Posts Tagged Cultural trips
‘The surrounding modern buildings show no respect for the Tower of London’
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on January 21, 2012
The iconic 11th-century citadel that is the Tower of London, with its ancient walls, streets, steps and turrets, has been let down by a towering failure of City planners, says Simon Jenkins
Will Self on Trafalgar Square
Jonathan Glancey on the British Museum
Bad news. Unesco may soon strip London's two most prominent tourist sites, Westminster's Parliament Square and the Tower of London in the City of their world heritage status. Chief reason is the towering Shard, which will be western Europe's tallest building, now looming over both of them from its launch pad on the south side of London Bridge. Westminster's grouping of Abbey, Houses of Parliament, Big Ben and Whitehall is probably far enough away to survive the shock. The Tower of London is a different matter.
The rough-and-tumble old citadel has become such a London familiar that few people really know it. William the Conqueror's White Tower still sits nobly in the centre of the composition, sadly deprived of the original limewash that gave it its name. Inside are the original apartments, two chambers to each floor, and a Norman chapel. In the basement is a magnificent armoury museum. This remains the finest 11th-century structure in Britain.
On the river side of the Tower is Traitor's Gate and a suite of medieval chambers fitted out for Henry III (who kept a zoo in the grounds). This mini-palace has been recreated, complete with throne room and peaceful oratory looking out over the Thames – a serene view touched by the sadness of those passing to their deaths beneath.
Within this palace runs the last medieval street in London, a maze of ancient walls, steps and turrets. Here are the Bloody Tower, Raleigh's prison chambers, the Crown Jewels and the "leads" where Princess Elizabeth walked and contemplated death or coronation during the reign of her Catholic half-sister, Mary. The Tower enclave as a whole is a remarkable medieval town within a town. When inside, we can just about lose ourselves in Beefeaters, ravens, blood, guts and history.
Until the 1960s Tower Hill, overlooking the tower itself, was surrounded by the buildings, mostly warehouses, of a working Georgian and Victorian city. Most eye-catching of all, Tower Bridge, designed by the City architect, Horace Jones, in 1886, rose downstream in deference to the tower itself. The most famous bascule bridge in the world and still working, it perfectly complements the battlements and vigour of the Conqueror's fortress. Visitors can climb it and look down on river and city beneath, getting a closer and more evocative view than from the big wheel upstream.
That is about it. As Unesco rightly suggests, no city in Europe has shown less concern for the setting of its historic buildings than London. St Katherine's Dock just downstream of the bridge has been partly restored, but its tower facade is wrecked by an overwhelming glass box by Lord Rogers, and by the appalling concrete Tower Hotel. Whoever allowed this to be put up should be shot, and one day I assume it will be taken down.
Across the river lies the benighted site of warehouses cleared in the 1970s and left fallow as planners argue over what to do next. Had the waterfront been restored, as happened downstream in Wapping, this area would have been yielding rent and jobs for a quarter of a century. That is the true cost of so-called redevelopment.
Directly opposite the Tower is the mayor of London's oval building designed by Lord Foster and described by former mayor Ken Livingstone as a "glass testicle". It lurches strangely towards the river with, to its right, the frigid More London development. Meanwhile, on the north bank upstream of the Tower, is a giant atrium block also by Foster, blundering across the contour.
These buildings show not the slightest respect for the Tower or Tower Bridge. They are monuments only to insipid steel and glass.
• Admission to the Tower of London (0844 482 7799, hrp.org.uk/TowerOfLondon) from £17 adults and £9 children, if booked online
Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist and chairman of the National Trust
Stay in your very own Frank Lloyd Wright house
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on December 17, 2011
Three of Frank Lloyd Wright's iconic houses can be seen on a day trip from Pittsburgh – and there's even the opportunity to spend the night in one of them
Frank Lloyd Wright was coming towards me in his trademark pork-pie hat and opera-goer's cape, frosty eyebrows raised, when I woke up. As a rule I don't dream of world-famous architects – never, so far as I recall, have I dreamed of Frank Gehry or IM Pei – but there were extenuating factors. I'd nodded off over a biography of Wright, reading about how he'd arrive unannounced at a house of his design to see how its owners were treating it. And the house where I lay, the Duncan House, an hour south-east of Pittsburgh, was an actual FLW, one of only half a dozen where Wright-lovers can stay the night.
Left in sole possession, my wife and I struggled that first evening to make ourselves at home. To begin with, we tried going for a walk. The house is at the end of a mile-long private driveway, set amid a 125-acre wooded estate. In October the trees were in their autumn finery, spanning the spectrum from deep red to palest yellow. Climbing a hill, we looked out over the rolling Laurel Highlands, one of Pennsylvania's prettiest landscapes and a favourite getaway for Pittsburghers, before following a trail to a secluded pond. On our return leg, we looked in on the estate's two other houses, both designed by a pupil of Wright's and bearing his influence.
