“Our entire imagination could never create anything that lies outside the infinite wealth of nature – it is therefore first when we wholly comprehend nature, and are in contact with it, that we are at liberty to create in our own, personal style,” wrote the 29-year-old Jørn Utzon in a manifesto in 1947. Furthermore, Utzon continued, nature consists of “many tiny, similar elements of highly differing types and qualities, which in combination with themselves or others provide infinite riches and splendour – spatially, in regard to materials, form, and colour”. In his comprehensive volume on Utzon, Richard Weston emphasizes that the Danish architect is part of a long tradition of theorists and practitioners, from Aristotle and Goethe to Bauhaus and the early modernists, who were all inspired by the organic forms of animals and plants. Nature itself appears as a sort of “modular architecture” that revealed the possibilities inherent in industrial prefabrication.
At the same time that Utzon wrote his manifesto, the somewhat older Norwegian architect Knut Knutsen (1903–69) built his summer residence in Portør on the southern coast of Norway (1949). This unassuming cabin also reveals an intense preoccupation with nature, and it quickly established itself as an ideal for many Norwegian architects. Both Jørn Utzon and Knut Knutsen were interested in the natural. Knutsen’s focus was on topography, and it is difficult to distinguish his cabin from the coastal crags of southern Norway. The edifice is deferential in that it identifies itself with the forms of the surrounding landscape, becoming one with the locality. Utzon for his part belongs to a tradition that searches for underlying regularities in botanical and biological phenomena. Employing that as his point of departure, Utzon created an additive architecture that was applicable to the entire range of design – from large-scale urban structures (Farum City Centre, project 1966) to furniture systems (Utsep, 1968).
“There are many sources for the revitalization and transformation of the pre-war architectural concepts that took place around 1950,” asserts the Danish professor of architecture Nils-Ole Lund. One example he cites is Jørn Utzon’s journeys to Morocco and Mexico in the late 1940s, to ancient cultures that had contended with fundamental problems of architecture – experiences that our industrial culture had removed us from. Such traditional architectures, in addition to the organic forms of nature, were primeval sources that contemporary architecture needed.
In the immediate post-war years, Norway’s leading journal on architecture, Byggekunst (Architecture), was full of travelogues – after five years of occupation and isolation, there was a great hunger for impressions from the outside world. Some correspondents reported on architectural developments in the United States, which had not suffered the ravages of war, while others re-established contact with European colleagues. Surprisingly many, however, sought out simple, down-to-earth styles. Not everyone travelled south, however, as aboriginal architecture could also be found within Norway’s borders. The architect Kjell Borgen journeyed for example to the county of Finnmark in the northernmost part of Norway and became the first to document the architectural traditions of the Sami peoples.
Another luminary who sought out local roots was the prominent Norwegian architectural historian and theorist Christian Norberg-Schulz (1926–2000). During the winter of 1963–64, a classmate from ETH Zürich, Gunnar Bugge, took him along to the valleys of Telemark in southeastern Norway, where he was introduced to the venerable architectural styles of the Norwegian farmsteads. This resulted in the monograph Stav og laft (1969), which remains a standard work on Norwegian stave churches and the farmsteads of the inland areas.
Such an understanding of local traditions was considered to be all-important in the post-war development of Norwegian architecture. In 1961 the Wood Prize (Treprisen) was awarded for the first time, with the twofold aim of paying tribute to outstanding modern uses of wood in architecture and of inspiring innovation and the development of an artistically sublime wood architecture. In a 1966 publication that showcased the works of the first four recipients of the prize, Norberg-Schulz wrote an introduction where he linked the age-old traditions in this field with the Wood Prize winners’ modern contributions – the national “primeval architecture” continued in other words to be relevant as a knowledge repository and source of inspiration.
When Norberg-Schulz studied at ETH, one of his teachers was Siegfried Gideon, who was not only the general secretary of the International Congress of Modern Architecture (CIAM) but also a major Baroque scholar. Already during his student years, Norberg-Schulz thereby gained a double toehold in the discipline: he was committed to contemporary architecture, but he also acquired wide-ranging knowledge of architectural history – a rare combination for the time.
Other architects received an entirely different education. “We were tossed around the history of art with a ruthless subjectivity, without any chronology, without any plan. The road to Africa went through the ethnographer Leo Frobenius’s notes; the journey from Egypt to neoclassicism was never taken.” These lines were written in 1985 by the prominent Norwegian architect Sverre Fehn (1924–2009) about his relationship to his mentor, Professor Arne Korsmo (1900–68), and the haphazard instruction in architectural history Fehn received as a student in Oslo right after World War II. Fehn would later thoroughly acquaint himself with Europe’s heritage of classical architecture, and with Andrea Palladio in particular. But in the immediate post-war years it was “primitive” architecture that seemed most relevant.
In 1951 Fehn received a grant to study the traditional architecture of Morocco. The following year he wrote a four-page article for the journal Byggekunst, wherein he gave an account of the journey and presented sketches and personal photographs. In 1987 he expressed himself as follows in regard to his experiences in Morocco: “I went to Morocco not to discover new things but to recollect what has been forgotten. (…) The only answer to this architectural simplicity and clarity is that it exists in a culture that for us seems timeless. Architecture’s work is perfect, because it is working in a timeless space. Its signature is anonymous, because it is nature itself.”
Fehn has on numerous occasions highlighted how this journey fundamentally influenced his understanding of architecture. Some of the lessons he had learned in Morocco could be applied directly. For example, the 1952 Byggekunst article includes a photograph of a Moroccan house that lies in a slope, with the entrance on the roof terrace, and Fehn employed the same principle in the 1980s when he designed a detached house in the fashionable hillside neighbourhood of Holmenkollen in northern Oslo.
In 1949 Liz and Jørn Utzon travelled to the United States along with Arne Korsmo and his wife Grete, and it was during this trip that the two couples took a detour to Mexico. Among the architectural wonders Utzon set his eyes on was the Zapotec temple complex on Monte Albán, an experience that would greatly influence his competition entry for the Sydney Opera House in 1957. In 1947 Utzon had also visited Morocco, and he supposedly recommended his good friend Sverre Fehn to travel there as well.
Another architect in the Team Ten generation who was concurrently seeking out the same sources was the Dutchman Aldo van Eyck (1918–99). During the period 1947–52, van Eyck visited prehistoric monuments in France and also made three expeditions to North Africa to study the local architecture. “The travels that Aldo went on in this period shared a constant theme, that of the ‘elementary’. Their aim was, at least in the first instance, not to become acquainted with modern or classic art and architecture, but to make direct contact with the primary forms of visual language,” Francis Strauven wrote in his comprehensive monograph on van Eyck. The mural architecture of the oases seemed authentic and would serve as a useful foundation for creating the buildings of the future.
North Africa had not always been perceived as exotic and far removed from Europe. For many centuries the Roman Empire had included all the territories that bordered on the Mediterranean. In addition to the impressive Roman network of roads, it was this immense mare nostrum (lit. “our sea”) that bound the Roman Empire together, and North Africa was a vital and integrated part of this empire. Here was Rome’s granary, here were large, flourishing cities; from this region came individuals who would rise to the very top of the imperial administration, or even ascend the imperial throne. During this era it was rather Northern Europe and the Germanic world across the Rhine that was primitive and alien. Following the fifth-century dissolution of the Western Roman Empire and the seventh-century expansion of Islam, however, North Africa disappeared from the European sphere.
It was first 1100 years later that Europe would again gain access to, and insight into, this part of the world. The 29-year-old general Napoleon Bonaparte’s campaign in Egypt (1798–99) was of course a strategic ploy and a facet of his continuing battle with his primary foe, Great Britain. But in addition to 50,000 soldiers, Napoleon’s expedition included 154 learned savants (experts), who were to document the Egyptian civilization. This encyclopaedic gathering of knowledge was entirely in the spirit of the Age of Enlightenment and can be viewed as a parallel to Alexander von Humboldt’s concurrent American expedition (1799–1804): the world was to be measured, described, and understood.
The re-opening of North Africa thus commenced with the documentation of the grand, imposing monuments of the ancient Egyptian civilization. The area’s other major civilization, the Islamic world, had long held the Europeans’ fascination. But when the British architect Owen Jones (1809–74) embarked on his Grand Tour in 1832 and included not only the classical architecture of Italy and Greece, but also the Islamic architecture of Istanbul, Cairo, and not least the Alhambra in Granada, he opened an entirely new chapter in this relationship with his scientifically exact studies of Islamic decorative patterns. At about the same time Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) was visiting North Africa, where he was inspired by the dignity of the local population and the exotic sensuality of the women. This type of Orientalism was continued by Henri Matisse when he painted his North African Odalisques in the 1920s, and also by Le Corbusier, who painted similar feminine motifs a decade later while on assignment in Algeria. This took place in 1931 when Le Corbusier was busy drafting a utopian city plan for Algiers, Plan Obus, featuring monumental, curved buildings and a winding, arced viaduct that would serve as a massive landscape sculpture along the coast. The gigantic, feminine forms stood in contrast to his diagrammatical Ville Contemporaine (1925) for Paris, but the proposed plan for Algiers showed little understanding of the local building traditions, nor was it in line with France’s determination to view the colony as a natural part of the French motherland. However, in 1942 Le Corbusier designed a farmstead in Cherchell, Algeria, that was a fenced-in construction with barrel arches, clearly inspired by local building customs. This project was by no means unique in Le Corbusier’s oeuvre, and he had begun to use rough construction materials already in a number of works in the 1930s. It is therefore not surprising that in the post-war years he advised young architects, such as Sverre Fehn, to travel to North Africa to study the “primitive” architecture there.
