WRITING, A PRACTICE OF ARCHITECTURE? COMPARATIVE APPROACHES OF TWO ARCHITECTS WITH A PEN

Why write fiction when you are an architect? If the role of professionals in architecture is not, a priori, to write stories, some of them have a privileged relationship with literature. This is the case of Sergio Morales, a Quebec architect (co-founder of Chevalier Morales Architectes, a studio based in Montreal) and Pierre Blondel, a Belgian architect (founder of Pierre Blondel Architectes, a studio based in Ixelles). We went to meet them in order to better understand the place that writing occupies in their practice as designers (1).

 

Practitioners and teachers, they have in common that they take the pen to expand the limits of representation in architecture. Both of them bring fictional characters to life in their projects, particularly in competition situations. When Sergio Morales summoned Nadia Comaneci and revived Jean Drapeau and Youri Gagarin in the competition for the Montreal Planetarium in 2008, Pierre Blondel invented a story between three characters – Lucie, Marc and Simon – who frequent three buildings he designed. This story is set in the difficult commission of a prostitution center and two social housing buildings in Belgium. It also gave its title to the book L.M.S. et autres nouvelles, published in 2011 by Éditions Fourre-Tout of Liège, followed by Professeur Toumani Inc, published in 2019 by Éditions Ercée of Brussels. In addition, each of our architects is the main writer of the project texts of his studio. For Sergio Morales, there are “many voices in one that passes through a pen”. For Pierre Blondel, this work “in the background” is necessary for the good balance of the architect. Both have also won competitions on both sides of the ocean for a literary institution – a “house” of literature in Quebec or a “museum” of literature in Belgium.

 

The Maison de la Littérature de l’Institut canadien de Québec “particularly touches” Sergio Morales, insofar as it brought “a program that was new”. For the architect, it was a testament to the many forms that literature could take at the time of the competition, in 2011: “We wanted to interest young people with everything that is done in the more current world of literature, whether it is poems on Twitter (…). There is writing everywhere, not only in great works of the 19th century or the beginning of the 20th century here”. Pierre Blondel also testifies to his enthusiasm for the Archives et Musée de la Littérature program, which he began in 2006, “a special thing,” which marked the beginning of the fictions around his projects: “This is my entry, if I may say so, into writing. I like reading a lot, but I had never written before. Blondel thus associated each piece of the planned building with a short story and read all the texts during the competition oral: “There was even an epilogue to the competition that described the building twenty or thirty years later, once it was built. Finally, the literature no longer existed or was no longer of interest, so it was decided to transform the entrance into a reception area for a large mall that was to be built later.

 

What then are the reasons that led our two architects to pursue this fictional writing, taking as a setting their future buildings? Pierre Blondel explains them in the introduction to L.M.S. et autres nouvelles. Words allow him to represent and describe space in a form that favors use, authorizes the introduction of sounds and smells, and breathes lightness into a profession marked by administrative red tape and the weight of responsibilities, but also to defy time, by bringing the project to life even though the construction site has not yet begun. He adds that there is “an almost ‘psychoanalytical’ virtue: I write about things when they are really beyond me. When I started working on religion and boxing, it was completely beyond me. And then literature comes in – and literature is an escape. However, the Belgian architect insists that the fictional text, which he usually starts writing at the beginning of the design process, is not directly related to the configuration of the project: “Architecture is always a kind of mystery: you ask yourself why you do architecture and how you manage to do it. (…) Many people have said to me: “Oh yes, that’s great, for you, literature is a tool for architectural design”. No! Unfortunately, no. The design of the project often goes faster than the story itself, and it is only a few “small links”, a few “small connections” that take place from the text to the project. The only case where writing can have this operative value is, for Pierre Blondel, the situation of pedagogical blockage. Asking a student in a deadlock to “tell a story” can help him or her move forward in the project process.

 

The writing occupies a very different place in the projection for Sergio Morales. On the contrary, it is a “design tool” in its own right, “a real driving force in the project”. The writing activity is concomitant, even intrinsic to the design: “The discourse of the project – and this is something that has become obvious to me – is written at the same time as the project”. He insists: “There is not the discourse before, then the project after”. Moreover, this writing that transforms the project is a narrative that is always in motion: “Sometimes it can be written afterwards, in retrospection – we rewrite the discourse. The architect “images” the project as much as he writes it. The text constitutes in fact “a way of approaching the context which is more creative and imaginative, which is that of going to understand, the history the events, the accidents of emotional nature which tint the places”. The words sculpt, the pen already configures the building in the making: “Writing is like a can opener, it serves to open the project to an original reading. A design tool as powerful as the sketch, the three-dimensional image or the model, writing in a competition situation retains a certain specificity, according to Sergio Morales: “For this exercise, we have to sit down, think, organize our ideas, make sure we are clear. It’s not really creative writing, but there is something that appears in the text that feeds us. The characters introduced in the stories of the architect are so many “voices to be heard”, which constitute the primary function of writing according to Sergio Morales, “that of a channel of transmission to the object, that is to say that what is written in the end, it would be nice to be able to read it in the building”.

 

As to whether architectural writing is self-conscious, that is to say, whether there is writing tinged with disciplinary specificity in architecture, our two architects remain cautious. Pierre Blondel considers that fictional writing is singular in that it relieves the architect of financial and legal responsibilities: “Writing is a light thing. It takes as much time as architecture – you have to reread a hundred times – but it’s different. Yet he notes that his writing does have something “architectural” about it, its structure sometimes akin to pictorial composition or mirror construction: “What I’ve noticed – and what several people have pointed out to me – is that a lot of the short stories and stories are very strongly ‘constructed. For example, Berger, is a story composed with several characters that must lead to a final tableau. It is a choral writing where each one has his part in the edifice and must, at some point, participate in what will be this final”. Sergio Morales considers that he writes texts in architecture as he would write texts called “literary”: “I would say that it is not an architectural writing as such, it is just a fiction that is built and is fed by a project in the making.

 

In answer to our initial question – why write fiction when you are an architect? – we could say that if architects write fictions around the architectural project, it is because this one is already, by essence, fictional (2). Our comparison highlights two ways of approaching writing in architecture. On the side of Sergio Morales, we can speak of a productive writing that is intrinsic to the exercise of architecture. This textuality is addressed to certain people who need to be convinced, and not only for the pleasure of writing. A real design tool, it is operative and performative. The text reconfigures the building in the process of being made. We can therefore speak of a writing of the project. For Pierre Blondel, the writing is more independent, accompanying, even parallel to the exercise of the project. More like writing “for oneself”, it participates in the architect’s equilibrium and does not follow the same temporality as the project in the process of being woven. It constitutes an escape, a step back. Its prescription makes it possible to solve a blockage in a student. It also gained its autonomy compared to the buildings in the making, since it exists in the form of published works – two “literary buildings”. We will then speak of writing as a project. The status of writing in a competition situation remains to be determined. Is it a function of the designer, or is it a side activity? Are there juxtapositions or collisions between architecture and literature? To use Roland Barthes’ expression (3), is the architect with a pen an “écrivant” or an “écrivain” (4)?

  1. The fragments of quotations in quotation marks in this post are transcripts of interviews conducted respectively with Sergio Morales and Pierre Blondel by Zoom in the spring of 2021.
  2. According to Jean-Pierre Boutinet, the paradigm of any project is that of an object that is both real and mental: “Every building constructed expresses in a certain way the realization of a project or at least of an intention that it has endeavored at a certain time to concretize. The project is thus the obligatory passage towards the realization of the architectural work. This last, once completed is on its side the translation more or less faithful of an old project which anticipated it but does not exist any more “, in Anthropologie du projet, Presses Universitaires de France, Paris, 2012 (first edition 1990), p.189
  3. Roland Barthes, “Écrivains et écrivants”, in Essais critiques, Seuil, 1964
  4. See the beautiful reflection proposed by Jean-Louis Cohen on the occasion of a study day at the Collège de France. Architecture and literature: fiction, rhetoric and poetics, May 2021 (replay online).
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ROCOCO, BY FRANÇOIS CHASLIN: AN AWARD-WINNING BOOK ON ARCHITECTURE, WIDELY ACCLAIMED FOR ITS FORM AND CONTENT

Gold Medal in the Book Design category at the European Design Award in Warsaw in 2019, winner of the student selection of the Best Dutch Book Design 2018, and more recently awarded the Architecture Book Prize by the Academy of Architecture in October 2019 (see our post), François Chaslin’s latest book is still being rewarded, in France and internationally.

