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NOVEMBER 22, 2008 When Buildings Try Too Hard
Architects and developers are focused on erecting icons. Why most fall short
By WITOLD RYBCZYNSKI
In a devastated real-estate market, builders and developers are clinging to an ambitious word with magical properties. In New York, a proposed 56-story luxury residential tower, designed by Pritzker Prize-winning Swiss architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, though as yet unbuilt, already claims to be "iconic." A Brooklyn condominium high-rise with a textured façade of jagged, light- and dark-colored glass designed by SOM, the same firm that designed Chicago's Sears Tower, promises "iconic design within reach." A Seattle developer, taking no chances, has simply named his forthcoming residential tower The Icon. Apparently, everyone would like their building to be an icon, but it's not that easy.
Traditionally, a building is an icon when it is a popularly-recognized symbol of something larger than itself -- like the White House, the Eiffel Tower or the Empire State Building. Architectural icons are generally anointed by the public, and sometimes a long time after they are built. So why do developers think that they can create instant icons? Frank Gehry and the Bilbao Guggenheim, that's why. The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, an industrial city in northeast Spain, opened in 1997. Using innovative computer technology, Mr. Gehry designed and built a structure of striking originality and formal inventiveness. The swirling shapes covered in highly reflective titanium were not only astonishingly original, they were like no other building that people had ever seen. Moreover, unlike most avant-garde creations -- one thinks of atonal music, or Nouvelle Vague cinema -- the Bilbao Guggenheim was fun.
The Bilbao museum is not the first modern architectural icon; it was preceded by the Sydney Opera House. Jørn Utzon's stunning waterside building, which reminds many people of sails or seashells, became an international sensation when it was completed in 1973. Gehry has been quoted as saying that his Basque clients wanted the Guggenheim "to do for Bilbao what the Sydney Opera House did for Australia." In fact, Mr. Gehry's museum succeeded so well at attracting visitors -- millions of them -- that the phenomenon of iconic architecture acting as a tourist draw became known as the Bilbao effect.
However you interpret Gehry's museum, as billowing sails, an extraterrestrial object or a silver artichoke, it has unquestionably become an internationally recognized icon -- for travel to Spain, and for tourism generally. It is the built equivalent of Niagara Falls or the Grand Canyon: a place that you must visit at least once. That is the chief promise of the Bilbao effect, whether for a concert hall hoping to attract patrons, a downtown luring tourists and conventioneers, or a real-estate developer looking to draw buyers: People will come.
Despite the success of the Bilbao Guggenheim, the Bilbao effect has not proved easy to replicate, not even for Frank Gehry. His Experience Music Project for Paul Allen, the Microsoft billionaire, was supposed to put Seattle on the architectural map. Despite its unusual architecture, consisting of colorful, rounded forms said to be inspired by electric guitars, the museum of rock music and Jimi Hendrix memorabilia has not proven to be a success. Attendance has been poor, and recently a part of the building was converted into a science-fiction museum. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which had not built a significant modern building since Eero Saarinen's Kresge Auditorium, commissioned Gehry to add a landmark to its campus. The Stata Center is an eye-catching structure, all slipping and sliding shapes, but the intended iconic effect has been severely compromised by a public furor (and a lawsuit) over cost over-runs and functional failings, allegedly including mold growth, leaks and falling ice and snow from the building. Daniel Libeskind is another architect who, following his universally acclaimed Jewish Museum in Berlin, was considered to have the Midas touch when it came to signature buildings. Yet his recent crystalline addition to the Denver Art Museum has failed to attract the expected number of visitors, and another crystalline -- and slightly scary-looking -- extension to the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto has not exactly set the architectural world on fire. None of this bodes well for cities that are counting on instant icons to save them in a looming recession.
Perhaps the Bilbao effect should be called the Bilbao anomaly, for the iconic chemistry between the design of building, its image and the public turns out to be rather rare -- and somewhat mysterious. Herzog & de Meuron's design for Beijing's Olympic Stadium is ingenious, for example, but instead of the complex engineering it was the widely perceived image of a bird's nest (a nickname that did not originate with the architects) that cemented the building's international iconic status; the woven steel wrapper seemed to symbolize both China's ancient traditions and its rush to modernization. The so-called Water Cube, housing the Olympic pools, also became an iconic hit, although since the illuminated box is chiefly effective at night it is something of a one-trick pony, and it will be interesting to see how long the iconic effect lasts.
But for every Bird's Nest, there are scores of costly iconic failures, buildings that fail to spark the public's imagination. Of course, failed icons don't go away, which is a problem. Since the Bilbao effect teaches -- I believe mistakenly -- that unconventional architecture is a prerequisite for iconic status, clients have encouraged their architects to go to greater and greater lengths to design buildings that are unusual, surprising, even shocking. But the shock will inevitably wear off, and 100 years from now, all those iconic wannabes will resemble a cross between a theme park and the Las Vegas strip.
