lost and found

so there we were, at 9.30 in the morning, walking through the drizzling rain in a Scottish new town. it was Easter Sunday and we reckoned our best shot at getting into the church would be to try to get in right before mass. this was what we had come here for, the reason we were in this particular part of Europe.

when arriving at the church we slowly pushed the door open and found ourselves in the middle of an ongoing mass; seemingly we had made some error estimating the times. my catholic travel companion urged me to step in, and not really knowing what else to do I followed suit.

bar my grandparents' funerals this was the first time I found myself in a church during service for ten, maybe fifteen, years. being from a not particularly religious background in one of the most secular countries in the world the only reason I've been to church recently has been architectural. but there I was, doing my best to keep up with what was going on, suddenly being told to stand up to shake hands with the people that had been sitting around us. I never knew or had heard about that.

the fact is I've never been to churches as much as I have since starting to study architecture but, as I said, during that time this was only ever the third time I've seen one being used for what it was designed for, and – as the other two times were for my grandfathers' funerals – the first time I was in a state to actually take in what was happening.

after mass ended we were let to roam around the place, taking photos, exploring nooks and hidden corners. then we left by foot heading back towards the train station. on our way there we happened on some old cottages in grey stone (granite, I'd say, but my memory might be playing tricks on me). the cottages were lining a picturesque cobbled street, the whole scene utterly idyllic. this was nothing I had expected - we were in the town that gave birth to the Reid brothers and thus the Jesus and Mary Chain, after all - but it was beautiful indeed. even more so for its contrast with the surroundings.

the more I travel to visit buildings, the more I appreciate unexpected happenings and scenes like these. the moments where you get to see something else, something unexpected. I used to work for a big firm and the study trips the office went on were painstakingly prepared: itineraries prepared by academics, local guides hired, restaurants pre-booked: it was the definition of a professionally organised trip. of course we got to see great buildings - and I assume I picked up a thing or two from those trips - but they were problematic to me in the same way that riding the underground in a strange town is problematic: you never get a sense of coherence, of how things are connected. you visit this one building to then immediately be on your way to the next. and this without really encountering neither the surrounding city nor the community.

not to overstate how much we've managed to take part of the local community when I've been on private trips with friends but at least we've had to rely on the people we encounter to get food, or to find our way. and in places where we've known the language we've suddenly ended up talking to some of the locals (ok, a couple of sentences exchanged with some children up an apple tree in Paspels is hardly a great exchange of views, but at least I know they find the Olgiati extension 'langweilig'). just the fact of being reliant on public transport is a great way of getting to know a city better. you're not just zoomed from one place to the other in your own private bubble but actually encounter people, and other parts of the city, on your way getting to your goal.

a time before moving here I was visiting Malmö and decided to take a trip to Lund to have a closer look at some of Klas Anshelm's work and Bengt Edman's* brutalist student-housing Sparta. walking out of the station towards the Technical university I happened to lose my way. just as I found someone to ask for directions I realised I was standing across the street from Bernt Nyberg's archival building for Landsarkivet, a huge lump of Helsingborg bricks owing quite a lot to Lewerentz's late churches. this is a building I've seen at lectures but had somehow managed to forget about since. and there it was, just in front of me. lucky me! especially as I later found out it's about to be turned into student accomodation, with huge new windows punched through those expanses of brooding brick.

I know I'm always a tourist on any of these trips, just dipping a toe in and never actually taking part in the life around me, but I think that the chance encounters and unplanned distractions have been as important to me as what I've actually planned to go somewhere for, maybe even more so.

