Failed Architecture will be co-hosting a public debate during the Skopje Architecture Week on Friday June 3. We were invited by Ljubo Georgiev, architect and speaker at the last Failed Architecture event in Amsterdam. In his role as curator of the coming Sofia Architecture Week in Bulgaria in November 2011, Ljubo was invited by the organization in Skopje to contribute to this annual event. Given the current debate on the legacy and future of Modernist architecture in the Macedonian capital, he proposed to organize a Failed Architecture event with the aim to re-energize the local discussion.

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Are we too quick in assessing post war architecture as failed? That was the question that dominated the second edition of the Failed Architecture series on the 20th of April at De Verdieping / TrouwAmsterdam.

At least a hundred people listened to how five speakers gave their views on how our contemporary taste influences the assessment of modernist architecture. The diverse backgrounds of the guests resulted in a comprehensive worldwide oversight.

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Detroit. Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images

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Anthony Tung sees the preservation of our built environment as a struggle between competing interests, which has to be decided yet. In a detailed and extensive lecture the author (of Preserving the World’s Great Cities, 2001) and former New York City preservation commissioner elaborated on the importance of preservation, and the different approaches to heritage in Europe and the United States.

 

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On the 16^th of May 1968 a gas explosion led to the collapse of an entire corner of the recently opened Ronan Point council estate in Newham, East London. The responsible council tenant, Ivy Hodge, set of a domino effect of buckling flats by trying to light her stove in her 18^th floor apartment.  While Miss Hodge miraculously survived, four others died and seventeen were injured.

The accident led to a plunge in the public esteem for Modernist architecture and the architectural profession, an impact comparable to the iconic blowing up of the St. Louis’ Pruitt-Igoe housing project. This was especially so since the collapse of Ronan Point was due to construction errors. The gas explosion caused by Miss Hodge blew out the flank walls, which supported the floors situated above. A local architect discovered that the weakness was in the joints connecting the vertical walls to the floor slabs. Lack of quality control led construction workers to fill the joints with newspapers, instead of concrete.

                  
                      Ronan Point following the explosion (Daily Telegraph)

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25 Ridgmount Street, London

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From TNT to Tetris

Late last year, in the Dutch provincial town of Alphen aan den Rijn, some 20 km from Amsterdam, a desperate 46-year old man blew up his flat, killing himself and lightly injuring two others. At least four apartments were seriously damaged. Part of the railing and the wall was swept away.

Initial suspicions that the blast was caused by fireworks were quickly revised. It appears that something stronger, such as dynamite, semtex or C4 plastic explosives was the cause. 

Currently, the damaged part near that covers several floors is being dismantled wall by wall and floor by floor, leaving a big crater-shaped hole in the building that will be filled in with new apartments in the future, Tetris-style.

When first seeing this photo (courtesy of Courtauld Institute of Art), I thought it was from somewhere former Soviet Union, or so. Finding out it was something called “Priory Green Estate”, a rather prestigiously titled housing area in Islington, UK, from the 1950’s (architect Berthold Lubetkin), made me instantly more curious about how Soviet it would look today. While this, was mainly due to my inclination for modernist endeavours (and tragedies), it was also related to the fact that I often feel lost-opportunities-sadness about the way many shining works of modernism are being repaired and decorated into something they never were, after their usually inescapable social and physical decline.

If you look at things this way, modern architecture and urban planning has been a major failure. It’s not lasting forever. Often, the most interesting or valuable aspects modernism, are impossible to preserve because the world has moved on. The planners of today are forced to try and balance the clarity of yesterday’s design and repair the sociological, tecnological, or ecological problems, often losing the best bits in the process. This is because the modern look, only works in the exact context it was planned. The ways you can appreciate its chic, are mostly academic and nostalgic and of acquired taste.

So, what had really happened. As it could be expected, the place had gone sour. Stuff broken, up to 100 drug needles collected from the grounds weekly, prostitution, stuff the architect Lubetkin probably didn’t have in mind. What happened to people supposingly living perfect modern lives? In 1999 the governance of the Priory Green Estate was transferred to UK’s oldest housing association Peabody. After this, things started to run differently. Very refreshing, to see something good still coming out of the old modern.

(photos via Peabody blog)

via mikasavela 

Failed Architecture is starting a new series of talks and public discussions that kicks off on March 30 at De Verdieping in Amsterdam with writer and urbanist Anthony M. Tung. De Verdieping is the cultural basement and fringe programme in the building Trouw-building, an abandoned printing plant on Amsterdam’s most Berlin-like street that is now home to restaurant and club TrouwAmsterdam.

Being the real life equivalent of this Tumblr-blog the evenings at De Verdieping will bring together people and ideas that focus on buildings and urban environments that have failed to stand the test of time and are currently neglected, abandoned or even vandalized or demolished, because of changing economic, social, political and/or physical circumstances.

Without a doubt the maxim ‘Failed Architecture’ raises questions: What and according to whom is architecture failed? Which criteria do we use when assessing architecture, e.g. the viewpoint of inhabitants and/or users, architects and/or planners? Which role does ‘Zeitgeist’ play when assessing architecture, and how do ‘our’ contemporary taste and cultural differences influence the assessment of buildings? 

