ARCHITECTURAL EYEWASHPRAHA 2004
In the Kaleidoskop column of Respekt 21 (May 17-23, 2004), Praha’s finest newspaper, architectural historian (and specialist on the subject of early twentieth-century Czech architecture) Zdenek Lukes unleashed a scorching (sardonic) critique of the Czech Grand Prix for architecture, denouncing (mocking) the picturesque nature of the annual competition. In particular, he lambastes its dependence on pure imagery, especially glamorous photographic, almost pornographic images taken in the evening, striking images of depopulated buildings glowing from within, in the half-light, a type of long-exposure photography that can make any building whatsoever look ravishing. Lukes seconds Sir Colin Stansfield Smith (member of the 2004 Grand Prix board), arguing that the jury should visit all of the buildings vying for the award and interview the users (as well as the investors), while also conceiving of a prize that defies the existing categories (residence, office building, urban plan, etcetera), embracing, then, the totality (the existential gestalt) of the works under review (waiting, if necessary, a few years before considering a building for an award).
In the impressionistic harangue, Lukes goes on to describe the ludicrous project for a Salvador Dali museum in Praha (by “galerista Miro Smolak”) for a non-existent collection of paintings. This tale already begins to perversely resemble the origins of the museum recently installed in an old mill, Sovovy Mlyny, on Kampa, an island hugging the Left Bank of the Vltava. A City-owned building, it was leased to a foundation established after an absurd and botched design competition, innocently authorized by the Czech Chamber of Architects, and based on the premise that the museum (and therefore the City) would receive a collection of Frantisek Kupka paintings from the widow of a wealthy Czech ex-pat. The Dali House fantasy also seems to summarize the current state of art-chitecture, here and there, or the speculative élan of high-end and boutique museums designed by star architects (a.k.a. starchitects) … ‘Here’ (in Praha) Daniel Libeskind has been ‘invited’ to submit a design. Few people in the official Praha art scene seem to want or understand the need for this newest imposition, although, as always, the City will decide behind mostly closed doors what is what (what is ‘useful’ and what is not).
While Lukes was venting his spleen in the pages of Respekt, the May 12-25, 2004 issue of the Prague Post (Vol. 14, No. 20) reported, in a front-page article entitled “Maverick architect eyes site on Vltava”, that Smolak and Libeskind favor building the ‘Dali House’ on the embankment at the end of Revolucni Street. The article describes the controversy (who’s for, who’s against … the mayor seems to be ‘for’), making passing and ill-informed references to the Milunic/Gehry Dancing Building (a.k.a. the Nederlander Building and/or the Fred and Ginger Building) on the embankment in the New Town and Jean Nouvel’s Andel tucked into Prague-Smichov across the river. Both of these buildings actually respect their respective locations, whereas Libeskind’s proposed architectural object / icon (the “transformation of a circle into a square and back again into a circle”) would sit awkwardly amidst the mostly low-rise buildings along the bend of the river in the Old Town. A single ‘authorized’ rendering reproduced by various print and electronic media shows the building, in perspective, bursting forth into the warped perspectival space (picture plane) of architectural (mis)representation. Oddly, the Prague Post somehow manages to describe the Dali House as a “seven-storey gallery”, whereas the rendering, ‘taken’ from across the river along the embankment, shows an expansive, aggressive volumetric something-or-other that is clearly not seven storeys. Yet missing storeys is part and parcel of every architectural tall-tale. Apparently some architects looking at Praha from far away still see a naïve city susceptible to the usual architectural eyewash that passes as ‘Realism’, while, in fact, present-day architectural rhetoric (inclusive of photo-realistic renderings) is almost always selling a fantasy. What is most unsettling (bizarre), however, is that Libeskind’s strident rendering of the Dali House actually overstates (oversells) the arrogance of the building and he ends up (once again) with his foot in his mouth.
Nouvel’s Andel project (an office and shopping complex) for ING is a not-inelegant example of so-called “urban acupuncture”, mostly delightful impositions (urbanistic interpellations) that release latent (pent-up) energies, in the case of Andel, in a somewhat down-at-the-heels working-class neighborhood long slated, in various 20th-century urban plans, as an alternative city center. Thousands of workers pass through this section of the city daily on foot, on the subway and by tram (streetcar). It is not Nouvel’s fault if Smichov’s pent-up energy was primarily real-estate speculation and rampant consumer desire for the latest in fashionable (and expensive) things.
