Post: Architects veer away from 'car crash' design

[Urban Shocker]

Meanwhile, back in the land of 'car crash' design ... I think the economic meltdown has put a dent in the craving for expensive, high-fashion, high-end novelty shapes and spectacle architecture, no matter how well some of it may have suited the programmatic requirements of the institutions, and the profit margins of the high-end condo developers, who commissioned it. Not being a movement geared to providing moderately priced and sensibly designed places for ordinary people to live or work in it was always limited in what it could deliver. It's already beginning to look like a thing of the past, the work of a small group of jetlagged starchitects, hired by a few high-end clients - and the novelty shapes aren't actually turning out to be as varied as many of us assumed they would be when the cycle began in the heady days of the mid-90s.

 

[lawsond]

I think Diamond, like Libeskind and others, has had his successes and his failures.

What were some Diamond successes?

 

[adma]

Well, the Central YMCA was a keynote work of Toronto architecture in the 1980s, for starters...

 

[Archivist]

The Central Y is fabulous, and won a GG award.

If we limit ourself to the buildings that won awards and that are found in Toronto, Diamond's successes might include:

- Bahen Centre (U of T)
- Earth Sciences Centre (U of T)
- Apotex Centre
- University of Guelph at Humber
- Ways Lane Residence
- York University Student Centre

Other notables that have contributed to our city:

- Beverley Place
- Innis College
- Maria S. Shchuka Library
- the Hudson

 

[Tewder]

I like the Four Seasons Centre too. Ok, maybe not the back facades so much but they don't detract from the design as a whole, imo. He's also designed a beautiful performing arts centre for Burlington which will fit into its context quite nicely.

As for the architecture of funny shapes etc, I can't help but think that this is what will eventually come to define the architecture of this generation in years to come. To the degree that innovation in design and form is often a function of evolving technologies (plastics for modernism etc) these funny shaped buildings are the product of the emerging role of computer design in architecture. The current trend of neo-modernism is certainly elegant but still seems to me to be a bit of a retread of an already earlier established design aesthetic, and one that defines a previous generation (mid-century). Like it or not, the funny and ambitious shapes, the liberation of form as permitted by computers, and the show-stopping, car-crashing craving for spectacle will likely come to say a great deal about who we are in the here and now. Perhaps neo-minimalism will be viewed as the 'anti-spectacle' that proves that spectacle is the ultimate defining style? ...

 

[Urban Shocker]

Internationally, Diamond is known for his performing arts venues - including Washington's Sidney Harman Center for the Arts, which opened in 2007, and the renovation to Detroit's Max M. Fisher Center for the Performing arts. Last year he won a shortlisted competition to redesign Denver's Boettcher Concert Hall, and has just been chosen to design the new Mariinsky opera house in St. Petersburg.

in.http://bustler.net/index.php/articl...s_to_redesign_denvers_boettcher_concert_hall/

http://www.sceneadvisor.com/news/st...d-to-build-st.-petersburg-opera-house-0011296

 

[Urban Shocker]

My favourite regeneration industry 'car crash design' - this one by a wannabee starchitect called Anthony Caradonna - was the Cadillac Center, announced about a year ago, that was intended to revive Detroit. Appropriately enough, it really did look like a car crash.

http://www.urbantoronto.ca/showthread.php?t=5751

I haven't heard anything about it since.

 

[adma]

The Central Y is fabulous, and won a GG award.

If we limit ourself to the buildings that won awards and that are found in Toronto, Diamond's successes might include:

- Bahen Centre (U of T)
- Earth Sciences Centre (U of T)
- Apotex Centre
- University of Guelph at Humber
- Ways Lane Residence
- York University Student Centre

Other notables that have contributed to our city:

- Beverley Place
- Innis College
- Maria S. Shchuka Library
- the Hudson

Big deal. All that stuff is either dated, or it's crap

 

[dulapul]

I don`t know if somebody would read this but I couldn’t resist making a short comment on the “car crash design†syntagma. I feel that this kind of descriptions can only hurt a discussion on city, urban, buildings quality, city life quality by its triviality or superficiality. The same as stereotypes like “no-frills designâ€, “frivolous designâ€, that I heard elsewhere. They just shut down, for everybody, the possibility of getting closer to a realistic idea of what we would need to build better or to live better in the city.

 

[Urban Shocker]

Though, to be fair to the writer, it was a reference to something one of the interviewees talked about - clients with a craving for architectural spectacle. Some architects, including the two quoted, don't do that sort of design and the book they're promoting ( which is clearly the reason for the interview ) explains their quite different approach. They'd probably see the things you're concerned about - triviality and superficiality - as inherent in "car crash design".

 

[dulapul]

True, the writer quoted the architect (who quoted the client) but both of them adapted the expression to their use, creating a stereotype on the way.
As far as I know they mainly refer to the ROM building. Deconstructivist architecture has a very strong cultural foundation, like it or not (personally not a fan). Comparing the shape of a crashed car to the ROM shape (again, not a fan) or using “head turning†as a cultural-architectural term, for me, is just looking for sensational. Even if the ROM building is not the point, is hard to believe that a non “spectacular†approach, whatever that would be, is the solution to avoid triviality or superficiality. I would think the opposite.

 

[Urban Shocker]

The ROM made no bones about the fact that they wanted a spectacular new building, a head-turner that acts as a 3D logo for the institution - which they've got. The quest for novelty shapes and architectural spectacle has been a common approach with cultural buildings since Bilbao, so it isn't an unreasonable stereotype to call it "car crash design" if that's the phrase used by one potential client ( in the article ) to describe the sort of high-fashion architectural commodity they crave.

 

[dulapul]

I would say that the quest for novelty shapes and architectural spectacle has been a common approach with buildings since the beginning of civilisation. Le Corbusier was “car crash design†at his time. What I am saying is that the language is reflecting the reality and viceversa. Limiting one is limiting the other.

 

[Urban Shocker]

Was he? Modernism of the Corbusian kind has been tarred with the brush of sameness - not novelty. It was part of a broad movement in the arts, and in politics for social change, whereas the recent thirst for architectural novelty and sensation has different roots - a reaction against Modernism, seeing architecture as commodity. The former is a workhorse approach, and applied broadly, the latter is applied mainly to expensive, high-end cultural buildings and condos and centered on the vision of the designer - hence starchitecture. By defining the values that underpin what's being built we don't limit good design. Running the Cheddintonistas out of town, for instance, seems perfectly sensible. Pointing out when buildings are more about ego than function is another. Those sorts of things enable better cities.

 

[dulapul]

Well, for that time he was novelty (as part of a broad movement in the arts, and in politics). And, yes, if we are focusing on his worst, his work has been tarred with the brush of sameness. Internal, multi-layered contradictions are the nature (and beauty) of architecture and of reality. A unique label would always loose something on the way.
On the contemporary side, I think there is much more in architecture, today than the starchitecture, it just doesn’t have the same press. That’s another discussion.
Is the architecture as commodity wrong? I’m not sure about this, maybe it’s more democratic in a way, it would put urban issues back into large public discussion.
Also, I would exclude the architect’s “ego†argument. For me, it is more a moral judgment on an individual decision making profession, business, politics, arts, some use it for tennis. There is ego in everything, it’s too easy to use it as argument for function against urban-esthetic. Again, another discussion. Thank you for discussing.