Architecture and its Discontents

Some unnamed wise guys here in Spain have organized the Pretzel Prize to annually recognize the worst in architecture and urbanism. See their web page here, where you can vote for your choice among several finalists for 2012.

The forum also offers the opportunity to write-in crits of your favorite worst buildings. Very tempting.

But I must say the list of finalists is a disappointment. Easy targets, and brushing off any serious appreciation for experiment and flash -- the Revenge of the Philistines?

Sorry guys, a lot of your candidates for the dumps will be around a lot longer on the collective radar than your poor opinion of them (Frank Gehry's Strata Building at MIT, Jean Nouvel's Agbar Tower in Barcelona....).

Best of the page: It could be worse, a section with photos of hilarious details, such as the one shown here.

A New Look at Genius Loci

I've just received issue number 9 of the Russian journal Speech, with my interview with Álvaro Siza and my report on the Interdisciplinary Sciences Building at Columbia University in New York by Rafael Moneo and the Moneo Brock Studio.

The theme of the issue is Genius Loci, on which Siza had a lot to say, including this:

"AS: It also occurs to me that genius loci has to do with the culture of a country. Let me tell you something very curious about American cities, both Spanish and Portuguese, and the Portuguese cities in India and Macao. Spanish colonial urbanism is based on the Philippine Codices (he sketches a grid plan). A fantastic code. The plaza, the dimensions of the lots, the typology, all articulated in the plan, which produces these marvelous cities of South America, which still work today following the same principle. The Spanish built on a high plain. Large areas that permitted great extensions and growth."
 
"In Portuguese cities, on the other hand, in Macao or Boa, and in Brazil, in Rio de Janeiro, Recife or Olinda, the topography is always very abrupt and irregular, and the cities adapt to the topography."

"For me, the principal reason for this difference is the following: when the Spanish arrived in America, they were a country of millions of people, and with enormous power. But in Portugal there were only three million Portuguese when they started exploring and civilizing Africa, Asia and Brazil. A very small country that goes out all over the world – there are clear explanations for this, but the first is that we are crazy."

"The Portuguese couldn't defend cities the size of the Spanish settlements. And so all the Portuguese cities are like fortifications. Nature promotes their defense."

"DC: And the Spanish colonial cities reproduce the Spanish meseta."

"AS: They are numbers and power." 

Moneo's building, designed as a heavily-trussed bridge, 14 stories tall that spans the roof of a preexisting gymnasium, offers an interesting take on the genius loci of Manhattan as I describe it in my introduction: 

"But there is another, more intimate side to this native genius that one discovers inside the city, at street level. This character has been forged in the struggle to submit the geographic incidents of the island to the demands of mobility and density. It can be found in the underground concourses and elevated bridges of its transportation systems –structures of iron, concrete and steel exposed in all their gritty strength– and in the hard asphalt canyons of its endless avenues – spaces of incessant movement, cast in shadow by enormous towers and splattered with moving shards of reflected light. It can be found too in the city's artificial landscapes – the artificial deck of Park Avenue and its towers, built over the rail lines of Grand Central Station, or Central Park's molded hillocks and meandering roads, sculpted to contrast with the city's grid. The original terrain of the island has been leveled, mined, spanned, extended by landfills into its waterways and otherwise transformed."

Álvaro Siza
"There was something in this place that asked for this building here" 
Speech 09, 2012, pages 252 - 275 

The Bridge Building
 Speech 09, 2012, pages 116 - 129

Álvaro Siza photo, DC
Structural sketch of Columbia building, Ove Arup

Sorry, no web version available

Crisis Casualties: The Profession

 The Pain in Spain 
Under this unfortunate title (as I told my editor, I have been trying to forget that song for well-nigh 45 years), I survey the devastating effects of Spain's economic crisis on the architecture community in the August issue of Architectural Record.

With over 45% of Spain's architecture studios closed or "open in name only" and a massive emigration of young talent underway, the only bright spot is that Spain's loss will be the rest of the world's gain.

