Is this a sign of things to come? As austerity measures dig in, are “los indignados” of Spain wondering about the money that fed a cultural building boom? Where complex buildings were designed by foreign architects, who didn’t seem to know that their hefty fees were being added to the country’s debt.

Photo: Sergio Calleja

Santiago Calatrava is in a puddle of a muddle in his home town, Valencia. The fourth-ranked United Left party (Esquerra Unida) has found the architect to be a handy scapegoat as the region nears bankruptcy. On a dedicated website Esquerra Unida lists allegedly corrupt dealings with the Comunidad Valenciana concerning fees for the City of Arts and Sciences. Perhaps they have also targeted Calatrava as both major political parties had a hand in commissioning him, and because his work is monument to that very recent era when a government would happily extend its debt to secure prestigious buildings and events.

The [Popular Party] government denied for years the information on contracts and payments to Calatrava, but the work of the United Esquerra parliamentary group has managed to uncover all the secrets of business of the Swiss architect with the money of the Valencians. Esquerra Unida

Fairfax papers have passed some news along from the Guardian. It trumpets that:“contracts were given to [Calatrava] via an unpublicised negotiating system establishing his payments as a percentage of the final cost of each project, which doubled or tripled’”. Then they reveal that he was paid, “for designing projects that never came to fruition.” The horror.

Santiago Calatrava, architect born in Valencia star but residing in Switzerland, has claimed about 100 million euros from the Generalitat Valenciana, with no IVA or tax paid in Spain. Esquerra Unida

They neglect to mention that Calatrava moved to Switzerland to do his civil engineering degree in 1975, not to evade spanish tax. If Calatrava’s Swiss office had charged IVA (Spain’s GST equivalent), it would have been extra to the fee, and passed back to the government. [ Update: In 2008, Calatrava’s website did mention offices in New York and Valencia – it no longer does. ]

His most emblematic [project] is the City of Arts and Sciences, which has cost over 1,100 million euros and is still unfinished and has various operating problems. Esquerra Unida

Calatrava was signed on in 1991 to a 625M Euro project. The project was inaugurated in 1998, with the final building, Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía, being opened in 2005. According to The Guardian, the ‘city’ runs at a loss.

“…the costs of reproduction, models, photography, travel, travel and expenses … are billed separately and paid within one month from the filing of the bill.” exclaims El Mundo.

Apparently journalists haven’t heard of disbursements. Or percentage fees… Calatrava initially charged 4.5% of the budgeted cost for architecture and engineering, and 6.5% for “construction management”. In later buildings this was revised to “11% to 12%” of the final cost of construction, highly controversial to El Levante-EMV, which refers to the City of Arts and Sciences as “the crime scene”.

Calatrava is an easy target in a deep recession. His main faults? 1. He left Spain. His Spanish wikipedia page is… er rather negative compared to the English one. 2. He didn’t audit the government, and 3. His buildings don’t come cheap. They are expensive and distinctive, which is what the government of the day wanted, to attract major events and tourism, and build its own pyramids.

Over the last decade, surfing on a property boom, Valencia spent billions hosting the America’s Cup sailing competition and the European Grand Prix motor race, launching Hollywood-style movie studios, and building the biggest aquarium in Europe, a Sydney-style opera house and several museums. Reuters May 1st [ link ]

“The “big events” policy is responsible for 13% of the region’s current debt, which has been estimated at close to 20 billion euros. “Looking beyond the surface of wealth and excess, this superficial economic model made us poorer.” Vincent Soler, Professor of Applied Economics at the Univeristy of Valencia. [ link ]

One of the worrying things about this politically motivated kerfuffle is how it has been reported. Many news services have let these claims about dodgy contracts slip through, without noticing that a normal contract for architectural services looks around about the same. Maybe not for much longer?

