A leading architectural critic pans and praises some Seattle landmarks
Witold Rybczynski makes a quick tour (with camera) of the changing Seattle cityscape and discovers a new style for a new kind of city, where a hard-edged, unpretty design sense matches the city's smart, unconventional population.
Seattle is drawing a lot of architectural attention these days, and this fascinating essay and slide show by Witold Rybcyznski on Slate comes up with a new way of looking at four recent projects. He admits that on earlier visits to Seattle, the architecture seemed way too safe and dull. Benaroya Hall, by the Seattle firm of LMN, is given due praise for its acoustics and the way it works inside, but he dismisses the exterior as an "uninspired mix of architectural cliches." The Experience Music Project, by Frank Gehry, also gets a quick poke: "shallow and unconvincing."
Rybcyznski spends most of his time on the downtown Seattle Public Library, by Rem Koolhaas, and the Olympic Sculpture Park, by Marion Weiss and Michael Manfredi. Here he finds much to admire and, best of all, a creation of an architectural sensibility that matches the city, rather than just importing styles from other places.
He zeroes in on the library's roughness, "almost crudeness" of detailing, noting all the ways it is "an affront to conventional 'good taste.'" That in-your-face urban chic and lack of refinement, in turn, "feels just right for this city of outdoorsmen and software programmers." The light-filled vast spaces, while "not immediately clear that this is an ideal environment for reading," also reflect the Seattle hunger for sunlight. In short, it's a daring building that belongs in an edgy city, not in any city.
The same theme shows up in Rybczynski's critique of SAM's new Sculpture Park, where he likes the way it avoids becoming a pretty park and instead, for example, uses concrete forms that almost would work as barriers on freeways. The design is tough-minded, he says, hard-edged and unpretty, forming "unsentimental counterpoints to the beauty of Puget Sound." (The art impresses him less, but he makes a big gaffe in misidentifying Richard Serra's monumental "Wake.")
In the end, the library and the Sculpture Park carve out a new Seattle sensibility. They "riff on the city's unusual combination of high-tech smarts, iconoclastic roughess, and a closeness to nature." Sound like us?
Comments:
Posted Thu, May 17, 1 a.m. inappropriate
Trading the Koolhaus for the SAM.: With all due respect to our nice visitor, he mistakes Seattle's on-the-cheap tradtion for a style.
The Koolhaus is a rare exception to a city full of dull, copy cat, meaningless buildings. If one took the Koolhaus, the Space Needle, thye Columbia Tower, the Smith tower, away, the rest would look like a generic city decorated by a third rate Venturi and Geary's worst effort. I take it back ... we would want to take away the stadia as well.
The sculpture garden is ... another tribute to Seattle's rich folks; ability to get public subsidies to their hobbies .. like Allen's stadia. More a statement that someone here has enough money to buy things than to local taste. Is there any local art in the garden? The one potential beautiful site, the Seattle Center is neglected.
In a city this borjng, the Pike Place Market sign and the Troll in Fremont stand out as icons.
Citing a few crudities as exemplars pof some wonderful Seattle style is an insult to Tobey, Graves, Tsutakawa, Chihuly, Oliver, Holm, Quincy Jones, ... anything that is original about this place. Tacoma's new downtown comes closer to being "northwest" than Seattle's pile of corporate cloned structures.
Here is an idea. Lets do a trade! The Koolhaus is a great work of art and a dumb library design. SAM is a utilitarian warehouse of a museum easily convertible to anything else. Why not a 1 for 1 trade? The spiral ramp in the Koolhias woul.d work as well as Wright's Guggenheim in NY. The awesome spaces would create a unique atmosphere for art. Then the library could move into the SAM structure!
SeattleJew
Posted Thu, May 17, 7:30 a.m. inappropriate
Personally: I love just about everything in this city that was built around 1900 to 1930 - the warehouses, apartment buildings, houses, and high rises. No, there's not much in these old structures to arouse the academics, but I've never been a fan of architecture built for architects. The buildings from this era are beautiful and unassuming. When I arrived here in the early 90's, they struck me as being just as essential to Seattle's character as the rain, mountains, music, coffee, and microbrews.
Posted Thu, May 17, 8:31 a.m. inappropriate
Rybczynski Misidentifies Sculptures: I would have been a little more impressed with Rybczynski's critique if he had not attributed the Serra sculpture to Caro, but I'm not surprised that Brewster failed to pick up on that. Brewster thinks he knows more that he does.
