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Thursday, May 17, 2012
Feature: March 2008
Wishing on a Starchitect
The debate over local talent vs. world-renowned designers
Story by Ingrid Ahlgren and Elspeth Cisneros
Commentators have described architect Zaha Hadid’s work as breathtakingly sensuous and a manifesto for the future. They say her designs have protean energy. She’s also been called a paper architect: The London-based Hadid has a handful of completed projects around the world, including one in the United States. The city of Elk Grove would like to make that two.
For the suburban community — usually associated with big-box retailers rather than highbrow art — bringing in an architect like Hadid, winner of the prestigious Pritzker Prize, to design a civic center might seem like a stretch. Actually, the city’s hopes are part of a trend that’s hit small and mid-sized cities across the country.
The landmark architecture prescription calls for a high-visibility project — often a bridge, museum or performing arts center — paired with a design from a “starchitect,” a slightly disparaging word for the handful of elite architects who travel around the world to work on projects. The combination is calculated to bring a dramatic increase in tourism and, eventually, development. The problem is that Elk Grove — and even Sacramento — may be running late to the postmodern party.
When it comes to a renewed Sacramento, the skyline doesn’t appear to be changing any time soon. As the region’s real estate market tumbles downward, its aspirations for development have woken up with a wet blanket of failed financing and finger-pointing. Drawn out legal battles over development plans for K Street and the railyards are just getting started.
The biggest blow to Sacramento’s future as a home to landmark architecture came with the failure of the Aura and Epic towers. Designed by renowned architect Daniel Libeskind, they would have brought a unique design to downtown, as well as residents to an area that’s normally a ghost town after 6 p.m. There were hopes that developer David Taylor would take over the Aura project after its original financing fell through, but he says it’s simply not possible at this time. “It’s just too expensive,” he says. “The market’s changed enough where it’s just not realistic to finance it.”
The fate of Elk Grove’s showpiece is also imperiled. Conceived at the height of the Capital Region housing boom, the $200 million civic center would have been funded by a surrounding 1,900-acre commercial and residential development. City planners say they are still negotiating a contract with Hadid, but any real progress is on hold. “This plan was developed at a time when development was progressing very rapidly,” says Michael Leary, an Elk Grove councilman. “We would have loved to have built this, but we have to change with the times.”
Had these projects moved forward as planned, anecdotal evidence from other cities suggests star architecture may not deliver all that’s hoped. Stuart Emmons, a design activist in Portland, Ore., says the city’s one foray into star architecture was an office building by Michael Graves, who was selected through a contest in the ’80s. The edifice ultimately set star architecture back in Portland, he says. “The Graves building is important architecturally, but a disaster humanistically,” he says. “It’s unpleasant to work in.” Since then, Portland has shied away from working with famous architects.
Some regional architects say hiring out-of-towners takes away from the local economy, and that local talent, not just the superstars, should have the opportunity to head significant projects. Other critics argue that some well-known architects are only concerned with their own projects and don’t necessarily respect the surrounding areas. Rick Potestio, an emerging architect in Portland, says not all famous architects are created equal.
“There are many star architects — some better than others — and each has his or her own take on design,” Potestio says. “Some work well with context and have a vocabulary or design philosophy that enables them to integrate with local issues and contexts. Others impose a style or approach and ask the context to adapt.”
Clients have also accused big-name architects of overlooking budgets and the basic design of buildings. The Frank Gehry-designed Stata Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology opened four years behind schedule and at double the projected cost. Recently, Gehry was sued by MIT, citing structural flaws in the $315 million project.
Closer to home, a Gehry-designed building in Rocklin had its signature copper trellis removed in the late ’90s because of a leak. It was originally built as a production facility for office furniture manufacturer Herman Miller and now houses William Jessup University. Gehry is adamant the flaw is a result of construction and not his design.
Along with the risks of working with world-renowned designers, the payoff can be rewarding. Officials for the city of Redding say the star architect formula has worked for them. The city’s Santiago Calatrava-designed Sundial Bridge opened in 2004 with a price tag of $23 million. The Spanish-born Calatrava has designed landmark bridges in Europe and South America, in addition to several buildings. In Redding, as many as 20,000 out-of-towners visited in the two months that followed the bridge’s opening, according to the city’s tourism bureau, adding nearly $2 million to the local economy. Transient occupancy tax jumped by as much as 20 percent at some hotels, and those numbers continue to climb.
“The economics may sound a little odd in the beginning: Why spend so much money on a bridge?” says Bob Warren, manager of the Redding Convention and Visitors Bureau. “But over the life of that bridge, it will literally pay itself back by bringing visitors who come to see it.”
Milwaukee, another city with a Calatrava-designed structure, couldn’t be happier with its 2001 addition to the Milwaukee Art Museum. “Milwaukee has gone from Brew City to New City,” says David Fantle, a publicist for Visit Milwaukee. “The museum at our lakefront has had a tremendous impact in symbolizing the new Milwaukee.”
