Power, Corruption and Architecture

Photo courtesy ElMundo.com

Transparency International released its annual report some weeks ago, and this year's corruption perception index, which ranks 177 countries from least to most corrupt, lists Spain as having dropped from position 30 to 40. In just one year.

Yes, you might well ask, but what does architecture have to do with all this?

Well, the biggest corruption scandal of them all, the Bárcenas affair (after Luís Bárcenas, the imprisoned former treasurer of the right-of-centre Partido Popular / PP, which governs Spain nationally as well as regionally in 11 of its 17 Autonomous Regions and locally in the majority of its municipalities), is about supposed illegal party funding during nearly two decades, mostly by construction companies and real-estate developers, who, in exchange for "donations" to the PP party, received favorable consideration by PP-led local or regional governments in the allocation of large public works contracts, or were granted favorable changes to land-use zoning bylaws when building private developments.

The whole racket began in 1990, but it went into high gear in 1998, when land law reforms passed by the Aznar-led PP majority government to facilitate zoning changes stimulated a huge boom in private real estate development that would last over a decade and that, upon bursting, would cause a disastrous economic crisis that is still on-going and seemingly never-ending. The construction boom's huge urban expansions required new infrastructure and public buildings, which in turn meant, of course, lots more opportunities to raise cash for the PP coffers. During the boom, the PP's slush fund was so large that Luís Bárcenas regularly handed out "bonuses" --envelopes containing large sums of cash-- to the party brass, including allegedly Mariano Rajoy, the current prime minister of Spain. Catalonia's ruling right-of-centre CiU party is embroiled in a similar scandal, the Palau case, in which contractors were allegedly systematically charged a 3% fee in the allocation of public works contracts.

Judges and journalists who have tried to investigate corruption networks, such as Judge Baltasar Garzón's probe into the "Gürtel" scandal or the Catalan digital newspaper Cafè amb Llet's uncovering of sleaze in Catalonia's public health system, have been either removed from office or sued for defamation, while a great many politicians accused of corruption are still in office. Corrupt politicians and royalty are defended, ironically, by none other than Spain's special "anti-corruption" prosecutor's office. Talk about impunity.

But what does architecture as distinct from construction have to do with all this?

The fact is that the real estate and public works boom of the 2000s coincides exactly with the period in which Spanish architecture was heralded around the world as exemplary. "Good architecture" thus became an unwitting byproduct of --if not a cynical smokescreen for-- large-scale political corruption. As long as critics, curators, and archi-tourists were gushing over all the fabulous new buildings in Spain, then maybe the hundreds of millions of euros of tax money that was being diverted into the pockets of politicians wouldn't be noticed. Or worse yet--this being the land of the picaresque por excelencia-- maybe such wrongdoing would even be tolerated if it meant Spain was being celebrated in the global spotlight, which it certainly was. The architecture boom was such a good party while it lasted, that nobody wanted to entertain the possibility that architecture, known to march hand-in-hand with power, might also be marching hand-in-hand with XL-size political corruption.

Many ordinary Spaniards are now sickened, not only by negative effects of the construction boom (urban sprawl, thousands of empty buildings, unemployment, forced evictions, polarization of wealth, disappearance of the middle class, etc.), but also by the perception that architecture was somehow either directly or indirectly complicit with the boom. This feeling of betrayal is especially significant because Spanish architects generally enjoyed a high level of citizen respect until recently. Before the death of Franco in 1975, architecture students were an important contingent in the pro-democracy student movement, and a number of architects played leading roles in neighborhood-association struggles to improve living conditions in Spanish cities.

Spanish architecture was thus identified with an incipient democracy movement at one time. Corruption, on the other hand, directly undermines democracy, and it is interesting to note a change that occurred in Spanish architecture from the end of the Transition period to the boom-years of the late 90s and 2000s. Whereas up to the 1992 Olympics most public works projects concentrated on renovating public spaces and building new public institutions (schools, sport facilities, city halls, etc.), usually at the neighborhood scale; after 1997, the year that the Bilbao Guggenheim Museum opened, a new typology emerges that we might call an "architecture of tourism": cultural facilities that are so large, they could only have been designed with hordes of tourists in mind as the principal user-group. Alongside these publicly financed tourism mega-projects, private real-estate development built primarily for purposes of speculation began to spring up. Generalizing grossly, we could say that the pre-Guggenheim period's architecture had the improvement of the lives of citizens as its priority, while most of the building undertaken during the post-Guggenheim boom years now ultimately had tourists and foreign investors in mind, in addition to voting citizens of course.