Posted Thu, May 17, 9:24 a.m. inappropriate
WWHRD?: What would Howard Roark say about Seattle architecture?
Posted Thu, May 17, 10:11 a.m. inappropriate
Brewster's not that dumb: The gaffe about Serra's sculpture is duly noted in my story.
Posted Thu, May 17, 10:42 a.m. inappropriate
Oops!: Oops! Missed it, sorry.
Posted Thu, May 17, 7:49 p.m. inappropriate
Rybcyznski's Perspective on Seattle Architecture: Witold Rybcyznski (not to be confused with Ryszard Kapuscinski because of their Polish names) wrote A Clearing in the Distance: Frederick Law Olmsted and America in the 19th Century. Given Olmsted's link to New York's Central Park and our UW and Arboretum, Rybcyznski's background gives him instant credibility in Seattle.
Despite Rybcyznski's pedigree, his whirlwind review of Seattle architecture is mainly representative of recent Seattle architecture; his ten-slide show on Slate consists of one (1) shot of the Space Needle with Mt. Rainier as a backdrop, one (1) shot of the Rainier Bank Tower as an example of obligatory big-city-bank-tower infrastructure (he mentions the Washington Mutual and Bank of America Towers in passing), one (1) shot of the EMP that diminishes the vastness of its awkward Gehry clunkiness, three (3) laudatory photos of the Koolhaas Library, and finally three (3) of the new Sculpture Park, one of which is of the waterfront and driftwood.
I would concur with comments that question the omission of Qwest Field and Safeco Stadium, which comprise a panoramic architectural statement in and of themselves. Similarly, the two floating bridges, the University Bridge and the viaduct are significant viewing and viewed Seattle icons that help to define key panoramic vistas of the larger city. (How about we we replace both 520 and the viaduct with architecturally magnificent suspension bridges?) And don't forget the Trolls. Still, one must forgive the non-native for not being a native, and credit Rybcyznski's first impressions with not being jaded by familiarity.
In Rybcyznsk's book on Central Park he notes how Olmsted was a master at designing vistas that separated areas for parkgoer contemplation and solitude. Thus he notes the failure to fully delimit and separate the rail line from Sculpture Park ("Jersey barriers would not be out of place here.") A suggestion for improving the park then, would be to increase its separation from the urban environment. On the other hand, Rybcyznski notes that the hard rough edges of the urban environment are part of Seattle's architectural style, and again, I would have to concur.
Rybcyznski praises the Koolhaas Seattle Library and its celebration of glass and light; however, to my mind the library is misplaced within the a sea of boxed towers. It's more deserving of a Bilbao Guggenheim Museum or Sidney Opera House setting. yet is stuck like a diamond in a coal mine, rather than like a diamond-studded necklace on a beautiful woman. (This suggests that we move the library down to the waterfront where it can stand like a shining monument to What Could Be, in contrast to the Viaduct Tape Memorial being quasi-planned by various government entities.)
All in all, Rybcyznski's architectural review helps us frame our kaleidoscopic vision for Seattle. That vision now exists on the civic canvas, yet will be repainted in the years to come as the frame expands, the canvas contorts, and the millions of viewers of this vision upgrade their kaleidoscopes.
Posted Thu, May 17, 8:17 p.m. inappropriate
Architecture and the Decline of Seattle Center's, Seattle's Center and the Seattle Center: Rybcyznski's connection to New York City architecture through Olmsted is eerily reciprocal to our own through Yamasaki, who designed both the U.S. Pavilion at the 1962 Seattle World's Fair and the World Trade Center towers, America's ultimate in negative symbolic space. Of the Pavilion, journalist Alistair Cooke wrote back in the 60's, "It is as if Venice has just been built." The Pavilion and its five 110-foot arches were once iconic in Seattle and always pictured with the Space Needle, but are now tucked away between buildings. Daylighting and movement of these arches to a more visible location would be an easy win for Seattle Center architecture that could to get the juices flowing for a reinvigoration of the Center proper.
From a Seattle Center architectural perspective, the tendency exists to both over-emphasize and yet dismiss the significance of John Graham's Space Needle, which dominates Everyman's (and Everywoman's) mental image of our City. It has remained iconic in large part because of the negative space that acts as its backdrop, an architectural analog to the Growth Management Act, which protects critical areas and open space.
