Junk Space or Space Jumk: A Visit to Berlin's Free University

Main f acaede, corten steel replaced with bronze in Norman Foster retoration.Photo: Lena Giovanazzi, 2015. Source: web magaine Uncube (reference below)

Freie Universität Berlin
1962 (competition); 1967-72 (Phase 1)
Georgis Candilis, Alexis Josic & Shadrach Woods, architects.

I have wanted to see this legendary building for years - an entire university in a single sprawling structure, with a maze of interior streets and courtyards - an indoor city, like a souk, projected to extend over 350,000 m2 of space -3.5 million square feet- when complete. Though its pedigree is Team X -Candilis and Woods were founders of the group- I imagined it as a physical incarnation of concepts such as Constant's New Babylon or Yona Friedman's Spatial City, a fully-realized adolescent male fantasy of endless, random exploration and encounter - which, apparently, in its salad days of leaking facades and student strikes in the 1970s, it came close to being.

 Original plan. Source: web magazine Socks (full reference below)

But this is not the building my friends and I found. Perhaps we simply didn't wander far enough into the nether reaches of numerical-alphabetically-named passageways. But I wonder too if Norman Foster's restoration of 1997-2004, while saving the building for posterity, perhaps gentrified it as well. Or was it always, with its carpeted hallways and artificial air, its dropped ceilings and fluorescent lights, more akin to a 1960s airport concourse, shopping center, hotel convention center, or other forms of modern junk space? Too soberly German and institutional to be really avant-garde, despite the jazzy facades, the maze-like plan and the endless possibilities of its vastness. Our friend Michael Neil found it simply difficult to breathe. A real city turns out to be much more interesting.

Unless noted, all photos by DC

Strangely, like Hans Scharoun's Philharmonic and other monuments of West Berlin's Cold War period, the Freie Universität is unmistakably suburban in character, rather than urban, despite its enormous size: in its low, two- and three-story profile, in its disregard for street lines, in those grassy borders that separate it from the street like a suburban church. The only thing missing is a parking lot.

Rear facade in aluminum, from Phase II, 1973.79

Our friend Emily Pütter sees the anti-hierarchical character of the design, its bid for "free form" and all that, and its suburban American ethos, as clearly ideological. Of course. And it was built in the heart of the American sector, in suburban Zehlendorf. Similarly, Scharoun's Philharmonic, together with Mies' National Gallery and Scharoun's State Library, are haphazardly scattered in a park-like setting, right beside what was then the ravaged border of the wall, and now is steps away from a re-incarnated Potsdammer Platz, though the vibe is closer to Westchester or Shaker Heights.

Aerial view, 1974. Gabriel Feld and Peter Smithson, Free University, Berlin: Candilis, Josic, Woods, Schiedhelm. Exemplary Projects, 3 (London: Architectural Association, 1999), 16. Source: Socks.

But the vastness of the Freie Universität is ultimately impressive, at least from the inside - junk space of such a scale that it comes to feel like a Star Wars mothership or an artificial planet. Walking down the endless central corridor, with ramps sliding up and down to other levels and corridors peeling off at regular intervals, you feel as if the whole thing is cruising through interstellar space as you walk.

Next time in Berlin I must explore the building alone, like a spelunker, venturing deeper and deeper into its recondite byways, and try again to find the magic. Though the very fact that we were not tempted to do so seems telling.

We came close to such an epiphany in a little bookshop hidden off one of the garden courts. As we walked by some windows, a primitive sign outside caught our eye in a corner of the garden. We found a little door into the garden, followed a meandering, sloping path down into a sunken service road, which tunnels under several wings of the building, and entered a claustrophobic, windowless little basement space packed with books.

Two interesting web sites on the project:

Florian Heilmeyer
"Radically Modern in 60s Berlin (3): The Radically Modular Free University of West Berlin"
Uncube Magazine, Blog Berlin, June 15, 2015
http://www.uncubemagazine.com/blog/15799747

Mariabruna Fabrizi
"The Free University of Berlin (Candilis, Josic, Woods and Schiedhelm - 1963)"
Socks, 10.29.2015
http://socks-studio.com/2015/10/29/the-free-university-of-berlin-candilis-josic-woods-and-schiedhelm-1963/

From the latter, edited:

"The project proposed to transform the campus into a deeply interconnected city with internal streets, squares, courtyards and multiple walkways on the model of an Arabic Medina."