14.05.12 in practice 

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On Tuesday I snuck in, as a “plus one”, to ACMI’s preview of the new Eames doco, “Eames: The Architect and The Painter”, not sure what to expect. It was long, but it was good. It must have been hard compressing an odd fifty years of career into 83 minutes, and it did feel as though some stretches of time were skipped over. There wasn’t too much of the Sixties, unless I dozed off, which I doubt.

The film seemed to have two main zones of investigation: the complicated creative partnership between Charles and Ray, and their cross-disciplinary practice. Interviews with stylishly ageing Angelinos who used to work in the office are intercut with rare footage and photos of life in the studio. The employees seemed a tolerant lot, mostly seeming quite happy to be ‘exploited’ by a charismatic and ‘proper’ master. This was a studio that apparently never closed, life and work being very much entwined for Mr and Mrs Eames.

Their work too was intertwined and complementary – the Eames’s output stemming (for the most part) from the fusing of two minds – a neglected aspect the film very much wants to promote. The studio’s output was not quite as cross-disciplinary as I had imagined, more a progression from furniture design to a dominant focus on film making and communications, with a famous dabble or two in architecture along the way.

I don’t want to spoil any surprises for those considering attending, so I will keep this short. Go, be surprised and amazed. What I will do is embed some of the footage that the film sampled, some of it newly released by the Eames Office. If you want to see these at the film, just don’t click play!

Possibly the most awkward TV interview I’ve ever seen. It starkly shows the difficulty people had accepting Ray as an equal design partner.

IBM at the Fair. The film of the Eames / Saarinen IBM pavilion at the 1964-5 New York World’s Fair. Hello Koyaanisqatsi?

Many of the following films show an unusual regard for scale, often zooming into macro for a slow pan with a limited depth of field, revealing the intricate detailing of.. a hand, a toy train, anything really. There is a fascination with contraptions and mechanics, the way things go together, and the way people use them. This perhaps even extends into the circus films and the off-the-shelf components of the Eames House.

Powers of Ten, from 1977. A film seeking to engage school children with maths and science, preempting Google Earth?

A leisurely paced eleven minute advertisement introducing the Polaroid SX-70 (1972).

The Coloring Toy
A Communications Primer – 1953
Something About Functions – 1961
Toccata for Toy Trains – 1957
Tops – 1969
The Information Machine – 1958

And, of course, the trailer.

ACMI Melbourne screening details
The film’s website

13.05.12 in film 

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This looks too good to miss. RSVP by tomorrow Tuesday if you are in Sydney.

When important new buildings don’t meet the expectations of others in the architectural community, there is usually a lot of grumbling in back street bars, then we try to avoid looking at them. Very rarely do architects break rank to publicly criticise a design. And when they do it too publicly, they can run foul of the institute’s code of conduct and the ‘defamed’ architect. So it is left to the poor reviewers to surreptitiously inject just the right amount of doubt – too much and their article may attract the dreaded “kill fee”.

But the MCA’s new “Mordant Wing”, named after philanthropist Simon Mordant, is a special case. Since 1997, the MCA has not once but twice held limited architectural competitions for extensions to the old museum. One comp was won by Kazuyo Sejima, the other, which Seijima boycotted, by Sauerbruch Hutton. Neither went ahead, much to the embarrassment of just about everyone except the MCA. So the eyes were on Sam Marshall when he eventually gained the commission a few years ago, having worked as the MCA’s master planner for several years. Talk about a poisoned chalice.

Marshall’s blockish design (which I have yet to visit) addresses the MCA’s concerns that the building not be too showy, the art is what it’s about. Coincidentally, the Venice Biennale pavilion proposal by DCM addresses similar concerns voiced by the Australia Council’s Simon Mordant, who is also part-funding that project.

Congratulations to Architect Marshall for fronting up at this debate. Elizabeth Farrelly is also on the panel, which will perhaps add some historic perspective, given her role at the council when the Seijima scheme was “moved to trash”.

Here’s Sam Marshall discussing the MCA’s environmental sustainability recently:

MCA Green Plan – Sam Marshall from GreenUps on Vimeo.

Lastly, a dated butterpaper forum discussion.