The more the construction industry profited (and the more they donated to political parties such as the PP or Catalonia's CiU party), the more Spanish architecture excelled in recognition and won international competitions. Coincidence? Or is it merely a case of having to take, as it were, the good with the bad (and the ugly)? The boom is also the period during which a significant number of prestigious Spanish architecture magazines went to global distribution, and when many celebrated architects from abroad started building in Spain and vice versa. Numerous architectural master's programs aimed at foreign architecture students appeared at the same time that many Spanish architecture students and academics went abroad to study or become leading figures at some of the most prestigious architecture schools. Thus, even architectural theory and criticism "boomed" alongside the construction and architecture boom, gaining increasing global recognition.

Spanish architecture thus shifted from mainly local concerns to chiefly global concerns. Accordingly, attention shifted from the concerns of citizens to those of tourists, consumers of global media, international financial speculators, and architectural academia. But all this changed from one day to the next when Spain's feverish construction bubble suddenly burst in 2008.  Architects themselves were not only suddenly out of work, but were also suddenly shunned by a society that until then had regarded them as heroes. Unfair scapegoats? Perhaps. In any case, a profession that was societally respected and internally bonded was now coming apart, both literally and metaphorically. Since the great crash, there has been almost no work, no income, and no optimism. A very high number of architects have been forced to move abroad, some as far as the Americas or Australasia. Interestingly, at this moment more US architecture schools are headed by Spanish architects than ever before (a group colloquially referred to as "The Spanish Armada").

Back in Spain, meanwhile, a law has been tabled to "liberalize" the profession and make it more "competitive" (we all know what that word really means). Enrollment in architecture schools is way down, while paper architecture, collectives, collaborating (once again) with activist groups and neighborhood associations, and un-solicited architecture are up, as are "alternative" spatial practices that approach art. Such alternatives to traditional practice, even if these put yet less bread on the table, show the inventiveness and persistence of Spanish architects, who are some of the best-educated in the world.

We are now being told that the crisis is over, and that it's all going to get better from now on; that our sacrifices are finally bearing fruit. While we are being told this, the majority PP government is passing an anti-protest and hence anti-democratic "Citizen Safety Law" the likes of which have not been seen since the Franco era. Another law designed to protect coastal construction is being reformed to facilitate construction on those few remaining stretches of coastline that have not been destroyed already, while another law is being entertained that would provide an instant Spanish (and hence EU) passport to anyone "investing" half a million euros in Spain; a law obviously aimed at reducing the current surplus of approximately 800 000 apartments. Perhaps the PP ultimately wants to kick-start another con-struction boom; a re-ron. Only this time, the spectacular hotel casinos for both tourist consumption and real-estate speculation in one (giving a whole new meaning to the term "multi-use building") will be built by global developers and their brand of global architects. The Spanish government has already shown that it is willing to bend over backwards (which in Spanish translates as "bajar los pantalones", or lower the trousers) in order to meet the demands of developers, such as easing laws concerning money-laundering, smoking in public buildings, foreign work visas, and of course land-use zoning. What the failed negotiations over EuroVegas reveal is just how low the Spanish government is willing to go in lowering its trousers. The only one of Sheldon Adelson's demands that it couldn't meet was a guarantee that future governments would not recede on the final agreement. A democratically elected government cannot, of course, ever agree to such a condition--only a dictator is in a position to do so.

Although EuroVegas thankfully fell through in the end, the eagerness with which this project was embraced by ruling politicians paints a dismaying picture of Spanish architecture in the coming decade or two. It will likely become two-tiered and highly polarized, just like Spain itself, with a handful of local architecture collectives designing food banks, emergency shelters for the homeless, and Single-Room Occupancy dwellings for NGOs, while a handful of superstar "developer-architects" (with names like BIGGUS DICKUS, Co-opted Himmelb(l)au, OMG, and Frankly Garish) will probably be brought in to design private hotels, casinos, tourist apartments, gated communities and luxury marinas. There will be very little in the way of museums, since so many have been built in the last decade that there is little to no money left for their collections. In fact, public work will all but disappear, since there is little public money anyway, growing public opposition to these kinds of projects, and since it is no longer as profitable a method for filling the coffers of ruling political parties. But the PP party has already found another way to profit from the public sector: privatizing it by selling off public institutions such as Spain's regional health-care or education systems to their cronies.

