What's in a Name?

image courtesy wikipedia.org

How should we name an important temple after it undergoes a complete religious change of use, but only a partial architectural transformation? And what if that temple is, moreover, known around the world because of its original use? Cordova's cathedral was built, after the Christian 'Reconquista' of Al Andalus, in the very middle of that city's sprawling mosque, leaving a significant part of the Moorish monument intact. Yet very few people today refer to it as "la Catedral de Córdoba". Colloquially, it is called "la Mezquita".

Indeed, when I first saw a current change.org petition titled "Save the Mosque-Cathedral of Cordova", I briefly thought for a split second that the building was being threatened with demolition. It turns out, in fact, that the petition is against the official re-naming of the building solely as "Cathedral" some years ago, before which is was referred to as The Mosque-Cathedral of Cordova. What needs to be saved, then, is the historical memory of the building.

Nobody doubts that the building is a cathedral. But for many centuries before that it was a mosque, a fact that cannot be ignored. Today, the vast majority of tourists lining up to visit it do so in order to see its impressive forest of columns supporting horseshoe arches and its mihrab. The Christian interventions, though very impressive, are less interesting. Though ironically, the Christian appropriation of the mosque as the site for a cathedral in its day may have actually been the very thing that saved the mosque from total demolition, as some historians have argued.

So what, then, should this building be named? To refer to it exclusively as the Cathedral, as the Diocese of Cordova is doing, may be technically correct, but that only speaks to a dwindling minority of practicing Christians in this country, while ignoring the very element that makes the building unique in the world. To refer to the structure exclusively as a mosque would also be misleading, since Muslim orations have not occurred there for centuries (though there have been two notable exceptions, in 1974 and 1977, when the first and second international conferences of the Amistad Islamo-Cristiana were held in Cordova).

Perhaps, taking a cue from a certain rock star, the place could be officially named: "The Building Formerly Known As The Great Mosque That Is Today A Cathedral". For short, the authorities could also revert, once again, to simply naming it Cordova's "Mosque-Cathedral". Much more unique-sounding than just another cathedral, which it is not.

Reflected ceiling plan of actual Mosque-Cathedral of Cordova, courtesy otraarquitecturaesposible.blogspot.com

Old Buildings, New Buildings

"I don’t know whether we should be designating heritage buildings." -Frank O. Gehry

Why is preserving old buildings only ever a question of heritage? Shouldn't we be maintaining and re-using whatever buildings can be salvaged for environmental reasons at this point? It is known that construction is one of the biggest causes of human CO2 emissions, up there with industry, agriculture, and transportation. There is also growing alarm about sand depletion, the main cause of which is construction. To say nothing of land depletion, sprawl, and the mind-numbing boringness of the vast majority of new buildings--including many "interesting" ones.

If construction is a major environmental problem, then how about over-construction? In Spain alone, it is estimated that 818 000 dwellings built during the boom are sitting empty and looking for a buyer. It should be obvious by now that most new construction is undertaken for purposes of financial speculation--not satisfying any real need.

Re-purposing old buildings that are sitting empty, of which there is no shortage, instead of building anew, which in many cases merely leads to more buildings sitting empty, seems to make increasing sense. But since when does architecture have anything to do with making sense? Well, perhaps the time has come. Better late than never.

As architects, our duty is first and foremost to improve our habitat, or so we like to think. In some cases, this is indeed best done with new construction, but in most cases now, this is best done by not building anew, and instead preserving and adaptively re-using old buildings.  In more ways than one, the city of the future will be the city of the past, and architecture will have more and more to do with intervening creatively within existing structures, and less and less to do with building new ones.

Let's not forget, while we're on the subject of old buildings, that Frank Gehry's greatest contribution to architecture is still that little suburban house in Santa Monica that he so lovingly and beautifully renovated in the late 1970s. That old house wasn't preserved back then for reasons of heritage. Well, now there are even more reasons for preserving old buildings that have nothing to do with heritage.

Gaudí in Red Alert

“Gaudí en alerta roja” is the title of an online petition currently the source of much debate in Barcelona. Its proponents, a group of luminaries from the local architectural and cultural establishment, argue that Gaudí’s work should be left "alone" and that he should be allowed to “rest in peace.” In fact, it demands that post-humous additions to projects Gaudí never completed in his lifetime be "undone" so as to revert to the state in which "the author" left them.