In 2007 I visited Libya and Tunisia to see the ruins of Roman settlements in Sabrata, El-Jem, Thuburbo Majus, Dougga, and not least the impressive Roman city of Leptis Magna, which lies 120 km east of Tripoli. Though it was not our goal to follow in the footsteps of Sverre Fehn and the other European architects who had visited this part of the world in the 1950s, we could not avoid encounters with local building traditions of a striking vitality and quality, such as Ksar Hadada, an ancient granary where the Berbers had stored barley, wheat, and olive oil. The edifice consists of a series of multi-storeyed barrel arches, and displays a certain similarity with Le Corbusier’s project in Cherchell in Algeria. However, a sign by the entrance to the facility emphasized an entirely different link to Western culture. The sign was written in three languages, and the English version went as follows: “Ksar Hadada. U.S. film maker George Lucas used this monument to create the town Mos Espa on the Galactic planet Tatooine, featured in the tremendously successful movie ‘Star Wars: The Phantom Menace’. Date of shooting July 1997.”
The young Darth Vader had thus also been to North Africa, though to be sure in an era that lies far in the future. It therefore seems to be correct, just as the Nordic architects believed in the post-war years, that the future belongs to the fundamental, the primeval.
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fredag 6. juli 2012
onsdag 9. mai 2012
Architecture at the Pompidou. Jean Dethier interview by Ulf Grønvold
For obvious reasons the Centre Pompidou in Paris has a special place in the hearts and minds of most of us. An epochal building and an ambitious cultural institution with a program that the world had not seen before. And it should be added: a place that has created some of the most innovative - and popular - architectural exhibitions to be seen anywhere. The Belgian architect Jean Dethier was the first to act - during three decades, from 1975 to 2005 - as author, curator & stage-designer of 20 of those architectural exhibitions produced at the Pompidou by the CCI department. He received from the French government the highest professional award - the prestigious “Grand Prix National d’Architecture” - for his many contributions to renew, enlarge and promote, among a very large international audience, a “vivid architectural culture”. Currently he is writing the book: “Living with Earth. Traditions, modernity and future of architecture & cities built with raw earth: a world & trans-historic panorama”, hopefully to be published in 2013. Dethier, a persevere and focused man - very often dressed in “Bordeaux red” - has researched earth architecture worldwide for over 40 years and sees this encyclopedia as his Manifesto for an ecological and sustainable domestic architecture.
How did the story of the Centre Pompidou start as a new and ambitious cultural project where architecture exhibitions would become a major goal and a pioneering international achievement ?
It all started in the wake of May 1968, a political, social and cultural revolution initiated in Paris by students - and later by workers all over the country - against the conservative politics of President Charles de Gaulle. Faced with a huge national wave of frustration and fury he had to resign. In 1969 Georges Pompidou was elected to lead the country. He was the first president of France to have a political profile including a background and motivation in the fields of arts and culture. He is the author of one of the most popular anthology of French poetry. Privately, he was also a passionate collector of contemporary art. Due to his culturally oriented sensibility, Pompidou understood that the May 1968 movement included also a claim by the young generation in favor of a new and liberated approach of culture as well as a radical change of its way of life, and that those two quests were converging. He had the conviction that culture was a key tool for social change. So, one of his first political decisions was to initiate a very innovative and ambitious cultural state institution exploring all new facets of contemporary arts and cultures. Initially called Centre Beaubourg - due to the name of the district of Paris where it was located at the very heart of the capital - this institution was later named Centre Pompidou (CP) in memory of his passionate creator who died three years before its inauguration in 1977.
Was that project managed by Pompidou himself? Did he personally shape its program? Yes indeed, this project is his most memorable brain-child. He personally initiated and controlled all the essential options and decisions during 5 years, since his first intentions announced in 1969 as soon he was elected. It was his “Grand Projet”. Culture has always been an important facet of politics for all French governments but as a pioneering case, the birth of this mega-project was decided by the President himself. The concept and program of the future CP was not initiated at once. It followed a quite a pragmatic and evolutionary process. His first idea was to promote a new Museum of Modern and Contemporary Arts (MNAM) to replace the tiny and old fashioned one operating at the Palais de Tokyo since 1937. Then he added a very large encyclopedic Public Library (BPI). Soon emerged the project of a Music Research Center (IRCAM) dedicated to avant-garde. This basic three parts scheme was later enlarged to theatre, dance & cinema. The final step of this creative process was the integration of a department (CCI) devoted to Architecture, Civic Design and the Built Environment. Those many ingredients materialised a “multi-disciplinary strategy” to develop new creative synergies between all possible facets of arts and cultures. All those activities would be located under one same roof in a new emblematic building clearly designed to promote a process of “democratization of culture”. This large “culture refinery” (as initially nicknamed by the medias due to its architectural structure) would be totally financed by the State - the Ministry of Culture - and managed by a staff of about 1.200 people.
Why was the Centre Pompidou building commissioned to Piano & Rodgers?
This is another facet of this amazing epic. As President of the Republic, Pompidou could have decided by himself the choice of the architect. Wisely, he preferred to launch an international open and anonymous competition. In 1970 it was a world première for such a huge cultural institution. He also decided not to be part of the jury which should be, according to his request, composed of 12 top professionals, many of them selected abroad to guarantee a non-nationalist and a non politically-oriented cultural choice. Among them were the architects Philip Johnson (USA) and Niemeyer (Brazil). To act as president of this totally independent jury, Pompidou appointed the most respected, creative and exigent French architectural designer: Jean Prouvé. Among the 681 projects submitted (including by then world famous architects), the jury selected the most innovative, seductive and provocative one. It was designed by two very young and unknown architects from Italy and Great Britain; at that time Piano and Rodgers had only built small and confidential projects. So the risky jury’s choice turned to be highly memorable: it gave life to an instant worldwide success-story and to an iconic architecture now considered as a major reference of the 20th century. This High-Tech building - developing 60.000 m2 on seven levels - was initially conceived for a daily frequentation of about 4.000 to 7.000 visitors. But the reality of the public reaction was very different: during the first decade, that average has been around 30.000 entrances every day (17.000 daily in 2006). Such an overwhelming figure was a unique socio-cultural phenomenon in the world of museums. It stays as an eloquent statement about the exceptional success the Centre Pompidou, cumulating largely over 200 million visitors since its opening.
How have you been selected to act as director of architectural exhibitions in such an innovative institution? What kind of professional background did you then have?
After my studies of architecture and town-planning in Brussels - I am Belgian - I initiated in 1965 a one year study trip in North Africa to explore vernacular and colonial architecture. Fascinated by those cultures, I decided to stay for four more years in Morocco, working for the Ministry of Housing and Urbanism. There I was involved, with UNESCO and United Nations agencies, in different pilot-programs. Among them, the rehabilitation of the magnificent vernacular earth-built village of Tissergate in the Draa valley (8 km. north of Zagora) as well as the conception a large multi-media show for the 1st Pan-African Cultural Festival (Algiers 1969) about Traditional and Modern Raw Earth Architecture all over Africa. This was the origin of what would become one of my professional passions. After one year in 1970 at Princeton University - to finalize and publish my research about the History of Modern Architecture and Urbanism in Morocco - I settled in Paris. During three years I acted as advisor for a large private company involved in housing construction. My main job was to organize each trimester a 3 days cultural study-trip in a different European city to initiate the chairman and his 25 top directors to the best examples of housing and urban design. After Algiers, it was my second experience into “cultural communication”. At that time I was often visiting in Paris the Musée des Arts Décoratifs where I appreciated their provocative exhibitions about art and the very first architectural exhibitions shown in France. They were mainly devoted to pioneer-architects like Gaudi, Horta, etc. I found those monographic shows useful but quite academic in their concept and “flat” in their conventional 2D mural layout. So, during my free time at home, I initiated some research to develop an alternative approach of architecture exhibitions through a thematic scenario and a 3D scenography. I asked to meet the directors - Mathey & Barré - to present them the vast iconography I had collected to promote an idealistic concept that grew in my head: a hypothetical show focused on the evolution, from 1830 to 1975, of Railway Architecture closely related to the many facets of the so called Railway Revolution.
How did you argue in favor of adopting such a specific approach?