This time around, "architecture" will have little to gain.

Going Slowly: Cadaval and Solà-Morales

X House, near Barcelona. Photo credit: Iwan Baan.

Lounge in Tepoztlán, Mexico. Photo credit: Sandra Pereznieto.

"Young architects" is a culturally loaded term, often conjuring notions of rebellion, utopian idealism, gravity-defying flights of fantasy and trendy theoretical posturing. But while Eduardo Cadaval and Clara de Solà-Morales are definitely young, their unpretentious, beautifully built work is planted firmly in the ground of common sense, which is precisely why it caught my interest. Why shouldn’t "young" architecture also be about building – and building rationally?

Having seen only images of their work on the internet, I’m looking forward to seeing a real Cadaval and Solà-Morales building. Eduardo and Clara gladly agree to show me a house they have just completed on the coast north of Barcelona: Casa X. On our way to the site, I wonder: What’s with the X? Is it a reference to House X by Peter Eisenman? A house for a secret agent? Or is the client’s name Xavier? In any case, I’m willing to let X equal X; the name of the house is of no great matter.

Sure enough, the first thing Eduardo and Clara tell me, as we approach the motorway that takes us out of Barcelona – one of the few benefits of Spain’s disastrous economic crisis is a noticeable reduction in traffic – is not to mind the name of the house. Why? "Because we don’t want you to get the wrong idea. We are not formalists."

Eventually, we drive through a small town and up the side of a steep hill dotted with villas that enjoy privileged views of the Mediterranean. These homes seem to occupy the rugged hillside haphazardly, but the random pattern they make terminates cleanly and abruptly at the top. ‘That contour line represents the highest permissible building elevation,’ says Eduardo, pointing up while manoeuvring around sharp hairpin turns. I notice one house that looks nothing like the others: a flat-topped, concrete-and-glass structure with two angled arms cantilevering out of the slope, seemingly embracing the horizon. No confirmation required – architecture is always identifiable by process of elimination.

We stop and get out of the car. The house lies below the level of the road, permitting views of the

distant landscape over a roof terrace shaped like an X in plan. A driveway descends at an angle parallel

to one of the two intersecting bars comprising the X, terminating in a tidy two-car garage. "X is the shape we arrived at after trying out all sorts of configurations to best optimize views, light, circulation and privacy on a rather small and very steep site," explains Clara. "X is simply the shape that worked best."

I am surprised by how small the house appears to be, especially in comparison with others in the area. "We worked hard to make the house as spatially compact and efficient as possible, as well as to convince the municipality that the house didn’t need to sit atop a plinth," which, given the steepness of the site, would have exposed immense foundation walls. Instead, Casa X cantilevers out of the hillside, lightening its volume. "Interesting," I remark, thinking of all the gratuitous and conspicuous cantilevers being designed just about everywhere these days. What I’m looking at here is a cantilever that actually makes sense.

Although the exterior gives a compact impression, the interior of the house does not feel small at all, thanks not only to generous views of the surroundings through the living room’s double-height glass curtain wall, but also to an interior organization that avoids boxed-in spaces and reveals something new around every corner. Indeed, it becomes evident that every detail has been very carefully considered: the fine, uniform texture of exposed concrete; the positioning of vertical curtain-wall mullions on the exterior to assure a smooth, uninterrupted surface on the inner side of the glass; the mitred joints of acutely angled corners in the millwork; and more.

Back at their office, I ask Clara and Eduardo whether, for them, architecture is essentially a building art, or Baukunst, as the German language so succinctly puts it. 

Clara: "Architecture can be many things beyond building, but when a design does get built, there’s a responsibility to build well. It’s an insult when things fall apart or noise passes through apartment walls. Architecture is human, and mistakes can happen, but architects need to do their very best to make sure they don’t happen. Building well is a way of building sustainably. There you have it – the S word!"

