August 30: Decon at MOMA

On this day in 1988 the exhibition Deconstructivist Architecture closed.

Running from June 23 at MoMA and curated by Mark Wigley and Philip Johnson, exhibition #1489 codified the way the term deconstructivist, which had been lifted from lit crit, would be applied to architectural design.   In some ways this was a repeat of Johnson’s participation in the exhibition that introduced the term International Style fifty-six years earlier.  Whereas in 1932 the emphasis was on the clean industrialized Neues Bauen of the Bauhaus et al., in 1988 he and Wigley selected seven architects/firms that illustrated “a new sensibility in architecture” characterized by work that recognized the “imperfectibility of the modern world” and addressed “the pleasures of unease.”  Their shared stylistic qualities  included slashing lines, leaping arcs and warped planes.  The curators suggested a link with Russian Constructivist architecture due to formal and material relationships, but with the recognition that the aims were completely different among this new tribe of Deconstructivist architects.

The exhibition and its sharp, small catalogue was helpful in explaining the ideas behind all the crooked walls and wilting surfaces.  Especially as it skates closely to the work of French philosopher Jacques Derrida, Decon theory can quickly become as skewed and off-kilter as the buildings it tries to explain. But in the catalogue, Wigley–in remarkably straightforward prose quite different from his academic publications–was as straightforward as a Miesian I-beam, disturbing the old Modernist axiom ‘form follows function’ with the proclaimed that for the new architects, ‘function follows deformation.’

If only the exhibitees all agreed that this was their point (which they didn’t).  Still, the exhibition was helpful in giving a name to the strange new stuff showing up in journals and by suggesting there was a common link that was more than just (egads) formalist among this crew (although none such was proven).  Representative projects from the exhibitoin, which included Coop Himmelblau, Peter Eisenman, Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas, Daniel Libeskind and Bernard Tschumi reveal the embryonic status of the moment (if ‘movement’ it was) in 1988.

These projects illustrate that Decon worked/works best (maybe only) at small scale, for leisure facilities, and in graphic imagery–certainly the later work of these seven has been a mixed bag.  Indeed Decon probably best achieves its goals in the latter, since the laws of physics knock the stuffing out of Deconstructivism, raising the question, if the theory cannot survive the built world, can there actually be such a thing as Deconstructivist architecture at all?

Image: the catalogue (from this source)

July 08: The Latest Guggenheim (For Now)

On this day in 2006 the government of Abu Dhabi and the Guggenheim signed an agreement to build a museum.

The Guggenheim family has one of the most profound names in modern art, and are to credit for making so much of their vast collection open to the public.  Starting in the mid-twentieth century they started a habit of building spectacular museums by name-brand architects, starting with Frank Lloyd Wright’s flagship in New York, followed more recently by the Frank Gehry building in Bilbao.  Most recently they have made plans for another Gehry building in the United Arab Emirates.

The three Guggenheims, as a group, reveal some significant strategic differences.  The New York museum was built in what was, hands-down, the capital of modern art in the world.  Nothing like the same could be said of Bilbao, a huge city in the north of Spain, removed from its centers of culture and tourism.  And now Abu Dhabi, the up-and-coming dream in the desert, a city constructed with the force of volcanic willpower and a gulf-ful of riches from oil reserves.

The Abu Dhabi Guggenheim is planned as one of the jewels of Saadiyat Island, which will indeed be a glittery thing if these projects ever really get off the ground (this one in particular has been stalled for some time now).  Among the other proposed mega-museums, the Abu Dhabi Guggenheim presents special challenges.  Its dual focus, to honor the Guggenheim tradition of modern and contemporary art, and its place in the capital of the UAE, narrows the pool of resources considerably–there just aren’t that many artists out there who can serve both part of the mission and attract, but not offend, the local audience.  Worse yet, the human rights abuses on the building site have prompted artists to boycott the project, narrowing the resources of really good artists from the Middle East even further.  The curators are faced with a strange problem, having gazillions to spend to be able to fill up the acres of museum (and needing to do it quickly–maybe the greatest art splurge in history since the Hapsburgs decided they liked paintings), and nothing to spend it on.  You can almost bet on the fact that if and when this thing finally opens, the building will outshine the art.  And if you know the Muse, you know that is saying something.

Image: rendering of the new Goog

June 22: Don’t Call It “Fred and Ginger”

On this day in 1987 Fred Astaire died.

