Extra Extra won’t focus on memes but try to illustrate problems through them. To that end, the looser conditions of a column allow for visible cracks in my positions. Unanswered questions are welcomed. Criticisms formed on a mimetic hunch can be built up. Nothing here is too polished, neither is it expected to be.
As architecture culture breaks into architecture cultures, let's explore the fissures. Tomorrow, we begin together the construction of a constituency.
I tend to bag on Bjarke Ingels a lot. While I don’t think it is productive to criticise individual architects, Bjarke Ingels Group’s image and success make them a glaring target. He is known as the poster child of current architecture culture through the Netflix special Abstract: The Art of Design, and he is the ultimate salesman. Ingels is a very good architect. But as culture shifts into decentralized constituencies, Ingels persona and brand is revealed as a prime example of how architecture created in harmony with cultural mainstream weakens as that mainstream fractures.
Being popular itself isn’t a reason to knock anyone. However, Ingels work operates less like architecture and more like the pervading neoliberal political system wherein sweeping promises are made yet when the dust settles we are still left with problematic capitalist colonialism. In other words, no matter what party is in power today the United States will remain an oligarchy while carrying out interventionist drone strikes in oil-rich countries.
The BIG diagram is a highly legible graphic which explains the design decisions inherent in a building.
This architectural phenomena can be understood by comparing the projects on BIG.dk to walking down the toothpaste aisle in a grocery store. Have you noticed that every toothpaste seems to do a bit of everything? Each tube is graphically plastered with glittery text offering cavity prevention, fresh breath, tartar control... plus whitening! All that seems to change from brand to brand is the graphic importance of any given trait over another — but they all promise to do everything. This always makes me wonder: Are the toothpastes even that different?What makes any of them better than the others? Would I still have a sense of humor if I went to dental school? How can I choose what is right for my needs? In Ingels case, his work promises mini utopias yet its image is more akin to a Colgate® commercial. He speaks with great force about thinking outside the box while pledging an architecture that is functional, sustainable, culturally informed, accessible, site-specific, and avant-garde all at the same time. The result is a watered down version of each quality, and the only thing left of the architecture as a valuable tool is in its marketing, which culminated in the birth of what my friends and I call a BIG diagram.
The BIG diagram is a highly legible graphic which explains the design decisions inherent in a building. It may have started through Ingels self-described desire to be a cartoonist. This diagram style became so popular it pervaded practically every architecture pinup of 2010 and it is still popular to this day. The diagram explains the building design through a series of operations. They begin by showing the building as simple as possible — usually an extruded box — and while each shaping force is added the design is carved back until the proposed building form is revealed. Yet what draws my suspicion is that for all of the carving and forces supposedly at play the buildings end up looking remarkably alike. If we go back and analyze the final building form for how well it responds to one of the previously illustrated forces we may find it lacking, or worse, nonexistent.
For example, only someone with the talent and hubris of Bjarke Ingels would have the gall to call The Spiral project the next logical step after the industrial and digital revolution. Yet, plain as day on the original website, the development bills itself as the workplace revolution. The BIG diagram of the project shows a cascading shape that lifts up to the sky, twisting every 16 floors or so. This is admittedly an elegant solution to issues regarding sunlight and the problem of accessible exterior space in a New York office building typology. However, is that what workplace revolution looks like? A few plants thrown into the corner of a milquetoast glass office tower?
Ingels has an extraordinary ability to speak to and inspire the public with architecture. This is useful as a tool to engage the public, but alarming when it makes promises it can’t keep. Same with its effect on current and future students. The ‘explain away all of the secrets’ aspect of the BIG diagram gives students a strong defensive tactic for critiques. In the production of this tactic, however, is a loss of the autonomy of the object and its ability to remain available to the architectural imagination.
Architecture isn’t just about improving the lives of people but challenging the structures that hegemonize us by projecting new possible futures. The BIG diagram inherently conflicts itself by attempting to remove authorship while producing highly authored buildings. Imagine if every architect were to do this. It would create an illusion of choice for those who aren’t experts and become impossible to evaluate. So if you are not a dentist and you’re walking down the toothpaste aisle, where everything claims that it does everything just as good as everything else, the best tube on the shelf suddenly becomes the tube that is on sale.
Ryan Scavnicky is the founder of Extra Office. The practice investigates architecture’s relationship to contemporary culture, aesthetics, and media to seek new agencies for critical practice. He studied at L'Ecole Speciale d'Architecture in Paris and DAAP in Cincinnati for his Masters of ...
1 Comment
Nice essay. If I can ask a question, don't you think REM does the same thing, and if so does the same critique apply? It seems the single lesson Bjarke took from his brief time at OMA was to create a clear narrative about buildings, separate from what it looks like, but absolutely underpinning the final form. So much so that there is no way to argue for an alternative outcome.
From a personal point of view, the unexpected thing about Bjarke's work is that it is really good in person. Details are wonky and not so impressive in comparison to Herzog and DeMeuron for example, and the architecture with the big A effect is not as big as might be expected (for a starchitect his buildings dont feel like money, weirdly). But the social experience is brilliant. The diagrams are actually kind of real, which is seriously impressive. Maybe its because they don't over-promise or because the diagram is so in your face that it cant fail. So far, the BIG experience is pretty good.
That said, I havent see all of his work. My guess is that some of Bjarke's diagrams are actually like the cheeseburger burningman. But lets be fair, that particular mirror ball was originally for a northern European town, not a desert free for all with people kicking things up 24 hours a day. He should be given the chance to try and fail on that one, though it seems to me that he actually did something pretty spectacular even with all the dust.
Block this user
Are you sure you want to block this user and hide all related comments throughout the site?
Archinect
This is your first comment on Archinect. Your comment will be visible once approved.