An atlas of 21st-century architecture might seem a tad premature what with us
only being eight years in. A 20th century equivalent produced 100 years ago
would have missed, well, everything – Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, right
up to Frank Gehry and Rem Koolhaas. But, what the hell, the publisher
Phaidon has gone ahead anyway. Those eight years haven’t half been busy
after all, the world high on a decade-long economic boom, indulging itself
endlessly in deconstructivist villas and exquisite art galleries crafted
like a Swiss watch.
So even a few years in, The Atlas of 21st Century World Architecture,
the publisher’s latest coffee table book (make sure that coffee table’s got
concrete foundations), is still stuffed with treats garnered from what we
should now regard as a global architectural golden age. Reading it in one
sitting is like scoffing a dust-bin bag of toffees. Too much, too much!
You’ll need a good lie down.
The great advantage of atlases, though, is that they do help you to see the
wood for the trees. Here are the past eight years of excess laid bare. Page
after page proves that the once nerdy architectural theory born in Europe
and the US in the Seventies after Modernism fizzled out (the rollercoaster
swoops and origami angles of Zaha Hadid, Koolhaas and Herzog & De
Meuron) has been exported around the world. No corner of the globe, not even
rural Africa, can escape iconic curves and 20 degree angles. It is the new
orthodoxy.
Laid bare, too, on these unforgiving pages are the stark differences between
continents and nations. It’s like an Olympics of architecture. Sadly, thanks
to our conservatism and reticence in spending money, Britain doesn’t match
this summer’s sporting success in the architecture event. But what we lack
in quality, we make up for in variety. Any nation that can tolerate in one
small island Norman Foster and Will Alsop has catholic taste indeed.
Otherwise, the usual rules apply.
If you want to find great architecture, you follow the money. But while the
atlas reveals the continuing dominance of old money – Europe, Japan and
America – it also hints at the rise of the new – the Middle East, China and
South America – which are starting to flex their architectural as well as
economic muscles. The end of centuries of Western dominance is here, written
in three dimensions.
Gold medal: Japan
All hail the greatest architectural nation on earth. Japan garners 65 pages of
quality, variety and swoonsome cross sections. How do they do it? Well,
having the highest number of architects in the world helps: 307,558,
according to the book. That’s 240.4 architects per 100,000 people, far ahead
of the rest, beaten only by Liechtenstein, which doesn’t count for
obvious reasons.
Britain has 54.1 architects per 100,000; France 47.7 (ha!); Germany 144.7
(damn!); Russia only 8.3 (which explains what’s happening to Moscow right
now) and Bangladesh is bottom with 0.8. But numbers aren’t everything, or
Greece, with 143.5 architects per 100,000, would be architectural heaven,
rather than, well, not.
Japan counts among its 307,558, Kazuyo Sejima, Tadao Ando, Fumihiko Maki,
Shigeru Ban, Atelier BowWow, Kengo Kuma and, master of them all, Toyo Ito.
Added to which, the Japanese public is switched on to architecture like
nowhere else on earth, and I hear they have a bit of money, too. All of
which adds up to inventive buildings everywhere you turn, whether you’re
shopping in Tokyo’s jewel-like boutiques or meeting your maker at Toyo Ito’s
Meiso no Mori crematorium in the woods near Kakami-gahara City.
Silver medal: Switzerland
The Swiss, like the Japanese, have the benefit of oodles of money to spend.
Plus all that cuckoo clock-making makes their eyes sharp as hawks, so their
architecture is fine-tuned, precise, crisp, and minimalist. But though the
country gave us the greatest Modernist of all, Le Corbusier, it’s only
really in the past three decades that it has emerged as an architectural
heavyweight.
Much of this is down to having some of the best design schools in the world,
but also to its particular brand of architecture – sober, abstract, weighty,
heavy on the concrete – which has become enormously popular as an antidote
to the flighty excesses of icon architecture. It also happens to have the
two most revered architectural firms in the world, glaring at each other
from either end of the country, each, perhaps, representing the two opposing
teams in architecture.
In the east is Peter Zumthor, self-styled guru of “slow architecture”, who
favours handcrafted, locally sourced buildings and rarely steps more than
100 yards from his front door. In the west, Herzog & De Meuron are
globetrotting, glitzy, celebrity showmen exporting icons such as the Beijing
Olympic stadium and Tate Modern around the world.
Bronze medal: the Netherlands
The Dutch have slipped a bit in the medal table since a decade ago, when as
the “Super-Dutch”, they ruled the world in cheeky, intelligent design and
architecture, which they exported round the globe. Don’t write them off yet
though – it’s just changing fashion that makes their bright colours,
tin-shed vernacular and gawky angles less fresh than they were. And you can
never write off Rem Koolhaas: he’s got years left in him, though the ideas
are thinning a little these days.
The Dutch go a long way on relatively few architects – 56 per 100,000 – mostly
because design is almost written into the national constitution. The
Government has feverishly supported the creative industries and indulged
them with commissions – Dutch public housing puts ours to shame.
Runners up
Spain: has shot up the league table by using its economic boom to go on
a spending spree since the Barcelona Olympics. Frank Gehry, Foreign Office,
Richard Rogers, Herzog & De Meuron and Jean Nouvel have all built here,
but Spain is also fostering homegrown greats like Enric Miralles and Rafael
Moneo, and younger talent such as Mansilla & Tunon, Justo Garcia Rubio
and Abalos & Herreros. With the boom going bust, however, it may not
last.
Norway, Finland and Denmark: for consistent quality, these three are
always in the top ten: wealthy, design-literate nations, with quality
buildings, though their architecture, heavy on sublime engagement with
nature, can lack passion.
Germany: follows suit, though is more eclectic and international in its
patronage – supplementing its diet with David Chipperfield and Frank Gehry.
Austria: loves indulging its intellectual architects, and adores its
kerrazy angles, perhaps too much. But they have the finest –
architect-designed – supermarkets in the world.
North America: after decades of slumber since the Fifties and Sixties,
the US has commissioned a great swath of major public buildings in the past
eight years, from its own talent – Morphosis, Gehry – and Europe’s – Hadid,
Chipperfield, Koolhaas, Herzog & De Meuron. New York, especially, is
undergoing a renaissance, thanks to the design-savvy Mayor Bloomberg.
Special medal for effort
Portugal: for such a small country, the consistent quality of
Portugal’s architecture is staggering, betraying the overwhelming influence
of Alvaro Siza, recent winner of the RIBA’s Gold Medal, and much revered
since the Seventies for his serious, sublime, locally rooted Modernism.
Could do better
Britain: lots of money sloshing around until just recently, with little
but the millennium projects to show for it.
France: though solid, still hasn’t got over 1968, in architecture as
much as literature, though young guns such as Lacaton & Vassal and Jakob &
Macfarlane promise rebirth in the future.
Italy: given its heritage, and the huge number of architects – 194 per
100,000 – and nearly five times the UK’s architectural student population,
Italy has been far too conservative, relying on Renzo Piano for its renown.
Blame Berlusconi.
The ones to watch
Central and South America: the collective nations of this continent –
Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Peru, and especially Chile – while drawing on
their European heritage, are going it alone in spectacular fashion with
their own new generation of great architects.
The Phaidon Atlas of 21st Century World Architecture is available from timesonline.co.uk/booksfirst
for the special price of £90 (free p&p)