In Rococo ou drôle d’oiseaux, published by Éditions Non Standard and modestly presented by the author as “entertainment”, Chaslin returns with humour and poetry to the recent controversies that surrounded Le Corbusier. A concise summary warns the reader that he is about to discover “The Le Corbusier affair as seen by one of its protagonists, with considerations on criticism, plagiarism, hogwash and denunciation” (1). But beyond apparent amusement and fable, Chaslin’s verve is also representative of quality writing in architecture, and his commitment is undoubtedly emblematic of a textuality specific to the discipline. The text can, moreover, be understood in turn alone or supported by the author’s drawings, hidden between the pages.

But what are the members of the prize juries looking for: the content – the text, the tropical horizon, even the literary quality? Or the form – the physical medium, the printed matter punctuated by admirable drawings that never cease to amaze us as we cut the paper?

In this award-winning book, the architect-writer depicts a disciplinary universe populated by colourful characters, a small world where proud roosters, croaking crows and cuckoo cuckoo looters intertwine. Such a work had to have a title that would make its mark; in “Prélude”, François Chaslin preferred “Drôles d’oiseaux” (“Funny Birds”), and with good reason: “Distracted booksellers would not present it next to Chopin’s twenty-four preludes or, even worse, in the architecture section, this confidential discipline relegated to a dark corridor, near the unsold stockroom” (2), in short, “where no one ever goes” (3). Books on architecture seem to be sidelined, or at least unknown to the general public – no one seems to read books written by architects; at most, they are leafed through.

In the video presentation of the publication, François Chaslin advises, not without humour, not to read his book in order to be able to talk about it better: “This is something I discovered: you talk much better about a book if you haven’t read it… this is why we could invite people not to buy it and not to read it” (4). To go further, architecture would have little aura or meaning without the text, as the architect and architectural historian Jean-Louis Cohen pointed out when he was awarded an honorary doctorate at the Université de Montréal, “The written word is crucial to the architectural culture that buildings and printed books, whether by architects or critics, constitute inseparably” (5).

In the eyes of François Chaslin, Rococo as a printed book remains “a beautiful object, but not a beautiful book; I don’t like the idea of a beautiful book, nor a book as an object – adds the author – it is a subject, it is a book with a personality” (6). While he was reluctant to add the drawings of birds, which could comment on the text and inject possible irony, Chaslin finally accepted his publisher’s idea by hiding the images in the folds of the book: “You can read the text without ever meeting a bird” (7).

So, let’s ask the question again: What do the jurors value in the prizes awarded to Rococo: the words or the audacity of the layout (8)? In a previous reflection on the Academy of Architecture Book Prizes, we had noted that the literary dimension of the work was targeted, the jury having appreciated its “literary, original and humorous form” (10). But the titles of the two other prizes won by Rococo lead us to believe that the “design” of the book is undoubtedly the element that prevails over textuality. This intuition would be confirmed by the criteria announced for the Best Dutch Book Design 2018 (note that this was the student selection): “the 295 entries were evaluated for their distinctive qualities by a panel of experts looking for outstanding work in aspects such as content, design, image editing, typography, choice of materials, printing and binding” (10).

Finally, with regard to the prize awarded by the European Design Award in Warsaw in 2019, the criteria focus on three areas of visuals: ‘1 – Quality of design, including the use of images, typography; 2 – Creativity, originality and artistic quality; 3 – Relevance, the extent to which the design meets the specific purpose for which it was conceived’ (11). The literary quality of Chaslin’s book would be secondary to image and composition. This observation echoes the observations of Pierre Chabard and Marilena Kourniati in their book Raisons d’écrire: “(…) from the point of view of material form, architects’ books privilege the articulation between text and images, between discourse and itinerary; from the point of view of reading, they are often less read than consulted, traversed in their visual narrative. (…) Indeed, more than writing books, architects know how to make hybrid editorial objects that have the ability to transform themselves to adjust to constantly changing conditions” (12).

 

  • (1) Back cover of the book; Chaslin, François. Rococo, ou drôles d’oiseaux (divertissement), Éditions Non Standard, Paris, 2018
  • (2) Chaslin, François. Rococo, ou drôles d’oiseaux (divertissement), Éditions Non Standard, Paris, 2018, p.32
  • (3) Chaslin, François. Rococo, ou drôles d’oiseaux (divertissement), Éditions Non Standard, Paris, 2018, p.32
  • (4) Transcription of an extract at 5’20 of the Rococo presentation video at the Librairie La Galerne (https://www.lagalerne.com/videos/5988004/details/)
  • (5) Extract from the speech for the honorary doctorate awarded to Professor Jean-Louis Cohen in 2019 (https://nouvelles.umontreal.ca/article/2019/08/28/trois-doctorats-honorifiques-decernes-aux-plus-recentes-collations-des-grades/)
  • (6) Transcript of an extract at 1’46 from the Rococo presentation video at the Librairie La Galerne (https://www.lagalerne.com/videos/5988004/details/)
  • (7) Transcript of an excerpt at 3’00 of the Rococo presentation video at the Librairie La Galerne (https://www.lagalerne.com/videos/5988004/details/)
  • (8) It should be noted that the design of the book is signed by Élodie Boyer and Patrick Doan (https://editions-non-standard.com/books/rococo)
  • (9) See http://academie-architecture.fr/prix-du-livre-darchitecyre-et-du-livre-pour-la-jeunesse-2019/, Note on the Architectural Book Awards (p.4/5), page consulted on 31 October 2019
  • (10) Information found at https://debestverzorgdeboeken.nl/en/news/the-best-dutch-book-designs-of-2018-announced/, accessed February 26, 2020
  • (11) Information found at https://europeandesign.org/ed-awards/rules/, accessed February 26, 2020
  • (12) Pierre Chabard and Marilena Kourniati, Raisons d’écrire. Livres d’architectes 1945-1999, Éditions de la Villette, Paris, 2013, p.11

 

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PARADOXES OF HERITAGE AWARD

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Evolution of award titles related to heritage issues in Quebec (2009-2019)

What should we think of awards of excellence for heritage transformations, particularly in the Quebec context?  According to the recurrence of this type of distinction in the contemporary landscape of architectural awards, heritage would be one of the canonical categories of architectural excellence. Despite their number, the impressive variability in the nature of the buildings awarded these awards seems to be equalled only by their titles. In Canada, the categories judged range from preservation to heritage conservation, to restoration, extension or renovation as one might legitimately expect. On the other hand, it is curious to see notions that seem as far removed from heritage as recycling, sustainable development, or innovation rewarding intervention on the existing. Contrary to what we will call “programmatic” awards that reward buildings with specific functions, these “heritage” awards can be granted to any type of architectural intervention, as long as it concerns a built site, whether or not it has a historical value.

This terminological vagueness could evoke the famous lecture given by the language philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein in 1932 at the University of Cambridge (1) where, in desperation to define the term “game” according to the entirety of the productions it covers, he came to the conclusion that this concept refers less to a common essence than to family likenesses. In fact, if all the artefacts likely to correspond to this family name have fundamentally no common characteristics, they are very similar from one generation to the next: A resembles B, which admits another characteristic in common with C, and so on.  In other words, the multiple productions of the discipline that we do not hesitate to call “heritage” have relationships that are sometimes as distorted as the very definition of the word and the different values to which it refers.

