Well, what about Richard Rogers' Lloyd's Building, or 30 St Mary Axe (the gherkin) in London? Or Gehry's Guggenheim Bilbao? The juxtapositions are startling, yet hugely successful. There are many other examples, and Utzon's Sydney Opera House could be considered one of them, although there is no juxtaposition... just a ship assail on a low-slung sandstone harbour. Zaha Hadid's ill-fated Cardiff Opera House, Gehry's Venice Public Library and Rogers and Piano's Centre Pompidou are further contemporary examples.
The reason these buildings are so successful is that each of them is utterly innovative and uniquely of their time. Can, or will, the same be said of the proposed new wing for Sydney's MCA by Sam Marshall? Phillip Cox has already has his spray, and reluctantly, LF agrees. It's not that we are advocating some sort of match-up with the MCA's existing facade, just that a Rietveldian assemblage of boxes is NOT INTERESTING ENOUGH!
Above: MCA proposed new wing: 2 views, courtesy MCA
Gerrit Rietveld, Schröder House, 1924
LF hasn't studied the interior plans, and we're persuaded it will be a lovely series of spaces inside, but Cox is right - this is a missed opportunity to do something innovative and daring, to create an entirely new architectural conversation between the orderly deco rhythms of the Maritime Services Building and a new wing. What we have with Marshall's facade is not a 'Rubik's Cube' (as it has been instantly dubbed by the press) - A genuine Rubik's cube (in those garish colours perhaps?) might actually be quite interesting. Marshall's unsettling jumble of intersecting rectangles owes everything to 20th Dutch 'de Stijl', and nothing to the surrounding sandstone vernacular, or its maritime setting. Deliberate, obviously, but willful in its refusal to have a decent conversation with its neighbours. And the there's that ghastly clocktower from the cheap, faux-historic shopping centre behind, raised above the edifice like a sore thumb. This is suburban 'try-hard' architecture upped to a monumental scale, and we don't think it works. Please re-consider. Maybe get Zaha Hadid to do a couple of concept drawings after a stroll around the precinct? Or Mr Murcutt perhaps?
Or Richard Johnson, whose firm Johnson Pilton Walker designed the new national Portrait Gallery, below. Low-slung, single storied, yet quietly distinctive, it sits near the half-decent legal catheral of the High Court, and Colin Madigan's flawed concrèt brut NGA, itself in the throes of building a promising new wing by the able Andrew Andersons, which will fix the disastrous entrance and add light and space.
Above: Street Facade and Interior (lobby) detail, NPG Canberra, courtesy Johnson Pilton Walker
It's not just the NPA's street facade, with its distinctively cantilevered concrete blade, that works. The spaces inside are lucid, humane and allow us to follow an instinctive journey around the collection. The finishes, in a variety of materials, have a restraint and simplicity - polished terrazzo, blackbutt (?) floors, unadorned concrete, simple diffusing blinds... we recognise this style from Johnson's serene Asian extension at AGNSW - a translucent lantern. It's like an architectural version of the best mod-oz cuisine - Asian inspired, yet imbued with a uniquely Australian modesty.
More soon on the collection.
2 comments:
Why haven't you mentioned the GOMA building?
Brilliant.
And talking about Zaha Hadid - what about her sensational MAXXI in Rome: http://www.darc.beniculturali.it/MAXXI/english/mostre.htm
pity.
it was ten or so years ago SANAA won the first competition for the MCA... now one of the most interesting architecture studios in the world.
but nothing happened.
silly sydney. never learns.
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