Calatravaland

Santiago Calatrava explaining his skyscrapers to mayor of Valencia Rita Barberá and former premier of the Regional Autonomy of Valencia Francisco Camps. Photo courtesy El País.

El País reported recently that the government of the Autonomous Region of Valencia, when it was presided by Francisco Camps (the Popular Party leader who resigned recently over allegations of corruption), paid architect Santiago Calatrava over €15 million to design three skyscrapers for the city of Valencia that, it turns out, are never going to be built. The unusually high "fee" for such a preliminary study, not to mention the lack of an architectural competition, are not the only irregularities, however. The site of the three controversial skyscrapers is adjacent to a monumental opera house, a science museum, an IMAX cinema, a stadium, and a bridge all designed by... (tada!) Santiago Calatrava. Such a concentration in one place of so many large buildings by one architect is rare, and rather questionable in its wisdom.

True, a number of architects are historically associated with cities in which they built their careers: Palladio with Vicenza, Gaudí with Barcelona, Mies van der Rohe with Chicago, to name only some examples. But their works do not appear conspicuously amassed the way Calatrava's work appears to be in Valencia. The problem with Calatrava's architecture is that it long ago became a signature style, which is to say a cliché. When sparsely distributed around the globe in different cities, it is not very perceptible. But when overdone in one place, a cliché easily becomes a theme park.

Calatrava's early work, mainly bridges, are appreciable for containing some rationality. But in his later work, especially larger buildings, rationality gives way entirely to spectacle and showmanship. The true "function" of Calatrava buildings is to impress--the uses for which they are designated are mere pretext.  The elongated and elevated proportions of the science museum at the City of Arts and Sciences, for example, make that building appear much larger than it is in reality; not unlike the way an aggressive dog makes its hair stand on end in order to appear bigger and more menacing.

The problem with the "City" of Arts and Sciences is that it is not designed by an architect-urbanist, but by an architect-sculptor of stand-alone objects. An architect-urbanist, when commissioned to design a large-scale urban project, will usually devise a plan in which the finer components--the buildings and public spaces that comprise it--are passed on to several architects to design, thereby ensuring that a single architect does not dominate. In the City of Arts and Sciences, however, Calatrava controls every detail, material, and color palette (white). Alright, to be fair: one of the buildings at the City of Arts and Culture, the aquarium, is by another architect, Felix Candela; but it is off to one end--a transition piece between the port of Valencia and Calatravaland.

It is useful to compare Valencia's City of Arts and Culture to another expensive cultural mega-project in Spain of roughly similar size and also designed in one signature style: the City of Culture of Galicia by Peter Eisenman. Here, six large buildings will, when completed, form an artificial hilltop landscape of sorts. But therein also lies a difference: The City of Culture of Galicia is actually relatively dense and compact. It is not a sprawling arrangement of similar-looking stand-alone objects, but a single structure subdivided by the overlay of a pattern of streets and public spaces.

Calatrava's work can be taken in low doses. It seems ideally suited for tourist consumption: an intense, once-in-a-lifetime "experience" to take photos of and post on facebook. But you couldn't take living there for very long. A good thing it is, then, that these towers are not going ahead. In fact, considering just how corny Calatravaland would begin looking with three skyscrapers added to it, I wonder if this might not have been the plan all along.

The Cantilever Race

Forum 2004 Building, Herzog & de Meuron

The skyscraper race is over. It's been won hands down by an absurdly high building in Dubai which doesn't look like it will be superseded for quite a while. But not to worry: there is another space race currently in full swing. Unlike the skyscraper race, which was mostly between corporations-developers and their corporate architecture firms, this space race involves organizations and architects of a more academic and artistic inclination. The cantilever race is the fashionable one to participate in now, and if your architectural design doesn't have a pronounced protrusion poking out of one of its sides or isn't suspended in a way that appears to defy gravity, it won't stand a chance. Whose cantilever is the highest, the longest, or the most absurd? CCTV? MVRDV? EMBT? MOUSE?


