Case Study / Auditorium Parco Della Musica

The pursuit for a prominent musical complex to showcase Rome’s famed National Academy of St Cecilia (Accademia Nationale di Santa Cecilia) has been an ambitious undertaking - one that has lasted over 65 years of competitions, postponements and uncertainty. In 1936, the historic auditorium (the Augusteo) - and home to the 425+ year-old institution’s Symphony Orchestra - would be dismantled to recover the ruins of the Emperor Augustus Mausoleum buried beneath. In the years that followed, the National Academy of St Cecilia was forced to rent existing structures throughout the city center as it pressed the municipal administration for available urban space to construct a new concert venue. A 1950 design competition considered the expansive and available Flaminio district of Rome as a new home for the Academy, only to result in an indeterminate recommendation from the jury - putting the project in a state of uncertainty for years, though highlighting Flaminio as an ideal and practical location for future development.

Site Diagram : Auditorium Parco Della Musica

The Flaminio district, located north of the city’s historical center in the curve of the Tiber River, is named after the ancient road of Via Flaminia that leads from Rome over the Apennine Mountains to the Adriatic Sea - a major trade route in the Roman Empire. Excluding the Flaminia road, the flood-prone area outside the Aurelian walls was largely untouched until the end of the 19th century when industrial enterprises overran the region. With the industrial implant established, a period of settlement expansion would occur with an increase of building complexes and road networks. In 1911, city officials selected the Flaminio district to host Rome’s International Exhibition of Art in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Unification of Italy - initially defining the area’s ubiquitous character as a cultural, entertainment and sporting locality for the city. Following the announcement of the Rome Olympic Games for 1960, Flaminio would enter a new phase of urban transformation as the selected site for the new games - with construction of the Olympic village, Olympic Stadium, and the Sports Palace (along with the previously-built Flaminio Stadium) a catalyst for change in post-war Rome that is still omnipresent today.

*Covered entry arcade with access to the site’s public commercial activities (shops & restaurant)*

In the ongoing effort to alleviate Rome’s lack of adequate venues for classical music, the Rome City Council decided to host an invited international design competition in 1993 for a new music complex. However, such a desired large complex would not be feasible in the very dense historical center of Rome near the Accademia’s prior venues. Therefore, the competition site would be positioned in northern Rome, on a spacious former parking lot site in the Flaminio district - bundled between the former Olympic structures. The Olympic Village extends northward of the site, Pier Luigi Nervi’s ‘Sports Palace’ (Palazzetto della Sport) to the west, and the Flaminio soccer stadium to the south-west. The following year, Italian architect Renzo Piano and the Renzo Piano Workshop were named the winners of the competition with a scheme that offered a modern concept of landscape urbanism to weave the scattered fragments of the Flaminio district. With the completion of the new Auditorium project, Rome’s Flaminio district would again go through another chapter in urban development - one that requalifies the region as a contemporary neighborhood focused on the arts and sports - further emphasized by the recent completions of the MAXXI (Museum of XXI Century Arts) by Zaha Hadid in 2010 and the Ponte della Musica (Bridge of Music) by Kit Powell-Williams and Buro Happold in 2011.

Zinc-shrouded roofs (a material resembling the historic lead domes of Rome)

Sculpted cultural elements composed around outdoor amphitheater and landscape

Auditorium Parco Della Musica  /  Site Section — Auditorium Parco Della Musica / Site Section

The project, later named the Auditorium Parco della Musica (Park of Music), is conceived as an open multi-functional complex to host a variety of musical performances on a decentralized site that benefits from a transportation infrastructure inherited from the 1960 Olympic Games. Not simply a performance hall, but a complete urban condition for music: with three concert halls, large rehearsal and recording rooms, workrooms, a museum of musical instruments, a comprehensive music library, retail shops, gardens, exhibition spaces, offices, bars and restaurants - all radiating around an active open-air amphitheater or ‘Cavea’. Acknowledging activity adds an additional layer to the project - allowing urban participation therefore gives an urban sense of the complex - enriched by cultural nodes (concert halls) that are separated and submerged in the Parco della Musicas landscape, which rolls down from the neighboring Villa Glori. Each one of the three concert halls is understood as an individualistic element, architecturally and functionally separated to facilitate soundproofing and coinciding performances, but aesthetically tied by identical zinc-shrouded roofs (a material resembling the historic lead domes of Rome). It is the placement of these sculpted cultural elements - arranged by size and elevated around the amphitheaters concave stepped seating - that unifies the project’s composition, while the subterranean foyer below directly links the perimeter of the outdoor amphitheater to the Auditorium. The main entrance of the complex from Viale de Coubertin projects a glass-covered arcade with access to the site’s popular public commercial activities (restaurant and shops), while the more intimate park area - complete with playgrounds and grass fields - radiates beyond the halls as a quiet buffer between the complex and the city beyond.

Seating overlooking The ‘Cavea’ open-air theater, named ‘Largo Luciano Berio’

Auditorium Parco Della Musica  /  Hybrid Site Plan — Auditorium Parco Della Musica / Hybrid Site Plan

When the project began excavation in 1995, work was immediately halted with the discovery of ancient ruins from a large farmhouse villa dating from an archaic era (6th century BC - 3rd century AD) - not an uncommon occurrence in Rome - consisting of different residential rooms around a central courtyard. The discovery of the archaeological remains delayed construction for a year and triggered a modification in the design with an adjustment to the building layout for integration of a museum for the Roman remains found on the site - proving the project’s fluidity and adaptability early in the construction process.

Ruins preserved within the Parco della Musica complex.

*Ancient Roman villa unearthed during construction*

Inaugurated in December 2002, the Auditorium Parco della Musica has been considered a healing element in Flaminio’s pocketed urban tissue and Rome’s arts scene. The multi-dimensional complex accommodates the diverse programmatic needs of the city - designed for symphonic concerts, ballets, contemporary music, opera, baroque music, and theater - with potential to significantly expand its range of activities to include different art and performances in support of the Music for Rome Foundation (a joint partnership between the City of Rome, Chamber of Commerce, the province of Rome and the Lazio Region). Recent urban growth, cultural production and historical connotation come together with this new complex to alleviate the urban fracture that was once a neglected parking lot. The whole area can now be considered a new park open to the meandering public - a synthetic and functional continuation of a landscape that stretches between the banks of the River Tiber and the nearby Villa Glori - redefining the Flaminio district as an integral part in Rome’s contemporary aspirations.

“ When cities expand there are always black, untidy holes that then need to be filled in. This is the real gamble of the next thirty years: how to transform the edges of the city of those areas over-looked by urban development. One of the ways of upgrading this emptiness is to create places that bring people together or fill them with collective functions.” - Renzo Piano, architect

Auditorium Parco Della Musica  /  Site analysis of access, circulation, new development, and points of social engagement — Auditorium Parco Della Musica / Site analysis of access, circulation, new development, and points of social engagement

Case Study / Florence Opera House

On the outskirts of the historic center of Florence, the first planned railway network in the city would begin construction in 1841. A new structure (Leopolda station) - located on a clearing just outside the city walls, near the Pignone ‘industrial district’ and Porta al Prato (named after the 1285 gate to the city center) - was to be a train terminus to the new Leopolda Railway, connecting the Tuscan region between the Port of Livorno and Florence. The construction of the station in 1948 would be the culminating piece to the completed railway - leading to great economic and social benefits to the entire region. However, the activity at Leopolda station would be short-lived, as a new link was opened in 1860 between the Leopolda railway and the much larger and centrally-located Maria Antonia station (now the Santa Maria Novella Station) in Florence. Soon after, the diversion of all region and national traffic would lead to the closing of Leopolda Station, but the structure would remain, undergoing a multitude of programmatic changes through time. Since 1993, the old station’s large interior halls were recognized as a perfect location for an adaptable event / theatrical space, now run by a fashion industry promoter (Pitti Immagine) - establishing a new cultural perspective to this old Florentine industrial district.

Aerial of Florence (new Opera House in upper right)

By the beginning of the new millenium, an effort was underway for the redevelopment of this stagnant area outside the historic center by the ‘Committee of Ministers for the 150th anniversary of the Unification of Italy’, aimed at the realization of major infrastructural, cultural and scientific works to reinvigorate the region and celebrate the country. In 2008, an international competition would be initiated for the new ‘Park of Music and Culture’ multipurpose facility, located in the hinge between the historic Leopolda station, Fratelli Rosselli ring road network, Cascine Park and future Porta al Prato regional rail station - aimed at improving the area with a playful combination of cultural and leisure activities, along with the construction of the new head offices of the Florentine Maggio Musicale - all within the vicinity of the current Municipal Theatre (one-quarter mile away). The large complex would be awarded to Roman architects ABDR Associates with a design that represents a link between Cascine’s natural landscape and the stones of the city center, between history and the future.

New Porta al Prato regional railway station adjacent to Leopolda station

Opera House from Porta al Prato regional railway station

The new site is a transitional point that divides landscape from hardscape, playing a fragile role of integration between a multifaceted boundary of a chronicled city. Along with immediate adjacencies to Leopolda station, the project must contend with Florence’s largest (395 acres) and most popular park - Parco delle Cascine - that invites a natural, porous edge all the way to the Arno River. Adversely, the opposite edge of the site is one that is cut off and impermeable - adored by a large fenced wall and a stretch of tracks - as a result of a new regional railway station built in 2008 that would open adjacent to Leopolda, recycling two rail tracks from the historic station. Primary entry to the site is achieved from the east, along the Viale Fratelli Rosselli - a grand avenue constructed after the elimination of the historic city walls - recently accompanied by the city’s only public light rail line in 2010 with a stop for Parco della Musica.

New metro line through Parco delle Cascine

Entry to Opera Site (still under construction)

Florence Opera House  /  Site Plan — Florence Opera House / Site Plan

Florence Opera House  /  Building Section : Florence Opera House — Florence Opera House / Building Section : Florence Opera House

Built in a city considered the ‘birthplace of opera’, the new Florence Opera House is designed as a multi-functional complex with both an urban and architectural agenda. Shaped by wide open spaces and a public perception of openness on an urban scale, the new project not only adds to the city’s public spaces with one of the largest piazzas in the region, but also provides a conceptual bridge between the stone-lined city and scenic landscapes of Cascine Park with a series of terraces and outdoor spaces arranged fluidily along a pedestrian thoroughfare, including the ramped volume of the main hall with terraced seating on the roof for an open-air ‘cavea’ amphitheater space and panoramic views of the entire city of Florence. Beyond, the walls of the fly tower are clad in grey tiles whose identifiable staggering pattern provide an alternating visual awareness of the project as you move through the site. The complex itself is weighted - a massive, formalistic stone construction - containing two large music halls, administrative center, workshops, rehearsal rooms and accomodations for other activities / performances. Together, the imposing architectural clarity of the new structure, along with the pre-existing Leopolda structure and park, form a new urban center devoted to cultural and musical activeness.

By the end of 2011, with construction delayed and out of money, the main auditorium in the Florence Opera House would open symbolically with performances for the intended 150th anniversary of the Italian Republic, only to be subsequently closed. Today, the project is in a funding dilemma - needing a substantial amount of money to complete the entire complex - with the Tuscan Region, city of Florence and national governments all slowly trying to contribute during a weakened economic period in hopes of officially opening in mid-2014. Even with insufficient ongoing performances, the site is open - a manufactured landscape to inhabit, stroll and wander - allowing a freedom to experience the potential consummation of the intended program - a ‘factory’ for music and entertainment. Eventually, the city that is making its money on art museums and chic shopping will again identify itself as the birthplace of opera and emphasizing that as yet another reason to visit.

Florence Opera House  /  Site analysis of access, circulation, new development, and points of social engagement — Florence Opera House / Site analysis of access, circulation, new development, and points of social engagement

Case Study / Culture and Congress Center

In 1856, the city’s first railway station was introduced on the edge of Lake Lucerne in order to bring in main line routes from both German and French railways. The selected site of the terminal station was based on unambiguous connectivity with direct linkages to both the boat service piers on Lake Lucerne and to the city gates of the historic urban center - resulting in the waterfront lake location to develop into an imposing urban junction for the city of Lucerne. Forty years later, the station would be deemed inadequate - replaced by a new terminal building to handle the rapid expansion of transportation demands by cause of the introduction of nautical steam navigation and electric rail tracks. This area of Lucerne would embed itself as the city’s active nucleus - generating a perpetual migration of commuters, merchants and visitors to the city’s urban extents. However, following an intense fire in 1971, the historic railway station would be left in unsalvageable ruin - leaving city officials to quickly develop a comprehensive redevelopment plan for the station and consider the future development of the entire lake side region.

Historical Map of city, future site of Lucerne Central Station area in redFormer Art and Convention Center (designed by Swiss architect Armin Meili in 1934) adjacent to the old central train station (right)

With the completion of the new Lucerne Central Station, built in 1991 by the architectural firm Ammann and Baumann, the city of Lucerne began a crucial modernization of the city quarter known as Bahnhofplatz (Station Square) stretching from the new station to Lake Lucerne. The public face of the new project lies in the multi-story concourse with an underground shopping arcade, designed by the architects then employee, Santiago Calatrava, linking the various functions of the city center with the station’s railway platforms. The newly available land between the station and the water’s edge allowed for a potential hub for the local bus system, leading to the landings for passenger ships on the water’s shores. A massive new Culture and Congress Center would be proposed directly east of the Central Station, just below the outflow of the Reuss river, and directly next to it, the University of Lucerne’s new main building is planned as a renovation of the former post office. Together, these contemporary interventions work together to create a refreshingly new city quarter - a reprieve from the historically imposing city center.

Lucerne Central Station

Station Square / Bahnhofplatz (top), University of Lucerne adjacent to the KKL (left), waterfront of Lake Lucerne (right)

In 1980, poor structural circumstances with the former Art and Convention Center (designed by Swiss architect Armin Meili in 1934) would force city officials to shut down the ubiquitous cultural building, leading to the creation of the Concert Hall Foundation - established to explore options and gain support for the city’s future cultural initiative. Nearly a decade later, local resident Alice Bucher of Bucher Publishing, would donate a small fortune to the city of Lucerne to launch an architectural competition for a new concert hall that would occupy the former site of Meili’s historic structure. By the following year, French architects Jean Nouvel and Emmanuel Cattani would be chosen with a dramatic design to project the new center out over the waters edge and onto Lake Lucerene - exploiting the site’s natural advantages while creating an autonomous relationship with its influential neighbors. However, the initial design tested the city council’s comfortability with the proposed project - declaring the line of the lakeshore could not be broken - and Swiss architect, Rodolphe Luscher (who placed third in the design competition), was brought in to takeover the design. Two years later, Luscher would abandon the project, leading Nouvel and his team to be invited back with the only condition that the lake remain undisturbed. The new KKL (Kunst Und Kongresshaus) Luzern would complete construction in 2000 - 5 years after breaking ground - leaving the new complex off the lake’s shores by way of producing a new poroous public expanse between the lake and the KKL called Plaza Europa (Europaplatz), including the original Meili-designed Wagenbach Fountain that had also accompanied the former center. However, Nouvel still believed the main element of the project was the prescience of the lake and if the building could not break the lakeshore, then the lake had to come to the building. Thus, the ground level of the new complex is conceptualized as a ‘water garden’ with shallow strips of water invading the interior from the adjacent Europaplatz, effectively separating the building into three distinct programmatic elements - the Concert Hall, Lucerne Hall and Conference Center/Museum - all unified under an immensely (130,00 sqft) monolithic roof that can be identified from across the lake, marking the building in the rich visual Alpine landscape.

The diverse layout of programmatic elements for the KKL is visually framed on the northern facade between its immense cantilevered roof (projecting more than 100 feet) and the boundless Plaza Europa - accompanied by a six-story glass atrium and outdoor terraces - concentrate your contextual perception toward the historic city center across the river and surrounding landscape. All public access is focused around this point to create a ‘front door’ effect onto the lake. Conversely, the service and administrative areas run along an impermeable southern edge clad in a verdigris metal mesh, defining a definitive boundary for an entry/dining courtyard from the new University of Lucerne’s Main Building across the street. The lakeside elevations (east and north) are composed of multicolored metallic blocks that undulate across the facade in saturated color tones of blue, red, and green - creating an exchange between a vibrant landscape and a dynamic interior. Together, this hefty ultra-structure represents a clear and distinctive break with tradition - a juxtaposition of contemporary ideas all condensed under one roof that harmonizes with the horizontal nature of Lake Lucerne.

“ I travelled to Lucerne and was met by a stunning sight: the expanse of the landscape, of the mountains, of the bridges – I was captivated ... This is an example of framing the landscape. It is a building on an exceptional site, by the lake facing the town. The entire town can be seen from the foyer.”- Jean Nouvel, architect

Currently, the city is embarking on another bold cultural endeavour. Driven by the need to further integrate musical theater and opera performance into the successful Lucerne Festival and the desire to achieve creative freedom through a variable of staging, spatial design and media technologies; the city of Lucerne has started showing interest in an independent building for a flexible and adaptable opera house - one based on the state-of-the-art ‘Salle Modulable’ (Adjustable hall) design. The Lucerne Theater (Stadttheater Luzern) is currently the only professional theater in central Switzerland - located down the street from the KKL - however the 1838 structure is overburdened as a ‘three division house’ (musical theater, theater and dance ensembles) and lacks the space needed to meet the highest international standards for an acclaimed opera house. Led by the Salle Modulable foundation and Lucerne Festival leadership, discussions are ongoing to privately fund the project (estimated to cost $180 million) and hope the addition and close proximity of the new project can mutually stimulate and innovate the cultural partnership of the city.