There are many problems with this rather romantic manifesto. For one thing, building is not a “pure” or “fine” art, and as Robert Hughes writes in Barcelona, Gaudí fancied himself as more of a builder than an architect: "That he was the son of artisans mattered immensely to Gaudí. He thought of himself as a man of his hands, not a theoretician." (p. 470). The Sagrada Familia was, from day one, a collaborative endeavor between Gaudí and his crew of masons and artisans. He never produced a full set of drawings of the temple (he apparently hated drawing), and is known to have made many design decisions in situ with his co-workers, operating at a level of humility that is unfathomable in the context of today's prima donna architecture. Leaving Gaudí’s work incomplete in the name of a supposed purity of authorship is probably something he himself would never have wished.

Another argument made in the manifesto is that the construction of such an ambitious temple is anachronous with a modern secular nation, and that the exorbitant amount of money it is costing would be better spent on more urgent needs. As far as I know, the construction of the Sagrada Familia is being financed mostly, if not entirely, by the hordes of tourists lining up to buy tickets to visit the site. Just who is to deny tourists and religious fanatics their right to pay tribute to a temple? Aren’t freedom of religion and freedom of mobility the very hallmarks of a modern, secular society?

Of course, it is entirely correct to insist that the Sagrada Familia should not invade public space, that it should have a building permit like any other construction site, and that there is no rational reason for a projected tunnel to have to make a wide detour around its foundations. Yes, the Casa Batlló’s neighbor should never have had four stories added on top of it, and perhaps the Colonia Güell crypt could have been renovated more sensitively (though it doesn’t look that bad either). But to insist that Gaudí’s work be returned to some sort of pure state and be henceforth left untouched?! That smacks of religious fundamentalism to me.

Exquisite Corpse: CaixaForum Madrid by Herzog + de Meuron

A large sculpture next to a mega monochrome painting – at first glance and from a distance, that’s what the serrated box and vertical garden of the new CaixaForum Madrid resemble. A Per Kirkeby next to an oversize Ad Reinhart or Brice Marden in an unknown green period, or perhaps a public piece by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen.

The building by Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron and the vertical garden by French botanist Patrick Blanc amount to a brilliant urban intervention that has transformed the site of a former power plant and petrol station in central Madrid into an important new addition to the city’s ‘art triangle’, an area formed by the Prado, Reina Sofía and Thyssen-Bornemisza Museums. Nonetheless, the resemblance of this intervention to sculpture and painting raises questions about contemporary architecture’s fascination with art. Even the ‘secular’ work of Herzog & de Meuron – indisputably the favorite architects of the art world – is clearly inspired by modern and contemporary art. Barcelona’s Forum 2004 Building, with its highly textured Yves Klein Blue-coloured skin, is a direct homage to the artist who invented that shade of blue.

Yet, as artists such as Sol LeWitt have written, architecture is not art, and it is particularly ironic that so much cutting-edge architecture currently reminds us of the most traditional forms of art – sculpture and painting – precisely at a time when contemporary art seems to be almost anything but sculpture and painting. I’m not referring here exclusively to Herzog &de Meuron, but to all the usual suspects. It has to be asked whether architecture is really advancing when it seeks to become an inhabitable form of sculpture. If art, as is so often said, is a mirror held up to the world, then architecture, the very construction of the world, cannot be the same sort of mirror. As an old-school professor told me in my formative years: ‘An artist can make a square wheel, but an architect’s wheel must always be round.’

CaixaForum Madrid is the newest of a series of ambitious social and cultural outreach projects of the Fundación ‘la Caixa’, a private philanthropic foundation funded by one of Spain’s larger financial institutions. Like the CaixaForums in Barcelona and Palma de Mallorca, Madrid’s is a centre for exhibitions of ancient, modern and contemporary art (including works from the Fundación ‘la Caixa’ contemporary art collection), music and poetry festivals, debates, seminars on contemporary issues and educational workshops. And like most of the foundation’s building projects, which include CosmoCaixa science museums in Barcelona and Madrid as well as smaller cultural and social centres in Catalonia and the Balearic Isles, CaixaForum Madrid has a social agenda that includes the preservation of a significant piece of built heritage. CaixaForum Barcelona, by Arata Isozaki, involved the adaptive reuse of the Casaramona textile factory designed in 1909 by Josep Puig i Cadafalch. Similarly, CaixaForum Madrid recuperates the Central Eléctrica del Mediodía, a power plant designed in 1899 by architect Jesús Carrasco-Muñoz.