Back at home base, we tried walking around the single-storey house, considering it from every angle: the horizontal bands of bleached mahogany, the gutterless eaves, the stonework of the chimney, and the carport (Wright hated enclosed spaces like garages, attics and basements). Inside the house was a vintage 1950s American kitchen, like the set of Happy Days, but instead of cooking we made a picnic at the living room table. This was our favourite space, the heart of the house with its cathedral roof and fireplace, and the expansive windows that allowed us to sit warmly inside without missing the magnificent foliage. It wasn't until we were ready for bed that we noticed another typical FLW feature – no curtains or blinds on the windows.
So, up at first light, we made the 40-minute drive south through the Laurel Highlands to Fallingwater. Wright built Fallingwater in the 1930s, when he was pushing 70, and such was its impact that he never again lacked for commissions. People have been visiting, photographing and writing about the place ever since but it still has the power to startle at first sight. The family who commissioned Fallingwater, owners of a Pittsburgh department store, anticipated something more conventional: a weekend cabin with a view of the falls. What they got instead was a bravura exercise in modern architecture and engineering – the core of the house resting on boulders with terraces of reinforced concrete cantilevered out over the falls. To their credit, they were content to foot the bill, which, in true Wright style, never ceased to climb.
Seven miles from Fallingwater and now under the ownership of Lord Palumbo, Kentuck Knob is another FLW favourite. Crowning the brow of a hill and shrouded by trees, Kentuck Knob is built around a hexagonal kitchen and its angles just keep getting odder. Wright hated the dark, Victorian houses of his childhood, calling their rooms boxes within boxes; one of his abiding aims was to break down those boxes and blur the line between inside and out. Built for local ice-cream barons, Kentuck Knob achieves these aims with considerable charm. Adding to its appeal, the house and grounds are dotted with modern art – works by Claes Oldenburg, Andy Goldsworthy and Richard Serra – from Lord Palumbo's collection.
Having toured these two houses, we returned for a second night at the Duncan House and found ourselves looking on "our" FLW with fresh eyes. Now that we'd learned a little about Wright's methods and motives, certain things made more sense: the absence of decoration (Wright abhorred "inferior desecrators"); the narrow gallery leading to the bedrooms (a mere passing-through space, to be minimized as far as possible); the built-in shelving; and the division of the house between living areas (spacious and open) and private spaces (smaller and darker, places to sleep and take shelter rather than for living).
FLW houses try to teach their inhabitants how their paternalistic designer would you to live: together, around the fireplace; in harmony with nature; simply and without clutter. If Americans have largely ignored his lessons, holding on to their garages and basements, preferring to live in bigger and bigger boxes on sub-divided estates, that isn't Wright's fault.
The Duncan House is no Fallingwater. In common with the other five Wright houses where you can stay the night (all in the Midwest), it's a Usonian. Usonians, designed and built in the last decades of Wright's life, were prefabricated houses that could be assembled according to one of a dozen blueprints. They were meant to be affordable, bringing good design within reach of middle-class America. (Though affordable was always a very relative term with Wright.)
The only way you'll ever get to experience Fallingwater is on a guided tour. Staying at Duncan House felt a bit like being able to take a Rembrandt home from the gallery – not a major work, a sketch, but a Rembrandt all the same.
We certainly got to like the place and were sorry to leave – perhaps, if we'd been allowed to stay, we'd have become better people! Lingering on our last morning, I took time to flick through the comments book. In the couple of years since the Duncan House opened, Wright aficionados from all over the world have stayed there, adding an extra, personal facet to their FLW tour. It's not cheap but very few were complaining. 'The dream of a lifetime' wrote more than one.
• The Duncan House, 187 Evergreen Lane, Acme (+1 877 833 7829) costs $425 per night (two night minimum); the house sleeps up to six – extra $50 per night for fourth, fifth and sixth guests. Fallingwater, 1491 Mill Run Road, Mill Run, (fallingwater.org; book tours several months in advance). Kentuck Knob, 723 Kentuck Road, Dunbar (kentuckknob.com; advance bookings recommended). Flights from London to Pittsburgh with various US airlines start at around £340, if booked via kayak.co.uk.
Thoroughly modern Miami: art and architecture tours
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on November 19, 2011
Two ways of getting under the skin of Miami's creative scene: a Vespa tour of off-beat arts venues, and a limo ride around the best MiMo (Miami Modernist) architecture
'Do you guys want soup? It's very good – vegetable. I just finished making it ..." It's not the first thing you expect to hear when meeting a cutting-edge collector of American contemporary art, but there's something maternal and unpretentious about Mera Rubell, co-director of the Rubell Family Collection.
I accept, partly to calm my nerves. I've just ridden here on a Vespa – a cool powder-blue one, no less – with Roam Rides, which offers art tours of Miami by Vespa.
There are numerous art galleries and museums in the city, and 2013 will see the opening of the Miami Art Museum (miamiartmuseum.org), designed by Herzog and de Meuron (of Beijing Olympics fame). Next month it will host the 10th Art Basel Miami Beach (1-4 December, artbasel.com).
