So the reason I was on the roof is that it is actually the main exterior public space at the new opera (the Norwegian National Opera & Ballet). Oslo’s biggest attraction nowadays is this wonderful building designed by the architectural firm Snøhetta.
- Photo: Christopher Hagelund
I’ll briefly describe the building’s massing: the oak-covered auditorium (below, right) is enclosed by a glass box containing the huge entry space that opera houses traditionally have (the sequence of entry spaces at Garnier’s Second Empire Paris Opera take up as much volume as the auditorium does). You can see (above) that the glass box is almost bisected on three of its sides by the white Carrara marble roof, which is folded downwards like origami towards the fjord. Beneath this diagonal roof are the other public interior spaces (restaurants, bookshop, etc.); these have glass walls that on one side of the building overlook the city, and on the other, the fjord.
Walking up to the top of the roof it’s blindingly white in the sun, and vast. It’s like a fifteen-minute polar expedition.
But I’m not here to talk about architecture. Every state-funded building in Norway is required to spend money on art, and there were some big international competitions at the opera — an enclosure for the cloakrooms made by Olafur Eliasson, and the curtain in the auditorium, amongst other things. The last piece was installed in May, eighteen months after the building opened. This is it:
It’s called She Lies by Monica Bonvicini, an Italian artist. As it says in Wikipedia:
There has been a lot of controversy around this sculpture. Many people say that it looks like a piece of garbage, while others are exclusively positive, and say it is a beautiful piece of art.
And that’s not a bad discussion to have; people’s opinions of what’s beautiful are usually only spontaneous reactions. At first I thought it looked broken, but by the end of my visit I was feeling quite pleased with it. It takes the building’s connection with the Oslofjord and its ice:
and alludes to a painting from 1823, Das Eismeer (Sea of Ice) by Caspar David Friedrich,
the centre of which it has represented in three dimensions :
The glass and its twelve-metre-high steel framework sit on a concrete raft floating on the water; it’s anchored, and slowly rotates in place according to the prevailing wind and the tide. Its profile and the reflections, transparency and double reflections off the water vary all the time.
The title of the piece, She Lies, doesn’t really work in either Norwegian or Italian, the artist’s mother tongue, only in English. Bonvicini says she means it to be ambiguous and has given possible interpretations: with “she” being either the piece or the artist, and “lies” referring to both global warming in the Arctic and floating next to the building. Well, whatever. There’s always the danger of a postmodern artist overestimating the potential of their multi-layered ideas — and Bonvicini is no Brunelleschi: not a master builder as well as an artist. In fact, resolving the technological problems and the logistics of how to build a painting of ice and then move this 335 ton object to the site was done by the Norwegians, especially the contractor. Apparently it was a painful process, but it was worth the trouble.
A Bad Guide 
My initial reaction to “She Lies” was negative, but reading your discussion and looking at the other images made me reconsider. I’d like to see the whole ensemble in person, especially since I could probably combine it with a visit to the goats.
Our local glasshouse is this
http://www.galinsky.com/buildings/History%20faculty/index.htm
It’s generally reckoned to have been an expensive disaster.
You sure could. Please do, the Hats are welcome anytime.
I was going to add a goat to one of the pictures to give a sense of scale, but I forgot.
Wikipedia touches on the problems
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seeley_Historical_Library
How do the Oslo buildings avoid overheating on sunny days?
Jim Stirling’s History Faculty Library is generally considered to be one of the masterpieces of the second half of the twentieth century, and the ungrateful and undeserving
moronshistorians of Cambridge should be made to live in a hole in the ground if they’re going to badmouth it — or better yet, put them in a building by Lord Norman Bloody Foster.How do the Oslo buildings avoid overheating on sunny days?
There are lots of ways, air conditioning being the most effective but least desirable these days, due to you-know-what. Operable windows are obviously a big help, and nowadays you can remotely control them if they’re hard to get to. Also, you can avoid having large expanses of glass facing south or west, and use screens (louvres, etc.) on the exterior. Blinds on the inside don’t help; the air’s already warm by that time & can’t get out again.
Dearie, I hadn’t thought of the similarity of the two projects. Thanks for that. I know there were a lot of problems with the History Library, though I’ve forgotten the details; I think some of the red tiles on the outside fell off in cold weather and there were problems with the glass. Most leaking skylights aren’t leaking at all, though; it’s usually condensation that isn’t being channelled away properly.
I can see why some people’d hate it, but I rather like it.
Your opera is also much much prettier than ours.
I think the opera is extraordinarily beautiful, and like Hat, after reading your comments, I began to like She Lies. I was very gratified by this: “There’s always the danger of a postmodern artist overestimating the potential of their multi-layered ideas” (I thought I was the only one who feels 1) stupid and (immediately after) 2) annoyed by those sorts of titles). And you will be — I dunno — not surprised? horrified? vindicated in your assessment of contemporary Moscow architecture? — to learn that “Lord Norman Bloody Foster” is Russia’s court architect, responsible for “Moscow City” and the blessedly, although probably temporarily, halted project of Crystal Island.