We want to answer some of these questions by inviting people from different professional backgrounds and from various parts of the world to share their thoughts and experiences with us.

You can follow Failed Architecture on Facebook and Twitter.

The series starts on Wednesday March 30 with a talk by and interview with Anthony Tung. Tung is an urbanist and writer who has been a New York City Landmarks Preservation Commissioner, an instructor on architectural history at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and a visiting professor on international urban preservation at MIT.

In his ‘Preserving the world’s great cities’ he asks why some cities preserve their heritage better or more readily than others? He describes how the architectural character of cities can be transformed by war, greed, poverty, pollution and apathy and how some cities and people managed to turn the tide.

On this occasion Mr. Tung will talk about the differences between Amsterdam and other cities in terms of the appreciation and preservation of certain types of (post-war) architecture and he will tell us about the types of buildings and urban ensembles that are most widely threatened. He will discuss some of the causes of this mistrust or even outright hostility that some architecture is facing.

In addition, he will present his personal definition of ‘failed architecture’ (“unsympathetic new buildings set in beautiful historic settings”) by juxtaposing “inappropriate” versus “appropriate” new additions to the urban fabric and by raising the question: “What should the standard be for new construction in protected historic settings?”

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Anthony Tung is also participating in the international forum Urban Heritage Inc.on public-private partnerships and the preservation of urban heritage, from March 31 until April 2 at church De Duif in Amsterdam. This symposium is organized by Stadsherstel, the City of Amsterdam and UNESCO’s World Heritage Center. Their will be participants from Russia, Turkey, Morocco, the United Kingdom, Yemen, Tanzania, the United States, Suriname and Indonesia who will give their view on the way we can preserve our cities. There are still tickets available. You can register here.

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De Verdieping is kindly supported by the Amsterdam Fund for the Arts (AFK) and the Netherlands Architecture Fund (SfA). Follow us on Facebook and Twitter

House of cards - why buildings collapse and who’s to blame..

Sometimes buildings are subject to sudden catastrophic collapse. It might even happen without notice and without any external cause (e.g. earthquakes, etc.).

According to Dr James B. Calvert, the causes of building collapse can be classified under general headings. These five (or mix of) headings are:

• Bad Design
• Faulty Construction
• Foundation Failure
• Extraordinary Loads
• Unexpected Failure Modes
• Combination of Causes

Faulty construction has been the most important cause of structural failure. 

But who is to blame? The architect, the engineer, the construction company, the occupants, nature, Yahweh? And can we ever prevent buildings from collapsing?

House of the Soviets, before its paint job

Architecture is the perfect means to an end for those in power to express their authority. A new architecture can symbolize the dawning of a new era. The symbolism of space and its relation to power plays a decisive role here, as may be exemplified by the 1969 deliberate destruction of the Königsberger Schloss in present day Kaliningrad, Russia.

Who thinks of Communists blowing up the remains of the past, will probably think of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow or the Berliner Stadtschloss. Most of these communist-destroyed symbols of the ancien regime are now being rebuild, or will be rebuild in the near future. The rebuilding plans are usually highly debated and publicized, not only in the city concerned, but also on a national and even international level.

However, in the Russian enclave Kaliningrad a historical gem comparable in size and splendour to the Berliner Schloss may well be rebuild within the next couple of years, without the usual international attention. Maybe the vague post-war status of Kaliningrad as a Russian enclave has turned the city into a blind spot on our mental maps. Up until the end of the Second World War Kaliningrad was known as Königsberg, capital of East Prussia and part of the German Reich. During the war the city was obliterated, mainly due to the Nazi’s stubbornness to give up fighting. When in April 1945 Berlin was already slowly falling into the hands of the Soviets, German troops were still fiercely defending Königsberg.

After the German surrender the vast ruins of the Schloss – of which construction began in 1255 – were one of the few points of recognition for the German inhabitants of Königsberg, who were soon expelled by the new Soviet rulers and replaced by Russians. Only in 1969 did party leader Leonid Brezhnev decide to demolish the remains of the ‘hornet’s nest of militarism and fascism’.

In its place came the twenty-story ‘House of the Soviets’, built as the party headquarters for the Kaliningrad Oblast. However, already during construction the building came to symbolize everything that was wrong with Communism. There were construction faults, the building process took too long and in the 1980s the Communist party lost its interest in the building, leaving a city and its citizens with an unfinished concrete eyesore. Everything that makes architecture potentially fail, failed here.

 
House of the Soviets, present day

While the building was painted for a visit by president Putin in 2005 (a modern version of a Potemkin façade), it is still an unused shell. Not for too long, if it is up to the Kaliningrad city council and especially Russian oligarchs willing to invest. There are plans to rebuild the old Schloss, albeit with some post-modernist additions to make the place interesting for commercial activities.

The nearby ‘Fishermen’s Village’ is an example of how the rebuild Königsberg may look like. The elderly German tourists, flocking to Kaliningrad since the downfall of Communism, will be more than happy with the Russian rebuilding efforts since the only present remains of the old Königsberg are sewage lids. Whether you hate or love the rebuilding plans, if you still want to take a glimpse at one of Europe’s most impressive examples of failed architecture, you should join the old Königsbergers, albeit with a different reason.

A note in a guest book left by an old Königsberger