Perhaps one of the biggest benefits of bringing in “starchitects” is that it educates the public about good design. Portland’s Emmons says, “There will always be local architects who feel threatened by bringing in star architects, but anything that raises design awareness has a positive effect on everybody. I think it’s healthy, and it puts architects on the front page.”
But no matter when you build — during a boom or bust — coming up with the money for a landmark project is always difficult. Unlike the proposed civic center in Elk Grove, the Sundial Bridge received most of its financing from a private foundation rather than construction revenues from related building. Because the project was an original, the time and materials needed to build it were unknown. That meant no contractor would bid on it. The alternative, paying for time and materials, simply wasn’t an option. “No city or state government would ever be allowed to do that,” Warren says.
Kris Barkley, design director for Dreyfuss & Blackford Architects, says Sacramento’s development woes go deeper than mere real estate cycles or project financing.
“The biggest challenge to working in Sacramento is developing progressive architecture in an environment that is not necessarily conducive to that,” says Barkley, pointing to the current addition to the Crocker Art Museum. “Even with the Crocker expansion, the initial design changed because the review board felt that it didn’t speak to its surroundings enough, whereas a museum like that should really be something that stands out as an icon.”
It’s become a familiar pattern to Barkley during his 30 years as a Sacramento architect. In the early ’90s, Dreyfuss & Blackford teamed up with New York-based architect James Polshek, most famous for his renovation of Carnegie Hall. Together, they started work on the Memorial Auditorium in downtown Sacramento. “What it would have allowed is to really, truly restore the building,” Barkley says. At the same time, the building would have been transformed into a concert hall-type venue, rather than a favorite spot for hosting high school graduations.
Taking away its populist function rubbed one city council member the wrong way. That led to a ballot measure Barkley describes as “confusing,” which ultimately halted the project. “It would have served the same kind of function that the Mondavi does, and we would have had it right in downtown Sacramento. To me, it was a shame.”
For architect Jeff Warner, more troublesome than the lack of landmark structures is Sacramento’s outlying suburban sprawl. “You can drive through Natomas, where all the developments are, or Elk Grove, Roseville or Folsom — wherever large development is happening — and if you squint, you can be in any place in the country,” says Warner, who divides his time between Sacramento and San Francisco, where he is a principal at WRNS Studio. “Regionalism, or innovation and design, is quickly disappearing in our country.”
But ultimately, Warner says, economics are on the side of a developed urban core. It’s only a matter of time until high gas prices oblige people to move to downtown locations. “I am optimistic the market will get us back to where we need to be,” he says.
Sacramento city planners say they aren’t too worried about the real estate slowdown and delays with landmark projects. They’re just as happy to work on smaller ventures that add to the overall feel of the town. And compared to the last downturn about 15 years ago, they’ve noticed a lot more development. “I think we’re rebounding a lot easier this time,” says Luis Sanchez, a senior architect for the city and member of the design review board. “This is just a cycle we are going through. It’s not like people are suddenly going to leave Sacramento.”
Sanchez says that applications for entitlements on downtown and midtown projects have hardly let up, despite many major plans being on hold. He says that means developers will be prepared to get started on construction again as soon as the market picks up.
“We’re actually extremely busy right now,” says Sanchez, referring to commercial projects. “This is the time when people who own land want to develop, so they have a product ready when we have an uptake.” For example, he says, the R Street corridor is continuing activity.
The most important design for Sanchez and his colleagues to avoid is the monotonous stand-alone buildings that sprouted in the ’70s to house Sacramento’s many state agencies. “Back in the ’70s, it was form follows function,” says William Crouch, urban design manager for the city of Sacramento. “That was the architectural credo of the day. What that produced in a lot of cases is very, very cold brutalist sort of concrete buildings.”
Still, it may be because of all those government buildings that Sacramento’s design future is better off than most. “No matter what’s happening in the economy, government never seems to shrink,” says Kevin Pressey, principal with HMR Architects in Sacramento. Public buildings have historically been more carefully designed than those made for the private sector. “I think design goes through large swings in terms of the design quality,” he says. “You look at a lot of historic buildings that are government, and the ornamentation on those far exceeded what was being done in the private sector at the time.”
And even when buildings opt for high design, too many of them create a chaotic urban environment, for example in cities like Dubai. “Those types of more artistic statements have a place, but it also needs to create a sense of place,” says Sanchez. “If every other day a new high-rise starts, you sort of lose the art form, and it becomes a competition to see which one will be taller tomorrow.”
Now planners want buildings that echo the styles from the World War II era, a period when architecture focused on pedestrians and mingling with the street. “We’ve had a long hiccup of about 30 or 40 years,” says Greg Taylor, senior urban designer with the city of Sacramento. “A difference in buildings from yesterday to today is that you’ll notice a lot of the older buildings [from the ’70s] paid very little attention to the character of the street. You see darkened glass, very undefined street edges and wall surfaces that are very harsh and almost repelling.”
This is a stark contrast to Libeskind’s cosmopolitan designs that never made it to downtown Sacramento. And as for the future of projects like the civic center in Elk Grove? What is most important, says Warner, is to keep trying. “I think a community absolutely needs to have dreams,” he says, “and it needs to push them hard.”
