AlvinofDiaspar
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From the Globe:
CITYSPACE: GOODBYE ONE-OFF, DOWNTOWN FOLLIES: HELLO SCALED-DOWN POETRY FOR THE CITY'S TROUBLED EDGES
High time for a monumental rethink
LISA ROCHON
March 21, 2009
Norman Foster, Frank Gehry, Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano are architects, geniuses, stars - and old. They're children of the Depression, the last one and the current one, and are all well past 70, with Gehry having just turned 80. Happy Birthday, Frank! And welcome to the harsh new reality of the minimalist economy.
For our newest city halls, opera houses, museums and galleries, for the airports and public parks, university buildings and bridges - for unleashing the art of architecture, we have the superstars to thank. It's hard to imagine a more scintillating version of urbanity than the one they delivered.
But the currency of the old avant-garde has become a difficult commodity. Many of their monumental projects have crashed - Gehry's highly anticipated Beekman Tower in lower Manhattan was this week chopped in half from 76 to 38 storeys. Besides that, their fees are outrageous; it's becoming increasingly uncomfortable to ask clients to indulge them. It could be that the glorious, creative outpouring of the iconic ones is destined for an inelegant dead end.
Until recently, Foster + Partners (whose works include London's gherkin-shaped Swiss Re Tower) employed 1,300 architects in 17 offices around the world. Last month, the firm announced that it was firing 300 of them. And figures from Britain's Office of National Statistics, released this week, reveal the number of architects claiming employment benefits rose from 150 to 1,290.
Work has tanked in Russia, forcing Norman Foster to close his Berlin office, where much of the work for the moneyed oligarchs was being drafted. Lord Foster was known to travel in his private jet, and is said to have charged $2,500 an hour for design consulting. His buildings have accomplished startling things with glass and high-tech wizardry. But they're hardly cheap - his remodelling of Europe's biggest football stadium, Camp Nou in Barcelona, involved recladding the exterior with a skin of colour-changing glass panels, estimated to cost upward of $400-million. Now delayed indefinitely, the project pushed architecture to heady heights, but alas, it's produced the kind of price tag that's difficult to rationalize these days.
In the Catalonian capital, considered a Mecca of exquisite architecture, work has dried up. Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners (creators of Heathrow's Terminal 5) had conjured a way to insert a shopping centre into an old bullring. Five years ago, Las Arenas might have been pushed through, but in these troubled times, the project stands silent and half-built. And a much-anticipated 34-storey tower by Gehry + Partners (which has cut dozens of architects at the firm's Los Angeles studio) has also been put on hold.
Back in North America, in the once-searing-hot city of Chicago, the Spire by world-renowned Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, proposed by Irish billionaire Garrett Kelleher as the tallest residential tower in North America, is a gaping hole in the ground - and going nowhere fast.
In Canada, too, the superstars came, designed and built, working their magic over the country's ambitious downtowns. Projects conceived 10 years ago have survived. They include all seven of the major cultural makeovers in the City of Toronto, including the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts by Diamond + Schmitt Architects; Daniel Libeskind's makeover of the Royal Ontario Museum; and Gehry's sumptuous if slightly leaky Art Gallery of Ontario.
The University of Toronto's Leslie Dan Pharmacy Building, by Foster + Partners, with its surreal lecture pods suspended in a gigantic atrium, slipped in under the wire. But, over the last year, Foster's design of the Bow - a commercial glass tower with impressive sustainability, spearheaded by oil-and-gas producer EnCana - in Calgary has suffered a scaling back of the original design vision. Vancouver's proposed Jameson House, a series of glass cylinders rising 37 storeys, was cancelled last month.
For the masters, the past few decades have been a wild ride. After enduring creative fits and starts, they got up their nerve to create mind-altering architecture in the 1960s. In Paris, the youngsters Piano and Rogers imagined the unforgettable Centre Pompidou (1977). Jean Nouvel's L'Institut du Monde Arabe, with its wall of mechanical oculi, opened in 1987.
