The commercialization of "national" architecture in the United States has led to a consistent decline in the quality and innovation of American exhibitions on the world stage...true to form, the US Pavilion at the Shanghai Expo is another poor showing. Bland, cliche, and worst of all, designed by a Canadian firm ;) Go ahead and check out some of the other entries and be amazed.
From an article in Architecture Magazine by Fred A. Bernstein:
[The U.S. pavilion, which looks like a suburban auto dealership, is just one step up from the prefabs. The pavilion is the result of a 1999 law that makes it hard for the U.S. government to spend money on international expos, a short-sighted bit of isolationism that has led to a series of embarrassments. A nonprofit corporation struggled to raise money to build it, and—with funding unsure until the 11th hour—commissioned a no-frills building by the Canadian architect Clive Grout, whose firm specializes in pavilion and “attraction” design. The building Grout produced isn’t the complete humiliation some predicted: It has a graceful shape and a high-tech sheen. But it’s hardly a beacon of U.S. ingenuity.] Ouch.
Photo: ArtInfo / Ian Zhang
For those of you that live in Atlanta, this may remind you of a few buildings...liiiiiiiike this:
Or this:
Or even THIS [gasp]:
Top building - Northlake Public Library, Tucker, Richard Wittschiebe Hand.
Middle building - Regal 24 Theaters, Doraville.
Bottom building - Georgia Aquarium, Atlanta, Heery International. Photo Courtesy David Zandman.
Don't even get me started on the Atlanta Olympics. We blew our one-shot opportunity to do something really exciting and memorable, and instead we're not left with much except a huge park with no trees in the middle of the city.
ReplyDeleteCommercialization in architecture has its positive and negative aspects...in the last post, I pointed out how some companies are using good efficient design to sell their products. That's fine, the impetus is financial and the company and the public benefit.
The US should adopt a similar philosophy to sell itself, but forget about the money - a pavilion is about expression and innovation. This is an instance where the influence of corporations (especially the largest corporation - the US government) on design is detrimental. Where is Morphosis? Predock? Gehry? Pugh Scarpa? We should spend the money to send our best and brightest.
Or if not our established best, how bout a young, up and coming firm?
ReplyDeleteit's pretty despairing, the US Pavilion. There's no IDEA there, not like the British one or the Dutch...Where's the American version of Bjarke/BIG?!
ReplyDeleteThe Spanish got innovative with their pavilion, made of thousands of what looks like straw floor mats!
They could have done so many things: a temporary Apple store! Peter Bohlin's latest glassy shape...They could have put one of our (discontinued) space shuttles there! Maybe put a little price tag on it as if it were standing in a Shanghai flea market...
Or how about a small modern civic building with a row of electronic voting machines inside...
Right. There's nothing "now" about this building. It lacks that ephemeral quality of the big idea that we find in the sketch, and which gets lost in the arduous and spirit-dampening process of rationalization we have to undertake in this country to get something built. Opportunities like this are rare.
ReplyDeleteYou can condense the design process in this way: idea>conform>build. For this type of project, most removed the "conform" element, because there were no limitations with regard to conformity. In the case of the US with all those government restrictions and funding problems they removed the "idea" part and simply approached the project like any other.