Well known to historians, restorers and architects, these values were described for the first time in 1903 by Alois Reigl in a report commissioned by the Central Commission for Historic Monuments in Austria: the now famous Modern Cult of Monuments (2). In this text, Riegl distinguishes between two categories of value attributed to historical monuments and to heritage in general: the ” commemorative values” (Erinnerungszerte) and the “present values” (Gegenwartswerte). For Riegl, these values do not compete with each other and regularly overlap. His decomposition was based on a pragmatic and political objective in that it was primarily intended to provide a basis for legislation and then recommendations for restoration.

However, this distinction seems to be at the origin of the multiplication of titles among the organizations that proposed to distribute award and thus to categorize the awarded projects. For example, in 2009, the Ordre des Architectes du Québec already dissociated reconversion, embodied by so-called “recycling” awards that essentially rewarded the consideration of contemporary utilitarian value, from conservation and restoration, which referred instead to the values of memory – the age-value and historical value.

Although this binary perception of the disciplines of restoration seemed adequate for the organization until 2015, the titles of its mentions seem to be in perpetual questioning. As of 2013, the term “recycling” will take a back seat to designate interventions of high contemporary utilitarian value, but will be coupled with a sustainable development mention, which rewards the same type of building, more or less.

The 2017 edition sees a major upheaval within these categories and this division disappears in favour of the very neutral Mise en valeur du Patrimoine, awarded that year to the renovation of the Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier by Atelier TAG + Jodoin Lamarre Pratte architects in consortium. The OAQ Grand Prix will be awarded to the Maison de la littérature de Québec, a project by the Chevalier Morales agency whose heritage quality is now attested. Although the project was praised by the Order for its consideration of religious heritage – even more so than for the qualities of its plan in relation to its program – the project was nevertheless awarded in the cultural building category. At the same time, the sustainable development mention, which has been recurring since 2013, was changed to a green building mention for this edition, rewarding in particular a project to recycle industrial buildings without demolition.

In 2020, the OAQ will retain the category of Heritage Development but will divide it into two subgroups which refer to the binary distinction that has disappeared over the past five years: “conservation/restoration” and “conversion/expansion”. By combining these terms under the same category, the OAQ acknowledges the need to combine commemorative and present values. While they always distinguish between dissimilar project practices, they all qualify as “heritage”. In doing so, they are thus closer to the categorization proposed by Opération Patrimoine Montréal (formerly known as the Opération Patrimoine Architectural), which does not reward works by categorizing them, but rewards practices as shown by the action verbs in the award titles: “take care”, “bring back to life”, “know-how”, “make known” and “act together”(3).

The fluctuation of heritage mentions in the awards we observe in the case of the Ordre des Architectes du Québec awards is only an indication of a broader disciplinary problem: that of the definition of heritage and its scope within the architectural disciplinary field. If conservation and restoration practices – even extension or recycling – are as old as the discipline itself, it is natural that vectors of standards representing the profession identify them and reward contemporary productions that they deem exemplary. Nevertheless, it appears that some of these productions have absolutely nothing in common, like the so-called “game” elements observed by Wittgenstein. Consequently, by forcing their inscription within the same taxon, these awards contribute to obscure an already protean definition of heritage much more than to shed light on it as they might suggest at first glance.

  • (1) Marjorie Perloff, Wittgenstein’s ladder: poetic language and the strangeness of the ordinary (Chicago (Ill.) ; University of Chicago Press, 1996). p. 60
  • (2) Alois Riegl, The Modern Cult of Monuments: Its Character and Its Origin. (Cambridge (Mass.): MIT Press, 1982).
  • (3) https://ville.montreal.qc.ca/operationpatrimoine/laureats/2019

Aurélien Catros

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ELEMENTARY SCHOOL IN QUEBEC IN 1964: SAMPLE PLANS FOR INDUSTRIALIZATION

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“Concours pour écoles primaires, Québec, 1964”. Top image, project by Rosen, Caruso, Vecsei, bottom image project by Melvin Charney (see Canadian Competitions Catalogue)

Organized by the government of Quebec, the “provincial architecture competition for elementary school” was launched in the midst of the “quiet revolution”, under the watchful eye of the religious authorities hitherto in charge of education. Traditional schools had to make way for new spatial organizations and a vast educational project began with the publication of the now famous “Parent Report” (1964). What is felt today as the sad memory of the so-called “prefabricated” places of education is probably not what the organizers had foreseen in terms of the renewal of school architecture. The fact remains that the analysis of the jury report shows the disproportionate importance of two criteria that converged on the same principle: identifying new standard plans and verifying that they could accommodate the industrialization of construction. 

Nearly sixty years after its publication, the “Parent Report” is today a historical document, sometimes obsolete. However, at the time of its publication, the report directed by Alphonse-Marie Parent, in 5 volumes of nearly 1500 pages, was published by the Royal Commission on Education between 1963 and 1964 and was a milestone in the “quiet revolution” in Quebec.  It proposed, no more and no less, the creation of a Ministry of Education, compulsory schooling until the age of 16, the creation of “CEGEPs” and, in general, the democratization of higher education. In other words, we are moving from religious education to education for all, as Claude Corbo, former rector of the Université du Québec à Montréal, wrote in 2002.

It is in this vast educational site in Quebec that the “provincial architecture competition for elementary schools” was organized as early as 1964. Its goal was to propose new concepts for elementary schools and was looking for “model plans”. The program – which will appear summary in terms of contemporary “functional and technical programs” (FTP) – included: twelve classrooms, including one kindergarten class, a library, a dining room, a gathering space as well as changing rooms and staff quarters. The clientelism that the academic authorities are sometimes criticized for was already included in the “list of premises”: “Immediate environment: Taking into account the different clienteles: schoolchildren, faculty and the general public. Provide for each of these clienteles to have access to the school either on foot or in motor vehicles. »

Chaired by the architect Jean Damphouse, the jury was composed of the architects Raymond Affleck, Jean Paul Carlhian, Alfred Roth, Victor Prus, and the “designer” (sic in the publications) François Lamy. It should be noted that the jury did not include an expert in education or a representative of the school milieu, but was composed of an industrial designer and five architects, including the famous Alfred Roth, considered the Swiss expert for having contributed to the revival of educational architecture in the 1950s. Assistant to Le Corbusier and then collaborator of Marcel Breuer, representative of the “Neues Bauen” movement, the modernist “new objectivity”, Alfred Roth settled in Zurich and worked regularly with Alvar Aalto.

In other words, the program of the 1964 “Canadian” competition must have seemed elementary to the Swiss modernist. It was asked to take into account the immediate environment, without specifying which one, and three types of classrooms were distinguished according to whether they accommodated 30, 33 or 35 students. It was suggested, for example, that for classrooms of 35 students, during a teaching period, students would be required to use three different methods of work: work in homogeneous groups, work in sub-groups for research, and individual work for further training.

Equipped with such pedagogical refinement, the jury selected 14 projects, according to particularly deterministic criteria, including those of Melvin Charney, Jean Michaud, from the Rosen, Caruso, Vecsei consortium and the Ouellet, Reeves, Guité, Alain consortium. The description of the fourteen projects and the jury’s comments appeared in the April 1965 issue of Architecture-Bâtiment-Construction magazine, and while black and white printed graphic documents are sometimes difficult to read today, the dualism of the jury’s comments is clearly displayed in two columns of lapidary statements listing the “pros” and “cons”.