By the 1990s, the established stars were reigniting a faith in downtowns around the world. But their change-making architecture, which lit fireworks in the metropolis, is set to radically change. And it's about time. Architectural and landscape poetry is desperately needed to help heal the disaffected suburbs. The work may be subtle, but there's an urgency to address the societal discontent lurking on the city's edges.
In North America, the biggest challenge will come in reinventing a suburban landscape marred by boarded-up houses, old-style shopping malls and big-box retailers. The stars obsessed over one-off, showy works of architectural sculpture. A new generation is required to consider new questions: How to negotiate the future of the bloated suburban house in light of changing demographics and a desire for intimate communities? How to accommodate smaller families, gay couples without children, and single parents who live alone half the time?
In Europe, the challenges will take on a different shape. Paris, for instance, is a model of urban elegance. But its suburbs are places of deep unrest, where immigrants are often housed in dehumanizing apartment blocks, and where public amenities and parks are scarce. To address the disaster of the Parisian banlieues, President Nicolas Sarkozy has commissioned 10 architects - famous and not, old and young - to imagine a vision for a new Grand Paris. The emphasis is not on standalone, audacious architecture that requires buying a ticket to enjoy.
Parisian architect Roland Castro has presented a sweeping green, Central Park-style space for the otherwise unhappy suburb of La Courneuve. Besides that, he radicalizes his vision by suggesting that the Élysée Palace be moved to the city's tough northeastern suburbs. In another scheme, by Italian architects Bernardo Secchi and Paola Vigano, waterways, rather than roadways, would be Paris's new connective tissue. Richard Rogers recommends reinventing disused railway lines as a network of walkable greenery, something already happening in downtown Paris and New York.
Culture follows money. Besides that, vanity inspires reckless desire. Maybe there was too much of a good thing in the moneyed cities of the world. With a push and shove by a new world order, and by the likes of Sarkozy, the suburbs might just get their chance at a greater livability. The challenge should be one taken up by young, passionate designers. And who knows? The young might make some room for the superstars to weigh in, too, in their golden years.
lrochon@globeandmail.com
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20090321.AROCHON21/TPStory/?query=lisa+rochon
_____
Didn't know that Foster's Jameson House in Vancouver got cancelled.
AoD
CITYSPACE: GOODBYE ONE-OFF, DOWNTOWN FOLLIES: HELLO SCALED-DOWN POETRY FOR THE CITY'S TROUBLED EDGES
High time for a monumental rethink
LISA ROCHON
March 21, 2009
Norman Foster, Frank Gehry, Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano are architects, geniuses, stars - and old. They're children of the Depression, the last one and the current one, and are all well past 70, with Gehry having just turned 80. Happy Birthday, Frank! And welcome to the harsh new reality of the minimalist economy.
For our newest city halls, opera houses, museums and galleries, for the airports and public parks, university buildings and bridges - for unleashing the art of architecture, we have the superstars to thank. It's hard to imagine a more scintillating version of urbanity than the one they delivered.
But the currency of the old avant-garde has become a difficult commodity. Many of their monumental projects have crashed - Gehry's highly anticipated Beekman Tower in lower Manhattan was this week chopped in half from 76 to 38 storeys. Besides that, their fees are outrageous; it's becoming increasingly uncomfortable to ask clients to indulge them. It could be that the glorious, creative outpouring of the iconic ones is destined for an inelegant dead end.
Until recently, Foster + Partners (whose works include London's gherkin-shaped Swiss Re Tower) employed 1,300 architects in 17 offices around the world. Last month, the firm announced that it was firing 300 of them. And figures from Britain's Office of National Statistics, released this week, reveal the number of architects claiming employment benefits rose from 150 to 1,290.
Work has tanked in Russia, forcing Norman Foster to close his Berlin office, where much of the work for the moneyed oligarchs was being drafted. Lord Foster was known to travel in his private jet, and is said to have charged $2,500 an hour for design consulting. His buildings have accomplished startling things with glass and high-tech wizardry. But they're hardly cheap - his remodelling of Europe's biggest football stadium, Camp Nou in Barcelona, involved recladding the exterior with a skin of colour-changing glass panels, estimated to cost upward of $400-million. Now delayed indefinitely, the project pushed architecture to heady heights, but alas, it's produced the kind of price tag that's difficult to rationalize these days.
