Learned from Las Vegas: DHUB Design Museum, Barcelona, by MBM

DHUB: a shed with a duck stapled on top of it?

This building is important. It occupies a prominent site at the intersection of Barcelona’s three most important thoroughfares. But not only that: a chunk of it has been allowed to singularly invade public airspace over Gran Via, the longest, straightest and most important of these avenues. Just to give us an idea, La Sagrada Familia is among the few other buildings in Barcelona permitted to occupy public airspace over a major street: when completed, the Glory façade’s monumental entrance steps will arch over Carrer de Mallorca. The name of the new building, “Disseny Hub”, also exudes importance, suggesting that it is a point of network centrality, not unlike an international airport.

It turns out that this important building is a design institution, not a transportation interchange, although the jet-setting Wallpaperazzi are sure to make it a stopover on their globe-trotting itineraries. Among Barcelona’s locals, meanwhile, this building’s pronounced cantilever has already earned it the sobriquet of “la grapadora”, or the stapler; astutely reflecting today’s growing complicity between architecture, design and bureaucracy.

But this monumental stapler is in fact only a small component of a much larger building; a mere hood ornament on a sprawling, low-slung, semi-buried 'groundscraper'. It is as if one part of the building were intended to be highly visible—an eye-catching icon or sign—and the rest much more hidden and discreet. Moreover, the conspicuous element faces the busy roadway intersection, while the discreet one opens in the other direction onto a more pedestrian-scaled public space. It is almost...almost...as if the architects, MBM, took their cue from the ducks and sheds of Las Vegas, stacking these elements vertically instead of layering them horizontally, as would make sense in a much denser urban setting. Who would have thought that an important building on Barcelona’s grand strip would one day take the form of a duck stapled onto a shed?

[Originally published in Mark Magazine #45]

Product Placement / Emplazamiento publicitario

[versión en castellano sigue a continuación]

Product Placement

“Designed by Apple in California. Assembled in China.” The underside of the laptop computer I’m using to write this displays those very words alongside the model name, serial number, and safety norm compliance symbols. Funny, because until not too long ago a product usually only stated where it was made. But now it is evidently just as important—if not more important—to say where a product was designed. Could this be because the list of countries that still actually manufacture things has shrunk to a mere handful, necessitating other criteria for distinguishing one product from another? Does this mean that design is increasingly the basis upon which goods and services compete in the global economy, confirming once and for all the supremacy of form over content? Curiously, my laptop does not say which country it was designed in, but which state; California, no less. Now why would that be? What might the difference be had it been designed instead in, say, Massachusetts? Perhaps this information is intended for no other reason than to induce some California Dreamin' and good vibrations. Californication über alles.

One of the differences between architecture and industrial design, I once learned in school, is that the former is contextual and site-specific, while the latter is industrial and place-less. But this is not so. While the same Apple product can be found all over the world, the brand’s identity is very much associated with a specific culture. Indeed, global brand-names increasingly include place-names, exploiting the cachet that places—themselves often carefully branded—are able to confer. Think “Custo Barcelona” or “DKNY”.

Barcelona’s new Disseny Hub, as its name suggests, is a building whose program is none other than to assert the centrality of the Catalan capital within the contemporary design world. But curiously the Disseny Hub is not a designer-object-building, like some others nearby, but a piece of urban infrastructure designed to contain a variety of programmatic activities (design museum, the FAD design institution, a local library...) and to mediate between different neighborhoods, topographies, and  transportation corridors, most notoriously an elevated viaduct.

MBM's DHUB building comprises two main elements, one on top of the other: a large, semi-buried longitudinal volume containing offices and a vast exhibition hall, and a taller sculptural element with smaller gallery spaces and an auditorium. Reminiscent of Melnikov’s Rusakov Club in Moscow, the auditorium volume is cantilevered over the viaduct, invading public airspace. “La grapadora” (the stapler), as local residents have dubbed the sculptural element, is effectively a hood ornament for the much larger and more discreet volume below. The exaggerated cantilever was originally intended to enable a gigantic LED screen on its end-façade to be seen from the viaduct. But in the meantime the viaduct has been scheduled for demolition, an action which would eliminate the entire raison d’être of the cantilever. It seems that if a computer can exude regional vibes, architecture too can have its site-specificity taken away from it.

