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. 

Power to the People: Andrés Jaque activist-architect

The office of Andrés Jaque Arquitectos

Still on the shy side of 40, Andrés Jaque is a leading member of a new generation of Spanish architects that is emerging onto the international scene, a generation that distinguishes itself more by its way of working – networking, to be more precise – than by any singly identifiable architectural style. Indeed, this generation is seemingly more interested in process than in product, quite unlike the previous generation, whose trademark minimalism of the 1980s and ’90s has become a kind of official dogma in Spain. What these generations have in common, nevertheless, is political activism, albeit approached from different positions. Members of the elder generation of architects took on positions of power in new governmental institutions, both municipal and regional, that had to be ‘built’ during the post-Franco transition to democracy, while those of the new generation more often work for NGOs, collaborate with neighbourhood associations and stage media events as acts of protest. The latter are more anti-Establishment. To their way of thinking, the perfectly detailed building is no longer as important as a design process that invites public participation and interaction by using digital platforms and Web 2.0 networks. In short, these architects are more ‘artist-activists’ than ‘professional experts’. Knowing that Andrés Jacque is one of their most outspoken exponents, I eagerly make my way to Madrid on the first high-speed train out of Barcelona one summer morning.

Hidden away in the heart of Malasaña, a lively barrio in Madrid, Andrés Jaque’s small office is on a street so obscure that people from neighbouring streets haven’t even heard of it. Only the news vendor at the nearby Plaza del 2 de Mayo is able to direct me to Calle de la Galería de Roble. Entering the calle, I spot a sign the size of a business card on a storefront: Andrés Jaque Arquitectos. I knock on the door and am greeted instantly by the man himself – no secretary, no receptionist – and shown inside. The interior is minuscule but high, with a small mezzanine overlooking a double-height space. It’s the kind of shop that was probably once occupied by a neighbourhood shoemaker or locksmith.

The size of his office is the first thing I mention to Andrés. ‘We are actually two offices here,’ he says, ‘an architecture firm and the Oficina de Inovación Política (Office for Political Innovation or OPI).’ Oh, like OMA and AMO, but smaller? ‘Not exactly, because in this case one of the offices is not a business but a not-for-profit think-tank.’ Reminder to self: pick up on this topic again soon.

He introduces me to two colleagues: a young architect from Bogotá, Colombia, and a young sociologist from Lanzarote, Canary Islands. Wait a minute: a sociologist? Hmm. Just what does the ‘Office for Political Innovation’ actually do, I ponder aloud, and what, if anything, does it have to do with Jaque’s architecture practice?

‘Field work’ is his answer. ‘You know: research.’ He goes on: ‘Ever since I was a student, I’ve been more interested in the complexity of the life that occurs in architecture than in the complexity [and contradiction?] of architecture itself. I’ve wondered why it is that buildings are designed so that people are inevitably obliged to adapt to the architecture rather than the other way round. I decided to make it my mission to dismantle the widely held notion of architecture as a fait accompli. I believe architecture must adapt to reality.’ I find myself nodding in agreement: Jacque is very persuasive and enthusiastic. He would probably make a good motivational speaker, I think to myself.

‘Reality is extremely complex, so we need descriptions of it that are equally complex. The Office for Political Innovation is interested in qualitative sociology, in detailed descriptions of current ways of living and of social interaction that can inform the design process of buildings. This is why we engage in field work.’

How did Andrés go from having a student interest in field work to engaging in it professionally? ‘It all came about gradually. We were a bunch of friends and colleagues who one day decided to articulate and make public a political agenda. We would look for the “architectural dimension” of everything that was happening around us, especially news items of public concern: the environment, gender inequality, poverty, et cetera. We soon realized that to address these public concerns seriously and legitimately we needed to join people from other fields who were already directly involved in such issues. I’m tired of hearing architects say that we are like film directors, that we ‘direct’ others. No, we architects are a part of something bigger. In a complex urban reality, we don’t want just one person pulling all the strings. We need a multiplicity of agents. We live in a democracy, not a technocracy!’

Jaque is on a roll now. He is speaking in Spanish, and if there’s one thing Spaniards have it’s the gift of gab. This man is especially gifted: I can hardly get a word in edgeways.