And there's as yet no end in sight to the deepening crisis. We're back to age-old patterns: the emigrations of Spanish workers in the 1950's and 60's. or the cultural purge after the Civil War.... And all for the tight money policy of Angela Merkel and her voters: will German stupidity destroy Europe once more?

Photo from my story © Antonio Rull, showing a protest under J. Mayer H's  Metropol Parasol at Seville's Plaza de la Encarnación in May 2011.

Gaudi or Not Gaudi?

London's Architectural Review sent me to Barcelona this summer to take a look at progress on Antoní Gaudi's Sagrada Familia. I interviewed Jordi Bonet, the 87-year-old architect in charge of the work, and judged his arguments in defense of the project against the evidence at hand:

"Bonet and his predecessors may have captured the geometries of Gaudí’s design, but the fervid textures of his overworked surfaces, and his vital fusion of structural logic, formal serendipity and an original sense for materials and craft (early-20th-century craft at that) are completely lost. Take in the mad profusion of sculpture and fussy surfaces of the lower parts of the Nativity Portal, for example, which are liquid, lumpy and dark like a poured sandcastle (and quite scatological as Catalan art tends to be, from Joan Miró to Antoni Tàpies, reveling in the plastic richness of mud). And now turn to the raw concrete porch of the Passion Facade on the opposite side, with its awkwardly angled piers and architraves. There may be a Gaudí drawing that traces these exact forms, but my bet is that the eccentric master of Reus wouldn’t have left the matter there."

Photo 1
Christ parachutes down over the main altar, in an interpretation of surviving reproductions of a tiny sectional drawing by Gaudi.

Photo 2
My hosts brought me up above the vaults of the nave, where the raw brick and concrete of the roof structure may be the closest thing to the spirit of Gaudi in the new work.

Photo 3
Clouds collaborate in the dizzying rise of towers and scaffolds into the heavens. Is Barcelona ready for the 170-meter lantern and cross that are under construction above the crossing of the nave, and that will transform the city's skyline?

Photo 4
Detail of the Passion Portal
All photos: DC


Gaudi's Sacred Monster
Sagrada Familia, Barcelona
The Architectural Review, August 2012

Crisis Casualties: The Mallorca Congress Center

The City of Palma de Mallorca has halted construction on the waterfront Congress Center designed by Francisco Mangado. It made the decision after the request for bids from the private sector to operate the center produced only one submission, from Melía Hotels, which it found inadequate. The building has been under construction for several years and has accumulated a construction debt of 70 million euros. The city plans to finish enclosing the facades and wait for better times.

Reported in the Diario de Mallorca newspaper, July 20, 2012
Link from the Arquitectura Viva webpage

Rendering from arqa.com
Model photo from europapress.es

Endgame In Córdoba

The Berlin weekly Bauwelt asked me to report on the cancellation of Rem Koolhaas' Congress Center in Córdoba, as announced by the city's new conservative mayor last March. The project was originally conceived in a 2001 competition and has long been bogged down in financing problems. This is a major loss for the city, but the project was not without problems as well -- a lose-lose boggle every way you look at it.

"Clearly Spain's local politicians have a lot to learn about how to responsibly manage large building projects. But architects, as accomplices in their wasteful building spree, are being held to account as well, as the profession enters a period of profound self-examination. Is architecture a plaything of the newly-rich (whether governments or individuals), a gaudy bauble, or does it have something serious and important to offer society?"

The site today. Photo: DC

Endspiel in Córdoba
Bauwelt 26.12, July 6, 2012, pages 6 - 7
(No web version available without subscription)


Thankfully though, historic Córdoba is still around:

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).