Eduardo: "We love the adrenaline rush that comes from built work." They show me other recently completed projects, as well as those not yet finished, including two in Mexico: a lounge and bungalow for a rural resort in Tepoztlán, and urban housing in Mexico City. What I’m wondering, though, is how their building ethic can be maintained when such operations are in progress on both sides of the Atlantic.

Eduardo: "We may work on two different continents, but we are not one of those ‘global’ offices. We run two local offices. We know and understand the Mexican context. We work there as a local office and charge our clients accordingly. We also work here in Barcelona as a local office. We have been invited to do work in Dubai, but we said no thanks – if it’s difficult to do a good building three blocks away, imagine how difficult it would be to do one without knowing local construction techniques, let alone local culture. That doesn’t mean we’re not interested in designing buildings for other countries, but it takes time. We believe in going slowly, step by step. We really like working on residential and other relatively small projects, but that doesn’t mean we plan to do the same thing forever. We are interested in doing medium-scale projects and in making public architecture, especially in Mexico, but little by little. We want to be able to have successful results, and to do that we need to take our time."

The discussion shifts to landscape, which seems to play a central role in the work of Cadaval and Solà-Morales. In addition to distant views of tectonically framed scenery for visual enjoyment – an important feature of Casa X – landscape is often a more visceral, up-close component of the architecture. One example is the Tepoztlán lounge, in which space is created as much by landscape as by artificially built elements, while earth and vegetation seem to be building materials for the first Tepoztlán bungalow.

Clara: "For us, landscape is not just a view but a part of the programme. We don’t see a line between inside and outside, but a space – and it’s that space that interests us."

Eduardo: "An environment is an environment, whether it’s architecturally built or not. We believe in environments. We don’t build things that just invite users to admire the landscape; we want our work to become part of the landscape – to interact with it. Yes, in the case of the Tepoztlán lounge, the terraces, patios and vegetation are just as important as the concrete. Our design of the lounge includes the environment as a whole, not just the building."

But at the same time, I reply, the ‘hard stuff’ in these environments takes on strong forms: X-shaped or triangular plans, rectangular frames...

Clara: "Form is the result of a long process. We try to find a single shape or idea – an idealistic or utopian form – that can solve everything. In Casa X, the shape of the plan shields the house from very closely situated neighbours while providing views of the surroundings."

Such a search for optimization sounds a bit like the discourse on parametric design, but parametric forms are typically very complicated and convoluted, whereas Eduardo and Clara’s are scandalously simple. I ask them whether they are into using the latest digital technology in their search for optimization.

Eduardo: "A worker on a construction site in Mexico would shatter current parametric discourse in three minutes flat. We feel a closer kinship to his concerns than to those of the digital-technology discourse. We concentrate on simpler issues: how to build reasonably economically and where natural light and ventilation are going to come from. We are more into human parametricism."

Clara: "If we were into parametricism, we would find our own way to build these designs. We are more interested in people and in the urban and social aspects of architecture. Right now, parametricism seems to be concerned solely with formalism and not with how people actually live."

After saying "Adéu", I realize I was wrong. Eduardo Cadaval and Clara de Solà Morales are, in fact, polemical – and in true "young architect" style, no less. They are making a point – a very timely point, I might add – which is that architecture cannot lose sight of its most essential and primordial aspect. Ultimately, architecture must serve others and not just itself.

[Originally published in Mark #39]

Ill-Fitting: The Balenciaga Museum

The Balenciaga Museum: a refurbished 19th-century palace
onto which a vast new glass shed has been added. 

The canted, curving sea-facing glass facade of the addition is
punctuated by clunky emergency exits that appear to be an afterthought.

The shed is symmetrical in cross-section, even though it is built into a steep hillside.

 The care taken by AV62 in the design of the exhibition spaces redeems the building.

