The monument to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin by Peter Eisenman must be pointed out as one of the most significant works in this first period of the new millennium not so much as it represents a crucial turning point in the career of one of the most important architects of the twentieth century, but rather due to the fact that it personifies that transition relating to an attitude that is still modern – that despite everything it still characterises the most part of contemporary architecture – leading towards another form of architecture. In fact, if on one hand it takes us back, in virtue of his programme, to the conceptual heart of the twentieth century, on the other, its inoperability in architectural terms is immediately reported. Modern architecture was born, with Adolf Loos, as both tomb and monument. Eisenman’s work is compared, in fact, with the impossibility of this duty in light of chilling, inexpressible “enormity of the banal” represented by the tragedy of the Holocaust and, at length, with the effects of the World War, right up to Hiroshima.

But there’s more. In the Berlin monument such excess emerges not as an exception, but an aspect of that alienation built into the modern human condition. «Nothing of what is considered human must outrage us» sustained Adorno. The unimportance of death is the other face of the unimportance of living. It is in modernity that there are mass deaths because mass society exists. Therefore with its grid consisting of 2700 concrete stelae which are about a metre wide, a little less than two and a half metres deep and its height measures between zero and four metres, the monument is, implicitly, an urban structure, the individual and collective dimensions of which are associated with each other without ever coming to a conclusion: a model of a city without squares, nor monuments, made only of roads that allow the transit of only one person and that do not lead anywhere; in fact it is an anonymous, anti-monumental non-city, it is even out of scale, that one can appreciate only by entering and passing through it without really knowing for what reason.

© Roland Halbe

In the era in which collective memory is increasingly and massively reduced and sorted out into data and images, Eisenman’s monument refuses any iconography of memory in order to let it emerge as an individual experience of the estrangement induced by the spatial device of the person who passes through it: an experience that prevents a person from “coming out” of the monument, or rather of referring to nothing else but him/herself, therefore re-establishing as a positive architectural value only the relationship with space by means of which one can question oneself on the sense of one’s existence in this world.

Gabriele Mastrigli

© Andrea Martiradonna

Gio Ponti states that modern architecture cannot avoid taking into consideration solutions to socially-committed themes; certainly the Ifdesign project relating to the new NOIVOILORO cooperative site fully responds to this founding assumption, conducted from “the bottom up” as out-and-out voluntary work.

The first modern architecture – in reply to the rapid evolution of the new social needs – sought for the “typical” solution, by emphasising the general features of the building and often taking into account the location and the circumstances like mere “accidents”. Ida Origgi and Franco Tagliabue work in the opposite direction: beginning with the particular requirements requested by the commissioning client and from the constraints of a specific location, they build an “open” project, that is capable of growing and developing over time starting from a large common space.

Just like some rural constructions built around a barnyard or a medieval monastery around a cloister, simple buildings aggregate around a large central courtyard, that represents a common area open to the different forms of sociality stimulated by the cooperative: parties, shows, sports or recreational activities.

However, special reference is made to “timeless” models of settlement – or to sophisticated experiences of “minor” modern architecture, such as the quotation of the church roof by Sigurd Lewerentz in Björkhagen – without devaluating the decisive “contemporary” dimension of the project. The materials and the colours of the facades, the external and sometimes playful use of graphic art, the presence of continuous inventions of details make the building a kind of story with parallel episodes, that come together only in the overall bird’s eye view of such. From here, one can see how the building and the open space that it embraces show that deep relationship with the orography of the landscape, which historical settlements have always had: a relationship based on the transparency of its purposes and on the economy of means, that makes architecture the development of spaces that welcome the life of man rather than the production of virtual images to be re-broadcasted by media.

Cino Zucchi

(panel presented at the exhibition “The Architecture you like©”, MAXXI Museum, Rome, 24 February-10 May 2011)

by Antony Moulis

The State Library of Queensland re-design by Donovan Hill (in association with Peddle Thorp Architects) completed in Brisbane, Queensland in 2006 is, for me, an architecture of great promise. The project has been a popular success, being something like a “termite’s nest” with a broad and diverse set of spaces and activities that create a sense of active public space within a previously insular institutional setting.

A critical aspect of the building’s form is its re-creation of domestic style space within public space. In a country such as Australia where domestic architecture is predominant in cultural terms, the “domestication” of public institutions is a way to have people feel “at home” in a city where the suburbs offer the main form of living. At the same time the building does not “talk down” to its public but seeks to engage it in playful ways. There are aspects of the building that recall the work of Alvar Aalto and his attempts to “humanise” architecture and public space. These values are important to a culture at the other fringe of the world that is dominated by an open and vast landscape that dwarfs attempts to make architecture at a similar scale. I like this building because it signals a new beginning for public space as an open experiment beyond the settings of Europe and America where such cultural questions about public space are usually answered through the repetition of, or reaction to, conventionally understood architectural forms. With the main interior actually being exterior space there is a delightful ambiguity to experience here. The sense of being enveloped in the larger landscape and the benign climate is ever present.

