Situating architectural performance: 'star architecture' and its roles in repositioning the cities of Graz, Lucerne and Wolfsburg

Authors: Nina Alaily-Mattar, Dominik Bartmanski, Johannes Dreher, Michael Koch, Martina Löw, Timothy Pape & Alain Thierstein
Year: 2018
Source type: article (European Planning Studies)
Raw file: raw/articles/alaily-mattar-et-al-2018-situating-architectural-performance.md

Summary

This paper challenges the assumed replicability of the "Bilbao effect" by examining three cases of star architecture projects in medium-sized cities: Kunsthaus Graz (Austria), Culture and Congress Centre Lucerne (Switzerland), and Phaeno Science Centre Wolfsburg (Germany). The authors argue that star architecture should be understood as a "social performance" with relational situatedness and plurality of roles, not as a generic economic investment tool. They find that "not every city that commissions the design of a public cultural building to a star architect seeks to emulate the so-called Bilbao effect," and that medium-sized cities often aim at "distinction within a specific field, in their nation-state, or try to reinvent their internal dynamics" rather than competing in international economic rankings. The process of city repositioning through star architecture "can have expressive and symbolic, not merely instrumental character, and be understood as more of a socio-cultural performance rather than a purely economic investment."

Key Claims

• Bilbao effect as background narrative: "Since the opening of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao in 1997, the topic of how 'star architecture' plays a decisive role in urban regeneration has been discussed in academic debates as well as in the media. Efforts to emulate the so-called Bilbao effect followed internationally. However, not every city that commissions the design of a public cultural building to a star architect seeks to replicate that effect. This overarching narrative has nevertheless constituted a powerful background representation."

• Research aim: "This paper discusses the supposed replicability of the 'effect'. The aim is to emphasize relational situatedness and plurality of roles of star architecture as a device of urban regeneration."

• Medium-sized cities differ: "The process of repositioning of a city does not necessarily follow the logic of international economic competition. When it comes to medium-sized cities, we observe that they aim at distinction within a specific field, in their nation-state, or try to reinvent their internal dynamics."

• Expressive vs. instrumental: "This process can have expressive and symbolic, not merely instrumental character, and be understood as more of a socio-cultural performance rather than a purely economic investment."

• Three cases: Kunsthaus Graz (contemporary art exhibition centre), Culture and Congress Centre Lucerne, Phaeno Science Centre Wolfsburg — "Each one of these examples is a publicly commissioned cultural facility designed by an internationally renowned architect, the appointment of which was related to international architectural competition."

• Star architecture projects are costly and contested: "Such projects introduce profound urban, morphological, economic and socio-cultural changes in their respective cities. They are costly investments, frequently politically motivated and contested, especially when publicly funded. Their necessity tends to be justified by the proponents with the argument that these projects will yield significant direct or indirect regeneration effects."

• Path dependency: "The process of implementing and developing such projects usually takes various turns over many years... comparability of different urban situations is obviously restricted by localized path dependencies."

• Symbolic interests and local attachments: "Star architectural projects rivet heightened attention and breed controversies is that they are not only utilitarian interventions of experts. They also involve many individuals and various constituencies that have symbolic interests and local attachments. In fact, they are always related to people's sense of place, aesthetics and citizen pride, and may mean 'managing spoiled identity'."

• Situatedness concept: "Every architectural project becomes effective as a developmental performance relative to specific sets of relations unfolding continuously in a given place. For this reason, the present paper proposes to contextualize each case of repositioning of cities through star architecture via the relational concept of situatedness. Each city can be understood as having its own socio-cultural logic and its own morphological composition and economic challenges that need to be addressed, each of which is a path-dependent process."

• Translation required: "Generic policy templates need to undergo translation to fit local conditions. Crucially, the divergence of objectives means that from the very inception these projects are geared towards different roles in the repositioning of their respective cities."

• Beyond Bilbao narrative: "We wish to contribute to the body of research that presents evidence that we should go 'beyond Bilbao narrative' couched in those terms."

• Term inflation: "There seems to be an inflation of definitions regarding star architecture projects which may suggest that this term functions today as a place holder for many different social values and ideologies serving diverse interests."

• Related terms:

  • Flagship architecture / cultural flagship: buildings/institutions that attract visitors with economic implications
  • Iconic architecture: architectural genre (Jencks) or famous symbolically laden building (Sklair, Kaika)
  • Starchitecture / signature architecture: celebrity status of involved architects and effects of signature products

• Bilbao effect as urban policy in motion: "Following the transformative role that the Guggenheim Museum designed by Frank Gehry has played in the Basque city of Bilbao, the buzzword 'Bilbao effect' has become a widely circulated term to describe transformations related to star architecture projects in a generic way." Led to "culture-led urban regeneration," "architourism," "architainment," "magnet cities," "phoenix cities."

