The death of Richard Rogers stirs up a variety of mixed memories, and various related news reports too. An associated text at the end of one of the many reports on Rogers’ passing provides a link to an article on his retirement: Richard Rogers retires: Pompidou and Dome architect helped shape our cities.* Can only good be said of persons moving into retirement too?
One pauses to think about this: did he really? – did he really help ‘shape our cities’? The Pompidou Centre established a uniquely startling, somewhat disturbing mark, certainly a questionable one, in the cityscape of Paris: some might say it is the proverbial ‘blot on the landscape.’ Perhaps it could be said that it helped ‘shape’ or ‘reshape’ Paris in some obscure way; maybe it helped to ‘misshape’ it as most modern buildings seem to do to old cities?# - but publications tell us otherwise, and praise the astonishing brilliance of this new insert: likewise with the Millennium Dome, only in a much lesser way. The ‘dome’ plays a very insignificant role in the vista of London, lying tucked in low opposite the startlingly new heights of the Isle of Dogs. This Dome is not a great work of architecture either: it is just promoted as such with much unapologetic hype that seems to want to cover up some mysterious mishap just too eagerly. Is this an attempt to avoid the embarrassment of failure; to disguise a seemingly redundant idea in an attempt to create some relevance? The ‘dome’ occupies no central or core location or purpose in the city, as if it might transform it, as it struggles to be more than an awkwardly, (promoted as ‘clever, smart’), punctured tent on a promontory attempting to shelter something; but what? One can visualise what is beneath the dome of St. Pauls Cathedral with some pride and certainty; but the Millennium Dome? - what is below this; and why? Why does it exist? Why call it a ‘dome’? It really holds no integral or native meaning or purpose other than, perhaps, for things political and promotional. Events are held there with some degree of coercion, or so it appears. It seems to lack the necessity of functional convenience and personal satisfaction for any real happy and relaxed fulfilling civic outcome. There is something that feels forced about the whole place and the total concept; something that appears to command that ‘This shall be our country’s celebration of the century - wear it!’
The integrity of a dome lies in its form; to have this special surface pierced is somewhat alarming and questionable, even if it has become fashionable. One now sees structures poking through a variety of roof forms and materials willy-nilly, just for the style, or so it appears. How is the water kept out without some disturbingly cunning, muddlingly messy solution that alienates the integrity of the tensile surface and the continuity of the supporting structural elements? Here one recalls the shiny, slick Hadid structure outside the Arab Institute in Paris. The tensile skin roof of this exhibition structure was sealed to the concealed fibre glass gutter shell with huge globs of messy sealant. The ‘dome’ seal solution generates an unhappy, worrying thought, even without knowing the actual resolution. One wonders; is this ‘dome’ all just too much effort to be architecturally bespoke?
One is reminded of a virus with this ‘carona-like’ form. It is an unfortunate correspondence given that this celebratory structure has always suffered from a lack of purpose, being what it is just because it can be and is. A virus has more organic intent and virility; a more determined certainty. This ‘dome’ has become the subject of political and social spin, flogged as ‘super,’ as if it might be critically and uniquely, indeed grandly important rather than super-fluous. The idea for the ‘dome’ seemed to be the outcome of the indecision on what to do to recognise the turn of the century – the effort to discover what grand gesture might be appropriate - when folk were left floundering, wondering just what to do and where: ‘Quick, we’re running out of time!’ Have we forgotten how to celebrate occasions and life itself? Have grand gestures only become a matter of obviously spending huge amounts of money anyhow, without knowing why or what for? Here one recalls the Australian government’s grant of $400 million dollars to a tiny firm with little experience in environmental matters to ‘save’ the great barrier reef – to prove that it cared and was ‘doing something’ about it: all that was needed was the report that $400 million had been spent on the reef – the outcome was irrelevant.
At the last occasion on the turn of the century, the money was spent much more appropriately on a variety of civic buildings across the country rather than just one one massive folly. These buildings did transform the city and society with infrastructure and purposes that happily remain useful today. The ‘dome’ is sadly a forgettable aside; a saga that seems to seek to be forgotten – ssshh! Even the engineering of the dome cannot save this presence; it appears crude; almost irresponsibly grand; overbearing; overworked; a seemingly lost and misguided effort just to be too clever. One wonders if anyone would ever design an umbrella with all of the ribs penetrating the skin just for smart effect. Why is this idea acceptable? The dome is essentially a compressive structure; by turning it into a tensile structure, one senses conflicts. Domes stand; they do not hang. Frei Otto showed us how to use tensile surfaces with commitment, rigour, and a natural energy; Nervi showed us how to build marvellous domes with thoughtfully decorative compression. Mixing these stresses can give us wonderful tensegrity structures; but the Millennium Dome has none of the elegant qualities or delicacy displayed in these wondrous delights. Both projects, Pompideu and Millennium, stir controversy with their ‘very smart, heavy technology,’ but they really do very little about shaping a city. Maybe these words are merely a matter of lazy, cliché journalism that so easily slips into nonsensical jargon without giving the meaning any thought. After all, it is the ‘feel’ of the story that is important. We know that the grammar is irrelevant these days, so why should meaning be taken seriously?