Yet the recent dramatic floods that engulfed Brisbane also inundated the building, breaking the fragile truce between nature and architecture that so strongly characterises this vast continent.

critical text by Joseph Grima

Flipping through an architecture magazine or clicking through the feed of one of the countless architecture blogs online today, it quickly becomes evident that contemporary architectural production suffers from a chronic case of hyperinflated personality syndrome (a pathology which causes buildings and their authors to engage in an agonistic rivalry for the limelight, both within the city and within the collective consciousness of its inhabitants).

Pondering the possible causes, one is tempted to suspect that the addiction to public attention is in fact a consequence of the profession’s marginalisation: few times in history have architects had as little influence on the form of the urban landscape that surrounds them as in the last two or three decades of developer-driven urban expansion. Little wonder that when they actually do get to shape a portion of the city – something that is entirely the exception and not the norm – the primary ambition is to project a larger-than-life personality, to create a strident landmark that compensates for a general sense of impotence over its context.

Even in the days when ambitions were greater and the belief that serving society was possible endured, a top-down attitude to planning and urbanism doomed many projects at best to formal alteration and at worst to demolition. Le Corbusier’s dwellings in Pessac were customised beyond recognition by their working-class inhabitants, much to their author’s chagrin; Stirling, Kikutake et al’s housing in Previ (Lima, Peru) suffered a similar fate, given that the integrity of formal compositions designed by members of Team X held little value when the need to add an extra room arose.

Quinta Monroy is therefore doubly exceptional. Not only does it renounce formal ambitions of any kind, but it actually bows to the inevitable and embraces the change its inhabitants will inevitably desire. It is an architecture-as-framework, a support structure that renounces its own personality in favour of its inhabitants’. If, as a profession, we genuinely aspire to become even remotely relevant in shaping the landscape that surrounds them, we would do well to consider architecture as a service to society rather than a vehicle for our vanity.

***

Sfogliando una rivista di architettura o cliccando in uno degli innumerevoli blog di architettura online oggi, appare ben presto evidente che la produzione architettonica contemporanea soffre di una sindrome cronica da personalità megalomane (una patologia che fa sì che gli edifici e chi li ha concepiti siano impegnati in una rivalità agonistica nella ricerca della ribalta, sia all’interno della città che all’interno della coscienza collettiva dei suoi abitanti).

Riflettendo sulle possibili cause di tale fenomeno viene il sospetto che la dipendenza nei confronti dell’attenzione pubblica sia una conseguenza della marginalizzazione della professione dell’architetto: poche volte nella storia infatti gli architetti hanno avuto così poca influenza sulla forma del paesaggio urbano che li circonda come negli ultimi due o tre decenni di espansione urbana guidata dagli agenti immobiliari. Allora c’è poco da meravigliarsi se, quando devono disegnare una porzione di città – cosa che è assolutamente l’eccezione e non la regola –, l’ambizione primaria sia quella di proiettare una personalità esagerata, di creare un oggetto isolato che compensi un senso generale di impotenza verso il suo contesto.

Persino nei giorni in cui le ambizioni erano maggiori e la fiducia che servire la società era possibile, un siffatto approccio alla progettazione e all’urbanistica dominava molti progetti, traducendosi nel migliore dei casi in alterazioni formali e nel peggiore in demolizioni. Le abitazioni di Corbusier a Pessac erano personalizzate a tal punto dai loro abitanti della classe operaia da non essere riconoscibili, con gran delusione del loro ideatore. Le case di Stirling, Kikutake e altri a Previ (Lima, Peru) hanno avuto un destino simile, visto che l’integrità delle composizioni formali progettate dai membri del Team X ebbe poco valore quando sorse l’esigenza di aggiungere una camera extra.

Quinta Monroy pertanto è doppiamente eccezionale. Non solo rinuncia a qualsiasi tipo di ambizione formale ma si inchina all’inevitabile e abbraccia i cambiamenti che i suoi abitanti inevitabilmente desidereranno apportare. È un’architettura-scheletro, una struttura di supporto, che rinuncia alla sua personalità a favore dei suoi abitanti. Se, a livello professionale, aspiriamo genuinamente a esercitare una seppur remota influenza sul disegno del paesaggio che li circonda, faremmo meglio a considerare l’architettura come un servizio alla società piuttosto che come un veicolo della nostra vanità.

