Eikongraphia

MoPo 2009

Michiel van Raaij — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 22:37:03 +0000

Maya Lin - Stormking Wavefield (Photographer: Jerry L. Thompson)

Welcome to the new listing of the Most Popular weblogs on architecture: the MoPo 2009. Eikongraphia congratulates Geoff Manaugh with a hattrick. His blog, BLDGBLOG, leads the chart for the third time in a row. Further congratulations go to all the other bloggers that made it into the MoPo 2009. You are among the twenty-five most popular blogs on architecture worldwide.

A weblog is included in the MoPo 2009 when it’s an English blog on architecture written by a single writer. The popularity of the blog is measured by the number of subscribers (Google Reader + Bloglines) and the number of hits in Google (Google + Google Images).

In last year’s edition the number of links in Technorati was also included in the equation. The unreliability of Technorati, where some bloggers already complained about back then, by now has become a widespread reality: half of the blogs in the MoPo 2009 aren’t recognized by the website. As a parameter Technorati therefore has become useless.

1. BLDGBLOG
2. Archidose
3. City of Sound
4. Architecture.mnp
5. Pruned
6. Architechnophilia
7. Tropolism
8. Architectural Videos
9. Mirage Studio 7
10. Super Colossal
11. Subtopia
12. Landscape+Urbanism
13. Sit down man, you’re a bloody tragedy
14. Architecture Chicago Plus
15. Lebbeus Woods
16. Strange Harvest
17. Life Without Buildings
18. Eye Candy
19. Design with Intent
20. Earth Architecture
21. Anarchitecture
22. Hugh Pearman
23. Brand Avenue
24. a456
25. The Arch

In comparison with the edition last year the ranking hasn’t developed dramatically. Architecture.mnp has entered the Top 5, while Interactive Architecture has tumbled from a fifth place to the 17th place. Archidose and City of Sound switched places, Pruned is one place down. The irony of the MoPo is that each new edition looks a lot like the one before. There are again no female bloggers among the twenty-two. For next year I am thinking of measuring growth, instead of size.

BLDGBLOG reigns the architecture blogosphere. Between 2007 and 2008 the total number of visitors tripled from one to three million, since last year that number has again dubbled to a total of almost six million. Which rookie can challenge that? Landscape+Urbanism has entered the MoPo at the twelfth place and is thereby the runner-up of the year. But with less than a thousand subscribers to its rss-feed, it is a long way to the more than 11,000 subscribers of BLDGBLOG. Even the blog in second place, Archidose, features less than a third of that.

The Where blog has been excluded from this year’s MoPo as it is now written by a bunch of people. If Eikongraphia had been included in the ranking, it would have ended up between the fifth and sixth place. One place up. Quite popular blogs that just missed the cut are in consecutive order: Varnelis; Loud Paper, and Fantastic Journal.

A blog that I can recommend is the blog by NL Architects. I would love to see more architects starting a blog like that! Maybe next year in the MoPo 2010?

Related: MoPo 2008; MoPo 2007

Tempelhof Mountain 2

Michiel van Raaij — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 20:31:48 +0000

Tempelhof Mountain (Copyright The Berg)

A kind of movement has developed, architect Jakob Tigges says, supporting the idea of building a mountain on the site of Tempelhof airport in Berlin. The German newspaper Tagesspiegel has taken the effort to talk to some of the supporters of the plan that have thought about how to actually build Tempelhof Mountain. In this post I will translate and summarize the article of the newspaper.

After a long debate Tempelhof airport has been closed last fall. The 300 hectare site now is about to be developed into another, regular neighborhood. In protest of that plan Jakob Tigges has proposed a 1071 meter high mountain for site. Tigges believes the Tempelhof site deserves something out of the ordinary. Not necessarily a mountain, but something.

The starting point by the Tagesspiegel article is a post on Eikongraphia. The newspaper has developed the idea to build the mountain with rubble further. The German building industry produces 280 million tons of rubble every year. If all of that is being moved to Berlin, in 5.5 years the mountain would be finished.