The Vespa tour is a brilliant way to explore the city's less obvious art scene. Our guide and instructor for the morning is Kit Sullivan, an amateur artist and graffiti fan who aims to show guests off-the-radar galleries and street art projects. The Rubell rarely appears on tourist maps, has very little marketing and attracts just 200 people a week, but it is a personal collection, where the owners often act as guides.
The building was once a holding facility for the Drug Enforcement Administration (storing tonnes of seized cocaine and cash). It's accessed by a huge, caged doorway. Kit points out bullet holes in the wall.
Mera and her husband Donald began their influential collection in the 1960s. It has now grown to almost 6,500 pieces, with 200 on loan across the world. "We were lucky, I guess," smiles Mera. "We had an eye for it. We bought pieces from Francesco Clemente, Keith Haring, and Jean-Michel Basquiat long before anyone had heard of them."
As we wander round the gallery I'm drawn to some privately commissioned Sterling Ruby canvases. With dark nods to American abstract expressionism, Russian constructivism, graffiti and tribal markings, they're powerful and overwhelming. It's hard to believe the beach is just minutes away.
Then we're on the road again. Riding on Miami's wide open roads is pleasurably sedate, and with the sun on my back I gain confidence and speed. Over the engine noise Kit shouts: "I'm going to take you somewhere we're really proud of in Miami. A few years ago, this area was in decline but wait until you see it. We've got something really cool going on."
Wynwood Walls, a once-derelict warehouse district, is being reborn as an arts neighbourhood. Vast grey walls are being transformed by international street artists including Shepard Fairey (the name behind those iconic 2008 Obama images), Os Gemeos from Brazil, Futura from New York and Lady Aiko of Japan. Musicians, painters, actors and poets are all setting up studios here.
On each corner, a piece of street art is taking shape. The artists don't mind us taking photographs but many refuse to speak to visitors and cover their faces. Hawaiian-born Estria, a pioneer of street art and a respected social historian, is more approachable: "A lot of my friends were b-boys and I used to go watch them breakdancing. I kind of fell into it. With hip-hop arts, it's all connected."
He's too modest to mention the Estria Foundation (estria.org), set up with Jeremy LaTrasse, co-founder of Twitter. The organisation was conceived to effect "social change through art" by fundraising and art events.
As he paints, he talks me through some terminology. A "bomb" is an illegal work, "thrown up" fast, often at night. "Slashing" (when an artist "throws up" his tag over a legal piece) is one of the most disrespectful things that can happen in graffiti.
On the way back to the hotel I gawp at the stunning art deco facades of Ocean Drive, and am keen to learn more about the city's architecture. So I book a MiMo (Miami Modernist) tour with Charles J Kropke, an architectural historian who has written a book on MiMo (between overseeing 20 companies and his single-parent family of eight adopted kids).
We will be touring the classics of the future, not this time by Vespa, but like rap-stars – in a limousine with drinks cabinet, leather seats, tinted windows and mirrored ceilings.
Our first stop is the International Inn on the Miami Beach side of 79th Street Causeway. In the unrestored 1956 building, Charles leads us to a shimmering pool: "Just look at those blue opaque tiles. I can see this as an incredible boutique hotel – the way those doors all open on to the pool, that crisp, easy symmetry. It's so Miami."
The Formica counter is a little chipped, but I can picture a vacationing Don Draper in the vintage lounge chair, louchely raising a Martini glass through swirls of cigarette smoke.
Down the road is another off-beat jewel, the New Yorker hotel on Biscayne Boulevard, with pastel bath suites and vintage ceiling fans in every room. "The owners spent 18 months sourcing the original-font nameplates for the bedroom doors," says the receptionist.
We take in motels, garages, diners, ice-cream parlours. The tour is so new that one or two of the owners seem pleasantly surprised to see us.
The Biltmore Hotel is not strictly MiMo, but we make an exception. The 1920s Spanish Revivalist resort with its Moorish tower and sweeping driveway oozes Miami glamour. The enormous, U-shaped pool was groundbreaking in its day and hosted beauty pageants and synchronised swimming displays. We learn that Johnny Weissmuller worked here as a lifeguard and had a penchant for streaking on the job.
There's one more building to see – the Pan Am terminal at Dinner Key, one of the earliest international seaplane airports and a reminder of the glamour of the golden years of aviation, portrayed in the new TV series Pan Am, which started on BBC2 this week. The clattering heels have long fallen silent but the magnificent winged clock stands as a timely reminder of one of Miami's brightest eras.