Despite appearances, though, this cantilever race is not really very different from the skyscraper race. As every structural engineer knows (along with, hopefully, most architects), skyscrapers have to be designed as vertical cantilevers because they must resist, "above all", wind forces. Seen in this light, the current cantilever race is a horizontal skyscraper race of sorts. Horizontal has become the new vertical.


Barcelona, perhaps in its bid to outdo Dubai at something, has been participating in this cantilever race wholeheartedly. A good example of Catalan Cantileverisme is the Catalan Filmothèque, a veritable concrete bunker by Catalan architect Josep Lluis Mateo (professor at the ETH in Zürich and a founder of the BIArch) that is currently being completed just a few blocks from my home in the Raval neighbourhood of Barcelona. It sports a massive, post-tensioned concrete cantilever reaching over a narrow street, nearly touching the balconies of its residential neighbours. But, what is the cantilever for? What is it doing? Is it sheltering the entrance to the building? No, it only shelters a utility door to an electrical transformer. Is it creating public space? Yes, but not a public space with any qualities, since it is merely widening a dark and dingy street known for vice with a dark and dingy "plaçeta". Unless it is deliberately intended to provide a shady spot for junkies to shoot up or for prostitutes to turn a trick, which I don't think is the case, then just what is the cantilever doing, precisely? Nothing, unless looking impressive (or oppressive, better said) counts as doing something. For all the talk these days about "performance" in architecture...

Filmothèque of Catalonia, Josep Lluis Mateo

But this is not an isolated case. In fact Barcelona abounds with cantilevers of all shapes, sizes and pretexts. The following is a photographic tour of some of the cantilevers of Barcelona:

Fire station, Manuel Ruisánchez

Gas Natural Headquarters, EMBT

DHUB Design Museum, MBM

Office building, Dominique Perrault

Hotel ME, Dominique Perrault

Office building, Josep Mías

Office building, Arata Isozaki 

Botanical Institute, Carles Ferrater

Hotel in Poble Nou

Social Housing, Arturo Frediani (photo courtesy Urbipedia)

Quaderns 204 cover (1994). 

Quaderns #262: A Gut Reaction

Quaderns d’arquitectura i urbanisme #262 is provocatively titled “Parainfrastructures”, an invented word that is rich with ambiguity. Are we to understand this as a type of subsidiary or ancillary infrastructure operating parallel to a more official one? Or does it refer, in the sense of “paramedic”, to a temporary, quick-response, emergency infrastructure? Certainly, it suggests something more subversive, or perhaps we could say something more “underground” than ordinary infrastructure.

“Are we now completely unable to dream of antiinfrastructure?” asks John May in his introductory essay titled “Infrastructuralism: The Pathology of Negative Externalities.” His insightful and provocative critique is followed by four case studies, together comprising a section of the magazine titled “1 Essay x 4 Cases”. Of the four cases that follow, the first, Heathrow Airplot by Paisajes Emergentes, is arguably the only outright piece of antiinfrastructure: it proposes to prevent the expansion of Heathrow Airport by positioning a series of large Pink Floyd-like balloons to occupy flightpaths so that they literally stand–or float–in the way of progress. The other three cases (Brockholes Wetland Visitor Centre by Adam Khan, Lolita restaurant by Langarita-Navarro, and Nagelhaus by Caruso St John), all of which have something to do with highway infrastructure, relate more tenuously to May’s thesis. Significantly, the texts accompanying each of these four works are architects’ project statements; not critical reflections. The same goes for the works included in the Observatory section at the end of the magazine. I guess architecture critics need not apply here.

