THE NON_EXISTENT LIBRARY

THE NON-EXISTENT LIBRARY

In my library account stands the records of books borrowed from the architecture library. It shows the book code which would point the exact location in real space where you can find it. Yet its physical location- the architecture library- is no more.

The librarians extended my loan till June.

Weird.

TU DELFT ARCHITECTURE 14th MAY 2008

Dean and team during this morning's briefing



Briefing today. The leadership team is all about "the show must go on!"
Photos from today. Walked around the building. Accepted the truth. Prayed for hope.

SANFORD KWINTER @ BERLAGE

left to right: Salomon Frausto, Sanford Kwinter, Peter Trummer


Sanford Kwinter was in Berlage to launch his 20-years-in-the-making book= Far from Equilibrium. Looking every bit the mad scientist that he was, Kwinter captivated with his sincerity and self-deprecating attitude. If you've ever tried to read his book Architectures of Time, you will realise that everything you've thought was deep and complex writing was really only surface treatment.

The book, written within a 20 year time frame, where much of the essays which were published in the ANY magazine in the 90's, was produced as a reminder that today's culture was a production of the past, whether a past that had happened or not- radical an-amnesia, he calls it.

I crept up to him in the cafeteria and asked for him to sign the book. He was nice to initiate some conversation. Despite my belief that I could make small talk with anyone, the fact that Kwinter listened to everything I said made it a tad intimidating, yet surprisingly refreshing.

I pored over his book and was pleasantly surprised at various fun things in it- change in font size, secret essays hidden within flaps. Good buy.

CARUSO ST JOHN

Brick house, London 2001-2005
First time I would ever brag that I like a brick house.

Big Brother's REALLY watching.

This comes about a month behind, but here's a sneak peak at what Rem Koolhaas has "architectured" for an island in Dubai that aspires to be... well, Manhattan.

Image courtesy of The New York Times; you can read the article here.

The round building... no, object... has been likened to the Death Star, which featured rather prominently in Star Wars (I have no idea which episode):

Looks more like a giant eyeball watching over the city to me... Can you say "Here's looking at you, kid"?

Well, make your own judgement.

Lebbeus Woods, architecture theorist and artist extraordinaire, has. (I say this because I'm a big fan of his drawings, many of which are very post-apocalyptic, for lack of a better description.) Read his blog entry, Delirious Dubai, here.

His blog's a very good read actually - ideas abound, and comments and criticisms of these ideas abound.

He says this of Dubai:

"...built up rapidly over the past few years on the wealth gotten from the world’s greed for oil—and more recently as an unregulated sanctuary for cash—it has no depth of history or indigenous culture, no complexity, no conflicts, no questions about itself, no doubts, in short, nothing to stand in the way of its being shaped into the ultimate neo-liberal Utopia."

And of Koolhaas' proposal, he asks:

What, for example, are the space-organization possibilities of networks of information exchange, rather than streets? What are the architectural design possibilities of synthetics, rather than steel or concrete building frames typical of high-rise construction? What are the possibilities for increasing choices in non-hierarchically organized urban spaces, rather than classical, Cartesian systems? And so on—the list of new possibilities is long.

It's with quite a bit of irony to me, that Koolhaas, who, fifteen years ago, so heavily criticised Singapore in the highly-exalted bumper book S, M, L, XL for being a tabula rasa haven for being almost exactly what Dubai is today, is pandering to and relishing in the bland tastes that these very tabula rasa scenarios emanate... and dare I imagine, cashing in in the process.

Woods has this to say, in closing:

"Or maybe he believes, true to his post-Modernist roots, that the past offers the best model for the future ... Or maybe he simply doesn’t have a vision for the future. ... The world’s attention is focused on Dubai, and on Koolhaas and other architecture stars, and because—like it or not—what they do is taken as a model for the future, even when it is, how shall I say, not nearly good enough."

MVRDV

I was at MVRDV today!

OMA, check.
UN studio, check.
MVRDV, check.

:P

LIVING IN A GLASS HOUSE: CHAREAU'S MAISON DE VERRE IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

(except for the third picture the rest represents the current condition of the building, taken from flickr.)

Berlage Institute Lecture Series (Netherlands)
-Robert Rubin, current owner of Maison de Verre. (Also restored Tropical House by Jean Prouve)
Tuesday, 22nd January 2008, 7pm


Either I was in an lucid and clear frame of mind, or Robert Rubin was extremely precise in his presentation. The running I did to catch the train to Rotterdam was well worth the short moment of breathlessness on the train.

Trivia aside, I found his lecture well worth the effort to spend some time to blog about. Mr Rubin buys the house with his wife, Stephane Samuel (who incidentally is a landscape architect) and proceeds to restore it and live in it. It was clear that the dwelling component on the onset was important to him as he more than once stresses the idea of restoration as being divergent when it comes to restoration for living in, or restoration as a museum piece.

The site context was interestingly restricted by this old lady who lived in the top floor or the building, who could not be evicted. Hence, the decision was to carve out the two bottom floors, make them into three, and slide the whole thing in. The building was occupied by the Dalsace/ Bernheim/ Vellay family till the 1970s. Dalsace was a gynaecologist so gynae artifacts are still preserved.

The building did not come into attention until Richard Rogers wrote about it in the 60s. Then Frampton picked it up in 68 and his writing was of course widely circulated so Banham took note of it as well. Mr Rubin compared Le Corbusier's aesthetic of the machine with Chareau's, noting how Corbusier's aesthetic preceded form while Chareau's starts from function. Banham describes the Maison de Verre as a techno-surrealist masterpiece, and thus qualified surrealism "as a permitted response to the machine".

Mr Rubin's concept to take possession of the home slowly, and live in it, became evident in the choices he made in altering the building. Firstly, he selected the period in which the house should be restored to, and after the removal of the art deco furniture by the previous owner, the house closely resembled its original condition before occupancy. Hence his choice was to restore the house to its condition of 1932. Mr Rubin also decided to restore the house beyond the plastic condition (the surface) and thought about how to change the building system so knowledge of the house is not skin deep.