"The main concept was a radical rethinking of the educational system with an accent on the flexibility and evolution of space, as well as a literal spatial incarnation of the idea of horizontal communication among students and teachers."

"Classrooms, departments and facilities were to be decentralized and distributed on the grid without any hierarchical organization."

Photo: Lena Giovanazzi, 2015 (Uncube)

Phase 1 construction: 1967-73

Original architects with local project architect Manfred Schiedhelm

Phase II: 1973-79 by Manfred Schiedhelm

Restoration: 1997-2005, Foster & Partners

Phase IV: 2004-2015, Florian Nagler Architects

Phas IV, 2004-2015, with terrain remaining for development

Massing plan, Phase IV outlined in dark. Source: Uncube

In the first phase the lightweight facade panels, designed by Jean Prouvé, were intended to be dismounted and re-arranged by two people with a screwdriver. They were finished in corten-steel. Unfortunately, they rusted out and leaked even before construction was completed, earning the building the nickname of "Die Rostlaube" or "Rusty Shed".

Full-scale mock-up of Foster's bronze facade panel, replacing the corten-steel originals.© Foster + Partners. Source: Uncube (visible by clicking through photos).

In his restoration, Foster replaced the corten steel with bronze panels that otherwise match the originals remarkably.

Candilis, Josic & Woods dissolved their partnership in 1968. The second phase was carried out by the local project architect, who remained true to the original concept, but replaced the corten-steel with aluminum. It was called "Die Silberlaube".

Foster library. Photo: Freie Universität

Foster also added a glass-domed library to the complex, somewhat in the spirit of Buckminster Fuller - Foster is a fervent fan and collector of both Fuller and Prouvé. The complex takes on the addition remarkably well - it could use a few more such couplings or plug-ins. But Foster's glass dome leaks when it rains.

Foster's Library breaks with the open carpet plan of the original. Photo:

Prado Museum taps Foster for Expansion

Facade, version A, cutting through 19th century facade. All images © Foster & Partners

David Cohn
"Foster + Partners' Winning Proposal for Prado Museum Annex"
Architectural Record web page
December 6, 2016

Full text:

Foster + Partners, together with the Spanish architect Carlos Rubio, have won a competition to rehabilitate a surviving fragment of the former royal palace of Buen Retiro in Madrid as an annex to the nearby Prado Museum. The project will restore the Baroque splendor of the "Salón de Reinos" or Hall of Realms, where King Felipe IV received foreign ambassadors in the 17th century, and will create 27,000 square feet of gallery space for temporary exhibitions. The Salón was preserved as an independent building after French troops sacked the palace during the Peninsular Wars (1808-1814).

The Foster team won the competition over seven other finalists, including teams led by David Chipperfield, Rem Koolhaas and Eduardo Souto de Moura. Other participants were Gluckman Tang of New York with the Madrid studios of Álvarez Sala and Enguita & Lasso de la Vega, and the Spanish offices of Cruz & Ortíz, Nieto Sobejano and Garces De Seta Bonet with Pedro Feduchi.

Foster's proposal raises the existing roof of the building to make way for a large gallery on the top floor, and creates a glazed atrium entry on the south facade, between the two original towers that flank the structure at each end. The atrium allows the architects to peel back later additions to the structure, and restore the Salón de Reinos' original facade and window openings. Foster presented two versions of this glass enclosure, one which opens up the existing neoclassical façade, added in the 19th century, and another that removes it entirely, replacing the structure with a line of monumental bronze columns. In both cases, the atrium roof forms an accessible terrace for the top-floor galleries.

Facade, alternative version with bronze columns

Atrium

While most of the finalists proposed modern additions or enclosures on the southern facade, the jury, headed by Rafael Moneo, singled out Foster's design for its "respect" for the "pre-existing structure", its "intelligent" solution to the "museological requirements," its "skilled integration ... into its surroundings," and its "efficient cost study."

Estimated costs are currently 32 million euros, to be financed in part by private donations.

