Sydney Opera House - Expressionism at its best

Sydney Opera House from the Ferry
Foto: Axel Kaehne

Modernist architecture can be as much a revelation as it is sometimes a disappointment. Most modernist building tend to be something of the latter because they fail to relate meaningfully to their surroundings. Norman Foster's IB tower in Malaysia is little more than exactly that, a very tall building without much thought about its environmental context. Zaha Hadid built impressive buildings but they never managed to link in, or indeed cared much about their neighbourhoods. And then there is the external versus the internal. Hans Scharoun's Philharmic Hall, Concert Hall and Library in Berlin are all of a kind externally, but the real wonders start once you enter the buildings.

Hans Scharoun's Philharmonic Hall - Foto: Manfred Brueckels

Perhaps this lack of connectivity to the physical context is the nature of the beast, something that modernist architecture is preternaturally disposed to. This may particularly be the case with expressionism. Expressionism has mainly remained a dream confined to the drawing boards of architectural firms, presumably because the issue of fitting expressionist buildings into their environment is tricky. Where expressionism has made it into reality, the buildings tend to be in areas that have no residential or urban context in the first place, such as Berlin's Congress Hall.

Berlin Kongresshalle - Foto: Bertholt Werner

Sydney's opera house is an exception. It was built adjacent to the central business district, an area that glorifies in mainly non-descript and forgettable glass and steel buildings. However, the Sydney Opera House is at the same time slightly removed from the district by virtue of being located on the tip of a promontary. This affords it a distance to the city that was put to some extraordinary use by the architect. The individual 'shells' of the House open up towards the city which gives those standing inside the house or those sitting on its front steps a breathtaking view of the Sydney skyline.

The view from Sydney Opera House towards the Central Business District
Foto: Axel Kaehne

In the night, people leaving a performance at the opera or concert hall get the impression that the venue somehow floats on the water, like something moored in Sydney Harbour. The sense is of something holistic that works well with its surroundings to impress. Hence a rare example of expressionist architecture done well.

Zaha Hadid - the tabula rasa architect

So she has finally made it. Recently Zaha Hadid was awarded the most important accolade of the architecture establishment, the RIBA Gold Medal. She is the first woman to get this prize in her own right. Whilst this marks the well deserved culmination of a long and distinguished career, her rise to architectural stardom has had its hiccups.

Zaha Hadid

An early stumbling bloc was the Cardiff Opera house. She won the competition twice, but locals just simply did not warm to her hypermodern design and, in the end it was rejected. The house now standing on the site was designed by Jonathan Adams, whose design is said to be incorporating Welsh elements and reflect Welsh national culture. As a former resident of Cardiff and frequent visitor to the Welsh Millenium Centre, I am actually glad that her design was never built. Whilst the current house certainly has its flaws, its gentle, non-threatening nature is probably right for the city. There is a pedestrian-ness about it, without ever being dull, and it may just be the best design for the Welsh capital.

Hadid's design for the Cardiff Opera House

And therein lies part of the problem with Hadid. Her indisputable genius often appears to be outside of time and context. And so her designs sometimes struggle to latch on to local environments. Her work seems to work best where she can start with a blank sheet of paper. Her most recent work, the Olympic Swimming Pool in the London Olympic Village is a courageous piece of breathtaking curves. Beautiful as it is, its design would simply refuse to relate meaningfully to any other building in the locale. Luckily for Hadid, the building was practically built on wasteland with no context other than its own.

London Aquatics Centre

In a recent interview she mentioned her work for BMW as one of the most gratifying pieces in her portfolio. She may just be one of those architects who thrive on the tabula rasa. As blank spaces are rare in this country, she may come to build even less than previously, which is our loss.

BMW Headquarters in Leipzig

In praise of ... Prince Charles

When I was in fourth grade, our arts teacher asked us to paint the city of the future. I took a very broad brush and painted plenty of blocks of flats, square or rectangular, and clearly aligned them along a symmetrical grid. I don't think I bothered with putting windows into the buildings. It would have required some dexterous painting abilities, something certainly beyond my artistic grasp back then (or now). The outcome was as expected: square, ordered and hideously boring to look at, without a thought for the human beings who presumably would have to live in this city of the future very soon.

When I came to Birmingham for the first time in 1991, I was shocked. The city had ruthlessly copied my painting and rebuilt its centre exactly as I had pictured it only a few years earlier! In record time and with the same cavalier neglect for the need of humane habitation. Everywhere there were blocks of flats without windows and concrete subways. I was incensed. There was my picture of a future city that I had envisioned as a fourth grader and I had not received a single pence in royalties!

Not suitable for living - Owen Luder's Tricorn Centre in Portsmouth -
or as Prince Charles called it: a 'mildewed lump of elephant droppings' 

Of course, Birmingham is not the only British city that struggles with the legacy of post-war architecture. There are few urban centres in England or Wales that have been spared the attention of an unimaginative fourth grader with an architecture degree. This is often blamed on the large scale second world war bombing that ruined Coventry and others. But this is not quite the whole picture. Whilst the 1950s saw a significant increase in housebuilding, it was the expansive use of concrete in the 1960s that produced the brutalist city-scape scarring Britain.

The BBC recently ran a feature of several British cities that are coming to terms with this legacy. The preferred way of dealing with Birmingham, Hull or Coventry city centre appears to be dynamite, or rather: controlled destruction.

Should we regret the disappearance of these concrete blobs disfiguring the city landscape? There are those (mainly the architects who were responsible for these aberrations in human habitation) who argue that they represent a significant part of architectural history and should be preserved. I am unconvinced. What they forget to mention is that many of these concrete buildings required the destruction of Victorian or Georgian buildings that were still extant. The architecture of the 1960s did not arise on a blank sheet. Town planners and architects engaged in a near criminal tabula rasa which tried to eliminate the very architectural history that they now want to be part of.

There is of course one person who consistently warned of these architectural follies. The heir to the British throne. Prince Charles is widely ridiculed by some in the press but I think he has always been sharp, witty and sophisticated in his criticism of modern architecture, qualities that were mostly absent from the work of British architects or my own foray into architectural paintings as a fourth grader.

So, here is it: Three cheers for the common sense, and the heir of the throne!