[originally published in Arquitectura Viva #153 under the title "Marcas y contextos / The Disseny Hub in Barcelona"]

Emplazamiento publicitario

«Diseñado por Apple en California. Fabricado en China.» La base del ordenador portátil que estoy utilizando para escribir estas líneas contiene estas palabras junto con el nombre del modelo, el número de serie y otros datos. Y esto es curioso, porque hasta no hace tanto en un producto, por lo general, sólo se indicaba dónde se fabricaba. Sin embargo, ahora parece tan importante, si no más, decir dónde se diseña. ¿Acaso lo es porque la lista de los países donde todavía se fabrican cosas se ha reducido a un puñado, lo cual exige nuevos criterios para distinguir un producto de otro? ¿Significa esto que el diseño es cada vez más la base sobre la que los bienes y lo servicios compiten en la economía global, confirmando la supremacía de la forma sobre el contenido? De una manera curiosa, mi portátil no dice en qué país se diseñó, sino en qué Estado: California, nada menos. ¿Cuá sería la diferencia si hubiese sido diseñado, pongamos por caso, en Massachusetts? Quizá el dato no tenga otra intención que transmitir el sueño californiano y las buenas vibraciones a él asociadas. Californication über alles.

En las escuelas se enseña que una de las diferencias entre la arquitectura y el diseño es que aquella es contextual, mientras que este es, en principio,  global. Sin embargo, tampoco esto está claro. Mientras que el mismo producto de Apple puede encontrarse en cualquier lugar del mundo, la identidad de marca está fuertemente vinculada a una cultura específica. De hecho, las marcas globales tienden cada vez más a incluir topónimos, aprovechando el prestigio que los lugares por sí mismos son capaces de dotar al producto. Piénsese en ‘Custo Barcelona’ o ‘DKNY’. 

Como su nombre indica, el nuevo DissenyHub de Barcelona es un edificio cuyo programa es afirmar la centralidad de la capital catalana en el mundo del diseño. Pero, contra lo que pudiera esperarse, no es un edificio-objeto de diseñador, como otros de la zona, sino que forma parte de una infraestructura urbana concebida para albergar un programa de diferentes actividades —un museo de diseño, la sede de FAD, una biblioteca— y para mediar entre barrios, topografías y corredores de transporte, entre los cuales el más notorio es un viaducto elevado. Proyectado por MBM, el edificioDHUB está compuesto por dos elementos principales, uno encima de otro: un volumen grande y enterrado que contiene oficinas y una gran sala de exposiciones; y un elemento más alto y escultural, que alberga una zona expositiva más pequeña, y un auditorio. Recordando al Club Rusakov de Mélnikov en Moscú, el volumen que contiene el auditorio se lanza en voladizo sobre el viaducto, invadiendo, sin tocarlo, el espacio público. La ‘grapadora’ —así se le conoce por los barceloneses— es un elemento escultural, una especie de ornamento de capot que cubre el volumen inferior, que es mucho más grande y discreto. El exagerado voladizo fue pensado en origen para sostener una gigantesca pantalla LED, que podría ser vista desde el viaducto. Entretanto, este ha sido condenado a la demolición, lo cual podría también eliminar, a la postre, la razón de ser del voladizo, un hecho que demuestra que, igual que un ordenador puede emanar vibraciones regionales, la arquitectura también puede seguir siendo específica, aunque sea a costa de su propio contexto.

[Originalmente publicado en Arquitectura Viva bajo el título "Marcas y contextos / The Disseny Hub in Barcelona". Traducción: Eduardo Prieto]

El País, 7.7.2013

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?