“This kind of project is most unusual for a relatively small city like Lucerne – not even Paris has a concert hall seating two thousand and boasting such facilities and infrastructure.”- Jean Nouvel, architect

Case Study / Elbphilharmonie Hamburg

Once the busiest maritime port in Europe (still the 2nd largest), the harbor of Hamburg was starting to slip in an emerging era of globalization with EU free trade, massive modern container ships and increased border security. The bountiful southern banks across the Elbe River would emerge as successor to the city’s evolving ship activity, leaving the impractical historic harbor abandoned by disuse and deterioration. In the mid-1990s, Hamburg’s municipal government determined that the city’s downtown core was in a major need of help - looking for a revigorating urban strategy to combat a continuingly declining inner-city population of just 14,000 residents (peaking around 170,000 in the 1890s) and the adjacent dockland’s depreciation became an opportunistic realization. Located less than a mile away from the city center, the 388-acre industrial harbor was obtained by the city-state of Hamburg in 1997. Following an urban master-planning competition, both KCAP (Dutch firm) and ASTOC (German firm) would be selected to collaborate on the future of this prime inner-city location.

19th century Hamburg port area (future site of HafenCity)

The subsequent development concept, christened ‘HafenCity’ (or Port City), would divide the site into ten districts, each with specifically assigned qualities and limitations. The plan (approved in 2000) allowed for a variety of building types and neighborhoods with the flexibility to adapt to unforeseen circumstances - an innovative approach that allows development officials to facilitate a cooperative of invested future property owners / tenants who procure the design and construction of their own building, attracting local and international architecture firms that leads to a diverse, higher-quality form of living and working conditions. Furthermore, mandated site sustainability requirements ensure quality performance on a site that is known to flood two or three times a year. To provide resiliency from the elements, pedestrian promenade levels are set 15 feet above water level, while street levels are set even further up to 25 feet - effectively separating major vehicular and pedestrian traffic throughout the development.

Currently underway, the evolving $10 billion urban redevelopment effort has been projected to take 25-30 years in implementing all the sub-districts - proceeding from west to east - with a total of 19.5 million square feet of new construction, currently labeled “the largest urban construction initiative ongoing in Europe” and effectively increases the size of Hamburg’s city center by 40 percent. To the north of HafenCity lies the historic 19th century warehouse complex of Speicherstadt, a series of renovated clinker brick-built buildings, allowing an easy transition between the old and the new city. Directly south of Speicherstadt is the neighborhood of Am Sandtorkai / Dalmannkai - the first completed HafenCity district in 2009 - consisting of multi-use developments, a Ship Harbor and a waterfront promenade below cantilevered buildings. On the western tip of the historic pier - rising from the massive red brick framework of a former cocoa-bean warehouse known as Kaispeicher - emerges the identifiable singular structure of the new Elbe Philharmonic Hall (The Elbphilharmonie). The new construction follows the guidelines of HafenCity’s master plan in creating ‘urban magnets’ - strategically located on the outer-perimeter of the entire development, instead of toward the center, in able to shape the discretely independent quarters with specific civic / cultural functions. As the future home to the NDR Symphony Orchestra, the emblematic Elbe Philharmonie vies to become the centerpiece of the new HafenCity neighborhood and give the city of Hamburg a second concert hall - following the opening of the Laeiszhalle in 1908 - with a contemporary design prescience meant to attract international consideration and highlight Hamburg’s recent expansion plans.

Elbphilharmonie and Laeiszhalle : Two venues in the city center under one management — Elbphilharmonie and Laeiszhalle : Two venues in the city center under one management

Sandtorhafen (historic harbor) in HafenCity

The Elbphilharmonie : Construction on the western tip of the Hafen-City — The Elbphilharmonie : Construction on the western tip of the Hafen-City

Fueled by their recent work in urban regeneration, including the transformation of London’s delinquent Bankside Power Station into the Tate Modern, Swiss architects Herzog and DeMeuron were selected to assemble Hamburg’s new cultural facility that would include (in the spirit of the multi-use development) three concert halls, a hotel and luxury apartments. The selected base of the new design - the historic keel-shaped Kaispecher warehouse - would provide the designers with distinct advantages that would afford the project with robust structural performance and an exterior brickwork fenestration that echos the vocabulary of the historical harbor’s streetscapes. Moreover, the design of the monolithic Kaispecher - built in 1963 by Werner Kallmorgen - is considered to have survived the ‘test of time’ with a playfully modern, yet unbiased abstraction of apertures patterning throughout the entire facade - an ideal plinth for a looming contemporary institution. The new addition - realized as an undulating and multifaceted glass-bodied design - extrudes an identical footprint of the warehouse below and ascents to a maximum height of 328 feet to become Hamburg’s tallest structure in the city center. Ground entry is gained from the east, up an elongated escalator diagonally across the entire warehouse to the former roof of the Kaispecher - now an elevated public square sandwiched between the ‘new’ and ‘old’ elements, offering panoramic views of the surrounding city at 120 feet and entry to the project’s many ancillary areas. Above, the new addition is clad in both curved and textured glass panels (each responding differently to the three main building components), yielding an iridescent visual appeal with the capacity for natural ventilation.The overall composition from the ground mimics a wave-like gem that captures and distorts the animated reflections from both the sky and the water - taking advantage of the projects’ siting from the tip of the old harbor and translating it into an ever-changing appearance. At the core of the ‘crystal’ addition lies an acoustically-reliable concert hall for 2,150 people, hung 160 feet above the river between both the hotel and apartment program blocks. The interiority of the new structure becomes a symbiotic relationship between architecture, logics of acoustics and visual perception - all fundamental ideas that led to an organic tier composition swelling from the boundaries of the concert hall and creating a phenomenological environment throughout the entire project.

Still under development after an expected opening date in 2010, Hamburg’s answer to Sydney’s iconoclastic opera house has gone through a turbulent construction process that has seen more visitors than construction workers on site in recent years. The gigantic glass and steel concert hall was originally presented to the city with a modest budget ($248 million) and accelerated schedule to appease voters, but the expansion of scope to include a hotel, luxury apartments and three concert halls would strain the construction schedule and present unprecedented engineering challenges. Recently, with substantial completion of the exterior shell complete, the contractor of the project would halt work due to structural concerns with the project’s steel saddle roof, leading to more delays and rising costs (currently around $790 million). Now, with a new agreement settled, the completion date has been pushed back to 2016. Hamburg isn’t alone in it’s construction woes, as other project in Germany (the Berlin-Brandenburg Airport at $2.7 billion over budget and Stuttgart’s new high-speed railway station at $2.8 billion over budget) have put these massive ‘civic’ projects at a loss with the German public. Some in Hamburg even wonder if the decision to invest so many resources on HafenCity and its new concert hall will benefit only tourists and the city’s elite.

Elbphilharmonie  /  Building Section — Elbphilharmonie / Building Section

“It’s what happens whenever you try to build a world wonder that has never been built before, using new materials in new ways ... It’s the same wherever you go — from the pyramids to the Sydney Opera House — it’s very difficult to keep those kind of special projects in tight budgets.”

— Christoph Lieben-Suetter, Elbphilharmonie’s artistic director

Elbphilharmonie  /  Site analysis of access, circulation, new development, and points of social engagement — Elbphilharmonie / Site analysis of access, circulation, new development, and points of social engagement

Case Study / Queen Sofia Palace of the Arts

From its founding, Valencia has had a dynamic relationship with the Turia River, allowing the city to thrive as an urban nucleus to a maritime network that would connect the Eastern Iberian Pennisula (from the Montes Universales) to the far-reaching Mediterean Sea. However, the resourceful river would also bring unwanted consequences with numerous flooding events affecting the city through its history, resulting in significant property damage and death. Finally - in the Autumn of 1957 - Valencia would experience heavy ongoing rainfall for days that would lead to a catastrophic flood, forever changing the city’s relationship with the Turia River. Nearly three quarters of the urban area would be overrun by the river’s discharged flood waters - displacing thousands of families from their residences and leaving the city without basic utilities to operate for weeks. Over 80 people would lose their lives following the disaster. In response to the tragedy, the Spanish government embraced a bold defense plan to prevent another great disaster in the area. The plan, known as “Plan Sur” (South Plan), was an expensive and colossal undertaking that required diverting the Turia River southwards along a new course that skirts the city’s boundary before meeting the Mediterranean Sea, leaving the old riverbed to continue bisecting the city’s historic city center - lifeless and dry.

The 'Garden of Turia' : The old riverbed of the Turia River, red indicating the location of new opera house

Finished in 1969, the new channel brought relief to a wary Valencian populace, but left the remnants of the old riverbed up for much political debate. In an effort to alleviate traffic congestion, city leadership envisioned the dry sunken earth as a potential site for an elaborate highway system that could help alleviate traffic in the heart of the city. But residents pushed back and vigorously protested the highway proposal, arguing for more green space in the city that would allow pedestrians and cyclists to pass through much of the city without contact to city roads. A decade later, city officials would succumb to public resistance and approved legislation to ‘sanitize the city’ by turning the old riverbed into a network of sunken landscapes, referred to as the Garden of the Turia.

Ricard Bofill's formal garden - complimenting the 'Palace of Music' built within the western edge of Turia Garden

View of Palace of the Arts from the Turia Park

Queen Sofia Palace of the Arts and surrounding vegetation

The newly commissioned five-mile green swath in central Valencia was awarded to Catalan architect Ricard Bofill in 1982 to create an initial framework for the proposed 450 acre park. The plan divides the riverbed into 18 zones, each free to formalize its own distinct character by selected local designers, but unified by similar vegetation and water features based on Bofill’s neoclassical concepts along a central longitudinal axis. It would be the decision of segmenting the Turia Park into a sequence of independent gardens that would invite controversy, claiming it impeded the definition of a true global park system - a unifying element like the river water before it. The extents of each park, with an average span of 600 feet from bank to bank, is marked by an existing or new bridge that transverse the green basin, allowing regulated access points for pedestrians and bicyclists to enter the park while allowing vehicular traffic to cross uncontested. Below, a green matrix of pathways, manicured gardens and social spaces (playing fields, ponds, service areas, playgrounds) flourish as a refuge from the daily urban routine. In 1987, Bofill would complete his own series of formal gardens - accompanied by an artificial lake - to compliment the new “Palace of Music” built within the western edge of Turia Garden. The glass dome concert hall by architect José María Paredes would take advantage of the generous green space and become an immensely popular center for musical performances and events, ushering a new cultural renaissance into the city. A few years later, the regional government set out to develop a 86 acre site at the mouth of the dry riverbed - one of the few remaining undeveloped areas - near the coastal district of Nazaret. The Valencian architect and engineer Santiago Calatrava, often called the “native son” of Valencia, would win the commission to develop the entire site. The original plans called for a large telecommunications tower on the land, but government leadership desired ‘cultural clout’ that would rival Bilbao and other Spanish cities. In 1995, the city would begin construction on The City of Arts and Sciences (Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias) - a scientific and cultural center that would serve the entire community of Valencia and expectantly attract international attention from all over the world. The massive complex, often referred to ‘a city within a city’, would consist of five key linear elements - an opera house, planetarium, science museum, multifunctional space and marine park.

“The function of arts centers goes far beyond being places for performance ... It is a symbol of the city’s aspirations and a place where people want to meet one another and talk as much as it is a wonderful place to hear music.”

— Santiago Calatrava, Architect

Different sections of the City of Arts and Science complex - all designed by Calatrava

Site Plan of entire Arts and Science Complex

Built not only to reside as the city’s new scientific and cultural center, Calatrava’s vast and opulent complex manifests a new identity for the historic city center that can not be ignored - both regionally and abroad - creating a heavily transversed urban hub with links to the city’s lower eastern / western banks, an area that had regularly been separated by natural and legislative circumstances. The City of Arts and Sciences responds to traditional nautical Mediterranean culture with a series of diverse pure white ‘fluid’ structures - each with its own concept and aesthetic response - unified by a landscape of pristine light blue reflective pools, a suggestive reference to the ancient river bed and giving a sense to the work as a whole.

Ten years after breaking ground on Calatrava’s ‘city within a city’ the last piece in the grand scheme - the 475,000 square-foot opera house (Queen Sofia Palace of the Arts) - reached substantial completion. Rising 246 feet as the world’s tallest opera house, the massive concrete structure spearheads the complex’s main longitudinal axis, perceptibly linking it across a vast site of concrete and reflective pools toward the adjacent Hemispheric Planetarium and Prince Felipe Science Museum. Calatrava’s design for the opera house, as with most of his projects, forms the structure as the compositional protagonist. By recognizing the project’s diverse programmatic commitment, the design unifies the series of irregular volumes through a comprehensive structural enclosure of two symmetrical concrete shells. The center section of the shell’s surface is cut away on both elevations to expose the substantive elements of the building and revealing curves of subsidiary concrete sweeping around the building’s four primary spaces: the main auditorium (Aula Magistral), a large auditorium, playhouse and multipurpose space. The broad tapered exterior shell - clad in the traditional white trencadis (mosaic of shattered tiles) - in conjunction with Valencia’s subtropical climate allows exterior peripheral circulation along stacked horizontal promenade decks to reach distinct sections of the building - all offering panoramic views of Jardin Turia winding through the city’s historic urban center. Today, the Queen Sofia Palace of the Arts sits as Valencia’s largest landmark (both in visitor impact and overall physical size) as well as one of the top visited cultural complexes in Spain. The opera house has become the climactic centerpiece to a creative vision illustrating the ideas of a new public arena with organic arches, curvalinear forms and vast promenade space - reillustrating the gothic cathedral into a contemporary civic structure within a city that has been defined by medieval architecture.

Reception Hall overlooking City of Arts and Science Complex

The long-winded planning and construction efforts to redefine Turia’s dry riverbed into Valencia’s ‘City of Arts and Sciences’ did come with its fair share of detractors that claimed the planned complex was too grandiose - a monument only to promote the power of the ruling governing establishment, not for the people. By the end of construction, the entire region was beginning to feel the effects of the world recession. The initial cost estimate for the complex ($410 million dollars) would be revealed to have ballooned to a reputed cost of over $1.6 billion dollars by the completion of the project, with some blaming the cost overruns a contributing factor to Valencia’s economic distress. Even the price of the massive complex’s upkeep is said to be consuming more money than the city can handle. Supporters claim the cost overrides are a result of local officials deciding to expand the project significantly from the original plan. Along with the City of Culture, other civic ambitions - from a new marina to a theme park during the boom years - have been linked to the Valencia region’s burdening debt totaling close to 20 percent of its total economy - one of the highest proportions in Spain. Now, once an emblem of civic ambition during Spain’s long economic boom, these new civic buildings now have become a symbol of promiscuous spending and government corruption. To make matters worse, the Queen Sofia Palace of the Arts suffered from a number of setbacks during its inaugural year. Ranging from the collapse of the main stage platform that forced to cancel initial performances and reschedule the entire inaugural opera season, to the entire cultural complex suffering from a series of storm flooding that would lead to water infiltration of the lower floors of the building and destroy sensitive electronic and motor equipment, again leading to the rescheduling of the opera season. “The buildings are like symbols of an era when politician thought we were rich”, says Ignacio Blanco, a member of the opposition United Left party.

Aerial of Valencia (Palace of the Arts in background)

Palace of the Arts  /  Site analysis of access, circulation, new development, and points of social engagement — Palace of the Arts / Site analysis of access, circulation, new development, and points of social engagement

Case Study / Casa da Musica

In 1999 the European Union announced that Porto would be selected as one of the two Cultural Capitals of Europe in 2001 (along with Rotterdam), leading the Minister of Culture and the city to develop ‘Porto 2001’, an organization setup to initiate and produce different urban and cultural interventions within the city limits. In light of this event, a restrictive design competition was established by city officials, inviting five international architectural practices to develop a new concert hall and create a ‘symbol’ of the city to be positioned in the historical center of Porto - the Rotunda da Boavista. The new project - The Casa da Musica - was meant to be the big attraction of Porto’s cultural year, but the tight 3-year construction schedule and a prolonged planning process made organizers realize it would be nearly impossible to meet the 2001 opening deadline. Neverless, Rem Koolhaas (OMA) would win the hurried design competition (with two firms not even meeting the deadline submission), proudly recycling an unrealized scheme from his office that was originally conceived as a Nigerian residence turned into a grand concert hall for Portugal’s second city in under two weeks - indicating the unstable and waning relationship between form and function in contemporary architectural thought. Ultimately, the design was preferred for its ability to connect with a much more diverse audience - proposing an adventurous curriculum that included a highly flexible chamber music hall, a cyber-music hall, teaching spaces for children and a multimedia production area - aimed to attract not only the concert-going persuasion, but the rest of the city as well.

Casa da Musica  /  Site Diagram — Casa da Musica / Site Diagram

The stairs from the ground-level plaza to the main foyer

This is clear upon arrival to the completed project, finally finished in 2005 after lengthy negotiations with a myriad of city organizations. The new Concert Hall sits in sculptural solitary, posed in a public plaza of its own creation beside the historic circular Boavista park, punctuated by large windows that overlook public gatherings below. Skateboarders, loitering teenagers, dining businessmen, international tourists, smoking concertgoers (to name a few) - all congregate on the plaza in front of the faceted form, creating a beehive-like effect of activity both inside and out. The building stands on the site of a former trolley yard in a transitional neighborhood between old and new models of the city, connecting the intact historic 19th-century urban core with a new sprawling financial sector toward the Atlantic Ocean by way of a grand avenue (Avenue da Boavista). The new plaza, organically paved in a rusty Jordanian travertine, is an exposed and fluid counterpoint to the rigid angles of the obscure concert hall as it rises up at two corners for entry to both the underground parking and cafe/information kiosk areas. The project becomes an autonomous response, both architecturally and urbanistically, to its charged location and achieves to mediate a fresh relationship between different metropolitan contingents.

