The concluding sixth and seventh lectures of our series will present two recent architectural competitions, the KANAL—Centre Pompidou and the Guggenheim Helsinki. Informed by the earlier discussed historical exemplars in the series, these two lectures will reflect upon ways architecture offices today use competitions as opportunities for experimentation.
In 2011, the Guggenheim Foundation organized an open international architecture competition exploring the possibility of a Guggenheim museum in the Finnish capital. Urtzi Grau, co-founder of Fake Industries Architectural Agonism, will present in this lecture their finalist proposal, and will discuss the participation in this renowned competition. Their proposal entitled “47 Rooms,” embraced Helsinki by focusing on interior climate rather than external appearance. Approaching Helsinki as city of interiors, due to its extreme climatic conditions, it extended on this network of interiors with walls, doors, windows, and the machinery that defines atmospheric conditions.
Kersten Geers (OFFICE KGDVS) will conclude the seven-part series by presenting the KANAL—Centre Pompidou competition. OFFICE’s second place entry for the conversion of the former Citroën garage in Brussels to house the collections of the Centre Pompidou, completed in collaboration with Christ & Gantenbein, Richard Venlet, Jan De Moffarts Architecten, Bureau Bas Smets, Bollinger + Grohmann Ingenieure, Arup, muller van severen, and Kritis & Kritis, proposed the insertion of two new pertinent volumes—one a stacked series of galleries, the other a silo as a container of the archives and library—in the existing complex. Geers will reflect on this semester’s theme, “Building Competitions,” exploring how architecture offices use competitions as opportunities for formal experimentation. From the circulation of ideas in the office, to ways in which competition proposals are informed by preceding built and unbuilt projects.
The Berlage Sessions is a thematic seven-part seminar series focusing on scholarly research and critical approaches to the history and theory of architecture and urban design. This semester’s theme, “Building Competitions,” will examine the histories, politics, policies, and processes of canonical architectural competitions, from the Chicago Tribune Tower, the Paris Opera House, the Palace of the League of Nations, the Canberra Plan and Parliament, and Parc de la Villette, to most recently KANAL—Centre Pompidou and Guggenheim Helsinki. Contributors include George Baird, Tim Benton, Urtzi Grau, Kersten Geers, Christopher Curtis Mead, Katherine Solomonson, and David T. van Zanten.
Kersten Geers is partner of OFFICE Kersten Geers and David Van Severen in Brussels. He is the Kenzo Tange Design Critic in Architecture at the Harvard’s GSD and is also currently teaching at the Accademia di Architettura di Mendrisio in Switzerland. He previously worked with Maxwan Architects and Urbanists and Neutelings Riedijk Architects in Rotterdam.
Urtzi Grau is an architect, Director of the Master of Architectural Research at UTS and co-founder of Fake Industries Architectural Agonism. Grau graduated from the School of Architecture of Barcelona in 2000, and GSAPP Columbia Universityin 2004, and is currently completing his Ph.D. at Princeton University School of Architecture on the 1970's urban renewal of Barcelona.