Here one has to note that the primal weakness with Modernism is its singularity: (see – https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2019/03/architectures-two-remote-islands-too.html; https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2020/02/villa-mairea-city-of-solitude.html; and https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2019/10/the-rose-seidler-house-private-visions.html ) - how it looks after only itself in spite of any context.* Indeed, context is irrelevant. Modernism, (and even most of its later variations and developments that seem to have adopted this theme), has done nothing but challenge our cities, bifurcating them; spifflicating them with self-important, self-love; destroying the native patterning to make way for the grand, new – the brand new – exciting statement, in spite of anything and everything. The situation has something of a missionary zeal that promotes an heroic, moral message for the betterment of mankind. These 'modern’ buildings knew the importance of ‘selfies’ well before the mobile phone was even thought of – that photographic image of ME, and ME alone, cropped from the detritus of other messy existence: just LOOK AT ME! It is almost an insult to hear that Rogers ‘helped shape our cities’ when one might see his work as contributing to the demise of the city, its integral identity; the shattering of its coherence that is essential to support life and its simple everyday experiences with a compatible ease; an enrichment.#
There is no modesty in this work that is self-referential. One sees something of a ‘civic’ gesture in his Sydney building, a collage of ‘Rogers’ building elements with an open street corner entry; but this looks more like a convenience for vehicular traffic rather than a place for people. The grand stairway at this entry reveals the intent; its lack of intermediate handrails suggests that more thought has been given to the open appearance of the gesture and its scale rather than to the use; to the experience of entering. One is denied touch and the ease of a welcoming support, unless one chooses to use the remote stair extremities. There is very little that one might call ‘civic’ in Rogers’ work; it is, like Modernism itself, more ‘selfic.’ Yet one appears to be forbidden from saying such things about an acclaimed modern ‘master’: but it has been done - see the small book on Pound/Eliot that refreshingly exposes their shrewd and scheming hollowness – in 1939!^ No one wants to know or to talk about this, just drool on with hagiographic matters as with Rogers. If one can gauge a building by its care of detailing for people, the great Lloyds of London building fails. Here one sees unresolved, awkward handrail details – those elements missing from the Sydney collage – scattered around an elaborately detailed structure. Again, the effort appears to have gone into the grand gesture rather than into ‘meaningless’ handrail details; yet these are the parts of the building that are designed for touch; for the care and safety of people. These are the building’s intimate handles – the greeting: see – https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/search?q=handle .
Pompideu has a grand forecourt too, a grander one than Sydney’s, that slopes almost too steeply, (again with no handrails), always making one aware that one is being manipulated by an architect, forced to gravitate to the work of the genius. The open ‘civic’ space appears to be merely an amphitheatre for all to admire what we are told is ‘a great work of architecture.’ One does wonder if someone got the levels wrong! This building, like the Dome, has a history of being formed for an unknown or obscure, fanciful usage. New fit-outs to accommodate resolved purposes now smother the original interior intents involving open flexibility and adaptability. On the other side of the building that fronts the rear street, one is bombarded with huge bits of ‘tech’ that intimidate and mock their surroundings, belittling them by demanding attention to an alien identity and scale: the demands of clever ME. This looks like the ‘exhaust’ side of things, like the rear end of a motor car.
This building mocks Paris rather than otherwise celebrating it and its fine coherence; yet one is not allowed to say this of such ‘a great work of architecture’ with its ‘stunning’ engineering; one is tutored in ways of seeing this place – to see it as a bespoke work of genius that fits marvellously into old Paris by way of stark contrast. Is this yet again a way of smothering failure? Maybe we should delight only in the structure? Indeed, one should read Peter Rice’s autobiographical text that is critical of architects and their manipulation of photography – the image: see - https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/search?q=peter+rice . Again, the momentum here lies with the PR, not the reality; journalistic spin creates the space for shaping understanding, and ignores experience. We are asked to admire the arty images and slick texts, and dismiss the Street View experience: see – https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/search?q=street+view; and http://voussoirs.blogspot.com.au/2014/04/seeing-what-we-believe-idyllic-visions.html . We are trained in ways of seeing and understanding: we see places as they have been published, promoted, and paraded before us, rarely as they are.