Undeniably one of the great screen stars of all time, Astaire was a virtuoso dancer with charisma to burn, especially when paired with his long-time partner Ginger Rogers.  But that’s become difficult to those who have memory of the 1990s when the names of the two were cheekily applied to designate a building by Frank Gehry in Prague.  Standing on a corner site that was bombed out (so nothing had to die for it, thankfully), it looks across the Vltava River to the Castle in the distance.  It’s a pretty great part of Prague; no obvious monuments in the immediate neighborhood, but instead a very Praguish and colorful collection of Baroque and Art Nouveau era commercial and residential blocks.  Gehry’s work, which owes something to Expressionism and the Baroque, fits in here as well as it does anywhere–indeed far better than in some cities.

Gehry’s building for Prague replicates (or, rather, echoes, as a happy accident), as much as possible for him, the scale and rhythm of the neighboring structures, with very expensive projecting window details staggered along the facade as if providing a freeze-frame of the building in the midst of seismic action.  The corner turns with a pair of forms, one a downwardly tapering cylinder with the world’s biggest sieve for a crown; the other a limpid, liquid flared . . . thing, that gets slightly skinny in its middle.  The way it leans into the sieve-topped cylinder and bares so many concrete legs, very much makes it look like a (headless) creature in a skirt, preparing to do-si-do around her partner.

The big paired things attracted the nicknaming for this building, which was essential.  Without it you’re stuck calling it after its Dutch client or Czech designation, two of the universe’s unfriendliest languages (right up there with Chinese and Klingon).  So, generically, “Dancing House” it is, or for most, “Fred and Ginger.” And that puts the Muse twice in a reflective mood.  First, how interesting it is that people crave an identity for buildings, and, in the quest for a proper nickname, will make great leaps of association if the building does not look like a building.  When buildings are abstracted forms, people tend to make up stuff: they’ve done it in an attempt to make sense of the pants, the corncobs, the quarry, the egg, the walkie talkie, the erotic gherkin.  Second, while it is to be expected that the names of of the most famous dancing couples in the world would be chosen here, it’s really unfair to their memory.  Together, Fred and Ginger were the epitome of grace and elegance, precision enhanced by emotion, virtuosity dazzled with wit (as they are in this little number).  We’re not certain such could be said of the building.  If dancers those forms be, they put the Muse more in mind of an analogy with a popular television show where contestants grind out choppy routines in flashy costumes in a bid for spectacle, high ratings, and advertising earnings.  That might be fine for Gehry; not so much for the memory of Fred Astaire.

Image: (from this source)

April 03: Cartoon Architecture

On this day in 2005 The Simpsons episode entitled “The Seven-Beer Snitch” aired.

It’s not one of the best of the long-running show, by a long shot; but it is notable for its inclusion of Frank Gehry.  In the story, the Springfield Cultural Activities Board commissions a concert hall of the Pritzker winner to show that the town is not populated solely by uncultured losers (turns out, it actually is), especially in comparison with the neighboring high-faultin’ burg of Shelbyville.  Marge petitions Gehry in a letter that he initially tosses on the sidewalk in a show of dismissal that turns to a moment of inspiration, as the crumpled paper inspires his ultimate design for the building.

Gehry himself was in on the joke, which shows his reasonable sense of humor, and that’s nice to see (hard to imagine Thom Mayne or maybe Rem Koolhaas showing that kind of self-deprecation).  It’s too bad they didn’t take the architecture bit farther; could have been rich material for a funnier show.  The plot actually goes in a very different direction, so we are left with just one additional visual joke as wrecking balls disfigure an otherwise traditional steel frame into a Gehryesque curvy mass.  There’s also a good bit with a Springfield resident calling the new concert hall a “$30 million ‘screw-you’ to Shelbyville.”

These observations are (or were) on-point for Gehry’s fame in 2005, and it is impressive that he had achieved enough a status to be deemed worthy of inclusion in a vehicle as popular as the longest-running animated series/sitcom.  In 2005 he’d completed the Pritzker Pavilion in Chicago, Walt Disney Concert Hall in LA, Experience Music Project in Seattle, Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Fred & Ginger in Prague.  Looking back, his architecture encapsulates a heady period in contemporary architecture, in which the forces of unbridled experimentation were matched with limitless budgets, leading to an intoxicating mixture of wild, unprecedented, spectacle buildings.  This episode couldn’t happen five years later; we’d love to see how the writers would address Marge’s sense of cultural inferiority today.  Would they even go the architectural route?  If so, who would be l’architecte du jour?  (We might have hoped for Zaha Hadid, had it not been for the recent sad news.)  Or could architecture be adopted in ways more suitable to the present mood?  Should Lisa petition the mayor of Springfield to adopt principles of sustainability in the greening of the grade school?  What if Moe’s Tavern was given landmark status; would the proprietor embrace or discourage the plaqueing of his establishment?  We’d tune in for those.