I argued that this Railway Revolution and its strong impact in many fields of modern society had been - and still was - so powerful, influential and diverse worldwide during 150 years that it was highly appropriate to explore and show - in that context - the pioneering design process of Railway Architecture and Engineering. My idea was to approach and explain this specific creativity through explicit reference to a large panorama of complementary and contextual domains: technology, economy, politics, town-planning, industry, military strategy, sociology, art and so on. The key idea was to investigate and exhibit, for the first time in a museum, a full typology of architecture - in this case the Railway Station and all related concepts - as a multi-faceted mirror of modern society, illustrating an innovative multi-disciplinary spectrum of interactions.
What was the result of this plea?
The reaction of Barré and Mathey was to me a real surprise: after further interviews, they offered me a job at the Centre Pompidou, then still under construction and scheduled to open two years later. So, in 1975, I was headhunted to act there as a full-time “advisor for architecture”, to initiate a global strategy, to curate and design exhibitions in this field. I was then 36 years old. This would be my activity during the next three decades, up to 2005. I am still highly grateful to them for the confidence they invested in my appointment. This option radically changed my life and gave me, during 30 years, an amazing opportunity to invent - in total freedom and independence - new approaches and concepts for action. Furthermore, the CP was then the first Centre of Modern Art in Europe to incorporate a large department devoted to architecture and civic design: a unique, powerful and influential place to promote those fields of creativity.
How did you initially define your strategy about architecture exhibitions?
First, I adopted with enthusiasm the pioneering ideas initiated by François Barré who founded the CCI in 1969. One of his political aims was to develop architecture and urbanism as a new cultural field of investigation, information and enjoyment for a very large public. The basic idea was to consider that in a progressive democracy all citizens should know and understand the specific nature and the key challenges of our built environment. So, ideally, they should be able to take part - critically, civically and (even possibly) creatively - in a new “participative process” about the design of their cities, daily environment and habitat. To achieve that strategic ambition, the exhibitions covering those fields had to be conceived to attract, seduce - a key word for me in that context - and convince a broad public. So basically the priority was to capture a large audience through stimulating explorations of architectural and urban issues. If this aim is appropriately achieved - without paternalism, elitism, obscurantism, propaganda or technocracy - it can also stimulate the interest of all concerned professionals. In clear, those architecture exhibitions were not designed just to attract the restricted milieu of architects who, at that time, still represented a ghetto isolated from society.
What kind of ideas did you personally add to develop your own strategy?
One of them was inspired to me by a seven words quotation from Winston Churchill: “Society Shapes Architecture and Architecture Shapes Society”. His statement confirms that our built environment is the materialization of an invisible dual relationship system of influences on our daily way of life. So, we should all be aware of those specific dangers or opportunities. I am still convinced that the best way to stimulate the curiosity of the public about architecture is to present it in such a critical context. To explore, in each specific case, what the main external powers that a society develops to shape architecture are and, when finally built, how it affects our environment and social behavior. To provide the citizens with those useful keys to capture the full meaning of architecture, this option supposes to adopt a broad and critical contextual analysis. And not only - as it happens too often - one restricted only to aesthetical or technical considerations. In short, a contextual approach of architecture is essential to make it really understandable, meaningful and even exciting for the public. Just the opposite attitude to Koolhaas’ “Fuck the Context” ideological statement. When most citizens are not yet concerned or interested by architecture, the best way to stimulate them is first to capture their interest through a vivid approach related to its contextual components: politics, economy, society, technology, ecology, etc. My quest for a dynamic multi-disciplinary approach led me to choose thematic subjects, and never any monographic one, too much related to the glorification of the ego of a single person. I am also still convinced that those contextual and critical ingredients are the most appropriate to develop a captivating scenario that will guarantee an architecture exhibition is socially efficient and memorable.
Could you illustrate this concept with an example?
When I had in 1979 to choose the theme of my next exhibition, I referred to the most obvious problem society was facing worldwide during the 1970’s: the first major Energy Crisis linked to political and economical oil speculation. I underlined the fact - quite obvious but never mentioned before - that modern architecture was heavily and dangerously dependent on fossil energy because all main building materials used (cement, concrete, steel, aluminium, synthetic materials, etc) were highly energy-consuming in their industrial processing. Cement itself is still responsible today for 6 to 8% of the world’s CO2 production. I used that contextual environmental evidence to campaign - to militate - in favor of a universal raw & natural building material who does not request any fossil energy to be transformed and used. So, my exhibition “Down to Earth” was devoted to architecture and housing built with Raw Earth. It was articulated in 3 parts.(A) A world survey of our ancient and vernacular heritage. (B) Eloquent - but then ignored - examples of best practice from Cointeraux (French 18th &19th C. architect), Le Corbusier or Wright (both during the 1940’s) up to recent pioneers in USA during the70’s.(C) An activist plea to regenerate and develop a contemporary ecological architecture using that basic and cheap raw material, both in developing countries and in our western world.
So, for your most successful and famous exhibition, you initiated an approach focused on a very hot contemporary socio-economic issue to question a forgotten cultural heritage and to argue ecologically in favor of a new sustainable earthen architecture. Is that correct? And what about your broader approach of architectural history?
Yes indeed. Another aspect of my criteria has often been a quest for a trans-historic approach to architecture. Most of my thematic exhibitions provided an opportunity to link organically the past, the present and a prospective future into an inspiring saga. The idea was not to focus on history as such - it would have been inappropriate in a Museum of Modern Art - but to “question the past” in a modern critical attitude, and so to understand more vividly the present evolution; and finally to extrapolate about potential options which could be usefully regenerated during the next decades. This synergy between history and a prospective future seemed to me essential due to the fact that the ideology of Modernity in architecture and urbanism has so long been coupled, during the 20th century, with a voluntary ignorance and amnesia or a dogmatic rejection of the lessons we can learn from the past and from traditions. Paradoxically, critical history is a new key - among others - for the future, if we can creatively extrapolate its meaning and carefully avoid the poison of nostalgia. This approach clearly needs a contextual approach to boost dynamic architecture exhibitions and make them usefully provocative, socially stimulating and efficiently acting as a progressive incitation.
Concerning the 20 exhibitions you have personally curated and designed - which were among the most successful at the Centre Pompidou, with a cumulated international frequentation as high as 6 million visitors - what is the one you would like most to be remembered as your best socio-cultural achievement?
I hesitate between two of them. 1] I could choose “All Stations” [Le Temps des Gares] because it was in 1978 my first extra-large multi-disciplinary architecture exhibition (1.500 m2) located at the top floor of the CP, in the “Grande Galerie”. It is still the most prestigious place in Paris to exhibit major projects focused on modern art & culture, but also the one where the prerequisite condition to use it was to be certain to attract at least 150.000 visitors in 75 days. It was the very first time architecture was shown there and so it was really risky to target such a large frequentation. For the very first time for an architectural show, the public response was overwhelming with about 220.000 visitors: an average of 2.900 per day which was similar to the attendance of the big exhibitions devoted to top modern artists like Magritte or others. After presentation in Paris those Railway Stations were shown in six European capitals where they attracted in three years over a million visitors. Finally, due to the impact of the exhibition on the medias and the decision-makers, the French National Railways (SNCF) seriously improved their strategy about historical and new railway stations. Some of them were soon built according to a cutting-edge design: a real progress in terms of civic architecture, urbanism and public service. [2] But, to answer to your question, my final preference would go to “Down to Earth” [“Architectures de terre”] inaugurated in 1981. Because it is my most eco-militant exhibition and the one which won the largest international recognition and influence, partly through his extra-long circulation during 16 years on the four continents where it cumulated 3 million visitors.
What creative options did you adopt about the so called “by-products” related to your architecture exhibitions?
“By-products” progressively became an important strategic complement to any exhibition: to enlarge socially and geographically their impact or to hold it alive during a longer period than the quite short life of a show. I am convinced, since 1980, that any architecture exhibition which has a militant ambition to change something in our built environment should be closely linked to a full size permanent demonstration of its purpose. In clear the idea is to materialize simultaneously an architectural program specifically built to demonstrate the feasibility of the ideas promoted by the exhibition. I call this activist process a “passage à l’acte”, a term referring to a shift from theory to practice, demonstrating in full scale the realism and the efficiency of your ideas. Indeed, I believe it is too easy - and even irresponsible - for an exhibition director to promote publicly architectural or urban strategies without offering an evident proof of their effectiveness, … as any scientist would do.
How did this ambition materialize? How many times did you apply that specific strategy?