And skin deep it is not, as his restoration involved things like rewiring the house so that it functions like how it does in 1932, remove 180 kilos (or thereabouts) of dust from the heating system, and hunting for the period lights in the flea markets that would light the building from the exterior. (they have dummy ones now, yet to find the period pieces). The furniture he chose were also low key so they did not interfere with the space. The only luxury he permitted himself was to restore a really contemporary shower in the laundry room.

Mr Rubin's obsession with habitation and precise documentation of the entire process is perhaps driven by his view that the house was a cultural project, and that the documentation of the house (a student is doing a PhD on this house) would be valuable addition to our understanding of modernity. I think he mentioned that he is in the process of understanding how modernism (or was it Chareau?) moved from French modernism to American Abstract Expressionism. Walter Benjamin was meant to give a talk at the place but apparently Dr Dalsace was ill on that day. He did mention how the fact that the house was going to house a talk by a political dissident (Benjamin) touched on the cultural richness of the situation but I think he was still formulating this part of his lecture.

Funnily enough, I did an analysis during year two on Maisson de Verre, and also visited the memorial of Walter Benjamin in Port Bou, Spain. I happen to love Benjamin's writing "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction." Read it 5 times before I understood it.

So in conclusion, I really enjoyed this lecture for the clarity and new insights it brought to my understanding of restoration- that to restore something, you had to decide which period to restore it to, that every part of the house had to be restored in the same intensity or else it would be set off by the other parts, that restoration was part of a broader cultural project, and in this case writers, political figures and multiple avant gardes. What I really liked was the idea of habitation in restoration, and how, according to him, that was the "least violent form of restoration". The only contention I had for his comment was that he mentioned how the building was out of the political limelight, and hence he had the creative freedom to alter without much political pressure; yet he talks later about a whole slew of advisors that would give him "talmudic" advice on what he should and should not do. I could have clarified this but then I was sitting to far back and only formulated the disjuncture when the mediator said thank you guys.

Good time spent. Plus good company.

CANTILEVER

OFFICE IN FUSSACH, AUSTRIA
by Baumschlager & Eberle

The brilliant thing about this cantilever is the lever arm is hidden under ground.

Stadiums for the community??

Just a thought came to my mind as I read through a sports news article titled "Seedorf's SOS for soccer". In the article, Seedorf, a famous soccer player for Netherlands who was born in S. Africa, spoke of solving the issues of sports violence and players' welfare through the design of stadiums. As of now, there are increasing incidents of violence from the spectators stands and in some cases, the police are the ones getting hurt.

Here's a quote from him,
<< At Milan's Champions League 1-1 draw at Benfica's ultra-modern Stadium of Light last week, Seedorf saw where Italy had gone wrong and that new grounds attract calmer fans.

'In Lisbon, it was a great stadium, very public-friendly. Simple things make a difference,' he said. 'That's what we need in Italy. We need to build new stadiums. Outside of Italy, people are addressing these issues.' >> published 07 dec 2007, The Electric New Paper, Sports

image from www.wayfaring.info/tag/soccer/

image from www.nytimes.com

It's an interesting observation and I just want to point this out, given the recent hype about the sports hub designs in Singapore. Maybe we can explore new ways, new typologies of looking at sporting facilities' designs.

What are the implications of future sports arenas, facilities? Can stadiums do more for the community? What new architecture discourses can be derived by the changing sporting experience?

While we're at it...

...there's also the Alvar Aalto exhibition, by the Alvar Aalto foundation and NUS Museums, on-going at the National University Museum (that's at the University Cultural Centre),

...and T3 (no Kristianna Loken though (or Arnie depending on who you like); the closest you get to cyborgs are perhaps the smiling SQ girls) which is open to the public during office hours and weekends for the public.

(Images from rightful owners)

Check here for more details! (A little bit of input required.)

Exhibition and Public Lecture - Neues Bauen - New Architecture

Every so often, we architects / architecture-enthusiasts need something to remind us why we even sold our souls - and for some of us, even our (social) lives! - to the Underworld. (Literally, for times when we do things like design basement carparks.)

Here's one of those things - an exhibition (with a keynote lecture) on "New Building"! (Neues Bauen in German. The latter word rhymes with "Frauen", except it doesn't quite mean the same thing. ... Now, if there were a lecture on Neues Frauen.......)

It's based on a 1927 exhibition, International Plan and Model Exhibition of New Architecture, that placed architecture in an international context. That exhibition toured 17 European cities between 1928 and 1930 as a part of Die Wohnung (Habitation), a 1927 Werkbund exhibition in Stuttgart, demonstrating the similarities and interdependence between the modern buildings from the US and Europe. (This paragraph adapted from publicity material)

Perhaps the throwback to 1920s architecture ideas - highly innovative at that point in time; still in vogue 80 years on (which can't be said of any 80-year-old Frauen!) would stir up enough nostalgia for us to get re-inspired should our motivation run dry, reliving the little wow moments amidst the snoozes in first-year architecture history courses.

On a side note, if the 1920s was "new", pre-WW2 "modern", post-WW2 (very loosely) "post-modern", the decades straddling the turn of the new millennium "contemporary", wouldn't we have run out of terms to define movements in art, architecture and philosophy say, 80 years downstream?

Anyhow, the exhibition runs from today til 6 January, with a keynote lecture this evening! ...

"Neues Bauen. What was so new about it in 1927?"

By Professor Karin Kirsch
Moderated by Dr Erwin Viray
7 to 830pm
Gallery Theatre, National Museum of Singapore
Free admission

In conjunction with the Neues Bauen (New Architecture) exhibition, now til 6 Jan 2008; 10am to 9pm

(Image taken from the National Museum of Singapore website, hence the funny tags.)

Please see http://www.nationalmuseum.sg/ for further details.

A classic moment with Cesar

Today was one of those few days in a year when Cesar (Pelli) graced our New York office with his charming presence and infectious laugh. In the midst of our design review with him, a classic moment took place.