“With this concept, issues of symbolism, visibility and access were resolved in one gesture. Through both continuity and contrast, the park on the Rotunda da Boavista, after our intervention, is no longer a mere hinge between the old and the new Porto, but it becomes a positive encounter of two different models of the city.”

— Rem Koolhaas, Architect

Following the completion of the Arrábida Bridge (the largest concrete span bridge in the world at the time) in 1963, a new southern entry point over the Douro River was established in the city, complementing the historic district’s Dom Luís Bridge to the East. The new road bridge was a product of the recently implemented Municipal Master Plan in 1962 - coordinated by French architect Robert Auzelle - to establish a new urban center in the Boavista area to the west of the city. The infiltration of new road traffic to the area strengthened an existing concentration of railroad / tram networks that was established in the late 19th century, based on the French urban design model of large radial urban spaces (roundabouts). At the center of the circular space lies a landscaped and monumentalized park with a memorial obelisk at its center - dedicated to the Peninsular War. The expansion of this infrastructural network has sought to create a western centrality - distinct from the historic ‘Old Town’ to the east - with the area becoming an expansive territory for modern commercial and residential investment (the first shopping center in the city - Brasilia - would open on the Boavista roundabout in 1974) by reason of the economic value of the region near multiple shorelines (Atlantic Ocan and mouth of the Douro River). Today, private initiative has driven the centrality of Boavista (reinforced by the siting of the Casa da Musica in 2005) that extends down an axis toward the sea, enriching the region with private investment while historic parts of the city remain generally dormant.

Exterior Stair  /  Entry — Exterior Stair / Entry

Casa da Musica  /  Floorplan — Casa da Musica / Floorplan

“Most cultural institutions serve only part of a population. A majority knows their exterior shape, only a minority knows what happens inside.”

— Rem Koolhaas, Architect

While the imposing volume seems rather fastened, the Casa da Musica has an unimpeded relationship between the interior and exterior, with the intention to maximize the link with the public realm through direct visual contact - always enticing visitors in relation to their surroundings and offering them a unique view to the city, sea and sky. The dramatic main entry is put on full display in the public plaza, fronted by a steep flight of concrete steps with a theatrical prescience, seemingly discharged from the large angled sliding glass doors recessed in the large mass, conceding a blurred position of institutional arrival and public contemplation. The same is true for the interior approach that strives to break down the barriers of a typical concert hall to achieve a greater connection between the audience and the artist, allowing a succession of open spaces to visually and physically communicate with the central space (the auditorium) - a notion from the unrealized design of OMA’s private house that required a series of separate zones around a common family room. The concept would work for Porto as it broke open the traditionally closed ‘shoebox’ music hall, creating an exchange between old and new, public and private - two samplings of different cities.

The entire volume of the Casa da Musica operates as a condensed urban container with the ability to absorb any amount of programmatic chaos that the city offers. The main auditorium lays calmly at the heart of the building’s structure, defined by a series of warped spaces and twisting runs of stairs that tunnel through the mass, creating key programmatic elements that seem to processionally erode from the building’s interior and create a socially charged set of secondary spaces (press room, restaurant, children’s room, electronic room, etc.) that compliment the traditional main performance hall. Public circulation is entwined through these interstitial spaces, past soaring angled structural elements, dramatically lit alcoves, and polychromatic interiors - turning the simple act of moving through the building into an transformative kinetic experience that believes in the ‘crush and bustle’ of the audience before the sense of satisfaction during the event. The main auditorium is introduced in a different way, suspended between two massive parallel walls running the entire length and height of the building, it is a completely soundproof device that is able to be seen throughout the building, but not heard. The hall design itself was chosen as a ‘shoebox’ configuration, one that is safe and time-tested, but requires visual association with the city and introduces large glazed openings to each of the end walls - a feature unheard of in performance halls, along with numerous openings for the surrounding secondary spaces that seem to intrude and hang into the main hall, exposing that blurred programmatic break line so common throughout the entire project.

Case da Musica  /  Site analysis of access, circulation, new development, and points of social engagement — Case da Musica / Site analysis of access, circulation, new development, and points of social engagement

Case Study / City of Culture

During the mid-1990s - a period of rapid regional competition in Spain with the planning of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao and Valencia opening construction on the City of Science and Art - city officials determined Galicia needed to join this cultural arms race and promote the region’s illustrious heritage to the world. In 1999 an international architectural competition was initiated to create a new 1 million-square-foot cultural complex from a list of eleven finalists submitting proposals, all focusing on a beautiful hillside site (Monte Gaiás) overlooking Santiago de Compostela to plan the new ‘City of Culture’. Organizers acknowledged the proposed project would be a new place of pilgrimage toward a 'city of knowledge and creativity', a dynamic addition to a region with a 1,200 year tradition of spiritual passage. The proposal from New York architect Peter Eisenman would eventually be chosen with a scheme embodying an extensive topographical architecture that would relate to the neighboring granite hillsides - an acknowledgment to both an immense building program and the surrounding Galician landscape. The resulting uniquelly-organic design from Eisenman is derived from a condensation of multiple patterns - first from the pilgrim routes that run through the medieval ‘Old Town’ city center of Santiago overlaid on a topographic map of the hillside site. Then, a geometric Cartesian grid superimposed onto the site diagram and extruded using new computer modeling software to create a deformed topographic surface that ripples in the landscape, incorporating old and new contexts into a singular building matrix. The composed massings can seem to have both a smooth and striated tactile quality, a likeness to the symbolic seashell that has defined the city and its history for centuries.

Model exposing the connection between Old Town and the City of Culture

Walking through the City of Culture site, one realizes the figure-ground urbanism of the original medieval city center is superseded to the project’s emerging deformed grid with sinuous surfaces that are neither figure nor ground, but read as one continuous stone-clad architectural composition. The interstitial space between buildings is a familiar presence found in a new form with narrow pedestrian ‘streets’, carved and affected by its relationship to immediate building adjacencies, all emptying out onto a public plaza overlooking the inspiring Santiago skyline. The entire complex celebrates a regionalist expression with local hand-quarried quartzite (in brown, rose, and off-white hues) cladding all the walls and roofs in 20-inch blocks, proving to be hard for quarries to meet demand.

Although Eisenman’s proposal called for eight buildings, today the entire complex is conceived as three pairs of buildings (totaling six buildings in three construction phases), with the Library of Galicia (186,990 sqft) and Galician Archives (155,205 sqft) opened in 2011, followed a year later by the completion of the Museum of Galicia (223,889 sqft) and Central Services Building (80,729 sqft). The remaining two structures, the International Art Center and Center for Music and Performing Arts, are currently non-entities with uncertain futures that operate as two glaring holes in the site due to cost overruns, creating a lightning rod for debate.

It is too early to fully evaluate a complex that is still unfinished, although it has already become a focal point for debate regarding high cost, excessive space, and an ambiguous program. Initially, the brief for the project called for a six-building complex on a 7 million sqft (160 acre) site for a budget of just around $145 million. Expectations were high when the project was launched during the economic ‘boom years’ and competition was fierce (Guggenheim opened years earlier to much international acclaim). 12 years later, under the cloud of the ‘Great Recession’, the first two phases of the City of Culture would be completed at a budget far exceeding expectations ($385 million). Critics would soon unleash their frustration at the entire project, saying it became a symbol of government’s inappropriate spending during one of the worst financial periods in the country’s history (20% unemployment and 9% budget deficit). Meanwhile, the construction of the final two buildings (the Center for Performing Arts and Arts Center) had yet to be started, being continuously delayed due to the economic downturn (along with all building activity in Spain). Of the two buildings, the Performing Arts Center was to be the ‘jewel’ of the complex, planned as the largest building in the complex at 137 feet high and housing over 2000 seats to promote Galicia to the musical and performing arts world. In 2013, with large construction expenditures for the arts not a high political priority and a Spanish economy showing no sign of improvement, the regional governor of Galicia supported a motion to “definitively” stop construction work on the complex, which would need another $228 million to finish. Currently, the City of Culture, Galicia’s answer to Bilbao, is little more than four large under-capacity buildings adjacent to two big holes in the ground. Last year, 330,000 would visit the Galician site that craved so much attention, compared to over a million visitors for Bilbao’s Guggenheim during the same period. It is an unfortunate result of bad economic timing and high (maybe unrealistic) ambitions that have halted this monumental task, but though still unfinished, it creates a pure architectural landscape that is unique in the world and can been seen as a serious investment to the region of Galicia.

“Instead of the ground’s being conceived as a backdrop against which the buildings stand out as figures, we generate a condition in which the ground can rear up to become figure, the buildings can subside into ground. It is a new kind of urban fabric”

— Peter Eisenman, Architect

City of Culture  /  Site analysis of access, circulation, new development, and points of social engagement — City of Culture / Site analysis of access, circulation, new development, and points of social engagement

Case Study / Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

From the moment Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum was unveiled along the banks of the Nervión river in 1997, the term “Bilbao Effect” emerged as a battle cry from civic leaders, architects and city planners intent on revitalizing dilapidated city centers and elevating their status in a competitive global market. In fact, there was reason for elated optimism, as market research showed Gehry’s new building bringing an extra 3 million visitors to the city each year, with additional tax revenue and corporate sponsorship invading the flourishing post-industrial region. However, the success of the project would not rely on a single object, but on an inspiring urban strategy that cleared the city’s waterfront of old shipbuilding industries and introduced accessible green space that was capable of hosting popular city activities and attractions throughout the year. The city, eager for a museum to compliment the region, gave the Guggenheim foundation complete control of the project throughout the process. The result was an efficient, yet impressive construction. Nevertheless, it was obvious to the media and aspiring cities that the “Icon” resulted in the sudden fortune of Bilbao, elevating an emerging cultural industry in architecture that relies on the shock of iconographic structures for supremacy in a global market.

“At some point, when it was becoming clear that the Alhondiga was not going to work as a site, there was this moment when I had this epiphany ... I went past the Bellas Artes Museum and then crossed this bridge to the university ... ran down to the opera house (Teatro Arriaga) and realized that this was, in fact, what I called the geocultural triangle of Bilbao. The fact that the waterfront was in the middle of it at this point was only coincidental.”

— Thomas Krens, Director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation

Over fifteen years have passed since Bilbao grabbed headlines from all over the world. In those years, the population of urban centers around the world began to exceed those of rural areas and the tourism industry was surging with no sign of abating, leading to an assortment of cities to invest heavily in their cultural infrastructure during the economic ‘boom years’. This initiative was spearheaded by substantial performing-arts complexes (theaters, concert halls and opera houses) and lead to a total metamorphic shift in the live-art industry with efforts to combat inclusion, globalization and a dwindling audience. Now, architects were forced to balance between civic responsibility and a new form of city-branding, with politicians overwhelmingly focused on the latter. After the global financial meltdown in 2008, many of these major cultural projects (some still in construction) - combined with government mismanagement and poor attendance - resulted in intense public scrutiny and questioned the foundation of this surging iconography in architecture. This study will focus on the characteristics and campaigns for new performance architecture in a post-Bilbao environment, with an emphasis on geographically-condensed regions in Europe that traditionally have had regionalist building attitudes.

Case Study / Grand Canal Theater

Comprising of 1,300 acres of land, the Dublin Docklands Development Area represents the Eastern territory of both the north and south banks of the river Liffey , the city’s geographical gateway to the Irish Sea and the rest of the world. Historically, the area suffered from little contact between the communties on both sides of the river, as the O’Connell Bridge was one of the only physical crossing-points until the late 19th century, forcing people to rely mainly on Liffey ferries to cross downstream. The south bank (Ringsend) would later develop into a prosperious port area, driving people and businesses steadily into the Docklands with prospects of jobs and undeveloped land. To this day, the area remains Ireland’s largest sea port, with nearly two-thirds of the country’s port traffic going through Dublin Port. During the mid-1990s, an economic boom would bring top international tech giants to the city and begin establishing headquarters in the area, creating an intense demand on the city’s limited housing stock. In 1997 the Dublin Docklands Development Authority Act was created to responsibilly generate a physical, social and economic regeneration in the East side of Dublin. The plan would transform the district into an extension of the city that would not only be the base for business and culture, but also a vibrant residential hub of 22,000 people who might otherwise move to the suburbs. The central core of the Docklands area, a toxic brownfield from a dormant gas production industry, would be transformed into a catalytic centerpiece of the new development called the Grand Canal Square, signalling the rebirth of the district and announce the Docklands as a new destination in the city.

The extent of the 1300-acre Dublin Docklands Development Project (red), with the Grand Canal Dock (GCD) planning area (yellow). The site of the Grand Canal Theatre is indicated.

The Dublin Docklands area has historically been an important part of the city of Dublin, but it has always been a difficult place to establish an alliance between industry and urban livelihood. The proposed redevelopment of the area would need an identity that would be immmediately recognizable and associated with the place. That event would occur at the central core of the Docklands area, called Grand Canal Square, named after the historic Grand Canal that had connected trade cargo from Dublin to the River Shannon. The construction of the new square would be implemented months, and in some cases, even years before the rest of the Docklands development, in order to attract investment and excitement to the transforming neighborhood. At the heart of the new construction lies the Grand Canal Square Theatre, a structure that becomes the main facade of the large public piazza, framed by a five star hotel and residences on one side and an office building on the other. Architect Daniel Libeskind would be selected to lead a group of designers and engineers to complete the theatre with the concept to build a cultural presence on the site by sculpting expressionistic glass volumes to convey a fluid and open public dialogue with the cultural, commercial and residential surroundings, while presenting various programmatic forces essential to the Theatre’s operation. The faceted entrance facade acts as a theatre curtain, projecting the ‘stages’ of the building’s multiple level theatre lobby onto the projected public piazza, creating an active visual edge onto a dynamic civic space. The dynamic volumes and large geometric structural ribs can also be said to evoke imagery of the docklad area as a composition of rippled water with protruding ‘ribs’ of wooden piers.

Calatrava’s Samuel Beckett Bridge crossing the River Liffey in Dublin’s Docklands area

Looking down Chimney View toward Grand Canal Theatre

The Grand Canal Theatre is integrated into the planned commercial development of the Docklands by twin office buildings designed by Libeskind, flanking the theatre to the north and south and containing almost 500,000 square feet of leasable office and retail space. Like the Theatre, the office buildings provide multi-story glazed atriums with similar facade articulations, visually integrating the buildings with adjacnt retail, cultural and public space components. South Block and North Block, as the twin offices are named, help reinforce the boundary of the new urban square and form a theatrical gateway to Dublin Harbor.

Libeskind’s design for the Grand Canal Theater delivered a clear and compelling aesthetic to the newly-formed district, so rather than confront it with a conflicting language the designers of Grand Canal Sqaure (Martha Schwartz Partners) embraced the angularity of the entry facade down to the ground plane, uniting the building and landscape into one larger compostion with a singular identity. The piazza compliments the interiority of the Theater, acting as a grand outdoor lobby, itself becoming a stage for civic gathering with the dramatic theatre elevation as a backdrop offering platforms for viewing. Most notably, is the fragmented paving pattern across the entire open space, with sharp lines seemingly continuing off the building’s architecture, creating a varied networks of paths that reach out into the surrounding context to attract people into and through the new plaza.

Site plan of Martha Schwartz Partners' design for Grand Canal Square

“The initial focus in people’s minds was on development and on the buildings, but no matter what the quality of the individual buildings, people’s overwhelming sense of place was going to be determined by that public space and the public realm of the wider district.”

— Martha Schwartz

In a bold statement, the designers created a ‘red carpet’ that cuts across though the square and up to the theater’s entrance, signaling that the “theater is open to the world”. The other end of the carpet extends out over the canal to the west, inviting visitors to connect with the waterfront and the Dockland area. This move is further emphasized with 23-foot high red light poles angled out of the surface of the square, enabling color and energy to an otherwise colorless landscape (parking garage below limits much vegetation growth). The light poles serve to soften the hardscape while breaking down the scale shift between the Theater and the expansive ground plane. The composition of both the square and Theater creates a dynamic urban gathering space, one defined by visual relationships, connection points and porous infastructure. It is a performance space both inside and out.

“The concept….is to build a powerful cultural presence expressed in a dynamic volume. This volume is sculpted to express the various forces which create the urban piazza, the public space and inner workings of the theatre. This composition creates an icon that mirrors the joy and drama emblematic of Dublin itself.”

— Daniel Libeskind, Architect

Grand Canal Theater  /  Site analysis of access, circulation, new development, and points of social engagement — Grand Canal Theater / Site analysis of access, circulation, new development, and points of social engagement

Case Study / Kulturhuset (The House of Culture)

During the 20th century, the population of Stockholm had exploded and the city center was no longer able to facilitate the rapid growth. With the controversial City Plan of 1946, a radical modernization project was launched to transform the old Norrmalm district of the inner city into the new modern heart of Stockholm - creating new underground metro networks, wider traffic infrastructure and new high-rise developments, at the cost of extensive and unpopular demolitions that had plagued the city through the 1950s. The new district that had emerged consisted largely of modern commercial buildings and business activities, including the Hötorget office and commercial center that had been directly inspired by emerging modernist projects such as the Lever House in New York City. The new commercial district would form around the heart of the reconstruction - a new large square, referred to as Sergels Torg, which addressed the city's continuously increasing traffic loads and the concept of separating pedestrian and car traffic, with a new sunken pedestrian plaza (the Plattan) connecting the city's popular pedestrian shopping street of Drottninggatan with the new infrastructure and commercial developments.

