In The Search Of Beauty
On the Barcelona Forum Building
A life without beauty does not deserve to be called human, claimed the Mexican master Luis Barragan while receiving the prestigious Pritzker Prize in 1980. Since then it hasn’t been evident to which degree architects or society really do care for the search of beauty in architecture. At least the occurrence of urban beauty so far is extremely rare.
As a remarkable exception the Swiss office of Herzog & de Meuron have tested every opportunity to give beauty a chance in the often glass dominated facades of their recent works. In this respect their Forum building (2004) in Barcelona is no exception being an enormous triangular volume threatening to become just another dull corpus in the fringe of the Catalan city.
The site is on the eastern edge of Barcelona where Avenida Diagonal intersecting the right-angled Cerda grid meets the Mediterranean coastline in an earlier terrain vague, an urban ‘no-man’s land’ with industrial installations, a residual water treatment plant and a gasoline station. The aim for planning the Forum building and its neighbouring vacant land originated in converting a former wasteland to contain a small park and a fountain formerly excluded from the nearby beach by an incoming highway following the shoreline at this point.
To prevent the impact with the highway the architects have chosen to tilt the terrain upwards to underline the pedestrian character of the affected planning zone and make the urban area the most significant district within sight. By letting a gigantic platform span over Ronda Litoral an easy access to the beaches is established while the artificial slope hiding the highway is providing a natural setting for the auditorium with impressive 3.200 seats.
The triangular building measuring some 183 x 188 x 177metres cantilevers imposingly more than 25metres above the natural terrain containing the auditorium in its core is surrounded by 8.000square metres exhibition space horizontally. The triangle has been constructed almost like a traditional bridge with a grid of trusses forming the roof structure and providing open public space beneath. The exhibition space is hung from this grid while the number of load bearing piers has been reduced to an absolute minimum. A series of courtyards is cutting through the elevated volume as well as the artificial platform that establishes multiple relations between the street level and the other levels of the building permitting new angles of vision and an ever changing play of light. The form and orientations of the small courtyards are derived from the juxtaposition of the two directions of the Cerda grid and the cut of the Diagonal
The floor of the exhibition area is located up in the deep blue triangle while colour as well as texture is used to humanise the vastness of a façade punctuated by dramatic cuts, mirrors and an ever shifting character ranging between dull and smooth. As a contrast the facades of auditorium in the centre of the triangle are glazed at the level of the outdoor space and can therefore be seen into. The interiors of the auditorium and the exhibition space are designed as hybrid spaces, not only blurring the boundaries between exterior and interior, but also in a way that easily adapt to the constantly changing program. The auditorium being neither a bare conference centre nor a philharmonic music hall is like the exhibition area having a dark asphalt surface on the outdoor space continued to the interior.
At close range the lower parts of the facades are made up of triangulated surfaces of glass or stainless steel producing kaleidoscope effects, multiple reflections and an interesting play of light on the square below. These are highlighted by the cladding of public ceilings and columns under the triangular volume with some 3.800 different stainless steel panels. The rough sprayed plaster of the upper façade is continued on the internal walls but is here coloured black instead of dark blue. Inside the ceilings does not have any complaisantly cladding, instead one has a view of the black painted structure and services. Irregular full-high slits in the façade as well as the glazed patios allow uncontrolled daylight to enter the space. The different levels are connected by ramps allowing one to feel the topography of the square below – the outdoor space becomes palpable in the interior.
According to Le Corbusier ‘Mass and surface are the elements by which architecture manifests itself’ while ‘A mass is enveloped in its surface, a surface which is divided up according to the directing and generating lines of the mass’.
In this respect the most impressive part of the Forum building might not be its urban scale or form as much as the delicacy of tactile elements of the façade.
The surprising changes from vulgar dark blue sprayings to inlaid mirrors or the small punctuated steel plates are making a great impact of the visitor, reminding the viewer that beauty may be found even in any surface part of a mayor building. And recall any architect of the advantage of blurring the mayor form of architecture to appear sometimes camouflaged in other places weightless. That beauty is both to be found in the detail and the very skin of a building.
Flemming Skude
FACTS:
Competition 2000
Finished April 2004
Floor area 45.000sqaremetres
