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.

london belongs to me

as I touched upon it in the last part of my previous post I feel it might be time for a digression on memory, dreams and the city.

the first time I went to London I was almost 25. that means that for at least 20 years I had watched tv programmes and films set in London, and for more than ten years I had listened to music set in London, and read books and articles about bands in London. I was basically steeped in references to a city I had never visited. so finally coming there, for a rushed two-day trip where we were meant to stock up on clothes (at the time my travel companion and I were both living in Dublin and, as much as I love that city, it really wasn't the place to find clothes) and records was a weird experience.

everywhere we went I encountered names and places I'd read about but didn't really have any actual relation to: Neil's Yard, Wardour Street, Portobello Road, and, most puzzlingly, Ingestre Place. Ingestre Place was a mystery, suddenly we were standing in this tiny cul-de-sac surrounded by anonymous walls, and it had been me suggesting we'd go in there. because I had seen the street sign on passing and it stirred some kind of memory: I knew, I knew there was something that had been important to me that was related to Ingestre Place. but, to be honest, there was nothing there to even give a hint what that thing might have been.

way later, after having moved back to Sweden, I was rummaging through my LP's looking for some record or other when I cast a glance at In the Beginning There was Rhythm and there it was: Soul Jazz Records, 12 Ingestre Place, Soho, London W1F OJF England.

suddenly it made sense, suddenly it fit, something that was very important to me did have something to do with Ingestre Place. just not the actual street because to me Ingestre Place was never that cul-de-sac, never those office buildings. to me Ingestre Place was Soul Jazz Records, the company that had released some of my favourite compilations. and in the same way Parkway is Saint Etienne's London Belongs to Me, rather than the actual street. even when I last walked along it – in dreary January weather – I was transported to a lovely lunch in Regent's Park from years ago.

I have never really encountered this phenomenon on any other of my travels, not in Tokyo, not in Berlin nor in Milan. I guess it's because London is ubiquitous for those taking part of any kind of pop-culture. it's probably the same with New York, at least for those of a more American leaning even if not to me. it was strange, though, the feeling you knew this place but not having a clue why or why you'd even like to know this tiny little street in the middle of a bustling city.