The sections in the middle, “Archive 1971”, “3 Essays x 1 Case”, and “Guest” are much more coherent and watertight. The Archive section features a different year in every issue; a sort of blast-from-the-past. In this issue, the year 1971 is featured, and includes an interview with José Miguel de Prada Poole followed by historical research and firsthand accounts of the building of experimental inflatable structures. 3 Essays x 1 Case looks back at Girona-Costa Brava Airport, a building which has had its share of ups and downs during its lifetime. The instigation to look back and reflect on past work is one of the most significant turns this edition of Quaderns has taken. Architecture takes on a life of its own when it becomes inhabited; a reality that can sometimes be stranger than fiction. For an architecture magazine to critically reflect back on the real life of buildings, and not just ones idealized in design intentions, is praiseworthy. The conduciveness of architecture to a better shelf-life might just become a little more lubricated.

Continuity can be seen as another quality of this edition of Quaderns magazines. Each issue begins with a review of the last one and ends with a segue into the next, which in this case is preservation. A debate, if it were (only) to erupt, is well served by the weaving of a continuous thread through consecutive issues of a magazine. And provoking debate is exactly what magazines such as Quaderns should be doing.

[Originally published at http://quaderns.coac.net/en/2011/09/reaccions-262-gomezmoriana/ ]

Experimenting in Public: Metropol Parasol, Seville, by Jürgen Mayer H.

Seville’s public squares come in all shapes and sizes. Some are large and officious, others small and illicit; some are patronized by conservative families in their Sunday best, while others are taken over by rowdy radicals in their Thursday-night gear. The life of Seville’s plazas changes with the time of the day, the day of the week and the fiesta of the month.

Yes, public space is still ‘public’ in Spain, meaning it is a charged, highly contested area of gentle conflict. Progress may have usurped the role of public space in much of the rest of the world – or packaged it into a cheesy, sanitized theme-park ‘experience’ – but here it is still considered vital for purposes of leisure, commerce, ritual, making yourself heard, or simply seeing and being seen. This is especially the case in Seville, where stepping out the door requires spending at least half an hour in front of the bathroom mirror – or else risk being mistaken for a guiri (Spanish slang for ‘tourist’). Squares are even among the favourite subjects of joking complaints by Sevillanos, almost up there with politics and football. The riddler’s question most often comes down to why so many contemporary plazas are duras (hard-paved), which is to say treeless, soulless and inhospitable. Answer: so that guiris can sunbathe there.

This criticism does not apply, however, to Jürgen Mayer H's Metropol Parasol, a multi-level, multi-use redevelopment of the centrally situated Plaza de la Encarnación that locals have already dubbed ‘las setas’ (the mushrooms). Generously shading the square – now elevated over a market, boutiques and an archaeology museum – is an expansive waffled-timber canopy that looks much more like a grove of stone pines (Pinus pinea, interestingly referred to as the ‘parasol pine’) than a cluster of mushrooms, magical or not. But not to worry: Seville’s esteemed citizens have already found other aspects of Metropol Parasol to criticize, such as serious cost overruns and delays. Such grievances are, of course, indisputable. But I do wish to make the following case before the court of public opinion that has emerged over this structure: a work of public architecture is worth significant extra investment when, as here, it experiments and takes risks in pursuit of a more ecological way of building intended to benefit future generations. Admittedly, the construction of schools and day-care centres should not have been put on hold for the sake of a single high-profile building project, but architecture that builds new knowledge is equally important. We need both. 

Let’s begin with the facts. Plaza de la Encarnación is a square at the centre of Seville’s extensive historical core originally occupied by a medieval convent and, later, a 19th century market hall demolished in 1973. After that, for almost four decades, the site was surrounded by metal hoarding initially erected for the construction of an underground car park; a project that had to be abandoned when ancient Roman archaeological remains were encountered. The hoarding remained during the subsequent archaeological excavation as well as throughout the lengthy construction of Metropol Parasol.