‘In the end, what we are interested in is urbanism as a qualitative endeavour. Too often there is a fascination with the quantitative: numbers that generate “datascapes” and “mappings” as if these were ends in themselves. The question of urbanism is ultimately a qualitative one: what kind of social interaction do we want in cities? Koolhaas’s research into the “culture of congestion” and studies by the Multiplicity group are interesting examples of qualitative studies of the city.’

I point to dozens of pieces of coloured paper filled with notations arranged in rows on the wall, and ask if these are part of a field-work project.

‘Yes. One of our research projects involves a qualitative survey of the way people live. It’s called “Current Ways of Living”. We are interviewing hundreds of people in their homes to find out what sort of arrangement they live in – traditional family, single-parent family, gay couple, flatmates, roommates – and what kinds of problems and preoccupations this raises. One of the things we have learned first-hand is that there is no such thing as a traditional family any more. We strive for an urbanism that can accommodate ways of living that are as diverse as possible, not the unifying, pacifying urbanism we have now. Confrontation is more constructive than a fictitious consensus.’

I am reminded of something I read recently: that one of the primary motives behind the construction of spectacular public buildings by celebrity architects over the last decade has been to build consensus among citizens – that the Bilbao Effect is a pacification strategy. By bringing residential architecture into the urban political debate, Jaque is challenging this enshrined model. He is championing an urbanism of the ordinary and the everyday rather than an urbanism of the extraordinary and the holiday.

‘When you think about it, the domestic interior is much more of a politicized space than the innocent and sacred “home sweet home” it’s made out to be. John Lennon and Yoko Ono knew this when they bedded-in for peace. If we look beyond the traditional family at other kinds of cohabitation, such as apartments shared by Erasmus students, we find that the home is where we encounter “the other” and where all sorts of forms of collectivity are negotiated. Internet has also made the home much more public. Some homes are veritable television studios these days: look at the ongoing fascination with reality shows that occur in domestic spaces.’

Residential architecture is indeed what constitutes the bulk of the built environment; there’s little question that it has not been given the architectural attention it deserves, especially in Spain. But I’m still wondering how Andrés transforms field work into design. How are his theories manifested in his built work? Or are both these offices completely separate spheres of activity?

‘Each office has its own business model, priorities and levels of risk. One is an office that delivers a service to paying clients. This office has to deliver on time and on budget; it can’t afford to take too many risks. It has a responsibility to the public and to the client. The other is a not-for-profit organization. I couldn’t ask sociologists to collaborate on a research project if there was a profit motive. The motive has to be a common research interest and a common political goal – nothing else. We’ve received some research commissions, and sometimes an architectural commission has come out of a research project we’ve initiated. So while there is a transfer of knowledge between the two offices, their organizational and economic structures are different.’

I ask if this research finds its way to the real powers that be: politicians, planners and developers. ‘The OPI disseminates its findings by means of exhibitions and publications in places like the University of Alicante’s architecture school and La Casa Encendida Cultural Centre in Madrid. Through these institutions, I hope the information reaches politicians, planners and developers, because the diversity of living arrangements that exists out there is not reflected at all in the built environment. All we seem to find are three-bedroom homes for traditional families, which almost don’t exist any more. As architects, we have to enter into more of a dialogue with developers, who are a lot more willing to innovate their product if it can deliver an advantage for them. The problem is that the property and housing market is not very transparent. It has been driven entirely by speculation, which explains the repetition of three-bedroom units. Look at how developers' advertisements all seem to look and sound the same when compared with the way people describe their own homes in ads that tend to be much more nuanced and detailed. We do field work in order to go into detail, not to generalize. Details help us understand better just how complex reality is. At the Venice Biennale this year, I participated in a round table discussion with a few architects who have very large practices, and they were complaining that architecture is no longer possible because the only design freedom left to architects is in the façade. To this I responded: reduce the size of your practice, collaborate within a multidisciplinary network and refuse to work for big clients. Of course, the remuneration won’t be the same, but the satisfaction and the respect you’ll receive will be much greater.’

As the train pulls out of Atocha Station for the two-and-a-half-hour journey to Barcelona, block after block of soulless new housing blocks filled with three-bedroom dwellings pass by the window. Their formulaic monotony is perfectly revealed as the train accelerates. I come to a realization: this is not so much an architectural problem as it is a political one, and political problems do indeed require political innovation. 


[originally published in Mark Magazine #29]

Media-TIC by Cloud 9: Architecture as Research

Column-free lobby

Truss space

Two facades with different pillow systems: ETFE fog configuration

and ETFE diaphragm configuration.