We were meditating on a question of how to articulate the top of an office tower we were designing (as requested by Department of City Planning). Amidst all the sketches and models of different iterations, Cesar thought aloud, “Maybe, it just needs something to sit on top of the building.”

He then proceeded to squeeze and crush a paper cup, and then he placed it on top of the study model I made. I just thought it such a classic moment that I had to share it with others.

Cesar proceeds to crush the cup, as Ronald and colleague Kristen watch on amusedly........

Cesar examines the "object" sitting on the tower... and chuckles...

As he squeezed the cup, my mind ran through his account of how Eero Saarinen flattened a grapefruit to describe to his employees his ideal form of the TWA Terminal Buiding. And then my mind rushed on the Simpsons episode with Frank Gehry and his crushed paper.

Gehry's epiphany on The Simpsons

May more of such fun and classic moments greet me in my long career ahead. Hooray to classic moments!

The Clients - our allies

Sometime back, Sy Lyng posted an article on the need for architectural “mediators” in Singapore. If I remember the gist of her posting correctly, she referred to such architecture mediators as people who were not career architects, but were important facilitators who took a sincere interest in enabling good architecture to be built.

Along the same vein, I wanted to devote this post to a special category of people who are not the architects but are as crucial to a project’s success. Without these people, many masterpieces and imaginative forms would not have been realized – they are the clients, or the crucial decision-makers in the commissioning process.

Whereas most architects believe that the ideal client gives the architect the free rein, I beg to differ, somewhat. The most successful commissions often begin clients who have a strong vision and intention of what outcome they want. They share with architects the faith in the power of architecture. The strength of their vision and intention often gives clarity to the parameters (and meaningful constraints) that they lay down for their architects. At the same time, they trust the architects to be their own.

Rarely are they followers seeking to commission a building similar in form to something that already exists somewhere else. Instead, they believe in that which has yet to come into existence and make discoveries together with the architects during the design process. In short, they care about the design of the buildings they commission but never usurp the role of designer.

Beyond all these, the strongest architect-client partnerships depend upon a deep affinity, chemistry, and mutual understanding in a highly personal relationship.

For architecture in Singapore to flourish, it is not only important for us to nurture design talent, but to cultivate interest within potential allies within the power circles (in real-estate, in decision-making processes, in academia, in administration) to share the belief in compelling architecture and powerful spaces. The architects cannot go it alone.

I raise here, examples of important people who made it happen because they had a vision and cared about design.



1. Hilla Rebay
Was the curator of Solomon Guggenheim’s personal collection of “non-objective art” She sought to exhibit his collection in a “temple of non-objectivity” and found that the only architect with whom she could share that vision was Frank Lloyd Wright.
The result: Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, New York



2. Jonas Salk
Envisioned a research space for scientists where “anyone with a mind in the humanities, in science, or in art could contribute to the mental environment of research leading to discoveries in science.” He wanted a space where a scientist could “invite Picasso”.
The result: the Salk Institute, (Louis Kahn)



3. Phyllis Lambert
Daughter of Samuel Bronfman, CEO of Seagram. When it was decided that a tower would be built to house Seagram’s headquarters, Phyllis Lambert personally insisted that a great architect be commissioned for the building. She ended up choosing Mies van der Rohe for his most successful skyscraper tower – the Seagram Building.



4. Deborah Jacobs
Head Librarian for the Seattle Public Library. Together with architects Rem Koolhaas and Joshua Prince-Ramus, visited every new library in America, consulted IT experts on the future of the printed book, to clarify the vision of the library of the 21st century.




5. Francois Mitterand
Francois Mitterrand initiated the French government’s decision to fund and build contemporary, audacious and sometimes controversial buildings to reaffirm France’s cultural leadership in the world. The spectacular result includes I.M. Pei’s Louvre extension glass pyramid, Jean Nouvel’s Institut du Monde Arabe, Bernard Tschumi’s Parc de la Vilette, Christian de Portzamparc’s Cite de Musique, Otto von Spreckleson’s Grande Arche de la Defense,





6. Zhang Xin
CEO of Beijing-based real estate firm SOHO China. As a bold personal initiative, she gathered 12 leading East Asian architects (including Singapore’s Tan Kay Ngee) to each design a villa by the Great Wall in a unique commission that has been compared to the historically important Weissenhof Siedlung housing exposition of the 1930s. For her efforts, she became the first non-architect to win a prize at the Vennice Biennale.



7. Simon Cheong
CEO of Singapore-based developer, SC Global. His commitment to high-quality design (in view of his target market of the high-end residential sector of single professionals) led him to commission signature residential projects, including Chan Soo Khian’s Lincoln Modern and Mok Wei Wei’s Three Three Robin.

(I know it sounds slightly lame, but I had to force in a Singapore example to give ourselves some optimism, much as I find it hard to personally buy into the “commodification of design” phenomena)

Architects, and the work that they did as students

Most of us regard an architectural career as a rite of passage. First is the romance of architecture school, of studio classes, model-making, drawings, charettes, sleepless nights. And then many start work in the real working world, to find it hard to transfer many of the wild (and possibly brilliant) ideas into built reality. When faced with real-world demands of cost, zoning, building code, achieving maximum usable square footage, and mechanical and structural demands, the days of school are inadvertently dismissed as the last place where we can truly play with ideas.

A consequent dichotomy ensues. On one hand, the many architects too deeply entrenched in real-world architecting find it hard to create compelling designs. On the other, the many academic practitioners focused on pursuing personal creative research ideas fail to translate their whimsical graphics, subject to the vagaries of architectural fashion, into real workable buildings (and consequently fail to win real commissions). This begs the question – how then does one inhabit that fine line that separates creative idealism and real-world workability? (knowing that it is the synthesis of the two that leads to a compelling result)

Having raised the above questions, I wanted to bring up a few examples of architects, both in Singapore and abroad, whose professional work were a direct extension from their student work.

