The Subtle Landscape

  Sometime this month, the University of Iowa will decide which of four finalists will design the new $125 million Hancher Auditorium  which will replace the one ruined by flood several years ago.  It will be the most important performing arts venue for quite a swath of this part of the world and thus will have an elevated prominence.

  And elevated in more ways than one.  Its new site will be near the old, but somewhere just a bit uphill toward the Levitt Center – above the levels of the record high water.  There had been thought of a move downtown, but access to I-80, parking issues, and the riparian sublimity kept it closer to the original. 

  The context of the site is indeed remarkable.  Nearby Art Campus buildings include the Levitt Center designed by Charles Gwathmey, The Advanced Technology Lab by Frank Gehry, and The Art Building West by Steven Holl.  There’s an expansive park north of the Levitt Center. The gold dome of the Old Capital can be seen toward the south.

  The finalists are: Pelli Clarke Pelli/New Haven, CN; Trahan Architects/Baton Rouge, LA; William Rawn Associates/Boston, MA; and SnØhetta.  For some reason all of the reports give SnØhetta’s home as NYC where they do have an office, but practice HQ is in Oslo*.  And for me they’re the one to chose.

  I knee jerk eliminate Pelli and Rawn because even though they’ve done neat stuff, they have other projects nearby.  Cesar Pelli designed the wonderful Faulconer Gallery on the Grinnell campus which by the way is walking distance from Sullivan’s bank.   

  I’ve visited and admired a dorm Rawn designed on the Bowdoin College Campus and he was called the “…go to architect for elite universities”** in a review of another project there.  A performing arts building in fact.  But like I said, he designed the under construction Federal Court House in Cedar Rapids.

  The  U of I hasn’t shied from risk and this is the perfect opportunity to take another which both Trahan and SnØhetta would represent.  I’m not much familiar with Trahan, but perusal of their site takes one’s breath away.  If they win, great – but my vote would be for the Scandanavians. 

  I’ve never been in a SnØhetta project*** but began following them with great interest after reading about the library they designed in Alexandria, Egypt.  The firm didn’t exist in 1989 when three Norwegians, an Austrian, and an American teamed up to submit a proposal for the project commemorating the most important library and place of learning in the ancient world.

  The site, very near the original one, is between the campus of Alexandria University and the sea from which the building appears to be just emerging anew.  The circular 160m diameter glazed roof is tilted toward the sea like an ancient sundial.  Inside, thirty-two meters below lies the main reading room.  Outside walls are gray Aswan granite inscribed with characters from 120 different languages.

  Egyptians have great pride in this twenty-first century take on the celebration of its antiquities. For it they won one of the prestigious Aga Khan awards for architecture during the 2004 cycle.  The award is given to projects that enhance the understanding and appreciation of Islamic culture.****

  Other significant and interesting projects in the Middle East ensued.  SnØhetta opened in New York after winning a competition for the 9/11 site which has morphed through controversy and iterations.  Recently SnØhetta was retained by  SFMoma to design its $250 million expansion. 

  Guess we’ll soon see about IC.  Whatever, should you be driving by on I-80 get off and look around.

* You’d have thought the Ø would have been a clue…

**Architect May 2002.  Can’t wait to visit the courthouse.  Renderings are beautiful.

***But daughter and husband did and came away impressed… And amused: It was obvious that Facebook was on 98% of the computer screens banked in the main reading room.

****Coincidentaly, Cesar Pelli won one during the same cycle for the Petrobras Towers in Kuala Lumpur.

*****Check out their site: http://www.snoarc.no

   Last week while riding my bike along the swollen Mississippi, my mind took me back to the architect selection process for the Figge Art Museum.  One of the reasons David Chipperfield was chosen was that he’d designed several projects alongside rivers, most notably (at that point*) the River and Rowing Museum by the Thames near Henley.

  We first met Mr. Chipperfield (now Sir) at that site and listened to him describe how even more stringent were flood plain building requirements in the UK than in the states.  And how, in any case, a river is a force of nature with which one best not trifle.  He quoted TS Eliot in that regard: “A river has a permanence far greater than mere humans.”

  That respect, in part, led him to set the volumes upon concrete columns thus placing them just above flood level.  Their shape was inflected first by the long obtusely peaked tents set up during the annual Henley Regatta.  The rooflines of traditional wooden barns of Oxfordshire were the second important influence. 

  The structure thus “fit in” and assuaged fears of local conservatives.  Chipperfield also though endeavored to clearly interject something new by having it appear to float over the site – resting it upon nearly invisible walls of glass.  The raised platform also bears resemblance to pavilions in Japan where will be found most of his early built work.

  The hovering effect was achieved for our project by exactly opposite means.  FAM looks like a glistening rectilinear crystal made to appear to float by its stark contrast with the dark concrete plinth upon which it rests.  Though the scale of the two buildings differs significantly, important similarity does not end there.  Both buildings honor their contents without sequestration. 

  Both employ skylights to allow for some natural lighting**, but more importantly both set up an opportunity for the visitor to visually interact with mother nature.  At Henley it’s the embrace (if not caress) of poplars around one small glazed room while here it’s the invigorating slap in the face one receives exiting fourth level exhibition space to look out and over the mighty Mississippi through a huge window sixty-one foot tall and nearly as wide.  Our own Grand Canyon.

*Chipperfield’s recently completed Neues project on Museum Island in the River Spree in Berlin was for ten years one of Europe’s largest.  It’s received raves.  Hope to visit one day…

**The skylights at Henley have been said to have been inspired by those at the Kimball.  Indeed, during our visit, Chipperfield was heard to say that “he’d work very hard to make the building what it wants to be” a phrase made famous by Kimball Architect Louis Kahn.

***cf June 26, 2009 – For a nearby work of Frank Lloyd Wright’s by a river.  There are some similarities as well as fundamental differences.  Wright’s has roots.

****cf June 5, 2009 to read about bridge builders and nature.