• The Rubell Family Collection's American Exuberance exhibition runs from 30 November until July 2012 (rfc.museum). Street art scooter tours cost $75pp plus $50 for a two-person scooter (+1 888 760 7626, roamrides.com). Charles J Kropke's tailormade architecture tours from $65-$85pp (+1 305 774 9019, dragonflyexpeditions.com). KLM (klm.com) flies Heathrow-Miami from £401 return. The Morgan Mondrian (+1 305 514 1500, mondrian-miami.com), on South Beach has doubles from $270. Doubles at the New Yorker (hotelnewyorkermiami.com) from $125
Top 10 reasons to love Switzerland
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on October 11, 2011
From lofty mountains to high-end hotels and cutting-edge architecture – 10 reasons for falling for Switzerland, your Favourite European Country in our Travel Awards 2011
Zermatt rebooted
This Matterhorn-cuddling meta-village has such a standing among skiers and mountain climbers that it could have rested on its laurels till the end of time. But Zermatt has added a cool, contemporary edge to its chocolate-box charms. Last December saw the opening of the Backstage Hotel (+41 27 966 6970, backstagehotel.ch, rooms from €250), a boutique inn with rich-kitsch suites designed to within an inch of their lives – beds are on transparent boxes in the centre of the rooms. It has a super-stylish little cinema (with chandeliers) and bar, and the spa is themed not on Buddhism like so many, but on the Christian story of creation. All over town, ultra-luxury designer chalets – fronted with glass and chrome rather than pine and cutesy balconies – are springing up, while the traditional Hotel Europe (+41 27 966 2700, europe-zermatt.ch, rooms from €225) has unveiled an airy new modern wing, complete with bijou spa. Come dinnertime in the resort, the big story is Restaurant Heimberg (+41 27 967 8484, heimberg-zermatt.ch, three-course dinner from CHF74 – £52), a menu-free high-end restaurant where supermodel-esque staff interview guests about their tastes before serving personalised multiple-course feasts. Or opt for gourmet mountain hut Chez Vrony (+41 27 967 2552, chezvrony.ch).
Fresh Basel
The oldest and most important contemporary art fair in the world, Art Basel (artbasel.com, 13-17 June 2012) is the tip of the iceberg in Switzerland's third-largest city. The permanent collection at Fondation Beyeler (fondationbeyeler.ch) bristles with Giacomettis, Picassos, Monets and Bacons, while the Kunstmuseum (kunstmuseumbasel.ch) houses the world's oldest public art collection, and its largest collection of Holbeins. A 30-minute bus ride takes you across the German border to Riehen and the Vitra Design Museum (design-museum.de) home to buildings by Zaha Hadid and Tadao Ando, or take a tram to the Gotheanum (goetheanum.org) in neighbouring Dornach. The centre of Rudolph Steiner's anthroposophy movement, this vast, visionary 1928 structure in cast concrete is built without a single right angle and is rich in sculptural forms, murals and stained glass.
Master strokes
You're never more than 20km from a lake or river in Switzerland, and the Swiss keep their H2O extraordinarily clean, so even in the centre of its busiest cities, pretty much any river or lake is ripe for the dipping. Zurich tops the lido tables, with 18 outdoor bathing areas (zuerich.com), many of which morph into funky, artsy bars by night, but Geneva also has its posh pontoons, complete with sauna and hammams, in the form of Bains des Paquis (bains-des-paquis.ch). And both Basel's Rhine and Bern's Aare rivers throng with paddling punters in summer, some even commute to work this way.
Oases with oomph
There's nothing much you can teach the Swiss about water-based wellness. They have a 2,000-year history of tapping the country's abundant thermal springs, but never stop reinventing the idea. Among the most sumptuous spas are those of Hotel Therme in Vals (+41 81 926 8961, therme-vals.ch, admission €31), an austere-glam grotto carved into the rock by Peter Zumthor, the Swiss architect behind this year's Serpentine Pavilion in Hyde Park, and Tschuggen Bergoase (+41 81 378 9999, tschuggen.ch, half-day £46) in Arosa, whose spooky glass spinnakers shooting from the mountainside flood the space with light. New kid on the block since last spring is the huge spa at the Eden Roc (+41 91 785 7171, edenroc.ch, half-day £35) in Ascona, whose mosaic- and stone-covered walls in shades of blue and grey reflect the colours of Lake Maggiore, a loofah's throw away.
La dolce Helvetia
Switzerland's Italian-speaking region is its sunniest, and the cantons that border Lake Maggiore in the south-east boast balmy climes, lush sub-tropical flora and a laid-back riviera lifestyle fuelled by Italia-tinged cuisine. Home to lotus blossoms and giant sequoias, the stunning botanical garden on San Pancrazio, one of the lake's two Brissago Islands (isolebrissago.ch) is a must-see, as is the vibrant city of Lugano (lugano-tourism.ch). And while no self-respecting adrenalinista would miss the chance to recreate 007's Goldeneye bungee jump at the Verzasca dam, the tranquil, hamlet-studded and largely hotel-free valleys of Verzasca (verzasca.ch) and Maggia (vallemaggia.ch) are the real finds here. There is just a sprinkling of unpretentious, reasonably priced lodgings in villages such as Brione and Gerra – you may just be the only visitors in the valley.
