To understand how strange this pairing of client and architect is, you have to contemplate two things: the deeply embedded social progressivism that has become the standard worldview of international architectural firms such as BIG; and organizations such as the NFL, a private club for 1 percenters that bullies municipalities and treats its own players’ health with indifference. Can this marriage last? Is BIG motivated by naivete or cynicism? — The Washington Post
WaPo's art and architecture critic Philip Kennicott discusses the oddities of BIG's recent commission to design a new stadium for the Washington Redskins — and the team's problematic name is just the tip of the iceberg.
More on Archinect:
Bjarke Ingels Group, BIG, tackles NFL stadium design for the Washington Redskin
Herzog & de Meuron's stadium in Chelsea "will be a hefty brute of a thing"
76 Comments
I think Kennicott has an illusory view of BIG based mostly on stereotypes and his own prejudices about "the deeply embedded social progressivism that has become the standard worldview of international architectural firms."
Whereas in Bjarke's words: More is More.
As I understood it - to the extend BIG articulates any manifesto, it's get involved in everything. Nothing is beneath an effort at design. Even stadiums - which pretty much by their nature are anti-underdog, big-city political handouts to the well-connected. Whatever civic or social ills they cause ought to be addressed by society and law as a whole; an architect making his stand by standing somewhere else won't do much.
And really, this is the firm that made it's name doing a facade design for a municipal incinerator! Which PK reads as "an urban park that functions both as a power plant and a ski slope."
I'm not entirely impressed by BIG's contributions to the art of architecture, but he does have a smarter understanding of the reality of practice than most in his position. If he can use that to get his firm involved in projects typically taken on by hack shops, I guess that's worth trying. I'm suspicious he will accomplish much, but this criticism seems to miss the point of BIG entirely.
++midlander
I too agree and find it hard to criticize any architect that breaks away from order-taking.
Whatever rhetoric they use to get projects, whether "socially progressive" or "more is more" I find their art of architecture to be where the problem is--every project is a tweetable one liner: "an urban park that functions both as a power plant and a ski slope" Thinking about the best buildings, and how hard it would be to sum it up so glibly. Then you look at the projects and they have just about that much depth.
But again, it relates to our media... An army of PR consultants that run it sell gimmicks not any good design.
If Kennicott sees a gap between two different brand images (as I said old BIG vs new BIG), that's fine. But there are much deeper problems here...
"every project is a tweetable one liner"
In reality, no tweet will be able to truly sum up a building. Tweets are media and media distorts. If you want to get the primary architectural experience, go visit the building. If you want to know a tiny piece of the story behind the building, read the tweet. All of the griping tells me that we just haven't yet figured out a way to deal with the new media aspects of architecture in a productive way.
The public is far ahead of the profession on this. The public embraces the media aspects of architecture. They instagram images about architecture without any of the anxiety over gimmicks or depth. I've never actually visited the great pyramid of giza. Ive only seen photos. I suppose it could just be made of dryvit since I haven't actually knocked my fist against it.
I seem to remember a much more robust media...
Now it's all Instagram and tweetable one liners. I'm sure we all know by now that Giza isn't cardboard, but will we ever know about these buildings? Critics like Kennicott seem to only be interested in the politics of today. And perhaps the new media will have a greater influence on other buildings when they create an army of BIG copycats who make similar one liners.
Will they be nice buildings? They could be, but when all the rhetoric is so circular it seems like the building isn't the point--or at least the experience of it. And seeing this posters reaffirms this point--it's just an ego driven BIG Short:
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/11/the-party-with-bjarke-ingels.html
Giza pyramids are AWESOME, you have to be there....media can't relay real life.
Nate your Kennicott crit above is on point.
and the poster is pretty cool in the wrong way, but says a lot
Being anti-media is not a good strategy. Its lazy. Media isn't going away... and the public is embracing media. Thats the same public that architects are supposed to care about.
davvid, i guesss the question is, how can you be pro media and pro architecture? say like Quinton Tarantino of architecture...