The only problem with that, the Tagesspiegel thinks, is the transportation. If a single truck carries 20 tons of rubble, it would require 47.000 rides/day. That is with pauses on Sunday. From an environmental perspective, that amount of rides from everywhere in Germany into Berlin is obviously not a great idea.

The solution, physicist Moritz Schieder says, is to keep the rides short. He therefore suggests to use soil from Grunewald, an area only 11 kilometers from Tempelhof. Schieder adds that the local authorities of Grunewald probably won’t support that idea.

Another protagonist of Tempelhof Mountain suggests to dig some big lakes in Mittenwalde, an area 30 kilometers of Berlin. The area could really profit from a lake like that, he thinks. When asked for a response by the Tagesspiegel, the Mayer of Mittenwalde, Uwe Pfeiffer, says he is not amused: “We have enough lakes already.”

To transport the building material through the city the best option is to use a conveyer belt, an engineering office has told Jakob Tigges. A conveyer belt of 1.80 meters wide can transport 12.000 tons of rubble or soil per hour. The engineering office has calculated that the construction of a 1000 meter mountain costs about 5 billion euro.

The Berlin soil can support such a mountain, says Hubert Quick, an engineer who has worked on the Sony Center by Helmut Jahn at Postdamer Platz. When built layer by layer, the ground will slowly settle. Quick says he knows about a planned mountain in the Middle East of twice the size of Tempelhof Mountain, which is meant to increase rainfall in the area! Quick adds that if the Berlin mountain is to be used for recreational purposes, it shouldn’t be higher than 300 meter. Otherwise the mountain would just be too steep.

With a clear sky, Tempelhof Mountain could be seen from a distance of 112 kilometers, Moritz Schieder has calculated. That means it could be seen from the Polish border. Beyond that distance views are blocked by the curvature of the earth.

I want to finish with the story by the Jakob Tigges on the Facebook page on the project:

“While big and wealthy cities in many parts of the world challenge the limits of possibility by building gigantic hotels with fancy shapes, erecting sky-high office towers or constructing hovering philharmonic temples, Berlin sets up a decent mountain. Yet, never at a loss for anything, we do not have to build it. We just picture it to ourselves and pretend its beautiful existence to everyone else: It’s peak exceeds 1000 metres and is covered with snow from September to March…
Hamburg, as stiff as flat, turns green with envy, rich and once proud Munich starts to feel ashamed of its distant Alp-panorama and planners of the Middle-East, experienced in taking the spell off any kind of architectural utopia immediately design authentic copies of the iconic Berlin-Mountain.”

Tempelhof Mountain (Copyright The Berg)

A new architecture criticism

Michiel van Raaij — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 19:44:21 +0000

EMBT - Gas Naturel Office Building, Barcelona (jsprhrm_msn/Flickr)

When you ask around, a lot of people will suggest that architecture criticism is about making negative judgments on unwanted tendencies in the built environment, or a part of it. This somewhat hasty interpretation of the word ‘criticism’ does goes up often. If we for instance had to believe the Belgian critic Lieven de Cauter, author of the book ‘Capsular Civilization’, the world is quickly heading down hill. And he is not the only one who favors the negative.

Much too often architecture criticism turns into a criticism of society at large. Architecture in that case is taken as both the example of the unwanted tendency and the subject to criticize it. In the final branches of critical theory – another confusing term – it is all about the unmasking of consumerism and the support of the resistance against capitalism. Within that perspective the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao is nothing more than a highly spectacular store in which commerce has finally has overwon. Let’s not even start on Dubai.

That is not the architecture criticism I want to write. Although critical theory gained momentum after the 1968 riots in France, at this moment it has become futile. The success of capitalism over communism does play its part in this. The recent credit crunch doesn’t change that. Just as important however is the didactic tone of the ‘critical critics’, as I would like to call them. This tone of voice is, as Bruno Latour proves, no longer accepted by the public as the truth. Society has moved beyond that. Everything can and is questioned. When only plausible truths exist, as Michael Speaks says, critical theory has to compete with other perspectives.

