retroactive: the first tower

Responsible response to context.

Marseille is modernising rapidly. The idea is to develop the run-down part of the port into a type of starchitect theme park (join the queue). At the moment the only tower block under construction is by Millennium People's bete noir. I am always surprised, given her reputation, that her actual built work is always so corporate. All alone, that tower is an eyesore alright. I tried to be nice and capture a sunset shot from an apartment I found myself in, but it didn't change much. The next one to be built (assuming the recession lets up) is a building by Jean Nouvel (looking like this, or perhaps like this) Hopefully it wont look too bad when its all done (maybe like this).


The sunset of unbridled success over Zaha's ivory tower.

studio crit #1: Guggenheim Hermitage Vilnius

image via deezeen

Why is it that in studio one's own architectural projects are always received so critically by peers and professors (well, at least, mine always are) - while professionals that produce work of dubious quality seem to be praised. Why is it that famous architects are not shot down like students?

From time to time I will be taking architect's projects and pretending I am their tutor, and it seemed an easy choice to select everybody's favourite punching bag- Zaha. The facility of this exercise is self-evident: the wave of universal admiration for Zaha has passed, and the tide of the Digital Formalists has turned. It is really too late to be criticising Hadid, she has, I believe, already fallen from the forefront of contemporary architectural discussion. Nonetheless, I was particularly struck by the accompanying text to her project for the Guggenheim Hermitage museum in Vilnius.

"The building appears like a mystical object floating above the extensive artificial landscape strip, seemingly defying gravity by exposing dramatic undercuts towards the surrounding entrance plazas. Large activated green fields flow around the museums sculptural mass, underlining its enigmatic presence with curvilinear lines echoing the elongated contours of the building. Contrasting with the vertical business district skyline it is a manifestation of Vilnius’ new cultural significance.

In the interior a canyon like air space allows for architecturally refined communication and circulation spaces mirroring the Fluxus spirit of informality and vivacity surrounding art. Through manipulations of the ground at the riverfront, towards the park and the bridge, different levels are made accessible. An intensification of public life at the river is our aim. The positioning of the building on the riverbanks, respectively the cities edge, creates a strong sense of place within Vilnius. The exterior spaces are modulated landscape formations creating several imprints or plinths upon which various activities and performances can take place."

My. A moment's pause. I suppose my first question would be, what is an ‘activated green field’? Are these irregular triangles of grass ‘activated fields’? because they look a lot like grass roofs. Presumably retail. Notice there are no people walking on them. They are not portrayed as inhabited spaces, and since they subsequently belong to the order of having (we own them, or consume them by viewing them) and not the order of being (by which we experience them in the act of existing amongst them), how can they be ‘activated’?

I could continue, but I think we all know where I am going with this. High Distinction (A) for presentation (although I would be interested to know Zaha's precise relationship to the drawings- I can't help but think of Milli Vanilli) but a Credit plus (C+) for attention to landscape- and who the hell is writing their press releases?

I was watching a film by Chris Marker the other day (of La Jetee fame) called Sans Soleil, wiki says of the film:

"Sans Soleil is a meditation on the nature of human memory and the inability to recall the context and nuances of memory and as a result, how the perception of personal and global histories are affected."

One of the really poignent remarks was about Japanese poetry. In Western poetry all nouns are modulated by adjectives- but the beauty of Japanese poetry is that the nouns are never modulated, 'rock', 'rope', 'boat', 'chrysanthemum', 'mountain' - they appeal to the infinte, to the thing itself, and not to some adjectival simulacrum.


Early C20- "Shinto priests crossing a courtyard of the Meiji Temple in Tokyo. Snow is falling on the pine-trees and the cloisters and on their paper umbrellas."

start at the end

I was interviewed for the AA the other day, and at the end of the meeting a member of the panel asked me if I had any questions. ‘I read Kuma’s Anti-Object recently’ I said, ‘and I found the introduction by Brett Steele very interesting. Given his, and the AA’s, role at the forefront of the digital revolution in architecture, his support for an architecture that is, if anything, adigital, seems quite a striking change of position. Is this symptomatic of the change in contemporary thinking? What do you think is the future of the digital revolution, and more specifically, what will be the future role of the AA in this field?’ None of the three replied, then after a few seconds a man who I sensed was least impressed by my presentation said: ‘the revolution is over.’

This reminded me of something I read in Log magazine recently, (run by Cynthia Davidson, Eisenman’s wife). Mario Carpo writes: “In the early 90’s, the digital revolution in architecture had no clearly identified course of history to call into question: in true post-modernist fashion it had no preset destination - no target, as it were, and almost no end in mind. Indeed, 15 years later, some may reasonably claim that as the digital turn had nowhere to go, it went nowhere.”

Yeah, alright, fair enough, I dislike the vocabulary of digital architecture as much as the next person. The projects mostly resemble neo-baroque fretwork, objects of unnecessary complexity just plonked down wherever their site might be (with no thought to landscape, to human scale, to the modality of perception), and then these architects claim to not have produced architecture at all, but programmable elements that in themselves are generic, but which can be adapted to the hyper-specific conditions of program. It makes me ill.
However, I hardly think its fair to search out a scapegoat in these times of global financial crisis. I first noticed this bitter approach when Zaha was balled out by one and all at the Barbican in April. Her style of digital architecture epitomises the fundamental ethos of Modernism: that we produce architecture we are technologically capable of, and not morally responsible for.

Does this perhaps mean that the Modern era is done with? Probably not. But the aim of this blog is, at the end of the digital revolution, to propose new directions for the profession. This does not mean abandonning digital techniques, but it does mean carefully examining the ontological legitimacy of what we produce. Or, if you prefer, asking again ‘why do we make architecture?’.