Ski crowd-free
If you like your pistes crowd-free and your powder plentiful, the undercelebrated resorts of Adelboden (adelboden.ch), Andermatt (andermatt.ch) and Val D'Anniviers (sierre-anniviers.ch) are where you should point your ski tips. Quaint weathered chalets and barns are the norm here, rather than shiny hotels and busy bars, and while the marked runs are mainly in the intermediate range, there's a wealth of off-piste action in trees, powder fields and long, north-facing valleys which hold their snow beautifully. Andermatt – where Elvis learned to ski, fact fans – recently caught the eye of Egyptian tycoon Samih Sawiris. He has very commercial plans for its future, so don't delay – get there while it's, er, cold.
Arty architecture
For all their yodelling, alpenhorns and cowbells, the Swiss are no slouches when it comes to pushing the boundaries of design and architecture. Barely a year has passed of late without some ultramodern landmark building springing up – whether on an idyllic mountainside, as in the case of Mario Botta's tiny but striking 1996 church of San Giovanni Battistta in Mogno, or in the heart of a city, such as Frank Gehry's Novartis Campus building, which opened in Basel in 2009, and Renzo Piano's seductively undulating Zentrum Paul Klee (paulkleezentrum.ch) of 2005 in Bern. Most recently, the Rolex Learning Centre (rolexlearningcenter.ch) in Lausanne, a spaceship of a building by Japanese architects SANAA won Wallpaper* magazine's Best New Public Building award 2011.
Diamond digs
Switzerland's diversity is reflected as much in the range of accommodation as anywhere else. Where do you fancy hanging your hat? In Lausanne's 19th-century Château d'Ouchy (+41 21 331 3232, chateaudouchy.ch, rooms from £235), in a Mongolian yurt high above Lake Geneva on the edge of Rochers de Naye (goldenpass.ch) 2,000m above sea level, or in the unique La Claustra, (+41 91 880 5055, schau-mal.com), a luxury hotel in a converted artillery bunker bored deep into the San Gottardo mountain. At the other end of the scale, and a comfort to those fearing the all-slaying power of today's Swiss franc, the country's hostels are among the world's best – take a bow Grindelwald (youthhostel.ch), recently voted the world's cleanest. And stays in the haylofts of working farms (bauernhof-ferien.ch), starting at as little as £7 a night, are proof that for all its banking muscle and corporate polish, Switzerland is still more than happy to share its rustic roots.
Life in the slow lane
While tour operators such as Black Tomato (blacktomato.co.uk) and Swiss Safari (swisssafari.com) offer sports cars to rent if you want to cruise some great driving roads in millionaire style, those who prefer their transport low-carbon also qualify for superstar treatment. SwitzerlandMobility (schweizmobil.ch), an organisation promoting non-motorised traffic, has created local, regional and national networks of signposted routes for hikers, cyclists, mountain bikers, roller skaters and canoeists. Many routes are integrated with public transport so you can cover plenty of ground, there are options for bike rental, overnight accommodation and transport of luggage, and you can plan your next move on the go with an iPhone app.
Express yourself
"Sorry I'm late – my train was delayed," is a not an excuse you tend to hear in Switzerland. And apart from being the centrepiece of the country's mind-bogglingly efficient integrated transport system, the Swiss rail network includes some of the most dazzling routes on the planet. Linking Chur with Tirano, just over the border in Italy, and fitted with panoramic windows, the Bernina Express (rhb.ch/Bernina-Express) rises on an old stone viaduct to pass forests, plunging cliffs and the Morteratsch glacier, taking in 55 tunnels, 196 bridges and a peak altitude of 2253m. It's only the third railway route in the world to have Unesco world heritage status.
• This article was amended on 11 October 2011 to correct the original version which stated the ski resort of Val d'Anniviers was in the Bernese Oberland. It is in Valais
Open House: take a nosey around some of London’s most interesting buildings – in pictures
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on September 8, 2011
A record 784 London buildings and public spaces will be showcased in next weekend's (17-18 September) Open House, a celebration of the capital's architecture. Here's a small taster of what you'll be able to see
Serpentine pavillion 2011: ‘I hope people relax here’ – video
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on June 30, 2011
Peter Zumthor, the Swiss architect behind this year's Serpentine pavilion, on creating a secluded sanctuary garden in the centre of London
Guggenheim plans extension in Spanish nature reserve
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on June 30, 2010
Local Basque officials rail against decision taken in New York to place new Guggenheim in nature reserve
The Guggenheim Museum has become the emblem of the northern Spanish city of Bilbao and its main tourist attraction, but now attempts to spread its magic by building an extension in a nearby nature reserve have run into fierce opposition.
Provincial authorities want to call an international competition for a museum extension in the bucolic surroundings of the coastal Urdaibai Biosphere Reserve, 25 miles from Bilbao, hoping it will help boost the local economy in the same way the Guggenheim helped Bilbao.
"People in Urdaibai are worried because unemployment is growing and traditional industries are in decline. The museum would be a great boost," said Andoni Ortuzar, local head of the Basque Nationalist party.