The lost monopoly of critical theory has left architecture critics in despair. In the book ‘Architecture in the Netherlands 2007-08’ the editors complain about the loss of a singular frame of reference by which architecture can be judged. This confusion is inherited by the younger generation of critics. They continue to study critical theory, finish PhD’s on it, but can’t rhyme what they have learned with the world around them.

With the loss of a singular frame of reference (assuming there once existed one), critics have lost their ability to judge. Reality, it has been recognized, is too complex to grasp in a single truth. Whether or not we can counter climate change by reducing CO2 emissions is plausible, but not more than that. Architecture criticism has lost its ‘god-mode’ in which everything had its predictable place.

I am glad. We now own the freedom to take on every perspective imaginable. The singular frame of reference has switched places with temporary, provisional ones. With the diminished relevance of critical theory, architecture criticism has to take a step back to the moment before the judgment. The public now can decide for themselves. The architecture critic only has to offer the public handles to make up their mind on their own. The work of the critic has to become more diverse and more open.

For the subject of architecture criticism this means a farewell to the fixed point-of-view in favor of a more neutral position where pro’s and con’s are treated equally. In architecture criticism the negative effects of capitalism should be compared with its positive effects. Just like that innovation and conservatism are virtues in their own right. Architecture criticism indeed again gains journalistic and scientific value.

The architecture critic gives the public an understanding of the subject being discussed. The new architecture critic doesn’t provide a judgment based on critical theory or ideology, but instead provide an insight with the instruments he can apply. An overview:

1. Selection. Architecture criticism starts with the selection of the subject or subjects and by motivating that selection. Why is this relevant now, and why? An important criterion is whether or not the subject embodies a future development, but it is certainly not the only criterion imaginable. The subject can for instance also be really appropriate at a certain moment, like an economic crisis, without technically being innovative.

2. Confrontation. The architecture critic can put the performance of the subject in perspective by presenting a competing subject next to it and to compare the performance of them. It is an easy instrument: just compare two or more projects, sources, concepts or opinions in one document. Architecture criticism guaranteed. The selection of course should be done carefully. Compare apples with apples.

3. Broadening. With this instrument the subject is put in a broader perspective by elaborating on its context: its background, its location, the reception by the public, its predecessors, the circumstances, its development, and so on. The simplicity of the instrument is deceptive. Discussing the ‘how?’ alone is easy, more difficult is to assess the ‘why?’ and most importantly: ‘why now?’

4. Speculation. Scenario’s, extrapolating trends, imagination… to speculate on the future is an intrinsic part of architecture and of architecture criticism. Read for instance BLDGBLOG to see what I mean.

5. Analysis. In ‘What is Philosophy’ Gilles Deleuze argues that the essence of philosophy is to discover concepts that can describe bits of reality. In an analyses the concept behind the subject is uncovered. In architecture criticism analysis is among the most challenging instruments there are.

If you think I have overlooked an instrument, or want to respond in another way, please leave a comment below.

Cedar Island

Michiel van Raaij — Mon, 11 May 2009 20:40:53 +0000

Cedar Island, Lebanon (Copyright) (click-2-enlarge)

Against all economic and political odds a Lebanese businessman has proposed to build an enormous island in the form of a Cedar tree for the coast of Lebanon. The building of the Palm Islands and The World in Dubai has provoked reactions everywhere. In the Netherlands a massive tulip was proposed, in Canada a big Maple leaf, in Russia a mini-Russia and now in Lebanon a mega cedar tree.

At a different time and at a different location, the plan probably wouldn’t have met the criticism it is now receiving. The economic crisis is putting projects on hold everywhere, whereas the recent war with Israel puts question marks behind the supposed political stability of Lebanon. The Lebanese businessman however sees his project as a great vehicle for Lebanese people all over the world to invest in their country.