The Salón is one of two existing fragments of the palace, both now part of the Prado's extended campus. One block to the north, the Casón del Buen Retiro conserves its ballroom, with notable ceiling frescos; it now houses the museum's Research Center. The original Prado building was in fact built as an adjunct to this complex by the neo-classical architect Juan de Villanueva in 1785. Directly behind it, Rafael Moneo's 2007 addition is organized around the ruined cloister of a former monastery, also closely associated with the palace as the site of royal retreats before it was built.

With this latest addition, the Prado thus completes an expansion plan that sketches, through this constellation of structures, the ghostly presence of the lost palace and its grounds, as can be seen in an exploded axonometric of the area prepared by the Foster team. To underscore this historical palimpsest, Foster proposes to connect the main building to the Salón and Casón via a pedestrianized street that culminates in the Retiro Park, the site of the palace's pleasure gardens.

The Palace del Buen Retiro and the Prado campus

(End of Record article)

Among the finalists, one of the reported top contenders was this scheme by the Seville-based office of Antonio Cruz and Antonio Ortíz:

Proposal by Cruz & Ortíz

Other sources:

Announcing the decision:
Prado Museum Press Release
"Architects Norman Foster and Carlos Rubio winners of the projects competition to remodel the Hall of Realms"
Nov. 24, 2016

On the other entries:
 Anatxu Zabalbeascoa
"El Prado expone durante un mes los distintos proyectos que compitieron por la ampliación del Salón de Reinos que finalmente hará el estudio Foster-Rubio"
El País, December 1, 2016

The building's history:
Rafael Fraguas

"El palacio varado"

El País, October 21, 2013

Complete coverage on all the entries:
"El Concurso del Prado"
Arquitectura Viva 191, No. 1-2, January 2017

Purchase digital version on line here

The current director of the Prado, Miguel Zugaza, announced his departure shortly after the competition results were announced:

"Miguel Zugaza anuncia su decisión de volver el próximo año a la dirección del Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao"
El País, Nov. 30, 2016


Borja Hermoso
"Zugaza: 'En El Prado he estado dimitiendo desde el principio' "
El País, Dec. 1, 2016

Foster Cancels Planned Foundation in Madrid

Site of proposed foundation. Source: Palacetes de Madrid

El Pais reports that Norman Foster has dropped plans to establish his private foundation in a Madrid palace dating to 1912, after Madrid's Heritage Commission ruled against some of his proposed modifications and additions to the protected building.

The Foundation, currently registered in London, would house Foster's personal archives and organize exhibitions, debates and publications on architecture, urbanism, design and art.

In a letter to the city, Foster stated that he is reconsidering "the suitability of the location". His office has declined to make further comments.

Foster currently organizes an annual architecture show in his wife's Madrid art gallery, Ivorypress, which has featured Ron Arad, Buckminster Fuller, Jean Prouvé, Zaha Hadid and Foster himself.

Another architect's personal foundation seems to be in the works in Madrid, that of Emilio Ambasz. Last year, the City of Madrid ceded a building near the Prado Museum that Ambasz plans to demolish for a new building of his own design. Fore more on that story (although the less said, the better), see El Pais, March 6, 2013 and December 12, 2013.
 

Ambasz proposal from El Pais

I would gladly trade Ambasz's furry green building on its overly-promintent site for Foster and his palace, discretely located in Madrid's leafy embassy district, with its pavilions and whatnot in the garden. With any luck, though, Ambasz's project will go nowhere. And let's hope that Foster, once properly begged to and groveled before, will reconsider.

Bruno García Gallo, Ángeles García
"Norman Foster Drops Plans to  Create his Foundation in Madrid"
El País, English edition
April 8, 2014

Ron Arad at Ivorypress

With his annual September shows at the Ivorypress Gallery, Norman Foster has single-handedly put Madrid on the map as far as first-class architecture exhibitions go.

After memorably featuring Jean Prouvé, Bucky Fuller or Zaha Hadid in past editions, this year he turns to a younger London contemporary, Ron Arad.

From the Ivorypress web page:

"From 5 September, Ivorypress will host a solo exhibition of architect and designer Ron Arad (Tel Aviv, 1951). The show—as part of the annual architecture programme celebrated each autumn at Ivorypress to mark the beginning of the season—covers the achievements and the latest work of this label-defying artist who has been based in London since the 1970s.