* Bengt Edman is, together with Lennart Holm, the architect behind Villa Göth, a building that – according to Swedish architectural lore – is the one that had Hans Asplund (Gunnar's son) characterising it as 'brutalistisk' (or some such phrase, the exact wording is never entirely clear) which is supposedly the starting point for the expression 'the New Brutalism'.

taste the floor

I just found out Bobby Gillespie attended King's Park Secondary school, designed by Gillespie, Kidd and Coia. as one of GKC's finest buildings - the church of St. Bride's - is in East Kilbride where the Reid brothers grew up it seems there's a strong connection between GKC and the Jesus and Mary Chain at the time around Psychocandy.

if this is a good or a bad thing, and what it might have meant for the music I'm not entirely sure.

it's the same old song

last weekend I made another visit to the Malmö Konsthall (1971-75) by Klas Anshelm and was reminded of Adam Caruso's essay on the building. what I noticed more than during any previous visit was the relation of the different parts to the surroundings: the way the outside defines different zones in the interior. I guess it was the fact that the large rooflight wasn't covered this time as it has been on several of my earlier visits.

even if the interior has this rough semi-warehouse feel it is worth noting that the building was much more radical and anti-institutional when new. it was conceived as one volume where the café was placed right next to the art with no separating walls, the only permanent interior walls were the ones surrounding the lecture theatre. it was basically the same idea as for Peter Celsing's Kulturhuset in Stockholm, or Centre Pompidou/Beauborg in Paris (where the man responsible for the programme for Kulturhuset, Pontus Hultén, was the first director): big open and flexible spaces meant to be adapted for every new exhibition.

but the Malmö Konsthall has changed, a new connecting café and shop was built between the gallery and an old brick building in 1994. in this way the more mundane parts of the art experience have been separated from where art is presented, creating the highbrow atmosphere the gallery initially tried to eschew. walking into the new café it hit me this transformation can be characterised by the exterior walls. they're in fair-faced concrete with horizontal boardmarks; out in the open this feels mundane, almost rough, but in the café the former exterior wall is lit from a strip rooflight above giving the wall an almost sacral feel. it is exactly the same wall, with exactly the same treatment but the tiny difference of how it's lit gives it entirely different meanings and connotations. just in this way the gallery space has been given a new, more sacral and high-art feeling by the café and shop being moved out of there. it really is the same old space, but with a different meaning now those elements are gone.

I'm not saying this is entirely wrong – I can imagine the presence of a café and chattering people creating problems when displaying certain kinds of art – but it is important to notice the difference, to notice how our attitudes have changed. nowadays we seem to think a work of art needs this kind of space to assert itself as art. just in the same way as religion might need a certain kind of space and somewhat arcane rituals and language to keep its air of holiness. if the goal of the avant-garde in the early parts of the 20th century was to break down the barriers between art and life throughout the last couple of decades we have instead tried to architecturally reinstate those boundaries, in this respect a lot has changed since the seventies.

neu!

I have previously written about De Carlo's Magistero - a building I've been fascinated with for years now - and how it's a reworking of a medieval structure into a functioning modern building. it feels like it's time to revisit that topic, though from a different angle.

let's start with Gottfried Böhm: last summer he seemed to be everywhere. to be honest 'everywhere' mostly consisted of someone at work mentioning him once and me reading about his Bensberg Town Hall (1962-67) in Peter Blundell-Jones and Eamonn Canniffe's Modern Architecture Through Case Studies 1945-1990 (a book I bought mostly because it featured said Magistero). the Town Hall is a concrete building set within the remains of a medieval castle and was so intriguing that the next time I found myself in a well-stocked bookshop I ended up buying a monograph on Böhm.

through the monograph I found out not only that Böhm had done other projects in a similar vein – the first seems to be a hotel and restaurant in Bad Godesberg outside Bonn (1959-68) – but also that he designed a chapel on the site of Peter Zumthor's Kolumba Museum (1997-2007), a chapel now incorporated into the new museum. so let's take a look at these buildings and their attitudes to adaptations of older buildings*:

in Bad Godesberg** Böhm unceremoniously places his modern additions on and in-between existing wall fragments. while the original walls are of stone Böhm's additions are in fair-faced concrete, neither entirely breaking with nor blending in with the old ruins. in this way Böhm creates not a brand new building but an amalgamation: the new spaces are partly created by what built matter was already on the site. at the same time Böhm adhered to the often used modernist strategy of clearly separating the existing building and any new interventions: what is modern is undoubtedly modern: there is no mimicking of traditional forms or detailing.