The programme of Jürgen Mayer H's redesign of the square – the winner of a 2004 competition – comprises an archaeology museum, a market, and a plaza with a vast, habitable parasol-like structure supported by six columns that rest on foundation pilings remaining from the discontinued car park. Construction of Metropol Parasol encountered delays and cost overruns caused by the complexity of building over archaeological remains, as well as by the complexity of the parasol itself. Using exposed laminated timber for the first time on such a large scale and in such a hot climate necessitated the development of a new method for protecting wood from high levels of ultraviolet radiation and heat.

Yes, Metropol Parasol is experimental. But the experimentation was not undertaken purely for the sake of form. This investigation focused on the formal possibilities of a construction system new to a climate zone that occasionally sets global high-temperature records. By curving, folding and nurbing the parasol, the architects tested the permutations and possibilities of the system. It is experimental architecture at its best, if you ask me, because the inventions developed to make this structure endure offer lessons and new possibilities for application. So why not simply use good old steel or concrete instead of wood? Because wood is the building material of the future. Wood is not only renewable; it also sequesters carbon, making it perform even better than a carbon-neutral building material. Finding new, more complex applications for wood is crucial today, especially in conditions of intense heat – a scenario that awaits more and more regions of the planet.

How better to catalyze a research agenda than by way of an ambitious public-space project that produces findings for everyone to see and (bonus!) to enjoy. Architecture is the most public of the arts, and when it involves extensive research and development, as this project does, it builds public, open-source knowledge. Spain is often criticized for investing less than other European countries in research and development. I wonder how the rankings would look if experimental public architecture were part of the equation.

This less-visible, long-term aspect of Metropol Parasol should be taken into consideration if the project is to enjoy a fair trial in the court of public opinion. But even leaving aside its value in terms of embodied knowledge, Metropol Parasol is fantastic as a public space, a fact that cannot be denied. It is a work of art imitating nature, a strategy that makes much more sense in a dense historical urban context than the addition of just another building. Metropol Parasol is an adventure-filled promenade of unexpected delights to walk over, under, around and through. Beneath the canopy, a generous stairway leads from Calle Imagen, the busiest street in the heart of the city, to the elevated plaza.  Reminiscent of the Spanish Steps in Rome, these wide stairs invite pedestrians to linger and relax. The rather baroque handrails terminate by turning in broad arcs, closing in on themselves to enclose micro-gardens and openings through which archaeological remains can be seen below. The elevated plaza is a spacious surface designed to host all sorts of events, including the Holy Week procession, Seville’s most important traditional fiesta. 

Metropol Parasol is still too new to judge how well it will be appropriated and whether it will become an organic, living part of this vital historical city. For this to happen, the controversy has to die down, the politicians have to move on to other issues, and Sevillanos have to stop looking at the structure as a foreign intrusion and truly make it theirs. It is, after all, a public space both simple and complex enough to offer something for everyone. Unlike most icons, which are semi-public if not outright private, this square is open 24/7 and of interest to one and all, not just to architects and guiris. Hey: experimenting in public is not a crime.

[Originally published in Mark Magazine #33]

POSTSCRIPT:
This article was written before the events of May 2011, when public squares in all major cities in Spain became sites of spontaneous protest against high unemployment, corruption, and a distancing of political leadership from citizens.  Plaza de Encarnación became Seville's site of spontaneous protest (as can be seen here), specifically Calle Imagen and the "Spanish Steps" leading to the elevated plaza. 

Strike a Pose: Assisted Living Facility near Lisbon by Aires Mateus Architects

Photography: Fernando Guerra

Photography: Fernando Guerra

What is it that makes these architectural images so seductive? To be sure, there is nothing here that we haven’t seen before, at least at first glance: a work of exquisitely proportioned, beautifully detailed architecture bordering on sculpture is represented in crisp, technically perfect colour photographs shot under blue skies on a sunny day. We are so inundated by this kind of imagery in design, travel and lifestyle publications that we must surely be immune to it by now. Granted, a few colourful characters included for the sake of human scale give these architectural photographs a certain charm, but something else makes these particular images stand out. Is it the building’s design, the photography, or both?