It is well known that the art world generally prefers older buildings – especially those linked to a region’s industrial heritage – over completely new architecture for exhibiting visual art. The patina of worn and weathered buildings, according to many artists and curators, suits the display of contemporary art better than brand-new sterile spaces, though I suspect their preference may emerge in part from a predisposition for buildings that look like buildings and not like sculptures. The most monumental manifestation of this aesthetic preference is, of course, London’s Tate Modern, another power plant transformed by Herzog & de Meuron, although the prototype for exhibiting art in industrial buildings originates in the use made of New York warehouses by American minimalist and conceptualist artists of the 1960s and ’70s.

In the case of CaixaForum Madrid, however, the appropriation of historical architecture is superficial: only the exterior walls of the Central del Mediodía have been preserved. Inside these walls – as well as above and below them – the construction is contrastingly new. Moreover, the historical building has been completely recontextualized: the heavy plinth that originally supported the power station has been removed and replaced by three points of support, causing the building to appear to levitate over the site. As a result, it is no longer self-evident that this was the original site of the Central del Mediodía. Industrial architecture is so rare and out of place in Madrid, the monumental capital of Spain, that one could easily imagine this building floating to the site all the way from Barcelona, Spain’s industrial capital and, incidentally, the headquarters of ‘la Caixa’. Indeed, with its addition on top, CaixaForum recalls the many 19th-century buildings of Barcelona’s Eixample district that were expanded vertically by as many as four storeys during the latter half of the Franco dictatorship, a period of rampant real-estate speculation.

CaixaForum Madrid appears, then, to be a palimpsest, a collage, an exquisite corpse. But this is just an exterior reading: in addition to the elevated hybrid building, there is also a hidden underground component extending horizontally beneath the plaza. This underground component can be reached only after penetrating the elevated building through its topographical underside, by means of a sculptural winding stair that ascends from the plaza into the lobby. Here, a single picture window frames a view of Madrid’s Botanical Gardens across the busy Paseo del Prado and a segment of an adjacent block of buildings whose end wall supports Patrick Blanc’s vertical garden. To continue from the lobby to the rest of the building, the visitor must enter a stairwell that leads up to two exhibition galleries, a bar-restaurant and administrative offices; and down to an underground auditorium and lecture halls. The stairwell, a tapered vertical shaft, is important for structural reasons: it is the largest of the three vertical supports that elevate the building above the plaza. As the shear- and torsion-resistant structural core of the building, it functions like the vertical core of any high-rise building, except that it’s roomy and admits daylight from above. But the stairwell is no ‘museum atrium’ either: it is completely out of view with respect to the rest of the building, precisely because of the load-bearing and fire-resistant role of its heavy white concrete walls. In this regard, CaixaForum marks a significant departure from current art-museum thinking, in which galleries are typically organized around a central, brightly lit atrium to which visitors periodically return, as part of a strategy to alleviate disorientation and museum fatigue. The opacity of the structural stairwell separates each floor completely from the others; consequently, depending on the level at which one exits the stairwell, the décor could change completely. The lobby, with its bright silver beams, contrasts with the white terrazzo floored galleries, the natural wood and dark red-brown perforated metal of the underground spaces, and the delicately screened daylight passing through perforated Corten steel in the restaurant. Here, CaixaForum marks another significant departure from current museums: the building interior is neither monotonously monochrome nor ‘purist’ in an ‘honest’ display of construction materials. Like an urban palace– the first art gallery – CaixaForum contains a variety of differently finished rooms. Paint and interior wall coverings are no taboo for these Swiss architects.

Although CaixaForum Madrid appears at first glance to resemble supersize art, up close it reveals itself to be surprising, eclectic and complex. It incorporates the façade of a historical building that has been emptied, but unlike the common heritage practice of ‘façadism’ –whereby a historical surface is used to camouflage modernity – the historical façade of this building functions as a character foil to some radical moves. CaixaForum Madrid appropriates many art-world architectural conventions but subtly turns them upside down. Precisely what the best art and architecture have always done.

[originally published in Mark Magazine #14]