For one project, the jury emphasized that “its universal character is suitable for possible prefabrication” because its “plan is clear and well-disciplined”, for another, that it “lends itself to expansion” or that “the plan is well organized”, that the “project lends itself to expansion possibilities” or that the “good natural lighting of the classrooms by means of skylights is well designed”. Melvin Charney’s project is credited as an “interesting prefabrication proposal” whose fire stairs are described as “pretentious”. The “difference in levels between the cafeteria and the common room” of the beautiful modernist project by St-Gelais, Tremblay and Tremblay is deplored, while the extreme refinement of the project by Rosen, Caruso, Vecsei, a subtle and skillful mix of borrowings from the architectures of Louis Kahn and Aldo Van Eyck, is considered a “project well studied in all its aspects” but whose “abundance of exterior walls and excess circulation surfaces” leads to fears of “high construction costs”.

The comparative publication of the competition results in April 1965, in the only specialized Quebec magazine at the time, Architecture – Bâtiment – Construction, had a great impact on the imagination of architects for more than a decade, with sometimes questionable results.

There were only a few competitions in the field of education in Canada in the 1960s and 1970s, mainly for universities, and it was not until the late 1980s and especially the 1990s that the aging building stock required new consultations and reflections. These were strongly encouraged, this time, by the numerous studies, mainly sociological, carried out in particular in the Swiss and French contexts. However, in a characteristic way and contrary to the importance of competitions dedicated to school buildings in all European countries, one can legitimately be surprised that schools are not considered as architectural issues in North America.

More on this competition on the Canadian Competitions Catalogue 

Jean-Pierre Chupin

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HENRY N. COBB’S AWARD-WINNING SKYSCRAPERS

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Place Ville Marie in Montréal (1955-62), Henry N. Cobb in his office (February 2019), the John Hancock Tower in Boston (1967-76)

With the passing away of Henry N. Cobb on March 2nd, 2020, North American architecture has lost one of his most respected professionals—a man acclaimed for his designs as well as for his human dimension.

A native of Boston in 1926, and a graduate of Harvard University’s School of Design in 1947. He was exposed to a new Bauhaus-derived pedagogy at the time of Walter Gropius’ direction, but also to other forms of modernist discourse: from the writings of Le Corbusier to the aphorisms of Mies van der Rohe, who famously saw in architecture “powerful ethics as much as an aesthetic.” Gropius put the emphasis on the social potential of high-rise buildings, as illustrated in Cobb’s diploma thesis for a cluster of housing towers. One of his instructors was Ieoh Ming Pei, with whom he would later create a successful architectural firm in New York.

It was on February 19, 2019 that I met Mr. Harry Cobb in his apartment, on the ground-floor of a prewar building on Manhattan’s East 78th Street in. Although I was planning to interview him specifically about his experience in the making of Place Ville Marie in Montréal (1955-62), and his theories on the skyscrapers, the talk gave way to a comparative analysis of Place Ville Marie and the John Hancock Tower, which was built later in Boston (1967-76), and remained the structure of which Harry was the proudest, as shown by all his writings. If the Montreal tower was left without a single award, the Boston one won no less than five awards.

Throughout his professional lifetime, Henry Cobb was either the lead designer, or part of the team of designers, in 18 cases of high-rise buildings (1). These 18 towers received a total of 47 awards. Among them, not more than 6 have Cobb as the lead designer. For the other 12, he was an active member of the team at work on the design, which included 2 architects, except for Palazzo Lombardia in Milan, for which they were 4 of them. Only 5 buildings among these 18 never received an award: 3 in the category of collaborative design and 2 for which he was a solo designer. In the category of collaborative designs, the Bank of China on Bryant Park in New York (2010–16) received a total of 9 awards. In the category of buildings for which Henry Cobb was the solo designer, the John Hancock Tower has a total of five awards. One wonders why the Place Ville Marie ensemble, which has become one of the most iconic landmarks of postwar modernism in Montreal and in fact in Canada, with its characteristic as first cruciform structure combining several programs, never received any recognition.

These two buildings have undoubtedly become turning point page in Cobb’s carrier. Yet, according to the theory he has proposed, these two buildings cannot be considered as skyscrapers, as they don’t really generate a skyline, and don’t “scrape the sky”. Strangely enough, as Harry Cobb affirmed in the February 2019 interview, Place Ville Marie was only “a very large building,” (2). For him, the Montréal scheme was a self-referential building, an autonomous entity governed by internal systems (3). On the other hand, the John Hancock Tower had been shaped by the contingent determinants of its delicate historic context, in particular Henry Hobson Richardson’s Trinity Church.

The John Hancock commission for a skyscraper had been first given to Pei in the 1950s, and he proposed a set of two buildings on Copley Plaza. After the client rejected this scheme in 1966, requesting a single object on the site, Cobb took the responsibility of the design. His initial proposal was unanimously rejected at first by the local community, as it did not address the historical context. Later, it would be submitted to a heated critique of Boston’s public opinion, as the glass façade panels started falling down one after the next. It took complex legal and technical expertise to finally clear the reputation of the architect.

The earliest awards were specifically dedicated to the building itself, but to the materials it used, and to its urban parti. It received the Prestressed Concrete Institute Award in 1973 and the Annual Award on the Highway & Its Environment, for John Hancock Place Garage, in 1976 and its setting in the urban fabric of Boston. In 1983 it received the Harleston Parker Medal of the Boston Society of Architects, dedicated to architects who built monuments or building considered as the beautiful piece of architecture within Boston and its Metropolitan Area. Considering that the reputation of this building had been primarily smeared by the façade fiasco, one wonders whether these awards were not, in the end, some symbolic compensations.

Back to the history of the firm born in 1955, and in which Pei, Cobb and James I. Freed were the founding partners, the Place Ville Marie was unquestionably the first high-rise building erected by the office, under the direct responsibility of Cobb, as Pei was then busy traveling for other urban planning projects. Beyond this division of projects between partners—Freed being particularly engaged in the design of housing—Pei has engaged the building of cultural edifices and of high-rise structures arranged in groups: he assembled for instance three towers framing a plaza at Society Hills in Philadelphia (1964) and University Plaza in New York (1967). It is difficult to ascertain if Cobb was influenced by his senior or whether it went the other way around. It is obvious, however, that the first two designs of Henry N. Cobb had a determining role for the firm at large. The towers for Montréal and then for Boston paved the way for the later award-winning projects of a by now legendary team.

Rest in peace Mr. Henry N. Cobb.

Mandana Bafghinia.

  • 1) https://www.pcf-p.com/projects/type/tall-buildings/
  • 2) Henry N. Cobb, in conversation with Mandana Bafghinia, New York, February 19th, 2019.
  • 3) Henry N. Cobb, Henry N. Cobb: Words & Works 1948–2018: Scenes from a Life in Architecture. New York, The Monacelli Press, 2018.
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BOOK AWARDS OF THE FRENCH ACADEMY OF ARCHITECTURE

In October 2019, on the National Days of Architecture, the Academy of Architecture announced the winning work of its 25th edition of the Book Prize, and the 1st winner of the Book Prize for young people. The Academy Book Prize is annual, and rewards quality architectural works published the previous year, from May to May.

The distinction was created in 1994 by the Academy of Architecture, on an idea by Catherine Seyler and by Gérard Granval, who chaired the institution until 2018. In reaction to the observation that architectural culture is too little known in France despite the attempts to raise awareness deployed by cultural institutions, the mission of this award is to publicize architecture by presenting works of the discipline, whatever the nature of the writing proposed: “The objective of the Book Prize architecture is to enhance any form of architectural culture, whether scholarly, fictional, critical, sensitive or literary, or even committed to the major causes of architectural and urban space ”(1).

The book is therefore considered to be the favored means of provoking interest, a desire for architecture, at all ages. Through the implementation of the Children’s Book Prize, awareness is now spreading to the youth. Varied profiles are invited to participate. Judging by this one condition, that the prize-winning text offers a new perspective on the discipline or that it contributes to it … and that it is of quality, we begin to imagine that the criteria of the competition and the jury reports are likely to inform an understanding of the nature of quality writing in architecture, and even of its possible literary nature (2).

