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#190: WINGS OF DESIRE | QUADRACCI PAVILION

July 19, 2024

Within its lakefront setting, the Quadracci Pavilion, addition to the Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, Wisconsin (photo by Anthony Poon)

What makes this museum addition an instant icon for the city of Milwaukee? Yes, there is the striking look of the building and its lakefront setting. But also, this structure, through no small feat of engineering, actually moves—its wing-like roof opening and closing daily.

For this $130 million addition to the Milwaukee Art Museum, known as the Quadracci Pavilion, the trustees created a long list of 70 architects to consider for the job. After several rounds, Spanish architect/engineer/sculptor, Santiago Calatrava, won the commission. The name “Pavilion” is deceptively modest, as if this addition was to be a quaint cottage. Quite the opposite, Calatrava’s vision is heroic and ambitious, a museum like no other of its time.

Completed in 2001 and Calatrava’s first work in America, the 142,000-square-foot building contains exhibition space, retail, café, underground parking, and the glass-roofed, 90-foot tall atrium. With the proportions and verticality of this light-filled reception area, it is a near-scared space. Symbolically speaking, Calatrava created a cathedral to the arts.

Cathedral for art, the 90-foot tall atrium (photo by Anthony Poon)

Kinetic architecture is uncommon. Finding a building that moves and transforms is not only rare, but requires complex engineering. With the Quadracci Pavilion, I am not referring to how the common garage door opens and closes. Calatrava’s enormous brise-soleils envelope the glass atrium, opening and closing remarkably. 72 steel fins per side, the building spreads to a wingspan of 220 feet when open.

Dramatic entrance to underground parking (photo by Anthony Poon)

The iconic nature of the Quadracci arrives through an architecture instantly identifiable—unique, recognizable and memorable. Its other-worldly personality remains in one’s psyche long after a single visit. Though this building shares a design vocabulary with other projects by the architect—in Spain, Belgium, France and New York—the muscular, expressive, even Baroque work for Milwaukee is singularly creative.

upper left: City of Arts and Science, Valencia, Spain (photo by Luca from Pixabay); upper right: Oculus, World Trade Center, New York, New York (photo by Olive Stays): lower left: Liege-Guillemins Station, Liege, Belgium (photo by Nikky Smolders from Pixabay); lower right: Lyon-Saint Exupéry Airport Railway Station, Colombier-Saugnieu, France (photo by Marcin Czerniawski from Pixabay)

Similar to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Quadracci contributes to the “Bilbao Effect,” a spectacular occurrence where a community is invigorated and transformed, including economic growth, through the arrival of wow-factor “starchitecture.” This “Effect” was coined after the 1997 completion of Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. Over a million people visit this single building annually, supporting the museum director’s agenda of “a transformational project” that would be an “agent of economic development” for the Basque region.

Gallery connection from the addition to the main museum (photo by Anthony Poon)

Not just a modern day cathedral for art, the Quadracci itself is art, no mere neutral vessel for the display of creative artifacts. In fact, very little art is displayed inside. The art is the architectural form itself, the unusual visual character jarringly contrasting the surroundings of a historical American city. The art to visit here comprises the light, space, and proportions of the design, and of course the wings in motion—not just old paintings hanging on a blank walls.

Calatrava suggests, “I hope that…we have designed not a building, but a piece of the city.”

Even the parking lot is extraordinary, consistent in its muscular expression (photo by Anthony Poon)

#160: THE BRAVERY OF HAYDEN TRACT

October 28, 2022

(W)rapper: Moss' most ambitious project to date, a highrise with a striking exterior frame which eliminates all columns on the inside, Los Angeles, California (photo by Anthony Poon)

Good architecture takes vision. Great architecture takes courage. Within Culver City lies Hayden Tract, a former industrial zone named after the main streets, Hayden Avenue and Hayden Place. For the past four decades, this neighborhood has served as the national stage for the audacious vision of architect Eric Owen Moss and developer/builders Frederick and Laurie Samitaur Smith.