30.04.12 in forum 

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I finally got to the William Kentridge exhibition at ACMI last weekend, with a friend. It closes at the end of May. It is worth every cent. Etchings and drawings of characters in his films take up most of the space. He has a particular way with blotchy skin that reminds me of the late Lucian Freud’s work. The self portraits – William as “Felix” and “Solo” – move about within ghost like bubbles that remind me a bit of one of Freud’s models, Sunshine boy Leigh Bowery.

So the traditional hung paintings sat well in the gallery, with lots of room to pace about and stand back without getting in anyone’s way. The film spaces were such a let down in contrast. My memory fails me as to whether it has always been like this. Perhaps it was just the volume of people highlighting the deficiencies.

[ACMI Flinders Street level – the main entrance has been relabelled Video Garden..? MORE PLANS]

Some suggestions we came up with afterwards, for those lucky enough to be designing such space, and their exhibitions.

• small theatres work for a few people, but they need to have a way to cope when a few more arrive. One seat holding at most five people doesn’t cut it when the viewing time is over half an hour. Elderly people were sitting on the floor. Why not an inconspicuous bench around the perimeter of the room?
• for some reason Kentridge’s work had been digitised. I guess it has to be to run on a loop. The rooms were so shallow though that it was too easy to see the pixels on the screen, and in one older video, an awful lot of colour artefacts (smudgy bits). We come to view video here rather than on Youtube for the quality, so it is disturbing when you can get a better result (and distance) on your home screen.
• the theatres have no doors on them. I suppose this has something to do with enticing people in and providing them enough light to sit down. Instead, gaggles of people just stood in the doorway.
• two of the theatres are adjacent. Sound travels, especially when there are no doors and a lack of acoustic insulation.
• show starting times and durations on the doors to the theatres. We entered half way through both films and had no idea how long the loop was. People can’t pace their visit if they don’t know how long things are. Some people like to watch films from the start too.
• having sat uncomfortably in the two theatres for over an hour, we were exhausted and had to leave. This meant we had to forfeit the rest of the exhibition. Gallery fatigue is real, so why not provide pass outs?
• ease off on the surveys. One at the bottom of the “out” escalator, and another at the top. I was identity-stripped. I was expecting to be asked about my visit, but they were more interested in my income level and postcode.
• The new and revised ACMI has no access from Flinders Street. Why shut the front door and force people to enter from the Square? The ACMI layout has been fiddled with since it opened. The organisation has grown significantly and has many separate functions on four levels. Why does it need to occupy a cul de sac? No one can just drift through as we could when it opened. That was great, it was surely useful to ACMI, and it was also an integral arm of Federation Square’s meandering circulation system.

[ Lucian Freud’s portraits are currently on exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, London ]

10.04.12 in galleries 

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Denton Corker Marshall have won the limited competition for the Australian Venice Biennale Pavilion. There is a fair bit about that competition within these pages. Myself and about 750 architects protested against its conditions, which basically limited it to larger companies with overseas experience and experience in similar buildings. This wasn’t to be a pavilion that would take any risks.

In June, the commissioner for the Australian 2013 Venice Art Biennale, Simon Mordant, announced the competition and antagonised the nation’s architects by stating, “This is an art space. It’s not an architectural competition … We need a functional exhibition space that works for the artist and complies with the Venetian authorities’ requirements. And that’s going to be something that’s far more modest.” Mr Mordant is also donating $1M towards the $6M construction budget.

Denton Corker Marshall have read the writing on the wall, designing a stealthful black box that sucks in the light. It is not reflective, and doesn’t want to be anything other than the container Mordant asked for. This appears to be a building trying to disappear, in a terribly elegant way. Whether that’s the right thing to be doing in the canal-side backlot of a garden full of expressive national pavilions, is debatable.

