team and I decided to do a performance/installation before our departure to thank our hosts and show them that we stood with them in solidarity.
I recalled a story I was told by my mother based on the allegory of the long spoons. The source of the story is unknown and has become part of the folklore of different cultures. It is an inspiring story about how the survival of humanity is about caring and loving the other, which fit the moment and place we were in.
We selected a space in the sugar factory, which felt like a nave. The space was about 80 feet long, 30 feet wide, and 30 feet high. Its central part was the perfect stage for our installation. We used the debris of the dismantled factory machinery to construct the base for a 30-foot table. Meanwhile, we’d collect branches from the trees around the factory and with the borrowed spoons from the cafeteria we’d build the long spoons. The PROJEKT X organizers offered to provide the food and wine, which was greatly appreciated. The event was taking place on the night of our departure. We sent the invitation to a group of friends and new people we’d connected with, then set the table with goulash, bottles of local wine, and bread. Everyone met at a gathering spot in the courtyard where we blindfolded them and tied a spoon to each of their hands. We’d then guide them into a queue. After everyone was ready we led them into the dining space, lit with hundreds of candles, and positioned them on opposite sides of the table. Once everyone was in their position, we removed their eye covers, thanked them for their participation, and instructed them to help themselves to the food and wine we had made especially for them. It didn’t take long before the first person used their spoon to feed someone on the opposite site, and immediately after the event took off.
The message was clear. As members of a global community, we need each other and we need to take care of one another if we want a better world for ourselves and future generations. Like most messages we need reminders now and then. In those few hours we all connected spiritually and hoped for a better world. Then our transportation was ready to take us to the border. After saying goodbye to our friends and team of organizers we got into the station wagon and as we were getting farther away from the sugar factory, the reality of the war-damaged country resurfaced like a nightmare. We were stopped a few times by the military guards and our passports were checked. We didn’t say much during the trip as we were all processing the intense experience we just had.
The original fable goes like this: A woman dies and is going to be sent to Heaven. The day finally arrives when her guardian angel appears to take her. On their way to Heaven, they pass by Hell’s gate and the woman asks if she can visit. Her angel gives her permission and they enter. She is astonished to see a beautiful field with fruit trees, milk and honey running through the streams, and the sun shining. It was divine, unlike anything she has ever seen. Finally, they approach the dinner table in the center of the field. She can hardly believe her eyes. Before her is an incredible setup with vegetables, fruits, and foods of every kind. She is perplexed and can’t understand how it is that Hell could be so fantastic. Then she sees people making their way to the table. They are famished, exhausted, with faces full of sadness and bitterness. Strangely enough, she notices that there are long spoons tied to their hands. She keeps asking her angel, “Why? Why are these people, with all that surrounds them, are they so miserable?” The angel's reply is to wait and see for herself. The people keep arriving from left and right and try to start eating, but their long spoons don’t allow for the food to reach their mouths. They try to throw the food in the air and to catch it with their widened jaws, but are ultimately unsuccessful. The woman is saddened and asks her angel if they can leave. Once they leave, they make their way to the gates of Heaven. The woman is even more surprised when she notices that Heaven resembles Hell to every detail. Everything is replicated. Even the same table with the same food. She sees people arriving from all directions, but something is different. The people are a lot healthier and a lot happier, even with the same spoons attached to their hands. To the woman's astonishment, she watches everyone sit down to eat, observing them using their spoons to feed each other from opposites sides of the table.
(The above story has been paraphrased from an ancient Iranian fable.)
Introduction
by Claude Parent
Michele Saee first rubbed elbows with architecture when he was a very young man in Italy. He graduated with a Masters of Art in Architecture from the University of Florence complimenting Persian roots with a European art education.
By 1981, Italy had already given up on rational architecture. A long time had passed since Frank Lloyd Wright, with his love of the organic, had passed through Rome and Venice in the company of Bruno Zevi and working with the likes of Superstudio Michele was infected with the aggressive virus of the moment’s rebellious modernity.