One can be critical about Modernism’s lack of concern with the city, but this critique needs a response; a change in attitude to care for our cities. We have to learn how cities can be beautifully shaped as organic entities in themselves rather than as a collection of grand ME buildings. We understand and talk about the impact of things subtle, but turn our thoughts away from any comprehension of the impact of our chaotic cities on our lives. Here one needs to reference yet another artful impact on our thoughts and attitudes: the design of the motor car. Every day we are surrounded by and use vehicles of all shapes, colours, sizes; all expressing some design idea with difference for the same set of problems, with all solutions being quirkily, cleverly shaped for the eye, for the WOW! response. This impact must be far more penetrating than the mess of the city itself, as its engagement is far more complex, persistent, indistinct, and immediate. Is this why we now see architecture as ‘anything clever and different’? Is this why theory has fallen to one side in favour of the exercise of digital games for diverse difference? Why is this done? - ‘because it can be’ seems to be the answer: ‘whatever it takes’ appears to be the new message – whatever it takes for ME to make a mark. ‘Hey. Look! I’ve built a building with a hole in it.’ ‘I’ve done a hollow one that twists.’ ‘Mine is a ruined wreck – WOW!’: see - https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/search?q=wow .
Gertrude Stein, in Picasso, as quoted by Stephen Scheding in A Small Unsigned Painting A Vintage Book Random House Australia 1998, writes: (p.52)
Picasso to Gertrude Stein, as recorded by Stein in Picasso 1938: He was still a little troubled, no, he repeated, you have to know something to paint a picture, you have to, you have to.
Scheding later writes: (p.54)
Frank (McDonald) makes the point that in either case, the quality of the work is sometimes so good that it doesn’t matter. True works of art have a habit of standing apart from whoever made them.
The questions are: what must one know; and how can this knowing expression isolate itself from the person/personal – the ME? The proposition is that what we know or what we do not know all has an impact on outcomes, on that tenuous ‘standing apart’ experience. What is now happening is that the reverse seems to be occurring: by creating things that ‘stand apart’ just by being bespoke and cleverly different, we are assuming we are creating great art. Tragically, the logic, with its superficial adoption of ‘face value’ meaning that conceals a void, is flawed.
We need ideas and intents to create great cities. We need to learn about this rather than create alien statements that laud the designer as the genius; the master. There is a place for humility here; for love and care; and for the ordinary: then places can truly become ‘special’ in their own uniquely quiet manner. Yelling at people only creates an annoying stress. Our buildings need to stop yelling and showing off, and start considering things quietly rich, subtle, and meaningful; contentment needs this, just as good architecture does; and good cities too.
One might start by listening to Herbert Read who writes in Wordsworth Faber London 1965 (first published 1930) - p.19
Art does not yield its highest felicity to those who treat it like sweetmeat, to be taken when the mind is too satiated for grosser nutriment. That is the miserably insufficient concept of art as the subject-matter of ‘taste’ - and of architecture too.
*
https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-53998251
#
Perhaps the journalist was trying to communicate the impact on the city is that expressed in the report on the late Hadids’s new hotel in Florida: the residential building is making its starchitect mark on the city's skyline - ?
^
Refer Ezra Pound & T.S. Eliot, A Lecture by Richard Aldington, Oriloe Chapbooks, New York,1939. The lecture finishes with:
After that the only thing for us all to do now is to go home and commit suicide as painfully as possible.
See: https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2021/12/the-pounding-critic.html
7 Jan 22
BEST PRIVATE HOUSE:
The best private house stands alone on a rocky outcrop in a wilderness.
11 JAN 22 - AM
Google presented this item today, thinking it might be of interest:
Rogers talks about two inspirational notes that were on the office wall:
"On one wall, it will say: 'A place for all people, all ages, all creeds, the rich and the poor.' That was actually the first paragraph that I wrote with Renzo when we entered the Pompidou competition and several hundred people competed for it."
"Then on another wall, there will be the Hellenic oath, which is: 'I will leave the city more beautiful than I entered.'
"It's an oath that each citizen made and it's an oath, which I would like to think we are all trying to do and using beauty in a very broad, shall we say, Greek way, democratic and intellectual. So not just purely aesthetic."
Both notes are admirable but do not necessarily ensure the desired outcomes. One has to ask: Is Lloyd’s 'a place for all people, all ages, all creeds, the rich and the poor’? Does it ‘leave the city more beautiful’ than before? Is the Pompideau Centre? Does it?
The worry is that a repeated emphasis on an ambition or a preferred outcome might eventually allow some people to believe that this might be so. Just look at Trump’s claims! If we are truly to create places for ‘for all people, all ages, all creeds, the rich and the poor,’ and actually leave our cities ‘more beautiful,’ then we need to do more than pin up notes on walls. We need real strategies, real outcomes, not just hopes, no matter how ambitiously altruistic they might be.
11 JAN 22 - PM
Yet another promotion for the ‘ideal’ home - a strikingly modern home alone in a wilderness:
It is this concentration on the single, isolated ‘gem’ with the usual unoccupied, stage-set interiors that leaves one concerned about the fate of the city that rests in community. Most of what one sees published in the architectural press are hagiographical images of solitude and emptiness; the city relies on managing complexity. The examples of what we are asked to admire exclude everything respectively civic and communal, characteristics that are essential for good cities.
THE CAR
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