Consequently, to counteract the commercialism of the inner city redevelopment, the Municipality of Stockholm in association with Pontus Hultén, the influential founder of Moderna Museet, launched an architectural competition in 1965 to create a cultural center within Sergels Torg. The competition's brief asked to create a cultural institution with heavy urban and national implications, including such programs as theatres, galleries, cultural activities, and premises for the central bank of Sweden. The winning entry entitled 'Kulturhuset' was proposed by Peter Celsing, the chief architect of the Stockholm Tramways and a leader in the city's modernist movement. At a time when city redevelopment was becoming increasingly unpopular in public opinion, the project sought to rationalize and humanize large-scale construction by creating an 'open shelf', transparent multi-purpose building in which visible interior functions take the place of traditional ornament, allowing the institutional building to have an atmosphere of the street coupled with the possibilities of a cultural workshop.

Sergels Torg's sunken pedestrian plaza articulated with a triangular pattern, referred to as "The Slab"

Pedestrian avenue through the Hötorget Office and Commercial Center toward Sergels torg

SL Tram at Sergels torgIn 1974, the Center would be constructed to the south of Sergels Torg according to the proposed competition scheme, realizing an accessible seven-story shelf unit mounted on a solid concrete wall, deemed as a "cultural living room". The Swedish Parliament (the Riksdag) had decided several years before on changes to the parliament building, as a result of the abolition of the upper house. With the withdrawl of Moderna Museet's future expansion, half of the Kulturhuset would then be intended as a temporary Parliament Building while the original on Helgeandsholmen island was being remodeled into a one-House legislature. What was intended to be the major stage of the City Theatre was rapidly transformed into a main governing chamber and with the state government as a future tenant, the building’s finances were on a safe footing during the development of the project.

Following the completion of the Cultural Center, two additions would soon follow. As the commercial limb of the Bank/City Theater/Cultural Center complex, the Bank of Sweden turns its back on the unifying concrete wall of the Cultural Center and presents an impervious, grid-like granite façade towards Brunkeberg Square and the city's old town. Directly west to the bank, the city theatre is assimilated into the existing urban fabric, while the other two elements stand out as objectified, representative buildings. The complex closes the main north-south axis of the city, and is sited on the historical boundary between the old town and the nineteenth-century commercial district. Celsing preserved this distinction by attaching the bank and the cultural centre to opposite sides of a thick ‘service’ wall, which symbolically represents the ancient city wall.

Underground commercial mall east of the pedestrian plaza underneath a fountain roundabout

Pedestrian passage through the Kulturhuset toward Brunkeberg Square

The concept of Kulturhuset represented a new architectural ideology rising in Sweden, closely identified with the social reform movement of the early twentieth-century. However, by the date of completion, the period large housing projects in Stockholm and Sweden, including the large-scale brutal redevelopment of the civic center, were brought to an end. Protests against slum-clearance policies implemented without the consent of the public reached a culmination with the so-called "Battle of the Elms" in 1971. Kulturhuset would become the controversial figurehead to the public unrest, but the architectural composition would be sufficiently robust to survive both a tough childhood and confused adolescence by strength in functional performance. And now after thirty-eight years, the building has been taken back by the public - a department store for culture - with the openness and generosity of Sergels Torg, exposure of cultural activities outward to the square, and connective tissue to a layered shopping mecca, making its presence significantly felt in the modern center of the city.

“I am building for a new human being who has to come”

— Peter Celsing, architect

Diagram: Analysis of site access and movement, new development, and points of social engagement

Case Study / Finlandia Park (Finlandia Hall & Helsinki Music Centre)

As a young, war-torn country isolated in northern Europe, Finland began the 20th century as a nation looking for an identity; with the ability to communicate regional cultural values and a nationalistic character, embracing a hostility to all things Russian. A famous nineteenth-century painting by Edward Isto titled 'The Attack' in which a white-gowned young Finnish woman defends her country's law, as an emblem to its independence, against the Russian Eagle, would loom large in the national psyche. The situation would intensify just as a young Alvar Aalto came to Helsinki to study architecture. The city became the epicenter of events that led Finland to declare independence from Russia in 1917, only to be drawn into a civil war the following year, involving pro-western Aalto into numerous battles with pro-eastern forces. The subsequent victory for the independent nation would shape the future of the Finnish cultural community and influence Aalto's nationalistic position on architecture.

Decades later, as a response to the old center of eastern-influenced Senate Square, community leaders were of the opinion that an independent Finland needed a central square of its own in the new, self-proclaimed center of the city around the vicinity of the recently completed Parliament House, a building that symbolizes the status won in 1917. It was a coincidence that right in front of the Parliament there lay a large railway freight yard which was to be resited elsewhere; an older Alvar Aalto thought that this area would provide a unique opportunity for the realization of an idea, originally suggested by Eliel Saarinen after the civil war. By the end of the 1950s, after countless alternative plans were proposed and numerous competitions reviewed, the planning committee would entrust Aalto with the task of formulating a central plan for Helsinki. The resulting master plan, encompassing Helsinki's Töölönlahti bay, proposed a terraced square with a variety of civic buildings placed linearly along the waterfront, partly on ground and partly on water, to allow an open view of the bay through the buildings. The area in front of the Finnish House of Parliament was envisioned as an open central area that acted as a new active center, concentrating the economic and cultural needs of the community, while connecting the eastern and western parts of the city. However, the plan became a piecemeal development under much debate, with only the concert and conference house of Finlandia Hall to see completion, leaving the only building in an imposing position in its relatively natural surroundings. His master plan, first presented in 1961, would never be carried out in its entirety, but Aalto's ideals on a new urban landscape based on a humanistic design approach that enhanced the progressive and democratic nature of the city, would give relevant and realistic possibilities toward the future use of the site.

Map of Helsinki showing Senate Square (blue), new central square around Töölönlahti Bay (red) and supporting civic buildings around the area (purple)

Finlandia Hall

As the only piece to materialize from Alvar Aalto's central Helsinki master plan, Finlandia Hall represents a larger vision for the city; built on democratic values, cultural aspirations and strategic siting. One of the last projects to be overseen by the influential architect, the project was split into two phases, with the concert building constructed in 1967-71, and the conference wing four years later. Finlandia Hall can be viewed as a building with two sides, different in scale and character; one toward the bay (east) and the other toward Hesperia Park and Mannerheimintie street (west). The principle entryway, facing west, is a sculpturally winding facade with expressive and humanist aspirations that is married with the natural settings of Hesperia Park, following Aalto's thinking that one should always enter a building through nature as a singular experience. Conversely, on the 'public side' of the eastern facade, the distinct staircase foyers of the concert building and its terraced lobbies oriented toward Töölönlahti bay create a collective setting for public events, once thought to support a proposed urban landscape as a square for social engagement, completely free from vehicular traffic, unfortunately now faces various degrees of undefined land parcels and an abundance of surface parking. The commonality of the project comes from the building's material expression, as the prevalent use of the white Carrara marble not only becomes a contrasting element to the black granite interior, but more importantly generates an influential link to Mediterranean classicism culture, a move that Aalto believed gave Finland the right to exist in western cultural society.

Western reception portico off the busy street of Mannerheimintie

Finlandia Hall's eastern entry portico and car ramp

Parking lot to the east of Finlandia Hall

Töölönlahti Bay and Hesperia Park

Following the completion of Finlandia Hall and the abandonment of Aalto's proposed axis of public buildings to the north, Hesperia park's importance in the urban fabric would grow as one of the largest and most popular public parks in central Helsinki. Having a symbiotic relationship with Finlandia Hall; a building designed with intentions to preserve the surrounding landscape, the park would encourage a refuge for pedestrians to be led away from the narrow sidewalks of traffic-heavy Mannerheimintie road, creating a much larger area for exploitation of pedestrian traffic. The surrounding area of Töölönlahti Bay would be left almost untouched up to the end of the 20th century, acting as a natural threshold between the city center to the south and numerous civic developments around the area, including the 1952 Olympic Stadium complex, Linnanmäki amusement park, Helsinki City Theatre, Finnish Museum of Natural History and Aalto's House of Culture. However, in 1993 a new Opera House would be built on the site, flanking Hesperia Park to the north and providing the Finnish National Opera and the city of Helsinki with a state-of-the-art facility. The completion and success of the Finnish National Opera House would put into motion something that Finlandia Hall and Alvar Aalto started years earlier; a strong pedestrian-oriented cultural center for the city. Five years later, the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma would open on the southernmost site of Töölönlahti Bay based on an incremental planning process. Designed by Steven Holl Architects, the building was envisioned as an element that would dovetail with the urban structure of the city as well as with the natural environment of the park's surrounding landscape, creating a linear progression of major cultural institutions along Mannerheimintie road and a foundation for a more ambitious development plan.

Pedestrian paths along the shores of Töölönlahti bay

View of Kiasma contemporary art museum from the north

Töölönlahti Redevelopment & Finlandia Hall Renovation

The Töölönlahti area would become among the most prominent regions in the Helsinki city centre by the start of the new millennium. As a former state railyard, flanked by Helsinki's central train station and Parliament House, the southern section of the site offered city officials the land and the potential for a new dynamic urban square, embracing the cultural and recreational attitude that has evolved in the area for years. The new master plan, developed by the City of Helsinki, calls on Töölönlahti Bay to become what Alvar Aalto and his fellow compatriots once envisioned for the city, an utopian centre of cultural activity and a "living room" for the Helsinki people. Energetically refered to as Finlandia Park, the new development will grow from a southern extension of the bay, from its present shorelines to behind Finlandia Hall, with a shallow water element further extending all the way to Kiasma. A new concert hall is introduced across from the Parliament House, further enforcing a cultural presence along Mannerheimintie road, while new residential and commercial blocks are planned on the eastern perimeter, acting as an urban wall between the city's rail system and the proposed park. Public congregation and movement would therefore be seen in the plan's central axis, along the park's new shoreline, further enforced by a oval-shaped dance pavilion and the new Helsinki central library. After the completion of the new concert hall (Helsinki Music Centre) in 2011, Finlandia Hall is now undergoing most of the work in the area with an expansion/renovation to adapt the Hall to its new role in the site. Plans are to remove the car ramp and parking area from the building's eastern side, facing Töölönlahti Bay, leaving room for pedestrian use and accommodate a terraced café, which will be open to the public apart from serving Finlandia Hall’s functions. The parking spaces, which now occupy the back of Finlandia Hall, will be moved to a new underground parking facility that will serve all nearby buildings, effectively freeing the ground plane for more pedestrian-oriented activities. Within the next decade, it will be interesting to notice that some of Aalto's then too utopian ideas for central Helsinki will finally be realized – 35 years after his death.

The conceptual site plan illustration for Finlandia Park, provided by Helsinki City Planning Department

Rendering of Finlandia Park from the north, with Finlandia Hall on the right. Image from Helsinki City Planning Department

Helsinki Music Centre

Since its completion in 1971, Finlandia Hall has served as Helsinki’s main classical music concert venue. Unfortunately, persistent acoustic problems would plague Aalto's acclaimed building, making it out to be more of a conference venue than a concert hall. Moreover, despite repeated and persistent efforts spanning the past century, Helsinki has never had a true orchestral concert hall specifically designed and intended for the performance of symphonic music. However, after the much-debated detailed town plan for the Töölönlahti Bay area was accepted in 2002, an architectural competition was announced for a new Music Hall that would reinforce the new component master plan. The Helsinki City Board chose a site located in front of the Parliament House, a site that was historically valuable, loaded with symbolism and ultimately controversial as demonstrations would develop in support of the existing structures in the area, leading to a mysterious fire that would ultimately destroy everything on the site.

The winner of the competition, entitled ‘a mezza voce' (with moderate volume) by LPR Architects, was the most subtle, influenced by a fundamental Finnish appearance with an authentic choice of materials and a composition that pays homage to Functionalist design. Ideally, the project sought to be open and accessible to its environment, but it would ultimately be limited by its location. Because of the tight restrictions of the master plan concerning building height in the proximity of the Parliament House, a large part of the program is squeezed underground so that it almost seems to be bowing down to its surroundings. Following the completion of the Music Centre, Kiasma Park would soon follow, creating a terraced 'wedge' landscape that connects the new theater to Kiasma museum and, ultimately, to the future develop of Finlandia Park. Finlandia Hall would change as well, as most performances have now moved to the Music Centre, focus is more on its other role as a congress centre, serving as a venue for government events, trade fairs and exhibitions.

Interior view of the Helsinki Music Centre, looking to the north over the theater cafe

View of northern entry to Helsinki Music Centre

Kiasma Park from the south, with Parliament House (left) and Helsinki Music Centre (right)

Kiasma Park - Looking west toward Parliament House — Kiasma Park - Looking west toward Parliament House

The Planning of Töölönlahti Bay area is a story with two distinct chapters. One believed in a harmonic, but comprehensive plan dictated by the natural surrounding of the Finnish Landscape. The other, an incremental approach to planning through competitions, eventually formalizing a binding master plan around an artificial landscape. Both, Finlandia Hall and the Helsinki Music Centre, can be said to represent these two different sides of Helsinki's cultural center, although each share the importance in creating a civic environment based on a Finnish geo-political aspiration. It is hard to say how successful Helsinki's proclaimed 'Finlandia Park' will be, in terms of civic engagement and urban aspirations, as construction continues to take over the historic rail yard. But, the power lies in the inclusion of residential/commercial components, along with programmatic-led events, that encourage a diverse undertaking in combination with the Finnish nature ideology to create the assumed role of Töölönlahti Bay as the new monumental center for the country.

Site Diagram  /  Core of pedestrian site approach and movement — Site Diagram / Core of pedestrian site approach and movement

“In the days before printing, people needed - as symbols of their spiritual aspirations and to fulfill their longing for beauty - large and, above all, beautiful buildings. Temples, cathedrals, forums, theatres and palaces communicated history with greater clarity and sensitivity than old rolls of parchment ever could.”

— Alvar Aalto, architect

Finlandia Park  /  Royal Opera House  /  Site analysis of access, circulation, new development, and points of social engagement — Finlandia Park / Royal Opera House / Site analysis of access, circulation, new development, and points of social engagement

Case Study / Oslo Opera House

In a moonlit scene of a storm-ravaged coast, Norwegian painter Knud Baade creates an operatic landscape of a mythical Norway inhabited by an antiquated warrior. It is a common view from a country that is considered at the crossroads to nowhere, off in a corner of Europe, dominated by the harshness of the Artic-like landscape. And yet, as the warrior stares at the moon-lit clouds standing rock-like as the cliff he stands on, it celebrates a symbiotic relationship between the perseverance of the Norwegian people and the unforgiving nature that surround them. It is an image that activates all the senses, enticing one to explore, to climb, to view out into the unknown; a divine experience to all that follow the journey. Enter 2008 and the opening of the new Oslo Opera House, a large glacial building that embodies the spirit of Baade's paintings, encouraging unrestricted exploratative motion and redefined perspectives while creating a new urban condition in the heart of Bjørvika Bay, a vast developing area in the center of Oslo.

Knud Baade’s 'Scene from the era of Norwegian Sagas', 1850 (from the private collection of Asbjørn Lunde)

Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye (left) and the Oslo Opera House (right)

For centuries the Bjørvika pier has been one of Oslo’s economic lifelines and a point of contact with the rest of the world, however like so many other historic harbor cities, the site became underused and in a state of decay as harbor activity moved away from its central location. In 1999, after tireless political and cultural championing, the Norwegian Parliament decided that the Norwegian National Opera needed to move from its existing location in Anchor Square and construct a new opera house in Oslo. With the passage of the Opera Bill and much debate over different site possibilities, an open design competition was announced for the Bjorvika region that would bring in hundreds of design proposals, along with attracting an unprecedented amount of media attention and public interest. The international jury would declare the Norwegian design firm of Snøhetta the winner with a building concept based on three main elements: the Wave Wall, the Factory and the Carpet. The Wave Wall would develop into an extensive oak wall that composes a literal threshold between the public and private functions of the project, while The Factory represents the production area that would accommodate over 600 employees working in about 50 professions and trades for the new Opera House.

The final element, The Carpet, becomes the most obvious architectural characteristic with 190,000 sq.ft. of sloping marble roofscape growing out of the harbor’s waters. The defining element was specifically designed as common property - both a sculpted landscape and an topographic agora that allows free access for all and becomes a democratic source of experience that is independent of other theater functions. The pattern of the roof landscape, designated as artwork, is clad in a stone that traditionally has been used for public squares, sculpted as a jigsaw puzzle of tactile qualities that encourages movement through different visual perspectives and a heightened awareness of one’s surroundings. Ultimately, the sculpted roof exhibits the intention of the project, which is to return the location on which the opera house was constructed to the public and it’s natural surroundings. A quality rarely seen in civic design and one that ultimately speaks to Le Corbusier’s famous five points of architecture almost a century ago. Primarily used to illustrate the concept of domestic architecture as a standardized object, Le Corbusier’s theory emphasized the potential of restoring the area of ground covered by the house and bringing the landscape into the architecture with views and openness - blurring the relationship between built structure and the surrounding environment.

“The passing of the Opera Bill was not that popular at the time. It did not happen by popular demand. But then the building rises out of the dust, and people embrace it as if it was something they have yearned for! That is nothing short of a marvel and a conscious effort to showcase Norway as a cultural nation.”

— Anne Enger, former Minister of Culture

Map of Oslo  /  The central location of Opera House with primary access routes. Inner circle represents Bjørvika bay area surrounded by the outer circle of downtown Oslo. The black dot indicates the former location of the Norwegian Nationa… — Map of Oslo / The central location of Opera House with primary access routes. Inner circle represents Bjørvika bay area surrounded by the outer circle of downtown Oslo. The black dot indicates the former location of the Norwegian National Opera.

