In the new Artforum, Rem Koolhaas talks about what he’s doing to the Hermitage in St. Petersburg (he says it’s not curatorial, but it sounds curatorial to me), and he talks about the Bilbao Effect. Bilbao is the city in the Basque region of Spain that became a tourist attraction because of Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim building, which is all swoopy and sparkling.

I remember when starting the competition for the MAXXI museum in Rome, the director told us, “We want the museum to do for Rome what Gehry did for Bilbao.” The city with Saint Peter’s and the Pantheon needs a Bilbao? I think that this is really the danger of Bilbao: It works in a city that had nothing, less in one that has everything. It threatens to provincialize major cities with massive histories, because by seemingly answering the need for an identity in cities that already have an abundance of identity, you in fact diminish it all.

Meanwhile he defends his CCTV building as “modest” and distances himself from “anti-Bilbao discourse”:

And the effect of this is really quite sinister, because it’s also become the basis of an anti-Bilbao discourse that is now so strong—for instance, I have people telling me that the CCTV building, this new icon, has ruined the entire city of Beijing. But Beijing’s a city that already has thousands of icons, and this is only one of them. CCTV is therefore much more modest than this kind of critique acknowledges.

Editor Tim Griffin asks Koolhaas:

So basically what you’re saying is that you see CCTV fitting with the syntax of the city?

Rem:

It’s not only a syntactical thing but a statistical thing. A city with the history and urban richness of Beijing just cannot be ruined by one building.

Rem, you’re killing me.

Jen Graves (The Stranger’s former arts critic) mostly writes about things you approach with your eyeballs. But she’s also a history nerd interested in anything that needs more talking about, from male...

12 replies on “How to Ruin A City”

  1. I can just imagine the conversations going on when they decided to build St. Peter’s Cathedral:

    Architect: It’ll be spectacular, one of the highlights of the city!

    Reactionary: Rome already has the Colosseum, the Pantheon, the Forum! Your modern architecture will destroy the city!

  2. It’s Beijing.

    Most days you’re lucky if you can see 10 blocks away.

    How can that “destroy the aesthetic of the city”?

    Pollution already did that.

  6. true that will – at my office, it’s the stars who go out to starbucks, etc., and the plebes who pull their own. espresso.

  9. Having been to the Hermitage many, many times since the late 80’s, I will say that the exhibition diplays could use some updating. It’s an amazing building and there is amazing artwork, but the display of many works is grounded in the 60s and 70s – outdated and in some cases dilapidated. They have not asked him to actually replace or update the building, but to reimagine and renovate the displays of art works.

  10. So the Guggenheim destroyed all art and Koolhaus (and Gehry or just Koolhaus?) destroyed all architecture?

    What’s left? TV? Oh, wait, I bet Season 6 of Lost ruined TV now and forever, didn’t it?

  12. I don’t know about Beijing and other examples, but what he’s proposing for the Hermitage sounds spot-on actually: no architectural development, but splitting it up into individual chunks to go with the individual buildings, more public entrances, more individual gallery spaces that align with the feel of the buildings, for temporary exhibitions.
    The Hermitage is a thing of wonder but it really could use a bold yet humble architectural/curatorial eye. Judging by his answers, he’s thinking about it exactly right.

    Speaking as someone born and raised in St Petersburg. I hope he does it, and I hope it works out like I’m imagining.

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