While the Deutsches Architekturmuseum (DAM) Architecture Book Award is based each year on the book’s design, the quality of its materials and its finish, as well as its level of innovation to pass judgment (see our post), the Academy Book Award risks defining quality in architectural writing. The first criterion would consist in “distinguishing a work carrying momentum, a question, a knowledge, a writing carrying meaning with regard to architecture, vis-à-vis history as vis-à-vis visuality” (3).

On this same note on the Architecture Book Awards, the organization is quick to add other criteria, deemed more precise: the theme and the work of the author are valued, although some exceptions may be identified. The writing must be clear, accessible and rigorous. The work must interest a large audience and be easily transmitted. The edition – or the argument of the collection of the work – must be of quality, and its reading must be comfortable. Finally, the criterion relating to the Children’s Book is located at the end of the same list, and relates to the quality of the illustrations, graphics and model (4).

The jury is made up each year of a dozen members from various backgrounds. The 2019 edition brought together 13 personalities. The deliberations took place on October 7, outside the premises of the Academy, at Centre d’architecture et d’urbanisme de Lille. This trip, during a judgment session, was an opportunity for the various players on the architectural scene to meet. The Regional Directorate of Cultural Affairs, the City of Lille, the National Schools of Architecture, the Councils of Architecture, Urbanism and the Environment, the City Workshop, Architecture, Landscape, as well as the corresponding architects of the Academy of Architecture in Hauts de France were thus able to participate in decision-making.

The two Academy prizes were awarded by the Minister of Culture, in the presence of the President of the Academy of Architecture, on October 18, 2019 at the la Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine de Paris. The Architecture Award for Youth received 73 proposals for its first component. Note that all the publishers represented were French, and that the theme of the world was particularly represented (the word appears in 3 titles nominated out of 5). Habiter le monde (Éditions de La Martinière) by Anne Jonas and Lou Rihn was the book which won the prize for the illustrations presented, as well as “for the intelligence of his texts adapted to youth, clear and instructive. and connecting architecture and cities around the world to the diversity of their cultures” (5).

Note that a special Prize was awarded by the jury to Benjamin Mouton for Sens et Renaissance du patrimoine architectural (Éditions des Cendres, Cité de architecture et du Patrimoine – organization and place of the awarding of the prize), welcoming “a business that we would like to teach: the publication of thirty years of teaching on heritage ”(6). The only Book Prize awarded to Rococo (Éditions Non-Standard) by François Chaslin because of its “literary, original and humorous form” which “paints a portrait of his through his personal prism media environment that ignited around Le Corbusier” (7).

The appraisement by a jury of excellence awards of the literary character of an architectural text does not however guarantee that a book having received an award in architectural literature could receive a literary award. Architectural writing has an ambiguous status, as Emmanuel Rubio and Yannis Tsiomis point out in the introduction to the book L’architecte à la plume: “(…) falling under too much specialization for them, escaping too often for those … Perhaps this ambiguity is due to its very origin. In a way, the architect’s writing always occupies a secondary place: very often it accompanies the building, the image; at the very least, it seems to find its legitimacy in this other activity – founding – which precedes and exceeds it” (8). This writing which includes architecture, to paraphrase our two authors, would it not come from a textuality of architecture – in comparison with the materiality of architecture – rather than from a form of literature?

Lucie Palombi

Translated by Jade Swail

(1) See http://academie-architecture.fr/prix-du-livre-darchitecyre-et-du-livre-pour-la-jeunesse-2019/, Note sur les Prix du Livre d’architecture (p.1/5), consulted on October 31st 2019 : « Il s’agit de faire rayonner, par la lecture, la culture architecturale qui manque encore fortement en France. Il faut bien sûr saluer le développement des actions remarquables de sensibilisation (publications, expositions, films, reportages, etc) conduites par les institutions, publiques ou privées, dont c’est la mission, ainsi que les progrès de la connaissance apportés par la recherche. Mais il faut poursuivre l’effort et rendre la valeur et la nécessité de l’architecture plus visibles pour les citoyens, susciter l’envie d’architecture des citoyens ».

(2) See http://academie-architecture.fr/prix-du-livre-darchitecyre-et-du-livre-pour-la-jeunesse-2019/, Note sur les Prix du Livre d’architecture (p.1/5), consulted on October 31st 2019

(3) See http://academie-architecture.fr/prix-du-livre-darchitecyre-et-du-livre-pour-la-jeunesse-2019/, Note sur les Prix du Livre d’architecture (p.1/5), consulted on October 31st 2019  : « Tous les types de regards sont appréciés, sans aucun ostracisme pourvu que l’écrit primé apporte un éclairage particulier ou des connaissances sur l’architecture et qu’il soit de qualité »

(4) See http://academie-architecture.fr/prix-du-livre-darchitecyre-et-du-livre-pour-la-jeunesse-2019/, Note sur les Prix du Livre d’architecture (p.1/5), consulted on October 31st 2019  :

« – On s’attache en premier lieu au thème et on privilégie un travail d’auteur, même si des ouvrages savants issus de travaux d’équipe ont parfois été primés.

– L’écriture doit être claire, accessible et rigoureuse.

– On attend que l’ouvrage ait un pouvoir de transmission ou de conviction et puisse intéresser un large public.

– On est attentif à la qualité de l’édition, le cas échéant à l’argument de la collection, sans oublier les qualités de confort de lecture.

– Pour le Livre pour la jeunesse, la qualité des illustrations, graphisme et maquette. »

(5) See http://academie-architecture.fr/prix-du-livre-darchitecyre-et-du-livre-pour-la-jeunesse-2019/, Note sur les Prix du Livre d’architecture (p.3/5), consulted on October 31st 2019

(6) See http://academie-architecture.fr/prix-du-livre-darchitecyre-et-du-livre-pour-la-jeunesse-2019/, Note sur les Prix du Livre d’architecture (p.4/5), consulted on October 31st 2019

(7) See http://academie-architecture.fr/prix-du-livre-darchitecyre-et-du-livre-pour-la-jeunesse-2019/, Note sur les Prix du Livre d’architecture (p.4/5), consulted on October 31st 2019

(8) See Rubio, Emmanuel et Tsiomis, Yannis, L’architecte à la plume, Éditions de La Villette, Paris, 2019, p.5

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WHEN THE “TOP OF THE ROCK” RECEIVES AN AWARD: EXCELLENCE IN ALTERING THE VIEW

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Rockefeller Center Vintage Travel Brochure (2018)

“The city architect can no more afford to neglect the roofs that continually spread out below him than the country architect can afford to neglect the planting about a house.”(1)

There are only three observation decks on the top of skyscrapers in New York—in chronological order, the Empire State Building, which is a cake-stack top, the Rockefeller Center and the World Trade Center – and only the top of the Rockefeller Center has twice received an award, vouching for the acknowledgement of its excellences.

The observation roof closed in 1986 was reopened in 2005 under the name of the Top of the Rock. In 2006, the firm Gabellini and Sheppard Associates won two AIA awards for its renovation of the whole promenade from the top to the bottom of the Rockefeller Center: The Honor Awards for Interior Architecture and the Honor Award for Historic Preservation. The initial architect was Raymond Hood, under the umbrella of the Associates Architects. In order to understand why this building won those two heritage awards, from preservation to renovation, a retrospective look on its peculiar history is necessary.

Built between 1930 and 1939, the Rockefeller Center made a big change during the Depression, thanks to the initiative of John D. Rockefeller, Jr. It is not a simple building but “a city under one roof.” In order to understand the strategies and tactics that shaped its image, one has to go from the top to bottom, follow the statement of Harvey Wiley Corbett, according to whom towers should be built from the top down. The timeline also starts from the end toward the beginning, sketching out a set of related events that have produced what is today called the “Top of the Rock experience.”

At the beginning of 2000, Tishman Speyer has launched a competition between two firms for the renovation of the top of the Center. Gabellini and Sheppard won against Disney World. The reason to choose the former was their expertise in a landmark, while the latter were renowned for their touristic attractions. On the day of presentation, Shepard decided to show their panels on the 67th floor of the site itself, which was surrounded by mechanical and ductwork. Also, a boxing promoter had made his penthouse on what is now a weather room on the top.