Who is going to say whether it is possible or not? Or more importantly, whether or not the plan should be embraced? It could well become a symbol of hope and pride of Lebanon, a piece of architecture that would positively put the small country on the map. It could also very well turn into a big middle finger, pointed towards Israel. On the other hand though there are concerns about the destruction of the underwater landscape of the Mediterranean.

In order to discuss the applied iconography a comparison with the Palm Islands is instructive. In Dubai form and function do match. It is a holiday landscape shaped like the symbol of all sea vacations. It is exactly like the duck-restaurant shaped like a big duck that Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown showed in ‘Learning from Las Vegas’.

And the king of Dubai says the palm-figure is practical too. In order to accommodate a lot of tourists (again in order to diversify the economy) in the view of the king the city-state needed more shore. The palm figure provides exactly that: kilometers of pristine shore.

The plan for Cedar Island lacks both virtues. It doesn’t represent the vacation-image, nor does it add that much shore. What to make of this the plan then?

Although Cedar Island is almost exactly the same size as Palm Jumeirah, the first palm-island in Dubai, its contents are completely different. The Cedar Tree is a national icon in Lebanon, similar to what the Maple leaf is for Canada and what the Tulip is for Holland. The local tree is actually called the Lebanon Cedar and is depicted in the national flag of the Middle Eastern country. The response to the murder of Hariri in 2005 by the media has been dubbed the ‘Cedar revolution’.

Cedar Island isn’t a vacation island. It is more like a city, with a little bit of everything. According to the statement of the developer the island has a mixed program and a mixed density. On the renderings in the ‘center’ of the island a ‘downtown’ with a ‘central park’ is drawn, whereas little ‘suburbs’ are located in the ‘periphery’. Just like the Palm-islands in Dubai, Cedar Island takes the morphology of the tree as a diagram to differentiate the density of the island. Dense quarters echo the stem, free standing houses are an abstraction of small leaves. In the architecture of the islands the applied iconography is not two-dimensional, but three-dimensional.

What can we expect next? A ‘stars and stripes’ archipelago? An island featuring canals depicting the Union Jack, the nation flag of Great Britain? A moon and a star for Turkey? Another star for Israel? A perfectly round island for Japan…? Should a country count itself lucky when their national flag is easily translated into an island, or a couple of islands?

Cedar Island, Lebanon (Copyright) (click-2-enlarge)

Read further on the website of Cedar Island.

Bostoren, by SeARCH

Michiel van Raaij — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 20:00:27 +0000

SeARCH - Bostoren, Putten (Photographer: Michiel van Raaij) (click-2-enlarge)

In a forest in the east of the Netherlands one of the best architecture offices in the Netherlands has just completed a new lookout tower. The structure is part of a small park in the vicinity of the village Putten. The concept that the architect, SeARCH, has put forward works like this: take a circular piece of the forest and put it 36 meters up in the sky. From this elevated ground there is a 360 degree view over the forest, in which cities like Amersfoort appear at the horizon.

As the tower is not only located in the forest, but is actually a part of it, the tower has been named ‘Bostoren’; Forest Tower. To maintain the little forest in the air, the lookout platform has been fitted with soil, a layer of it. There where the trees have been positioned, the soil has some more depth. As trees grow as big as their roots, the landscape architects expect the trees to not grow that high. The forest at the platform will be a kind of Bonzai forest. It is engineered smallness.

What goes up for the trees, goes up for the foundations of the tower too. A concrete disc of about the same size as the lookout platform ensures the stability of the tower structure. Large cantilevers require large foundations.

Since the tower by law is not regarded a building but a structure, the regulations a building has attain to don’t go up here. The structural engineers say their main concern was to avoid visitors from feeling the tower move. I am not sure what that would mean in rough weather. On my visit you could feel the circular stairs swinging with every large step.

