PROJECT MANAGEMENT Florian Kobler, Cologne - IDATBCN

1
Olafur Eliasson, The New York City
Waterfalls, New York, New York, USA,
2008
simple, single image is everything. Any of these buildings could have been built anywhere else. Beijing is becoming a realization of the most
superficial aspects of a contemporary design culture obsessed with the gesture and the icon, with the cleverness and complexity of its own
structure. This is architecture as stage set for the Olympics, for a regime determined to demonstrate its modernity and its emerging economic
and cultural power. Radical architecture has let itself be used for spectacle and propaganda. Cities are made of buildings but great buildings
are not enough to make cities.” 2
Quoting this article does not represent an acceptance of its substance, but rather acknowledges the variety of emotions and opinions
elicited by the most spectacular expressions of contemporary architecture. It may look good, but what does it represent in terms of the inevitable
compromises that go with any large project? It is said that Norman Foster once tried to explain to Chinese clients that the reliance of their coun-
try on bicycles was an ecological plus, something that they should strive to perpetuate. He was told in no uncertain terms that China aspired
not to bicycles but to cars and jets. There is a powerful trend toward iconic architecture driven by vast amounts of money spread across the
globe in new patterns from Mumbai to Dubai and on to Shanghai. One can criticize such trends, but contemporary architects are not so much
agents of political protest as they are the creators of useful objects. Like everyone else, they seek to make a living and to leave their mark.
This book includes three iconic structures designed for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, but also the Ullens Center for Contemporary
Art (UCCA, 2006–07, page 546), a remake of a 1950s factory by the Frenchman Jean-Michel Wilmotte (with MADA s.p.a.m.). The UCCA
shows that the slash-and-burn demolition favored by local authorities is not the only way to make Beijing the kind of cosmopolitan center that
many dream of. It also provides a counterpoint to the “superficial gestures” excoriated by the Financial Times. Even in a burgeoning capital
like Beijing, it may not be possible to generalize about the directions of contemporary architecture.
The Architecture Now! series has also made frequent reference to works that can best be described as being situated at the frontier
between art and architecture, or between architecture and design. This edition is no exception, with the decidedly “un-monumental” 2007
Serpentine Gallery Pavilion in London designed by the artist Olafur Eliasson and Snøhetta principal Kjetil Thorsen (page 138). Eliasson appears
again with his New York City Waterfalls—installations that question the rapport of the city with its rivers (2008, page 134). Another artist, the
German Anselm Kiefer, occupied the Grand Palais in Paris in the late spring and early summer of 2007 with an installation (Sternenfall, or
Falling Stars, 2/3) that owes much to architecture, or perhaps, more precisely, to ruins. “What you see is despair,” says Kiefer. “I am com-
pletely desperate because I cannot explain why I am here. It’s more than mourning, it’s despair. But to survive, you build, you create illu-
sions.” 3 A questioning of the reasons for existence might well seem contrary to the “liquid modernity” defined by Bauman, but the point is
precisely that architecture, the art of the built environment, expressed in its myriad forms, can either confirm or negate most theories of
modernity. Solid enough to withstand the test of time, it is the object of ceaseless efforts to dissolve its substance practically into thin air. The
March 11 Memorial in Madrid (Spain, 2005–07, page 164) by FAM Arquitectura, a ring of glass over a blue subterranean room, comments
on a tragedy, again, curiously enough, inscribed on a membrane fashioned with EFTE, a sort of transparent Teflon, there, but hardly there.
Like the wounds of some and the heartache of others, architecture here assumes an evanescent yet lasting tribute to an event that played
out in a few moments of death and destruction.
1