Posted by Paul Malo on December 17, 2001 at 19:08:30:In Reply to: Daniel Libeskind IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM posted by AMANDA on December 16, 2001 at 16:48:40:
An assertive form such as this does less harm in such a context, which is hardly urban. The absence or neutrality of immediate surroundings means that they are not impaired by such an "object building." The V&A proposal, however, is quite different in its "function" (using that word not with reference to the fit of the form into the urban fabric or townscape). In London a sculptural object--agressively so--is to be sandwiched between buildings of historic character which respect the street and its wall, as urban buildings should.
Virtally ALL modern buildings (or at least those that aspire to radical modernism or postmodernism) are "object" buildings of this sort, which is why we think of the freestanding villas like Savoye as the landmarks of modernism. You can't wedge the Villa Savoye between party walls in a city. Corb, of course, wanted to tear down the city, in order to build his object buildings in Paris.
Wright's Guggenheim on Fifth Avenue is case in point: yes, it's dramatic and startling because it's so divergent as to seem surreal--but suppose other architects continued to build these arresting object buildings along Fifth Avenue. What would we get? Can you imagine Libeskind cheek to jowel with Wright, and Gehry next door? That's Las Vegas.
Top priority for these "signature" architects is their personal identity stamped on the work. That's the character that interests them, not the character of the city.
There may be a place for "foreground" buildings, which can serve as icons of a city--the Sidney Opera House, for instance. There, like this new museum, the sculptural object stands free. Gehry in Washington, however, is like Libeskind in London--insistently ramming an arrogant personal statement to a rather civil quarter of a rather urbane city. Better in Las Vegas.
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