• Two difficulties with existing analyses:

  1. Reduction to physicality: "There is a danger of reducing the topic to physicality of a building at hand, reifying its iconic properties. Buildings are never isolated physical objects. Their role cannot be abstracted from function, social audiences and morphology." Buildings must be seen "in their true double context: as pieces of cities and as sources of media representations."

  2. Causal dissociation: "It is problematic to causally dissociate a given aspect of star architecture, for example, the physical structure, the function, the institution or the site. They are tightly intertwined with each other in various ways, forming a process that we call here 'star architectural project'."

• Klingmann's warning: "Strategic and deliberate use of architecture as a catalyst to set off economic and social transformations [...] cannot be attained by a mindless repetition of a formula (that only worked once, anyway). [...] I[t] would be a great mistake to think that the Guggenheim effect is a generic recipe that can be duplicated."

• City is not an enterprise: "City is not an enterprise, nor is it a new product, which means you cannot 'sell' different cities according to the same formula."

• Social performance: "Each star architectural project is a unique 'social performance' within a given city." "'Successful' performance is not just a function of current urban development. Rather, 'other factors like historical experiences are likely to determine opportunities for competitive and sustainable future development in a more efficient way'."

• Eventisation: "Architectural projects are said to be staged as a permanent event." Question is how they contribute to "'eventisation' of the city" and how attention patterns initiate developmental effects.

• Media as primary site: "Foster (2008) goes so far as to claim that these buildings cannot be read at the ground level; instead, the media is their primary site. They are said to be designed also, or even primarily, to occupy a virtual site in the media, contributing to the 'aestheticisation of urban space in cognitive cultural capitalism'."

• Critical framework limitations: "Although useful in understanding mechanisms by which architecture can be instrumentalized for specific purposes, this critical framework is not perfectly applicable to public cultural flagships designed by star architects." Most commissions come from public urban authorities, not private capital.

• Risk of economistic understanding: Authors who critique late capitalism "run a risk of reproducing economistic understanding of architecture as a mere tool of power or prestige, focusing on normative aspects of the relevant discussions."

• Alternative logic: "The positioning of a city might not or not only follow the logic of international comparison among cities but rather that of distinction within a field or a city. It relates to how a city understands and presents itself, and how a given intervention may change its experiential character. This can be 'expressive rather than instrumental, irrational rather than rational, more like theatrical performance than economic exchange'."

• Composite definition of star architectural project: It is "(1) a process, (2) of designing and constructing a physical structure (3) by an internationally renowned architect, (4) to house a civic institution, (5) on a strategically identified urban site, (6) in order for star architecture to perform particular functions, (7) each of which is enacted over time according to specificities of the location (8) resulting in sets of localized meanings."

Connections

Concepts: star-architecture
Authors: jencks-charles, sklair-leslie, kaika-maria
Debates: spectacle-vs-function, jencks-vs-sklair-iconic-architecture
Related source notes: mahmoud-2014-iconic-architecture-publicizing-cities, jones-2009-putting-architecture-social-place, patterson-2020-bilbao-effect-revitalization-transformation

Direct Quotes

"Not every city that commissions the design of a public cultural building to a star architect seeks to replicate that effect. This overarching narrative has nevertheless constituted a powerful background representation."

"When it comes to medium-sized cities, we observe that they aim at distinction within a specific field, in their nation-state, or try to reinvent their internal dynamics."

"This process can have expressive and symbolic, not merely instrumental character, and be understood as more of a socio-cultural performance rather than a purely economic investment."

"Each star architectural project is a unique 'social performance' within a given city."

"City is not an enterprise, nor is it a new product, which means you cannot 'sell' different cities according to the same formula."

"It would be a great mistake to think that the Guggenheim effect is a generic recipe that can be duplicated." — Klingmann

Open Questions

• How does the "situatedness" framework relate to Jones' Bourdieusian field theory — are both accounting for local specificity vs. global replication?
• What is the relationship between "social performance" and the Situationist concept of the spectacle — is performance a form of resistance to spectacle or its contemporary form?
• Does the finding that cities seek "distinction within a field" rather than international competition complicate Sklair's TCC-driven iconic architecture model?
• How does the "eventisation" of cities connect to Olympic gigantism — are both forms of temporary spectacular intervention with uncertain long-term effects?