Davvid, you are missing the point. This big box office architecture is like x-men 5 to the art of cinema...like Katy perry to the art of music...
Olaf, The problem is that architects are too slow. They're too slow to adopt technologies and too slow to experiment with them. We don't need to reject media. We need to get better at using it. Archinect is a good example. 99%Invisible is another good example. I subscribe to several interesting Facebook groups where people are sharing images of buildings and debating them. This is the new public sphere. If architects are resisting that, I don't see how they can claim to understand the public and what the public wants/needs.
Jla-x its so funny how much you rely on pop culture references as metaphors. Which firms are you comparing to x-men? Is that a Herzog and de Meuron or Snohetta?
Good points, davvid
davvid i agree, architects are slow! in many ways. their ego often makes them dumb and miss the boat......i guess what architects are looking for from Bjarke is a clarification the intellectuals can get into.
Think a Sanders vs Trump election will fully illuminate the toxic media culture we find ourselves in. Going for the lowest common denominator, as I believe BIG does, instead of standing up for the real art of architecture, will perhaps drive the final nails in architecture's coffin.
Instead of embracing the trappings of ego, branding and capitalist excess, perhaps BIG will explore what it means to have a soul.
When the revolution comes, will it be professionally photographed and posted on Designboom?
The revolution will not be instagrammed
It will be Periscoped.
there is no revolution. Guy Debord wrote his piece in the late 60's. the type of media has changed, but its lack of substance hasn't.....the question, another way to state it.....can and will BIG deliver substance or will it be Justin Bieber up our ass until the next POP culture shit comes along to distract us?
Olaf, I think it already delivers substance (as in buildings that bring people joy, shelter, safety etc) but we're just obsessed with Bjarke's image. Go visit the buildings.
Visited W57, lets just say it looks great in the faraway photo shoots.
Think Bjarke has anything to do with the day to day design process? Since he is at every innovation conference, I doubt it
davvid, I know about the details, but don't want to give too much away, I don't work at SLCE....
look I like Bjarke intellectually actually, mainly due to his understanding of Douglas Coupland's work...I want him to come through like Koolhaas did eventually...
but I want to remind you both (nate) a knockoff of Metamechanics...liberty Bell won (aka Donna)
Manifesto #20 - Peter Eisenman
[don't click on links after this, copy-pasted from CPU kids use, all kinds nonsense)
“The spectacle is the sun that never sets on the empire of modern passivity.”
Guy Debord
Today, across cultural practices, the distracted viewing of the surface has replaced the reading of depth. This is abetted by media, which stages the appearance of reality as a spectacle. The spectacular is linked to the contemporary inundation of information, which proselytises the new and demands the continual production of new imagery for consumption. The images sought by media are circulated instantaneously, virtually and seamlessly. Media’s search for fantastic imagery, as well as the precedent set for architecture by the “Bilbao effect”, perpetuates an increasing need for the spectacular in theform of ever more precious forms of novelty. These shapes – mutations of their own mediation – are the spectacles of today. Seductive renderings of impossible buildings are their own graphic reality, fuelled by a voracious need for publicity. These images are the narcissistic death rattle of a discipline lost in the tidal wave of image-dependent media. In staging the appearance of reality as spectacle, media induces passivity. The more passive the audience, the more necessary spectacular imagery becomes. It is a vicious cycle in which architecture today is more than ever implicated. In such a context, today’s subject, now rendered passive, is truly in danger of losing the capacity for close reading.
Where is architecture’s critical resistance to this process of loss? The crisis of the spectacular demands a call for a new subjectivity, for a subject removed from the passivity induced by the image and engaged by form in close reading.
I think we all understand the media and its effects. Personally I dislike any irony in architecture. I just don't understand how everyone goes ga ga for those that play by the medias rules rather than trying to subvert them.
But Davvid, it is all pop now...
Ironically the game of football and sports is massively popular because it is the only "real" thing left in culture
true Nate on Football.
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