Abstract
The opening of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao in 1997 heralded the beginning of an era in world architecture defined by iconic buildings underpinned by mediatic exposure and the belief in the power of design to leverage urban conditions. Today, a conspicuous number of such buildings featuring non-standard geometries are experiencing accelerated forms of decay with the emergence of construction defects. This study compares the type of problems encountered in the Jubilee Church in Rome (1996–2003), analysed in previous studies, with the failures of other two contemporary buildings of analogous features, namely: the Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia in Valencia (1996–2005) and the Museum of the Arts of the XXI Century in Rome (1998–2010). The findings of the study show that the accelerated decay of the three buildings shares familiar features and common challenges: geometry of the façade, local environmental factors, labour organisation, and limited regard of maintenance principles. Building on the patterns identified here, the paper suggests structural reasons for their emergence and speculates on the potential benefits deriving from the amplification of the design function.
Highlights
The opening of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, in 1997, heralded the beginning of an era in world architecture defined by augmented mediatic exposure and the belief in the power of design to leverage urban conditions, either to unlock the economic development of depressed, post-industrial towns and socially disadvantaged areas, or to accompany and represent growth [1,2,3,4,5,6]
The account of the three projects against this background underscores the important and underplayed difference between technique(s) and technology, where the former refers to the operational knowledge required to respond to a discrete problem, and the latter indicates the process of deciding which technical solutions to select and employ amongst those available, in relation to the challenges that exist beyond the contained horizons of single problems. This distinction is worth considering, in relation to the issues highlighted in Rome and Valencia, and against the seeming evolution of building contracts towards the deconstruction of the building into specialist tasks, towards the procurement of technique rather than the deployment of techno-“logical” thinking
The concept of project management as a synthesis of “project design” and “design management” is present in the famous 1970s design writings by William Caudill, stating the need for every building project to be led jointly by a “troika” of experts, each sponsoring a discipline of practice: management, design, and technology [58]
Summary
Whether by disciplinary zeitgeist or marketing strategies, the structures generated by the political and social acceptance of this development paradigm are mostly recognisable by their iconic ambitions and non-standard aesthetics [7,8,9]. They reflect technical challenges generated by the following two related factors: (1) the extensive use of innovative construction systems and bespoke components, and (2) project teams involving local and non-local actors [10,11]. This paper intends to target buildings defects generated by design narratives relying on complex geometries
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