Surprisingly, despite the well-designed panels presented by Gabellini and Sheppard, Tishman Speyer at first has chosen Disney, but after six months, Rob Speyer, the senior managing director of the firm which co-owns Rockefeller Center together with the Crown family of Chicago, announced to Shepard that they had been selected. The Rockefeller Center is not just an attraction but conveys the grandeur of a family. It could be engaged as an attraction in New-York city, but it is definitely not a theme park in the manner of Disney.

The panels presented by Gabellini and Shepard defined three major zones: the concourse, the mezzanine and the top. “Make the Concourse a destination” (2): the lower decks of the 1930s concourse were like a luxury liner. In arranging the entries to the Plaza and into the building, Hood had created a pin-wheeling motion, which generated a certain rhythmic action. In 2005, Gabellini and Shephard created a new entrance on Fifth Avenue. They carved the offices out to make a lobby, combined with a triple-height atrium. The rhythmic action of the past was translated to an elliptical staircase entrance by the top down crystal chandeliers, as if the building itself were inverted.

“The greatest price of height lies in the requirements of efficient vertical circulation” (3): In 1930, Hood had proposed his “Number 27” theory. As each elevator shaft ended, he wrote: “we cut the building back to 27 feet from the core of the building for eliminating every dark corner” (4). He added: “by doing this, we found the instinctive sculptural shape of the building.” In the design of Gabellini and Sheppard is, at the end of each elevator shaft marked by a blue light. It is conceived as a time capsule shot across 65 floors through the original elevator shaft. (5)

“The roof was unquestionably a business enterprise” (6): Hood recognized it as one of the main elements in the design of the ideal city. Another important aspect of Hood’s design was the creation of views. The roofs of the RCA building, completed in 1933, resembled an ocean liner. The notion of “promenade” was suggested. In 2005, the design the summit turned to different optical devices. The frames were fragmented between exterior and interior sections, shaping, in other words, “Grand Viewing Terraces.” Clear optical glass panels now preserve the building’s original façade.

A “Hedonistic urbanism of congestion” (7): There are two revolutions induced by his skyscraper: first the shape which, according to Carol Willis, has broken the mold of the Chrysler and Empire State buildings. The experience of leisure gave place to education. The Top of the Rock doesn’t just provide a lookout enclosed by a fence, like the top of the Empire State Building or enclosed like the World Trade Center. It is an enhanced lighthouse, adorned by crystal to reflect the sky. Its location allows a discovery of Central Park, and a unique view of the surrounding pinnacles of Manhattan’s skyscrapers. In 1939, more than 1.3 million visitors came to the observation roof. In 2019, two million visited the Top of the Rock.

In conclusion, the multiple variable of the economic equation can affect design decisions and tailor the shape of buildings, according to a business logic, but excellence is not a matter of budget and appealing tourist, as the Disney proposal argued, but rather a matter of culture and visual pleasure, as shown by the deck brought to an end. Heritage and landmark preservation are necessary, even when changes are minimal, mentioned Kimberly Sheppard (8) As one sees, sometimes a slight change is worth an award.

In 1939, Hugh Ferriss could stand on the Rock’s parapet at dawn, he saw his “Metropolis of the future” of 1929 rising. (9)

Mandana Bafghinia

  • (1) Raymond Hood, personal writings, quoted by Alan Balfour in Rockefeller Center: Architecture as Theater. New York; Montréal: McGraw-Hill, 1978. p. 49.
  • (2) Daniel Okrent. Great Fortune: The Epic of Rockefeller Center. Penguin Books, 2004, p. 354.
  • (3) Carol Willis. Form Follows Finance: Skyscrapers and Skylines in New York and Chicago. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1995, p. 102.
  • (4) Daniel Okrent. Great Fortune, 357.
  • (5) Gabellini and Sheppard Associates. AIA New York State Convention. Grand Hyatt, New York, October 6, 2007.
  • (6) Daniel Okrent. Great Fortune, p. 354
  • (7) Rem Koolhaas. Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978.
  • (8) Interview with Kimberly Sheppard. 19/02/2019
  • (9) Hugh Ferris. The Metropolis of Tomorrow. New York: Ives Washburn, 1929.
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WHEN THE PHOTO OF THE AWARDED BUILDING CONFIRMS THE PICTURE OF THE COMPETITION MODEL

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The competition for the Toronto City Hall was won in 1958 by Viljo Revell (On the left the model produced for the competition, on the right photography taken by the author in 2015)

The Fort York Visitor Centre as a competition project won in 2009 by Patkau Architects and Kearns Mancini Architects (Top, a digital model produced during the competition, below a photo taken by the author in 2015)

Should we be able to measure the gap between the promise of the image produced during a competition (from a physical or digital model) and a photograph of the awarded building taken from similar angles several years later? In other words: How much should the constructed building look like the model that anticipated its appearance?

Each architectural model falls into the broad scientific category of “models”, while each model is itself a “figure to reproduce” (1). At the crossroads of these two principles, the architectural model should be “a reduced architecture to reproduce” according to varying degrees of fidelity. A designer is always more or less aware of the gap separating these representations from the expected built reality. On the other hand, in competition situations, the model is also a tool for explaining the project or even an argument to win the jury’s approval, which is not necessarily prepared to consider these artifacts with the same critical distance as their designers.

In order to measure the gap between the competition models and the building photographs that they originally represented, it is enlightening to compare two winning competition projects 60 years apart in Toronto: they have been awarded prizes of excellence, confirming their exemplary value and making them “role models”.

The competition for Toronto City Hall was won in 1958 by Vilijo Revell, while the building won an Ontario Association of Architects (OAA) Landmark Award in 1998. The Fort York Visitor Center, the result of a competition won in 2009 by Patkau Architects and Kearns Mancini Architects, was quickly awarded the Canadian Architect Award of Excellence in 2011, followed a few years later by a City of Toronto Urban Design Award and an Honourable Mention for Design Excellence from the Ontario Association of Architects in 2015, just prior to its consecration with a Governor General’s Medal in 2018.

The models of the Toronto City Hall made during the second stage of the competition were required for all competitors: and we know these famous images showing hundreds of models carefully arranged on huge tables so that the jury can examine them. If the photo of the competition model resembles the built project we photographed in 2015, there are several notable differences. The number of arches facing the tower has gone from 3 to 5 and their shapes have been simplified. They have also slid east of the body of water, which was halved. The division of the main building’s floors, which is perfectly regular on the model photographs gives way to wider intermediate and final levels. Finally, the gables of the two towers are less glazed than what the model displayed and thus the project at the competition stage. These differences appear minimal when we recall that this model was produced 7 years before the inauguration of the building in 1965.

The model produced by the winning team during the competition for the Fort York Visitor Center is only presented through the digital images it has produced. If the latter seek to anticipate the photographic representation pursuing objectives like the photograph of the model carried out in the context of the competition for City Hall, it must be kept in mind that these images have certainly been subjected to retouching. In addition to the lack of public and the tired grass banal witnesses of reality, the building’s photography in 2015 also appears very similar to the computer-generated image from a digital modelling from the competition. The translucent volume on the roof appears higher on the image than it will eventually be, while the glazing seems less transparent than announced by the perspective drawing: the difference between the two images of the project is small. The size of certain openings has changed somewhat and the number of corten steel panels has been modified accordingly, but the promised project is very close to the building that will finally be delivered 5 years later, in 2014.

Through these summary comparisons, it appears that the change of support of the models, namely, of the very nature of the architectural models does not necessarily seem to modify the distance that separates the object from the building which it represents: the two cases mentioned admit similarities and differences of the same order. Although the summary comparison of these two projects cannot support any generalization, the models can anticipate the realization and this leaves little doubt about the purpose of the mediations, which both deserve the name of “reduced architecture to reproduce”.