Böhm used the same approach in his competition-winning entry for the Bensberg Town Hall***, although in a more extreme version. the old castle in Bensberg had been a ruin since the Thirty Years' War but in the mid-eighteenth century the ruin was converted into a monastery and later on also into a hospital. Böhm decided to get rid of these fairly recent structures and to only keep the medieval remains. in this way he had a podium of lower walls as well as one higher fragment curving around and protecting part of the site. the higher part of the wall ended in a high tower with a slate roof which he also retained. Böhm placed the council chamber against the higher wall fragment while placing all other accommodation in a C-shaped pattern around a courtyard open to the town. in this way the position of the council chamber, the complex's most important room, was shown to the surrounding town by the tower and from the building's courtyard by extensive glazing, two stories high.

once again the interventions are modern, to say the least. the fenestration is in the form of ribbon windows thus clearly breaking with the romanesque windows of the original building (some of which were re-created from archaeological findings). in the more important parts - the stair tower and on the ground floor - the glazing is frameless which must be considered very advanced for the mid 60s.

just as in Bad Godesberg the junctions between new and old parts are not expressed in any particular way, rather new and old are juxtaposed with concrete simply sitting atop older stone walls.

after the allied bombing of Cologne during the Second World War most parts of the church of St. Kolumba had been demolished but left standing was a medieval statue of the Virgin Mary. in 1948 Böhm built a chapel to protect the statue and in 1956 he added a sacristy along with a boundary wall to the monastery just north of the chapel.

in 1997 there was a competition for a new diocesan arts museum on the site of the old church where Böhm participated. Böhm didn't win, instead the victory went to Peter Zumthor. in a move very reminiscent of Böhm Zumthor's proposal places new walls directly on to the structures already present on the site, be they medieval masonry or Böhm's post-war concrete walls. these new walls are made of a brick Zumthor developed especially for the project: a thin long slab hinting at both old Roman brickwork and at the masonry employed in his Therme Vals. in a way these brick walls become a mediation between the different periods already represented on the site: the detailing of the brickwork is very abstract hinting at modernity but in no way does it seem more modern than Böhm's 1956 concrete walls, rather the opposite. in this I think Zumthor has managed to strike a perfect note, the additions are clearly marked out as such but also function as a backdrop highlighting both the ruinous fragments and Böhm's structures as parts of special interest.

though Böhm himself have expressed reservations against Zumthor's project it seems the major difference between Kolumba and the Böhm projects I've discussed above is the fact that Böhm was still alive when Zumthor's project was built. apart from that it uses pretty much the same strategies regarding retention and interventions on sites already rich with history. I guess if there's one major difference it is that where Böhm at Bad Godesberg and Bensberg create a true collage from two equally important parts – what's existing and what's new – Zumthor's new structure is so much larger and more important than the older parts it feels as if it's about to devour them. if this is down to a different attitude or just a reflection of the size of the programme he had to fit on to the site I'm not sure.


* I probably should mention I haven't visited any of the buildings but rather have to rely on drawings, photos and other people's accounts.

** some more photos of Bad Godesberg can be found here

***and some very good ones of Bensberg can be found here


acknowledgements: both of the beautiful photos of Bensberg are stolen from SEIER+SEIER, photo of Bad Godesberg by TRiver
photo of Kolumba by Claus Moser

the road to ruin (pt. 3)

here's the latest news regarding St. Peter's seminary from BD. I just hope something good will come out of all this.

