PROJECT MANAGEMENT Florian Kobler, Cologne - IDATBCN

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FROM THE SHOCK OF THE OLD TO THE CHARMS OF THE METAVERSE
Perhaps because buildings take so long to build as compared to the quick creative cycle of artists, for example, or, rather, because
they engage so much money, architecture has a curious rhythm, not quite like that of other “sociological” manifestations of fashion. The Young
Turks who burst onto the scene with theories and forms that astonish go on to build, but so many years later their innovations seem to be
relics of the past. Thus, the “Deconstructivist Architecture” show at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (1988), curated by Philip Johnson,
showed mostly unbuilt work by Frank O. Gehry, Daniel Libeskind, Rem Koolhaas, Peter Eisenman, Zaha Hadid, Bernard Tschumi, and Coop
Himmelb(l)au. Today, looking at the BMW Welt (2001–07, page 124) in Munich by Coop Himmelb(l)au, their Akron Art Museum in Ohio
(2001–07, page 114), or Libeskind’s Royal Ontario Museum Extension (Toronto, Canada, 2002–07, page 314), one could be forgiven for
assuming that the MoMA show was particularly prescient, revealing trends that would only take form 20 years later. “Deconstructivist archi-
tecture,” wrote Mark Wigley, associate curator of the MoMA show, “does not constitute an avant-garde. Rather, it exposes the unfamiliar hid-
den within the traditional. It is the shock of the old.” 4 The aesthetics and forms of contemporary architecture are surely not only determined
by the age of architects. Steven Holl, for example, was born in 1947, just one year after Daniel Libeskind, and yet he has taken an inde-
pendent, artistic approach to his designs. Holl’s extension for the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (Bloch Building, Kansas City, Missouri,
2002–07, page 240) was the winner of a 2008 American Institute of Architects Honor Award. The jury commented, “The expansion of the
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art fuses architecture with landscape to create an experiential architecture that unfolds for visitors as it is per-
ceived through each individual’s movement through space and time.” The luminous boxes that form the new building take an approach to
surface, light, and space that is not the product of a “school” like Deconstructivism, but today this architecture may seem much more con-
temporary than fractured forms first publicized in the late 1980s.
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Anselm Kiefer, Sternenfall, Grand
Palais, Paris, France, 2007
Tadao Ando, born in 1941, is five years older than Libeskind, and has taken a route that is clearly anchored in the history of modern
architecture, beginning with Le Corbusier. Yet Ando, like Steven Holl, has an artistic approach to his work that has allowed him to evolve and
to create such surprising buildings as 21_21 Design Sight in Tokyo (Japan, 2004–07, page 76). Part of the ambitious Tokyo Midtown com-
plex built on the site of the former Self-Defense Agency, 21_21 Design Sight does include a number of the concrete walls for which Ando is
known, but its essential, visible structure is a folded metal roof that brings to mind the pleats of the fashion designer Issey Miyake, who was
also involved in this project. A reduced, geometric vocabulary does seem to allow for a more “timeless” building than fractured complexity,
but the general public may have more difficulty dating ideas than those who live in the world of contemporary architecture.
A number of important figures have influenced modern and contemporary architecture more through their drawings than through their
built work. This trend can easily be dated back to Antonio Sant’Elia (1888–1916), Hugh Ferriss (1889–1962), or more recently John Hejduk
(1929–2000), Peter Eisenman, and Zaha Hadid. Both Eisenman and Hadid have, of course, made the transition to more active building, but
their reputations were established on the basis of theory and drawings much more than on their built work, until a fairly recent date. Com-
puter imagery has, of course, facilitated the task of architects, who have the ability to imagine new worlds without making use of concrete
and glass. It might be interesting to note that an architect who was a Chief Designer and Project Partner at Coop Himmelb(l)au for over 10