jeannouvel (original) (raw)
Posts tagged jeannouvel
The Return of Scale and Grandeur
In the distant past, in ancient Egypt, in medieval France, architects and engineers innovated massive structures into existence seemingly by sheet willpower and imagination. Giza, apparently the product of simple geometry, is really enigma. We still don’t really know how it was achieved. We can guess, and many have formulated ingenious hypotheses as to how such precision was achieved and how, on such a grand scale. such enormity was built. With the great medieval cathedrals, we have a greater understanding of how architects such as Christopher Wren conjured flying buttresses and stained glass miracles from the cauldron of his imagination. We understand, yet we still marvel. What is know about the labor that put these structures together in ancient Egypt and medieval Europe is that two key elements were essential to their completion: time and manpower. Time could mean several decades, and even a century. Manpower meant harnessing the countryside for disposable labor or ‘slaves,’ if you will. I used to think when I looked around at the international style of architecture of the 70′s,80′s and 90′s, that we would never again see such magnificent structures as were produced by the masters of antiquity. There were, and are still, the great neo-Gothic works of Chicago and NYC. Perhaps those were the last. The Twin Towers represented for me a powerful example of the banality of the internationalist style. Steel, concrete, massive, less compelling even than the Brutalist structures. Who, I thought, would will be willing to invest the billions required to achieve the sublime workmanship of the Egyptians, the medievals, or the great American industrialists? The economics didn’t work anymore, I thought. Beauty, intricacy, delicacy, all too expensive to produce on a massive scale. And seemingly, too, they went against the grain of the structural-functionalism of cold capitalism.
But I was wrong…
.Jean Nouvel has shown that if the great billionaires are willing to spend the cash, he has the vision to create structures as grand and as magnificent as the old masters. Now, it is no longer time or labor, that are obstacles, but cash. As wealth becomes more concentrated, perhaps the ultra-wealthy will be willing to dispose of it on ever greater scales, creating structures just as grand and massive as the pyramids, the cathedrals, and the neo-Gothic masterpieces. I think, yes, it will happen.
Filed under jeannouvel