Bjørvika Bay from early 20th century. Red indicates location of future opera house.

Bjørvika bay, perspective from Snøhetta's competition entry

The conceptual elements of the opera building (The Wave, The Carpet, and The Factory), by Snøhetta

After the opening in 2008, the Oslo Opera House project was considered a success, both inside and outside, rising from the sea and linking the fjord to the city. The white platform rapidly became one of Oslo's most popular public properties, paired with the equally accessible Opera House foyer, granting visitors access to buy tickets for performances, eat in one of the restaurants, sit and enjoy a coffee, visit the Opera Shop or just stroll around and immerse yourself in the atmosphere. The openness and horizontality became the most evident characteristics of the project. However, once you leave the boundaries of the site, the building that prides itself on accessibility and free movement becomes increasingly marginalized in a undetermined context. Approaching the site from downtown Oslo today is like being transported through a cattle corral, leading visitors through restrictive enclosures toward greener pastures. Two pedestrian bridges, one from the north and the other from the west, lead visitors over a moat of networked roadways, only to land and encounter another footbridge spanning an excavated channel (Opera Canal) that seperates the Oslo Opera House from land. A series of events that would isolate a project, rather than accommodate within a city context.

When the highly-debated Opera Bill was passed, it was understood that the Bjørvika site was only possible with a new traffic solution, as well as a more expensive building and the unclear surrounding ground conditions, making the price tag much higher ($840 million). The project would be formulated as a 'footprint master plan', making it independent from the planning of the rest of the urban development in that area (referred to as Fjord City) and of the complicated traffic situation. So, why choose to build an opera house dependent on a host of questionable considerations and for more money? The main motivation behind Bjørvika bay was to speed up urban development in the defunct region. The motto became "If you build it, they will come" and a few years after the Opera's completion, the surrounding area is slowly seeing progress. Recently, the Bjørvika Tunnel project (the first immersed tunnel in Norway) was completed, bypassing most car traffic along the waterfront and allowing the removal of the remaining E18 highway that separates the Oslo Opera House from the rest of the city.

“This building has led to a discussion of the whole surrounding area, traffic, adjoining functions and the openness of the urban spaces. There has been a lot of discussion about how to make these areas as vibrant as possible; a discussion that demonstrates that public attention has really been alerted to the importance of urban development and public space.”

— Trond Giske, former Minister of Culture

View toward downtown Oslo showing the Opera House's main point of entry.

The pedestrian footbridge to the north of the Opera

The pedestrian footbridge to the west of the Opera

Following local and international praise for the new Opera House and the completion of the Bjørvika Tunnel, the immediate area is undergoing a quick and sudden urban transformation. To the north of the Opera, a new commercial business district known as the Opera Quarter is currently under construction. Previously called 'the Bar Code' because of the long, slender plots of land and staggered heights of the buildings, the project will bring in the largest collection of living and working space in all of Oslo to the area (10,000 office spaces and 500 residences), creating a dense 24/7 live-work community focused on urban activity from the street level. To the south, the artificial peninsula of Sørengautstikkeren is starting construction on a redevelopment project that will include an entire new neighborhood of about 1,000 residential units.

View looking south toward the artificial peninsula of Sørengautstikkeren (under construction)

In 2008, the Norwegian Parliament decided to continue the growth of cultural influence in the Bjørvika region by initiating design competitions for both the Munch-Stenersen Museum and Oslo Public Library that would surround the Oslo Opera House, creating a new cultural epicenter in the city. To be located directly north of the Opera House, across from Opera Canal, the competition commitee awarded Lund Hagem Arkitekter the Oslo Public Library commission with an entry that focused on integrating the project into the city by dividing the site into three separate buildings, offering a subtle human scale and optimal views to the city. Directly next to the Opera's office wing on the east side of the site, the architectural firm of Herreros Arquitectos was awarded the commission for the Munch-Stenersen Museum as a high-rise project that is conceived as a highly visible 'place of concentration' for art and the community. Even Oslo's Central Train Station is joining the Bjørvika fray, by proposing a major redesign by Space Group that would focus on a new unified station sited on a linear north-south axis toward the Opera House, freeing up the ground level for public interaction and providing a massive roof garden above. Of course, to say all these projects were to continue forward as planned would be idealistic at best, as financial and political resistance is already prevalent, but it shows how a single successful project can generate enough public enthusiasm and political influence in a planned transformation of an entire area of the city.

Masterplan of Bjørvika region around the Opera House

The proposal for the Oslo Public Library (left) north of the Oslo Opera House (right), design by Lund Hagem Arkitekter

The proposal for the Munch/Stenersen Museum (left) next to the Oslo Opera House (right), design by Herreros Arquitectos

The proposal for the new Oslo Train Station, design by Space Group Architects

The Oslo Opera House can surely be seen as an invigorating urban presence in the quickly redeveloping Bjørvika district. A building designed not be noticed, but intended to actively engage urban dwellers - elevating them out of the city on an unprecedented civic device that is developed with Norwegian character. As one of Norway’s first opera houses (waiting 120 years to become reality) it surely has an attractive programmatic force that can direct attention, but it is that powerful integrated public landscape that has an ongoing dynamic relationship with the opera house that can transform an entire area - seen in such examples as New York’s High Line and Seattle’s Olympic Sculpture Park. The architecture becomes an activity rather than a singular object, able to entice human experiences of movement, conversation, performance, assembly and so much more. Like Baade’s warrior on the coastal rocks, one can stand on top the Opera’s glacial structure and experience their own transcendent journey.

Diagram  /  Describing the current traffic conditions in Bjørvika. The red represents heavy car traffic that cuts off the Opera House from downtown Oslo, only by using two pedestrian bridges to cross (shown in blue). The new Bjørvika … — Diagram / Describing the current traffic conditions in Bjørvika. The red represents heavy car traffic that cuts off the Opera House from downtown Oslo, only by using two pedestrian bridges to cross (shown in blue). The new Bjørvika tunnel also shown.

“The building is not an icon. It’s trying to be the opposite. Because once you allow the public to move about the roof, it is they who generate the expression of the building, rather than the building itself.”

— Kjetil Trædal Thorsen, architect and co-founder of Snøhetta

Oslo Opera House  /   Site analysis of access, circulation, new development, and points of social engagement — Oslo Opera House / Site analysis of access, circulation, new development, and points of social engagement

Case Study / DR Concert Hall

South of the capital city, Ørestad is a developing urban quarter growing out of a metro line placed between Copenhagen's historical downtown district and the city's international airport, located on the island of Amager. Burdened with low economic growth and high unemployment at the end of the 1980s, the Danish Parliament passed the 'Act of Ørestad' in 1992 (first Act of Parliament in thirty years where the state was involvement in a major new urban development project), creating the idea for a new major urban development scheme that would act as a 'city annex' attracting innovative national and international ventures, supported by a series of important infrastructure investments including a new metro line and the Øresund Link (tunnel/bridge project to Malmö, Sweden). Financing such an expansive project would be inspired by the English New Town principles, to which new infrastructure be subsidized by the incremental land value created by the very same Metro. By building Ørestad, Copenhagen not only financed the Metro, but also a new urban quarter that would usher Copenhagen out of financial crisis and create a testing ground to display the city's new ideas in architecture and city planning. In 1994, the winning project of an international architectural competition by a Finnish-Danish architecture studio (KHR Arkitekter) revealed an overall masterplan for Ørestad, dividing the area into four smaller districts, focused on integrating a highly-dense and modern city with the surrounding natural environment, forming attractive recreational access and sustainable planning to future residents / companies of the area.

“It is the intention to give full artistic freedom concerning architectural form, so that the new city quarter of Ørestad will boast state-of- the-art within architecture and art during the building years.”

— Masterplan competition stipulations for Ørestad

Area of Ørestad's urban quarter between Copenhagen's historic downtown area and the international airport. Red area locates Ørestad North or 'University District'.

KHR Arkitekter's masterplan for the University of Copenhagen and Ørestad North, 1997

Located off the first new Metro stop from Copenhagen, Ørestad North (University District) is the most developed of the four areas of Ørestad. Focused around the masterplan's idea of a central "village green", the Landscape Canal and the north-south-oriented University Canal define the new urban construction of The University of Copenhagen-southern campus. Each building would ensure contact to a functional outdoor space and the strong axis of the artificial University Canal, creating a powerful pedestrian hierarchy with a connection to nature. In 1999, state-owned Danish media company (DR) decided to join Ørestad North's campus to concentrate all of the company's activities from the metropolitan area into one address. DR Byen (DR's new headquarters, referred to as 'DR City') is a four-component complex that would account for all Danish Radio’s offices, TV, radio, and orchestra productions under one roof, even including a new state-of-the-art concert hall (Koncerthuset) for the Danish National Symphony Orchestra, further advancing Ørestad's goal of promoting progressive arts and technologies in the region. Unfortunately, DR Byen's construction process accumulated a range of controversial public outcries over budgetary concerns, allegedly due to the complexity of the concert hall, leading to high-profile resignations and drastic cutbacks in DR staff and public funding. In all, the entire project would cost almost three times as much as budgeted (up to $300 million), making the DR Concert Hall one of the most expensive concert halls ever built.

Back in 2002, Jean Nouvel would win the competition to design the 590,000-square-foot concert hall, as the fourth and final segment to the DR Byen project. As the yet-to-be-finished 'gate to Ørestad', the site would prove to be problematic as it was clustered on a barren site in an emerging neighborhood, wedged between the new elevated metro and the remaining unfinished DR Byen projects. The architect would react with caution to the untested local conditions, as it was not reliable to judge the newly built-up surroundings with an urban potential that is impossible to evaluate. With no urban response, the question had to be switched. How can this project contribute to and survive the future of this site? According to Nouvel, the response would be the mystery of uncertainty. "The proposal consists of materializing the territory and providing it with the scale of an exceptional urban facility. It will be a volume that will allow its interior to be guessed."

Sitting behind the dematerialized envelope of blue glass-fiber skin that is draped over a commanding steel structural frame, the theater becomes an architectural anomaly. One that seeks to hide behind a curtain, but still calls for attention. Nouvel’s design approach, both the container and the auditoriums and spaces within assume a vastly different character depending on the time of day you visit. During the day, the project sits as the figurehead of North Ørestad's artificial canal, caging a shadowy figure that cannot be accessed with public intrusion, only to open at night as an ethereal object with the glitz of lights and images on the screened envelope, becoming a beacon of light 148 ft up in the air, calling to oncoming visitors. It is an urban alarm clock that can't be set, only to awake the surrounding context when it wishes. The only problem is the site has not fully awoken to the theater's tantalizing images, a stark opposition to the sterile desolation around it with swaths of undeveloped land with tufts of grass and mounds of dirt extending around it.

“Building in emerging neighborhoods is a risk that has often proved fatal in recent years. When there is no built environment upon which to found our work, when we cannot evaluate a neighborhood’s future potential, we have to turn the question around: what qualities can we bring to this future? We can respond positively to an uncertainty by using its most positive attribute, that is, mystery. Mystery is never far from seduction.”

— Jean Nouvel, Architect

Model displaying the interior workings of theater

DR Concert Hall  /  Site analysis of access, circulation, new development, and points of social engagement — DR Concert Hall / Site analysis of access, circulation, new development, and points of social engagement

Case Study / Royal Danish Playhouse & Copenhagen Opera House

For centuries, Copenhagen had depended on its Inner Harbor (Inderhavnen) and the strong maritime network the area has served to the Baltic Sea. Developed as a deep channel that cuts between two islands, the harbor was the center of urban activity, teeming with lively, exotic, dirty, and sometimes dangerous elements. But by the second half of the 20th century, the shipping industry had changed with new technologies and greater demands on urban infrastructure. Proximity to the downtown was becoming obsolete as goods were packed into huge steel containers stacked by cranes the size of buildings on the decks of giant freighters, demanding enormous ports with vast areas of land for daily operations. Copenhagen and virtually every large historical port city had developed similar symptoms: dilapidated docks, abandoned warehouses, and fences sealing downtown off from the quieted waters. The great urban project of the postindustrial age was to heal the coastal scar left by the evacuated maritime industry.

In 2000, the municipality of Copenhagen initiated a development strategy for the entire harbor area, divided into three geographical sections, each analyzed by a separate design studio. Henning Larsen Architects was commissioned to analyze the Inderhavnen area and outline different alternative solutions to exhibit the possibilities of new urban growth on the waterfront. The conclusion of the work relied on mixing residential and commercial buildings with emphasis on large public cultural institutions to create a dynamic city life. Functionally, no building was permitted to "turn its back" to the harbor, complimenting already defined plans of public promenades and squares along the entire harbor fairway with the purpose of stressing and strengthening waterfront activities. The large cultural 'magnets' would later be defined as the Royal Danish Playhouse and the Copenhagen Opera House.

“In our opinion this would create a rich variety in the urban environment, and by adding quality and coherence to the areas the harbor would provide an attraction to the citizens of Copenhagen as well as to visitors from all over the world.”

— Henning Larsens Architects

Henning Larsen's proposal for Copenhagen's Inner Harbor

Two of Copenhagen's most significant urban redevelopment projects would assist in Henning Larsen's proposed master plan for Inderhavnen - the 'car-free zones' of Strøget and Nyhavn. The sequence of streets known collectively as Strøget was the beginning of a successful string of pedestrian-only streets developed in the 1960's that became a strong reaction to the congested automobile culture in downtown Copenhagen. Evolved from one clogged traffic artery, the city began systematically banishing cars from gracious squares and narrow streets that had degenerated over time, encouraging people to commute by foot or bicycle again. A controversial plan at the time, it is now one of the longest pedestrian streets in Europe and is considered a highly influential study in contemporary urban design (influenced by Danish architect and urban planner Jan Gehl). The sequence of streets is a major pedestrian boulevard through the center of Copenhagen, from Radhuspladsen (City Hall Square) to the large bustling square of Kongens Nlytorv (King's New Square). Nyhavn, one of the oldest waterfront districts in the city, soon would follow the trend. In the 1980s the large car-park and once-forlorn canal of Nyhavn was incrementally converted into a pedestrian area that was immediately invaded by cafés and shops, full up all year round, becoming Copenhagen’s most often portrayed public space and a catalyst to the harbor's waterfront development.

“When Strøget in Copenhagen was changed into a pedestrian street in 1962, it was after much debate and with considerable reservations. If, at the time, anyone had predicted that the city center would have six times as many car-free areas 34 years later, and that car traffic and parking possibilities would be substantially reduced, it would have been met with a great deal of skepticism. That life in the city center could flourish markedly would simply have been too unbelievable.”

— Jan Gehl, 'Public Spaces Public Life'

Amagertorv Square, part of the Strøget pedestrian zone

Bars and restaurants lining the northern side of Nyhavn

Diagram showing the uninterrupted path of car-free zones from City Hall Square to Kvæsthusbroen. A total distance of 2350m (7710 ft).

The Playhouse

Since the 1880s, the Royal Danish Theatre had sought to relieve a congested home theater - the Old Stage - by expanding the Royal Playhouse drama company into a new building that would showcase the city's latest trends in acting. A suitable site and proper financing would not develop until around 2000 when international ferry operations would be relocated from Kvæsthusbroen Landing Stage, near Nyhavn, to a new DFDS terminal in the northern part of Copenhagen harbor. This relocation made the site at Kvæsthusbroen open to new development, later sold by Port of Copenhagen, Ltd. to the Danish Ministry of Culture, creating the possibility of building a new public arts center on the waterfront, eventually becoming the new Royal Danish Playhouse. After winning an international design competition, Danish architectural practice Lundgaard and Tranberg was chosen for the task, with construction beginning in 2004.

The building's design acknowledges three important site features: a revitalized Nyhavn region with heavy pedestrian traffic, a strong promenade along the Inderhavnenwaterfront, and panoramic views of Copenhagen's historic skyline. The harbor becomes the important component as the architects chose to move the theater forward into the harbor (about 40% of the building projecting over the water), with the visitors entering on gently sloping ramps, which, besides being the point of arrival, serve as a promenade pivoting around the playhouse, diverting pedestrians onto a raised 150m long walkway that affords panoramic views of the harbor and hosts an open cafe/restaurant. The tripartite abstract composition of the playhouse benefits the siting, as the continuous horizontal upper storey of private functions cantilever out above the water, creating a tall glazed public foyer that invites shelter and integration of the waterfront's broad promenade public space, injecting new life into the central part of the inner harbor that forms the continuation of Nyhavn.

View from Kvaesthusgade (north west facade)

While successful on the harbor side, the Royal Danish Theater becomes problematic toward the city, essentially ignoring the urban fabric and turning its back to the historic center of Copenhagen. Although the project follows the master plan's guideline with intention to inject the waterfront with a new cultural venue, when one arrives from the main Avenues of Nyhavn or Sankt Annae Plads, the theater is virtually invisible. Approaching from Nyhavn's pedestrian waterside street, one must turn hard left, up a fairly narrow ramp, to enter, like boarding a ship ready to disembark. There is an urban disconnect when the only truly active elevation is coming from the East (waterside), while others bare disengaging brick walls and the axis of the streets slide right by into the water. However, to the northeast, there are promising developments on the former Kvæsthusbroen Landing Stage called 'Ofelia Beach' that offers temporary outdoor performance stages and lounge areas, activating the theater to an urban/social terrain.