Honestly, it’s not a great episode, but if you’d like to see the Gehry part, you need only watch the first twelve minutes are so; see it here

January 31: Pritzker Paradise

On this day in 2007 a press release announced the official start of construction of Saadiyat Island Cultural District.

Saadiyat Island is a huuuuuge development in Abu Dhabi, even by contemporary Persian Gulf standards.  Ultimately it will house 145,000 residents–basically a Kansas City built in about fifteen years.  (The comparisons with Kansas City stop there.)  The proposal’s monumental waterfront edge is a 600-acre cultural district–basically two Millennium Parks.  But whereas that Chicago venue boasts only one Pritzker architect (Frank Gehry, 1989 laureate) (two if you include the neighboring addition to the Art Institute by Renzo Piano, who got the prize in 1998), Saadiyat Island will boast a collection of five–count ’em, FIVE!–Pritzker prize winners:

• Tadeo Ando (1995), Maritime Museum
• Norman Foster (1999), Zayed National Museum
• Frank Gehry (1989), Guggenheim Abu Dhabi
• Zaha Hadid (2004), Performing Arts Center
• Jean Nouvel (2008), Louvre Abu Dhabi

There is no arguing that this will become a must-visit among architects upon its projected completion in 2020.  The architects have enjoyed huge budgets, tremendous support and virtual freedom to deliver their most astonishing work to this ancient land.  The buildings will provide a comparison of the different approaches of these contemporaries, especially in the degree to which they have designed for this place, vs. just designing that thing they are known for.  Gehry and Hadid surely fall into the latter category: Hadid’s theatre complex looks like her other aggressively curvaceous buildings and shoes and whatnot; Gehry has designed one more big mess of stuff (although he did report seeing some kind of similarity between his “messiness” and the non-axial masses of Hagia Sophia, which for Gehry, we suppose, is being culturally relevant).  (Clio winces a bit at the idea that these buildings share some kind of Ottoman connection, but will let it pass.  For now.)  Ando and Foster are more literal in their adoption of, respectively, the sails of the Arabian boat called a dhow for his maritime museum and the wings of a giant metallic bird of prey for a museum dedicated to the Sheikh who was a great falconer.  Nouvel, who has the most experience of them all in conjoining his modernism with Islamic traditions, has designed a huge metal star-design webbed disk that will filter light and deliver a traditional dappled experience in an unpreceented interior.

A monument to contemporary architectural imagination, this Modernist Mecca comes at a stiff price.  Solid figures on the proposed budget for each project are hard to find; even suggested sums are suspect due to the nature of the timeframe and global economic troubles that have even affected Abu Dhabi.  Estimates range from 87 million as the low-ball estimate for what the Louvre might cost, to a round figure of 27 billion for the whole project.  At that point, it hardly matters: when you start rounding numbers by the tens or hundreds of millions, you may as well not count at all.

These tremendous sums (greater than the GDP of some Polynesian island nations) will buy significant architectural glamour and stunning cultural display.  But beneath its luxe and shiny surface, the story of Saadiyat reveals some corrosion.  It’s a very expensive and high-quality version of a pop-up store, providing instant concrete culture in a place where civilization has been historically transitory, commemorated by ephemeral artifacts.  The Maritime Museum and Zayed National Museum are dedicated to local history, but designed and planned by foreigners, as are the rest of the cultural landmarks, two of which bear names of far-away museum foundations.  Perhaps this is just the way of architecture.  In 1892, midwestern architects were peeved when East Coasters were brought in to plan the Columbian exposition, and, in spite of that, Chicago has turned out to have a fine little building culture of its own.  Likewise, the construction of a great number of giant cultural landmarks to modernize a city virtually overnight is not unprecedented; consider Haussman’s Paris and Franz Joseph’s Vienna.  The difference, of course, is that the new institutions in those European cities were built on extant cultural foundations, and built up by European architects and builders.

At least the Saadiyat architects will walk away with massive fees to pay all of the CAD jockeys who will bring their ideas to reality.  What of the people who will actually build them?  The mostly-immigrant crews suffer from substandard working and living conditions, nonpayment by their employers and other rights violations that are unacceptable in the architects’ home countries (the situation is improving, but still problematic: see recent reports from Human Rights Watch here and here).  In short, the aim of Saadiyat, to create a world-class destination that will attract people from across the globe, has already done so: the armies of architects, curators, planners, engineers, builders and laborers are almost all foreign, and when the project is complete, they will need to go home.  The multi-cultural hands that are to credit for the cultural center will be dismissed once it is ready to be opened as a tourist magnet.

One of Modernism’s main tenets has been the adamant belief in truthful representation.  One hopes that the glitter and sparkle of the Pritzker laureates’ paradise will not obscure the world’s perception of the foundations on which their buildings are actually constructed.

check out the master plan here

August 30: decon at moma

On this day in 1988 the exhibition Deconstructivist Architecture closed.