A Lazy Icon on the Riviera

My latest feature is just out in Architectural Record: 
Musée Jean Cocteau
Menton, France
Rudy Ricciotti, Architect
July 2012 issue

"If there is any corner of the world less in need of a contemporary architectural icon, that place is Menton, a lovely seaside hill town situated 2.5 miles from the Italian border on the French Riviera. With its gardens, villas and picturesque historic center, Menton retains the charms that once attracted luminaries such as Aubrey Beardsley, William Butler Yeats or the French poet, artist and filmmaker Jean Cocteau (1889-1963). But when municipal officials began to court the American art collector Severín Wunderman, and offered to build a permanent home for his collection of 990 works by Cocteau, the wheels were set in motion to create just such an icon, a new building that, in the words of Deputy Mayor Jean-Claude Guibal, would give Menton 'the status of a cultural destination in its own right, where bold projects ennoble the spirit of the site and reinforce its authenticity.' "
(Read on)

Here's a general view from the magazine article, © Roland Halbe (used with permission):

Photo, top: DC

Sheep Safely Graze

This spring I traveled to the town of Alcázar do Sal, 85 kilometers south of Lisbon, to report on this Nursing Home by Francisco and Manuel Aires Mateus. My cover story appears in the June issue of architektur.aktuell (sorry, no web page).

"A primary school is across the street, and the bright cries of children playing under the ancient trees of its grounds reach the garden, where a handful of sheep graze on the wild lawns under cork and olive trees – connections that keep the residents in touch with the life of the town and their rural origins."

"....a constant in Portuguese architecture over the centuries is clearly seen here: the tension between order and topography, between a rational, regular, repetitive system of settlement –from the urban street grid to individual buildings with their patios, gardens and terraces– and the accidents of topography and historical development that distort and transform this regular order. Amid the lush vegetation, vivid topography and mild climate of Portugal, with its mix of the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, this is the formula for a contemporary Garden of Eden."

In the Garden of Eden
Nursing Home, Alcácer do Sal, Portugal
Francisco + Manuel Aires Mateus
architektur.aktuell 387
Issue theme: Solid Structures
June 2012, pages 64 - 75; cover.

 Photo: DC

Summer Exhibitions in Spain

Madrid
The Arts of Piranesi
CaixaForum Madrid
Through September 9

In addition to 300 engravings representing the variety of Piranesi's interests (architecture, archeology, city views, decoration, the Imaginary Prisons series, etc.), the show includes "reproductions of furniture and decorative objects in various materials from his series Antichità Romane, an ... audiovisual presentation that gives a disturbing depth and breadth to his Imaginary Prisons, and contemporary photographs by G. Basilico for his collection of engravings of Views of Rome, comparisons that allow the public to discover the three dimensionality, perspective and detail of Piranesi`s engravings."

According to El País, the digitalizaiton of the Imaginary Prisons by the Madrid-based Factum Arte studio allows "the camera to make a three-dimensional journey through their interiors, creating the sensation of walking through buildings that never existed."

Barcelona 
Le Corbusier & Jean Genet in the Raval;
Gordon Matta-Clark, "Office Baroque" Portfolio;
Roberto Rosellini Filming Beaubourg
MACBA (Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art)
Through October 21

This miscellany shows off items from the museum's permanent collection.

The first show aims to document the visits of Le Corbusier and Jean Genet to Barcelona in the 1930s,  "when both applied their critical eye to the city's streets." It includes works by Brassaï, Joaquín Torres-García, Alexander Calder, Leandre Cristòfol, Lucio Fontana, Salvador Dalí and Antoni Tàpies.

Corb came to Barcelona at the urging of José Luis Sert and with the hope of contracting a major new urban plan with the republican regional government of the Generalitat. Genet came to live and write about the low life in the city's Barrio Chino (red light district).

The second show brings together 46 works documenting building interventions by Matta-Clark in the last six years of his life, in the 1970s.

And the third presents Robert Rossellini's film on the opening of the Pompidou in Paris, which ties in with one of Matta-Clark's  last works.

Congress in Pamplona

There's still time to sign up for the Architecture and Society Foundation's next Congress, Lo Común, to be held June 20-22 in Pamplona. Special grants are available to help students attend.