What’s peculiar about the design by SeARCH is that the journey to the top of the tower is just as fun, or even more fun, than being on the platform itself. At your climb every so much stairs there is something going on. First there are the ‘English stairs’, stairs that make a big circle outside of the tower. Then there is a big wooden room that from the outside is dotted with nest boxes. At the inside very small, round windows allow you to see into the boxes. The room is like a big boudoir from which you spy on the bird’s just doing their thing. Very voyeuristic.

Again a little higher, there a stairs cantilevering from the trunk outwards that contract on your way up, and expand on your way down. With the top in sight you stumble upon a room that features a ribbon floor and a view to the ground below. The sturdiness of the net allows you to walk it like floor. Very cool and not as scary as it looks. Then, right under the lookout platform, on top of the-room-with-the-ribbon-floor, there is a slanting balcony. Everything comes in two here. The horizon, the forest, the platform, even yourself: everything is mirrored and distorted in the underside of the platform. Absolutely sublime.

SeARCH - Bostoren, Putten (Photographer: Michiel van Raaij) (click-2-enlarge)

Tractor Tire, by Licotec

Michiel van Raaij — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 18:48:27 +0000

Licotec - De Graafschap Stadium (Copyright Licotec) (click-2-enlarge)

Have we reached the end of iconography in architecture? Offices that a couple years ago enthusiastically embraced iconography, have now abandoned it for more abstract representations. Foreign Office Architects has shifted its focus to ornamental patterns, Neutelings Riedijk is researching bare, round and oval forms. Did we pass the finish of iconography in architecture without noticing?

In architecture avant-garde positions in only years time are absorbed by the architecture community, who in their turn pass it on to contractors and self-builders. In the Netherlands for example the Piraeus building that Hans Kollhoff designed in Amsterdam made such an impression that for years Dutch architects only used very dark, even black, bricks for their buildings. By now that practice has become so banal that architects have turned to the next thing: brickwork constructed in decorative patterns.

Was it the Bird’s Nest stadium by Herzog & de Meuron that marked the completion of the iconography-project in architecture? Following the example set by the Olympic Stadium, this Friday roof manufacturer Licotec presented a design similarly loaded with iconography. This time the reference doesn’t point to a phenomenon in nature, but to an industrial design.

The proposed 20,000 seat stadium is meant for football club ‘de Graafschap’ in the rural east of the Netherlands. Since the supporters of the club are nicknamed ‘Superboeren’, superfarmers, Licotec has thought: why not build stadium in the form of a gigantic tractor tire?

The image of the tractor tire of course has nothing to do with the idea of a stadium, but the same could be said about the image of the bird’s nest. But whereas the form of the Olympic Stadium was highly fashionable, the form of the design by Licotec seems uncomfortable funny.

What fascinates me though is the fact that the iconography of the Tractor Tire is virtuous. The architecture celebrates the rural culture in the ‘Achterhoek’, as the area is called. Here the banality of the iconography has found its welcome home. The image represents the raw country life and the simple pleasures the farmers enjoy so much – such as football.

Licotec probably isn’t aware of the fact that it isn’t the first to apply the image of the tire to architecture. About ten years ago Neutelings Riedijk build a fire station in the city of Maastricht, whose concrete façade has the track of a car tire imprinted on it. The iconography there was a contextual one too: the building was located next to the ring road of the city.

Licotec - De Graafschap Stadium (Copyright Licotec) (click-2-enlarge)

Related on YouTube: a video of the stadium, with tractors!

The sustainable icon

Michiel van Raaij — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 23:03:29 +0000

Herman Miller - Mirra (Copyright Herman Miller)

This week I have been reading ‘Vers une architecture’ by Le Corbusier. As my French is not that great, I am reading the English translation. I find it a fascinating book, as the content is somewhat different than I expected. Le Corbusier states that buildings with a simpler, geometrical form are better appreciated by the public, than buildings with a more complex form. It is a fact, Le Corbusier continues, that has somehow been forgotten.