Pterodactyl: a visually-bold composition of zinc-clad boxes set into a glass office building, Culver City, California (photo by Anthony Poon)

Recently, I got a behind-the-scenes tour of Hayden Tract, organized by the AIA with members of Eric Owen Moss’ studio. Regarding the architecture, the Baroque and Mannerist art movements of 17th and 18th century Europe came to mind: sensual excess, grandeur and daring, and an idiosyncratic sense of awe.

3535 Hayden: The existing wood trusses remain like historic artifacts, Culver City, California (photo by Anthony Poon)

Samitaur: Architecture as art and sculpture, Culver City, California (photo by Anthony Poon)

In the 80s, husband-wife, real estate developer team, Frederick and Laura, launched an agenda of city transformation unlike no other. Prior to that, the husband was Pablo Picasso’s assistant, and the wife, a Los Angeles dancer and performing artist. The couple founded their organization, Samitaur, and found their lifelong pet project in Hayden Tract. At the time of their property acquisitions decades ago, the area was not much more than a rag-tag collection of crumbling buildings and streets.

Pterodactyl: left-the expressiveness of the exterior continue throughout the interiors of this office space; right-offices cantilever over the parking ramps, Culver City, California (photos by Anthony Poon)

Pterodactyl: Complexities of the engineering express themselves unapologetically, Culver City, California (photo by Anthony Poon)

Eric Owen Moss, a Los Angeles native with degrees from UCLA, UC Berkeley, and Harvard, started his design studio in 1973. The three individuals met a decade later through an ordinary circumstance: Moss was a tenant paying rent to his landlord, Samitaur. Since then, Frederick and Laura have been an unwavering loyal client to Moss, commissioning project after project, year after year, decade after decade. This patronage mirrors one of the most fruitful benefactions in history. From the Renaissance, I call it the Medici Effect.

left: Dining table detail at Waffle (now Verspertine restaurant), right: Pterodactyl: Zinc-clad and glass forms collide with impressive results, Culver City, California (photos by Anthony Poon)

Waffle: Originally designed as a conferenece center, then later adapted into a restaurant, Culver City, California (photos by Anthony Poon)

These days, Hayden Tract has become a pilgrimage for architects seeking landmarks of renewal and artistry—a flexing of muscles on the other-side-of-the-tracks. The nearby predictable redevelopment of downtown Culver City brings the expected offerings of shops, bars, and restaurants (and traffic!).

Strait is the Gate: Announcing the entry with steel plates and tubes, Culver City, California (photo by Anthony Poon)

Herbert Muschamp, New York Times, pronounced, “Moss’s projects strike me as such a form of education. The knowing spontaneity of his forms, the hands-on approach implicit in their strong, sculptural contours, the relationship they describe between a city’s vitality and the creative potential of its individuals: these coalesce into tangible lessons about how a city should face its future.”

Slash and Backslash: Glass surfaces express the cut away forms, Culver City, California (photo by Anthony Poon)

Neither Modern, Post-Modern, Post-Structuralist, or Deconstructivist, the work of Moss side steps the labels. His architecture defies both lessons learned and the successes of history, paving an individualistic path. The designs also resist the standard definitions of the industry, being architecture and art, sculpture and theater. From the 18th century movement, the Grotesque, such adjectives may apply to Moss’ work: deformed, bizarre, and uncomfortable, yet strikingly beautiful.

The Umbrella: A virtuoso performance of steel and shaped glass, Culver City, California (photo by Anthony Poon)

The materials are raw and honest, elemental even—unassuming concrete, metal, wood, and glass. The details are extreme. Like a car crash, one cannot advert the gaze, as I wonder how such twisted and decadent details are imagined, engineered, drawn, city-approved, and built in the field. Not only do the personalities of each project— nearly all unique—resist categorization, the forms and shapes appear to disregard even gravity itself. For architects—fans or not of the quixotic collaboration between Moss and Samitaur—the result is an extraordinary city-size amusement park of architectural indulgences, a wonderland of spatial and visual treasures not to be overlooked or presumed arbitrary. I think of the axiom, “Love me or hate me, but don’t ignore me.”

#55: MY FIFTEEN FAVE BUILDINGS

February 3, 2017

(photo by Will Truettner on Unsplash)

“Hey Anthony, what is your favorite building in the world?” I am often asked.

