November 2009 Archives
Iteration type a number 1: The Guggenheim museum is in the park from 1979-1999, its sequence of spaces has changed. The sequences of spaces are adapted to the fact that 'the amount of sqmetres taken by the building has to be equal to outdoor spaces' (by the CIty of New York). 
The promenade is not only indoor but outdoor, the spiral starts from the outside, leads the visitors up to the two roof terraces where ssculptural work is dispayed. The spiral continues inside the museum till the ground floor, the departure point.
Work analyses on the exisiting circulation path
The preservation of a legacy through cyclic iterations
Today we live in a world of constant crave for newness, where objects and identity are being updated and this more and more frequently. Clients are seeking a shock for the new and are desperate for dinstinctions. Iconic buildings (strongly express and shape the identity and taste of a client, an institution, an idea...) have also to be updated because what they express and represent has changed, is changing or has to be changed.
It is not relevant to undertake immense and tedious labor of preservation so patiently to restore a monument to its original identical state. There should be no need to focus our energies on preservation and restoration. This denies and erases new meanings that an iconic building might have acquired.
Therefore, we need to reconsider the notion of preservation. The problem on how to refresh an iconic building is raised. How can an iconic building preserve its legacy?Preserving the legacy of an icon not by reproducing the exact physicality or extending the building so that it is more imposing but through iterations of its original design. The iconic building is treated here as an object of expiration but capable of being reborn. Forever new, forever ancient and forever exciting.The iteration recreates the excitement and the shock of the new. The twists challenge and change the meaning and identity of the building. There should be cyclic architectural interventions in order to preserve the building. This cyclic interventions are agitating the building, increasing moments and it is by this accumulation of moments that the legacy of a building is strengthened and rejuvenate.
The legacy of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
It is through the manipulation of the archive of the Guggenheim Museum that the notion of preservation is explored.
Solomon R Guggenheim and Hilla Rebay, the first director and curator of the Guggenheim foundation, are together at the origin of the creation of the foundation. Hilla was very close to many artists such as Mondrian or Kandinski, and an expert in art. She did not only established on of the finest art collection in the world but also as she was passionate in architecture she initiated the construction of the Solomon R. Guggenheim museum in New York. In 1943, Hilla commissioned FLW to design a museum in New York that could contain the entire collection. The design underwent several delays due to changes of the site. The design was originally planned to be in Central Park but the city of New York did not allow such an imposing building in the Park. Couple of years letter, in this letter directed to Solomon, Hilla is encouraging Solomon to develop a freshly innovative concept for a museum that could contain the collection of the foundation. Here are the original negative film and couple of photographs taken by Hilla during her trip to Japan at the Ise Grand Shrine.The shrine buildings are ritually replicated every 20 years on an adjacent. As a part of the Shinto belief of the death and renewal of nature and the impermanence of all things as a way of passing building techniques from one generation to the next. Hilla proposed to reincarnate the Guggenheim museum (which refers to the soul) in an other plot (which refer to the body) in New York. Solomon is very enthusiastic about this revolutionary concept, and asked the office Frank Lloyd Wright to brainstorm about this idea of twinning the Guggenheim through collages and drawings. The museum first opened on the 21st october 1959. After a few years, a study of the
fragility of the building was conducted by a team of engineers. The foundation managed to convince the City of New York to build in the Park as long as the building will be temporary. The construction of the first replica started in 1971 and opened the 21st of october 1979. The Guggenheim foundation does not accept the conservationists motto "progressive authenticity" but believe in a "progressive agitation". They refuse to undertake an invisible restoration in favor of a visible restoration. By rebuilding the Guggenheim every 20 years with design iterations, the legacy of the Guggenheim is improved. The new buildings will be challenged spatially, aesthitically, programatically. A year later in 1980 the first Guggenheim on 5th avenue is demolished and its site is turned into a memorial space, only the fountain remains from the previous Guggenheim. In 1994, The construction of a third replica the Guggenheim 3 has started three years ago and the Guggenheim 2 in the Park is still operating. In 2000, The Guggenheim 3 is under demolition and a freshly new Guggenheim has been erected on the 5th avenue site. Since end of october 2009, The site in Central Park is a memorial space and the Guggenheim 4 is open to public. The ritual continues and the Guggenheim is more and more transformed.
I have been thinking about how the re-brief the legacy of the Guggenheim could lead me further.