"The exhibition, which will run until 9 November, shows his singular perspective on architecture, design and the artistic object. With his interest in experimentation as a starting point, Ron Arad studies the expressive possibilities of different materials such as steel, aluminium, Corian and polyethylene.

"His approach to form and structure has a freedom which is unlimited by links or borders. ‘The principle is that everything should be based on something that didn’t exist before’, says Arad. In line with this philosophy, the show includes some of his most iconic works along with industrially produced objects and several mock-ups and architectural projects.

"Among Arad’s latest experiments that will be on show at Ivorypress Space, the Folly bench (2013) is particularly worthy of mention. Made by rotational moulding, Folly constitutes a large sculptural object composed of soft lines that endow it with great vitality. Movement, whether in his functional creations or in his purely aesthetic pieces, is always the main element of his work.

​"Also among the objects on show is Blame the Tools (2013), in line with Arad’s early works made of waste materials. Additionally, the selection includes the workstation No Bad Colours (2013), which is the source of another experimental line of inquiry, centred on technological components rather than on plastic or ergonomic value. The exhibition at Ivorypress Space provides the opportunity to observe the diversity of his work and to re-examine his creative production.

"Ron Arad received his training from the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, in Jerusalem, and the Architectural Association School of Architecture, in London. In 1981 he founded the One Off design and production studio with Caroline Thorman and in 1989 he created the Ron Arad architecture and design studio. He has also been Professor of Design Products at Royal College of Art in London from 1998 to 2009."

Ron Arad 
Sept. 5 - Nov. 9, 2013

Ivorypress 

Comandante Zorita 46-48

28020 Madrid SPAIN

Monday to Friday, 10:00 - 14:00; 16:30 - 20:00

Saturday, 11:00 -  2:00

 

 Photo:
"Southern Hemisphere", 2006

© Ron Arad and Associates

Courtesy of Ivorypress

A Night at the Races

I inaugurate my new Canon SLR camera with this photo of Eduardo Torroja's magnificent grandstands for Madrid's racetrack, the Hipodromo de la Zarzuela outside Madrid, one clear, cool July evening last week. The evening races make the most of Madrid's summer climate -- the city is at an altitude of some 860 meters or half a mile above sea level, and the refreshing nights are when you want to be out-of-doors. People come just for the bars and food, but the races were a good adrenaline-booster for this newcomer.

And here's one of the reasons I went out to see them, an exerpt from my upcoming history of Spanish modernism:

"Carlos Arniches and Martín Domínguez opened their work even further to the radical structural experiments of Eduardo Torroja in their 1934 competition-winning design for the Zarzuela Hippodrome outside Madrid. Torroja's innovations in thin-shell concrete during the Republican years claim their place beside the pioneering work of Eugène Freyssinet, Robert Maillart and Pier Luigi Nervi. The Hippodrome design is dominated by his wing-like cantilevered shading vaults over the grandstands, which span nearly 14 meters and taper to a thickness of only five centimeters. The vaults are composed of hyperboloids, surfaces which curve in two directions, and are counterbalanced by an ingenious system that involves suspending the roof vault of the betting hall, situated below the grandstands, from tension bars tied to the rear flanges of the vaults."

 Above, the view from the stands of Madrid's new skyline, with 50-story towers by Henry Cobb, César Pelli, Estudio Rubio Álvarez Sala and Foster & Partners (left to right).

Ground Zero Update

The One World Trade Center Tower by David Childs is already the tallest thing on the New York skyline, as I found on my visit last November.

Here's an update from the British journal BD (Feb. 1, 2012; free registration required):

"The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this week that the cost of 1WTC – formerly known as the Freedom Tower – had soared to $3.8 billion, $700 million more than the last public estimate in 2008...."

"1WTC is already 90 stories high, 60% let, and on track to be completed by the end of the year."

"Foster and Partners’ 2WTC, which is intended to be the second-tallest building on the site, at 88 stories, is to be temporarily capped at ground level because of a lack of tenants."

"The same problem is also threatening to truncate Rogers Stirk Harbour and Partners’ 80-story Three World Trade Centre at just seven stories. A Port Authority financing agreement means developer Silverstein Properties must stop building at podium level if it cannot find tenants for at least 10 floors."

