Foundations

I Corinthians 3:11-17


A message for all walks of life.

11For no man can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. 12Now if any man builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, 13each man's work will become evident; for the day will show it because it is to be revealed with fire, and the fire itself will test the quality of each man's work. 14If any man's work which he has built on it remains, he will receive a reward. 15If any man's work is burned up, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire. 16Do you not know that you are a temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? 17If any man destroys the temple of God, God will destroy him, for the temple of God is holy, and that is what you are.

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The Errant Architect

In search of the concrete


The National Assembly Building in Dacca Bangladesh, by Louis Kahn

Is architecture the last frontier?

Any self-serving, "artistic" architect can have his day in the field. Once his buildings have been commissioned by the "in crowd", and built, they are there to last. And hundreds, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocent people will get to visit these "emperor has no clothes" structures.

Paintings, on the other hand, go to the single individuals, albeit at exorbitant prices, and no-one else need see them ever again.

So, this is the ultimate conceit of these modern architects. It is a means of forcefully interjecting into society their inner drives and inconclusive ideas.

I think that is why they are such globe-trotters. They cannot commit to a local style, where eventually the inhabitants will demand a building they can relate to.

By shifting geography constantly, they can dot the world's landscape with their inner musings, until they either get rejected, or find another location and move on.

This was how Louis Kahn lived.

His last piece that was built, having taken close to 20 years from design to finished structure, was unsurprisingly in South Asia.

The formidable fort-like National Assembly Building in Bangladesh is another one of those buildings which bear absolutely no relation to the geography, culture and I would venture to say, even the aesthetics of that country.

I would have thought the Bangladeshi would have had more insight than bringing in another foreigner (haven't they been through that already?) to dictate one of the most important buildings of their country.

The National Assembly is where democratic decisions are made, at least in theory. Yet, looking at this building, what comes to mind is a prison.

But then, what we choose is a symptom of who we are. Perhaps it is in the psyche of the Bangladeshi, and let's be fair, of all us modern people, to accept submissively these buildings that get tossed out at us.

Kahn collapsed in a bathroom in New York's Penn Station, and his body was not identified for three days. He had just returned from a trip to India.


The Interior of the National Assembly in Dacca Bangladesh

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Self-expressing Architects

The Turning Torso

Architecture these days seems to be a balancing act, literally.


Toronto's new Royal Ontario Museum

The new Royal Ontario Museum, to be completed in June 2007 (I had last posted that it would have been in January 2007) is one of the latest examples.

Architects these days juggle between engineering, artistic and functional roles. But, they hold on to the artistic the most. And true to modern traditions, that means primarily self-expression.


The Turning Torso

The Turning Torso, designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, is supposed to represent the twisting human body from a drawing that he made. It took four years to complete and was millions (of Swedish currency, I presume) over budget.

In the end, the building looks as incongruous as the new ROM, and just as unstable.

So, what is behind this rush of strange and daunting buildings? I believe it is a disconnection between the architect and his environment, as both the ROM and the Torso testify, and as I wrote in these earlier posts on a number of other buildings.

Geography is of paramount importance in all the arts. Once we start ignoring the reality of our surroundings, what else do we have left but our imaginations? Then any twisted shape and form can take over our buildings.

In a later blog, I will write about one of the most important and spectacular examples of how geography influenced architecture, down to the perfect last stone.

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