I might reply obnoxiously but with reason, “What is your favorite painting, favorite book or favorite ice cream?”

Just as there is no one favorite piece of music, there is no one favorite work of architecture. There are hundreds. But here I try. In this list of some of my favorites (in no particular order), I selected different building types and sizes—from a house to a parliament building, from a public plaza to a winery. I have also included a few of The Usual Suspects.

1: Can a design be both exquisitely silent and majestically heroic? Such is Louis Kahn’s 1982 National Parliament House in Dhaka.

2: In 1929, Mies van der Rohe contributed to the pioneering concept known as the Free Plan. Through a few carefully placed walls and columns, the Barcelona Pavilion gently and epically implies space and journey.

3: Before Ricard Bofill became fascinated with Postmodernism, he delved deep into his mind for fantastical dreamscapes. This 1975 apartment building known as Walden 7, in Sant Just Desvern, Spain, demonstrates what it means to be imaginative.

4. Situated over a station rail yard, Pinon and Vilaplana created a public square, transforming a blank space into one of Barcelona’s most powerful works of urban sculpture and place making, the Plaza de los Paises Catalanes.

5: Even in 1670, there were revolutionaries within a revolution. Baroque architect Gian Lorenzo Bernini twisted the classical world of pure geometry, and designed a chapel in the shape of an ellipse. Upon arriving inside Sant’Andrea al Quirinale in Rome, you are confronted by a twisted perspective.

6: The 2001 Wall House in The Netherlands was constructed three decades after the completed design, and a year after the death of architect John Hejduk. He juxtaposed Corbusian ideas with Cubism and Surrealism, offering one of the most formidable visions of a home.

7: During the design process for Maison Bordeaux in France, the client had a car accident that left him wheelchair bound. OMA quickly changed the 1998 design, transmuting the home office into a room size elevator, open on all four sides—where the three-story shaft is his library, art collection and office supplies.

8: In 1999, Rafael Moneo made two massive structures into leaning ethereal cubes of otherworldliness. For Spain’s Kursaal Congress Centre and Auditorium, Moneo explored prismatic volumes, glowing translucency, and double walls of rippled glass.

9: Some works, such as the Chapel Santa Maria degli Angeli, are pure poetry. Like the hand of God, architect Mario Botta placed this 1996 building gently in the Swiss mountains of Monte Tamaro.

10. It is not only astounding that Herzog & de Meuron wrapped the entire de Young Museum with dimpled, perforated, aging copper panels in 2005, but that these architects were able to convince the city of San Francisco that such a curious design idea would be the perfect addition to the beloved Golden Gate Park.

11: There is no limit to the extraordinary creativity of Catalan architect, Antonio Gaudi. Alongside studying the engineering of this ambitious cathedral by building an upside catenary model of stings and chains, Gaudi combined the Grotesque, Gothic and Art Nouveau, amongst many other influences. Since the start of construction of the Sagrada Familia Church in 1882, the unfinished project is still underway in Barcelona.

12. Sometimes I think it is just fetishized retail design, but not at Rem Koolhaas’s 2001 Prada Store in Manhattan. The street level floor wraps up then sweeps down to the lower level, bringing natural light to an otherwise dark space and creating the grand theater that is fashion.

13: At the early age of 26, Alvaro Siza created one of the most graceful compositions. More than a mere restaurant in Portugal, the Boa Nova Tea House of 1963 sits elegantly in its setting, as instinctively as the surrounding rock outcroppings.

Dominus Winery, Yountville, Napa Valley, California (photo by Anthony Poon)

14: Exploiting the elemental scenery in Napa Valley, California, Herzog & de Meuron formed the 1998 Dominus Winery with just some rocks placed in steel baskets. And that was the entire idea, the whole building.

15: Bernard Maybeck’s “temporary” monumental jewel of the 1915 World’s Fair still stands a century later, a romantic icon of San Francisco. With this Palace of Fine Arts, the “fictional ruin” expresses both an enduring melancholy of lost worlds and the ambition for new worlds to come.

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