Let's (not) make a noise!

"‘LET’S MAKE A NOISE FOR THE MIGHTY WESTS TIGERS!’ the ground announcer shouts to the crowd, his voice booming through portable speakers that are spread around the oval.

"‘I CAN’T HEAR YOU, TIGERS FANS,’ he continues, ‘I SAID MAKE A NOISE!’

"Why sporting administrators feel the need to fill breaks in the game with pumping music or high-pitched screeching of ground announcers is beyond me.

"Can you imagine an Ashes game at Lords, thousands of the Barmy Army singing, trumpets playing ‘Jerusalem’, and all of it drowned out by ‘We Will Rock You’ or ‘Hells Bells?’ Can you imagine decades-old home-grown supporters’ chants of an old firm clash between Rangers and Celtic interrupted by the shrieks of a ground announcer, or the cheery drunken chaos of the Bay 13 crowd of a Boxing Day Test match drowned out by rock music? They just can’t let us enjoy the natural noise of the game. ...

"The groans of despair at a last-second loss, the jubilation of an unexpected come-from-behind win are sounds that add to the atmosphere of the game, not the loud music and cliched slogans of chant champions and ground announcers. Why can’t we just enjoy the unscripted barracking of the game?

"‘AND NOW,’ the ground announcer’s voice blasts through the speakers again, ‘HERE COMES YOUR WESTS TIGERS.’"

~ Paul Harman from his post 'Time’s up, Ground Announcer'

Ise Shrine, Japan

Japanese temples don’t enclose congregations, they mark sacred space. Space to which pilgrims must undertake a journey.

The journey is part of the ritual. It conditions the soul for the destination.

These plain, craftsman buildings elevated above the ground on simple structures have been marking these same sacred space for centuries; unadorned, unchanged--yet they are destroyed and rebuilt anew identically every twenty years.  (Unadorned, but not undecorated—the “decoration” derives quite naturally from their construction.) At the turn of the century poet Locfadio Hearn visited Ise and wrote,

There is nothing imposing but the space, the silence and the suggestion of the past.

And few people gain admission to the inner shrine, where we find one of the main Ise “treasure houses,” The architecture recapitulates the ancient end-post-and-roof beam style of prehistoric Japanese rice storehouses and shrines.

Ise pre-dates Zen.  It represents a kind of nature worship that venerates the spaces that  gods might inhabit, and the nature-given materials used to frame it.  No wonder so many architects find inspiration here.

Granted permission to visit these temples  a few years ago, architect Kenzo Tange—designer of the dramatic 1964 Tokyo Olympic Stadium--said,

The buildings, their placement, and their form and space moved me deeply. Plain to the point of artlessness, they nevertheless possessed a highly refined style.  Their origin in remote times has stamped on them an elementary vigor; they combine this with a timeless aesthetic discipline.  Seldom is an architecture created in which the vital and the aesthetic are as well balanced as here.

Tange wasn’t alone in finding inspiration here. Architects from Greene & Greene to Walter Gropius to Bruno Taut to Frank Lloyd Wright discovered architecture afresh from the shrines at Ise and from other lesser temples.  taut reckoned that, along with the Parthenon, Ise represents “the peak of world architecture.”

But as Gropius and Wright observed, where the Parthenon seeks “to breast and conquer nature,” this is architecture that seeks to adapt and absorb it.  Honor, said Wright, represents truth to nature and  to materials. This is part of the “be clean” ethic celebrated here. Japanese architecture like this, he said, is “a supreme study in elimination—not only of dirt, but of the insignificant.” There is “very little added in the way of ornament because all ornament as we call it, they get out of the way the necessary things are done or by bringing out and polishing the beauty of the simple materials used in making the building.  Again, you see, and kind of cleanliness.”

In Japan, he declared, “I had found one country on earth where simplicity, as natural, is supreme.”

ARCHITECTURE DEBATE: Response to Berlin's Jewish Museum

Tonight a guest post from Dr. Robert Winefield, responding to Daniel Libeskind's design for the Jewish Museum in Berlin, which was posted here by Den as his "most favourite." It seems however that Dr. Robert wasn't too impressed.

I hate Daniel Libeskind’s so-called museum. Esthetically it looks even worse than DenMT’s first entry, a building I compared unfavorably to a copper-clad rectangular turd. More to the point, it isn’t even a real museum – thus violating its brief -- rather it’s a monument to Libeskind’s own view of Jewish history.

It’s not a museum. Museums are archives; they store and exhibit historical artifacts, documents and such in a manner that allows the public to examine the real artifact (what historians term the primary source) directly. When you go to a museum, you are viewing history with your own eyes, free of much of the author’s bias and not limited by the photographer’s lens. The facts are there in front of you, undiluted, uncensored, and in 3-D ready for your cross-examination. In other words, the value of a well-curated museum, as opposed to a history book, is that the evidential basis for history is sitting right in front of you rather than simply being described to you, and the only bias you bring to your observations and deductions is your own.