It may be objected that the similarity observed in these diachronic confrontations of perspective views is an exception and that few buildings can boast of always being so close to the original project. Nevertheless, it is clear that these two buildings whose architectural excellence was recognized have reproduced the same feat 60 years apart. One can wonder if this proximity is one of the marks of architectural excellence? Therefore, a good project, according to its etymology, would be a building that would have been precisely “thrown forward” by its model, that is to say, perfectly anticipated.

Unlike models of design, engineering or exhibition that could be respectively named exploratory models, predictive models and descriptive model, the models of competitions, whether they be virtual or physical, are the real models of the project (1) available to architects. Paradoxically, by confusing the latter, they are often the ones who make their own models lie.

Each architectural model falls into the broad scientific category of “models”, while each model is itself a “figure to reproduce”. At the crossroads of these two principles, the architectural model should be “a reduced architecture to reproduce” according to varying degrees of fidelity. A designer is always more or less aware of the gap separating these representations from the expected built reality. On the other hand, in competition situations, the model is also a tool for explaining the project or even an argument to win the jury’s approval, which is not necessarily prepared to consider these artifacts with the same critical distance as their designers.

In order to measure the gap between the competition models and the building photographs that they originally represented, it is enlightening to compare two winning competition projects 60 years apart in Toronto: they have been awarded prizes of excellence, confirming their exemplary value and making them “role models”.

The competition for Toronto City Hall was won in 1958 by Vilijo Revell, while the building won an Ontario Association of Architects (OAA) Landmark Award in 1998. The Fort York Visitor Center, the result of a competition won in 2009 by Patkau Architects and Kearns Mancini Architects, was quickly awarded the Canadian Architect Award of Excellence in 2011, followed a few years later by a City of Toronto Urban Design Award and an Honourable Mention for Design Excellence from the Ontario Association of Architects in 2015, just prior to its consecration with a Governor General’s Medal in 2018.

The models of the Toronto City Hall made during the second stage of the competition were required for all competitors: and we know these famous images showing hundreds of models carefully arranged on huge tables so that the jury can examine them. If the photo of the competition model resembles the built project we photographed in 2015, there are several notable differences. The number of arches facing the tower has gone from 3 to 5 and their shapes have been simplified. They have also slid east of the body of water, which was halved. The division of the main building’s floors, which is perfectly regular on the model photographs gives way to wider intermediate and final levels. Finally, the gables of the two towers are less glazed than what the model displayed and thus the project at the competition stage. These differences appear minimal when we recall that this model was produced 7 years before the inauguration of the building in 1965.

The model produced by the winning team during the competition for the Fort York Visitor Center is only presented through the digital images it has produced. If the latter seek to anticipate the photographic representation pursuing objectives like the photograph of the model carried out in the context of the competition for City Hall, it must be kept in mind that these images have certainly been subjected to retouching. In addition to the lack of public and the tired grass banal witnesses of reality, the building’s photography in 2015 also appears very similar to the computer-generated image from a digital modelling from the competition. The translucent volume on the roof appears higher on the image than it will eventually be, while the glazing seems less transparent than announced by the perspective drawing: the difference between the two images of the project is small. The size of certain openings has changed somewhat and the number of corten steel panels has been modified accordingly, but the promised project is very close to the building that will finally be delivered 5 years later, in 2014.

Through these summary comparisons, it appears that the change of support of the models, namely, of the very nature of the architectural models does not necessarily seem to modify the distance that separates the object from the building which it represents: the two cases mentioned admit similarities and differences of the same order. Although the summary comparison of these two projects cannot support any generalization, the models can anticipate the realization and this leaves little doubt about the purpose of the mediations, which both deserve the name of “reduced architecture to reproduce”.

It may be objected that the similarity observed in these diachronic confrontations of perspective views is an exception and that few buildings can boast of always being so close to the original project. Nevertheless, it is clear that these two buildings whose architectural excellence was recognized have reproduced the same feat 60 years apart. One can wonder if this proximity is one of the marks of architectural excellence? Therefore, a good project, according to its etymology, would be a building that would have been precisely “thrown forward” by its model, that is to say, perfectly anticipated.

Unlike models of design, engineering or exhibition that could be respectively named exploratory models, predictive models and descriptive model, the models of competitions, whether they be virtual or physical, are the real models of the project (2) available to architects. Paradoxically, by confusing the latter, they are often the ones who make their own models lie.

Aurélien Catros

(1) – Rey, Alain. (Éd.), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris, Le Robert, 1998.

(2) – What Marcial Echenique named in the 1970s “planning models”. Echenique, Marcial, Models: A Discussion, Cambridge, University of Cambridge, 1968.

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WHO ARE THE CLIENTS IN AN ARCHITECTURE COMPETITION PROCESS?

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Jury of the Beaubourg Plateau competition, 1971. From left to right: Oscar Niemeyer, Frank Francis, Jean Prouvé, Emile Aillaud, Philip Johnson, and Willem Sandberg

A favourite argument of the fiercest opponents of architectural competitions rests on the importance of the listening relationship, even connivance, between the architects and their clients. The competitions would have the adverse effect of interfering, preventing a balance between the expectations of one and the propositions of the other. In this representation of the approach – yet denied in the long history of these contests – the client would be ultimately largely absent.

This representation, recurrent but biased, tends to forget that the interventions of the clients marks the process: before, during and after the competition. Before, because it is up to the customer to formulate the terms of an order in the form of a program and quality criteria. During, since there are most likely representatives of the client in the jury; we will get back to this. After, because it can also be considered that it is legally up to the client to accept or to refuse the result: this rule being clearly written in most competition rules.

The enumeration of the client’s representatives in a competition is however expressive: the professional advisor, the quality of the competition documents, the members of the jury, the diverse committees, the public presentation devices, etc. Beginning with the professional advisor, who can carry out all the actions necessary on behalf of the client but can also limit his performance to a professional service to the one who pays, in detriment of the public’s interest. For example, can the chief librarian be considered the only client of a contest for a new public library? In all civil and democratic logic, the lambda user of the library, much like the Minister of Culture, would both be legitimate representatives of the client of the public library.

In this coil of responsibilities, typical of spaces and public spaces, the client cannot be confined to one end or the other of the decision-making chain and, paradoxically, all the members of the competing teams could also be considered as potential clients for the public building under study. It is an ability to anticipate the needs – to understand the expectations and the needs of the users – that emerges among all form of architectural empathy.

But in fact, like in theory, the entity that finds itself at the nodal point of the principle of the competition, the one who not only has the right but the obligation to behave as a potential client is simply the “jury of the competition “.

It is shocking to have to remind certain organizers, public and private, that the jury is the representative of the public and must be assembled to embody all the representations of the client. The jury is that “temporary client” to which the design teams submits their projects, in hopes that the process of collective qualitative judgement will be as fair and as representative as possible of all the interests at stake. In other words, the jury is the closest embodiment of an ideal model of the complex “client” entity of a competition for a public building.

That being understood, forming a jury with elected officials is as delicate as introducing an architect whose fame risks mobilizing or inhibiting debates. Even the elected representatives who are legitimate spokespersons of the public, should not impose themselves in a jury to avoid impeding all discussion and therefore all collective judgement by their apparently indisputable representativeness(1). As a general rule, the jury is composed of representatives speaking for the public interest, but some competition rules consider that neither elected officials nor the civil servants should act as members, since they can be subordinated to political or administrative interests all the while forgetting the needs of the general public. The history of competitions is a slow and continuous movement towards the democratic recognition of the public interest: the same way the history of the Internet reflects the tensions between transparent communication and manipulating propaganda.

In a competition database such as the Canadian Competitions Catalogue, the ontological structure of the computer program distinguishes many entities underlying the concept of “individual”. We distinguish for example the project manager, the representative, the professional advisor, the members of the jury, the designers, etc., but in this list the entity “client” is absent, because the logic of a computer system does not suit heterogenous entities.