The move has provoked concern that authorities might choose to place a building as loud and intrusive as the main museum, designed by Frank Gehry, in the unspoilt surroundings of a nature park which boasts some of Spain's finest surfing beaches. It has also run into the opposition of the regional Basque government, which has threatened to veto a competition.
The project has the enthusiastic backing of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, which also runs museums in New York, Berlin, Venice and Abu Dhabi. The foundation's director, Richard Armstrong, told a recent conference that he wanted the Urdaibai extension to become the "first important museum of the 21st century".
The foundation, however, sees the extension as very different from the dazzling building that towers over the River Nervion in Bilbao. "It would not be an architectural icon, but a landscape one," Armstrong said.
"The idea is to repeat the success, but not the model," added the Bilbao Guggenheim director, Juan Ignacio Vidarte.
The plan aims to raze a summer camp built in 1925 in the village of Sukarrieta and replace it with "an innovative ecological museum", with an emphasis on the "creative process rather than the finished product", according to the Guggenheim chief curator, Nancy Spector.
Critics have accused the Guggenheim of looking for a free new museum, given that the Urdaibai building would be paid for by local taxpayers.
Some local commentators already complain that the big decisions affecting the Bilbao Guggenheim are made in New York. "In the really important decisions the Basque and provincial governments have only been there to give their approval to what is decided in New York," said a former adviser to the museum, Javier González de Durana.
Provincial authorities said they still hoped to persuade the Basque regional government to go ahead with the architectural competition and that, if they did not get support, they would postpone it until a new government was elected.
Hancox: images from past and present
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on June 26, 2010
The Moore family has lived at Hancox, a large, Tudor house in Sussex, for five generations
Head for Valencia fishermen’s quarter – before the bulldozers get there
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on May 7, 2010
Valencia has developed into one of Spain's coolest cities but, as bulldozers threaten one of its oldest and most atmospheric barrios, what is the price of such rapid progress?
"To be alone in Valencia," theatre critic Kenneth Tynan quoted an American as saying, "is to be permanently 20 minutes this side of suicide."
Spain's third-largest city has come a long way since Tynan himself dubbed it the "world capital of anti-tourism" 40 years ago. The old quarter has been tarted up, Santiago Calatrava's space-age fantasy, the Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias, has been virtually completed, the America's Cup sailed into town in 2007, and it hosted a Formula One grand prix a year later.
From being a slightly forlorn and forgotten sister in the Spanish family, it became a hot destination.
With so much new-found pride in their city, it was easy to imagine that Valencians would never again commit the architectural crimes of the past, that the knee-jerk cementing of the coastline and construction of characterless apartment blocks was a thing of painful memory.
We were wrong.
If you are in the Valencia area this year, be sure to visit the old fishermen's quarter, El Cabanyal. This working-class jewel of art-nouveau style – officially a "protected historical zone" – may not exist in its present form for much longer. If the city hall planners get their way, bulldozers will continue punching a large hole through the middle of it to extend a modern avenue from the city centre to the sea. Residents have protested vociferously, and the highest court in the country – the Tribunal Constitucional – has ordered a stop to the demolition, but Valencia's Mayor, Rita Barberá, has insisted she'll go ahead.
In existence since the 13th century, El Cabanyal has become the common term for what are in fact three neighbourhoods stretching north from the port – El Canyamelar, El Cabanyal and Cap de França – and owes its name to the rows of thatched fishermen's cabins, also known as barracas, that used to line the beachfront. The remains of some can be seen today, with their characteristic steep – formerly thatched – roofs.
A major fire in the late 1700s, and the growing affluence of the inhabitants as the port was expanded, meant that most barracas were replaced around the turn of the century by elegant two- and three-storey townhouses. The Moors first brought a ceramic industry to the Valencia area more than 1,000 years ago: drawing on an ancient local tradition of covering facades with brightly coloured tiles, residents finished off their new homes in the styles in fashion at the time.
Art nouveau may be the dominant flavour, but you'll find anything from baroque to eclecticism, and even a few examples of something approaching art deco. Residents will tell you that their grandparents weren't overly concerned with the purity of the design when they were building these houses – that they simply used whatever materials appealed to them. A Mediterranean sensibility to light and colour and a certain degree of keeping up with the Joneses means the area is unique, leading more than one visitor to describe it as "an open-air museum".
Concentrating on maritime shades of blue, green and white, the tiles are often spaced to create a zigzag, or checkerboard pattern, and the effect is vibrant and harmonious. You may find the face of a sea god staring out at you from above a doorway, or a mosaic depiction of pesca dels bous – a kind of dragnet fishing that involved pulling laden boats back on to the beach using oxen, a scene local artist Joaquín Sorolla depicted in some of his impressionist paintings.
This is a barrio for taking a slow stroll through, criss-crossing from one street to another, and getting to know what is still a working community with a strong sense of identity. Although El Cabanyal has officially been part of the city for centuries, the people round here still talk about "going to Valencia" if they are travelling to the city centre.