I did it three times. [1] Firstly in 1980 as a complement to my exhibition “Down to Earth”. I initiated the construction of a social housing program of 62 houses & apartment blocks (up to five floors) conceived as an urban eco-district (in the New Town of L’Isle d’Abeau near Lyon) promoting the use of raw earth as an alternative ecological and natural construction material. The “Domaine de la Terre” [the Earth Estate] was inaugurated in 1985 as the first European experience to modernize a vernacular building tradition and to adapt it, in a realistic way, to contemporary technological, economic, social and urban needs. The result of this strategy was awarded in 1987 by the United Nations (through its “Habitat” agency) the title of “pilot experimental eco-housing project of major international significance”. [2] The second project was linked in 1988 to my exhibition “Châteaux Bordeaux”. Its aim was double. [A] To reveal the amazing architectural heritage of the prestigious wine business which, as such, was nearly unknown or forgotten, even within this region. [B] To criticize severely the lack of architectural responsibility and creativity of most owners of those great wine estates since the 1950’s and to initiate a militant process to modernize the ancestral tradition which was successfully materialized during centuries through its quality dual-management articulating “Great Wine & Great Architecture”. To stimulate such a contemporary renaissance, I initiated locally three European architectural competitions and a strategic cultural agreement with one prestigious estate to build there a cutting-edge new wine “château”: Pichon-Longueville, inaugurated in 1989 in Pauillac, Médoc. It was designed by Jean de Gastines (co-author with Shigeru Ban of the new regional Centre Pompidou opened in 2009 in Metz) &Patrick Dillon. This pilot project would later be recognized for its pioneering impact: it kick-started a new creative wine architecture boom in the Bordeaux region with new “wineries” built since 2000 by Porzemparc, Nouvel, Botta & others ; as well as in Spain - where the exhibition was also presented -with new spectacular buildings, mainly in the Rioja wine region, recently designed by Gehry, Calatrava, Hadid, etc.
Did you devote a similar strategy to promote militant ideas about urban design?
Yes indeed, that was one of my goals. [3] My 3rd attempt was linked to the exhibition “Living Bridges” when it was initially staged in 1996 at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. Its concept was, once again, based on a double thematic approach. [A] The first “act” was to trace, for the first time, the long international history - from the middle-age up to now - of those specific urban bridges and their rich (but then unknown) typology. They combine three functions in a unique and spectacular civic symbiosis. Engineering (by crossing an obstacle), Architecture (housing, retail or other services built, on two to five stories, on both lateral sides of the bridge) and Urbanism (connecting closely and organically two parts of a city previously divided by a major obstacle: river, urban highway or railway tracks). The most famous archetypes of ancient Living Bridges still are the Ponte Rialto in Venice and the Ponte Vecchio in Florence. [B] Secondly, to extrapolate creatively from this ancestral European and forgotten tradition. What where the lessons to learn from that former multi-functional “Collage” concept to avoid over-consumption of urban land and other disasters related to contemporary technocratic urban segregation of functions? To me, this heritage could promote an ecological alternative based on 3 cumulative values: Urban Density, Intensity and Compacity. To materialise that idea advocated by the exhibition, I met the British Minister of the Environment (Sir John Gummer) to choose with him the most appropriate site in Central London - on the Thames river - to locate there a new ambitious and spectacular Living Bridge. Its design would be the result of an international competition I suggested to launch, with my British partners, on the base of my two previous similar experiences in France.
What exactly happened then?
Among the 7 architects invited to submit a realistic project were Libeskind, Krier, Zaha Hadid and Antoine Grumbach. The jury being unable to choose the winner between the two last architects, I suggested - as an homage to British democracy - to ask the visitors of the exhibition - where all the large models were shown - to make the final choice. Among those 122.000 visitors (more than 1.300 each day) - the Royal Academy claimed it was the highest frequentation for any architectural exhibition ever taking place in Britain - 84.000 participated to that vote and gave 82% of their support to the French project submitted by Grumbach. He became an instant-star in England. The press was amazingly enthusiast about the exhibition as well as the future Living Bridge to be built parallel to Waterloo Bridge, at the very core of London. The public’s enthusiastic fervor was a stunning consecration of my option to combine an exhibition with a competition to materialize in full size the civic design idea promoted by the show. A property developer paid Grumbach’s honorarium during three years (up to 2000) to achieve the updated and detailed plans to build this very ambitious bridge (50 m. wide, 300 m. long and developing 44.000 m2. of built surface). But sadly it never came to fruition because the two boroughs, located on each side of the Thames, proclaimed irreconcilable political requests about the social nature of the buildings to be built on top of the bridge: one wanted social housing and the other luxury hotel development. Churchill was right to state that “society shapes architecture” but he should have added that politicians can also block that process.
Could you name - with some key words - the very nature and ambition of your ethical engagement to conceive and manage your exhibitions and related projects?
It would be a subtle balance between “Eco-Activism and Civic Seduction”; four key-words to outline my main convictions. “Eco” because an ecological strategy is now essential to save, regenerate or invent our environment. “Activism” means here a form of militancy to promote ideas and practices able to stimulate the understanding, criticism and improvement of architecture & urbanism. “Civic” because the priority of architectural and urban excellence must benefit first to the collectivity and promote Civic Design. And finally “Seduction” refers, in this specific context, to the social ability and power an exhibition must have - both intellectually, emotionally and visually - to catch the public and media interest, to formalize progressive ideas promoting a civic debate and finally to convince people and decision-makers to adopt them to improve our built environment.
Cultural exhibitions have become a large and specific new field of cultural & media communication, as well as an architectural field of creativity, in its own. And they now can capture huge audiences. How do you explain this evolution?
Indeed, I was lucky to be part of the first generation of authors and designers involved in this new creative process. But the many ideas, strategies, design projects, experiences - and their real social impact - cumulated during the last three decades have not yet been analyzed and published as a critical synthesis. Let’s hope that a new generation of historians concerned by contemporary culture, medias and architecture would start soon to investigate about this specific creativity. I transferred all my professional documents to the Centre Pompidou Archives to facilitate such research. I hope we would all see soon – hopefully with the help of ICAM - the development of an innovative research in this specific field and the publication of a stimulating and useful History of (Architectural) Exhibitions which should contribute to avoid a cultural amnesia in this under-explored domain. For any contact with Jean Dethier: jean.dethier@wanadoo.fr 6 rue de Belzunce, Paris 75010, France.
Published 2012 ICAM print 4
How did the story of the Centre Pompidou start as a new and ambitious cultural project where architecture exhibitions would become a major goal and a pioneering international achievement ?
It all started in the wake of May 1968, a political, social and cultural revolution initiated in Paris by students - and later by workers all over the country - against the conservative politics of President Charles de Gaulle. Faced with a huge national wave of frustration and fury he had to resign. In 1969 Georges Pompidou was elected to lead the country. He was the first president of France to have a political profile including a background and motivation in the fields of arts and culture. He is the author of one of the most popular anthology of French poetry. Privately, he was also a passionate collector of contemporary art. Due to his culturally oriented sensibility, Pompidou understood that the May 1968 movement included also a claim by the young generation in favor of a new and liberated approach of culture as well as a radical change of its way of life, and that those two quests were converging. He had the conviction that culture was a key tool for social change. So, one of his first political decisions was to initiate a very innovative and ambitious cultural state institution exploring all new facets of contemporary arts and cultures. Initially called Centre Beaubourg - due to the name of the district of Paris where it was located at the very heart of the capital - this institution was later named Centre Pompidou (CP) in memory of his passionate creator who died three years before its inauguration in 1977.
Was that project managed by Pompidou himself? Did he personally shape its program? Yes indeed, this project is his most memorable brain-child. He personally initiated and controlled all the essential options and decisions during 5 years, since his first intentions announced in 1969 as soon he was elected. It was his “Grand Projet”. Culture has always been an important facet of politics for all French governments but as a pioneering case, the birth of this mega-project was decided by the President himself. The concept and program of the future CP was not initiated at once. It followed a quite a pragmatic and evolutionary process. His first idea was to promote a new Museum of Modern and Contemporary Arts (MNAM) to replace the tiny and old fashioned one operating at the Palais de Tokyo since 1937. Then he added a very large encyclopedic Public Library (BPI). Soon emerged the project of a Music Research Center (IRCAM) dedicated to avant-garde. This basic three parts scheme was later enlarged to theatre, dance & cinema. The final step of this creative process was the integration of a department (CCI) devoted to Architecture, Civic Design and the Built Environment. Those many ingredients materialised a “multi-disciplinary strategy” to develop new creative synergies between all possible facets of arts and cultures. All those activities would be located under one same roof in a new emblematic building clearly designed to promote a process of “democratization of culture”. This large “culture refinery” (as initially nicknamed by the medias due to its architectural structure) would be totally financed by the State - the Ministry of Culture - and managed by a staff of about 1.200 people.
Why was the Centre Pompidou building commissioned to Piano & Rodgers?