Tan Kok Hiang, Forum Architects

Student thesis project: reinterpretation of a mosque

Professional creative work : Assyafah Mosque – a critical work that dislodges itself from the traditional iconography of the mosque and re-adapts itself to the realities of a cosmopolitan city-state.

Mok Wei Wei, W Architects

Student thesis project: re-experiencing the sensuality of Chinese courtyard spaces in sequence (or something to that end)

Professional creative work : the most direct reference is his Morley Road house, which literally recreates strong sequencing and courtyard experiences in a modernist idiom. But the strong element of sequencing in his work can also be discerned in his other work, such as the Da Paolo e Judie restaurant, National Museum extension, and his installation design for the Overseas Chinese exhibition.

Wong Mun Summ, WoHa

Student thesis project: vision of tropical high-density city (or something to that end)

Professional work: Many work that deal with the specifics of tropical climate in architecture, including Moulmein Rise (and its monsoon windows), Singapore Arts School (with its internal linkways, lush vegetation, and inner courtyard spaces), Tan Quee Lan Suites (high-density apartment configurations with inner courtyard spaces) The most direct reference is probably his scheme for the Duxton Plain public housing competition.

Zaha Hadid

Student thesis project: readapting Kazimir Malevich’s “Tektonics” painting (of overlapping geometric forms suggesting a city floating in space) into a 14-storey inhabitable bridge spanning the Thames.

Professional work: the first work that brought her to fame, the competition for the Peak tram station in HK, was an application of the same Malevich-ian formal imagination into architecture.


My point is this, just before we let our student work in our portfolio fade away into a bygone era, we must remember that in each studio project lies the seed of our future design careers, as long as we continue to nurse the ideas developed as students and synthesize them with what we now learn at work. That, coupled with faith, persistence, and idealism, (and experience!) may well produce something truly compelling some years from now.

This leads me to wonder what would be the final result of Sernhong's Pirated City or Hann's Mediaworms and Telepods years from now.

I MET BERNARD TSCHUMI

TU Delft organised a series of lectures: Architecture Positions. Two architects with differing opinions were pit against one another, with a critic as a moderator.

And today was one of the most exciting: Bernard Tschumi one of the forefathers of modern architecture, was in town! Topic of debate: Monumentality and public representation. Hundreds of students streamed into zaal A when the doors opened at 5.45pm. Excitement was in the air as students chatted excitedly. Tschumi was coming!
So what did Tschumi say about monumentality? It is a non-issue as far as he is concerned, because "Architecture is not a knowledge of form, it is a form of knowledge." His emphasis was on the logic and ideas of architecture, and how they could be executed as concepts. Tschumi was pit against Hans Koolhof, a german architect passionate for the facades of old, because in these facades you could see the representation of a face. Tschumi was polite and detached, while Hans Koolhof got slightly peeved with a student's question. Deyan Sujdik was the moderator, but I felt he did a pretty poor job moderating, although he gave a passionate speech in the beginning about architecture and power. His statement: Architects may be better off with megalomaniac dictators than they are now with with liberal democrats.
Although I disagree with Tschumi's stance (he is ignoring the outcome of monumentality by focusing on the process of design; seems to me like a case of closing one eye...just because) I am won over by Tschumi's professionalism and politeness. ps: check out Tschumi's work for the Dominican Republic. Oval overkill!

Agenda: Mediating Platform

Here you go. The inroduction to hunch 10, an entire issue dedicated to "theorizing the practice of mediation". Sorry for the length, take ur time to read it. Enjoy!




Mediators
by Alejandro Zaera-Polo, Dean of Berlage Institute
from hunch 10

Architects are famously unable to communicate, or even to explain themselves. We are, of course, not talking here of architecture as a mere service profession but as an activity that, beyond providing refuge from nature to human life and activity and organizing space, can also stage and structure social protocols, articulate tge public and the private domains, and represent institutions and power structures. The stereotype of the architect described in the media, but also subliminally promoted in schools, is a myopic, authoritarian and arrogant character, driven by a burning desire to implement his visions and obsessions. To become a relevant architect one has to nurture a certain dose of megalomania, look down on reality, and walk around in a state of permanent dissatisfaction. Architects are by default unequipped to listen to the public.

The reality for most of the profession has been much less ideal, and the amount of architecture that is allowed to be “critical” is actually very small. Most of the time, the roles of the architect is to implement the instructions of people with sufficient power to transform physical space to better suit their purpose. Developers, politicians and regulatory bodies hold real power to decide on the built environment, and practicing architects are mere accomplices on their ventures.

As the power to modify the built environment has become increasingly affordable and available to an increasing number of social agents, architects have become enablers rather than visionaries, subject to the decisions of others. In the developed and democratic world, construction, once an expensive and sophisticated technology, is now available to an ever-growing population of agents, and this has radically altered the traditional relationships between the commissioner and the architect. On the one hand, the architect has been removed from responsibilities that have been transferred to regulations or supervisory bodies. These bodies ensure that the deployment of construction technologies do not detract from the public good. And this does not stop at ensuring structural integrity, accessibility and environmental performance, but also the preservation of cultural heritage, and even the assessment of the “beauty” or “quality” of the architectural product.

Due to the progressive transfer of the public project initiatives to the private sector within most political and economic regimes, the capacity to implement architectural policies has been charged to market agents operating effectively within the existing legal frame but generally devoid of an architectural agenda. This mode of production has effectively removed the capacity of implementing architectural agendas both from the architects and the commissioners. The productive relationship between Michelangelo and Lorenzo de Medici, Nehru and Corbusier, or Niemeyer and Kubicek is now reduced to very small portions of the market as the construction of the environment is decided generally by faceless corporations and implemented by faceless consultants in a neural, risk-averse and heavily regulated legal frame.

However, as democratic governance, technological advances and market forces increasingly erase the possibility of a true architectural program, both from the architects and their commissioners, the opportunities to direct the built environment are re-emerging in a growing intermediate domain to which we are dedicating this issue of hunch. The rise of a new population of agents that we have called mediators is the phenomenon we have set out to elucidate here.