NOVEMBER 22, 2008 When Buildings Try Too Hard
Architects and developers are focused on erecting icons. Why most fall short
By WITOLD RYBCZYNSKI
In a devastated real-estate market, builders and developers are clinging to an ambitious word with magical properties. In New York, a proposed 56-story luxury residential tower, designed by Pritzker Prize-winning Swiss architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, though as yet unbuilt, already claims to be "iconic." A Brooklyn condominium high-rise with a textured façade of jagged, light- and dark-colored glass designed by SOM, the same firm that designed Chicago's Sears Tower, promises "iconic design within reach." A Seattle developer, taking no chances, has simply named his forthcoming residential tower The Icon. Apparently, everyone would like their building to be an icon, but it's not that easy.
Traditionally, a building is an icon when it is a popularly-recognized symbol of something larger than itself -- like the White House, the Eiffel Tower or the Empire State Building. Architectural icons are generally anointed by the public, and sometimes a long time after they are built. So why do developers think that they can create instant icons? Frank Gehry and the Bilbao Guggenheim, that's why. The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, an industrial city in northeast Spain, opened in 1997. Using innovative computer technology, Mr. Gehry designed and built a structure of striking originality and formal inventiveness. The swirling shapes covered in highly reflective titanium were not only astonishingly original, they were like no other building that people had ever seen. Moreover, unlike most avant-garde creations -- one thinks of atonal music, or Nouvelle Vague cinema -- the Bilbao Guggenheim was fun.
The Bilbao museum is not the first modern architectural icon; it was preceded by the Sydney Opera House. Jørn Utzon's stunning waterside building, which reminds many people of sails or seashells, became an international sensation when it was completed in 1973. Gehry has been quoted as saying that his Basque clients wanted the Guggenheim "to do for Bilbao what the Sydney Opera House did for Australia." In fact, Mr. Gehry's museum succeeded so well at attracting visitors -- millions of them -- that the phenomenon of iconic architecture acting as a tourist draw became known as the Bilbao effect.
However you interpret Gehry's museum, as billowing sails, an extraterrestrial object or a silver artichoke, it has unquestionably become an internationally recognized icon -- for travel to Spain, and for tourism generally. It is the built equivalent of Niagara Falls or the Grand Canyon: a place that you must visit at least once. That is the chief promise of the Bilbao effect, whether for a concert hall hoping to attract patrons, a downtown luring tourists and conventioneers, or a real-estate developer looking to draw buyers: People will come.
Despite the success of the Bilbao Guggenheim, the Bilbao effect has not proved easy to replicate, not even for Frank Gehry. His Experience Music Project for Paul Allen, the Microsoft billionaire, was supposed to put Seattle on the architectural map. Despite its unusual architecture, consisting of colorful, rounded forms said to be inspired by electric guitars, the museum of rock music and Jimi Hendrix memorabilia has not proven to be a success. Attendance has been poor, and recently a part of the building was converted into a science-fiction museum. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which had not built a significant modern building since Eero Saarinen's Kresge Auditorium, commissioned Gehry to add a landmark to its campus. The Stata Center is an eye-catching structure, all slipping and sliding shapes, but the intended iconic effect has been severely compromised by a public furor (and a lawsuit) over cost over-runs and functional failings, allegedly including mold growth, leaks and falling ice and snow from the building. Daniel Libeskind is another architect who, following his universally acclaimed Jewish Museum in Berlin, was considered to have the Midas touch when it came to signature buildings. Yet his recent crystalline addition to the Denver Art Museum has failed to attract the expected number of visitors, and another crystalline -- and slightly scary-looking -- extension to the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto has not exactly set the architectural world on fire. None of this bodes well for cities that are counting on instant icons to save them in a looming recession.
Perhaps the Bilbao effect should be called the Bilbao anomaly, for the iconic chemistry between the design of building, its image and the public turns out to be rather rare -- and somewhat mysterious. Herzog & de Meuron's design for Beijing's Olympic Stadium is ingenious, for example, but instead of the complex engineering it was the widely perceived image of a bird's nest (a nickname that did not originate with the architects) that cemented the building's international iconic status; the woven steel wrapper seemed to symbolize both China's ancient traditions and its rush to modernization. The so-called Water Cube, housing the Olympic pools, also became an iconic hit, although since the illuminated box is chiefly effective at night it is something of a one-trick pony, and it will be interesting to see how long the iconic effect lasts.
But for every Bird's Nest, there are scores of costly iconic failures, buildings that fail to spark the public's imagination. Of course, failed icons don't go away, which is a problem. Since the Bilbao effect teaches -- I believe mistakenly -- that unconventional architecture is a prerequisite for iconic status, clients have encouraged their architects to go to greater and greater lengths to design buildings that are unusual, surprising, even shocking. But the shock will inevitably wear off, and 100 years from now, all those iconic wannabes will resemble a cross between a theme park and the Las Vegas strip.