This is another facet of this amazing epic. As President of the Republic, Pompidou could have decided by himself the choice of the architect. Wisely, he preferred to launch an international open and anonymous competition. In 1970 it was a world première for such a huge cultural institution. He also decided not to be part of the jury which should be, according to his request, composed of 12 top professionals, many of them selected abroad to guarantee a non-nationalist and a non politically-oriented cultural choice. Among them were the architects Philip Johnson (USA) and Niemeyer (Brazil). To act as president of this totally independent jury, Pompidou appointed the most respected, creative and exigent French architectural designer: Jean Prouvé. Among the 681 projects submitted (including by then world famous architects), the jury selected the most innovative, seductive and provocative one. It was designed by two very young and unknown architects from Italy and Great Britain; at that time Piano and Rodgers had only built small and confidential projects. So the risky jury’s choice turned to be highly memorable: it gave life to an instant worldwide success-story and to an iconic architecture now considered as a major reference of the 20th century. This High-Tech building - developing 60.000 m2 on seven levels - was initially conceived for a daily frequentation of about 4.000 to 7.000 visitors. But the reality of the public reaction was very different: during the first decade, that average has been around 30.000 entrances every day (17.000 daily in 2006). Such an overwhelming figure was a unique socio-cultural phenomenon in the world of museums. It stays as an eloquent statement about the exceptional success the Centre Pompidou, cumulating largely over 200 million visitors since its opening.
How have you been selected to act as director of architectural exhibitions in such an innovative institution? What kind of professional background did you then have?
After my studies of architecture and town-planning in Brussels - I am Belgian - I initiated in 1965 a one year study trip in North Africa to explore vernacular and colonial architecture. Fascinated by those cultures, I decided to stay for four more years in Morocco, working for the Ministry of Housing and Urbanism. There I was involved, with UNESCO and United Nations agencies, in different pilot-programs. Among them, the rehabilitation of the magnificent vernacular earth-built village of Tissergate in the Draa valley (8 km. north of Zagora) as well as the conception a large multi-media show for the 1st Pan-African Cultural Festival (Algiers 1969) about Traditional and Modern Raw Earth Architecture all over Africa. This was the origin of what would become one of my professional passions. After one year in 1970 at Princeton University - to finalize and publish my research about the History of Modern Architecture and Urbanism in Morocco - I settled in Paris. During three years I acted as advisor for a large private company involved in housing construction. My main job was to organize each trimester a 3 days cultural study-trip in a different European city to initiate the chairman and his 25 top directors to the best examples of housing and urban design. After Algiers, it was my second experience into “cultural communication”. At that time I was often visiting in Paris the Musée des Arts Décoratifs where I appreciated their provocative exhibitions about art and the very first architectural exhibitions shown in France. They were mainly devoted to pioneer-architects like Gaudi, Horta, etc. I found those monographic shows useful but quite academic in their concept and “flat” in their conventional 2D mural layout. So, during my free time at home, I initiated some research to develop an alternative approach of architecture exhibitions through a thematic scenario and a 3D scenography. I asked to meet the directors - Mathey & Barré - to present them the vast iconography I had collected to promote an idealistic concept that grew in my head: a hypothetical show focused on the evolution, from 1830 to 1975, of Railway Architecture closely related to the many facets of the so called Railway Revolution.
How did you argue in favor of adopting such a specific approach?
I argued that this Railway Revolution and its strong impact in many fields of modern society had been - and still was - so powerful, influential and diverse worldwide during 150 years that it was highly appropriate to explore and show - in that context - the pioneering design process of Railway Architecture and Engineering. My idea was to approach and explain this specific creativity through explicit reference to a large panorama of complementary and contextual domains: technology, economy, politics, town-planning, industry, military strategy, sociology, art and so on. The key idea was to investigate and exhibit, for the first time in a museum, a full typology of architecture - in this case the Railway Station and all related concepts - as a multi-faceted mirror of modern society, illustrating an innovative multi-disciplinary spectrum of interactions.
What was the result of this plea?
The reaction of Barré and Mathey was to me a real surprise: after further interviews, they offered me a job at the Centre Pompidou, then still under construction and scheduled to open two years later. So, in 1975, I was headhunted to act there as a full-time “advisor for architecture”, to initiate a global strategy, to curate and design exhibitions in this field. I was then 36 years old. This would be my activity during the next three decades, up to 2005. I am still highly grateful to them for the confidence they invested in my appointment. This option radically changed my life and gave me, during 30 years, an amazing opportunity to invent - in total freedom and independence - new approaches and concepts for action. Furthermore, the CP was then the first Centre of Modern Art in Europe to incorporate a large department devoted to architecture and civic design: a unique, powerful and influential place to promote those fields of creativity.
How did you initially define your strategy about architecture exhibitions?
First, I adopted with enthusiasm the pioneering ideas initiated by François Barré who founded the CCI in 1969. One of his political aims was to develop architecture and urbanism as a new cultural field of investigation, information and enjoyment for a very large public. The basic idea was to consider that in a progressive democracy all citizens should know and understand the specific nature and the key challenges of our built environment. So, ideally, they should be able to take part - critically, civically and (even possibly) creatively - in a new “participative process” about the design of their cities, daily environment and habitat. To achieve that strategic ambition, the exhibitions covering those fields had to be conceived to attract, seduce - a key word for me in that context - and convince a broad public. So basically the priority was to capture a large audience through stimulating explorations of architectural and urban issues. If this aim is appropriately achieved - without paternalism, elitism, obscurantism, propaganda or technocracy - it can also stimulate the interest of all concerned professionals. In clear, those architecture exhibitions were not designed just to attract the restricted milieu of architects who, at that time, still represented a ghetto isolated from society.
What kind of ideas did you personally add to develop your own strategy?
One of them was inspired to me by a seven words quotation from Winston Churchill: “Society Shapes Architecture and Architecture Shapes Society”. His statement confirms that our built environment is the materialization of an invisible dual relationship system of influences on our daily way of life. So, we should all be aware of those specific dangers or opportunities. I am still convinced that the best way to stimulate the curiosity of the public about architecture is to present it in such a critical context. To explore, in each specific case, what the main external powers that a society develops to shape architecture are and, when finally built, how it affects our environment and social behavior. To provide the citizens with those useful keys to capture the full meaning of architecture, this option supposes to adopt a broad and critical contextual analysis. And not only - as it happens too often - one restricted only to aesthetical or technical considerations. In short, a contextual approach of architecture is essential to make it really understandable, meaningful and even exciting for the public. Just the opposite attitude to Koolhaas’ “Fuck the Context” ideological statement. When most citizens are not yet concerned or interested by architecture, the best way to stimulate them is first to capture their interest through a vivid approach related to its contextual components: politics, economy, society, technology, ecology, etc. My quest for a dynamic multi-disciplinary approach led me to choose thematic subjects, and never any monographic one, too much related to the glorification of the ego of a single person. I am also still convinced that those contextual and critical ingredients are the most appropriate to develop a captivating scenario that will guarantee an architecture exhibition is socially efficient and memorable.
Could you illustrate this concept with an example?
When I had in 1979 to choose the theme of my next exhibition, I referred to the most obvious problem society was facing worldwide during the 1970’s: the first major Energy Crisis linked to political and economical oil speculation. I underlined the fact - quite obvious but never mentioned before - that modern architecture was heavily and dangerously dependent on fossil energy because all main building materials used (cement, concrete, steel, aluminium, synthetic materials, etc) were highly energy-consuming in their industrial processing. Cement itself is still responsible today for 6 to 8% of the world’s CO2 production. I used that contextual environmental evidence to campaign - to militate - in favor of a universal raw & natural building material who does not request any fossil energy to be transformed and used. So, my exhibition “Down to Earth” was devoted to architecture and housing built with Raw Earth. It was articulated in 3 parts.(A) A world survey of our ancient and vernacular heritage. (B) Eloquent - but then ignored - examples of best practice from Cointeraux (French 18th &19th C. architect), Le Corbusier or Wright (both during the 1940’s) up to recent pioneers in USA during the70’s.(C) An activist plea to regenerate and develop a contemporary ecological architecture using that basic and cheap raw material, both in developing countries and in our western world.
So, for your most successful and famous exhibition, you initiated an approach focused on a very hot contemporary socio-economic issue to question a forgotten cultural heritage and to argue ecologically in favor of a new sustainable earthen architecture. Is that correct? And what about your broader approach of architectural history?
Yes indeed. Another aspect of my criteria has often been a quest for a trans-historic approach to architecture. Most of my thematic exhibitions provided an opportunity to link organically the past, the present and a prospective future into an inspiring saga. The idea was not to focus on history as such - it would have been inappropriate in a Museum of Modern Art - but to “question the past” in a modern critical attitude, and so to understand more vividly the present evolution; and finally to extrapolate about potential options which could be usefully regenerated during the next decades. This synergy between history and a prospective future seemed to me essential due to the fact that the ideology of Modernity in architecture and urbanism has so long been coupled, during the 20th century, with a voluntary ignorance and amnesia or a dogmatic rejection of the lessons we can learn from the past and from traditions. Paradoxically, critical history is a new key - among others - for the future, if we can creatively extrapolate its meaning and carefully avoid the poison of nostalgia. This approach clearly needs a contextual approach to boost dynamic architecture exhibitions and make them usefully provocative, socially stimulating and efficiently acting as a progressive incitation.
Concerning the 20 exhibitions you have personally curated and designed - which were among the most successful at the Centre Pompidou, with a cumulated international frequentation as high as 6 million visitors - what is the one you would like most to be remembered as your best socio-cultural achievement?