The range of building materials and construction techniques available to contemporary architects is unparalleled in history. New materials – in conjunction with digital processes such as computer-aided design, computer-aided manufacturing, parametric design and rapid prototyping – have dramatically expanded the possibilities of design. Were it not for the threat of climate change and the ongoing economic crisis, our future would be a matter of ‘the sky’s the limit’. Suddenly, all the freedom we have hardly learned to handle has a new mission: finding more sustainable ways to produce, consume and discard. The promise of technology remains unchanged, of course – it is still going to save the day and thus save us from ourselves. The mantra hasn’t changed either: architecture that is fresh and intelligent and innovative will eventually prevail over a building industry that is old-fashioned, uninspired, formulaic and wasteful.

In reality, though, innovative architecture and a boring building industry are two sides of the same coin: one being the R&D department of the other. The invention of the curtain wall is a case in point: originally modern and vanguard, curtain walls eventually became a mass-produced, commercially available, off-the-shelf product in a straightforward transfer of technology in the direction of banality. Viewed from this perspective, innovative architecture is to the building industry what Formula One is to mass-produced automobiles, or what haute cuisine is to processed food: an industry-sponsored elite and a glamorous field in which to invent, research and test new technology for the purpose of applying the findings en masse.

Barcelona’s new Media-TIC building, which has led to two inventions being patented by architect Enric Ruiz-Geli of Cloud 9, can be seen as a prototype for field-testing innovations before eventual commercialization. Despite its unorthodox construction and appearance, it is a building involving research partnerships with private manufacturers. It pushes the envelope, in this case both literally and metaphorically, in the service of advancing construction technology – something which supposedly ‘iconic’ or unorthodox buildings have always done to a varying degree, either wittingly or unwittingly.

Although it is in essence an office building, Media-TIC follows few if any of the tenets of commercial office development. Instead of a central service core, it has a central void; instead of a regular steel or concrete structure, it has a gigantic exoskeleton from which the floors are suspended; instead of the marble or granite traditionally used to tart up public areas, it sports DayGlo green paint throughout. The only conventional rule of property development it seems to follow is ‘location, location, location’: Media-TIC is situated in the middle of 22@Barcelona, an ambitious urban-renewal plan to transform a 19th-century industrial zone into a 21st-century knowledge-and-innovation district.

This area, popularly known as Poblenou or ‘new town’, lies to the northeast of Barcelona’s historical core, within the famous gridded urban-expansion plan devised by civil engineer Ildefons Cerdà in 1859. In fact, Media-TIC is situated only a few blocks from the intersection of three of this plan’s most monumental urban axes, Diagonal, Meridiana and Gran Via – a gesture that was intended to stimulate the creation of a new, more modern city centre away from the overly dense and tuberculosis-infested medieval one. As was generally the case with Cerdà’s plan, Poblenou’s built reality turned out to be quite different from what he had envisioned, and instead of a new city centre this area became home to one of Europe’s largest concentrations of textile mills, smokestacks, warehouses and workers’ living quarters. In the latter half of the 20th century, as manufacturing throughout Europe and North America went into decline, the area became increasingly abandoned, until a plan was initiated in 2000 to convert approximately 200 hectares, or 115 city blocks, into the knowledge-and-innovation district 22@, a name that makes reference to the previous zoning code, 22a, which stood for heavy industry. The new mixed-use 22@ designation permits ‘the coexistence of all nonpolluting urban activities’ and promotes greater density and ‘ecological efficiency’. It is only now, one and a half centuries later, that Cerdà’s modern city centre is finally coming to fruition.

Five knowledge clusters make up the 22@ innovation district: information and communication technologies (ICT), media, medical technology, energy and design. As the name implies, the Media-TIC building is intended for the crossover of two of these sectors – ICT and media – and forms part of a larger ‘audiovisual campus’ that spans several city blocks. The bright-green cubic building occupies a chamfered corner site across the street from a factory, Can Framis, which architect Jordi Badia recently converted into an art museum. Other neighbors in the area include national and regional broadcasting companies, institutional bodies, content producers, advertising firms, ICT start-ups and university research facilities.