Fashion, Architecture, Politics: Image is Everything

The inauguration of a cultural institution is normally a cause for widespread celebration; even more if it is the opening of the world’s first museum dedicated entirely to one couturier. But the long anticipated inauguration in 2011 of the Museum dedicated to Cristóbal Balenciaga in his birthplace of Getaria, a small fishing town in Spain's Basque Country, must have been somewhat awkward, to say the least. The occasion, as reported in national media, was attended by Queen Sofía of Spain, local and national politicians, and dignitaries and luminaries from the international fashion world, for whom the celebrated Basque chef Juan Mari Arzak created a special six-course gastronomical menu inspired by Balenciaga's creations. But there were nevertheless two very conspicuous absences at the inauguration: the former mayor of Getaria who spearheaded the project, Mariano Camio, and the architect who gave it its overall built form, Julián Argilagos. They were probably not invited because of the criminal charges they were facing in relation to the project. In 2007, when the building was semi-complete, a scandal broke out triggered by the apparent theft of some handkerchiefs and other pieces from the museum’s collection. More revelations soon followed: serious irregularities in the awarding of contracts, embezzlement of public money, huge cost overruns, and an unlicensed architect (who was also rumored to be the mayor’s lover). The scandal amounted to terrible publicity for a museum dedicated to a legendary perfectionist: Balenciaga was known to work in relative seclusion and to abhor publicity of any kind.

The corruption scandal surrounding the Balenciaga Museum is a textbook example of the close relationship that exists between architectural and political ambition. A spectacular building is capable of providing both the politician who spearheaded it and the architect who designed it with the very same thing each craves to advance their respective careers: a good photo opportunity. The politician craves photos that will generate news headlines, while the architect craves photo reportage in glossy design media. Regardless of the type of media, the greatest buzz is generated by photogenic architecture. Any politician or architect with the slightest ambition knows this: image is everything. 

Spain, in the nearly three decades between the definitive end of Franco's dictatorship and the onslaught of a devastating economic crisis in 2008, was a particularly rife place for architectural-political ambition. As a relatively young democracy, Spain still feels it has a collective "backwardness complex" it needs to bury once and for all. The construction of new democratic institutions, public spaces and infrastructure became a priority in the first decade, to be followed in the latter two by the construction of world-class cultural institutions. Museums, then very much in architectural vogue, became especially important as a way for Spain to brand itself as vanguard. Or, more precisely speaking, Spain’s autonomous regions, almost half of which speak languages that were suppressed during the Franco dictatorship and which afterward set out to gain greater political power. In Spain, regional identity is a global political issue as much as it a national one, and ambitious architecture was found to be among the most effective vehicles for projecting a regional voice into the global arena.   

Building iconic museums developed into a particularly Spanish kind of “space race” among its provincial cities. The Bilbao Guggenheim Museum by Frank O. Gehry (situated only an hour’s drive from Getaria) is the most famous example, eventually becoming an international media phenomenon. The “Bilbao effect” (a reference to Jean Baudrillard's "Beaubourg Effect") refers to a form of edifice envy among politicians around the world, for whom building a high-profile architect-designed museum became their preferred way to give their city or region an image make-over. If Bilbao is capable of completely transforming its urban image from heavy-industrial “grunge” to post-industrial “chic”, then so can Barcelona or Badajoz. The Bilbao Guggenheim is only one of many museums in Spain by respected national and international designers. In the Spanish vox populi, the new generation of museums are so much associated with "architecture" that it is often jokingly commented that museums are visited more for their shells than for what's inside. As we shall see, in the case of the Balenciaga Museum the exact inverse happens to be case: here, it is the container that does not live up to its content. 

The Fiasco

Sure enough, the Balenciaga Museum started out with what are presumably the best of intentions. When Mariano Camio, a charismatic member of the conservative-nationalist Euzko Alderdi Jeltzalea / Partido Nacionalista Vasco political party was elected mayor of Getaria in 1983, he saw building a museum in the place where Cristóbal Balenciaga was born and now lies buried as a way to leave a lasting mark on the town while honouring a native son, and, of course, as a way to put the town on the international cultural tourism circuit. Soon after his election he began to contact families who had been patrons of Balenciaga, convincing them to make donations to a publicly owned collection he was spearheading. He created a foundation to administer the collection and to oversee the design, construction and direction of a future (and "futuristic") museum, recruiting Hubert de Givenchy as its Honorary President. In 1999, Camio and de Givenchy convinced the Basque Government to buy an important collection of Balenciaga’s creations, significantly increasing the size of the Foundation’s collection to over a thousand pieces ranging from dresses for different sorts of occasions to hats and handkerchiefs. Government grants totalling 18 million euros were secured from the Spanish Ministry of Culture and other public sources, and the idea to build a museum had the support of Spanish Royalty, Queen Fabiola of Belgium (whose wedding dress Balenciaga had created), Paco Rabanne, Emanuel Ungaro and Óscar de la Renta, among others. 