The Opera House

From the playhouse, it’s a short trip by water bus across the inner harbor to the Operaen (Copenhagen Opera House), donated to the Danish state by Denmark's wealthest citizen and shipping mogul, A.P. Møller with the Chastine Mc-Kinney Møller Foundation, in 2000. Five years later, the 14-story structure rose up from a former naval base on Holmen Island - once the epicenter of Denmark's military and industrial complexes - in the city harbor, completing the historical axis running through the Queen's palace and the domed Marble Church. As one of the most expensive opera houses ever built (over $450 million) on a significantly visible piece of land in the harbor, the project brought a high-level of controversy, with politicians claiming the full cost of the project would be tax deductible, virtually forcing the government to buy the building, along with community leaders questioning the size and infrastructure needed for such a project. However, it would be the public disputes between Møller and his architects, Henning Larsen Architects, that would garner much of the attention during the construction of Denmark's first opera house. After acquisition of the land, the architecture firm was handed the commission by Møller himself, as they had worked on numerous successful projects in the past. The Danish government, happy to receive such a generous gift, didn't interfere when HLA was awarded the project without an architectural competition, commonly held in grand public projects of this type, or when Møller refused to discuss the design to the public during the four-year construction period. The architect, trying to make sure that the original architectural ideas were carried through the construction process, would consistently have disagreements with the client, who was viewed in the press to have dictatorial control over the entire project until completion in 2005. Henning Larsen would state before the building's grand opening, "What we have now is a compromise which failed, and this makes me sad".

From around the city's harbor waterfront, the Opera advertises itself with a distinctive size and central position in the Copenhagen cityscape. Anchored on a site, once abandoned and neglected for years by the military, that has gone through a metamorphosis. In connection with the new master plan, the existing island was separated by two new 17 meter-wide canals into three islands, accentuating the placement of the Opera House on the central island and emphasizing the maritime location of the structure. In designing the project, key attention is given to the arrival plaza, framed by a 32m long floating roof overhang that draws the public towards a vast transparent foyer looking right over the harbor toward Amalienborg Palace (Queen's Residence). The front of the house is visually integrated in the harbor space, whereas the back of the building, designed as a lower building block, relates to the vernacular structures in the area and to the proposed new apartment blocks on the north and south side of the building. Unfortunately, the location of the project and focus on maritime siting has disconnected the Opera House with downtown Copenhagen. As it stands now, the project sits alone (the proposed residential projects have not gone forward) on three large islands in the middle of Copenhagen's Inner Harbor, with limited access for all forms of transportation. The 'Copenhagen Harbour Bus' is realistically the only option for pedestrians and bikers to reach the Opera island from across the harbor, which can be problematic with certain weather conditions. Additionally, unlike the Royal Danish Playhouse, the Opera House does not allow public access to the building when performances are not showing, with no accessible watering hole (restaurants or cafes) to enjoy the vast arrival plaza on the waterfront, creating a somber environment throughout the day.

Promise of Pedestrian Bridges

Since the completion of the new Copenhagen Opera House, city officials have realized the area's need for connectivity and have been intent on looking for a solution to improve access from central Copenhagen to 'Opera Island' across the harbor. When the Royal Danish Playhouse was completed back in 2008, there was consideration for a pedestrian and bicycle bridge to link the Playhouse with the Opera, however plans to build bridges in the area have met heavy criticism from those living in Christianshavn, who were afraid that they would have a detrimental affect on the characteristic maritime environment of the quarter and that the bridges will mean that sailing boats will no longer have access to the area. After years of various proposals and competitions, with even a underground tunnel considered, the city agreed on a new network of openable pedestrian bridges - a long bridge over the inner harbor and shorter bridges over some of the canals - that would increase access to the Opera and the surrounding Holmen region. The winning designs, slated to begin construction, consist of a longer retractile bridge with a transparent/low profile to allow for views across the harbor, as well as smaller conventional single-leaf and double-leaf bascule structures over the harbor canals. When complete, these connections should transform the Inderhavnen area, finally merging opposing sides of the harbor with a strengthening horizontal movement and indentifying with Copenhagen's urban culture.

Pedestrian Bridge Proposal by Lundgaard & Tranberg Arkitekter, 2007 (not built)

Pedestrian Bridge Proposal by Flint & Neill and Studio Bednarski, start of construction in 2011

Almost sitting in front of each other, these two projects express a growing strategic consensus in urban design that demands the urban waterfront be a public amenity, but deviate on the processes needed to achieve such a goal. Although both are driven by a common client (Royal Danish Theatre) and an idealistic masterplan, one that encourages the assemblage and a focused convergence of cultural institutions, both are developed by contradicting processes - public opinion v. private decision, urban integration v. remote separation, programmatic expression v. grand gestures. But, both share a commonality as lanterns on the waterfront, glowing from within their grand foyers, waiting to attract interest from society and urban growth through the cultural Renaissance of Copenhagen.

Royal Danish Playhouse & Copenhagen Opera House / Site analysis of access, circulation, new development, and points of social engagement

ROTCH CASE STUDY / THE CONCERTGEBOUW

Before becoming the cultural capital of Europe in 2002, the city pressed through a 30-year-long process of economic and urban change. The 1972 Structure Plan had strived to alleviate an obvious struggle between the old town and surrounding boroughs while retaining historical value, introducing urban renewal philosophies to a stagnent city. The plan initiated a number of policies aimed at increasing the quality of low-cost housing standards, also laying out guidlines for redeveloping the city center and rethinking its traffic flow. At the same time, the city’s infastructure was upgraded, most notably sanitising the famous canals.

Concertgebouw / The composition of the project positions the new Concert Hall against the background of the three famous mediaeval towers of the city center: the Cathedral, the Belfry and the Church of Our Lady. — Concertgebouw / The composition of the project positions the new Concert Hall against the background of the three famous mediaeval towers of the city center: the Cathedral, the Belfry and the Church of Our Lady.

For 2002, the European Union selected Bruges, along with Salamanca, as co-selections for the European Capital of Culture (an over-30 year socio-economic program that promotes cultural aspirations and development within the host city). The aim of the year-long celebration was to submerge Bruges into the heart of contemporary cultural Europe and break free of its languid canals and medieval charm. The capital of Western Flanders would spend over $118 million on new construction / restoration projects throughout the city, along with an operational budget of $36 million, providing musical, sculptural, scenic, literary and theatrics in numerous different sites. The prominent venue would be a new 150,000 sqft performing arts center (Concertgebouw) located just inside the historic city center on a fomer large market space (the Zand), hoping to attract a larger cultural audience and attract international attention. The inauguration of the new venue in Febuarary 2002 would symbolically start Bruge’s year of culture that would eventually attract over 1.5 million new visitors.

Apart from building the Concertgebouw and renovating its urban center, Bruges has also adopted other architectural projects for the event. Although they are rather small in scope, they are nonetheless clearly in tune with the firm intention of the European Capital of Culture to link the heritage of the past to that of the present. At the site of Burg squarelies the contemporary villa by the Japanese architect Toyo Ito. The covered passage suggests both the famous Bruges lace and also the fourth side of the square where it occupies a place of honour. The footbridge by Dutch designers West 8 has the same intention. The construction leaves a pure, natural expression, with the organic nature of the bridge allows the structure to gently site itself within Koning Albert Park for pedestrians and cyclists connecting Kanaaleiland banks and the historic city center, following the traditional route of the night watchman’s round. Thus modern architecture serves ancient traditions.

The Large Fountain ‘The Bathing Ladies’ (1985) by De Puydt and Canestraro in the Zand

The selected site for the Concert Hall - one with a turbulent piece of urban history - can be seen to a certain extent undefined. The Zand has existed since the sixteenth century as a large market square just inside the historic city perimeter. Around 1840 it became home to two iterations of the city’s main railway station, which in 1940 was relocated south, just outside the edge of the historical city center. Furthermore, the growth of automobile transport would change the city’s infrastructure needs and lead to the old rail line to be replaced by a major roadway, effectively separating the western end of the city center. From 1978 - 82, following the Structural Plan, the road dividing The Zand was moved underground to a tunnel offering direct access to underground parking, on top of which part of the Concert Hall now stands. As the construction of the tunnel did help alleviate the connection between the eastern and western sides of the square, the interstitial zone between The Zand and the current train station were designed as a public park (Albert I Park) - itself divided by car traffic. The northern and southern edges were left largely open due to the tunnel’s superstructures, resulting in the design of the square failing to define a spatial entity. Regardless, The Zand remains a major public thoroughfare, accommodating various civic functions, such as hosting weekly food markets, annual fairs and music concerts.

The immediate proximity of the historic city center, the presence of an underground car park, the direct link to the city’s ring-road and ease of access from the whole region were the arguments for the correct choice of The Zand. In 1998 a closed architectural competition for the new concert hall would commence, with participation from seven architects around the world. The competition and its outcome generated a lively public response that indicated how closely views on the city’s identity were bound up with appreciations of its architecture (both from the present and the past). After an initial selection round the jury would choose the design of Robbrecht Daem, two Ghent-based architects.

South facade of Concertgebouw facing Koning Albert Park

Bruges / City Diagram (red indicates the Concertgebouw

The architects solution would focus on three keys areas: contextual siting, aesthetic identity and functional force; respecting the linkages between Bruges and Albert Park. As you approach, the building and site seem to overlap and merge, allowing the adjacent park to continue up, into and through the Concertgebouw. Numerous performance spaces are included in the building program in order to accommodate all types of events, which includes the Concert Hall (1289 seats), the Chamber Music Hall (320 seats) and various reception rooms. The small music hall is brought forward toward The Zand and lifted above the ground plane in order to balance the composition of the building’s distinctive shape and introduce a ‘lantern’ tower that is intended to redefine the character of the public square, evoking the image of an Italian campanile, while allowing visitors the ability to see panoramic views of the historic city. It is evident that a clear decision had been made by the designers to establish an articulated southern edge to an ambiguous site, while the bulk of the structure’s mass is removed from the square, dictated by the parking underneath. The southern edge is further defined by the addition of a new bus station with a 280 foot canopy just west of the concert hall.

“People may not know what country Bruges is in, but they know what it’s famous for. So we can start from this historical, cultural expression - and respect that - but let’s not stop with that; let’s not keep the place as a museum.”

— Hugo de Greef, theatre director and advisor for international cultural policy

The building’s mass is imposing with a monolithic and composed sculptural appearance, making no attempt at transparency or lightness. The volume is materialised in a heavy terracotta cloak made from ceramic tiles whose red colour speaks with the city’s roofscape, acting as a piece of drapery reinforced by the scale-like tectonic tiles. When facing the park, the facade peals away, perforated by windows that open onto smaller private spaces behind the skin and enters into an intimate relationship with the surrounding landscape. The Concert Hall has established itself as a building that questions the city’s identity in a historicised context, creating a place that is anchored into the city and makes sense of an undefined site. It offers a place that reestablishes old urban linkages and creates contemporary cultural relationships, allowing visitors to re-examine the city in the present.

Concertgebouw / Site analysis of access, circulation, new development, and points of social engagement

Case Study / The Royal Opera House

The Royal Opera House is an architectural apparatus, a constantly evolving combination of moving parts throughout history, all having a particular function and parti. Formerly referred to as Covent Garden Theatre, the siting of the project goes back to 1732, but the most crucial component of the project goes back even further. London's Covent Garden was thought to originated as a medieval convent garden belonging to Westminster's abbey of St Peters around 1000AD, but the area may have gone back another 400 years as a Saxon port town outside the walls of post-Roman London. However, the true nature of the site would not come until 1536, when the estate was handed over to John Russell (the first Earl of Bedford), beginning a more commercial view of land development and establishing a landlord/tenant relationship that would last until the 1950s. On the twenty acre site, Russell built a perimeter wall and family home, which would later develop into one of London's first planned suburbs.

Francis Russell, the fourth Earl of Bedford, was committed to developing the London estate for more wealthy tenants, bringing in acclaimed architect Inigo Jones, known for introducing England to Italian Renaissance architecture. Jones would influence the entire site, as his building scheme called for a large open piazza, informed by his knowledge of urban planning in Italy (particularly Livorno's Piazza Grande in Tuscany). The piazza was unadorned and open to the public, with a rebuilt church of St Pauls to the west side, residences with a lower arcade to the north and east, and the wall of Bedford House to the south. Though the building of urban squares became common thereafter in London, most were smaller private squares, while the infusion of this classical device in Covent Garden became a way of life in which the open square developed into a popular public meeting place. Since the estate was not at a convenient distance to any market facilities in London, the Earl of Bedford permitted a small market in the Piazza, against the garden wall of Bedford House, for the residences of Covent Garden to gain access to fresh food and other materials. By 1666, the Great Fire of London would render the city virtually uninhabitable and its traditional markets were destroyed, establishing the market at Covent Garden as an 'official' market space. Almost a hundred years later, the market would occupy much of the Piazza and become the largest fruit and vegetable market in the country and only privately owned market in the London area.

Above:: Plan of Covent Garden estate within the perimeter wall in 1613; Below:: View of Covent Garden Piazza in 1720

Theatre to Covent Garden

Before the English Civil War of the seventeenth century, theatre activity flourished across the Thames in the far-reaching Southwark area, as such activity was viewed as encouragement for bad behavior in the city of London. However, there were some rogue establishments in the city, including a small venue off Drury Lane called the Cockpit, which brought in much business until Parliamentary troops demolished it years later. The Cockpit would become the seed, which eventually would sprout various performance venues in the Covent Garden area up until today. After the Restoration of the English monarchy in 1660, the Crown would grant only two licenses for the erection of a playhouse in London, permitting the production of plays in the city, but with no other licenses issued until 1843. This monopoly would prove beneficial for the two recipients, who both would settle near the area (Theatre Royal and Covent Garden Theatre), making the only two theatres in London permitted to stage plays in Covent Garden. The Covent Garden Theatre would establish a strong foothold in the area with such exclusivity until it was destroyed by fire in 1808. Ironically, by the time of the fire, opera and pantomime became a more fashionable performance, making the rebuilt Theatre, modeled on the Temple of Minerva in Athens, more focused on opera configuration. Almost 50 years later, gas lighting would be the catalyst for destroying the theatre once again, only to be rebuilt to its current iteration eight months later, led by the efforts of architect E.M. Barry. After the fire of 1856, the management of Covent Garden Theatre took the opportunity, when planning the new building, to take a lease on some adjoining land. They asked their architect, E.M. Barry, to design a private flower market that would sit on the entirety of the site, next to the new theatre. Barry would take advantage of the new building techniques using iron and glass, demonstrated in the Crystal Palace for the Great Exhibition, creating a diverse pair of buildings in entirely opposing building styles. The Floral Hall would eventually be an economic failure for the owners, but it would create the first representative connection between the Opera House and the Covent Garden Market.

Diagram : Various historical iterations of the Covent Garden Theatre (which had burnt down twice in under a century) with emphasis on access and entry sequences.

The Market

By 1751, Covent Garden's Piazza would become completely consumed by trading activity, though permanent shed structures would only occupy the southern side. A century later, the market had grown substantially forcing the Bedford estate to include a permanent market presence in the square to create an impression of order and appease the traders. Charles Fowler would be commissioned for the task, designing a neo-classical market building at the center of the square, substantially what we can see today. Later, the market would face another test with the emergence of industrial activity and the railway, which would be the catalyst for a dramatic population explosion in London. The market's urban seclusion in the narrow streets of Covent Garden would eventually hurt the market with no city plans to create a direct connection to a main rail station, meaning that the greater volume of fruit and vegetables coming in to London by rail had to be loaded to wagons for road transportation, creating major traffic congestion and major access problems. By the end of the 19th century, there was growing criticism of the Bedford Estate's ownership and misuse of the market, as well as raising residential voices criticizing the location of the market bringing in too much traffic and noise. It became an inevitable conclusion that the market would one day have to be relocated outside the central area of London and placed in the hands of another authority, like so many other markets in the area. The estate would eventually sell the property in 1918 to the Covent Garden Estate Company, who had considered removing the church and opera house to accommodate a much larger market space and alleviate trader congestion. However, not much would change until 1973 when the London municipal authorities took on the market and established the Covent Garden Market Authority, which would finally move the market to a site at Nine Elms in south-west London. The shift left an urban void in one of London's prized central areas, a subject of much debate for decades between developers, politicians and community leaders. There would eventually be development plans to raze most of the neighborhood to build a large corporate/commercial element, but economic recessions and public outcry would halt that progress until the 1990s.

“All night long on the great main roads the rumble of the heavy wagons seldom ceases and before daylight the market is crowded. The very unloading of these waggons is in itself a wonder, and the wall-like regularity with which cabbages, cauliflowers, turnips are built up to a neight of some 12ft is nothing short of marvelous.”

— Charles Dickens

View of the congestion from Covent Garden Market in 1968

Current view of pedestrian-friendly Covent Garden Market

Opera House Renovation and Expansion

After the market had moved and much debate about the future of the existing context, the Opera House was deemed worthy of conservation and was never in any real trouble from urban redevelopment, but it would lose a strong connection to the commercial vibrance of the surrounding area. Regardless, the building itself needed a major structural and programmatic overhaul. In 1975, the English government gave land adjacent to the Royal Opera House for a long-overdue modernization, refurbishment, and extension. By 1995, the newly-formed National Lottery provided a controversial financial grant, enabling the company to embark upon a major $360 million reconstruction of the building led by architects Dixon Jones BDP, taking five years between 1996 and 2000. Meanwhile, plans were already underway for the restoration of Fowler's market building to become a 'showpiece' of commercial activity.