Make no mistake: photography is crucial when it comes to architecture. Buildings are perceived even more through photographic reproduction than through direct, first-hand experience. A famous example is Mies van der Rohe’s German pavilion, designed for the 1929 International Exposition in Barcelona. It is remarkable just how much celebrity this building garnered considering the relatively few people who were fortunate enough to experience the pavilion ‘live’ during its brief period of existence. If it weren’t for the publication of some black-and-white photographs taken on the occasion of a visit by Spanish royalty to the pavilion, the building would probably have remained in obscurity. Nor, for that matter, would it have been possible to reconstruct the pavilion half a century later – and to re-reproduce it in vibrant colour.

Photographic reproduction is not only essential for making a work of architecture known outside its immediate neighbourhood, not to mention beyond its life span; photography has also become crucial for the success of any building venture from a stakeholder perspective. Architecture has always been a form of communication, and good design is a prerequisite for good advertising copy (just ask Steve Jobs). The incredible photorealism of current rendering software, which is making it more and more difficult to distinguish 3D models from their physical counterparts, means buildings can be – and are – designed to look better than ever, to be photogenic by design. Of course, buildings must be designed to accommodate the human body in its entirety, not just to satisfy the desires of the human retina. But even when we do inhabit architecture bodily, chances are our eyes perceived it first – most likely by way of photographic reproduction.

The residências assistidas (assisted living) facility that Aires Mateus realized in Alcácer do Sal, Portugal, has a thoroughly functional design that gives residents the opportunity to live their final years with dignity. But the complex can also be seen as meticulously detailed architecture that has been designed, wittingly or unwittingly – and this is entirely my contention – to be photogenic. The success of this work lies not in its capacity to perform as it should, or even in its beauty, but in the fact that neither quality has been achieved at the expense of the other. But what, exactly, makes for ‘photogenic’ architecture?

A look at the building is a good place to start. Emerging from a hillside at one edge of the small, historical town of Alcácer do Sal, near Lisbon, the assisted living facility is an elongated, low-rise, bar-shaped building that is folded in places to create semi-enclosed public gardens at grade. The stark white building mass is punctured by large, deep, angular openings, most of which function as private outdoor patios for the individual rooms of this hotel-like home for the elderly. The deep recessing of these patios prevents solar heat gain inside the rooms, while allowing occupants to choose between privacy and community, as well as between sun and shade. The facility is entered at the end of the building nearest the town. From here, a lobby leads to stairs and long meandering corridors that lend access to individual rooms.

Each room faces a private patio visible through a window-wall that is rotated at an oblique angle to the plane of the façade, making the opening much less prominent in elevation. This simple but highly effective detail is crucial: it gives the building its abstract character. Windows – the eyes to the soul of a building, as it were – are among the most figurative parts of a building. By recessing and rotating these windows towards the private patios, the architects have ‘freed’ the façade of a glass-and-mullion configuration and enabled a much purer, solid-void dynamic to take place – a dynamic that makes the building sculptural. Like all abstract sculpture, the building undoubtedly generates different associations for different viewers: where art aficionados might be reminded of the work of Anish Kapoor, gluttons may see Swiss cheese and those with a fascination for death a burial wall with oversize crypts. What it won’t be seen as is a building with windows.

The obvious drawback to recessed private patios is that the building becomes significantly longer and more drawn out than would otherwise be the case. But these voids are not a caprice that serves ‘only’ architectural aesthetics; they are spaces that improve the residents’ quality of life. In this building, beauty is reconciled with utility. Indeed, what makes these façades so attractive is precisely that their defining elements – voids – are useful and delightful spaces. If the building becomes longer as a result, the leisurely strolls within and on top of it become all the more leisurely.

Another notable aspect of the building’s abstract appearance is that it has been achieved with ordinary, vernacular building materials commonly used throughout southern Europe. No high-tech materials visible here. The building may be highly abstract and unusual, but it is rooted at the same time in regional building typology and tradition. The practice of combining traditional materials with a modern expression has been a hallmark of certain ‘critical regionalist’ schools for some time and is in total contrast to the unfortunate international phenomenon of plastic-clad, neoclassical monster-homes in which high-tech materials are combined with a ‘historicist’ expression.