The museum project began with the refurbishment of the Berroeta Aldamar palace, a summer residence that once belonged to the Marquesa of Casa Torres, Balenciaga's first client and patron. But it was evident that the palace would be too small, and that an addition would be needed to display the growing collection. This is where Miami-based Cuban architect Julián Argilagos enters the picture. Mayor Camio personally handpicked Argilagos to design the museum, even though he had no experience with a public building of such magnitude. Although the museum was to be built with public funds, no architectural competition was held at the outset--not even an invitational competition. Camio must have been very impressed by Argilagos’s pompous (and erroneous) claim that his museum design, “inspired by Gaudí, American architecture, and Balenciaga himself” would be “the world’s first suspended building”, and that it would “revolutionize world architecture”. This kind of rhetoric sounds overly grandiose even coming from an architect, but it seems to have convinced Camio. 

So, just how was Mariano Camio able to handpick someone to design a public building without going through a public selection process? By creating a private company with himself as the sole signing authority (Berroeta-Aldamar S.L.) which would be directly contracted by the Foundation of which he is the deputy president to manage the construction of the future museum of which he is director and Argilagos curator and exhibition designer. That’s how. The Foundation’s Honorary President, Hubert de Givenchy, as well as most of the patrons of the Balenciaga Foundation were living far away from Getaria, and so were not involved in the Foundation’s day-to-day business. Camio could control everything (or so he thought). Incredulously, construction supervision was also contracted to Argilagos, [1] even though it is standard practice, when a foreign architect designs a building, for supervision and all legal-contractual aspects to be handled by a local "architect of record". Camio must evidently have been convinced that the involvement of any "outside" architect or consultant would only compromise Argilagos's vision. 

The original completion date of the building was originally scheduled for late 2003, but by 2005 construction had only barely begun. By 2007, the foundation, the steel structure, and parts of the envelope were in place, but it was slowly becoming evident that Argilagos could not handle the project by himself. In that year the Spanish Ministry of Culture halted funding when it was discovered that construction costs, initially estimated at 6 million euros, had tripled to 18 million. Camio, increasingly under pressure, fired Argilagos, but not without first paying him an extra 439 000 euros on top of the nearly million he had already been paid in fees.[2] When it was discovered one day that some scarves, handkerchieves and gloves had gone missing from the collection because they had been handed out by Camio as gifts to some of his cronies “for their support during difficult times”, the scandal finally broke in the media. The Foundation’s Honorary President called for Camio to step down, a parliamentary investigation was launched, and construction was immediately halted. 

In order to rescue the project, the Balenciaga Foundation was legally reconstituted in 2008, with Sonsoles Díez de Rivera, a major donor to the Balenciaga collection, appointed as the new director. The new foundation immediately launched an architectural competition. Officially, this competition was  for the museum’s interior and museological design, but it was also obviously intended to correct a wrong that had been committed. The competition was won by Victoria Garriga and Toño Foraster, principals of the firm AV62, a young Barcelona office with a proven record of designing museum exhibitions. But it was a bitter-sweet competition to win: AV62 soon discovered that they had inherited many building deficiencies that had to be corrected late in the game; problems that would further strain an already very limited budget.

The Building

As it stands today, the involuntary architectural collaboration that is the Balenciaga Museum is not exactly the most accurate manifestation of the couturier’s legacy and values. Balenciaga, who likened his métier to that of architecture, was a perfectionist who refined and developed his technique and craft gradually, throughout his entire career. Refusing to follow trends, he was experimental but at the same time extremely rigorous; the two being inseparable from one another in his mind. Balenciaga knew not only how to design, but also how to sew, which he learned as a child while helping his mother, a seamstress. Balenciaga is comparable in this regard to Mies van der Rohe, who had a similar ethic and who also learned to master a craft (masonry) before becoming a designer. Balenciaga's "Miesian" rigor is certainly not honored by the awkward building bearing his name; a building which was ill-conceived from the start, ran amuck, and finally had to be rescued by another architectural firm. If anything, it might provide us with an example of current-day "complexity and contradiction in architecture."