The architecture of the Media-TIC building, inside and out, seeks to create an environment conducive to both formal and informal encounters among the various knowledge sectors it is intended to host. The structure of the entire building, for example, is designed to keep the ground floor completely free of columns or vertical shafts, converting what is normally a labyrinthine lift lobby in most office buildings into a large open space for conferences, presentations and celebrations. This column-free space was achieved by suspending all floor plates from large trusses that crown the top of the building. The construction process was a spectacle in itself: with only the foundation and two rows of 32-m-high braced column pairs in place, the entire array of trusses – including the two floors contained within them – was raised slowly into place using hydraulic jacks. With the construction site momentarily resembling a triumphal arch, the rest of the floors were hung from the rooftop trusses by means of slender steel tubes.

This structural system results in a fascinating variety of spaces on different levels: the top two floors, situated entirely within the depth of the phosphorescent green trusses, are traversed by thick vertical and diagonal steel members, while the floors below have slender vertical columns adorned with large steel flanges that connect them to the undersides of the trusses. The rest of the floors below have slender columns without adornment until the ground floor is reached, which is column-free. The assembly of such an unorthodox structure for purposes of spatial permeability and open-spiritedness recalls the construction of the Pompidou Centre in Paris by Piano and Rogers, an important forerunner of this building and a milestone for architecture-as-research in general.

The Media-TIC’s outer skin is another unusual feature, employing ethylene tetrafluoroethylene (ETFE) ‘pillows’ that can be inflated or deflated to moderate heat gain as well as daylight in the building. The pillow pattern varies on each façade in accordance with solar orientation. On the southeast façade, an ‘ETFE diaphragm configuration’ uses a printed pattern on both sides of the pillows to let daylight pass through when inflated and to block it when deflated. Similarly, the southwest-facing pillows use an ‘ETFE fog configuration’ into which nitrogen gas can be injected to minimize solar heat gain. The inflation or deflation of the pillows is controlled in real time by sensors and pumps that manage the movement of gases, directing them where they are needed at the time they are needed.

With its breathing, pulsating body parts, Media-TIC recalls the mechanical systems depicted in Terry Gilliam’s classic science-fiction film Brazil. Indeed, what is perhaps most remarkable about the Media-TIC building is that it is performative in both the ‘art’ and the ‘machine’ sense of the word. Either way, what this building does is far more interesting than what it looks like, especially when seen as a work of research-in-progress. Will its ETFE pillow system work successfully and eventually make its way onto curtain-wall façades of office buildings the world over? Only time will tell.

[originally published in Mark Magazine #25]

Postscript: click here 

Rocket Architecture

Clockwise from top left: Nike, Aerobee, and Universal launchers

The ensemble of structures illustrated here could easily be mistaken for recent work by a number of contemporary architects, were it situated in the vicinity of Los Angeles or Berlin instead of Churchill, Manitoba on the shore of Hudson's Bay. But the Fort Churchill Rocket Range was built in 1957 by scientists and engineers of the International Geophysical Year and the US Military, who were interested in using rockets to study the aurora borealis.

The site plan of the rocket range is as inexplicable and elusive as the plan of Hadrian's Villa, but one would presume that it represents a logical arrangement of spaces for the preparation and launching of unmanned rockets in this cold and hostile environment. Buildings such as the Blockhouse (control centre), the Hazardous Assembly Building and the Aerobee and Nike Launcher Buildings--the roofs and walls of which slide open to release rockets and pressure from thrust--are linked by long enclosed passageways and gravel roads that meander the site. The Operations Building housed staff, offices, laboratories and a radar and weather station, and is the only structure still in use: it is now the Churchill Northern Studies Centre, a hostel frequented mostly by eco-tourists and wildlife biologists.

The remarkable thing about these idiosyncratic structures is that they were designed without any architectural pretension whatsoever. Their forms are a straightforward result of functional and practical concerns, not the product of deconstructionist posturing. Here, form simply follows rocket science, not postmodern theory. Yet seen today, these architecturally "naïve" buildings nevertheless strike a chord--they are, after all, avant la lettre by nearly half a century.

The fascination for architecture-without-architects is nothing new, especially in this country. From the Port of Montreal's grain terminal, which was celebrated by Le Corbusier in Vers une Architecture, to the prairie grain elevators to which the late Aldo Rossi is indebted, Canada's industrial-agricultural vernacular has long been considered among its most impressive architecture. Could it be that there is something truthful--dare one say authentic--about such structures?

[Originally published in Canadian Architect February 2001]