Mediators operate within the democratization of the decision-making processes in the built environment. As construction technology becomes affordable for increasing numbers of agents and sectors of the population, governmental bodies are forced to exponentially regulate construction activities, and also become interested in utilizing building for political goals. Within the pervasive democratic system, brokering the deals between political powers and the construction industry has reached increasing levels of complexity that require specialists to interface with a growing number of stakeholders in the process. Since architects have proved to be totally dysfunctional in playing this role, a new breed of operators has emerged in the industry as a specific and effective practice- a new domain where far-reaching effects can be achieved.

It is common for commissions today to include a composite of clients, often mixed public-private organizations, with no clear architectural program but full of architectural expectation. The mounting demand for change in contemporary cities has substantially reduced the strategic capacity of those empowered with commissioning capacity- be it elected politicians or the company CEO- and rendered architectural utopias as inadequate vehicles for effective transformation.

What is relevant about mediators is that, in the best cases, they cannot afford to be entirely subservient to either a status quo usually represented by the client, or to the utopian drive, usually represented by the architect. They must move between both. Mediators need to develop a certain program and count on stable architects- often involuntary creators of the mediator’s vision- capable tot implement it. At the same time, the mediator’s program needs to be understandable to those empowered to make decisions, and is therefore contaminated, bastardized, street-wise and definitely anti-utopian.

Mediators fill the missing link between an ever-growing architectural public and clientele and the architects’ hermetic collective. Mediators are often architects themselves, but have developed specialized listening skills, their antennae enabling them to interpret the needs of individuals, organizations, or entire populations, and to translate needs into guidelines for architects. They often perform as matchmakers between a particular client or problem and a particular architect. Mediators help the public understand what architects can offer, how crucial architecture is and how it should be done. They operate as opinion-makers through a variety of means and media, and often with a greater influence than both politicians and architects. If mediators are well-informed, their opinion is hardly neutral. Their role requires them to be passionate about architecture and to often act as collectors of architects they coach and promote. Mediators have stables of architects they deploy when necessary or push forward in competitions. It’s usually better to have a mediator in charge than a bunch of bureaucrats going by the book with absolute neutrality and without an architectural program.

The mediators phenomenon has a global reach. And like other global processes, it too has evolved local varieties contingent on local cultures. The European climate has perhaps proven to be the most favorable site for the evolution of this species, probably owing to the strength of the public sector, an entrenched urban tradition, and possibly a historically enlightened public. European mediators are often grown from ranks of critics, journalists and academics. A proof of the remaining importance of ideology and public-ness in the European city is one of the most fertile milieus for mediators has been architectural magazines and cultural institutes. One could distinguish Jean-Louis Cohen during his period as a director of the IFA, Jose Luis Mateo as a director of Quaderns, Vittorio Magnano Lampugnani at the helm of Domus, Hans van Dijk in Archis or Ricky Burdett at the Architectural Foundation as characters who were able to develop a particular take on architecture and, in certain cases, assembles a consistent group of architects they coaches and promoted throughout their magazines, their roles as jurors and advisors to public administrations, and other commissioning bodies. Others have also emerged from the broadsheets, such as Luis Fernandez-Galiano and Dejan Sudjic, at El Pais and The Observer respectively, where they have been instrumental in creating broader public awareness and promoting certain approaches to architecture. In Europe, a slightly different breed of mediators, more directly engaged with governmental power, has emerged from public service. The cases of Jose Antonio Acebilio in Barcelona, Hans Stimmann in Berlin or Maarten Schmitt in Groningen are examples of non-elected technocrats who have succeed to implement incredibly ambitious programs of urban regeneration, previously reserved only for elected politicians or developers, and, most importantly, loaded with the strongest kind of architectural ideology rather than with neutral technocratic strategies.

In the US, while the climate has been generally less fertile, there are a few figures who have managed to steer meager public fund into architecture and eventually hit it off with a major patron. In America, mediators are generally less public than in Europe, as the public dimension of architecture is still less developed and the intellectual and public debates are often disconnected from city governance and the construction industry. Mediation across these areas is a difficult task. Developers have lost their appetite for the visions that Portman or Hines had had in the past and are generally skeptical about architecture. Consequently, mediators in America are restricted to articulate the exchanges between public institutions with architectural ambitions and practices of a critical edge, operating more often as lobbies than as orchestrators. Their public profile is much less prominent than that of their European counterparts.

One of the first American mediators is obviously Phyllis Lambert, where, for biographical reasons, the client and the ideologue coincide in the same person. Phyllis Lambert started her career literally as a client in the construction of the Seagram Building and evolved into a philanthropist and institution-builder with the creation of the Canadian Center for Architecture. American mediators cannot afford to sustain an ideological stance like their European counterparts and usually ground their operation in a cultural or academic institution or in the press, as professional debate is very detached from the local construction industry decision-making processes.

The most powerful mediators in the US are by far those connected to the media, and the only mass media in America with an interest in architecture seems to be The New York Times. Paul Goldberger and Herbert Muschamp have been important forces in lobbying for certain architects and certain commissions, but still much less effective than their European counterparts at producing political effects, possibly due to the lack of ideological consistency in their critique.

On a different order of influence, the most fertile ground for American mediators have been the curators of a few institutions. The Museum of Modern Art, The Wexner Center, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art have been probably the most effective promoters of architectural public debate in the US, producing debate in the US, producing local mediators with an ideological program, but still very disengaged from the real powers that shape American cities.

Asia is currently the area where the disengagement between public architectural culture and the built environment is more acute, and where public awareness and debate on the city and architecture is less present. This is due to a strong local tradition that identifies the arhictect with the builder rather than considering architecture a theoretical discipline. In Asia, mediation happens through the materiality of the construction and generally the only agents entitled to discuss architecture publicly, and to advise politicians or industry captains, are those few well-recognized architects that, after establishing themselves as successful technicians, have been allowed to develop an attitude to confront politicians with wider issues.