Running from June 23 at MoMA and curated by Mark Wigley and Philip Johnson, exhibition #1489 codified the way the term deconstructivist, which had been lifted from lit crit, would be applied to architectural design.   In some ways this was a repeat of Johnson’s participation in the exhibition that introduced the term International Style fifty-six years earlier.  Whereas in 1932 the emphasis was on the clean industrialized Modernity of the Bauhaus et al., in 1988 he and Wigley selected seven architects/firms that illustrated “a new sensibility in architecture” characterized by work that recognized the “imperfectibility of the modern world” and addressed “the pleasures of unease.”  Their shared stylistic qualities  included slashing lines, leaping arcs and warped planes.  The curators suggested a link with Russian Constructivist architecture due to formal and material relationships, but with the recognition that the aims were completely different among this new tribe of Deconstructivist architects.

The exhibition and its sharp, small catalogue was helpful in explaining the ideas behind all the crooked walls and wilting surfaces.  Especially as it skates closely to the work of French philosopher Jacques Derrida, Decon theory can quickly become as skewed and off-kilter as the buildings it tries to explain. But in the catalogue, Wigley–in remarkably straightforward prose quite different from his academic publications)–was as straightforward as a Miesian I-beam, disturbing the old Modernist axiom ‘form follows function’ with the proclaimed that for the new architects, ‘function follows deformation.’

If only the exhibitees all agreed that this was their point (which they didn’t).  Still, the exhibition was helpful in giving a name to the strange new stuff showing up in journals and by suggesting there was a common link that was more than just (egads) formalist among this crew (although none such was proven).  Representative projects from the exhibitoin, which included Coop Himmelblau, Peter Eisenman, Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas, Daniel Libeskind and Bernard Tschumi (check out the links to see projects that were on display) reveal the embryonic status of the moment (if ‘movement’ it was) in 1988.  They include a rooftop addition, a personal house, a stalled office block project and three failed competition entries.  The most significant project of them all was Tschumi’s Parc de la Villette.

These projects illustrate that Decon worked/works best (maybe only) at small scale, for leisure facilities, and in graphic imagery–certainly the later work of these seven has been a mixed bag.  Indeed Decon probably best achieves its goals in the latter, since the laws of physics knock the stuffing out of Deconstructivism, raising the question, if the theory cannot survive the built world, can there actually be such a thing as Deconstructivist architecture at all?

Image: the catalogue (from this source)

July 08: another Guggenheim

On this day in 2006 the government of Abu Dhabi and the Guggenheim signed an agreement to build a museum.

The Guggenheim family has one of the most profound names in modern art, and are to credit for making so much of their vast collection open to the public.  Starting in the mid-twentieth century they started a habit of building spectacular museums by name-brand architects, starting with Frank Lloyd Wright’s flagship museum in New York, followed more recently by the Frank Gehry building in Bilbao.  Most recently they have made plans for another Gehry building in the United Arab Emirates.

Odd choice, Gehry.  They already have one of those.  Besides, the Muse was under the impression that Renzo Piano is the only architect who can design art museums these days.  Regrets to Thom Mayne, who is still punching a wall somewhere.

The three Guggenheims, as a group, reveal some significant strategic differences.  The New York museum was built in what was, hands-down, the capital of modern art in the world.  Nothing like the same could be said of Bilbao, a huge city in the north of Spain, removed from its centers of culture and tourism.  And now Abu Dhabi, the up-and-coming dream in the desert, a city constructed with the force of volcanic willpower and a gulf-ful of riches from oil reserves.

The Abu Dhabi Guggenheim is planned as one of the jewels of Saadiyat Island, which will indeed be a glittery thing if these projects ever really get off the ground.  Among the other proposed mega-museums, the Abu Dhabi Guggenheim presents special challenges.  Its dual focus, to honor the Guggenheim tradition of modern and contemporary art, and its place in the capital of the UAE, narrows the pool of resources considerably–there just aren’t that many artists out there who can serve both part of the mission and attract, but not offend, conservative people in the neighborhood.  Worse yet, the human rights abuses on the building site have prompted over one hundred artists to boycott the project, narrowing the resources of really good artists from the Middle East even further.  The curators are faced with a strange problem, having gazillions to spend to be able to fill up the acres of museum (and needing to do it quickly–maybe the greatest art splurge in history since the Hapsburgs decided they liked paintings), and nothing to spend it on.  You can almost bet on the fact that if and when this thing finally opens, the building will outshine the art.  And if you know the Muse, you know that is saying something.

Image: rendering of the new Goog (from this source)