Today we live in a world of constant quest for newness, where objects and identity are being updated and this more and more frequently. Iconic buildings (strongly express the identity and taste of a client, an institution, an idea...) have also to be updated because what they express and represent has changed, is changing or has to be changed. It is not relevant to undertake immense and tedious labor of preservation so patiently to restore a monument to its original identical state. There should be no need to focus our energies on preservation and restoration. This denies and erases new meanings that an iconic building might have acquired. We need to think about the notion of preservation differently. Therefore the problem on how to refresh an iconic building is raised. How can an iconic building preserve its legacy? Is it necessary that we think of preservation during the design process before the existence of the building? Shall we design building with an intrinsic renewal quality? Iconic buildings have to be treated as object of expiration, capable of being reborn. Forever new, forever ancient and forever exciting. What kind of twist can recreate this excitement? How can a new way of preserving become a tool to challenge and change the meaning of an iconic building?
A second life to a Synaguogue or an old cinema?
I am hesitating on two sites, both existing iconic fragile buildings which restoration is controversial and absolutely needed as they are the last icons of a legacy. Also an important fact is that their meanings have evolved through time.
1.the Maghen Abraham Synagogue, the last icon of the jewish community in lebanon.
(It was one of the icon of a large community and now its a memory of that community which no longer exist)
2.The Beirut City Centre Building, icon of modernist architecture and icon of the explicit traces of war in Lebanon.
(It was a an icon of the dynamic marketing and leading country and now it is an icon of the war and modernist architecture)
They are both 'dead' in the sense that their are not in use anymore. They are therefore a sort of monument, sculpture in the urban landscape. They have to become practical. They need to be reborn, reincarnated. They both are the last evidence of what they represent and need to survive. It is therefore needed to think about how they should survive within the contemporary context? By this I mean that they should no survive by being an exact replica of what they were, not restoring them as an homage to the traditional forms of skilled work, not by simply bringing the past to the now. The reincarnated icons should not only represent a nostalgia of a past time but represent how this past has evolved and how it affects the present. Both buildings have gained different meanings today because of history. This new meanings should be reflected in the architectural intervention of preservation. Preserving the legacy of a derelict icon does not necessarily implies to reproduce the exact physicality of what the icon was. A twist, an alteration to their original architecture needs to be thought in order to abuse and adapt their iconicity to the present.
2. The Beirut City Centre Building, icon of modernist architecture and icon of the explicit traces of war in Lebanon.
The Dome, Martyrs Square in Downtown Beirut, an old disused movie theater known variously as the dome, the egg, the bubble, the blob, saboune (meaning soap) or by its official name, the Beirut City Center Building. Originally designed by Lebanese architect Joseph Philippe Karam (prominent modernist if the 60s), the dome was built in 1965 as part of a larger, three-part complex of towers and shopping arcades that was expected, in an untimely burst of inauspicious optimism, to become the most important commercial center in the Middle East. The dome has become a symbol of modern design foresight and a testament to Lebanese talent and architecture. It has also become a reminder of the civil war. Pockmarked by years of war and stranded by decades of structural neglect, the dome is a stark visual icon, instantly recognizable as an emblem of 1960s-era modernist architecture, a relic of Beirut's bustling past, an object lesson in the city's tempestuous political history. Now, with the Beirut downtown area renovation and reconstruction, this milestone of Lebanese design is on death-row, making space for the new 600 million dollar Beirut Gate project. It is inevitably going to be demolished, according to all parties currently involved in deciding the building's fate. It is too precious, too odd, too cool, too much of an icon to tear it down. The dome has long been used as an alternative cultural venue, inhabited by raves, parties, temporary art exhibitions and experimental theater programs.
1. Maghen Abraham Synagogue, the last icon of the jewish community in lebanon.
Beirut's oldest synagogue , the Maghen Abraham Synagogue in Downtown's Wadi Abou Jemil neighborhood, located in the former Jewish quarter, is one of the last remaining symbols of Lebanon's vanishing Jewish community. Members of the Lebanese Jewish community, now estimated to have just 100-150 members, down from the thousands strong numbers it saw in the first half of the 20th century. Despite this, Judaism is still one of the 18 officially recognized faiths in Lebanon. Damaged by Israeli shelling during the 1982 invasion, the synagogue has been abandoned ever since, leaving the Jewish community in Lebanon without a place of worship. Its restoration has been undertaken recently in order to reaffirm the belief in lebanon's rich tradition of cultural pluralism and religious diversity.