I hesitate between two of them. 1] I could choose “All Stations” [Le Temps des Gares] because it was in 1978 my first extra-large multi-disciplinary architecture exhibition (1.500 m2) located at the top floor of the CP, in the “Grande Galerie”. It is still the most prestigious place in Paris to exhibit major projects focused on modern art & culture, but also the one where the prerequisite condition to use it was to be certain to attract at least 150.000 visitors in 75 days. It was the very first time architecture was shown there and so it was really risky to target such a large frequentation. For the very first time for an architectural show, the public response was overwhelming with about 220.000 visitors: an average of 2.900 per day which was similar to the attendance of the big exhibitions devoted to top modern artists like Magritte or others. After presentation in Paris those Railway Stations were shown in six European capitals where they attracted in three years over a million visitors. Finally, due to the impact of the exhibition on the medias and the decision-makers, the French National Railways (SNCF) seriously improved their strategy about historical and new railway stations. Some of them were soon built according to a cutting-edge design: a real progress in terms of civic architecture, urbanism and public service. [2] But, to answer to your question, my final preference would go to “Down to Earth” [“Architectures de terre”] inaugurated in 1981. Because it is my most eco-militant exhibition and the one which won the largest international recognition and influence, partly through his extra-long circulation during 16 years on the four continents where it cumulated 3 million visitors.
What creative options did you adopt about the so called “by-products” related to your architecture exhibitions?
“By-products” progressively became an important strategic complement to any exhibition: to enlarge socially and geographically their impact or to hold it alive during a longer period than the quite short life of a show. I am convinced, since 1980, that any architecture exhibition which has a militant ambition to change something in our built environment should be closely linked to a full size permanent demonstration of its purpose. In clear the idea is to materialize simultaneously an architectural program specifically built to demonstrate the feasibility of the ideas promoted by the exhibition. I call this activist process a “passage à l’acte”, a term referring to a shift from theory to practice, demonstrating in full scale the realism and the efficiency of your ideas. Indeed, I believe it is too easy - and even irresponsible - for an exhibition director to promote publicly architectural or urban strategies without offering an evident proof of their effectiveness, … as any scientist would do.
How did this ambition materialize? How many times did you apply that specific strategy?
I did it three times. [1] Firstly in 1980 as a complement to my exhibition “Down to Earth”. I initiated the construction of a social housing program of 62 houses & apartment blocks (up to five floors) conceived as an urban eco-district (in the New Town of L’Isle d’Abeau near Lyon) promoting the use of raw earth as an alternative ecological and natural construction material. The “Domaine de la Terre” [the Earth Estate] was inaugurated in 1985 as the first European experience to modernize a vernacular building tradition and to adapt it, in a realistic way, to contemporary technological, economic, social and urban needs. The result of this strategy was awarded in 1987 by the United Nations (through its “Habitat” agency) the title of “pilot experimental eco-housing project of major international significance”. [2] The second project was linked in 1988 to my exhibition “Châteaux Bordeaux”. Its aim was double. [A] To reveal the amazing architectural heritage of the prestigious wine business which, as such, was nearly unknown or forgotten, even within this region. [B] To criticize severely the lack of architectural responsibility and creativity of most owners of those great wine estates since the 1950’s and to initiate a militant process to modernize the ancestral tradition which was successfully materialized during centuries through its quality dual-management articulating “Great Wine & Great Architecture”. To stimulate such a contemporary renaissance, I initiated locally three European architectural competitions and a strategic cultural agreement with one prestigious estate to build there a cutting-edge new wine “château”: Pichon-Longueville, inaugurated in 1989 in Pauillac, Médoc. It was designed by Jean de Gastines (co-author with Shigeru Ban of the new regional Centre Pompidou opened in 2009 in Metz) &Patrick Dillon. This pilot project would later be recognized for its pioneering impact: it kick-started a new creative wine architecture boom in the Bordeaux region with new “wineries” built since 2000 by Porzemparc, Nouvel, Botta & others ; as well as in Spain - where the exhibition was also presented -with new spectacular buildings, mainly in the Rioja wine region, recently designed by Gehry, Calatrava, Hadid, etc.
Did you devote a similar strategy to promote militant ideas about urban design?
Yes indeed, that was one of my goals. [3] My 3rd attempt was linked to the exhibition “Living Bridges” when it was initially staged in 1996 at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. Its concept was, once again, based on a double thematic approach. [A] The first “act” was to trace, for the first time, the long international history - from the middle-age up to now - of those specific urban bridges and their rich (but then unknown) typology. They combine three functions in a unique and spectacular civic symbiosis. Engineering (by crossing an obstacle), Architecture (housing, retail or other services built, on two to five stories, on both lateral sides of the bridge) and Urbanism (connecting closely and organically two parts of a city previously divided by a major obstacle: river, urban highway or railway tracks). The most famous archetypes of ancient Living Bridges still are the Ponte Rialto in Venice and the Ponte Vecchio in Florence. [B] Secondly, to extrapolate creatively from this ancestral European and forgotten tradition. What where the lessons to learn from that former multi-functional “Collage” concept to avoid over-consumption of urban land and other disasters related to contemporary technocratic urban segregation of functions? To me, this heritage could promote an ecological alternative based on 3 cumulative values: Urban Density, Intensity and Compacity. To materialise that idea advocated by the exhibition, I met the British Minister of the Environment (Sir John Gummer) to choose with him the most appropriate site in Central London - on the Thames river - to locate there a new ambitious and spectacular Living Bridge. Its design would be the result of an international competition I suggested to launch, with my British partners, on the base of my two previous similar experiences in France.
What exactly happened then?
Among the 7 architects invited to submit a realistic project were Libeskind, Krier, Zaha Hadid and Antoine Grumbach. The jury being unable to choose the winner between the two last architects, I suggested - as an homage to British democracy - to ask the visitors of the exhibition - where all the large models were shown - to make the final choice. Among those 122.000 visitors (more than 1.300 each day) - the Royal Academy claimed it was the highest frequentation for any architectural exhibition ever taking place in Britain - 84.000 participated to that vote and gave 82% of their support to the French project submitted by Grumbach. He became an instant-star in England. The press was amazingly enthusiast about the exhibition as well as the future Living Bridge to be built parallel to Waterloo Bridge, at the very core of London. The public’s enthusiastic fervor was a stunning consecration of my option to combine an exhibition with a competition to materialize in full size the civic design idea promoted by the show. A property developer paid Grumbach’s honorarium during three years (up to 2000) to achieve the updated and detailed plans to build this very ambitious bridge (50 m. wide, 300 m. long and developing 44.000 m2. of built surface). But sadly it never came to fruition because the two boroughs, located on each side of the Thames, proclaimed irreconcilable political requests about the social nature of the buildings to be built on top of the bridge: one wanted social housing and the other luxury hotel development. Churchill was right to state that “society shapes architecture” but he should have added that politicians can also block that process.
Could you name - with some key words - the very nature and ambition of your ethical engagement to conceive and manage your exhibitions and related projects?
It would be a subtle balance between “Eco-Activism and Civic Seduction”; four key-words to outline my main convictions. “Eco” because an ecological strategy is now essential to save, regenerate or invent our environment. “Activism” means here a form of militancy to promote ideas and practices able to stimulate the understanding, criticism and improvement of architecture & urbanism. “Civic” because the priority of architectural and urban excellence must benefit first to the collectivity and promote Civic Design. And finally “Seduction” refers, in this specific context, to the social ability and power an exhibition must have - both intellectually, emotionally and visually - to catch the public and media interest, to formalize progressive ideas promoting a civic debate and finally to convince people and decision-makers to adopt them to improve our built environment.
Cultural exhibitions have become a large and specific new field of cultural & media communication, as well as an architectural field of creativity, in its own. And they now can capture huge audiences. How do you explain this evolution?
Indeed, I was lucky to be part of the first generation of authors and designers involved in this new creative process. But the many ideas, strategies, design projects, experiences - and their real social impact - cumulated during the last three decades have not yet been analyzed and published as a critical synthesis. Let’s hope that a new generation of historians concerned by contemporary culture, medias and architecture would start soon to investigate about this specific creativity. I transferred all my professional documents to the Centre Pompidou Archives to facilitate such research. I hope we would all see soon – hopefully with the help of ICAM - the development of an innovative research in this specific field and the publication of a stimulating and useful History of (Architectural) Exhibitions which should contribute to avoid a cultural amnesia in this under-explored domain. For any contact with Jean Dethier: jean.dethier@wanadoo.fr 6 rue de Belzunce, Paris 75010, France.
Published 2012 ICAM print 4
tirsdag 25. mai 2010
Bryggen in Bergen and Fantoft stave church
Two major tourist attractions in Bergen in Western Norway are wooden buildings with roots in the middle ages, and they have both been plagued by fire. The way they have been reconstructed are rather different.