On the other hand, Vlado Milunic’s Dancing Building (it is said that Gehry was merely called in to provide ‘starchitect’ cachet for the developer) ‘dances’ provocatively, but with a modicum of decorum, within the folded street-wall of the Right Bank, at the intersection of two busy thoroughfares, one heading straight across the Vltava, the other along its embankment. The deluxe restaurant on the ground floor and the twisted, open floor plans of the upper offices (with erratically placed windows that offer your knee or the ceiling fan a view of the Vltava) may provide a glamorous retreat for Praha’s trend-setting entrepreneurial set, yet the building was thoroughly vetted through both official and unofficial (favorable and vicious) criticism, as will be the ‘Dali House’. Milunic (with Gehry) and ING (again) prevailed with the assistance of then President Vaclav Havel, resolutely leaning in favor of the project (he formerly lived just down the street, during the communist years, and his once-affluent family, once upon a time developers, once owned a portion of the block). The finishing touch of the Dancing Building, the curiously crumpled cupola, was ceremoniously flown into place by a Soviet-era military helicopter.
As a footnote to Praha’s illustrious 1990s makeover, after the 1989 Velvet Revolution, it was Havel, working with architect-designer Borek Sipek (nominally ‘Castle Architect’ throughout the Velvet Presidency), who altered the iconography (and iconology) of the Castle (always Kafka’s ‘Castle’) by strategic interventions within the compound, including Sipek’s somewhat wild new entrance to the President’s Office, in the Second Courtyard. Sipek also brought his Sottsass-inspired aesthetic to the interiors, a curious blend of effects and affects that are no doubt in the process of being erased (if they are not already erased) by Havel’s successor (and enemy) Thatcherite neo-conservative Vaclav Klaus, head of the appropriately named right-leaning ODS party.
As for the ‘hypothetical collection of works by Dali’ cited in the Lukes send-up, the Prague Post explains: “The proposed museum would house some 1,500 works by the Spanish surrealist, most of them on loan from the Dali Foundation in Figueres, Spain, and from German collector Richard Meier. Additionally, it would contain space for exhibitions, a theater, shops, a library, a depository for contemporary art and accommodations for artists.” (p. 1) … These redundancies (vagaries of the architectural program) perhaps account for the inexplicable bulk of the Dali ‘House’ rendering, suggesting, in turn, that the project is, in fact, a stalking horse for a complex real estate pyramid scheme (and the paper confirms the rumor that one of the investors is, indeed, a Russian bank).
Dubbed ‘Dali House’, at first (and in Libeskind’s brash renderings), Smolak has since backed off and now refers to the proposed facility as the “Palace of Art Prague”. Echoing the bombast of Richard Meier’s high-rise project at Pankrac (i.e., the architect, not the above-mentioned art collector), a project now dramatically scaled back, Libeskind is quoted in the Post article as saying (remarks most likely taken from the official Press Release): “It’s very much related to Prague, to the forms and traditions of Prague, it tells a story that intersects Dali and 20th-century art, Prague, the 21st century and imagination.” (p. 2) … As if that was not quite enough, Libeskind adds: “If you don’t have a future, you don’t have a past, and if you don’t have a past, you won’t have a future.” (p. 2) … The ‘Dali House’ is projected to cost 700 million KC (26 million US dollars) if it ever sees the light of day. Meanwhile, “galerista Smolak” runs his limited-edition art operation from a decommissioned church, near Strahov Monastery, up the backside of Petrin.
Gavin Keeney (06/05/04)
ENDNOTES / REFERENCES
*Zdenek Lukes, "Jak hodnotit architekturu, Dali v Vltany [...]", Respekt, Vol XV, No. 21 (May 17-23, 2004), p. 18 / Respekt was being sued several years ago by every single member of Socialist PM Milos Zemans’ cabinet for ‘slander’, that is, for insistently reporting on systemic corruption in the award of government contracts. Miraculously, Karel Schwarzenberg, a member of the ‘old rich’ (the semi-illustrious former nobility of pre-communist Czechoslovakia and, before that, the so-called Czech Lands of the Austro-Hungarian Empire), bailed them out by buying a controlling interest in the paper. It was always the intention of Zeman’s nominally ‘socialist’ gang (ruling in coalition with Vaclav Klaus' center-right ODS party) to merely bankrupt (or at least hamstring) the paper by tying them up in the courts for years on end. Renascent noblesse oblige (with irony), then, in return for "Majoritni vlastnic" ...
For the online version of the Prague Post article on Dali House (with images of the smiling galerista Miro Smolak holding a model, plus the famous, ungainly perspective drawing of the project from 'somewhere' across the river), cliquez ici ...For assorted critiques, links, etcetera related to the aborted Richard Meier and Partners ECM Plaza project, Nouvel’s sublime Andel, Sipek's 'fauve' work at the Castle, and such, see Things Czech ...
Havel and Sipek’s makeover of the Castle has recently been documented in Petr Volf, Vaclav Havel-Borek Sipek: Hradni prace 1992-2002 (Praha: Breda, 2003), text in Czech and English ...