The main argument by Le Corbusier is well known: the Industrial Revolution is to affect architecture too. Houses for instance should be standardized and mass produced to reduce costs. The ocean liner, the car, the airplane, the bridge, the factory; they show the future of architecture. The architect however is not to be an engineer. Architectural space triggers emotions, Le Corbusier writes. The composition of space therefore requires a specialist knowledge different from engineering. Le Corbusier favors one effect of the new architecture: the clean, functional spaces of the factory fruits contemplation.

Le Corbusier wrote his manifest in the early twenties of the twentieth century. Now, in the first decade of the twenty-first century, architecture critics have called the end of the icon and have announced the arrival of a new modesty in architecture. This modesty, such is the expectation, is coupled with a new concern for the social issues of our world. It is a sentiment that is shared from the United States to the Netherlands. (I am not sure the Arabs and Asians feel this way too).

The irony of this is obviously that the icon has made architecture more popular than ever before. The services of the architect are in high demand. Ambitious clients still ask for ‘a new Bilbao’, more than ten years after the completion of the museum. The architect, as a hip figure, features in commercials on television. In the Netherlands politicians call architects an example of the creative economy and regard architecture as a valuable export product. Are we about to throw that all away?

There is no definite answer to that question. I do think though that a comparison with the early Modernism is instructive. The expected new modesty is not so new after all. However, the argument that is currently being used is different than the argument by Le Corbusier. The analogy with the ocean liner, the car, the airplane, the bridge, the factory that Le Corbusier puts forward doesn’t apply to the current situation. To stretch it a bit further: there is no field at the moment that shows a new modesty in design.

The parallel between de birth of Modernism and the current situation, that the architecture critics seem to see, is the following. Modernism was a response to the decadent, highly expensive, ornamental architecture of the nineteenth century. The ‘age of the icon’, as it has been called, is similarly regarded as a period of decadent, highly expensive, ornamental architecture. Time for a new modesty! Or not?

The global economical downturn automatically results in more modest architecture. At least temporarily. But is it going to last? The core of the argument of Le Corbusier is the reference to the industrialization. “A house is a machine for living in”. The reaction to ornament follows from that. Not the other way around.

Anno 2009 industrialization is off the table. The motto is differentiation, not standardization.
Just like the beginning of the twentieth century a new ideology has arrived. A revolution is at hand. It is a second industrial revolution, that not only applies to architecture, but to society at large. It is not about modesty in form. It is about how we use our building materials. The new ideology is sustainability.

The history of the icon is related to the emergence of complex form in architecture. The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, the Seattle Public Library, the Swiss Re tower in London, the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart, the Bird’s nest in Beijing; all represent innovations in architectural form.

Sustainability doesn’t end the trend towards ever more complex form in architecture. The car industry proves that focusing on sustainability doesn’t obstruct the creation of ever more complex bodyworks. The chairs that can be taken apart in 7 minutes by Herman Miller don’t feature a new simplicity in form. On contrary.
The emergence of the sustainable icon is upon us.

Herman Miller - Mirra (Copyright Herman Miller)

Related at Eikongraphia: Lease your facade, E2 Design

Related book: Towards a new architecture

Language

Michiel van Raaij — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 22:10:32 +0000

Unknown Flemish Master - Tower of Babel (Kurpfälzisches Mueseum) (click-2-enlarge)

There is a curious connection between the scientific language we use to share our knowledge and the origin of the architectural models we apply in our practice. The fact that all international scientific communication for centuries was done in Latin sustained the continuous interest of architects in the Greek and Roman architecture, Lex Hermans writes in his book on Classicism. It took about three and a half centuries before other languages could break that hegemony.

In the second half of the nineteenth century in the Netherlands the French and German language made an attempt to reign. They both represented different architecture models. One of the new concepts from Germany was regional architecture, among the innovations from France were first Eclecticism and later the neo-Gothic. As architects studied in Germany or France the grammar to describe the architecture spread.

At the beginning of the twentieth century there was both more German (Bauhaus) and more French (Le Corbusier). There was also some English (Arts & Crafts), a sliver of Russian (Constructivists) and – that was new too – a little Dutch (De Stijl).