“Jim Stirling’s History Faculty Library is generally considered to be one of the masterpieces of the second half of the twentieth century”: but Crown, it didn’t work. Libraries that boil the students are just a feat of macro-incompetence. The fact that the tiles kept falling off, and seemed likely to turn the undergraduates into sunderedgraduates is a micro-incompetence. If you want buildings that don’t work, I could design the ruddy things. You pay an architect on the assumption that the building will work, and he’ll get the number of loos right too. It’s not really a lot to ask, is it?
And OF COURSE we own a building that doesn’t work by Norman Bloody Foster too:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faculty_of_Law,_Cambridge
Comical ineptness: one Famous Effing Architect doesn’t understand the physics of light and the other the physics of sound. And those lacks of understanding are at a level that would embarrass a fourteen year old.
Too bad they had to include the (ugly) concrete platform…
Et, I don’t like the concrete either.
The building suffered serious acoustic problems (primarily due to a lack of consideration of acoustics in Foster’s design), with its form amplifying any noise from the lower levels and causing significant disturbance at higher levels, not least in the library.
I don’t understand how he made that mistake, one well-known example of this problem having occurred is in Paul Rudolph’s Art & Architecture Building at Yale — a department where Foster himself was a student in the early sixties (though perhaps not in the building itself, but the case is famous, as are the bad acoustics of the open-plan Harvard Design School).
As to Stirling, I’d be cross if I’d paid for a building and found it had practical problems that ought never to have occurred. But they aren’t architectural problems in the case of the History Library, they are problems of technology and incompetence that originated with Cambridge University and the building contractor, Sindalls; they aren’t attributed to Jim Stirling or his firm except by people who don’t know what happened and who just assume the architect must be to blame.
I’ve been rereading Mark Girouard’s biography of Stirling:
If you’re interested in architecture rather than building technology, you don’t say “The Parthenon’s a terrible building, the steps are slippery and the roof leaks”. Beauty can be fragile; and paradoxically, you can waterproof a building to within an inch of its life or reproduce a tried-and-tested (but boring) system and maybe it will be as ugly as sin… but it will last forever.
mab,
Though I think he’s a hateful human being and a badly-educated site planner, I can think of many worse designers than some of the people who work at Foster, so I ought not go too far, and some of their Russian stuff may end up being nice.
I’m glad you agree with my po-mo comment, the irrelevance of some of what gets said really annoys me.
Sili, I’ve never been to Copenhagen
*gasp from commenters*
but there’s one new building I like and one my daughter likes too (she’s been there). Unfortunately I can’t remember… maybe it’s the National Theatre? Library?
Oh no, it won’t do. “It wasn’t me, Miss, it was them bad boys, Sindall and the Historians”. An honourable man, faced with those problems, would at least decline all prizes, saying “It’s not my building, it faces the wrong way.”
And another thing: why the passive voice in this – “a number of economies were made, one of them undesirable, and one in the long term disastrous “?Who was responsible for that decision on the aluminium, then? Why is Stirling responsible for his good decisions (Handsome glasshouse, that) but not his bad ones (Yes, I’ll take on trust a way of sticking smooth to smooth.)
And another another thing: “The contractor produced work of high quality for traditional crafts such as joinery and brickwork, but was not able to manage the subcontractors for the metal and glass, or to build to the very small tolerances which Jim had asked for”. If I design a bit of experimental kit, it’s my business to establish the tolerances, amd materials constraints, that my instrument-maker is subject to. I blame myself if I make demands of technology that he cannot meet. We might even make little test pieces, just to see. Why is a Famous Architect allowed to escape responsibility? If you can’t be confident of glasshouse technology, don’t design a glasshouse. If the tolerances you demand are unmeetable, then you are not being a practical man.
A deeper question might be “Why do architects, as a profession, positively seek to bring themselves into contempt, by the prizes they award?” Stirling’s decisions could be defended up to a point, or, at least, are a matter between him and his customer. (The public passerby, as represented by the self-appointed me, has no gripe – it’s a handsome building.) But to award a prize to a building that proved to have been such a flop at its purpose is madness. It’s as if someone had awarded a prize to one of those medieval cathedrals that fell down: “It’s God’s will, and no-one denies that it was a handsome building”.