A similar ambiguity can be seen in Fernando Guerra’s photographs of the building in Alcácer do Sal: the presence of local elderly farmers in the foreground of some of the images reminds us of social documentary photography, a critical genre that has its roots in the work of photographers such as Jacob Riis. Buildings featured in social documentary photography, however, are usually decrepit vernacular structures, not cutting-edge architecture. Similarly, the people (if any) we are used to seeing in architectural photography are rarely elderly farmers. The ambiguity of this photographic genre provokes a tension that, like the abstractness of its subject, comes close to what we feel when viewing art.

Architecture has always been a favourite subject for photography, whether the structures are in a state of ruin or are newly completed. But it is the context in which images are reproduced that conditions the way we look at and appreciate them. We no longer believe that photography is a neutral or objective medium that merely documents what it sees; we understand it to be a highly subjective and selective process of framing and omitting – digital manipulation aside. Similarly, we no longer believe that the difference between architecture and building lies, as Nikolaus Pevsner remarked, in the difference between Lincoln Cathedral and a bicycle shed. Building becomes architecture when it is reproduced photographically. Otherwise, a building remains a building, no matter how photogenic it is.

[Originally published in Mark Magazine #32]

Context is Still Everything

The building that looks like an anvil is the soon to be completed Disseny HUB Barcelona, a design museum by the veteran firm MBM (Martorell, Bohigas, MacKay). It is characterized by a very large cantilever suspended over an elevated highway and traffic circle surrounding a park. This gesture serves, presumably, so that the end of the cantilever, which will be equipped with a large multimedia screen, will be visible from the park without being obstructed by the elevated highway. Considering that the architectural firm MBM is known for its rational, urban and contextual approach, that would seem to me like the main justification for such structural gymnastics.

But as it turns out, the very raison d'être behind this architectural move--the elevated highway--is slated to be demolished and submerged beneath what will become a much larger Plaça de les Glòries. It even turns out that this fact was known before construction began on the building, meaning of course that there was an opportunity to re-design the building to suit the "new" context--an opportunity that the architects, in all their wisdom, declined. What are we to make of this: that the very context that formed the basis of the architectural strategy of this building is, then, not so important in the end? I am reminded of something I read somewhere once to the effect of "fuck context."

To be sure, the elevated highway cannot be demolished until the tunnels are completed, so there is at least a window of some years during which the Disseny HUB design will make some sense. Just enough time for the building to be photographed, published, and talked about. And after that...who cares?

Experimental Architecture Without Architects

A Green School classroom

The Green School auditorium

Bamboo joinery details

Bamboo is an ancient building material that fell largely out of favor in the twentieth century, only to be used as scaffolding in the construction of Asian skyscrapers or else to create atmosphere in polynesian-themed bars and restaurants that serve cocktails decorated with miniature umbrellas. But that may be changing now as our addiction to concrete is proving to be unsustainable. Good old bamboo is making a comeback as a “green” building material: it is natural, very fast-growing, light-weight, strong, flexible, affordable, and requires relatively little maintenance. Its only disadvantages are that it deteriorates when exposed to direct sunshine and certain kinds of insects like to feed on it.  The other thing about bamboo is that, in structural applications, it has to be used whole. It can’t be sawn into lumber the way wood can. Bamboo structures are then, by their very nature, rather rustic and imprecise--the opposite of contemporary Swiss architecture. 

What is most remarkable about the Green School in Bali is the architectural experimentation that is being undertaken. Altogether, these structures comprise a veritable catalogue of countless ways that bamboo can be used as a building material. Especially impressive are the sizable column-free spans that have been achieved by means of long arches of bundled bamboo, and the beauty of latticed column structures.