The Congress is directed by Luis Fernández-Galiano. Speakers include Foster, Moneo, Siza and Souto de Moura, as well as Peter Buchanan, Vasa Perović (Slovenia), Manuel Aires Mateus, Roger Diener, Dietmar Eberle, Anna Heringer (Austria), Solano Benítez (Paraguay), Patxi Mangado (Foundation founder) and others.

The proceedings cover the themes "Architecture and Shelter," "Architecture and Efficiency," and "Architecture and Pleasure."

To give  an idea of the calado of the event (Spanish metaphor meaning the draft of a ship), the congress will be kicked off with welcoming remarks  by Carlos Solchaga, former Socialist Minister of Economy and the President of the Foundation, and Ana Pastor, current Minister of Development, as well as the president of Navarra and mayor of Pamplona. Other active and former politicians are sprinkled through the proceedings.

Detailed information can be found here.

It's Summer Again at the Serpentine

Rowan Moore in The Guardian on this summer's Serpentine Pavilion in London by HdM and Weiwei. (Skip-scroll through the intro about how tiresome Thomas Heatherwick is).

Quote:

"What you get now is a sunken bowl lined with series of descending terraces, with fragments of curved and angled lines that echo the bygone works of Sanaa, Gehry, Hadid, Libeskind, Eliasson and others. It's surfaced with dark brown compressed cork which looks like mud from a distance and is firm but slightly yielding underfoot. It also gives off an organic scent. Above is a horizontal disc, propped on a basic structure like the covering of an archaeological dig, holding a film of water."

"The surrounding land slopes, which means that at different places you can see over the top of the disc and appreciate the reflections it makes of trees and sky, or look into the cave-like space it covers, with fragmentary views of the park beyond. The interior ... is an events space, cafe and place for sitting around, except that this time it was felt that the concept would be compromised by installing catering facilities. These are provided by a matter-of-fact trailer parked close by."

Photo from the article
Oli Scarff/Getty Images

Petition Against EuroVegas. And Valdevaqueros!

Sign a petition for government disclosure of negotiations over EuroVegas organized by change.org.
Thanks, José Selgas.

(See my blog entry of April 29, The EuroVegas Threat).

José also sends this link for a petition to save the Valdevaqueros beach in Tarifa (above), threatened with a macro-development, a project that was just approved by the local government.

For details, here's the El Pais story on the vote from May 31, 2012.

Photo of Valdevaqueros Beach from:
Plataforma Ciudadana Por la preservación de Los Lances y Palmones

Design Vanguard Call for Entries

Architectural Record is now accepting entries for its 2012 Design Vanguard competition. Entries are due on August 10, 2012 and the winners will be published in the December 2012 issue.

For more information, and to enter, click here.

London's Olympics on the Horizon

Architectural Record's June issue devotes extensive coverage to the London Olympics, and to London in general. See a list of articles with links here.

The issue includes my brief overview of the lasting effects of the Olympics in Barcelona and Athens.

"For the Greeks, the 2004 Olympics in Athens and the aftermath have become a symbol for everything that has gone wrong in their country..."

"Barcelona used the investments and positive energy generated by the 1992 Olympic Games as a tool for long-term strategic planning—a model that London studied closely...." 

 In an excellent article in The Guardian, Rowan Moore also weighs in on London's Olympic effort (link), calling into question the whole enterprise of the Games.

The article includes links about some of the Olympic projects, such as Anish Kapoor's and Cecil Balmont's Orbit sculpture,  (photo above, apparently sporting an impressive phallus), on which Moore comments, "it will cost £15 to go up to the top. I suggest that residents of nearby council tower blocks charge £14.95 to visit their flats. The view will be just as good and visitors would gain a richer understanding of London and of humanity".

 Other venues:
Aquatic Center by Zaha Hadid.
Velodrome by Hopkins Architects.
Athletic Stadium, sponsored by Dow Chemical.
Olympic Village (in a separate review by Rowan Moore).
Olympic Park by George Harrgreaves (gets a thumbs-up from Moore for preserving a sense of the pre-existing context amid the waterways of the River Lea).