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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Intermediary between folk and fine art

Ethiopian fine art history consists entirely of religious art. Any non-religious art is the result of very recent modern-day art training and art schools.

But, there is an equally strong folk art history of textiles. I think, at its peak, textile/folk art reached the level of art. This is especially visible in the embroidery of dresses and shawls.

The word for embroidery is "tilet". For art it is "tibeb" – Fine Art being "Sine Tibeb". These borders go both by "tilet" and "tibeb". Somehow, the designers have found a term that would describe these borders both as a folk art (tilet) and as an intermediary between folk and fine art (tibeb). This is a clever nomenclature. I think English terminology could make more use of this.

Now for the embroidery. These borders have found a receptacle for art to permeate into the wider society. The primary shape that contained these colors is the diamond.

Here is the example of the border. I will try to analyze it briefly.











First -

There are four diamond shaped colors as part of the overall theme: purple, yellow, red and green.

The first and second rows are the same colors, but flipped. Purple is substituted for yellow, red for green.

These two rows are then repeated for the rest of the design.






In color terms, purple and yellow are opposites, red and green are opposites. So at the very initial design stage in choosing the colors, the designer made a clear aesthetic decision.







Second –

Vertically, the colors have been juxtaposed with their opposing partner – purple with yellow, red with green.



But, to make the design more interesting, each vertical combination was flipped, and joined in rows. Purple-yellow-red-green links with Yellow-purple-green-red.






As complicated as even these four color combinations manage to be, it is in the initial step, where the individual colors were chosen and placed, where this more complicated design becomes possible.


Third –

The eye starts to pick up pockets of color where the diamonds have joined making larger diamonds.









So there is a horizontal, vertical and shape-influenced reading of the design.



Fourth –

The perennial cross shape is clearly decipherable within the design.








Fifth -

How do the viewers/wearers interact with this "tibeb"?

Well, as mentioned above, they pick up on the various shapes and juxtapositions – vertical and horizontal lines, and diamond and cross shapes.

Also, the shawls are not worn in one position. Draping the cloth and the embroidery across the shoulders and around the back allows for the embroidery to be viewed straight across, at an angle, and moving with the person’s body.

Thus it would seem that the shapes, colors and lines are always fluctuating.

So this diamond shape seen at one angle can look quite different at other angles.

Most importantly, the colors which are doing all this enunciation of shape line and direction also play a separate and independent part.

Yellow is pulled brightly forward, green is more subdued and stays in the background, red is less forceful than yellow, and purple isn't as passive as green.




Interacting the "viewer" with the art has gone a step further with this embroidered shawl.

Since the piece is not static, motion, direction of wear, even body size and shape, will all influence the viewer. The initial color choices, with their clever use of color dynamics and juxtapositions act as the important base for the work. The rest is completed by the human body and the human eye.

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The Politics of Design

The design of politics


William Morris, Jasmine Wallpaper

Politics is a popular occupation. By that I mean it requires a mingling with the general public. Even at its most elitist, when Kings and Queens were born into that specific family, its whole being depended on the people. Which went from the lowly peasant who shouted "God save the King" to the conspiring attendants in court. Without people, there would be no politics.

This is the same with art and design. Artists and designers these days conveniently forget this.

William Morris was one such designer who combined his art and his politics almost leaving no discernable line between the two.

He was one of the founders of the British Arts and Crafts movement, which eventually also influenced American designers. He made wallpapers, fabric, carpets, and even published poems and novels.

His lofty insistence on making only hand-crafted objects, eschewing the machine-made demands of the day, earned him a great reputation.

His designs are still popular today.

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The Whimsy of Design

Stig Lindberg


Interlocking leaf design on ceramic plate

Here's a lull (only) from the regular architecture and society blogs I've been posting for a little while now...

I always associate Scandinavian design with light, pastel colors. Perhaps it is their way of dealing with the dark, long winters. Or, as I find the case to be here in Toronto, the sun does shine brightly in winter, and the white snow does give a light, airy glow to the surroundings.

Swedish designer Stig Lindberg's works are currently on display at the National Museum in Sweden. What comes across are whimsical, humorous ceramics and textiles with the ever-present touch of color.

One of the mandates of the Swedish Cooperative Union and Wholesale Society, which bought out the struggling Gustavesberg porcelain factory for whom Lindberg worked, was to produce aesthetically pleasing, high quality products for ordinary consumers. Lindberg was immensely successful with that vision, and the cooperative profitted accordingly.



Vases and cups
[click images to view enlarged photos]

Although designers always take themselves seriously, Lindberg apparently took himself seriously with a dosage of humor and whimsy. His designs come out as playful, elegant and intelligent. With of course the requisite color added in for our bonus.





Clever monochromatic (almost) print, and Stig's pottery on textile
[click images to view enlarged photos]

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Glass at the ROM

Déco Lalique


Bowl [with intertwining fish design], press-moulded opalescent glass, "Martigues" model. French, Lalique, model introduced in 1920.

The Royal Ontario Museum is displaying another type of glass. The elegant, decorative Lalique designs are on view until January 2007, which is around the time when the new Crystal extension will be completed.

The early 20th century designer understood beauty and style. It is a pity that he wasn't the architect of the 21st century glass debacle - The Crystal.

Still, I am thankful that a supporting structure is being built which will hopefully house many more of these Lalique-type exhibitions in the future.

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Commerce over Spirit

The New Royal Ontario Museum Extension


The Crystal addition
[All images can be clicked to view larger ones]

Architects these days are spending an inordinate amount of energy building delicate glass structures. And Daniel Libeskind, chosen for the ROM project, already had a dubious attempt at designing one.

He somehow got unofficially elected to build the “Freedom Tower” where the World Trade Center once stood. But his design later appeared so unstable that a second architect - David Childs - was put in charge to solidify it.



Original Freedom Tower design..............New Freedom Tower design

The Crystal at the ROM will have no such problems. Libeskind opted for sturdy rather than delicate. I would have called it “The Tank”, like Libeskind’s Jewish Museum in Berlin. Libeskind is cultivating some kind of tradition, after all. But unlike the Freedom Tower whose faulty structure only architects could see, we the public will forever wonder if these discombobulated cubes will cave in on us.

I’m astonished that the Berliner Jews allowed their sacred, Biblical sign to be so irreverently disfigured. Libeskind’s various slits for windows are parts and pieces of the lines that make the disjointed Star of David.


Libeskind's Jewish Museum in Berlin

There is no concern for the sacred when designing the ROM extension. But should there be? I don’t know what it is with architects in Toronto. Diamond (of the Toronto Opera House fame) complained about lack of funds, when it is more likely a lack of talent. What is Libeskind’s excuse? I must conclude that at the heart of it is a propensity for selling himself, covering up the real problem which is once again a scarcity of artistic ability. Testament to this is his Freedom Tower debacle.

And it’s not only Toronto that is short-changed. One of the finalists for the New York project came up with a spiralling set of glass towers. The simple symbolics of two towers (joined in the middle) spiralling upwards, with light emitting into the dark heavens above (carrying the souls of the departed?), would have surely garnered the appreciation and thanks of New Yorkers and visitors.


Design by finalists Frederic Schwartz and Rafael Vinoly
from THINK Designs

The THINK blueprint was the original recommendation by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation. Instead, Libeskind’s salesmanship won the show. And he offered New York a faulty tower that's unable to carry the ghosts of the departed to their rightful place.

Once again, his ulterior motive becomes apparent. Salesmanship is easier than spirituality.

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