Bryggen, the old wharf in Bergen, are rows of wooden buildings close to Bergenhus fortress. The buildings have a medieval structure that goes back to 1070. Up to 1945 it was called Tyskebryggen (The German warehouses) due to its Hanseatic history. Between 1360 and mid-16th century it was the seat of one of the most important offices of the Hanseatic League. Its importance was due to the trade with dried cod from northern Norway. In the Bryggen area the Hanseatic merchants lived in a separate quarter of the town and enjoyed exclusive rights to trade with the northern fishermen.
The long, parallel rows with the short ends facing the harbour gave space for offices, living quarters, commercial activities and store houses. Two and two rows are close together followed by a passage way for goods and people.
After the great fire of 1702, when 90 percent of the city of Bergen was burned to ashes, the whole structure of Bryggen was rebuilt in wood according to the medieval pattern.
For 800 years the buildings were used in the same way, but this came to an end early in the 20th century. That is why in 1901 the southern half of wooden rows was demolished and replaced by slightly bigger buildings constructed in brick. The new buildings repeated the gables of the former buildings and were a conscious attempt to harmonize with the historic context.
A devastating fire in 1955 destroyed about half of the remaining buildings from 170. This opened the site for archeological excavations, and this again resulted in the building of Bryggens Museum where the findings are exposed and the history of the area is presented. But what should one do with the vacant site, and what should be the fate of the 62 Bryggen buildings that had escaped the fire? The decades just after World War II, generally speaking, was a period when the general public had little patience with old buildings. A new bold era had started, and old buildings represented a past of little use. The old wooden Bryggen-buildings were in bad shape, and many people wanted to knock down the trash. There were also several simplistic, boxlike projects for the vacant site. The oil crisis in 1975 stopped the design process giving the architect, Øivind Maurseth, time to reconsider his project, a new hotel, for the site. Someone said: Why should we not go for a Warzawa-solution and recreate the appearance of the old building front?
This lead to a two part solution for the hotel project: Six shortened, recreated rows constructed with a concrete frame, due to fire regulations, but clad with painted, wooden boards and looking exactly like the former buildings facing the harbor. And behind them and partly hidden, the hotel proper consisting of seven double pitched rows built in bricks and a bit taller than the wooden ones. The hotel (1982) and the museum (1976) were both designed by Øivind Maurseth and the whole operation was a turning point in Norway for an architecture that harmonized with the existing historic context. Bryggen was accepted on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1979.
Fantoft
Stav in Norwegian means column, and a stave construction has an inner core consisting of columns bound together with diagonal Andreas crosses and wooden “knees”. The churches are both famous for the way they are constructed and marvellous wooden carvings, especially around the entrance doors.
In the middle ages stave churches were common in Northern Europe. There were more than 1000 just in Norway then. In 1650 270 of these churches were still existing. In 1850 the number was reduced to 60. The Church Law of 1851 demanded that a church should be big enough for 30 % of the congregation. This made the small stave churches useless. Now there are only 28 left, and they are considered Norway’s most important contribution to world architecture.
There is one stave church in Hedared near Borås in Sweden. The only other existing stave church outside Norway is in Karpacz in Poland, formerly Brückenberg near Krummhübel in the Riesengebirge in Prussia. It was moved from Vang, Valdres in Norway and reerected in Eastern Prussia in 1844 where it was greatly altered, with the best intentions. The church was too small for the congregation in Vang and they built a new church. The old church was saved by the famous painter Johan Christian Dahl who persuaded his friend King Frederick William IV of Prussia to take responsibility for it. The history of Vang stave church is parallel to what happened to many of the other Norwegian stave churches.
On the 6th of June 1992 the old stave church at Fantoft in Bergen burnt down to the ground. It is believed to have been put to fire by members of the black metal groups, youngsters that also showed an interest in the Pre Christian Nordic religious practice. Several churches were burnt down in the years that followed, and the most prominent black metal artist, Varg Vikernes, was convicted for having killed a fellow black metal artist and is believed to be connected to several of the church fires.
The stave church at Fantoft was originally situated at Fortun in the dramatic landscape at the end of the Sognefjord, not so far away from Urnes stave church which is on the UNESCO World Heritage List. The stave church at Fortun was built around 1200, but altered several times. The body of the church was prolonged 3 meters in the Midle Ages and in the 17th Century a west tower and a choir was built as a log construction.
In 1879 a new church was built near by and the old church was not needed anymore. In 1883 the medieval part of the condemned church was bought by Fredrik G. Gade and put up on his property at Fantoft south of Bergen. When the church was reconstructed there, it was built as one believed it had originally looked. Borgund stave church, the best preserved stave church, was used as a model. In 1940 architect Kristian Bjerknes proved that the reconstruction was based on several misinterpretations.
In 1997 the new stave church at Fantoft was consecreated and opened to the public. The reconstruction was financed by the wealthy family Horn that now owns the church. The owners did not want to adjust the rebuilding in accordance with the findings of Kristian Bjerknes, they wanted the church to be rebuilt as replica of the church that burnt down. The measured drawings of the old were few, so the architects Johan. L. Andersen and Kjell H. Irgens had to study Borgund stave church, just as was done in the 1880s when the first church was built in Fantoft.
In 1881, about the same time as Fortun stave church was rebuilt at Fantoft, king Oscar II of Sweden and Norway, bought the stave church at Gol in Hallingdal and put it up at Bygdøy in Oslo. This was the start of Norsk Folkemuseum (The Norwegian Museum of Cultural History), one of the oldest open air museums in the world. This reconstruction also used Borgund as a pattern.
The inhabitants of Gol argued for a long time that they wanted their church back, but when Fantoft stave church was successfully rebuilt after the fire, they instead decided to build a new stave church at Gol. The result has been criticized for its technical simplifications.
In the year 2000 the Norwegian church celebrated one thousand years of Christianity in Norway. Since Iceland was part of Norway at that time, the millennium celebration also included Iceland. Norway decided to give Iceland a copy of Haltdalen stave church. The Norwegian parliament voted the necessary funds, and NIKU (The Norwegian Institute for Cuktural Studies) was contracted to oversee the construction work using Johan. L. Andersen and Kjell H. Irgens as architects.
The small Haltdalen (or Holtålen) church has a history that is parallel to that of the others that has been mentioned: it was moved from Haltdalen to Trondheim in 1881 and is presently at Sverresborg open air museum there. Now the inhabitants in Haltdalen also wanted a copy of their stave church, and using the drawings by Johan. L. Andersen and Kjell H. Irgens a stave church was constructed in Haltdalen. – So after a pause of 800 years Norwegians are building stave churches again, four within a few years.
Article in the catalogue for the exhibition Geschichte der Rekonstruktion
Konstruktion der Geschichte, 15.07.2010 - 31.10.2010, Architekturmuseum der TU München, Pinakothek der Moderne.
søndag 4. april 2010
80 years of Norwegian Modernism
1930 is Year Zero in Modern Scandinavian Architecture. The famous Stockholm Exhibition that year, with Gunnar Asplund as its main architect, introduced a new world to a broad mass audience. The white buildings along the shores of Djurgårdsbrunnsviken convinced the general public that this future was a very desirable world. After that, Modernism, or Functionalism as it was called, was the dominant building style in the Nordic countries.
1930 is also the year that Lars Backer died. Like Moses he got a glimpse of the Promised Land. Backer was the pioneer of modern architecture in Norway. His restaurant Skansen in Oslo open in 1927 and he managed to erect two more buildings in the new style and write a manifesto before his untimely death at the age of 38 years.
The 1930s was a very good period in Norwegian architecture. Ove Bang, Blakstad & Munthe-Kaas, Bjercke & Eliassen in Oslo and Leif Grung and Per Grieg in Bergen producing building of the first order, but none of them became international stars like the Finn Alvar Aalto, the Dane Arne Jacobsen or the Swede Gunnar Asplund.
The end of the Second World War in 1945 saw the return of pragmatism and common sense. In the patriarchal Social democracy of the period the emphases was on «building the country» after the destruction of the War, and there was little room for youthful utopianism.
According to Christian Norberg-Schulz “the war destroyed belief in newness”. After the war, many of the interwar period’s eminent pioneers were gone. Lars Backer died in 1930, Ove Bang in 1942, and Frithjof Reppen (1893–1945) was shot in Vienna during a transport of German-held prisoners. In addition, several other leading modernists had changed course. For the young architects who graduated just after WWII, it must have seemed that their «father generation», those who had been active before the war, had retired from the front lines of the trade.
But of course Modernism was not totally dead. Erling Viksjø (1910–1971) designed both for big industry and for the public authorities. He, more than any, would
shape the modern Norway that became evident in the early post war period. Viksjø was faithful towards the teachings of Le Corbusier, but with the aid of his invention,
«natural concrete», a construction method in which façades were livened up with exposed river gravel, the stern concrete of modernism was refined into «stone
architecture» and Norwegian nature appeared on walls after they were sandblasted.
