http://www.bbc.com/culture/tags/architecture
Hello Everyone:
Wow, I still can't get over the fact that we hit 10,000 page views. That's so amazing. When I started writing this blog, I never thought that it would take off like it has. I'm absolutely floored by the response. I guess there's only one place to go, up. Alright, onto to today's topic, is modern architecture vandalism?
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Notre Dame du Haut de Ronchamp (1954)
Le Corbusier
archdaily.com |
Mastering the right combination of old and new architecture is an art. Get it right and it's a sight to behold. Get it wrong and you're doomed to disaster. Jonathan Glancy of the BBC explains why this is the case.
On January 17 of this year, vandals crashed through one of the stained glass windows into the pilgrimage chapel at Notre Dame du Haut de Ronchamp, the late career defining masterpiece by Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier. Despite finding a nearly empty collection box, the vandals unsuccessfully attempted to break into the new tourist pavilion near the chapel designed by Renzo Piano. In the end, all their criminal activity resulted in was the desecration of iconic work of mid-century modern architecture. Ronchamp is not just for Roman Catholics to worship and meditate, it is intended to be a place for all to come and seek solace. So why the desecration?
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Ronchamp site elevation with tourist pavilion
archinect.com |
Mr. Glancy cites English architectural historian William Curtis' comments in
Architectural Review (http://www.architectural-review.com/view/vandalism-and-neglect-at-ronchamp/8657913.article), who connected what he believed to be the vandalism created by the new buildings and break-in. Professor Curtis writes, "[The site] has been transformed and commercialised as a tourist destination, even with a sliding electric gate barring the route to the Chapel. In effect, it has become a sort of gated community with outward signs of prosperity. Nor should one forget the sums involved: over 10m euros to build the ensembles of the Piano project." The new buildings, including the vandalized pavilion, are part of a controversial new convent dug into the hillside near the chapel for the order of
Pauvre Clarisses, who Prof. Curtis says, "enjoy an environment which is far from poor in the material sense." So much for the vow of poverty.
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Sketches of Ronchamp
flickriver.com |
Jonathan Glancy accuses the new buildings next to a historic monument as a cultural and criminal vandalism. The additions have encouraged mass tourism at Ronchamp, something Prof. Curtis believes is on its way to becoming a mini-Lourdes rather than a place for quiet contemplation. However, it's also become a magnet for thieves who envision a large haul from the increased commercialization of the site. As to the quality of the new buildings, Prof. Curtis dismisses it as, "...listening to enforced muzak before rising to the sublimity of Bach or Mozart."
This latest turn of events at the landmark chapel has
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Kimbell Art Museum, Louis I. Kahn
Fort Worth, Texas
1972
commons.wikimedia.org |
Mr. Glancy wondering if an architect from one era can add to a great building of another epoch? One response, as in the case of Ronchamp, is possibly to let it be. Be that as it may, if there is a genuine need for new construction, "what can and should be done?" Interestingly, Mr. Piano recently completed a new extension to the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas. The museum, opened in 1972, is a gorgeously vaulted structure designed by Louis I. Kahn. Mr. Piano thoughtfully added a concrete and travertine extension that stands at, somewhat, of a distance from the Kahn building. There was no effort to compete with the original building design, rather it was intended to serve it as an "architectural acolyte." Meanwhile, over in Glasgow, Scotland, emotions have gotten quite heated
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Glasgow College of Art with extension
Glasgow, Scotland
glasgowarchitecture.co.uk |
over the building of an extension to the Charles Rennie Mackintosh designed Glasgow College of Art (1909). The extension, designed by American architect Steven Holl, makes massive use of glass in juxtaposition to the redbrick of the Mackintosh building. When the Holl-designed extension is completed, it's hoped that the two will play off one another instead work in opposition. Cross your fingers and hope for the best.
On a more optimistic note, it is possible to create new buildings in radical styles that do compliment their predecessors. Mr. Glancy cites the example of a medieval church, a Baroque cathedral, a nineteenth century Neo-Classical theater, and Casa del Popolo (1936) by Giuseppe Terragni. Mr. Glancy calls the Terragni designed building, "...a Rubik's Cube made of marble, was originally the Casa del Fascio, designed as a backdrop for political parades. However, such is the elemental, and thus all but timeless quality of Terragni's design, it has outlived its salubrious past and taken its place among the greatest Italian buildings.
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King's College Chapel, 1724
Cambridge, England
en.wikipedia.org |
This is also the case at King's College Chapel in Cambridge, England. The eighteenth century Palladian chapel, designed by James Gibbs, sits nicely next to a Perpendicular Gothic chapel. When the chapel cornerstone was laid in 1446 by King Henry VI, Classical architecture was basically absent from England, yet the two buildings happily co-exist. Once again, it comes down to making the right decision about material and to the apparent visual respect by generation of architect for another. In contemporary times, a similar spirit can be seen in Nimes, France, where in the mid-eighties, Norman Foster added Mediatheque, a very modern cultural building, to the center, close to the ancient Corinthian Roman temple known universally as Maison Carreé (c.16 CE). The two buildings politely conserve with each other, in a metaphoric and design sense, across two millennia.
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The Empire State Building
New York, New York
metroscenes.com |
Culture clash is something that happens all to frequently in our rapidly globalizing cities as a result of this inane competition to build the tallest buildings and overload the urban landscape with all manner of retail spaces, signage, "street furniture," and water elements all with the express intention of encouraging use but apparently at odds with the site context. Sounds like visual clutter to me. Nevertheless, there are moments when this clash of styles and scale works very well with the surrounding environment. Jonathan Glancy uses the example of the Empire State Building in New York, New York with all of its bravura and soaring height rising far above the mid-town Manhattan street grid and its clusters of less than appealing buildings with their hotch-potch of period styles. The limestone-clad shaft of the building rises confidently from a five-story base, filled with retail spaces and an Art Deco shopping arcade that have become integral to the urban fabric. The Empire State Building is as much part of the streets, "...in this it has good urban and architectural manners for all the bragadoccio."
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Gloucester Cathedral Choir
Gloucestershire, England
kippa2001
kippa2001.deviantart.com |
Finally, replacing out dated parts of buildings is not a contemporary phenomena. Medieval bishops were well-known for down big chunks of cathedrals they found unfashionable or rebuilding them in the latest style with flair and exuberance that it would be considered illegal today. Yet the more muscular Norman nave of the Gloucester Cathedral nave is spiritually and structurally the beneficiary of the Gothic vaults that replaced the original, the perpendicular Gothic choir that stretches beyond he nave culminating in a window wall. This might have been considered the "shock of the new" at the time but, yet, here it is in all of its ecclesiastical architectural glory. A real feat of medieval structural engineering.
Even today, no one would dare tinker with Gloucester Cathedral. It takes a very skilled hand and eye to careful balance the differing architectural period styles so that they harmoniously work together. Perhaps this is why Professor William Curtis can connect the Renzo Piano tourist pavilion at Ronchamp to the desecration of the chapel. Prof. Curtis concluded that the tourist pavilion was a form of visual vandalism, akin to the physical act committed by the would be thieves. In the rush to build, the key thing architects need to remember is that whatever additions you make to an older place, it must work with the site context, otherwise, you've committed an act of visual and aesthetic vandalism.
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