If this is the purpose of a museum then the purpose of a museum-architect is to aid the punter to observe the artifact on display. His job is to give the punter enough light to observe the exhibit closely and enough space and tranquility to contemplate both the object’s meaning and the context in which it has been presented. People go to museums to become enlightened and they must be able to digest the exhibition at their own pace and in their own way, forming their own opinions independently of the curator and the crowd. Such are the key interior elements to be found in my favorite museums.

Now let us observe Libeskind's so-called architectural masterpiece. Observe how claustrophobic some of the halls are; how the odd shaped walls and low roof closes in on the observer in the picture he supplied. This punter in the photo supplied has been forced – deliberately - to examine the exhibit from one distance and at one angle. Why? Well because Libeskind has decided to set the mood for the museum. German-Jewish history according to Libeskind is an unrelenting tragedy and the exhibition requires his artistic skills to convey this. DenMT explains: “Libeskind, through form and programme, recreates the history of the Jewish people in Germany. The straight line, broken into fragments can be conceived as the Jewish presence in Berlin and Germany, punctuated by voids, absences, and silence.”

Make no mistake, the architect is unabashedly attempting to manipulate the punter’s interpretation of the exhibitions, forcing his opinions on the museum’s visitors. This is why some of this museum’s feature walls actually lean out towards the observer as if to physically assault him. This is the reason that the building has no street entrance, instead you must enter by first descending into the bowels of an adjacent German history museum and enter though a connecting tunnel containing a constricted walk-way on an iron gantry that echoes ominously with every foot-fall.

Is this a museum or a house of horrors? Is it a museum or a monument? Moreover, if it is a monument, then is it a monument to the holocaust or this architect’s ego? Excuse me for asking, but who the fuck is this jumped-up little twat and why should I care what he thinks of German-Jewish history? If I were interested in him and his, I’d be visiting an exhibition of his works not a museum of German-Jewish history in Berlin. It would be a different story were this a monument to the holocaust, but it isn’t. It is supposed to be a museum, a testament to the entire 1,700-year history of the Germany-Jewish people.

Now, the architect has a right to express himself artistically when designing the building, and I would argue that it is necessary that he do so. What I object to is when the artistry inhibits the function of the building. You see not only does Libeskind’s design interfere with the museum’s objectivity but it also pays no heed to the practical requirements of a museum.

For a start, the building has been purposely designed in a contorted, illogical, poorly lit, and constricted manner. I mean it doesn’t even have a front door for fuck’s sake! Imagine how uncomfortably crowded this building would be if a tour came through. The inside of this architectural dog-turd reminds me of a cave I once visited in Chattanooga TN.

Observe how much space there isn't for odd-shaped exhibits. It seems that only small freestanding objects and wall-mounted exhibits can be displayed here. How, for instance, could this museum do the sort of exhibitions that Auckland's War Museum or the Award-winning Army Museum at Waiouru put on? I went to the ‘Scars of the Heart Exhibition in Auckland and saw a full scale mock up of a WWI Trench system and a real Spitfire. At Waiouru, there are static displays that include an entire Infantry landing craft, artillery pieces, small arms, helicopters, entire armored vehicles as well as photographs, books, medals, uniforms and the like. The Army Museum at Waiouru and the War Museum in Auckland may not look like a hell of a lot from the outside. However, they remain true to their primary purpose: to be an objective forum for history, to be a repository for primary sources regardless of their type and size.

And not only that, well-designed museums -- places like FLW's Guggenheim for example – are set up so that the building doesn't inhibit the punter's ability to view the exhibits. Good museum architecture should allow the punter to examine an exhibit from as many angles and directions as possible: from above, below, from close in, to the middle distance, and beyond. Good museum architecture should allow the punter to flow against the tide of the crowd, to skip exhibits that he’s not interested in and reexamine others. It should also provide spaces where you can stop and contemplate what you have seen. Why? Because a museum is also a place for thought, for reflection, for comprehension and integration of the lesson that resides in the history being presented.

For these reasons ‘Between the Lines’ does not classify as good architecture. The architect has gone out of his way to make a disjointed, cramped, dingy, constricted building that unilaterally imposes ~his own~ post-modernist illogical and retarded version of German-Jewish history on everything that will be displayed in that museum.

There is one more ghastly effect of Libeskind’s that casts a further disgraceful pall over proceedings: The built-in affectations of this building are allowed to overshadow the real lesson of the holocaust.

In truth, the holocaust occurred because, in a moment of willful ignorance, the German people allowed a psychopath to become their master. As Edmund Burke put it, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." Too many good Germans did nothing while a psychopath and his chums took over.

Had Libeskind been satisfied simply with allowing history do the talking, this is what would have been said. But then perhaps he wouldn’t have achieved the fame and fortune through this building that was clearly the real brief he gave himself: to get noticed.

Instead, what we have here is yet another post-modernist wank-session set in stone.
Alternatively, to use Libeskind’s own words "...two lines of thinking, organization, and relationship. One is a straight line, but broken into many fragments; the other is a tortuous line, but continuing indefinitely. These two lines develop architecturally and programmatically through a limited but definite dialogue. They also fall apart, become disengaged, and are seen as separated. In this way, they expose a void that runs through this museum and through architecture, a discontinuous void.”

