Claire Saeki chats with Danny Forster face of the Discovery Channel’s Build it Bigger about buildings that change cities.
Claire: Given the opportunity you’ve been given to see a wide range of projects from all over the world, what parts of the world in particular are you particularly intrigued with at the moment?
Danny: Right now for obvious economic reasons, there are less projects going on in America, whereas in some regions, like Asia and, frankly, the Middle East in particular, there are some really significant projects.
I would say there are some parts of the Middle East, specifically Abu Dhabi, where you can find some really complex architecture that’s grappling with cultural issues, not just about the hubris of building tall buildings with oil money, but rather governments and cities trying to really think about redefining themselves through new buildings and through new ideas of culture. So I’m very taken, for example, with Abu Dhabi.
A lot of the buildings in the Middle East have been in some cases more hype than genuine substance. I personally think that something like Masdar is really amazing.
Masdar is a good example - I have physically walked those projects myself. I think if they can accomplish Masdar, Masdar will be a gigantic accomplishment. I think even if they fail to complete the city, I think the endeavor of trying to build some of those projects is important research. Sustainable design can’t happen in a vacuum and it can’t happen on paper. A lot of times, you have to build the green buildings to find out how technologies perform. I hope Masdar works. I really do.
I think the central market towers, for example, in downtown Abu Dhabi, also a Norman Forester project, is significant, both in terms of the technology for the solar panels on the roof and the double glazed curtain and wall facade, but also in the way in which they meet the ground. The re-imagined souk is a real attempt to think about modern architecture, understanding the culture with which Abu Dhabi had them built upon, but without being nostalgic either.
Abu Dhabi has gone about its development in a slightly more thoughtful way than perhaps Dubai, which went a little bit too quickly.
Indeed, no question. Yes, they’ve made huge mistakes.
Talking about mistakes, and the potential for them, lets look at China with the huge amounts of urbanization and building taking place there at the moment. Do you have any comment on to what extent you think that all this building in developing countries is likely to start leapfrogging or becoming a standard even in the developed world?
I think China is an interesting example. I think Abu Dhabi and China, or actually Shanghai, if you want to focus it, are interesting counterpoints because Abu Dhabi is grabbling with trying to understand their own identity and doing so through embracing western technology, western design and western architects, but trying to fold them into their culture in order to make a new city. China on the other hand; the Shanghai World Financial Center in the Pudong region of Shanghai. I think there are some big mistakes there.I think that’s a situation between the Shanghai World Financial Center, the third tower being built by Gensler. These are buildings that are coming at the expense of culture. I think these are moments where they’re importing a westerner’s perspective of what success is. You see that in the kind of detached nature with which these buildings reside in the cities.
And you look at a JinMao Tower, to me that’s Skidmore Owens & Merrill attempting to tell a Chinese person what China looks like. That’s not what the discussion is really about. I think it’s really about a complicated struggle to understand and reinvent what it means to be mindful of a place, of a climate, of a culture, of a history of a set of material conditions and finding a solution. But I think it’s a process. I don’t think it’s a set of solutions. I think the CCTV Building in many ways is also fantastic and offensive in its lack of cultural sensitivity.
And this happens. You look at the way, for example, during the Expo in China, what the government has been managing, whether it be spitting or wearing pajamas or how you comport yourself with these experts, these are ways in which to remake culture at a very quick pace at the expense of indigenous culture.
I agree with you. I was in Shanghai recently and I wrote to a friend asking whether it as worth getting out of the Metro at a particular stop to grab one of my favourite buns from a particularly talented street vendor. Knowing that given the Expo they may have already cleared him away.
Exactly. I don’t think this makes it such a success. There are huge issues and I think if the economy doesn’t recover, we’re going to see some real problems there. Look at the Yas Island Hotel in Abu Dhabi and the buildings done by asymptote. Yas Hotel is a super modern building with the formula one race track running through it, totally expensive [US$36 mil: ed] and potentially gaudy. But when you look at that building wrapped in this incredible glass and steel grid shell, the way in which the architects found this solution was through looking at the logic for wrapping the body in the Middle East.
Wrapping the body has been a sophisticated way that’s worked well over thousands of years, blocking the sun and allowing air passage between the cloak and the body. This has been a solution for the body. Can this become a solution for architecture? And so all of a sudden, you’re looking at a modern way to rethink a building in Abu Dhabi predicated on thousand year old fashion. That to me is a much more complex and rich way to engage culture architecturally than it is to try and tell culture what it should be through glass and steel.
Okay, now to the next area that I wanted to discuss, glass and steel. We’re looking at now moving into a different era when it comes to sustainable architecture. Architecture is beginning to be influenced by engineering solutions and other aspects of the building process such as interior design, facilities management, issues relating to the ongoing upkeep of the building, which weren’t as important previously. To what extent do you think that’s a global phenomenon? Obviously you’re looking at amazing mega structures where engineering will always be significant but to what extent do you think that architecture is being influenced by engineering and other disciplines in the environment.