Overlooking the town of Getaria and the Bay of Biscay from a steep hillside, the Balenciaga Museum is essentially a long, sinuous glass shed added onto a nineteenth-century palace (Robert Venturi would of course have done the opposite, adding the palace to the shed). Inside its vast, bright space, a series of smaller, opaque buildings containing exhibition galleries are suspended from trapezoidally shaped steel arches.  The approach from the town is by way of a series of escalators that take the visitor from the main road passing through Getaria to a plaza in front of the palace and, adjoining it, an opaque, black metal end-facade belonging to the addition. A single, elegant angular pleat in the surface makes a minimal entranceway gesture. Upon entering one end of the longitudinal hall directly through the main doors beneath the pleat, the first thing that draws the eye are the long, gently curving canted glass walls on both sides. One of the glass walls faces north over Getaria’s rooftops toward town, sea and horizon, but the other faces south, directly into the sunlight as well as onto a four-story high retaining wall only a few meters away from the glass. This massive retaining wall, which is thankfully softened by vegetation, reveals that a steep, anything-but-symmetrical terrain had to be radically altered in order to accomodate the cross-sectional symmetry of Argilagos's design. 

“Ideally” intended for a flat site, Argilagos's design is essentially a utopian idea forced onto a rugged topography that had to make way. It is a pre-conceived architectural idea brought to a site from elsewhere. The only adaptation to the site occurs in the plan: the curvature of the building follows a topographic contour line. The Balenciaga Museum is thus ill-fitted to its site. With its long, drawn out form and symmetrically canted glass walls on both sides, it would be much more suitable as an airport terminal for a small Spanish town such as, say, Ciudad Real or Castellón. Mundane things like local building codes were evidently not taken into consideration either, judging by the number of fire escape doorways that punctuate the very glass wall graced with a sea-facing view. Due to the cant of the glass wall, and the fact that fire escape doors must, by necessity, be vertical and made of steel, these doorways become clunky, opaque box dormers tacked onto a complex, sculpted, smoothly warped glass curtain-wall. These doors appear to be such a foreign intrusion on the curtain-wall that they could only have been added as an afterthought, ruining what was presumably intended to be the main design feature of the building.

It is not until we finally reach the innermost parts of the building that it begins to look and feel like a museum and not an airport terminal, in large part because at this point that we no longer see the rest of the building. Inside the suspended exhibition spaces, a display architecture comprised of a single, continuous, deeply undulating wall creates smooth, seamless niches within which Balenciaga’s work is sensually  displayed, not unlike virgins in the chapels of a church. The undulating walls in each of the six different exhibition galleries vary in curvature and colour according to the museum’s six different curatorial classifications: “Early Years, Day, Cocktail, Evening, Bridal and Essential.” The hidden lighting sources, the subdued lighting levels, and the unframed glass set into the smoothly curved niches amount to a simple but effective exhibition design strategy that displays Balenciaga’s work with dignity and elegance.

Good News?

It is a miracle that this museum was completed in the end, in spite of all the problems it suffered. The museum has become a popular attraction in Gipuzkoa, despite a building that disappoints for the most part. In the end, the problem is perhaps not so much the building itself as it is the missed opportunity that the building represents. It is what this building could have been that disappoints above all (a type of disappointment only ever suffered by architects and politicians). It could have been so much better; something Balenciaga might be proud of. Instead, he must surely be rolling over in his grave. 

In the meantime, a criminal investigation launched when the scandal broke resulted in Mariano Camio being charged with embezzling public funds, falsification of invoices, and administrative disloyalty. He denies all charges. Julián Argilagos, along with another Cuban architect, is charged with practicing without a license, and is the only one of the three indicted who has yet to appear in court to testify, citing poor health as well as financial ruin as excuses not to travel. Argilagos claims on his YouTube channel that AV62 violated his intellectual property rights by not seeking his permission to make changes to his design. AV62, on the other hand, feels that their right to have been provided a fair opportunity to be awarded this project from the very beginning was violated, and that they have to now cope with the disappointment and frustration of not having been able to do their best work (although they certainly did the best they could under the circumstances). And Mariano Camio? Curiously, nothing is being heard from the person who is ultimately responsible and who should have known better than anyone else that when it comes to excessive architectural-political ambition, media can also backfire. 

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[1] http://www.elmundo.es/suplementos/cronica/2009/626/1245535216.html

[2] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/museum-accused-of-giving-away-balenciagas-work-789356.html

[a shorter version of this text was originally published in Disegno #1]