This was a golden compromise that many found appealing. Among them were Christian Norberg-Schulz and PAGON (Progressive Architects Group Oslo Norway), which in the 1950s represented a more unadulterated form of modernism. At the same time as Erling Viksjø was constructing the Executive Government Building, Sverre Fehn, the artistic luminary of the group, was designing even more audacious buildings such as Økern Nursing Home (1955) and Norway’s Pavilion at the Brussels World’s Fair (1958). These were harbingers of things to come.
KORSMO and KNUTSEN
The Norwegian parallel to the 1930 Stockholm Exhibition was the “Vi kan” (We can) exhibition in Oslo in 1938. The two main architects for the exhibition were Arne Korsmo (1903-1969) and Knut Knutsen (1900-1968). They were both young, promising modernist architects in the 1930s, but after WWII they went separate ways. They become to epitomize two alternative tendencies: Korsmo was well known in CIAM and internationally very well connected. He became the fatherfigur for the young architecs in the PAGON group and design houses inspired by Charles Eames.
Knutsen was close to vernacular architecture and wrote very early pre ecological statements. He designed buildings that were anti-monumental. His Norwegian Embassy in Stockholm (1950) is rhythmic division of volumes, and his own summer cottage at Portør (1949) has a topological shape making it nearly invisible. Both Korsmo and Knutsen became professors and had many followers. The most important Knutsen-inspired architects may be Wenche Selmer (1920-1998). Her wooden houses and cabins scattered along the picturesque coast of Southern Norway blend in with the landscape. Her sensitive architecture escapes fashion. It is interesting that she lately has received more international attention.
LUND & SLAATTO
Two of the most influential post war architects in Norway have been Kjell Lund (b. 1927) and Nils Slaatto (1923—2001). They set up their practice together in 1958. They had a huge production of high quality. Only Sverre Fehn has won more prices than them.
In the 1960s, Lund & Slaatto designed compact buildings that often took on cubic or pyramidal shape. In the 1970s, they developed a structuralistic mode of operation that was redeveloped in the 1980s to accommodate new assignments and urban environments. They have been instrumental in renewing Norwegian wood architecture and their church architecture are highly appreciated, especially St. Hallvard (1966), a Franciscan monastery in Oslo. This cubical brick building has a cylinder shaped church room in the middle and a hanging dome. It is considered one of the masterpieces of 20th Century architecture in Norway.
SVERRE FEHN
When Sverre Fehn (1924—2009) received the Pritzker Price in 1997, the first Scandinadian to do so, it was in a way his second international breakthrough. At the early ago of 34 his Norwegian pavilion at the Bruxelles EXPO in 1958 gave him international respect. The square site was walled in on 3 sides with hammered concrete elements. On the 4st side it opened up with broad stairs towards the road. Laminated beams, 37 m long, 1 m high and only 15 cm thick, streched from one party wall to the other. It carried a flat roof covered on both sides with plastic sheets that let sunlight through during day while electric light made it into a shining slab during night. Big sliding doors and straight walls guiding the visitors created a succession of spaces that made the pavilion a refined exhibition space.
His Nordic pavilion at the Biennale park in Venice consist of one big room, 446 m2 without columns. There is a retaining wall on two sides against the raising terrain while the two other sides open towards the park with big sliding glass doors. In the middle of the room are some trees. As the only vertical elements they move through the dense web of 3 layers of concrete beams where sunlight is reflected downwards creating a diffuse mystic light. Modernism pursue clarity and daring simplicity. Fehn’s Nordic pavilion manage to give this minimalistic architecture a special magic atmosphere.
Fehn’s other major work from the 1960s the Hedmark Museum at Hamar, Norway. In this building he leaves pure modernism and creates his own personal architectural universe. Meeting a complex situation and a rich historical material he developed a building that, together with Castelvecchio in Verona by Carlo Scarpa, has become a lesson in how new architecture converse with the remains of the past. The museum is inside a big, U-shaped barn. The midle part exposes the remains of a bishop-palace from the Middle Ages, another wing contains a local historical exhibition. Fehn has said that “only by manifesting the present can we converse with the past:” This has been his main idea when he created the museum at Hamar. The visitors move on bridges over the archeological excavations as on a Persian carpet over the exposed historical layers.
TEAM 3
In 1975 Arne Henriksen (b. 1944) got a job at the State Railway Architects Office. At the time he was a left wing Marxist who saw railway buildings as a public architecture that was potential meaningful for the general public. In the 1980s he designed staions and other railway buildings inspired by Aldo Rossi and Louis Kahn and received several Brunel Awards, and was recognised as the great renewer of Norwegian railway architecture. Two young architects came to work with him, Jan Olav Jensen (b. 1959) and Carl-Viggo Hølmebakk (b. 1958). Because of them, Arne Henriksen got first hand knowledge of their master, Sverre Fehn, and he started to explore the use of expressive wooden constructions in his stations: Sandvika (1994), Slependen (1993), Lillestrøm (1998) and Eidsvoll (1998).
Jensen and Hølmebakk, two of the most talented Norwegian architects of their generation, have remained close friends with the older Henriksen and the three (Team 3) has joined up for several competitions. They won in Trondheim where half a city block had been destroyed by fire. Their winning project resulted in a mixed use building divided into three parts reflecting the shape of the old buildings, but with exposed massive wood structure. Jan Olav Jensen was noticed already as a student when he a fellow student Per Christian Brynhildsen designed a leper hospital in Lasur in India in 1984. The structure was awarded the Aga Kahn Award for Architecture. Jensen and his partner Børre Skodvin has received several prizes for Mortensrud church (2002) in Oslo. They have shown great inventiveness and originality in their work. Carl-Viggo Hølmebakk concentrates at great depth on refining his few but very sensitive buildings.
THE MASTER AND THE SUPERGROUP
In 1989 a very small Norwegian practice of young architects named Snøhetta (meaning Snow cap, the name of a mountain top in central Norway) won the prestigious competition (650 entries) for the new library in Alexandria, Egypt. The importance of the competition had of cause to do with the mythical status of the ancient library in Alexandria that tried to gather all knowledge in the world and is considered the mother of all libraries. The old library burnt down 1600 years ago, and everyone understood that the new library had to have a design that invoked the greatness of the myth.
Snøhetta had won no competition in Norway and had built nearly nothing before the Alexandria library, so this was a classical fairy tale story. When the building open in 2002, it was recognized as a masterpiece. One of the partners, Craig Dykers, described it as “grand but not simle”, and that is correct. It is a tilted cylinder cut at an angle and facing North. The outer skin is a stone wall with letters and signs from all over the world cut into the granite. The semicircular reading room has a diameter of 160 meter and is divided into 7 terraces.
In 2008 the new building for the National Opera and Ballet opened in Oslo. It is positioned in the harbour and has sloping marble plain making it possible to walk on top of the building. It is a great public space that is intensively used by the population.
The last 20 years that has seen the rise of Snøhetta, has also been a golden final for Sverre Fehn. In 1997, two year before Snøhetta won in Alexandria, Fehn got the Pritzker Prize in the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, just before it was finished. In the same year there was a magnificent exhibition of his work in Basilika Palladiana in Vicenza and he got the Heinrich Tessenow gold medal in Dresden. At the end of his career he designed a string of museum, The Glacier Museum (1991) in Fjærland, The Aukrust Centre (1996) in Alvdal, The Ivar Aasen Centre (2000) in Volda plus Preus Photoraphical Museum (2001). The at the very end two more buildings: Gyldendal publishing house (2007) and the Architectural Museum in March 2008, just two months before the Opera open in Oslo. It was as if the torch passed from one generation to the other, from the single master architect to the supergroup.
PUBLIC AMBITIONS AND NEW TALENTS
In 1992, Åse Kleveland, the minister of Culture published a paper called Kultur i tiden (Cultur in our time) where there, for the first time in Norway, was a separate chapter devoted to architecture. This can be seen as a seed for a public architectural policy. The Winter Olympics at Lillehammer, two years later, also had an ambitious architectural profile. Then in 2009 the government issued a proper architectural policy paper. We will have to wait and see what the effect will be. The one thing that the state has done that undoubtedly has bee very positive, is the project for National Tourist Routes . It is a program for upgrading 18 scenic roads with look-out platforms, benches and toilet facilities. All the jobs have been given to promising, young architects and the results have been spectacular: poetic structures in dramatic landscape situations.
It is fair to say that at the moment Norway has plenty of talented architects (Jarmund+Vigsnæs, Lund Hagem, Helen & Hard , 3RW, Kristin Jarmund , Knut Hjeltnes, Haga & Grov, Reiulf Ramstad, 70˚N Arkitektur, Space Group, Code and a-lab, to mention the most obvious ones). It is also positive that Steven Holl has just finished the Hamsun Centre in Hamarøy, and that leading international architects like Renzo Piano, Peter Zumthor and Juan Herros are building new museums in Norway now. This has to do with the fact that in this period of international financial crisis, the Norwegian economy is good and building activity high. So after 80 years with Modern architecture in Norway one may say that it has been a period of growth and that there are promising signs on the horizon.
Publiseres i DPA journal, Universitat Politechnica de Catalunya, 2010
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