With a post-graduate degree in urban studies from the Polytechnic Institute of Milan in 1982, Michele took his notoriously probative nature to Los Angeles and began his work with Morphosis, a firm strongly committed to research in avant-garde architecture.
Student life had equipped the young architect with two major assets: his critical sense and an appetite for invention. It was a time when a mixture of Michele’s own extreme sensitivity and consistently poetic solutions combined with his academic background. The result: an explosive combination requiring careful handling.
The temptation of an academic career eventually led him to take up teaching, first at the Otis College of Art and Design in 1986, and then in 1990 at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCIArc). Despite the prestige these positions afforded, the opportunity to meet some of the greatest architects of the time, and the pleasure and intellectual support he took away from it, I, nonetheless ponder what may have been lost for a maker of Michele’s caliber by these diversions.
In spite of his work at this time, evidence of the embarkation of a deeply sensitive individual’s dream to reconcile the interweaving of Eastern, Latin and American cultures
Combining his education and experimental nature with a style that could be described as “out of control,” Michele began to assert his ability to manifest radical work where “architecture is part of daily life and architectural production is the reflection of our needs, our desires, and our capacity to improve the quality of our relationships through our creativity and taste for adventure.”
My initial admiration of his work led us to a confusing mix of English, French, and Italian that no one else could ever understand, which gave way to an exchange and acknowledgment of our primal truths and essential commitments.
The impact of his magnificent models and drawings revealed to me a fabulous imagination, and, the confluence of our ideas on architecture inspired in me a sense of total support and commitment. The overlapping of languages ultimately allowed us to seal our friendship with a type communication freed from the shackles of analytically understanding. After exhausting ourselves for hours attempting to understand one another, his projects, full of emotion and mystery, finally revealed themselves.
Let us now consider some impression’s of the work of Michele Saee (both built and un-built) while leaving aside the cognizant language of critical analysis so that we may drift into a sort of daydream.
I have four impressions of Michele and his work. First: There is a gap between the discourse and the actual project. This gap is penetrated by a basic poetic element and a limitless imagination. Second: close-up, the permanent image of frozen waterfalls appear, as if the physical element had been stopped in its trajectory at a specific moment in time. This was Michele’s impulsive decision. Third: all projects have traces of geological layers that give his architecture an almost monumental dimension and morphology similar to a landscape or relief. The last impression, and by no means the least, is the
permanence of the staged movement of spaces and surfaces in order to attain a constant vision of imbalance. We must never forget that Michele Saee is by birth and education a child of instability and continuity.
Finally let’s look at his “Publicis Drugstore” on the Champs Elysees, facing the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. From the start it seemed like an impossible task: to preserve Pierre Dufau’s rigid, cubic building, while making changes to the building’s surface, and keeping the workers and the businesses going inside during remodeling. One cannot dream of a more dangerous project. I would have refused to do it. But Michele was courageous and readily embarked on this impossible manifesto. Because the employees refused to lose even the slightest amount of natural lighting, the building’s surface had to remain totally transparent, with no material effect of partial opacity, not even printed patterns. He chose to install a dynamic system that enveloped the original cube, a sort of intense tornado whose whirling volumes are so present that they succeed in replacing the older building despite their transparency. This basic confrontation is made subject to the sun, clouds, and the world passing by—at any moment, the building appearance subject to the whims of changing weather. Along with this acquiescence to visual elements in a continual flux, one must more readily accept an inevitable haziness in interpretation.
Yesterday, on a typical gray day for the Ile de France, I saw the Publicis Drugstore as a sail in skytones stretched taut by the wind. Walking up the Champs Elysees, one can choose either to become immersed as a part of the composition or to chart a path to best take in the spirals of glass and steel. To love this project you need to taste it, choose your favorite angles, become involved with it and conjure up your own imagination without any apprehension.
Claude Parent May 26, 2006
