I recently had the opportunity to visit Milwaukee, WI, for the first time (thank you FUEL Milwaukee!). And visiting cities for the first time, to me, is particularly exciting. Arriving for the first time is a pure and unadulterated experience. First impressions matter and how a city presents itself to a first-time visitor is very important. I learned this from my friend Charles Landry.

Milwaukee Art Museum

I arrived via the airport with the typical location outside of city. My host takes the highway toward the city. As we approach the Hoan Bridge, we pass amid the Port of Milwaukee. On both sides, there are mountains of bulk materials and cranes. While not beautiful, there is the appearance of activity and a muscularity that says “we work here.” As we crest the bridge (with its own very strange design element) I am startled because the city presents itself there in panorama. The city in the hills to the left, the waters of Lake Michigan to the right. And to the right, near the lake, your eye is drawn to the white sails of the Santiago Calatrava masterpiece at the Milwaukee Art Museum.  It looks so different and unexpected in the tableau that one cannot help but to stare. Unexpected because this is the Midwest where modern iconic design is not the norm and that is not a shot; I am originally  from the Midwest!  More photos click here.

While many question the value of “starchitects” and iconic design, I have to say that my impression of Milwaukee was and is shaped in no small part because of that building. It is different and it says something about Milwaukee that no amount of advertising and marketing could equal. It says in a profound way “we are not what you expect” and that Milwaukee is looking to the future and beyond the beer brewery image of its past. The building says it in a visible and demonstrable way that one cannot deny.

Cities that are arguing over the cost/benefits of such iconic architecture should consider the context in which the new building will occur. In starchitect-rich Singapore, one more Calatrava or Libeskind is just keeping up with the crowd. In cities with a dearth of quality architecture (lots of those) or cities that need to redefine themselves in the 21st century, a new building can be a catalyst for new design and a whole host of other values.

The latest issue of Dwell Magazine looks at one of America’s first (and often considered the most successful) urban renewal projects. Detroit’s Lafayette Park, now undergoing a subtle transformation as a new wave of residents including Keira Alexandra and Toby Barlow settle in, remix the past, and make the place their own.

Given the uncertainty looming with the likely restructuring of the automotive and manufacturing base in this area, it’s encouraging to see a vibrant and stable cooperative community within the city that has endured the region’s many changes over the last 50 years. And, who knows, what comes next may in fact be orchestrated from this place.

It’s been a busy week of conferences and symposiums and forums! This week in Toronto the Canadian Housing and Renewal Association had their Tri-Country Conference; in Ottawa yesterday the Governor General held an Arts Matters forum on Architecture at Carleton University; and today we had the Carleton Senate Symposium focusing on the role of architecture in relation to health and the environment, where I presented my research on youth cultures in young spaces.

At all three of these meetings-of-the-mind, the issue of housing was focal, and at two of the three the issue of youth engagement in housing came up. At the Tri-Country Symposium in Toronto, Julia Unwin gave a great speech which, among many things, addressed the lack of system thinking when it comes to addressing the matter of youth and housing. The next day at the Arts Matters Forum in Ottawa, Professor Boyle talked about housing existing in something of a void as it relates to young people, and the open discussion often returned to the issue of what the best way is to engage society with the art of architecture.

The discussions got me thinking about my own education. I spent four years doing a fairly high level liberal arts degree and, even then, I never learned much about architecture or housing. It took some continued education, a lot of digging in the course calendar, and a bit of luck for me to stumble upon a history of housing course that really developed a deeper appreciation for the built environment by showing me the process. Not only the physical changes that the houses went through, but the changes in human consciousness that followed and sometimes preceded those changes in our modes of living. The relationship between form and function, and how space is one of the sedimentary aspects of all life. Moreover, that the places we live, work, and play didn’t just show up as we did. They’re a product of a long deliberated process and negotiation with the things we value and our increasing ability to realize those things physically in the world.

To put it in even less lofty terms, I’ll paraphrase what Sarah Webb of the UK delegation said during our group discussion at the Tri-Country Symposium: If you do choose to buy a house, it will most likely be the most expensive, most complicated, most determining decision of your life. Why is it that most young people only start to learn about it as they’re about to do it?

If the places we live are such important financial and personal investments, should there not be some base level courses about architecture, or at least housing in our secondary or post-secondary curriculums? Is it reasonable to raise young people without giving them the understanding of their built environments as a part of a process? Without some context, how can young people develop opinions about how space should be used when they are voting citizens of a municipality? Where did you first learn about where/how you live?

And now, as always, some music.

Seems the sixties and the hippie movement around the Bay Area had a big impact on architectural innovation a la Frank Gehry and Rem Koolhaas, as well as music, popular culture, food (Alice Waters), and technology. Zahid Sardar, writing in the San Francisco Gate, reviews Alastair Gordon’s new book, Spaced Out: Crash Pads, Hippie Communes, Infinity Machines, and Other Radical Environments of the Psychedelic Sixties. Creativity requires self-expression. It also appears to arise in clumps or clusters, not just in time but in space.

