The Architecture Thread

Originally Posted by GlenCoe

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would occupy
Where's the listing for this?

Gary Hustwit's third film in his design trilogy (Helvetica, Objectified) is Urbanized:

The third documentary in this trilogy is about the design of cities. Urbanized looks at the issues and strategies behind urban design, featuring some of the world's foremost architects, planners, policymakers, builders, and thinkers. Over half the world's population now lives in an urban area, and 75% will call a city home by 2050. But while some cities are experiencing explosive growth, others are shrinking. The challenges of balancing housing, mobility, public space, civic engagement, economic development, and environmental policy are fast becoming universal concerns. Yet much of the dialogue on these issues is disconnected from the public domain.

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http://urbanizedfilm.com/

I'm looking forward to it, and was pretty ignorant about the specific issues until a landscape architect friend started ranting to me about poor urban design a few years ago.

--Andre

Originally Posted by StephenHero

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If you have a competition for a half billion dollar project @5-10% commission, you're going to get everyone's best proposal and you give each firm's project team at least two-three months of wages and work.

Wait, so these competitions actually pay every firm that is involved? Meaning that a finalist with a losing design still gets paid? I never knew that it worked that way, but I did always wonder how firms with little built work (e.g. Wes Jones, Neil Denari) could afford to pay their staff for basically just entering competitions year-round.

Originally Posted by spertia

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Wait, so these competitions actually pay every firm that is involved? Meaning that a finalist with a losing design still gets paid? I never knew that it worked that way, but I did always wonder how firms with little built work (e.g. Wes Jones, Neil Denari) could afford to pay their staff for basically just entering competitions year-round.
Yes. Only the winner gets the large 5-10% design fee commission (or sometimes a flat sum), but all invited entries get paid. It's not a huge roll of cash, but to attract the top firms like the ones listed, you have to pay up a bit to invite them to get a scheme. It's definitely in their interest to pay for losing schemes because you get better projects out of all the firms. Every so often young inexperienced firms will ask to submit proposals for no fee to get their work out in the public, but established firms don't like to waste time working on projects that risk getting no compensation. Assuming on average there are 5-6 firms invited to compete, the odds of winning aren't great anyway. An all-or-none format creates a professional environment that is too unstable and will keep quality firms away. It's no different from professional golfers and poker players preferring flatter payout structure. Usually the competition board will give a 6-12 week deadline and $10-100k per office depending on the project budget, and that's enough to help pay the team working on the proposal. Usually the design team doing the proposal is a fairly small portion of the overall office, but they're the most important part of the firm's health. A much larger % of most offices (young people) is slaving away at the construction documents for projects already awarded, which is much more labor intensive. Throughout Europe (I'm most familiar with France), almost all public building projects are awarded through blind design competitions. On the whole, it's a more expensive process but it produces much better results. In the U.S., appointed commissions are much more common on all but the most extravagant projects. It's cheaper and the results are inferior.

Three of my favourite forms here in Accra:

The National Theatre, designed by the Chinese architectural firm Taining Cheng & Xianghan Lee and completed in 1992:



The Kwame Nkrumah Memorial, created for Ghana's First President and First Prime Minister in Accra Central. It represents a tree cut down before its time. The last 3 photographs are by Edward Barnieh



The Netherlands Embassy, designed by Zdeněk Zavřel; I think it was completed in 2007:

I saw that building a while back and really loved it. If I remember correctly some guy left his estate for the renovation of an old industrial building (bread factory?) into a gallery in a small town. It's really well done.

Originally Posted by StephenHero

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I can't see how this is anything but dumb. Most of these major young firms are struggling to remain fully staffed after ballooning their offices in the pre-recession starchitecture bubble. If you have a competition for a half billion dollar project @5-10% commission, you're going to get everyone's best proposal and you give each firm's project team at least two-three months of wages and work. Unless you specifically have an A+ list architect in mind (H&deM, Gehry, OMA, Zumthor, Renzo, Hadid, or Holl) why wouldn't you just let all five or six go at it in a competition to give yourself some options? You can still rig it anyway. Snohetta is a quality firm, but they're definitely not immune from an underwhelming scheme, and most of their portfolio is circulation-intensive infrastructure or high rises, something an art museum is definitely not.
SFMOMA's last architectural selection went so well...

Originally Posted by Aaron

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Where's the listing for this?

I think it's been taken off the market. It was listed at $25,000,000. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/09/re...e/09deal1.html

Originally Posted by StephenHero

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I saw that building a while back and really loved it. If I remember correctly some guy left his estate for the renovation of an old industrial building (bread factory?) into a gallery in a small town. It's really well done.

Where is the building? the place looks oddly familiar to me!

Originally Posted by mksims

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Where is the building? the place looks oddly familiar to me!
Das Gelbe Haus, Flims, Switzerland

i went to the Tate Modern a few days ago. Absolutely wonderful.

overall, the collections at MoMA > Tate. But the environment at Tate >>>>> MoMA. With the expansion I wouldn't be surprised if the Tate took a stab at >>>> over MoMA completely.

The Tate Modern is really great, but it isn't really in the same stratosphere economically as MoMA. MoMA's got an $800 million endowment, is working on another expansion with Jean Nouvel which includes lucrative real estate development, owns a collection that's conservatively estimated to be worth at least 25x as much as what the Tate owns, and has a far more valuable pool of artworks that their patrons own and will likely donate at some point. The Tate Modern only has 4,100 works, many of which are postwar and contemporary. The MoMA has 120,000, many of which are seminal prewar works. The modern art collecting base in the U.S. so was astronomical compared to Europe and London after the war that a huge number of all those early modern artworks are owned by Americans. Impressionist & Early Modern Art are the most expensive periods that reach auction by a considerable margin. MoMA can sleepwalk its way into financial dominance for the foreseeable future based on their strength in those departments. Unfortunately, only a minuscule portion of their collection is on view.

yes, you're right and thus i should not even suggest that tate > moma. I was mostly refering to the viewing environment while omitting things like endowments or % of collections not on display. MoMA is jam packed with Euro tourists who will only see the museum once every few years at most anyways, and they would come regardless of what was on display. And not only is it Euro packed - it's WAY too packed in general! I can't stand going there for the sheer size of the crowds, it sucks out any enjoyment of the place. The tate, on the other hand, never once seemed overcrowded, even on a Saturday. I can't help but wonder what MoMA would be like if it had an environment conducive to that of the tate's rather than that of the MTA at 8:30 AM.