Start near the port end and wander along Carrer de la Reina. This is the main artery running north to south; all the streets are on a grid system, with the houses oriented east to west to benefit from the cooling easterly winds off the sea in the summer. As you meander along, you'll eventually cross Avinguda Mediterrània, leading from the sea to the indoor market. This is where El Cabanyal proper begins, and the area most affected by the city's plans. It is also where you'll find some of the most enchanting houses.
Find Carrer Barraca, and the streets parallel to it, and let your eyes wander. On Carrer Progrès, look out for No 262, with its turquoise-and-white tiled facade, amphora designs above the windows in mosaic, and griffin-head drains running off the terrace roof. Opposite, No 279, finished in green and white, is more sedate, but no less spectacular. Around the corner on Carrer Padre Luís Navarro, the narrow fronting of No 309 has been covered in modernist tiles with delicate vegetable motifs in green and ochre.
Many of these houses run through from one street to the next. Get chatting with the locals and you may be invited inside for a peek. Large pitch-pine doors open up into living rooms tiled with more intricate designs, with elegantly carved window frames and arched ceilings. You can even stay in one of them: the B&B Cabanyal is on Carrer Josep Benlliure (+34 963 364521. Recently renovated, it is run by a friendly young couple who are more than happy to tell you all you want to know about the local area and its traditions, or they can put you in touch with a group who provide guided walks through the streets. It's also excellent value, starting at just €20pp a night, including breakfast.
(A quick word of warning – thanks to years of official neglect and degradation, this area has become a haven for drug dealers. You're almost certainly safe, but it's best to be aware.)
Good places to eat in the Cabanyal, particularly for fish, are not hard to find. The Casa Montaña (Carrer Josep Benlliure 69) is a former bodega that has become one of the best-known restaurants/tapas bars in the city, not least for its vast wine cellar (20,000 bottles). El Cabanyal, (Carrer de la Reina 128), which is right in the planner's line of fire, is known to be frequented by the very people who now want to tear it down. Meanwhile Casa Guillermo (Carrer Progrès 15) is famous as the home of the local "anchovy king".
But my favourite is the Bodega La Pascuala (on Carrer Eugènia Viñes 177), just a street away from the beach. Noisy, busy and a bit grimy, it's an authentic neighbourhood bar, with rows of dusty brandy bottles lining the walls, and it offers cheap, working-man-size sandwiches with names such as "The Republican" and the "Bribe-Giver", and delicious paella on Friday lunchtimes. Perfect for filling up after a dip in the sea.
Thankfully, Valencia is today far from being the suicide-inducing city that Tynan knew, but as you knock back a glass of brandy, it's hard not to reflect that the place you're sitting in may soon be a pile of rubble. The future of El Cabanyal looks uncertain, but while it's still standing, visitors have a last chance to explore this unpolished gem on the Mediterranean before it is destroyed for ever.
• The neighbourhood pressure group is Plataforma Salvem el Cabanyal; its members can organise guided walks through the area. Ryanair flies to Valencia from Bournemouth, Bristol, East Midlands, Liverpool and Stansted; easyJet flies from Gatwick
Jason Webster's detective novel set in Valencia, Or the Bull Kills You, will be published by Chatto & Windus in February 2011
What’s the big idea behind the Pompidou-Metz?
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on April 7, 2010
The legendary Paris gallery now has a regional outpost. Will it live up to the name? Jonathan Glancey takes a high-speed train to find out
This is a very strange fish. What first strikes the eye about the Pompidou-Metz is its bizarre, undulating roof. This complex structure, made of no fewer than 10 miles of laminated spruce and larch, is an extraordinary creation, drooping over the concrete, steel and glass core of the building in a seemingly random fashion, as if a passing bird had dropped a giant floppy hat on its head.
Coated in fibreglass, the roof has been shaped as much for practical reasons as for aesthetic ones – to keep sun, rain and snow at bay. It is, I can't help thinking, the building's best and most redeeming feature. Up close and on the inside, concrete, steel and glass take over, while every glance upwards allows another view of this glorious timber form.
The Pompidou Centre in Paris, opened in 1977, is one of the most visited art galleries in the world. So it makes perfect sense that it should choose to expand – creating this regional outpost in Metz, north-east France, a short, sensationally fast (1hr 25mins) TGV ride away from the capital. The Pompidou-Metz, rising up as if from the ocean like a great conch, was meant to open three years ago, but such experimental architecture rarely goes exactly to plan, and I suspect that roof might be to blame. It is now seven years since the design contest was won by a team comprising Shigeru Ban (Tokyo), Jean de Gastines (Paris) and Philip Gumuchdjian (London). Their curious new building, due to open next month, is just two minutes walk from the town's magnificent central station, designed like a castle by German architect Jürgen Kröger in the early 1900s.
