Essay: Containers Without Content

Containers
without
Content
The disastrous roll-out of
the Bilbao Effect across Spain
Text by
William J. R. Curtis
We have heard ad nauseam that “culture” in a post-industrial society is an essential part of the economy, a bartering device with which cities can establish a “brand” in the globalised networks of information, entertainment and tourism. Like everything else in the world of mass consumerism, from cars to supermarket food, the emphasis shifts from function and substance to packaging and image. Here the essential model is the advertising clip which may, for example, associate a brand of coffee with a well-known actor, or suggest that a scent and its shapely glass container will promise erotic conquests and delights. In the case of marketable museums and cultural centres, the image has to be instantly recognisable on the computer screen or in the airport magazine. Architecture is reduced to being a flashy container without much content to it.
»The image has to be instantly recognisable on the computer screen or in the airport magazine. Architecture is reduced to being a flashy container without much content to it.«
In Spain, no doubt under the spell of the so-called Bilbao Effect, mayors and civic authorities have stumbled over themselves to link their provincial cities to the delusory “global economy” by employing members of the international architectural star system to perform magic tricks for them without enough thought for real need and long-term cost. What the actor has done for coffee, the architect is supposed to do for the local economy by attracting attention with iconic buildings and hooking into networks of official cultural power, many of them in the dubious world of the institutionalised avant-garde, itself a commodity in the financial operations of the art market. Curators are expected to buy the latest approved products in art fairs and biennials and then distribute them in their showrooms and containers (museums and cultural centres), where the public is expected to consume them.
The walkways that snake across the top of Jürgen Mayer's Metropol Parasol provide panoramic views over the roof-tops of Seville. It is one of the largest and most complex wooden structures in the world, every piece of laminated timber in the waffle-grid construction unique in form, joined by steel bars and a specially-developed glue – giving it the flexibility to expand and contract in the extreme summer temperatures of the city. (Photo: David Franck)
All of this is supposed to be for the public good, there being the implicit suggestion that Spanish cities are without any intrinsic cultural value of their own until irrigated with this sort of investment. The architect responsible for the container is supposed to supply an attractive setting through formalistic demonstrations while the local culture is “themed” and reduced to caricature for tourist entertainment. The computerised image and fast-track production assure instant icons that are supposed somehow to give identity to this or that place, a preposterous suggestion for cities centuries old. Geometric gymnastics are the order of the day and Spanish cities are now littered with narcissistic exercises, such as the Metropol Parasol scheme designed by Jürgen Mayer for the Plaza de la Encarnación in Seville, a series of giant techno-kitsch mushrooms that effectively destroy a historic urban space while partially privatising it.
Situated in the redeveloped market square of Plaza de la Encarnación, Metropol Parasol is known locally as “Encarnación’s mushrooms.” It has four different levels: below grade a museum displaying the archaeological remains on the site; at ground level a market; above an elevated plaza; and on top of the structure, panoramic walkways, terrace and restaurant. (Left: Rafael Gomez-Moriana, criticalista.blogspot; Below: David Franck)
»The City of Culture of Galicia, designed by Peter Eisenman, sums up the excesses of the system with its empty rhetoric and extravagant and meaningless formalistic gestures.«
The City of Culture of Galicia project, near the ancient pilgrimage town of Santiago de Compostela, was won by Peter Eisenman in 1999 and is still unfinished. Designed to showcase the region’s artistic heritage, the six buildings on its 173-acre site include a library, archive, museum and theatre. (Photo: www.olympia-liechty.blogspot.de)
»All of this is supposed to be for the public good, there being the implicit suggestion that Spanish cities are without any intrinsic cultural value of their own until irrigated with this sort of investment.«
The stone-clad, contoured forms of the City of Culture were inspired, according to Eisenman, both by the surrounding landscape and the shape of a scallop shell, the traditional symbol of Santiago de Compostela. (Photos: openbuildings.com)
The disastrous City of Culture of Galicia outside Santiago de Compostela, designed by Peter Eisenman, sums up the excesses of the system with its empty rhetoric and extravagant and meaningless formalistic gestures. The folds of the project were sold to American academia through references to Deleuze (Le Pli), and to the gullible Galician locals through computerised transformations of the town plan of the old city of Compostela and allusions to the pilgrims of Santiago de Compostela. Far from being anchored in the local context, the project has decapitated Monte de Gaias and replaced it with a phony landscape with curves like those of a fun-fair roller coaster. These cynical intellectual manipulations cannot mask the reality of structures resembling supermarkets twisted about with algorithms and camouflaged with a thin veneer of granite (imported from Brasil!).

The 42.5-metre Museum of Galicia on the right is the tallest structure in the City of Culture. The hill-top site, offering views back to the the city of Santiago de Compostela, also allows the complex to be seen for miles around. To the left in the background is the Library of Galicia. (Photo: www.isabellaseveri.blogspot.de)
- William J.R. Curtis (*1948) is an architectural historian and critic. His writings have focused on twentieth century architecture, and his best known books are Modern Architecture Since 1900 (Phaidon, first published in1982) and Le Corbusier: Ideas and Forms (Phaidon, 1986). His focus more recently has also been on re-assessing and broadening the modernist ‘canon’, and other books include Balkrishna Doshi: an Architecture for India (Mapin, Rizzoli 1989); and Teodoro Gonzalez de Leon: Obra Completa (Arquine, Reverte, Mexico 2004).
  
  He studied at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London University and at Harvard University, and has taught and lectured extensively in Europe, USA, Australia, Asia and Latin America. Curtis currently lives in southwestern France.
  
  This article first appeared in El Païs, Babelia, May 14, 2011
This megalomaniac scheme may well fit the Pharaonic ambitions of its original client Manuel Fraga, but it still remains half-finished, it is bankrupting the local economy in the building process, and it will cost a fortune to run. The ill-defined claims of mass cultural entertainment do not sit too well in a period of mass unemployment.

The Centro Niemeyer Asturias in Spain’s industrially depressed city of Avilés follows this general pattern of cultural marketing, given that no one seems to know what the architectural container is supposed to contain. The building is a curious assemblage of Niemeyer’s own architectural clichés – from an upturned flying saucer to supposedly “seductive feminine curves” – a signature building in the full sense of the word that comes close to self-caricature. Everything has been done to attract attention to the project, including linking it to actors such as Woody Allen and Brad Pitt. We learn that the building “has the potential to become a Spanish national icon,” transforming the sad city of Avilés into a world class centre of arts, culture and design. An example, then, of what Llàtzer Moix has called “miracle architecture”: just rub the lamp and the genie will appear!

William J.R. Curtis
The Centro Niemeyer Asturias consists of five main elements, including an auditorium, exhibition dome beyond, and above, the sight-seeing tower and restaurant. Th centre has closed and reopened twice since its inauguration in 2011, due to political and funding issues. (Left: Wikimedia Commons; Top: SurfAst / Wikimedia Commons)