Story filed by Elizabeth Hopkirk.
Snapshot by DC, November 2011.

Note portable police surveillance tower in foreground.
And note the tower's  bomb-proof solid concrete podium, still unclad.

The new towers rise around the empty site of the original towers. That's an important void. But it's hard to make much sense of the towers as an urban presence. They seems so far like a negative presence all the way, from the absence at street level due to bunkerization to the anonymous sheer glass facades. And their apparent detachment from the site; they could really be anywhere, or move around like chessmen. They don't make a case for being there.

Another void: the raised plaza of the former towers has disappeared, a whole artificial topography. The Memorial Park is set down at the level of West Street and Battery Park (Battery Park was reclaimed from the river by the excavation of the first project in the 1960s). So the Memorial Park's footprint of the twin towers, in the form of pools with fountains, bumps into this problem of where the ground plane actually is, in one's semi-conscious, bodily memory of the site. Will have to wait and see how this is finally resolved at the top of the site, along Church Street.

Here's a rather lame photo of the new Park seem from across West Street -- the gimlet-eyed can maybe make out one of the pools:

Photo added May 8, 2012, as the main tower surpasses the Empire State in height:

Source: Buzzfeed, found on the Arquitectura Viva web page. Photographer credit not found.

While I am on the subject of New York and detachment, here are a couple of snaps from the same trip.:

Subway Dude

On The Phone

High Line in the Rain

From the Hellgate Bridge

Foster Competition Win: Business as Usual?

News brief
Foster & Partners has won a limited competition to build a high speed train station in Ourense, a provincial capital in Galicia, located in northwest Spain.

The adjudication is one of the last made by the Ministry of Development under the Socialist government in Madrid, and is likely to be reviewed by the incoming government. While the Socialist Mayor of Ourense supports the project, Galicia's regional government, headed by the Popular Party, opposes it, calling for the future high speed train line to be buried in its course through the city. The incoming central government, also controlled by the Popular Party, has asked for other adjudications  on the Galician high speed train line to be suspended for review. 

The other six finalists were not mentioned in press reports on the competition. Financing for the 67 million euro project is to come in part from European union development funds.

Note on the news 
I wish I could see something in these renderings that would make the project seem worth the trouble. Foster's name on a blueprint these days simply isn't enough. How much longer is it going to take for politicians to catch on?

See the story in the following newspapers (selection):
El País 
Faro de Vigo
El Mundo

Renderings from the blog edgargonzalez.com

Present Crisis and Glories Past

Articles for readers in both Spanish and English appear this week: The Architectural Review publishes my pundit piece (they asked for something "pithy") on the effect of the crisis on Spanish architecture (The Death of the Icon, it's alarmingly called; love the Brit's apocalyptic journalistic headline craft), and a review of the show on Jean Prouvé in Madrid, which appeared in the cultural supplement of El País this Saturday (Visionario y Pragmático).

On the crisis, I make a quick survey of the debris accumulated so far to conclude, among other things, that "the profession is clearly preparing itself for a period of contained, functionalist remorse, although it remains to be seen if politicians and voters will be capable of capturing the change in sensibility."

On the Prouvé show, organized by Norman Foster for his wife's Madrid gallery, I plot the interesting connections between Prouvé and Foster himself, as captured in "the photo of an older Prouvé heading the jury for the competition of the Pompidou Center in Paris, won by Foster's former associate Richard Rogers together with Renzo Piano. The photo seems intended to mark the changing of the guard between Prouvé, one of the original masters of the Modern Movement, and the High Tech generation to which Foster himself belongs, a generation that with this project took its first steps into the limelight."


Top photo: The Niemeyer Foundation in the northern post-industrial city of Avilés, yet another Guggenheimesque cultural center that will close after just six months of operation, due to local political squabbling. Photo from The Architectural Review.

Second photo: Construction shot of the Aeroclub Roland Garros in Bac, 1936, by Jean Prouvé and the architects Eugène Beaudouin and Marcels Lods, High Tech avant la lettre. Photo courtesy of Ivory Press Art + Books, © Fonds Jean Prouvé.