Just as the original Pompidou was designed to reinvent a large area of central Paris, so the Pompidou-Metz forms the centrepiece of the city's amphitheatre quarter, a district formerly given over to industry. It is, by any standards, an important building: much cultural pride rides on its curving shoulders, locally and nationally. And for Metz, a city not on the regular tourist beat, here is a chance to reinvent itself.
So does the new gallery pull it off? Beneath that hat, the building at first feels all over the place, its galleries, cafes and intervening public spaces rushing off in all directions. Fishier and fishier. Yet some sort of logic does start to emerge. You enter a lobby, with the usual cafe, bookshop and so on, before entering the forum, a soaring space for displaying large-scale installations (since the advent of Tate Modern's Turbine Hall, every gallery needs one). Above and through this vast space, three huge concrete tubes crisscross, with windows at either end. These are the three principal galleries, reached by stairs or lift in the central 77-metre tall tower, which stands like the mast on a ship, skewering your attention. Each space has been carefully crafted to offer framed views of the city's monuments, including Kröger's fairytale station.
What curious galleries these are: concrete corridors in the air relying, to a great degree, on artificial lighting in an era when it has become commonplace for galleries to demand diffused daylight everywhere. Ban points out the advantages: these galleries are entirely free of columns, or any other interruption, so offer seamless spaces for showcasing art. In any case, this is meant to be as radical a building as the original Pompidou, which stunned the world with its own big idea: wearing its insides outside, it looked for all the world like a brightly painted North Sea oil rig.
The architects were well aware of the extraordinary story of Metz itself when putting their design together. Perilously close to the border with Germany, Metz has changed hands many times. This sense of flux invades the fabric of this new building – in the sense that nothing is wholly certain here and anything, culturally, can happen. Even the funding reflects this flux: although fundamentally a French project, the €69m (£61m) Pompidou-Metz has also been funded by the EU.
Five centuries of masterpieces
Its tall tower leads up to a rooftop cafe-restaurant, a viewing gallery, and a studio intended for live performances, particularly of an experimental type. From up here, the building looks and feels more like the big top of a circus, with views out to new landscaped gardens planted with cherry trees. Throughout, though, this is a strange and ambivalent building. It has the feeling of being a book of bits rather than a considered, tightly edited volume. This may be the point: such spatial oddity and aesthetic uncertainty goes, I think, to the heart of the Pompidou-Metz project. The idea here is that anything might go – that art, architecture and curatorship is an adventure rather than an ordained or highly governed experience.
Like its predecessor, the Pompidou-Metz will take some getting used to. Much, of course, turns on the quality and variety of what goes on show; the first major exhibition will be an ambitious attempt to find out what makes a masterpiece by displaying 800 art works drawn from the past five centuries. What is for sure, though, is that the gallery is not some opportunistic franchise, there to cash in on the Pompidou name, but an art centre in its own right, intended to have an identity very much its own.
Although the product of team work, the design bears many of the hallmarks of Ban, an American-educated Japanese architect celebrated for his work with unexpected materials: houses made from recycled paper tubes, a museum made from 156 shipping containers. Ban has the knack of conjuring inventive buildings from very little. The Pompidou-Metz, and certainly its roof, is very much his kind of structure.
Ban describes it as a "crustacean". When I look back at this provocative new building from the gaping mouth of Metz-Ville station, sunlight flashes off its roof, making it vanish for a moment – as if it had slid back into some primordial sea.
From Venice to Vegas: Other gallery outposts
The idea of creating branches of established museums is not a new one. In 1969, Peggy Guggenheim handed the collections in her Venetian palazzo to her uncle Solomon, making it a European outpost of his famous Frank Lloyd Wright-designed museum in New York. London's Tate opened its first regional outpost, Tate Liverpool, in 1988, in a magnificent warehouse given a makeover by James Stirling. Tate St Ives, designed by Evans and Shalev, followed five years later.
The Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice and the regional Tates are all galleries with their own special characters, collections and displays; it would be unfair to call any of them clones. But what has changed in recent years is the idea of the museum or gallery "franchise": a branch of the Guggenheim, Louvre or Hermitage borrowing shows, most of its ideas and content, and, most importantly, its name from a parent institution.
Since the 1990s, the Guggenheim has opened new branches around the world, even in Las Vegas (a failure: it closed in 2003). Las Vegas was also host to the hybrid Guggenheim Hermitage Museum, which closed in 2008. Frank Gehry designed the eye-popping branch in Bilbao, while future Guggenheims are under construction in Guadalajara, Mexico (due to open in 2011) and Abu Dhabi (Frank Gehry again, 2011). The first major Louvre branch, a giant mushroom designed by Jean Nouvel (below), is taking shape in Abu Dhabi for 2012. In London, the Victoria and Albert museum is preparing to venture beyond the confines of South Kensington: the first V&A "abroad" will be built in Dundee, Scotland.
In architectural terms, the danger is that these can be expensive, over-the-top projects, parachuted into far-off countries without the subtlety that comes from architects working within the confines and discipline of cities they know well. Given carte blanche, there is a tendency to design something a little too wilful or impermanent.