Happier Trails in 2013

Panorama of Barcelona from an abandoned road

Garden and Gaffe: A Hotel by Jean Nouvel

“The city is like some large house and the house in turn like some small city”
-Leon Battista Alberti

If there is one type of "house" that comes closest to Alberti’s “small city”, then surely it is the hotel. Like a city, a hotel is comprised of both private “residential” space (in this case temporary residences) and relatively public functions; the private realm making up the representative bulk and consisting of largely repetitive units while the more public lobby, conference spaces, restaurant, and so on are monumental, singular spaces of representation. The ultimate mixed-use building type, a hotel is a place where guests stay for a variety of reasons, be it a travelling sales rep hoping to strike a business deal, illicit lovers having an affair, criminals evading the police, academics at a conference, or spies on an intelligence-gathering mission. Anything can and everything has happened in hotels: Watergate, John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s Bed-ins for Peace, Dominique Strauss Kahn.

It is no surprise, then, that the hotel has become in recent times one of the most architecturally reinvigorated types of buildings. The drab, beige hotel of the nineteen seventies and eighties, where sameness, familiarity and the offer of a cozy “home away from home” was the ideal, is seemingly a thing of the past. Hotels have instead become places where people seek a memorable experience that is precisely different from the familiarity and routine humdrum of home. As an “experience” space available to a majority of people, the hotel can also be seen as a democratization of the pleasure palaces of the aristocracy of previous centuries.

The Renaissance Barcelona Fira Hotel by Jean Novel and Ribas & Ribas is, like many palaces, characterized principally by a garden, that most sensuous space of pleasure and temptation since biblical times. This garden, however, climbs up a 26 story high atrium space that is completely open to the exterior on one of the sides of the tower, which forms a “U” shaped floor plan in which the rooms are accessed by garden-facing galleries that are open during three seasons of the year, and that are separated from the garden in winter by means of transparent roll-down barriers.

A single staircase climbs up the atrium along a different trajectory at each level change, connecting galleries as well as bridges, platforms, and a over a hundred planter boxes containing ten different varieties of palm trees and other plant species. It is a delirious, seemingly endless space that would make Giovanni Battista Piranesi proud, and which redefines the late-modern hotel atrium made famous by architect-developer John Portman.

It is the exterior openness of this atrium that sets it apart from any of  John Portman’s, however. In this atrium, there is no wall-to-wall carpeting, no chrome, and no air conditioning. Instead, there is a gentle breeze and the sounds and framed view of a city beyond. The leaves of the palm trees move in the breeze, and the hotel rooms open directly onto an exterior garden and not into a long, dim, anonymous corridor, making it tempting for guests to leave the door open when in their rooms.

Unfortunately, however, the theme of “palm tree” has been taken by its architect just a little too far. The palm tree-shaped windows of most of the rooms are gimmicky and goofy. A gaffe. Those windows are precisely why it’s a good thing the doors of the hotel rooms open directly onto the memorable garden--and city--outside.

Strange Bedfellows

Left: Construction of Instant City, Ibiza, in 1971 (photo www.domusweb.it)
Right: Hotel Algarrobico, Carboneras, Almería, 2010.

The image at left shows the construction of the "Instant City" during the congress of the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design (ICSID) of 1971, which was held at the Hotels Cartago and Galeón in Ibiza (visible in the background). The Instant City is currently the subject of a celebratory exhibition at the Macba (Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art) titled "La utopía es posible."

The image at right shows the infamous Hotel Algarrobico, construction of which began in the early 2000s within the boundary of the Cabo de Gata-Níjar Nature Park--a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve since 1997. Although it has repeatedly been ordered to be demolished by the courts, this never completed behemoth is still standing to date. As part of a 2007 Greenpeace "action" to raise awareness, the words "hotel ilegal" were painted in large four story high letters on its sea-facing elevation. 

The two hotels in these images, whose architecture is not entirely dissimilar, are separated by a distance of only four hundred kilometers and a timespan of only a few decades, yet one is celebrated as the site of an optimistic event that marked a milestone in the cultural modernization of Spain, while another has become the very symbol of political corruption and reckless development in this country. Utopia and dystopia: strange bedfellows indeed.

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. 

---

[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]

Gaudí's hanging chain models: parametric design avant la lettre?

Funicular chain model of Colonia Güell church project by Antoni Gaudí,
as exhibited at Colonia Güell Interpretive Centre.
Only the crypt was realized.

Interior view of Colonia Güell Crypt

It is known that Gaudí hated drawing and preferred to use models as design tools; especially ones made of chains hung from a ceiling, or strings with small weights attached. Through experimentation with such models, he discovered a way to use traditional Catalan masonry techniques in new, more complex ways. A chain suspended simply from both its ends results in a catenary curve that naturally distributes the static load--in this case tension--evenly between the links of the chain. When this shape is flipped vertically and the materials become brick or stone, then the static load--now compressive--is similarly evenly distributed, resulting in an optimally efficient arch. This was already known for centuries. What Gaudí did was to apply this tension-compression analogy to chains hanging from chains (or arches superimposed on arches) asymmetrically, permitting him to design a much more fluid architecture. 

Gaudí made the models of his buildings upside-down, then, using mirrors on the floor, visualized his designs downside-up. He also took photographs of these "wire-frame" models of sorts and "filled" them in with color to generate "solid model renderings", so to speak. All this has been well-documented in publications and exhibitions.

What is interesting is how, in the process, Gaudí effectively invented a kind of "parametric" design process long before the invention of the computer (let alone the development of software such as Maya or the Grasshopper plug-in for Rhino). One feature of so-called parametric design software is that it updates a complete three-dimensional digital model of a building every time any parameters are altered, allowing alternatives to be studied and compared in the search for a design that performs optimally (although to many architects who use this software it seems that the most important parameter is aesthetic form). Gaudí's hanging chains do exactly that: if a chain end-point is moved so as to enlarge or reduce, say, the floor plan in one corner, then the shape of the entire hanging chain model shifts and settles into a newly optimized catenary geometry. Of course, parametric design software does a great deal more, but at their conceptual root both of these modeling tools--one physical and the other digital--are analogous. 

Makes you wonder what Gaudí might have accomplished if he had had a computer. Or conversely, how Gaudí accomplished as much as he did without one.

The SuperSize of EuroVegas

The size of EuroVegas in comparison to the city of Barcelona
image courtesy of elgrupusculo.wordpress.com

This map shows what's wrong with the EuroVegas proposal. Barcelona does not have much farmland left within its metropolitan area. To turn among the last remaining 800 hectares of this valuable resource into a Vegas-styled theme park is plain stupidity. 

All the more worrisome, then, that someone like Ferran Adriá (that's right, the famous chef) would come out publicly stating that he supports the EuroVegas proposal. Shouldn't he be more concerned about the quality and provenance of his fruits and vegetables than giving a helping hand to one of the world's biggest gambling magnates? What bad taste on the part of Adriá. How disappointing.

Oh well, there goes the neighborhood.