While I must admit that, except for Japan and Korea, my knowledge of the ground is limited and I may be mussing important data, I am certain that the most advanced place in terms of mediation is Japan. During the years of the “bubble economy,” a local specimen, locale called “producer” emerged generally from the private publishing or curatorial sectors. Producers were basically charged to administer excess. While everyday practical problems were solved efficiently by what is probably the most sophisticated construction industry in the world, progressive clients called in the “producers” to generate a controlled disruption in the hope of yielding innovation. Japanese mediators were not articulating relationship between political power, the public and construction programs, like in Europe, nor between institutional power and the professional debate like in the US. The most important skill of Japanese mediators was to communicate with outsider, rather than addressing the subject of the local built environment. Many “experimental” projects were given to foreign architects, as they were usually unaware of the sophistication of the systems developed by local contactors, and had a higher capacity to ignore local conventions. Mediators usually the only ones in the industry able to communicate with them, and to defend their work from the clients themselves by creating an area of impunity around the projects they managed. Shozo Baba, the former director of Schinkenchiku, and Fran Kitagawa, from the Art Front Gallery, are probably the best example of this breed in Japan. After the bubble economy, the “producers” seem to have lost ground as the public interest in architecture through public projects has paradoxically led to their demise, as experimentation is now driven by small and enlightened private owners with enough knowledge to give small projects to experimental architects but not enough cash or interest to pay for mediation.


Despite the growing importance and scale of the practice, architecture’s mediators have not yet been recognized as specific agents in the building industry. Nobody has offered them a tribune upon which to explain their opinions, programs, ambitions, and tribulations as a collective. This publication, primarily based on the lecture series with the same title held at The Berlage Institute in Rotterdam during Spring 2004/2005, is a first attempt to theorize this practice of mediation.

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The role of mediator is definitely not a safety net to fall back on. Instead I see the act of mediation in line with re:Act's philosophy of advocating architecture for the "public good". I hope re:Act can gradually develop into a mediating platform for SouthEast Asia, actively promoting architecture through inter-disciplinary collaboration, governmental and public engagenment, debate and education (Xchange, Xecute, Xplore). This is exaclty why re:Act was set up in the beginning.

In any case, the platform cannot be neutral. Architecture for humanity cannot be the main agenda, for it is the ethical basis upon which the discipline is founded, preceding the existence of the discipline. The question is HOW can we do it.

MEDIATOR is what Asia needs

Today I met the 'Species' (Hunch No. 10, 9).

Like other of his kind, he is trained in Architecture, but does not do design work now. He is by no means close to giving up architecture, but in fact loves it too much, at least enough to make him decide that he wants to devote the rest of his career advocating architecture and getting it built. He is usually hired by the owner, resposible for not only making sure the owner get what he wants, but also that the money is well-spent on good design. The architects love him too of course, for he is taking care of all the dirty works that they don't want to deal with, like convincing the client and coaxing the contractors. He is the architecture's MEDIATOR (11), John Mass.



John Mass, the owner's representative for SANAA's Glass Pavilion of The Toledo Museum of Art and a graduate of Cooper, was here to share with us the battle of construction of the amazing glass structure. Needless to say, the recount of the fight was filled with juicy details like how everything that could possibly go wrong went wrong and how everything was built except those shown drawings. However, I am not going to elaborate the story here because it is worth another story on its own, and more importantly, I realise his service is exactly what Singapore if not Asia (except Japan) needs, in order to avoid the unfortunate disaster of the IR design selection and SG missing the chance of putting itself on the architectural world map from happening again.

People of money and power and project have to realise at one point that efficiency and cost cannot be the sole determining factor in building. These two criteria are crucial if it is a means to achieve better humanity or architectural ends, but is deadly if it is the end itself. It's about time to start factoring in the 'soft cost' incurred due imcompetancy in design or construction management. Quoting John, "The difference between a good piece of realised architecture work and a bad one is definitely not in the cost. Piano's High Museum in Atlanta costs about 1000 per square foor, Morgan Library in NY was 800, SANAA's New Museum is estimated to be 500, but they paid only 300 for The Toledo Glass Pavilion." Appreciation for design doesn't cost a lot, and ironically ended more cost-efficient than the projects that set out to be cost efficient, and in fact the value add and quality that the good piece of work adds to the urban life is priceless.

But how do we expect the policy and decision makers to know if their in-house representatives are too caught up with admin work and the design archiects are either too busy or simply unequiped at selling their designs and making things happen. That is why we need MEDIATOR to "fill the missing link between the ever-growing architectural public and clientele and the architects' hermetic collective" (9), having developed "specialized listening skills, their antennae enabling them to interpret the needs of individuals, organizations, or entire populations, and to translate needs into guidelines for architects" (9).

John's agency shares a relatively small piece of limelight despite having the above mentioned projects happend. To fight relentlessly day in day out for someone else's design is no easy task. You need more than the technical skills involved- you need a big selfless heart, and endless of belief and appreciation for the art itself. It is not surprising why Ricky Burdett said the following when commenting on mediating The Tate Modern project architecture in london: "If u've got the talent, the ego, and the ability to be a great designer, you probably don't end up doing what I do because you want to design things" (42).

So, I asked, "What motivates you to go on fighting everyday, for your job is built upon the conflicts of different interest groups? Don't you ever get tired of fighting?" To this, he said, "You know what, whenever I feel tired I just have to think that I have contributed something to Toledo and made it a better place, even if it is only slightly."

Frankly, the title 'MEDIATOR' only describes their job, their importance is no less than the key stone in the Roman Arch, and teh tarik in my life.


ps: check out HUNCH no. 10, an entire issue dedicated to the Mediators.
pps: Mediator seems like the perfect profession for someone who doesn't like design or who can't design, but is too deep into it or too late to quit. it is tailored made for those who love or know archi too much to quit, but not enough to want to focus on theory or design to become a critic.

Two inter-locking hi-rise apartments, and one master.