In the Catalonian capital, considered a Mecca of exquisite architecture, work has dried up. Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners (creators of Heathrow's Terminal 5) had conjured a way to insert a shopping centre into an old bullring. Five years ago, Las Arenas might have been pushed through, but in these troubled times, the project stands silent and half-built. And a much-anticipated 34-storey tower by Gehry + Partners (which has cut dozens of architects at the firm's Los Angeles studio) has also been put on hold.
Back in North America, in the once-searing-hot city of Chicago, the Spire by world-renowned Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, proposed by Irish billionaire Garrett Kelleher as the tallest residential tower in North America, is a gaping hole in the ground - and going nowhere fast.
In Canada, too, the superstars came, designed and built, working their magic over the country's ambitious downtowns. Projects conceived 10 years ago have survived. They include all seven of the major cultural makeovers in the City of Toronto, including the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts by Diamond + Schmitt Architects; Daniel Libeskind's makeover of the Royal Ontario Museum; and Gehry's sumptuous if slightly leaky Art Gallery of Ontario.
The University of Toronto's Leslie Dan Pharmacy Building, by Foster + Partners, with its surreal lecture pods suspended in a gigantic atrium, slipped in under the wire. But, over the last year, Foster's design of the Bow - a commercial glass tower with impressive sustainability, spearheaded by oil-and-gas producer EnCana - in Calgary has suffered a scaling back of the original design vision. Vancouver's proposed Jameson House, a series of glass cylinders rising 37 storeys, was cancelled last month.
For the masters, the past few decades have been a wild ride. After enduring creative fits and starts, they got up their nerve to create mind-altering architecture in the 1960s. In Paris, the youngsters Piano and Rogers imagined the unforgettable Centre Pompidou (1977). Jean Nouvel's L'Institut du Monde Arabe, with its wall of mechanical oculi, opened in 1987.
By the 1990s, the established stars were reigniting a faith in downtowns around the world. But their change-making architecture, which lit fireworks in the metropolis, is set to radically change. And it's about time. Architectural and landscape poetry is desperately needed to help heal the disaffected suburbs. The work may be subtle, but there's an urgency to address the societal discontent lurking on the city's edges.
In North America, the biggest challenge will come in reinventing a suburban landscape marred by boarded-up houses, old-style shopping malls and big-box retailers. The stars obsessed over one-off, showy works of architectural sculpture. A new generation is required to consider new questions: How to negotiate the future of the bloated suburban house in light of changing demographics and a desire for intimate communities? How to accommodate smaller families, gay couples without children, and single parents who live alone half the time?
In Europe, the challenges will take on a different shape. Paris, for instance, is a model of urban elegance. But its suburbs are places of deep unrest, where immigrants are often housed in dehumanizing apartment blocks, and where public amenities and parks are scarce. To address the disaster of the Parisian banlieues, President Nicolas Sarkozy has commissioned 10 architects - famous and not, old and young - to imagine a vision for a new Grand Paris. The emphasis is not on standalone, audacious architecture that requires buying a ticket to enjoy.
Parisian architect Roland Castro has presented a sweeping green, Central Park-style space for the otherwise unhappy suburb of La Courneuve. Besides that, he radicalizes his vision by suggesting that the Élysée Palace be moved to the city's tough northeastern suburbs. In another scheme, by Italian architects Bernardo Secchi and Paola Vigano, waterways, rather than roadways, would be Paris's new connective tissue. Richard Rogers recommends reinventing disused railway lines as a network of walkable greenery, something already happening in downtown Paris and New York.
Culture follows money. Besides that, vanity inspires reckless desire. Maybe there was too much of a good thing in the moneyed cities of the world. With a push and shove by a new world order, and by the likes of Sarkozy, the suburbs might just get their chance at a greater livability. The challenge should be one taken up by young, passionate designers. And who knows? The young might make some room for the superstars to weigh in, too, in their golden years.
lrochon@globeandmail.com
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20090321.AROCHON21/TPStory/?query=lisa+rochon
_____
Didn't know that Foster's Jameson House in Vancouver got cancelled.
AoD