Soon after the second world war a hint of French (1968) and an echo of Italian (Rationalists) could not distract from the fact that the American language had become the all encompassing language scientists worldwide communicated in. In time at least in the Netherlands the dominance of ‘English (U.S.)’, as Microsoft Word calls it, has only increased.

In Holland all universities have recently cut their school programs in half, in order to implement the Anglo-Saxon Bachelor-Master system. The PhD program at the Faculty of Architecture of the TU Delft is not called ‘Delftse ontwerpopleiding’, but Delft School of Design: DSD. The architectural theory that is taught there is, as Michael Speaks has pointed out, basically the French philosophy seen through the American eyes sold back to us.

The advantage of having a common language like English is obvious. Instead of small, regional fields of knowledge there now is a world spanning network of it. There is one giant, beating, differentiated body of knowledge. It is all so much more interesting than the one idea the local architect produces in his lifetime. There is an intelligence that forever speeds up, generating new concepts every minute.

The reign of the English language could however have some disadvantages too. Ever more eloquent in their native tongue the American en British have a rhetorical advantage over others, creating an uneven playing field. I wonder if we would have read American architecture theory in Holland if we weren’t so focused on communicating in English.

History proves that once dominant languages fade away; some fast, some slow. Latin is still used in medicine. What languages could we expect to start competing with the American English as the result of an appealing new body of knowledge? Last year South-Korea and Colombia suddenly appeared on the global architecture radar. Are we to expect small countries like that to increase their influence? Will online translation start to play a role in this? Or is the answer much easier? Will we tomorrow all speak Chinese? Are we about to start thinking and practicing like the Chinese?

Pieter Breughel - Tower of Babel (Museum Boijmans van Beuningen) (click-2-enlarge)

Hendrik III van Cleve - Tower of Babel (Kröller Müller Museum) (click-2-enlarge)

Unknown Flemish Master - Tower of Babel (Pinacoteca Nazionale) (click-2-enlarge)

BIG Mountains

Michiel van Raaij — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 21:33:30 +0000

BIG - Masterplan Zira Island, Azerbaijan (Copyright BIG) (click-2-enlarge)

One million square meters. That is the program BIG has added in a masterplan to a small island in the Caspian Sea called Zira. Being located right for the coast of Baku, the capital city of Azerbaijan, the island is expected to attract massive crowds. To accommodate the million BIG resided to a metaphor that is all about mass: the mountain.

For the island BIG proposes a set of seven different buildings, whose form is derived from seven peaks of Azerbaijan. Each measuring about 130.000 square meters, the buildings are huge. Monstrous almost. Everything is set in place to only reach one goal: to build a carbon neutral neighborhood. In an emerging oil-country.

BIG aims to reach the ‘zero’ by focusing on the sun, the wind and the water. Pretty much all there is on an island. The sun and wind are used to generate energy, the water is recycled. Heat pumps connected to the Caspian Sea warm and cool the buildings. The necessary windmills are projected in the sea, not on the island itself. Just like the concept OMA just presented for the area surrounding the North Sea. The sea once again is the new frontier.

The question the design by BIG poses is whether or not a sustainable environment benefits from dense, mid-rise building complexes. The earth is rapidly being populated by freestanding towers. It is the one building typology that is uncontested. In the face of sustainability, is that position about to crumble?

What fascinates me most about the masterplan by BIG is that the buildings actually haven’t been inspired by the seven mountains of Azerbaijan at all. When browsing the website of the architect last week I came across pretty much all the buildings. Of course each differently scaled and situated in a certain context, but still. The Zira masterplan simply is a catalogue of the designs BIG has created in the past years.

That isn’t necessarily a bad thing and doesn’t necessarily makes the iconography untrue. The masterplan still is a sketch. Who knows how it will develop? Once the metaphor is out there, it steers the design in a certain direction, modifies it until completion. A self fulfilling prophecy.