Upon entry into the black box, one will enter a white box. The architects say that they have, “avoided imposing a mannered architectural ‘event’ on the artworks displayed within, rather creating a container on and in which ideas can be explored where the container in no way competes with those ideas.” It could be seen as the polar opposite of Sverre Fehn’s Scandanavian pavilion, also chosen at a limited competition. That building provides a platform to be filled, opening out in two directions to the gardens. That building is beautiful and very obvious, but, like Mies’ National Gallery in Berlin, it is a hard one to hang paintings in. DCM’s building borrows more from the numerous older pavilions decked out in generic neoclassical garb, and housing plain white rooms with four sides.

The DCM building can be read as a discrete and perfect box for the architecture-averse Australia Council. Even the architects say it was conceived as an object rather than a building. But it can also be read as a protest against the silencing of Australian architects, a darker and angrier statement about the state of things. Perhaps a black armband was just what we needed.

More images

PS
Denton Corker Marshall is becoming quite adept at invisible buildings. In 2009 they designed the building that no one wanted, but everyone needed – The Stonehange Visitors Centre. At the time, London director Stephen Quinlan hoped that, “if a visitor can remember their visit to the stones but can’t remember the visitor centre they passed through, we will be happy.”

04.04.12 in competitions 

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This morning’s Background Briefing on RN examined the flaws in home energy rating systems. The show was unsurprising: they found many houses with low ratings and high performance, and vice versa. No prizes for guessing that architect-designed green homes suffered in the ratings department for not under-glazing, and not air-conditioning. The software wasn’t designed to be used like this and it encourages a conformity of design that suits standard project homes. From my experience, it is a bit of a lottery what the software will think of a custom-designed house.

Paraphrasing Adelaide architect John Maitland in the documentary, the system isn’t good but it’s better than nothing – at least it is pushing the industry along. Maitland designed a house in the early 2000s at Aldinga. An outer skin shields the building fabric from western sun, and a small in-line fan shunts hot air from the mezzanine back downstairs. Both of these are apparently too much for the software to handle. Despite not needing any active heating or cooling (which the software assumes you will have), the house has been rated 4.3, so would be unbuildable today. Its real performance, gauged from energy spend, is closer to 8.0.

This fitting of square pegs into round holes been something architects have grumbled about for years. But now the federal government is planning to extend the rating system to old houses, penalising houses like the one at Aldinga, and thousands more. News is just in that the government has backed off setting dates for the roll-out.

01.04.12 in sustainability 

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It was my first journey into the 26 year old Dulux colour awards. This is one of several industry awards in architecture, and this one now covers New Zealand also, so it was a big event. I have to admit the main reason I went along was that it was in the Regent Theatre, which I had never ventured into before, musicals not being my thing. The basement ballroom is a hidden Melbourne treasure, giant in scale, yet detailed to the umpteenth degree in 1920s exoticist splendour. Hundreds of ceiling panels, each individually painted. A late nod to the Marriner Group for bringing this beauty back from rat-infestedness.

The awards were dominated by the colour green. More of a lime green. It is everywhere, and is usually justified by the proximity of trees. Winners were chosen from an intensive six hour session held in the theatre yesterday where judges including Peter Maddison and Jeff Fearon argued over photographs.

The major winner of the night was the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne, which picked up the major gong as well as a few smaller awards. They built a palette for the project which included hundreds of colours, many of them green, and it looks damn good for it. Colours were built into the project concept, as the lead architect at Billard Leece / Bates Smart said, colours were a, “strategy for getting through a massive and gruelling project”. Meaning that if the colours were governed by an overarching scheme, department heads couldn’t stymie colour selections because they didn’t like yellow/ green/ purple. The close runner up for appearances on stage went to MGS for their Drill Hall project, also in Melbourne, and also in green.

The audience favourite was possibly a bridge in an arts precinct on the Derwent River near Hobart. It is part of the Glenorchy Arts and Sculpture Park. The palette for the vertical slats stretched the full height of Room 11’s poster. It may be time for another trip down that way. Here are some phone pics snapped on the night:

And here are some slightly more professional shots..

28.03.12 in awards 

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