Gordon’s research makes it clear that the ’60s generated many of the ideas about recycling and protecting the environment that we consider normal today … [T]he ’60s may have inspired the most visually arresting buildings by some of the most celebrated and visionary architects today.

Some of those unconventional buildings, it turns out, were created because the amateur builders could not quite figure out how to construct Fuller’s dome of conjoined triangular components. Nevertheless, you might see links between those forms and the wild imaginings of architect Eric Owen Moss in Culver City; Frank Gehry’s roof forms for the Bilbao Museum Guggenheim and the twisting, shiny Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles; the wacky, wonderful main library in Seattle by Rem Koolhaas; and even the Federal Building in San Francisco by Thom Mayne.

What other areas of the U.S. seem to have been affected architecturally by the hippie movement?

David Galenson, the University of Chicago economist who has written on the difference between conceptual (read: young) and pragmatic (that is, older) creatives, has a new paper on architects at the National Bureau of Economic Research (via Freakonomics):

A survey of textbooks reveals that Le Corbusier was the greatest architect of the twentieth century, followed by Frank Lloyd Wright and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. The same evidence shows that the greatest architects alive today are Frank Gehry and Renzo Piano. Scholars have long been aware of the differing approaches of architects who have embraced geometry and those who have been inspired by nature, but they have never compared the life cycles of these two groups. The present study demonstrates that, as in other arts, conceptual architects have made their greatest innovations early in their careers, whereas experimental architects have done their most important work late in their lives. Remarkably, the experimentalists Le Corbusier and Frank Gehry designed their greatest buildings after the age of 60, and Frank Lloyd Wright designed his after 70.

I recently had dinner with Gehry who is designing our new building for the Art Galley of Ontario and someone asked him who were his favorite younger architects. He hesitated. I remember thinking at the time: architects only become successful after fairly long careers. He then hesitatingly responded: “Rem Koolhaus and Zaha Hadid.” They still have plenty of time to join the rank of star-chitects

What makes the contemporary city successful, livable, humane, yet also inspirational?

With this Creative Class Exchange, my intent is to offer snapshots of the exemplars of 21^st century architecture and urbanism and how existing paradigms are being challenged by new modes of urban life.

How can architecture support and inspire creativity and life?

Week 2: New Opera House Oslo

The New Opera House Oslo is a spectacular fusion of landscape and architecture, urbanism and the art of opera located on the Bjørvika peninsula. Both an iconic abstraction of Norway’s geography and an engaging yet monumental public gathering place, the design demonstrates how architecture can add exponential value to what ultimately might have been a simple yet highly functional container for performance. Designed by Snohetta, an innovative architectural and design practice based in Oslo, the concept breaks from the paradigm of the opera ‘house’ to create a hybridized form that effectively acquires the audience and the city as actors in the drama of urban dwelling.

The design transforms what was formerly a flat, industrial waterfront site into a public terrain that relates to the landscape of fjords and hills surrounding Oslo. The architecture has three major elements: a white stone ‘carpet’ of tilted and flat planes that creates a public promenade around, above, and behind the House; a timber ‘wave’ wall that wraps the auditorium and defines the perimeter of the site between land and water; and a metal clad ‘factory’ which houses the functional components of the opera house. Viewed from the water, the timber wave wall is visible as a central figure in this new urban hill: the simultaneous expression of cultural sustainability and city building, both icon and memorable public landscape.

The concept of encompassing terraced stairs and landscapes around a building has precursors in early modernism (i.e. the Villa Malaparte at Capri) as well as later modernism (i.e. Tadeo Ando’s Chikatsu-Asuka Historical Museum). The New Opera House extends the trope of landscape as urban architecture and situates itself within a trajectory of projects of early 21^st century projects – from the Yokohama Pier and Terminal designed by Foreign Office Architects to Seattle’s Olympic Sculpture Park designed by Weiss Manfredi – demonstrating how the fusion of creative thinking and collaborative design can produce immediate and long-term value for broader acts of waterfront development and urban revitalization.

From left: 1) Yokohoma International Port Terminal (Foreign Office Architects); 2) Chikatsu-Asuka Historical Museum (Tadao Ando); 3) Seattle Art Museum Olympic Sculpture Park (Weiss/Manfredi); 4) Villa Malaparte (Adalberto Libera)

Photographic credit for New Opera House Oslo: Images taken from the Snohetta AS website: www.snoarc.no – Copyright: Snohetta

Photographic credit for banner above:

1) Image taken from arcspace: www.arcspace.com/architects/foreign_office/yokohama/yokohama_index.htm

2) Image taken from: Jodidio, Philip. “Ando – Complete Works”. Taschen (2004), pg. 211

3) Image taken from: Weiss/Manfredi website: www.weissmanfredi.com/projects/index.php

4) Image taken from: Wikipedia Online Encyclopedia user “Arnaud 25″: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villa_Malaparte