Pearl's Bank apartments (ArchUrban Architects,1976) and Lincoln Modern (Chan Soo Khian, 2004). I thought it would be interesting to place these two apartments side-by-side, even though both are separated by almost thirty years.

Both apartments have inter-locking configurations, though Pearl's Bank uses a horizontal-T configuration, whereas Lincoln Modern uses an L-shaped configuration. Coincidentally, in terms of client/patronage, both projects were catered to "upmarket" residents selling proximity to the city, spectacular views, and "commodified design".

Even more importantly, both pay homage to that one and only master (of the "five points" fame) who designed that canonical apartment block.

Pearl's Bank exterior facade.
Note the different fenestration/facade treatment for the floor in the middle. This leads me to suspect that the mid-level point is programmed with public amenities. (Just like in the second-last image)

Section perspective of an apartment unit at Pearl's Bank.
(Note the different fenestration treatment between the bedroom and living rooms.
That explains the pattern of the exterior facade.)

The Lincoln Modern.
The way the L-shaped apartment units are interlocked can probably be read from the facade. (Too bad sections are nowhere to be found.)

But, there was only one true master who conjured the original vision.

Unite d'Habitation, Marseilles. (Le Corbusier, 1952) In all its penta-pointal glory.
(Also, note the difference in fenestration in the middle of the block, where
there are shops, offices, a hotel, and an internal circulation "street". )

And that is Ronald, bathed in the Marseille sun, standing atop the "fifth point"
of this building. (i.e. the roof terrace)

I count myself so fortunate to have spent a night in this masterpiece.

The Art of Architecture

This article was published in Business Times on 20 Jan 2007. I thought it was an interesting insight into the motivations and aspirations of a world-reknown architect whose first building was built only when he was 54! It inspired me in certain ways, to push on in what I believe architecture is to me, perhaps it might bring some encouragement to you too!


Daniel Libeskind tells PARVATHI NAYAR why he regards architecture as 'the mother of the arts'

WHEN Berlin's Jewish Museum finally opened in 2001, its startling zigzag form, zinc exteriors, and dramatic interplay of solids and voids attracted vast public interest and generous critical plaudits. There were 200,000 visitors in the first two months alone. It was a great success that made the architect's name, but the really interesting details are that it was the architect's first building and that he was already 54 years old.

'He was a late bloomer,' says Nina Libeskind about her superstar architect husband.

Architecture isn't a profession of quick returns. 'An architect is a marathon runner not a sprinter,' chuckles Daniel Libeskind, who was in town to launch the exhibition Between, Beside, Beyond at the Singapore Art Museum which features 16 of his key works, and to launch the condo he is building for Keppel Land, called Reflections At Keppel Bay.

'Many run out of breath and drop out,' he says, continuing the marathon metaphor, 'but those who know how to time themselves can reach a goal - which is often very elusive. Architectural projects of grand complexity take a long time. Also, I have worked on a lot of projects that are particularly difficult - not necessarily architecturally, but socially or politically, like the Jewish Museum or Ground Zero.'

If the former laid the foundation of his fame, the latter catapulted him to stratospheric levels. When Studio Daniel Libeskind was selected as the design team of the new World Trade Center site in 2003, the architect became a household name in the West.

It has been a pretty eventful ride since.

Memory Foundations - as the World Trade Center master plans are called - have attracted more than its share of controversy about Libeskind suing the site's developer, Larry Silverstein; differences of opinion between Libeskind and David Childs, the architect of the site's proposed centrepiece, the Freedom Tower; the seemingly endless delays in starting construction; and, most critically, the final plan being very different from that conceived by Libeskind.

'Don't listen to architecture critics,' says Libeskind affably, noting that what is being built now looks remarkably like his original master plan. 'The first beams for the Freedom Tower were placed in December, the slurry wall is being readied, new streets are being created, the flanking office buildings have been presented exactly as I had them in my composition. I'm really excited it is actually under construction. I see it from my office window every day, and it's going to be something inspiring. What emerges there is not simply another piece of real estate but something about the spirit of New York that rises to the sky in an optimistic way.'

As to Freedom Tower itself, 'I'm not the architect of that tower but it follows very closely my ideas. It is standing exactly where I wanted it to be, and is 1,776 feet, which will symbolise the year of American independence. It has what I required, platforms at the original World Trade Center height, so people can see what it was like then, as well as a torch-like element at its apogee.'

The torch at the top means that how the Freedom Tower will look from the water will have resonances with the Statue of Liberty - and this links back in time to Libeskind's first viewing of the torch-bearing lady when he was arriving by boat as a young immigrant to the US.

Born in Poland in 1946 as the son of Holocaust survivors, Libeskind emigrated to the US when he was 13 years old, and attended the Bronx High School of Science. Architecture was not the arena of Libeskind's first display of excellence; he had been a child prodigy and virtuoso accordion player, and studied music in Israel on the America-Israel Cultural Foundation Scholarship. At the urging of Isaac Stern, he switched from the accordion to the piano. He continued to play the piano in the Bronx, and also pursued mathematics for a while, but in the 1970s traded it all in for architecture.

Even before he built his first building, when he was studying, teaching and writing, 'I always thought I was doing architecture. Architecture is bigger than just building a building. When I started on the path I didn't have a goal, but it was my own path; I started with drawings, investigations of history and archaeology - and along the path also found opportunities to build buildings and design cities.'

Libeskind was known within the architectural circles for his multidisciplinary approach, so it was no surprise that when he started to build, the buildings ranged from museums to universities, shopping centres and homes, or that he has designed opera sets and has set up an object design studio. Currently, Libeskind has ambitious ongoing projects round the world such as the Fiera Milano in Italy and Hong Kong's Creative Media Centre.

Or, closer to home, Reflections At Keppel Bay, which Libeskind likens to a musical composition. Situated on 84,000 sq m of land, the residential complex will consist of six dramatically curved skyscrapers with skybridges, and 11 blocks of low-rise villas.