Dixon Jones approached the redesign of the Royal Opera House in a spirit of connectivity and access; a building that would be deliberately unmonumental, changing the image of a forbidding 19th century building into a welcoming 21st century arts center, inviting a bigger and broader audience into the complex. The reconfigured opera house would neither be seen as bombastic or a patch-up project, but as a collective grouping or an 'urban village' of buildings radiating from E.M. Barry's neo-classical building fronting Bow Street, connecting with the shops, cafes and street theatre of Covent Garden piazza. The glass-laden Floral Hall, once left to decay as an ornate storage room, became the central artery of the project, turned into a vast public foyer that connects visitors from both the Piazza and Bow Street. Though some critics would compare it to an elaborate shopping mall and news of continuous delays, spiraling costs, resignations and threatened walkouts; the project achieved substantial success. Upon completion, the Covent Garden area achieved a sort of Disney/Times Square rejuvenation, with a home-grown urban metamorphosis driven by 'new media' commercial activity of fashion and food, along with positive connections to anchored institutions (ROH). Ironically, Covent Garden now fulfills many of the discarded intentions of the 1980s planners, but without the disadvantages they had in mind of urban gentrification.

“There was talk....of the Opera House being moved out of town, as happened in Paris. We didn’t want that. The fruit and vegetable market had already gone from Covent Garden and we felt that sooner or later central London would be stripped of the very buildings and attractions that gave it a life worth living.”

— Jeremy Dixon, architect

Exploded Axonometric of the renovated Royal Opera House by Stephen Biesty

View of Royal Opera House from Covent Garden Market

Comparison of the Piazza arcades in the north-eastern corner of the square (1700 v. 2011)

Royal Ballet School

After the successful renovation and rejuvenation of Covent Gardens, the Royal Ballet Upper School chose to make the long awaited relocation to Covent Garden. For more than 60 years, the Royal Ballet has been the resident ballet company at the Royal Opera House and finally, in 2003, the school finished a newly constructed 4-storey studio complex on Floral Street, north of the ROH. Three years later, a foot bridge would be constructed between the school and the Opera Ho

use for the Ballet students, faculty, and staff; creating a direct link from the school's studios to the stage of the opera house. Coined the 'Bridge of Aspiration' by Wilkinson Eyre Architects, the bridge was designed as a connection with a simple, but strong architectural statement—one that would provide an integrated link between the buildings while giving Floral Street a prominent identity. The basic concept of the serpentine construction was to project an effect of movement as a physical link, from both the interior and exterior. A sculptural contortion 50ft above the narrow streets in Covent Garden, the Bridge of Aspiration confronts a series of contextual issues, and is legible both as a fully integrated component of the buildings it links, and as an independent architectural element.

Royal Ballet Upper School's 'Bridge of Aspiration'

The relationship between the Royal Opera House and Covent Garden is a symbiotic one, with two unrelated components existing together in an unbiased environment, but still dependent upon each other. Through multiple historical iterations, ROH has learned to adapt to the pedestrian-friendly environment, while still providing that cornerstone anchor that Covent Garden market depends upon. The design of the renovated Royal Opera House is not so much a one-off cultural monument as a city block, criss-crossed with pedestrian walks and access points, but is not an overwhelming feature even though it is built on the scale of a nuclear power station. Furthermore, the Covent Garden neighborhood is really not an ideal site for any prominent public institution, with unrelenting narrow streets (no public bus routes), lack of connectivity to infrastructure and no visual association, but the Royal Opera House and many other theatres seem to work within the context's strict guidelines. You could argue that both the market area and ROH could not flourish without Covent Garden underground station, bringing in the only direct link from greater-London and a point of reference to the area's meandering attitude. The interesting thing is that the Opera House is where it's always been, in the very heart of London and not set on a cultural desert island.

Diagram: Displays the original Covent Garden site parti in the contemporary urban fabric.

“By the time I entered the competition ... English architects were finally caught up in a discussion of how we might build sensitively in old city centres, how we could be ‘contextual’ and how we might marry architectural history with present-day practice.”

— Jeremy Dixon, architect

Royal Opera House  /  Site analysis of access, circulation, new development, and points of social engagement — Royal Opera House / Site analysis of access, circulation, new development, and points of social engagement

Case Study / The National Theater

You could say that the marriage of the National Theatre and Southbank London has been a long and rigorous journey. In fact, it had taken over a hundred years for the idea of a subsidized national theatre company to even exist in London, from a proposal by London publisher Effingham Wilson in 1848 to passage of law in 1949 (National Theatre Bill), but to build a theatre expressly planned for the purpose took even longer. To gain interest, the project had been dressed up at different times in the propaganda of imperial grandeur - 'a national shrine in the capital of an empire' - and the rhetoric of social concern - 'a people's theatre'. In the middle of public debates to finance the theatre, the first site was acquired in 1937, located in Kensington by Cromwell Gardens opposite the V&A Museum, ready for construction until the beginning of the Second World War indefinitely delayed the project. In 1942, the London County Council (LCC) negotiated an agreement whereby the Kensington site is exchanged for a new site on the war-devastated industrial land on the South Bank along the River Thames, designated as one of the country’s first comprehensive postwar redevelopment areas designed by architect Charles Holden. The scheme would later receive little attention, as it was almost immediately superseded by plans to develop the area as the site of the Festival of Britain.

“Do the English people want a national theater? Of course they do not. They never want anything. They got the British Museum, the National Gallery, and Westminster Abbey, but they never wanted them. But once these things stood as mysterious phenomena that had come to them, they were quite proud of them, and felt that the place would be incomplete without them.”

— Bernard Shaw (playwright, served on London County Council)

Views of post-war Waterloo Bridge and South End sites

Map showing bomb-damaged buildings following the Second World War. (Red circle indicates future site of National Theatre) Images from London Metropolitan Archives. — Map showing bomb-damaged buildings following the Second World War. (Red circle indicates future site of National Theatre) Images from London Metropolitan Archives.

Festival of Britain

Conceived as a national exhibition to celebrate Britain’s post-war rejuvenation, the Festival of Britain was the brainchild of British newspaper editor Gerald Barry, referring to it as ‘tonic for the nation’. The layout of the South Bank site, overseen by appointed architect Hugh Casson, was intended to showcase the principles of urban planning that would feature better-quality design in the rebuilding of British towns and cities following the war. Predominately, this included buildings in the International Modernist style, with asymmetrical levels of buildings, elevated walkways, expulsion of ornament and avoidance of a street grid. The resulting construction effort of the South Bank site opened up a new public space in the city, including a riverside walkway, where there previously had been industrial warehouses. Opened in 1951, the project seemed to be a success, attracting around 8 million visitors in a five-month period, however there had been some opposition to the project from those who believed that the money would have been better spent on housing. After the Festival’s opening, National Theatre’s proposed new building planned to join the grounds with a foundation stone laid on a site next to Festival Hall; however, by next year it was determined that the theater should occupy a better site and all the festival grounds, excluding the Royal Festival Hall, would later be destroyed by the incoming Churchill government, which believed the Festival’s style too 'socialist'.

Current view of Southbank Centre's River Walk (former site of Festival)

NTOP (National Theatre and Opera House)

While still looking for a permanent home, the National Theatre company negotiated a deal with the Governors of the Old Vic theatre in 1962 to establish a temporary home for operations. By the next year, one of Britain’s leading Modernist architects, Denys Lasdun, was chosen to design the new theater on another South Bank site, just upstream from the Royal Festival grounds, between Hungerford and Westminster Bridges on Jubilee Gardens. Of interviewing Lasdun for the job, Lord Cottesloe, the Chairman of the Arts Council and the South Bank Board, wrote “the committee was particularly impressed when he said he knew nothing about designing theatres and would have to sit down and learn what was needed from our committee.” While focused on client discussions and program experimentation, Lasdun brought his own idea of the ‘urban landscape’ from previous experiences that had fused civic architecture with the public realm, encapsulating his vision of a theatrical space.

When design work commenced, a new National Opera House program was introduced on behalf of the client, and it was agreed they should stand together on a site next to the Thames in front of the recently constructed Shell Tower. Using the new high-profile project as a distillation of Lasdun’s notion of public architecture, he believed rather than being treated as individual objects, the National Theatre and National Opera House (NTOP) should blend together as a continuous horizontal range of urban landscape terraces or ‘strata’, creating a grand metropolitan composition that was conceived on the scale and function of the immediate context (Chamber’s Somerset House, etc.) and promoted human relationships. By creating a rhythmic construction of artificial hills and valleys, it opened up the entire length of the South Bank for public use, while experiencing the magnificent views of both the Thames river and surrounding city. Despite a widespread favorable reception to the design in 1966, the opera house was dropped from the new building scheme on the grounds of budgetary concerns. (the Sadler's Wells Company, due to be housed there, eventually moved to the Coliseum in Trafalgar Square to become the English National Opera). The resulting amputated building would be dwarfed in size by the Shell Tower and surrounding site, unacceptable to Lasdun and the client.

“A horizontal plane or series of horizontal planes is the first essential in any system of formal arrangement intended to embrace the activities of organized or collective life”

— Le Corbusier

Proposal by Denys Lasdun for the National Theatre and Opera House in front of Shell Tower

Waterloo Bridge Site

The situation was quickly redeemed at the beginning of 1967 when a new riverside site, just east of Waterloo Bridge (referred to as Prince’s Meadow), was offered by the Greater London Council. The new site would suit the scale of the new smaller project and Lasdun would carry over his design methodologies from the original proposal, but the new site required new responses, and it presented some difficulties. Among them were the problems of access and orientation. Here the presence of a new object proved decisive: Waterloo Bridge. This was the most prominent feature close to the site and was the link back to the West End and Greater London. Lasdun took advantage of this urban connection and christened it the 'umbilical chord' as if the life of the Theatre depended on it. Not only would Waterloo bridge’s elevated street manifest into a physical connection to one of the theatre’s ‘urban terraces’, establishing a direct pedestrian path of entry, but it also constituted a boundary to define a public courtyard and entry on the ground floor, orienting the project’s axis toward the bridge at a 45 degree angle. With that, the logic of internal functions and external access would remain the same as the NTOP, with production areas to the rear, foyers facing the water for view and auditorium for assembly in between. The focus on Lasdun’s stratification of foyers along the waterfront would prove beneficial not just for views, but for emphasizing a strong linear public passage along the river, composing a walkable boulevard that the Festival of Britain complex once championed along the Thames.

From the moment that he had been offered the site, Lasdun had been immediately impressed by the relationship to the city’s viewscape. Even though the new site was only about a mile up the river, it had a more natural relationship to significant urban conditions, such as St. Paul's Cathedral to the east, Somerset House across the river and Waterloo Bridge, connecting the West End theatre district. Lasdun referred to these perspective relationships as ‘the triangle’, influencing a triangular geometry felt in every facet and angle of the National Theatre. The idea of view was a crucial site component in connecting to nature and urban context, making the aesthetically-dominate horizontal levels such a significant component to the theatre design, as vertical obstruction was kept to a minimum. Urbanistically, the bands are seen as hovering landscapes set aside for the rituals of public life, opening out its contents to the passerby. They extend into the context as they flow down towards the river, connect with Waterloo Bridge or with the upper levels of Southbank Centre, to welcome those who wish to enter the site. The Theatre’s ‘strata’ becomes public property in the full-sense, with the city as a living scene in the background.

“.... The National Theatre must be its own advertisement - must impose itself on public notice, not by posters and column advertisements in the newspaper, but by he very fact of its ample, dignified and liberal existence. It must bulk large in the social and intellectual life of London. It must not even have the air of appealing to a specially literary and cultured class. It must appeal to the whole community.”

— Harley Granville- Barker, ‘A National Theatre’

View of National Theatre after completion in 1977

Theatre Upgrade

Recently, after over 30 years of operation, the National Theatre began investigating opportunities to subtly transform and extend the building’s relationship with its site. The priorities were three-fold: expand participation and education activities, explore ways in which the building could respond to the dramatically changing environment of the South Bank neighborhood, and to develop a more environmentlly sustainable solution for the project. The conservation management plan, led by Haworth Tompkins Architects (also responsible for the recent Young Vic refurbishment), is an incremental process, broken down into different phases to allow for continued building operation. Currently scheduled to begin next year, the plan will look at various problematic areas throughout the building, including the riverfront north façade and rear connection on the south façade, both with great need for improvement. Currently, a small service yard lot (a remnant of Lasdun’s original entry-driveway design) disconnects the highly-active pedestrian waterfront from the theatre; while on the other end, due to Lasdun’s focus on the waterfront and the programmatic needs of theatre’s production spaces, the southern face of the building is without a public connection. The proposed plan calls for the existing service yard to be transformed into a new cafe and bar, with the existing bookshop to be relocated to the south of the site, providing transparency to the river walk and a clearer entrance sequence to the foyers, opening up the north-east corner of the theatre. Along with receiving the bookshop, the southern part of the site will receive a new glass-fronted production section, giving passers-by views of scenery construction and a programmatic connection toward the Southbank community. Other plans include: a new education centre to welcome 50,000 more people, the creation of a public roof garden beside the Lyttleton fly tower, and the refurbishment of Cottesloe theatre. When completed, the renovations should help improve the building's public connection, open its interior, provide facilities for new operations and radically improve its environmental performance.

Service yard on north section of the theatre, disrupting pedestrian flow along the Southbank river walk.

Proposal by Haworth Tompkins architects for the existing service yard to be transformed into a new cafe and bar, allowing transparency and access to the theatre's northern elevation.

Proposal by Haworth Tompkins architects to create a public roof garden beside the Lyttleton fly tower

Doon Street Development

The Doon Street site (South of the National Theatre) has remained largely untouched as a brownfield/temporary car park for over 50 years. Currently, a partnership between Coin Street Community Builders and Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands Architects are proposing a controversial new mixed-use development that will potentially introduce numerous new programmatic elements to London’s South Bank and neighboring National Theatre, including an indoor public swimming pool/leisure center, ground floor retail facilities, residential tower, education/office space, and a new headquarters for Rambert Dance Company. Contextually, the new development would seek to improve accessibility and connections to the various pedestrian routes that converge around the site including Waterloo Bridge, the ‘Bullring’, Southbank Centre and the River Walk. Along with provide the community swimming pool and indoor leisure facilities residents have long desired, plus studios for the Rambert Dance Company, one of Britain’s leading contemporary dance companies. However, to make the project stack up economically and subsidise the costs of the public swimming pool - a notoriously expensive enterprise, the scheme will have to incorporate office space and private apartments in a 43-story tower, which has made the project a very controversial topic in the city and continues to remain in limbo.

Rendering of North Elevation, with the proposed residential tower growing between the National Theatre and IBM Building (also designed by Lasdun), a reminder of the original scheme for the NTOP. (Image provided by Coin Street Community Builders)

View of Doon Street Development (before/after) and its affect on the National Theatre's southern elevation.

When visiting the site - at first glance - it was predictable how the exposed concrete structure would be judged by many passersby, with comparisons to bunkers and car parks, and grumbles about public spending and institutionalized culture. Most notoriously, Prince Charles described the building in 1988 as "a clever way of building a nuclear power station in the middle of London without anyone objecting". Even hearing passing tour guides refer to it as “one of London’s ugliest buildings” was not too shocking, maybe even plausibly right. However, that is a pure aesthetic judgment, but does not justify the theatre’s current success, both economically and urbanistically. In fact, its success constitutes a virtual demonstration of Lasdun’s urban landscape philosophy; a building as a microcosm of the city with strong contextual connections that evokes a sense of time, place and people engaged in creating space and form. These powerful forms generate a recurring theme since antiquity, by reiterating a link between scenography and urbanism, city and platforms with stages and auditoria. The shared ground creates an energetic voice, but the connections to the urban composition – both visually and physically – feed that energy, giving the project a timeless relevance.

Site Diagram  /  Displaying what Lasdun referred to as 'the triangle' - the Theatre's response to other points of monumental intensity in the cityscape. Also reveals previous proposed sites for the National Theatre within th… — Site Diagram / Displaying what Lasdun referred to as 'the triangle' - the Theatre's response to other points of monumental intensity in the cityscape. Also reveals previous proposed sites for the National Theatre within the old grounds of the Festival of Britain (Blue Region).

“One of the fascinating things about the National Theatre is the way it demonstrates how a public building can be designed as a setting for numbers of people; it’s deliberately been made incomplete without people ... I know of no other theatre where the audience are given such a sense of being actors contributing to a festive occasion.”

— J.M. Richards, architecture critic

National Theatre  /  Site analysis of access, circulation, new development, and points of social engagement — National Theatre / Site analysis of access, circulation, new development, and points of social engagement

Case Study / Tate Modern

Bankside. For centuries, this area south of the Thames River had been synonymous with industry, entertainment (Rose and Globe theaters) and a brimming population living in poor conditions. Yet, once the theaters left and harbor activity moved east of the city, this once bustling district laid dormant. Years after the Great War, new infrastructure was needed and a baffling decision was made to build an oil-fired power station directly opposite St Paul's Cathedral, typical of the casual urbanism you would not find in many European countries except Britain. The outcome was a simply detailed functional brick shed, coined the 'cathedral of pure energy' by architect Giles Gilbert Scott to draw comparison to London's famous cathedral. Towering over the Thames, staring down the city of London, the power station soon became one of the city's most emblematic structures, active for more than thirty years until rising oil prices led it to shutdown in 1981, leaving the perceptible building vacant and slowly decaying. Bankside's urban fabric needed a new catalyst.