Architects are architects and engineers are engineers, and they do very different things and they do wonderful things together. But the best thing they do is when each one respects their respective core competencies. For example, we did a show about the Al Hamrah Tower in Kuwait. It’s one of the tallest buildings in the world. It’s a beautiful, also Skidmore owned and designed tower. What’s fascinating about this tower is that it’s a building, an office building, 1,450 feet tall, whose entire south facade is opaque, concrete with these torquing flare walls.
Now the idea of building a skyscraper and office tower whose job it is garner office rent and you tell the developer that 25 percent of their façade is windowless, they’d go crazy, right? Well, it’s an insane notion, but what’s interesting about this building is that the engineers and engineers figured out that by blocking the southern sun in Kuwait you could enable them to have better or more valuable office space that wouldn’t have to be cloaked by drapes. It would also enable them to create this incredible torquing concrete wall that would actually optimize for the path of the sun.
So what I’m getting at here is that you have an incredible formal geometry that it’s more idiosyncratic than anything Frank Ghery will ever do. This is very different from a formal solution that has to get “engineered by someone else,” so it can stand up. Do you know what I mean?
Yes, sure. So I suppose you’re advocating the more integrated approach during the planning stages, as opposed to the one where some architect comes up with a pretty design and then an engineer makes it happen.
That’s the worse situation in the world. The kind of a priory in italies architectural solution where an engineer has to stuff the sausages, as we say, to make it stand up. The best projects are ones where architects want to actually engage gravity, I would say, sympathetically and not oppositionally.
Now what about the other disciplines, looking at this from a life cycle perspective or different types of people who are likely to operate the building or tinker with it down the track?
We’re getting better. I would say we’re not there yet. I would say the most important recent technology or the most recent innovation is BIM (building information modeling).
Looking back at the cultural aspects and mass urbanisation. Do you think that that’s possible to get local cultural specificity alongside something that genuinely can be mass produced?
I think it’s a great question. I think the answer is yes. The best and most sophisticated kind of prefabricated system isn’t really a set of Lego’s but rather it’s a kind of a system. And the system has a degree of variation to it. It has a degree of complexity in how it comes together.
You look at some of the, for example, Dwell Homes. They all “You look at a JinMao Tower, to me that’s Skidmore Owens & Merrill attempting to tell a Chinese person what China looks like.” come out of the same prefab factory, but there’s tons of variation within that model. I think that much like BIM, I think prefabrication and specificity is a kind of area that’s not been explored at all and it probably should be. But it’s one of those things where architects have to abandon one of the things they love most, which is like idiosyncratic design decisions. And there haven’t been enough professionals I think at the higher, higher levels of our discipline who have really investigated this kind of research.
So I think it’s been left to more industrial design types, which is not to say they’re not incredibly smart and amazing. But I don’t think architecture has fully embraced that side of the profession yet.
We’ve come to the end of our time, I think. One last thing briefly, I suppose, would be we’ve talked a lot about Asia. Obviously, that’s where I’m based. But as a magazine, we’re also global. Would you consider doing regional Build it Bigger Asia or Pacific editions? So Danny goes to Asia, or Danny goes to South America or Danny goes to the Middle East you seem love.
Let me put it this way. If you look at our last season, which I think is going to be airing, I’d have to check when the air date was, but we did ten episodes last season, two of which were in America. Last season quite literally, this was my schedule in order: Shanghai, Kuwait, New Orleans, Brazil, South Africa, Australia, San Francisco, Switzerland, Abu Dhabi, and Rotterdam. And so I think the show, frankly, maybe it a function of the way the economy has gone and maybe it’s a function of just where significant projects that are having huge impacts on cities and countries happen to be.
But we’re going to begin shooting in the fall. I expect to leave the country for six to seven months and be fully on airplanes international. So I think number one I owe a debt of gratitude to global construction because it is what we do and it’s what we cover. But, frankly, we’re looking at projects that aren’t just big and tall, not the tall skyscrapers and deep tunnels, but they’re projects whose scale has a real transformative impact on a city. A hydroelectric dam in Rio that’s going to help provide power for the Olympics and the World Cup, which will really transform a city that otherwise couldn’t afford to transform itself.
Kuwait, the skyscraper, that represents a country liberated, really investing in itself only in the wake of Saddam’s death, quite literally living in fear for 15 years that they’d be reinvaded again. And so this skyscraper is not just a more important engineering model, but it’s a civic, a national marvel as well.
So those are the products we’re looking at and a lot of times you don’t get to see that in America. So I think the show, frankly, it’s an international show.
Excellent, it’s been great to talk to you. Do drop us a line if ever you’re coming through town. It would be great to catch up and hear your thoughts on or off the record.
I’d love to.