The Keppel development may be Libeskind's first residential site in Asia, but the first residential project he ever undertook was part of his gigantic Westside project for leisure and shopping, currently being built in Brunnen, Switzerland. The 60-year-old architect says: 'It's a huge multi-dimensional, mixed use development that radically reinvents the concepts of entertainment and shopping in 21st century life. I suggested that homes for the elderly should be part of this complex: Where else is better for the elderly than where the young people are?'

But if you think building homes is low down on his list of priorities: 'There's nothing more challenging than a residential building. It's not about designing a zappy space that works for partygoers but a place where people spend their lives. Every element of the project has to have a spirit of care. It's not disposable. It's no coincidence that the dwelling - not the museum or city hall - is the source of architecture. We judge cities not just by their great monumental spaces, but how people live in them.'

'What I do in Singapore is part of that belief.'

His own home is 'very modest, a loft in Tribeca, New York. It is very simple, modern, contemporary, a bare space that is also pleasant. We don't have much clutter in the house. I'm not nostalgic about keeping things, but it has the things I love: Books, pieces of furniture like a Mies lounge, and the little things I was given by my kids like a good-luck Buddha they bought in Chinatown. We still have a teenager - my daughter Rachel - living at home; sometimes when Rachel's friends visit they say it is like a movie set, does anyone actually live here?'

More on his Tribeca apartment: 'Some would say it's a very cool place with its grey Italian stone floor and soft white walls and lots of black, grey and red; I love red. I took out all the old windows and replaced it with very, very large windows that have hardly any mullions. Because it's also about how it is located vis-a vis New York; a great building is not just for itself but how the inside is related to the outside.'

Recently Libeskind was appointed by the State Department as the first Ambassador of Culture for Architecture. One tour of duty took him to India last year. He went with his two sons, travelling all over Northern India. It was his first trip there, but 'I'm a great fan of Indian philosophy and literature so I felt I had 'visited' India before. I spoke to large groups of students about architecture and about what they are doing. It was a very moving experience.'

So architecture has brought him all sorts of rewards; still, does he miss trading music for architecture?

As it turns out, music is an integral part of his life in many ways. For starters, he listens to music a lot. His tastes in music are 'eclectic, from classical to ethnic', and the presence of his teenage daughter means that it's not just Bach that plays in the Libeskind household. He chuckles: 'Yes sometimes I have to listen to rap and navigate through commercial music, to find that there are some great things there too, a great voice, for example.'

What's more, he is currently relooking the architecture of the piano. 'An old German family-owned company came to me and asked me to redesign the grand piano, and I accepted. They - and I - saw no reason why the piano should have this 17th century form. The project started a few years ago, and is now under way. It will take a bit of time because it's not just about redesigning the casing, but how a piano operates. I wanted to design a piano that not just a contemporary player would enjoy, but the great pianists like Glenn Gould or Horowitz would want to play.'

'I don't perform any more, it's hard to be a hobby player when you were once a virtuoso.'

Libeskind also sees parallels between architecture, drawing and music; all are 'acoustical'. An architectural drawing has to be conducted, resonate in a certain way and be a successful performance. Before you press the keys of a piano there is a certain impulse, which is no different from the pressure that directs the hand holding a pencil to draw.

'I have always done drawing, there is no 'why', no explanation for such a thing. There is a magic in drawing. It is so deep. It is one of the first artistic activities that human beings ever did, it is the source of writing, construction, architecture.

'The drawings that create a building are not really technical drawings but the artistic hand-drawn conception of what it might be - which later has to be elaborated into a technical drawing. I personally don't use the computer. When I start an architectural project, I draw. Out of the drawing comes an understanding and a relationship to the landscape. The art of architecture is drawing. The building then captures the spirit of the drawing, it isn't just an imitation of the drawing.'

He explains, narrating a lovely incident about another ongoing project, The Crystal, which is the extension to the Royal Ontario Museum in Canada. He did an emotive sketch for The Crystal on the material of choice for all spontaneous, inventive ideas: a napkin. However he put it away, thinking it was an impossible task to actually make a building like his sketch. 'But now when I look at the building - that will open in the summer - it's amazing just how much it does look like that first intuitive sketch.'

Initial emotive sketch of The Crystal

Rendering of actual design

Many architectural projects in today's world - including designs created for unsuccessful bids for architectural competitions - do not get built. Is Libeskind disappointed over his involvement, say, with the unsuccessful bid by Harrah's and Keppel for the integrated resorts project in Singapore, or about the as-yet-unbuilt extension to the Victoria & Albert Museum in London?

He replies: 'I'm not an architect who wants quantities. I never think that we have 'lost' any projects, I don't see it that way. I continue to evoke them, they continue to be alive and part of my work. What I invest in architecture is similar to what I invest into human relationships; if you want something back in return then, no, you don't actually have a relationship.'

In a world shaped by influences that range from technology to terrorism, 'architecture brings stability, not in a rigid form but in its cultural human form. It is part of what is sustainable for human life, it sets the stage for creativity, imagination - and the everyday. Architecture is the horizon we see, the ground we walk on, our orientation of the past to the future. There is a good reason why architecture is called 'the mother of the arts'.

'For architecture is not about itself, it's about everything else, it's about life. Architecture is an artwork,handcrafted; somebody makes these things by hand. Everything matters, from a doorknob to a bathroom tile, from the masterplan to the silhouette; there is nothing which is unimportant. In that sense Mies van der Rohe was wrong, God is not in the details, God is everywhere.'

Copyright © 2005 Singapore Press Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved.

Koolhaas blows a bubble

"...His pavilion is bigger, bolder and more expensive than any of its predecessors....Its roof is a giant, helium-filled, translucent canopy, which will rise and fall depending on weather conditions. When it is cold and windy, it will lie low; but on fine days, the cables holding it down will be loosened, and its bulbous form will rise like a balloon, higher than the gallery itself...it is essentially a joyous extravagance that stretches the definition of built form a little further."

Check out a time-lapse photo of the inflation thereof!

Read more here. More pictures here .