Coinciding with the power station shutdown, the Tate Gallery was working with architect James Stirling on a new master plan focusing on expansion of the overburdened facilities around their Millbank location. Following review of the proposal, the Tate trustees agreed the current site would not provide sufficient new exhibition space for present and anticipated needs of the gallery, concluding that a second site in London would have to be found. Luckily, Bankside had some available property. As Tate Trustee, Michael Craig-Martin explains, "The new site (the old power station) answered all the criteria governing the search: an unparalleled large-scale central London location, excellent transport facilities, the possibility of a riverboat connection with the gallery at Millbank, and immediate availability for development". An open international competition proceeded, particularly questioning how to deal with the existing building and it's position in the urban context. Nearly 150 architects entered the competition, but the eventual architect (H&dM) would have the only proposal that completely accepted the existing building - it's form, it's materials and it's industrial characteristics. By re-using the existing power station, the architects argued that the Tate was free from the need to create the memorable, signature form that is deemed essential in contemporary cultural design. They simply borrow it from the old building - with adaptations - and concentrate on the qualities and connections of public spaces.

Millennium Bridge and St Pauls Cathedral

Completed in 2000, the $208 million dollar project was the first new national museum built within Britain in the last hundred years and the first in London devoted solely to modern art. Tate Modern would be the cornerstone to an urban regeneration strategy, created by the Southwark Council, aimed at improving the accessibility of the area and its immediate environment as well as pulling investment into the area. Developments, such as the Bankside Pier (with ferry service) and Bankside Riverwalk manifested the area into an accessibility nexus, the center of a linear sweep along the Thames connecting destinations East (Tower Bridge, Tower of London) and West (South Bank, Westminster) of the site. Perhaps the most important connection would come months later, as the highly publicized Millennium Bridge (the first new central London river crossing in over a hundred years) opened, physically bringing together ideas of old and new, north and south, art and commerce, and the two visual landmarks of St. Paul's Cathedral in the city and Bankside's Tate Modern. Two days later, the steel suspension structure would shut down due to instability caused by heavy pedestrian traffic and not reopen for another year and a half.

Entry to Turbine Hall from the West, slipping below the building

Regardless of the bad news, Tate Modern surpassed expectations with more than five million visitors in the first year, making it one of the most visited modern art galleries in the world (note: museum offers free admission) and one of London's top destinations, basically overnight. However, a year later, attendance numbers would begin to slump after the initial first-year rush by 32%, despite popularity of the big-name temporary exhibits. A Tate spokeswoman would say the figures from 2002 signaled a "natural leveling-off", but it's coincidental those numbers coincided with the bridge closure, showing the significance of this crucial connection. After the bridge was reopened, visitor numbers would rebound to the current high levels the museum enjoys today. The key component in the project's success has been the potential of the redundant Turbine Hall itself, transformed into a covered street, like a city square, within the museum. I hesitate to use the phrase 'public space' to describe such a programmatic force, as it still is governed by Tate's rules and regulations. However, it is still an uniquely important urban space, drawing visitors in with the idea of an accessible place of refuge that can change character according to the time of day, the quality of light and the number of visitors. It's appeal is it's welcoming nature and easy access, offering the community a place for congregation and performance, including the popular Unilever Series, an annual commission to make interactive art specifically for the Turbine Hall. However, although hugely popular within the community, some critics would have reservations with the Turbine Hall embodying a place of art and performance:

“You feel very small in the face of the magnitude of this cathedral. It sends messages for miles: This is important, this is a sacred place, everything here is sacred. Things that are sacred aren’t questioned, and that’s the problem.”

— Jake Chapman, artist

Like all great modern successes, there is always a bigger, bolder sequel on the horizon. With a rocky world economy and ongoing government cutbacks in arts financing, the Tate Modern is ready to grow. What was once part of the museum's original plan in 2000, the extension realizes the further potential of the site and of the existing building itself. New plans (coined the Tate Modern Project) are being developed to take over the subterranean oil tanks of the former power station from which the new building will rise to the south of the Turbine Hall, as EDF Energy (operators of the electric substation) completed work to modernize the station's equipment, allowing them to use a smaller amount of space in the building and freeing up vital space for Tate Modern to expand. Breaking ground this past Spring, the 11-story addition will create new gallery and social spaces to relieve the overcrowded existing building and respond to the changing nature of art, with facilities for new media and raw spaces where special installations by artists and performances will take place. The proposal, putting all of the new development south of the original building, begins to structure a duality, defining the boundary of Tate's public center. To the north, the articulation of the landscape is much more expansive and public, with vast views of the city and river edge, occupied by movement of thousands of people from the bridge, ferry and riverwalk. To the south, a new development aimed at developing a dramatic change in scale and character, creating an 'external room' with a natural canopy and smaller, humanistic spaces to be shared between the surrounding local community.

“It is a cultural landmark and global icon and I’m delighted to support its much-needed expansion. Not only will it add to the excitement around the 2012 Games, it will extend the potential benefits of this great temple of art even further south into the Bankside area.”

— Boris Johnson, Mayor of London

New Commercial Development and Pedestrian Access South of Tate Modern

With the redeployment of the power station as a modern museum and an eagerly-awaited significant addition, along with developing vital connections along and across the Thames, Bankside's office and residential developments have begun to transform, as evidence in the improvements to both the public and private developments immediately South of Tate Modern that have successfully considered architect Richard Roger's urban study schemes for the area. However, a broader plan was needed to determine a smart-growth strategy for the entire Bankside Triangle area. Commissioned by 'Better Bankside' in collaboration with other broad groups in the area, architects Witherford Watson Mann developed Bankside Urban Forest, a coordinated urban design framework consisting of an evolutionary and fragmentary process that resists over-inscription of public space and focuses on investment in pocket parks, cultivating good relations with small businesses, changing the balance between vehicles and pedestrians, bringing scale and humanity to harsh areas, and offering continuing discoveries in it's street patterns. Inspired by the strengths of Bankside's labyrinthine set of streets and built structures, the idea of 'Forest Space' has always had an association with a sense of freedom and permeability, a place that can be entered and exited at any point, offering a diverse set of paths and activities. Considered as 'clearing' in the forest, Tate Modern was the ideal location to plant the first seeds of the forest, already projecting influence on the planning of the new southern addition and surrounding area.

““It shows that among the botched public works, overruns and administrative failures, things can be made on time, to cost, and can be popular without being crass””

— Andrew Marr, BBC News reporter

Tate Modern Museum  /  Site analysis of access, circulation, new development, and points of social engagement — Tate Modern Museum / Site analysis of access, circulation, new development, and points of social engagement

Transformation of urban districts - from industry to culture - is a commonality in today’s city redevelopment strategies. However, Tate’s successful development and appeal has come from accepting past contextual assignments inherent in the Tate’s projection, appealing not to the eternity of the Ages, but to the continually shifting present. The architects and planners took the old power station site, recalling the fate of the grimy industrial area and - instead of throwing it away - enhanced crucial urban connectivity, embracing it as a past projection onto a modern city, organizing a region with meandering streets, clusters of diverse spaces, and overlapping development patterns. Now, with a proposed addition underway and focus on Urban Forest’s micro-development strategies, a new direct North/South route will develop from crossing the Millennium Bridge, through the Turbine Hall, and into the heart of Southwark. This improvement will assist in creating a spine of human experiences and connectivity – helping to link the South Bank region and the city beyond, providing a catalyst for the further regeneration of the entire area.

Case Study / Harpa Concert Hall and Conference Center

Reykjavik : Materializing from the Sea

Like the representation of the ancient Colossus of Rhodes - one of the original seven wonders of the world - the recently constructed Harpa straddles it's harbor with such sheer luminosity and eye-catching height that it is hard not to compare it to this ancient monument. In fact, both have very similar symbolic methodology. Freedom and victory from tyrannical rule imbued the ancient monument 23 centuries ago, while it's modern counterpart symbolizes a new beginning and cultural victory for a country that suffered through a complete economic meltdown. Of course, that wasn't the original intention of the new complex as construction primarily started around 2005, during Iceland's economic "boom years", relishing as one of the richest countries in the world (per capita) at the time. The ultimate driving force of the project was the realization that Reykjavik was one of the only Western European capital cities that operated without a major performance hall, not to mention a conference center that gave the city a primary location for various civic events and meetings.

Location and Assemblage

The selected position for the concert hall and conference center in the Old Harbor area of Reykjavik makes an ideal location, as Iceland has always been a maritime nation with an explicit affiliation for the sea. The island nation, founded by Nordic sailors around the 9th century, was first settled in Reykjavik and essentially grew out of the sea, with the harbor as the lifeblood of the community for food supply and connections to mainland Europe. With that in mind, the new theater complex literally grew out of the sea by siting the future project on an area that was previously underwater in the old harbor - now on top of recent landfill, Harpa sits on a low, central point in the city with line-of-sight from numerous locations throughout greater-Reykjavik. This immediate visual connection offers direction and attraction to a low-lying city that has few focal points, with the exception of Hallgrímskirkja (largest church in the capital city). Programmatically, Harpa focuses different sections of the city as well, by inviting numerous artistic companies that have worked capriciously throughout the city to perform under one roof, including the Icelandic Opera and Icelandic Symphony Orchestra (both moving from old, modest buildings that are shared as cinema houses). Not to mention, coupling with the conference center section gives more program appeal as it invites corporate and civic events that would not necessarily be seen in contemporary performance halls.

Aerial View  /  Harpa Concert Hall from Downtown Reykjavik — Aerial View / Harpa Concert Hall from Downtown Reykjavik

CENTRAL LOCATION  /  Possible Views of Harpa Throughout City (orange icons show previous locations of Icelandic Symphony Orchestra and Icelandic Opera before moving to Harpa) — CENTRAL LOCATION / Possible Views of Harpa Throughout City (orange icons show previous locations of Icelandic Symphony Orchestra and Icelandic Opera before moving to Harpa)

The Beginning and Controversy

The plan to build a permanent concert house dates back three decades. In the eighties, the original designated site was far from the water - located East of the city center in Laugardalur (an area of sports venues, city parks and swimming pools). Years later, the decision would shift to build the concert hall in a more public and accessible location by the old harbor area in downtown Reykjavik with funding from the city government and an organization of music patrons. However, during Iceland’s ‘banking boom’, a private investor associated with Landsbanki (one of Iceland’s largest banks) took over and expedited the project - claiming it as a gift to the Icelandic nation. The original plans for the concert hall and surrounding area were immediately changed as it was going to be a stomping ground of consumerism with more shopping and mixed-use development, including a new headquarters for the bank. Initially, the concert hall had a strong focus on music facilities during the competition process - with interest in a supporting conference center space for civic interests. That would quickly change to become a conference center with some music on the side. The private entity had seemingly less interest in the cultural potential of the new Harpa - siding with a strong focus on optimizing and detailing the commercial aspects of the building, whereas the cultural aspects (the music and public civic institutions) were toned down. During this time there was strong pressure to create something with a very sound business plan.

After Iceland’s economic crash of 2008, it was discovered that the project’s primary investor had not actually placed any real capital into the project - with all loans coming from a now defunct bank - halting construction and leaving Harpa only half-complete. For a few months, nobody knew what to do with the stagnant project as it just sat unfinished down by the waterfront - a reminder of the folly of the boom years. The city government, after hotly argued debates about the merits of erecting an unfinished $270 million concert hall during a recession, decided that it would be more morally costly to let it disintegrate than to pony up the millions needed to finish it. The crisis shifted Harpa’s focus back towards its original purpose. Building materials were altered and a myriad of new design decisions were made to cut down the swelling construction budget - in return receiving a more honest and straightforward concert hall for Reykjavik.

Since completion, the concert hall has attracted a significant amount of local and international interest, however there is still some in Iceland that believe the contemporary steel and glass structure was built as a monument to the bankers - blamed for bankrupting the island nation. Interestingly enough, there was another idea that came from the runner-up in the design competition for this influential project - French architect Jean Nouvel calling for the house to be built as a subtle grassy hill - in harmony with Arnarhóll (a hillside park standing in the center of town directly adjacent to the site). Perhaps, this idea was thought to be too reminiscent of a time when most Icelanders would dwell in homes made of mud and grass - an unappealing image for a modern-day city.

View down the Laekjargata toward the Harpa

Old Harbor Waterfront Masterplan (2008-2009)

Before the effects of the economic meltdown were realized, the primary land owner, Associated Icelandic Ports, organized a master plan competition to provide a strategic vision for the future development of approximately 190 acres within the harbor area and city center, currently home to a range of industrial, commercial, tourist and cultural activities (including the already planned Harpa concert hall). The winning master plan, won byGraeme Massie Architects, proposed a 'spine' that forms an urban extension to the city and harbors, while creating a new city blocks that are structured into a series of highly permeable longitudinal building plots, each with street and harbor frontages linked by pedestrian lanes and intimately scaled courtyard spaces. The spine would extend beyond the natural coastline to form a new residential peninsula, with a generous waterfront promenade, orientated to the south-west. Access to the residential district is clearly separated from neighboring commercial and light industrial activities that will be consolidated on the outer harbor peninsula, benefitting both from a remarkable setting and direct road connections to the city center via a new harbor tunnel.

Reykjavik Waterfront Master Plan  /  Graeme Massie Architect — Reykjavik Waterfront Master Plan / Graeme Massie Architect

East Harbour Masterplan (2010-2011)

After the dust settled from the economic turmoil, master planning efforts were significantly pulled back to just the Eastern part of the Old Harbor. As the primary Architect of the Harpa,Henning Larsen Architects were asked to develop a plan to revitalize the area around the new theater complex and harbor. The resulting design comprises an 280,000 ft² master plan with the overall objective to improve the connection between the city center and the harbor. The project includes a number of significant buildings for cultural and mixed use, including the Harpa concert hall, a hotel and wellness center, an academy of fine arts, a bank domicile, a cinema, a new shopping street and urban plaza, and a number of residential and commercial buildings.

East Harbor Master Plan  /  Henning Larsen Architect — East Harbor Master Plan / Henning Larsen Architect

Design Intent

The 92,000 square-foot complex comprises of an exhibit area and four main concert halls inspired by the elements of fire, air, water, and earth; all of which are related to Icelandic nature: Eldborg (Fire Castle), Norðurljós (Northern Lights), Silfurberg (Iceland spar - a rare translucent calcite crystal), and Kaldalón (Cold Lagoon). Design work was carried out by Danish Architect, Henning Larson Architects, in collaboration with Danish Artist (Iceland-native) Olafur Eliasson, to create Iceland’s first contemporary theater venue. The most recognizable element of the project is the glass-structure facade that separates the public plaza and the interior atrium. According to the designers, the important aspect of the facade is its ability to transform Iceland’s unique northern light into a colorful, kaleidoscope effect. More appealing, is the building skin’s ability to interact with its surrounding context; between the active harbor, highway, and walkways - projecting the movement of the city onto itself with an alternate existence. The effect dematerializes the relationship between the project and the urban fabric, not acting as a static object, but having the ability to be receptive to change within it’s surrounding environment. Realistically, the facade creates a composed membrane that separates the city from the internal program of the theater in dramatic fashion, with the triple-pane design buffering air and noise from the adjacent street to maximize the hall’s acoustics, as well as withstand Iceland’s extreme climate changes. The quasi-brick constructed facade is a 12-sided module made of steel and glass - conceived by Olafur Eliasson and his collaborator Einar Thorsteinn - evoking the natural design of the Icelandic landscape by mimicking the famous crystallized basalt columns from Iceland’s vast coastlines (also inspiring the design for the Hallgrimskirkja - the largest church in Iceland).

“Harpa now has to build its own history. If the façade can serve as its identity, that is good, but the signature lies in the success of running the building. Ideally this will be a famous concert hall, renowned for its concerts and acoustics, that happens to have a fantastic work of art surrounding it.”

— Olafur Eliasson

The logic behind moving the Harpa project to the waterfront was to generate a ‘cultural bridge’ to the old harbor of Reykjavik and significantly contribute to the identity of the city, however this is not the case. Although the harbor area has played a pivotal role in the development of Reykjavik, connections with the sea have been weakened over time as the city and its economy have evolved. Heavy traffic on the adjacent highways of Geirsgata and Mýrargata act as physical barriers, making the route to the harbor an unattractive prospect for pedestrians. In addition, piecemeal development along the harbor has contributed to an environment that lacks a positive or coherent identity. The majority of pedestrian activity is contained within the core of the downtown - under cover from harsh winds and potential for sun in the many urban plazas and parks - with most activity occurring along the shopping area of Laugavegur. As Harpa nears completion (August 2011), the Eastern and Western boundaries of the site edge large undeveloped plots of land that wait for private acquisition. Especially troubling is the Western parcel adjacent to both the theater complex and downtown Reykjavik region - planned as a new hotel development in the current master plan (still with no buyers) - sits as a giant excavated ditch that creates another obstacle on the journey to the waterfront. As it stands now, there is no connection between the developed waterfront and Reykjavik’s historic city center: only surface parking lots, undeveloped plots of land and major roadways standing in the way to Iceland’s newest cultural venue.

Proposal

Still under construction, it is yet to be seen if Harpa will successfully stretch into the core of Reykjavik, but the simple design can become a strong statement and Harpa, along with it's many influential programs, has great potential for bringing the social fabric together. As stated above, the area around Harpa remains unclear, with no direct connection between the music hall and the rest of the city. Reykjavik would do well to rethink that association, as it would help integrate the harbor area and city center with a multifaceted space that will bolster urban activity and create an alliance between two districts that have been separated for some time. This strategy encourages a juxtaposition between urban environment and open landscape that is integral to Reykjavik's character, focusing on a connection of public areas that overlap the busy streets and reinforce a strong progression of movement. The strategy extends the grassy Arnarhóll over the roadway into the courtyard of the music hall, creating a continuous connection between all parks/plazas throughout downtown Reykjavik. New multi-purpose developments would be placed to enclose these public spaces, shielding them from the bitter winds of the ocean and creating opportunities to produce an esplanade along the edge of the harbor and waterfront.

GAP  /  Need for a Connection — GAP / Need for a Connection