I can’t help wondering though what would happen if more architects would design masterplans like catalogues of their own unbuilt work. What if OMA would stop designing Mies’ unbuilt work and instead would incorporate some of their paper architecture in their masterplans? If properly executed, it could result in instant UNESCO sites. World Heritage from the rack.

BIG - Masterplan Zira Island, Azerbaijan (Copyright BIG) (click-2-enlarge)

Tempelhof Mountain 1

Michiel van Raaij — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 20:51:14 +0000

Tempelhof Mountain (Copyright Jakab Tigges & Maltes Kroes) (click-2-enlarge)

What do to with Tempelhof Airport? After the airfield has been closed last October the city of Berlin has asked the ‘Berliners’ just that. One of the ideas that were sent to the municipality (and directly put aside) is the idea by architect Jakob Tigges. He proposes to construct a 1,000 meter tall mountain on the former airfield.

Imagine that in weekends you could climb a mountain, right in your city! On long summer nights barbeques could be held on the foot of the mountain, overlooking the Berlin skyline. When the conditions would allow for it, daredevils could take their glider from the mountain down onto the city. In the winter, when the slopes would turn white, the population of the city could ski right into the streets.

When I visited Berlin at the beginning of January this year I found out that the streets are not salted anymore that much to save the environment. The result is that with a little snow the city turns magnificently white. It would require only a little extra effort to shut down a couple of blocks to motor traffic, to allow for skiing.

The future city seems to be a leisure city. There are architects that suggest that the main attractor of cities should be the quality of living. If that is true, leisure should be considered as one of the main assets of a city. Leisure at large could include: Shops, restaurants, cafés and clubs; but also sports clubs and ‘nature’. Nature like a mountain.

The mountain idea makes me think of one of the datascapes that MVRDV did for the exhibition ‘Datacity’. When discussing garbage Winy Maas, Jakob van Rijs and Natalie de Vries suggested to collect all the garbage produced in the Netherlands and put them in just a couple of spots near each other. In a couple of years the flat landscape of the Netherlands would ‘naturally’ be enriched with an enormously high skyline of new mountains. A monument to consumerism.

What would happen if Berlin would take that idea into practice? The city would construct the largest MVRDV design on earth, that is for sure. But how long would it take? A simple calculation looks like this:

Cone = (π r²)h/2

Mountain: (π 1,000²)1,000/2 = 1.570.000.000 m³

If the 3.400.000 inhabitants of the city of Berlin would each produce 1 m³ of garbage a year, it would take 461 years to complete the mountain. However, if all 82.000.000 Germans would collect their garbage at Tempelhof, it would still take 19 years to get the mountain up to the kilometer. But that is for a mountain higher than the Burj Dubai!

Technically the Tempelhof Mountain could be erected. Architect Jakob Tigges however doesn’t regard the idea to be a serious proposal. To Der Spiegel he says the idea is an unconstructive provocation that is meant to work a place-holder in the minds of the Berliners, until a solid idea for the site has been developed. The site shouldn’t be developed into another mediocre neighborhood, Tigges demands: there are many open spaces in the city better suited for that.

That is true. There are quite a number of empty plots in the center of the city. The city of Berlin is far from being complete. That is probably in part due to the fact that city has a name for being somewhat too big in relation to its population. The result is that there is not enough pressure from the market to fill each space in the city.

A concept Jakob Tigges probably could agree with pops up at the end of the article in Der Spiegel: “[…] there was once a proposal to convert the space into a luxury medical clinic for the rich and famous, complete with landing strips for private planes. Ronald Lauder of the Estee Lauder fortune stood ready to invest €350 million for a huge health and wellness center that he felt would draw international patients seeking privacy during plastic surgery and other procedures. He may have been right, seeing as how the airport has attracted stars such as the Marilyn Monroe and Marlene Dietrich in the past. Yet the plan never came to fruition.”

Tempelhof Mountain (Copyright Jakab Tigges & Maltes Kroes) (click-2-enlarge)