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12/19/03 - refined master site plans for the world trade center. when did this project turn into silversteins erection of a new tallest building in the world ?
"the often spirited debate"
The new paradigm in architecture. (Theory).
Architectural Review, The, Feb, 2003, by Charles Jencks
" In spite of these problems, the question of whether the new paradigm exists in architecture is worth asking. Do these seven strands hold together, does something unite them? Does the Organi-Tech architecture relate to the fractal, do the enigmatic signifiers emerge out of datascapes? Are they connected to the fashion for folding and blob-architecture, the prevalence of landforms and waves; an iconography based on Gala and cosmogenesis? My view is that the sciences of complexity underlie all these movements, as much as does the computer, while an informing morality has yet to emerge. The answer is mixed. As Nikolaus Pevsner wrote concerning the paradigm of Modernism in nineteenth-century Britain, seven swallows do not necessarily a summer make. True, this maybe a false start, the old paradigm of Modernism can easily reassert its hegemony, as it is lurking behind every Blair and Bush. But a wind is stirring architecture, at least it is the beginning of a shift in theory and practice."
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MVRDV's pavilion at the Hanover Expo 2000 (AR September 2000), a strange and humorous interpretation of modern Dutch culture.
1 Santiago Calatrava, City of Arts and Sciences, Valencia, 1991.2002. Positive organic metaphors but not a fractal grammar. This spectacular urban landscape has many qualities of the new paradigm, and several virtues sods as the sculpted white concrete that profiles the structural forces in exciting and innovative ways, but the repetitive nature of the elements typifies the old way of thinking. Much EcoTech shows this ambivalent aspect - a half step toward the new paradigm.
2 LAB with Hates Smart, Federation Square, Melbourne, 1997-2002. Containing a museum of Australian art, cinemas, a glazed atrium for public meetings and an outdoor amphitheatre for political events of the city, this fractal landform summarizes so much of the new paradigm. Its enigmatic shards suggest a new contextualism: the glass, metal and sandstone of surrounding buildings is here splintered and reassembled in a dynamic way. Like Eisenman's Santiago landform the result is a form of neo-medieval urbanism, the city fabric as site new icon.
3 Norman Foster, Swiss Re Headquarters, London 1996-2002. Originally conceived in an eggform, this blob shape was stretched to resemble many other organic things in addition to the notorious gherkin - a pine cone, pineapple, cucumber and phallus - as well as a missile, bullet and bomb. Not only does this polysemy make it an enigmatic signifier, but the computer-perfected entasis makes it a good example of propositional beauty - the central planned skyscraper with elegant double curves shooting to the sky.
4 Frank Gehry, The New Guggenheim, Bilbao 1993-97. The popular and critical success of this building confirmed the enigmatic signifier as the convention for the contemporary monument. Although critics captured part of the suggested overtones of this building - Constructivist artichoke, fish, mermaid and boat - it is the capacity to mean many more things that makes the enigmatic signifier a multivalent symbol. Metaphors drawn by Madelon Vriesendorp.
5 MVRDV, Dutch Pavilion, EXPO 2000, Hanover. A stack of synthetic ecologies and artificial grounds determined as a statistical representation of the future Dutch landscape. From tise top dowucan be found l)windmills, and water on the artificial lake that flows into 2) sheets of water in an exhibition space and then to 3) a forest grown with high-powered lights. Next level down 4) is an auditorium with projection space, to 5) an agricultural section of smaller plants again artificially lit, to reach 6) a ground floor and grotto of houses and shops. Views and movement are celebrated by the exterior staircase. The sustainability of the closed cycle makes sense, the juxtaposition of gardens and moods is a delight, the remorseless logic humorous, but the question is raised: 'will all of life be managed and pharmed?' No wonder a vocal group in Holland want more wilderness (MVRDV
Foreign Office Architects (FOA): Moussavi & Zaero-Polo, Yokohama International Port Terminal, 1995-2002. The landform building as infrastructure and folded landscape of activities. Like the blob building the landform tends to merge floor, wall and roof in a seamless continuity. The architects do not intend the appropriate ship, water and wave metaphors, but like Mies van der Rohe seek a neutral, generic and technological architecture-yet they allow emergence of the unintended.
6 Foreign Office Architects (FOA): Moussavi & Zaero-Polo, Yokohama International Port Terminal, 1995-2002. The landform building as infrastructure and folded landscape of activities. Like the blob building the landform tends to merge floor, wall and roof in a seamless continuity. The architects do not intend the appropriate ship, water and wave metaphors, but like Mies van der Rohe seek a neutral, generic and technological architecture-yet they allow emergence of the unintended.
7 Daniel Libeskind, Imperial War Museum of the North, Trafford, Manchester, 1999-2002. A symbolic, spiritual and cosmic architecture is still relatively rare but a few architects are trying. Here the globe shattered through conflict is reassembled as three curved shards: the tall Air Shard, marks the entrance, and holds flying instruments of war in its open structure; the Earth Shard is a huge exhibition area with even the floor curving gently, the Water Shard curves down to the adjacent canal and minesweeper moored there. This huge expressive structure is both a giant advertisement, in the sense of Venturi's Duck Building, and an enigmatic signifier of conflict and its resolutions.
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