The text is presented at the exhibition L’architettura che ti piace©/The architecture you like© opened at MAXXI, Rome until 15th May 2011. Info www.fondazionemaxxi.it

Il testo è presentato alla mostra L’architettura che ti piace©/The architecture you like© visitabile al MAXXI di Roma fino al 15 maggio 2011. Info www.fondazionemaxxi.it

Milano, 25 luglio 2011

critical text by Grafton Architects/Yvonne Farrell + Shelley Mcnamara

The school in Rudrapur, Bangladesh, is a combination of imagination and intelligence, people and local materials: a building of cultural value and structural elegance.

Since the beginning of our practice - Grafton Architects  -  educational buildings have deeply interested us, as they epitomize a real potential for architecture: contributing to communities and structuring space, tangible signs of belief in the future.

Like the Egyptian architect, Hassan Fathy, who made his architecture using mud and craft, Anna Heringer inhabits a humanist position to make meaningful and beautiful work.

The simple and poetic section places classrooms on two levels, connected by an open staircase. Grounded to the earth by sensuous mud walls; connected to the sky by structurally versatile, bamboo bundles, trapping breezes; protected by an over-hanging, corrugated metal roof; the back wall on ground level is carved out to form curved, “secret” places for the children to “hide”, learn and play. Locally-made cloth in beautiful colours drape openings and the upper ceiling.

Using her Master’s Thesis research subject, Anna Heringer translates from Theory to Reality, bringing others with her, understanding materials and local capabilities to build a project of lasting worth, both in itself and in its methodology.

In third world countries, the influence of the west pushes local materials out of use. Buildings in concrete become synonymous with modernity and progress. Heringer research leads her to “cob” - a clay, earth, sand and straw mixed with water, built in layers and dried. She makes architecture part of the everyday, not an exclusive discipline, experienced only by the privileged.

Professor Chris Morash of National University of Ireland, Maynooth recently quoted the 19th century playwrite Dion Bouciault, who said: «Art is not a church; it is a philosophy of pleasure». In this project, to the mixture of mud, bamboo, metal, cloth, brick, plastic, imagination, intelligence, co-operation and humanity, add Pleasure!

***

La scuola a Rudrapur in Bangladesh è il risultato di una combinazione di immaginazione, intelligenza, persone e materiali locali: un edificio di valore culturale ed eleganza strutturale.

Sin dall’inizio il nostro studio - Grafton Architects  - ha nutrito un profondo interesse nei confronti degli edifici scolastici, poiché questi incarnano un vero potenziale per l’architettura: dando un contributo alle comunità e strutturando lo spazio, essi sono segni tangibili della fiducia nel futuro.

Come l’architetto egiziano Hassan Fathy, che ha realizzato le sue opere architettoniche artigianalmente in fango, Anna Heringer mostra una posizione umanista e progetta opere belle e ricche di significato.

La sezione, semplice e poetica, mostra la collocazione delle aule su due livelli, collegate da una scala esterna. La scuola è ancorata al terreno mediante sensuali pareti di fango; è protesa verso il cielo tramite fascine di bambù strutturalmente versatili che fermano il vento; è protetta da un tetto sporgente di metallo corrugato; il muro della facciata del retro a piano terra è intagliato per formare delle nicchie “segrete” in cui i bambini possano “nascondersi”, imparare e giocare. Le aperture e il soffitto superiore sono coperte da drappeggi in tessuto locale dai bei colori.

Usando il tema della sua tesi di Master, coinvolgendo altre persone, comprendendo i materiali e le abilità locali per costruire un progetto di valore duraturo, sia di per sé che per la sua metodologia, Anna Heringer traduce la “teoria” in “realtà”.

Nei paesi del terzo mondo, l’influenza dell’Occidente spinge a non utilizzare i materiali locali. Gli edifici in cemento divengono sinonimi di modernità e progresso. La ricerca di Heringer la porta a utilizzare i “mattoni crudi” - argilla, terra, sabbia e paglia mescolate con acqua - disposti in strati ed essiccati. Lei rende l’architettura parte del quotidiano e non una disciplina esclusiva, di cui possono godere solo i privilegiati.

Il Professor Chris Morash della National University of Ireland, Maynooth, recentemente ha citato il drammaturgo del diciannovesimo secolo Dion Bouciault, che affermava: «L’Arte non è una chiesa; è una filosofia del piacere». In questo progetto, al mix di fango, bambù, metallo, tessuto, mattone, plastica, immaginazione, intelligenza, co-operazione e umanità, aggiungete il Piacere!

The text is presented at the exhibition L’architettura che ti piace©/The architecture you like© opened at MAXXI, Rome until 15th May 2011. Info www.fondazionemaxxi.it

Il testo è presentato alla mostra L’architettura che ti piace©/The architecture you like© visitabile al MAXXI di Roma fino al 15 maggio 2011. Info www.fondazionemaxxi.it

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