(For the financial visionaries amongst you, note that the Space Needle was built for $4.5M in 1962, which is the equivalent of about $41M in today's dollars. What process, bureaucracy and bloat would be packed on its back today? Well, in 2000 it was renovated for about $20M.)
Another Seattle Center icon used to be the Coliseum, now called Key Arena and home to the Oklahoma City Super-Okies. The triptych of the Needle, the Arches, and the Coliseum used to brand the Seattle Center as an international wonder of the world. Now the Space Needle is largely seen as a nostalgic tourist photo, the arches may as well be in cardboard boxes, and the Coliseum is looming as a future basketball memorabilia site. This decline in the Seattle Center "brand" over the years has meant the loss of tens of millions of "economic impact" dollars to the city. Some architecturally reinvigoration would surely restore much of that lost luster and lucre. But alas, without vision the people and their architecture perish.
Posted Thu, May 17, 9:30 p.m. inappropriate
Downtown library is a joke.: Three years ago, the 'drive by media' heaped tons of mantra, agenda driven, boilerplate template, montage, verbal viagra pablum on Seattle's new downtown wasted space called 'library.' It is a poorly designed, dysfunctional, shoddy floor constructed tacky tourist trap. The SAM/SPL building content swap is NOT a bad idea!!
Posted Thu, May 17, 11:32 p.m. inappropriate
Free standing arches???: Stuka ..
PMJI but are you sure the arches once existed separately from the buildings? We have lived here since the late 60s and the Science Museum, nee US pavilion, has been in the same place for all that time as far as I can remember. The whole complex is a lovely tribute to Yamasaki .. far more beautiful than the martyred towers of NY.
I should have inclcuded that pavilion in my personal collection of keepable Seattloe architecture. FWIW (in no order) I would "keep" the stadia, Pioneer Square, the PP market and the stairs, the Smith-Columbia towers complex, the Koolhaus, the Chapel at Seattle Univ, The Yamasaki pavilion, the Market, the Gates mansion, the Admiral's house at Magnolia, Suzallo, Red Square, anhd a few other UW buildings.
The rest is interchangeable with SBP (standard building parts).
Posted Fri, May 18, midnight inappropriate
The "real" Seattle: After reading the Slate essay, I have three thoughts.
1. We really should consider trading spaces between SAM and SPL. Even the trivial Hammered Man might work better in front of the Koolhaus and add some character to its current featureless entry. I am also intrigued by the though of some of the scultures suspended over the poished steel floor! Fun!
2. It too bad that our visitor never got someone to drive him around some of our wonderful neighborhoods. For every boring downtown box, there must be hindreds of absolutely wonderful Capital Hill Saltbboxes and truly amaxzing waterfornt himes along Lake Washington. Within walking distance of our home on Capital Hill are several homes that are wonderful to look at. One of my favorites, on the corner of 22nd E and E Aloha, has a multistoryTiffany window that is as important to my personal collection fo art as anything in SAM. WADR to SanFran, NY and Boston ... our homescapes rival anything I have seen elsewhere.
It seems to me that there is a message here. "We" are building a new city .. or at least Paul Allen's Vulcan is. My understanding of the finances is that the added costs of infrastructure and services supporting these 200,000 or so newbies-in-condos, will more than consume the added tax income. So far, the buildings that have been put up range from boring (2200) to worse. The proliferation of colored corrugated iron siding and aluminum-wood panels, is not going to wear well on our eyes. Given the huge size of Vulcantown (Allen Villa?), isn't there any hope of a soupscon of architectural flare?
SeattleJew
Posted Fri, May 18, 8:08 a.m. inappropriate
RE: Architecture and the Decline of Seattle Center's, Seattle's Center and the Seattle Center: Unless I am mistaken, the Arches began as pasrt of the US Pavilion which is now the science museum.
Posted Mon, May 21, 2:37 a.m. inappropriate
RE: Free standing arches???: I didn't mean to imply that the arches had ever moved. I'm not certain, but I think that new science center bldgs have been added in the intervening years. Some of the old photos of the Fair seem to show much more daylight that we see nowadays. I haven't been in a long time, so I'm posting mainly on memory. I certainly never see or hear about the Arches in the Pavilion anymore.