I wonder a bit about what shape the restoration will take, and how they will handle the destroyed Kilmahew House that Gillespie, Kidd and Coia's scheme was designed around. will they just keep the ruined house or will they partially restore that as well? hopefully we'll see some plans in the next while and hopefully, hopefully, NVA will manage to find the money to go ahead with their plans as - although these magninficent ruins left half-forgotten in the forest do appeal to my romantic side - I'd be even more excited at the possibility of visiting a semi-restored seminary some time in the future.

this is radio etienne

my last post had me thinking about the strange ways buildings seem to upset so many people. how can one ugly building annoy people so much they keep insisting it needs to be torn down? one of the ugliest cities I've ever been to is Tokyo – most of the buildings there are horrible, drab post-modern eighties stuff – but that has never detracted from my enjoyment of the beautiful buildings standing next to the ugly ones. more importantly it has never stopped me from having a great time in the city, they're just buildings after all.

to make an analogy; when I listen to the radio and a horrible song comes on I have three options: I either change channels, turn the radio off or suffer through the song in the hope that I'll like the next song better. to follow the analogy your options in a city where you find a building ugly is to leave the city entirely to live in isolation in a building to your choice in surroundings you do like, to decide to never pass that horrid building ever again or to be happy in the knowledge you'll like that other building over there much more than the one you happen to be passing at the moment.

as the first two options have seriously detrimental effects on your quality of life the only feasible option is to learn to live with the ugly buildings without letting them affect you too much. it really doesn't seem it will be too hard to do and as ugly buildings will always be around as long as we can't agree on taste – and I hope few nowadays persist in the folly there is a universally agreeable taste – a stoic indifference to them will be the best way to handle the buildings we just can't stand.

taste

it's been a while. I can always try to blame moving cities and working too much, but it's probably mostly down to not having had any thoughts interesting enough to share.

but now I do.

my old college caught on fire earlier today. so far there haven't been any conclusive reports on just how bad the damage is. from photos in the papers it seems fairly clear that most of the lower parts towards Engelbrektskyrkan are severely damaged but it's hard to tell if it's worse than that.

I'd say huge parts of the residents in the surrounding areas are giving up a cheer tonight. after all the Architecture faculty at KTH is always voted in the top when it comes to the ugliest buildings in town. seems like the perfect time to revisit my ruminations on architecture and taste.

because I really can't understand all the abuse that's hurled at the building. yes, it's grey. yes, the ground floor is taken up by a car park. yes, the fenestration is repetitive. out of those three objections the only one I can find truly legitimate is the one concerning the parking. that parking is very unfortunate. it is also not the fault of the architect but of the city's planners and politicians. even more importantly it's something that can be mended.

we have to realise it's time to stop wasting our resources by tearing down perfectly sound buildings just because they're no longer fit for the purpose they were first meant for. we still look at individual buildings the way we look at our modernist suburbs (though – strangely enough – not the inner city): that they're works of art that should be protected in their entirety or torn down. but the way to handle any problems isn't to tear the building down instead we need to adapt what's already there to suit new needs. something must have happened since the destruction of Pruitt-Igoe*.

thankfully the idea of adapting and extending what's there seems to be spreading in Stockholm at the moment. the last couple of years have seen proposals for extensions/alterations from some of our most highly respected architects – Wingårdh at Thulehuset and Tham Videgård at Konserhuset most readily spring to mind – and the problem with them isn't that they're adapting an existing building but rather that they're adapting an existing landmark by making an extension that tries incredibly hard to assert its own presence, it tries so hard it pretty much overtakes the iconic building it's attached to. of course there are precedents for that, Markelius' roof-top extension to Centralpalatset is the obvious example in Stockholm, but that time it was an extension to a non-descript office building while Konserhuset is one of the most iconic buildings in Stockholm and Thulehuset's facade is one of the most recognisable and imposing buildings we have from its time. one of the profession's preferred ways to extend a building is to make an addition that is 'of its time' – to honestly separate new and old visually – and that is all well and fine, if a little boring at times, but when you try to outdo the host that's just plain rude. and rudeness, I'm afraid, isn't really that interesting.

so even though we need to adapt rather than to raze and build anew I just wish it would be done with a little more care. not because the city's authorities asks that of us (even if they might) but because the buildings themselves deserve it.

update 25/5: the low parts of KTH-A are indeed severly damaged but the higher parts escaped almost unscathed. some photos can be found in the latest issue of Arkitekten (pages 8–19).

* an event clearly demonstrating that Modernism as ideology was alive and well, rather than the opposite, whatever Charles Jencks says.