This reflection, which may seem theoretical, does not signify that clients that choose the process of the competition to realize their projects would easily recognize that they are participating in a collective enterprise: even less in the production of architectural knowledge. But they sometimes happen to consider competitions as a way of communicating with the general public and nowadays it is not rare to encounter situations in which a new representative of the client, the “communication advisor”, will enter the decision-making chain to control the message, sometimes blocking the dissemination of the submitted projects, except, of course, for the winner. This intervention is problematic, since a process designed to preserve the representativeness of the public, as well as transparency, is transformed once more into a black box (2). Access to public understanding of a competition becomes impossible once communication officers – of clients as well as designers – focus on retaining information.

At a time where news – both real and fake – reaches us in real time, it is these exact characteristics of transparency, collective debate and fairness of the competition that determine its capacity to welcome all the interests and the representatives of the client.

It remains to be seen whether these interests are better represented in a call for tenders, where the customer hides somewhere behind spreadsheets and where, in the end, the “lowest bidder” could very well be the true name of the client.

Notes:

  • (1) To make this even clearer, and to use an extreme case, it is not uncommon to see a private client wishing to launch a contest surprised to about not being the only member capable of judging projects, as it is not uncommon to meet certain elected representatives that see themselves as the only legitimate representative of the public. The weight of the French President François Mitterand, in the debatable judgement of some major competitions of the 1980s in Paris, is now well documented and analyzed since the famous critics of François Chaslin (Les Paris de François Mitterand : Histoire des grands projets architecturaux, Gallimard, Paris, 1985) to Laurence Cossé’s work on La Grande Arche (Gallimard, Paris, 2016) twice awarded the price of the Book of Architecture and the François-Mauriac Prize in 2016, not to mention some doctoral theses remarkably documented such as that of Loïse Lenne: “Le temps de l’évènement architectural. Fabrication et mise en scène de tours de bureau et leurs quartiers : la City, la Défense, Francfort”. Thesis directed by Antoine Picon and Pierre Chabard, defended in July 2015, University Paris-Est.
  • (2) As Emmanuel Caille, editor-in-chief of the French newspaper D’A (D’Architectures) explains, in a special issue devoted to the competitions we conducted with him in April 2013, the contests are sometimes seen as essential elements of cities’ communication strategies. (https://www.darchitectures.com/que-savons-nous-des-concours-a1158.html consulté le 26 octobre 2019.)

Jean-Pierre Chupin

Translated by Jade Swail

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THE DEUTSCHES ARCHITEKTURMUSEUM (DAM) BOOK AWARDS

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Since the establishment of the DAM Architectural Book Award in 2008, one hundred and ten books have been granted awards: books that would potentially make for a library of contemporary excellence in architecture. However, these celebrations of writing in architecture seem to spark little reactions, even less so controversies.

October is generally marked by the Frankfurt Book Fair, where the winners of one of the four grand prizes solely dedicated to architecture books are being presented. A jury selects the propositions based on criteria of form and content: “design, ideas, quality of materials and finish, level of innovation and respect of delays” (1). Strictly speaking a “honorary distinction”, awards granted by the German Museum of Architecture does not involve a financial reward, though, as stated by its organizers, these distinctions “arouse more and more reactions” (2) as they believe that, in this period of increasing competition of new mediums of communication, architecture books remain reliable reference material.

All books on architecture with an ISBN published between June 2018 and August 2019 were eligible to compete: works edited for advertisement purposes or online publications and journals were not considered. The books presented to the DAM must match to one of the following categories: building monograph, illustrated books, documentaries (contemporary) history, children’s book, landscape architecture, textbooks, materials science, urbanism, and, finally, “special subject” — without further detail.

When a book is granted an award, his carrier — the person from the publishing house in charge of its dossier — grants their approval for the presentation of the book at the DAM’s kiosk at the Frankfurt Book Fair as well as in many other book fairs across the world through the same organization. The carrier also authorizes the publication of excerpts — several spreads containing text and illustrations — on the DAM’s website. In order to expose the award-winning books at the Frankfurt Book Fair as well as on the fair’s collective German and international stands, between six and ten additional copies must be made available free of charge at the disposition of the DAM by its editors.

The jury of external experts of this 2019 edition was composed of six representative members of many disciplines and book trades: Hendrik Hellige (Frankfurt Book Fair), Micheal Kraus (M Books Verlag publishers), Friedrike von Rauch (photography), Florian Schülter (architect and member of the board of directors of the Society of the Friends of the DAM), Adeline Seidel (journalist) and David Voss (designer). The four internal jurors reinforce the museum’s say over the award: Peter Cachola Schmal (director of the DAM), Anette Becker (curator at the DAM), Oliver Elser (curator at the DAM), Christina Budde (curator at the DAM) — a total jury, internal and external, of an even effective of ten members, five of whom are tied to the German museum.

Around a hundred editors of architecture books responded to the call worldwide. In total, two hundred and twenty-seven propositions were reviewed to determine tenwinning works. In the press release issued in late September (3), rather than the name of the authors, those of the publishers and their associated cities were highlighted.

While much of the competition was international and open to English books, Swiss editors were the most represented (four of ten), followed by Germans editors (three of ten), Belgian editors (two of ten) and Russian editors (one of ten). Half of the books granted an award had an English title. The 2019 Library of Excellence Award of the DAM is thus made up of the following works:

  • Architektur der 1950er bis 1970er Jahre im Ruhrgebiet. Als die Zukunft gebaut wurde / Kettler, Dortmund(Germany)
  • Oil and urbanism / Park Books, Zürich (Switzerland)
  • Bovenbouw Architectuur. Living the Exotic Everyday / Flanders Architecture Institute, Antwerpen (Belgium)
  • Die Welt der Giedions. Sigfried Giedion und Carola Giedion-Welcker im Dialog / Scheidegger & Spiess, Zürich (Switezerland)
  • Léon A Life of Architecture 1899-1990 / Flanders Architecture Institute, Antwerpen (Belgium)
  • Lochergut – Ein Portrait / Quart Verlag, Luzern (Switzerland)
  • Theodor & Otto Froebel. Gartenkultur in Zürich im 19. Jahrhundert / gta Verlag, Zürich (Switzerland)
  • The Object of Zionism. The Architecture of Israel / Spector Books, Leipzig (Germany)
  • Vom Baustoff zum Bauprodukt. Ausbaumaterialien in der Schweiz 1950-1970 / Hirmer Verlag, München(Germany)
  • Veneč. Welcome to the Ideal / Gluschenkoizdat, Moskau (Russia)

Awards dedicated to architectural writing proliferate, as do literary awards. Other than the DAM architectural book awards, the famous Alice Davies Hitchcock Book Awards (1945 — anglophone) as well as the Prix du Livre de l’Académie d’Architecture (1996 — francophone) and the Grand Prix du Livre de la ville de Briey (1994 — francophone) confirm that we no longer only celebrate quality through buildings in architecture: writing is securing a choice place for itself. The momentum of this “economy of prestige” would correspond to the observations of James F. English, with one exception: the prizes dedicated to books on architecture do not seem to face these controversies and “cults of scandal” that reinforce the media coverage of literary awards (4).

Lucie Palombi

Notes:

  • (1) http://www.dam-online.de (page consulted October 10th 2019)
  • (2) See www.dam-online.de (page consulted October 10th 2019)
  • (3) See www.dam-online.de (page consulted October 10th 2019)
  • (4) English, James , The Economy of Prestige. Prizes, Awards and the Circulation of Cultural Value, Harvard University Press, 2005. p.192: « Every new prize is always already scandalous. The question is simply whether it will attract enough attention for this latent scandalousness to become manifest in the public sphere ».

Translated from French by Lucas Cormier-Affleck, October 23rd 2019.

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