Do I sound bad-tempered? I am. Architecture is, in one sense, much the most important Art, because it’s the Art that we cannot avoid. It stares us in the face as we pass; it embraces us as we work, or shop, or whatever. If you and I have different tastes in painting, so be it; we just decorate our walls differently, and no harm done. We listen to different music, attend different plays, read – or don’t read – different poets. But architecture pummels and bludgens us all the time. So, it would be very agreeable if buildings were handsome, subject to the constraint, of course, of doing their jobs well. Or, if you prefer, they should do their jobs well subject to the constraint of being handsome. Prizes, I suggest, should be awarded with a view to encouraging the achievement of both feats – by celebrating success, by attracting to the profession talented youngsters, by rewarding enlightened customers with a glow of satisfaction. In fact, I fear, they just encourage the layman’s view that famous architects are just farts in bow-ties, whose buildings let in the rain.
I can’t help but suspect that if anyone said to Wren “If you’re interested in architecture rather than building technology..” he might have enquired coldly what meaning that distinction might carry. If you want a building to work and be handsome, don’t you have to carry off both? Or is the architect to be viewed as making a contribution that’s as superficial as a motorcar stylist of the fifties? Just doing the fins and other geegaws?
I very much agree with much of what you’ve written, especially about the architects. I wouldn’t lump Stirling in with the other prizewinners, though.
To design a building that “works” requires much more than making it watertight and making sure the toilets flush properly — that stuff is a given, even when it goes wrong — a public building that works functionally has good circulation & easy vehicle access and parking, good connections between different but related departments, follows all the applicable codes & zoning, has appropriate and economical structural & HVAC systems, is well-lit naturally & artificially, has a massing that is affordable (not too large a facade area) and is generally designed within the ballpark of the owner’s budget– I could go on (and on). You’ll notice that “working” is all judged by the criterion of money: any mistakes can probably be fixed, but they will cost someone money. Do we judge “architecture” by what it cost? What did the Seagram Building cost? Brunelleschi’s dome on Florence cathedral? Who knows? No, never; it’s uninteresting. Do we care if the owner liked it? That can be interesting, but it’s got nothing much to do with how we judge the building (the Guggenheim in NY isn’t great for displaying paintings, but anyone will tell you it’s a great museum — I can’t remember ever meeting anyone who disliked it).
In Wren’s day there was no division between the technology and the architecture. Those guys were all — well lots of them anyway — “master builders”, a category that doesn’t exist any longer, partly because you can’t know everything any more, but there’s more to it than that.
the layman’s view that famous architects are just farts in bow-ties, whose buildings let in the rain.
If you pay attention to the background profession of movie characters, 9 times out of 10 the villain is a lawyer and the hero is an architect. Don’t ask me why.
Modern architecture was made to look light and insubstantial and used a lot of metal and glass. Brickwork nowadays is a 100mm-thick preformed veneer that’s laid up in panels, with a line of silicone between them that looks like toothpaste. Concrete looks terrible in a damp climate. Buildings are made to look like they’re junk regardless of whether they “work” or not.
A deeper question might be “Why do architects, as a profession, positively seek to bring themselves into contempt, by the prizes they award?”
The Pritzger prize (always called in the press “architecture’s Nobel prize”) is given once a year. It’s for a person not a building. However, they ran out of deserving candidates very quickly. It’s a waste of money.
This is one of the most interesting discussions of architecture I’ve read. Kudos to all.
the Guggenheim in NY isn’t great for displaying paintings, but anyone will tell you it’s a great museum — I can’t remember ever meeting anyone who disliked it
That’s because you don’t live in NYC. I’ve met a number of people who can’t stand it.
you don’t live in NYC.
True, but I did from 77-94.
I’ve met a number of people who can’t stand it.
That’s interesting. Can you remember on what grounds?
This is one of the most interesting discussions of architecture I’ve read. Kudos to all.
We owe you for several years’ worth of valuable language discussions.
My uncle-in-law, a structural engineer of some professional renommé, once said: All published architecture have lousy details.
(I don’t know if he ‘ll acknowledge it, though; he might say that I put it into his mouth.)
I’m telling him you said it.
“A. J. P. Crown | 17 September 2010 at 1:49 pm |” makes much use of the undefined “we”. And as for that dome – ooh boy it works. After hundreds of years the building is upright, undestroyed by any rain it admits, and capable of making the first-time viewer yelp with delight. And it doesn’t boil the customers to death or slice them open. I can’t speak for the number of loos, though.
By we I meant you and me, though you can opt out if you want to.
I wouldn’t want a loo as big as that, imagine the heating bill.
Brunelleschi was one of the world’s best builders ever, even though personally he was probably a bossy little sod. He won the competition for the dome by figuring out how to construct it; it’s a very interesting story that you can read here.
Can you remember on what grounds?
Probably evenly split between those who thought it wrecked the appearance of the street and those who thought it was a lousy way to display art. I have little sympathy for the former, more for the latter.
In Frank Lloyd Wright’s house on the Taliesin estate near Madison, WI, you can see the beautiful shell that was the inspiration for the Guggenheim museum.
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