What a worthless waste of space. If this is an architectural masterpiece then so is my arsehole. Unlike Libeskind’s museum it actually does the job it was designed for.

LINK: Den 5: Jewish Museum, Berlin - Daniel Libeskind

RELATED: Architecture, Art

Jewish Museum in Berlin - 'Between The Lines' - Daniel Libeskind

Our Architecture V Architecture Series is drawing to a close, with only two favourites left -- or you could say it's coming to a climax, with only the very best selections left, one from each of us! Tonight in this "Top Five" series then, we have the last of Den's "top five" favourites, with my own last selection in the series coming Monday.

This building, one that I unfortunately have yet to see in person, is without a doubt my most favourite piece of architecture. It demonstrates how brief, understanding of form, and individual brilliance in conception can be brought together in creating a 'speaking' architecture. This 'petrified flash of lightning' answers a lot of questions about what architecture's function in society should be, what it should speak of, and in what manner it should speak.

Libeskind won a hotly contested international competition on the back of a rather esoteric and ephemeral entry, which he entitled 'Between The Lines'. The drawings for this entry are beautiful and engaging entities in themselves, and Libeskind created an evocative intertwining of text and image to outline the story he wanted to tell.

The original brief was the replacement of the original Jewish Museum in Berlin, which opened with catastrophic timing in 1933, one week before the installation of Hitler as Chancellor, was badly damaged and thoroughly looted on Kristallnacht in 1938 and ultimately totally dismantled. The organisers of the competition set out an edgy and difficult triad of considerations for the proposals. They were to focus on:
(1) the Jewish religion, customs, and ritual objects; (2) the history of the Jewish community in Germany, its rise and terrible destruction at the hands of the Nazis; and (3) the lives and works of Jews who left their mark on the face and the history of Berlin over the centuries. Even given the ultimately integrationist aims of the competition, avoiding a grim memorial relic of a building would be the greatest challenge.

Libeskind's scheme, 'Between The Lines', aimed to create:

'...two lines of thinking, organization, and relationship. One is a straight line, but broken into many fragments; the other is a tortuous line, but continuing indefinitely. These two lines develop architecturally and programmatically through a limited but definite dialogue. They also fall apart, become disengaged, and are seen as separated. In this way, they expose a void that runs through this museum and through architecture, a discontinuous void.'

Libeskind, through form and programme, recreates the history of the Jewish people in Germany. The straight line, broken into fragments can be conceived as the Jewish presence in Berlin and Germany, punctuated by voids, absences, and silence. The tortuous yet continuing line is the shared destiny of the city. These are simplistic interpretations of what is a complex and multi-layered design, but what one can feel simply through looking at pictures of the evocative interiors and exterior is the powerful juxtaposition of solid and void, presence and absence. Visitors, in traversing the museum in order to move through the various exhibition areas, must go over sixty bridges through the void spaces which cut through the building's volume.

The exterior has been 'written upon' - appearing almost scarred, imprinted with arcane patterns and displaced fragments. Exterior space has been considered as an integral feature of the building, with the 'Garden of Exile' - 49 six-metre high columns through which visitors can wander, and the immensely evocative (although somewhat 'folly'-ish) 'Holocaust Tower' - a bare concrete tower, the interior of which is neither heated or cooled, with a single unreachable aperture opening to the outside. Friends (both architects and non-architects) who have been in this space all attest to the immense power of the simple gesture made by this space.

To return to the original point I made, that this building demonstrates architecture's power to speak, think about what Libeskind has done. By taking themes of absence and presence, and working these into the design in a concrete, tangible way, the architecture moves beyond something which must be explained - a piece of art that you have to read a pamphlet before you can sagely nod, grasping your chin - and into the realm of 'speaking' architecture: one forms one's own opinion, but is forcefully guided by powerful, masterful narrative.

Perhaps most brilliantly, the building constitutes an 'emblem of hope'. Libeskind has allowed both lines of the programme - the 'tortuous continuous' line and the 'straight, fragmented' line to coexist, such that our interpretation springs from the synthesis of the two, suggesting that rather than a solution or a closed book, the design logic presents a way forward. In his own words:

The work is conceived as a museum for all Berliners, for all citizens. Not only those of the present, but those of the future who might find their heritage and hope in this particular place. With its special emphasis on the Jewish dimension of Berlin's history, this building gives voice to a common fate - to the contradictions of the ordered and disordered, the chosen and not chosen, the vocal and silent. I believe that this project joins Architecture to questions that are now relevant to all humanity. To this end, I have sought to create a new Architecture for a time which would reflect an understanding of history, a new understanding of Museums and a new realization of the relationship between program and architectural space. Therefore this Museum is not only a response to a particular program, but an emblem of Hope.

* * * * *

So that's the last and "most favourite" of all Den's buildings. Look for a wrap-up from him on our series some time next week -- and go right ahead and comment yourself right here, right now. Remember those two questions I suggested on which to base your comments: First, is this good architecture? And second, do you like it. And remember to say why!

RELATED: Architecture