Khaleela Zaman
DISTRIBUTION MANAGER

For College of Architecture students,
Wednesday, October 22, was an early morning—
and a long day. At 9:30 am, Dean Wiel Arets
announced the beginning of the Mies Crown
Hall Americas Prize (MCHAP) 2000-2013
Symposium and Award Ceremony. Following
the Dean’s short speech, each of the seven
MCHAP inaugural finalists broke off into
student-led discussions with the architects and
clients about project—specific details.

The Iberé Camargo Foundation
breakout session was very well attended, and it
seemed like even more people started crowding
around to hear the conversation as the session
came to a close. Contradicting his aging
body and hearing difficulties, Alvaro Siza, the
Portuguese architect of the project, captured
the imagination of everyone around him. The
way he spoke about the foundation built in
Porto Alegre, Brazil and the way he conducted
himself throughout the session made him feel
like a grandfather. Even the men present during
the session who worked with Siza on the project
radiated with positive energy, laughter, and
smiles--one of whom stressed the wonderful
“spirit of collaboration” on this “happy project.”
The same man also said that whenever they
reached a tough spot in the project, they always
followed their master, Alvaro Siza, and found a
way to accomplish what needed to be done in
order to maintain the project’s integrity. For
instance, béton Blanc (white concrete) was
never made in Brazil before this foundation.
Therefore, those involved with the project
found a way to make it work, even though they
were forced to invent a whole new way to build

 

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in Brazil.

Another amazing thing about Siza’s
foundation is how he came up with the form
of the building. The taller rectangular mass of
the foundation reads as being very stable, yet it
also has three angular arms that stretch out from
the mass, creating a hole between the mass and
the arms where you can stand outside feeling
still enveloped in the architecture. Alvaro
Siza described the context of the site, with the
liveliness of the downtown area in view while
looking in the direction of where the arms of
the building stretch out. He felt a pull towards
downtown himself, and this reflects in how he
pulled out the ramps (which is the function
of the arms, joining the different floors of the
structure) from the tall mass: the architecture
itself stretches out towards the city. The
taller mass then has a shorter corresponding
rectangular mass, and both are connected
underground by the service areas located
one meter below. Additionally remarkable
is how, despite there being very few window
perforations in the massive block making up
the foundation, Siza claims that the building
can operate until 6 pm. without electrical light.
The small windows give such expansive views
while also taking in light, which reflects off the
white concrete walls to illuminate the entire
space.

Obviously, the breakout session with
architects and clients was the most interesting
part of the entire symposium. The subsequent
roundtable client-focused discussion with the
entire college, held in Crown Hall’s Upper Core,
was quite dreadful. By this time, everyone was
getting hungry, and it did not help that the
roundtable went overtime by an hour, leaving
only twenty minutes for lunch. Following lunch
was the MCHAP debate with all seven finalists

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and the jury at the roundtable. The debate topic,
Rethinking Metropolis, was intriguing, because
this is basically the slogan of the new dean of
the architecture college. Tension was created in
Kenneth Frampton’s opening words, when he
effectively denied that the metropolis could be
rethought, that this would be quite a daunting
task. On the other hand, he quoted Mies van
der Rohe by advocating that we must learn to
live in the jungle, in the chaos, since cities have
expanded so much lately. This debate felt mostly
static after his opening comments, other than
one later instance when the person representing
the Seattle Central Library spoke out in a cynical
manner against architects creating a distinct
language and that architects should instead do
whatever “turns them on.”

The finale of events after the debate
included a fancy reception, dinner, and
presentation of awards against the elegantly-
decorated Crown Hall (this environment
enhanced by its lack of architecture students
during these events). The candles lining nearly
the entire length of the building created an
experience like no other while viewing the
building from the outside in the surrounding
night-time darkness. In the end, both Alvaro
Siza and Herzog 8: de Meuron (for their unique
parking garage at 1111 Lincoln Road, Miami,
Florida) won a prize, since the jury ended up
splitting the original MCHAP 2000—2013 into
one for 2000-2008 (presented to Siza) and
another for 2009-2013 (given to Herzog 8r de
Meuron). Overall, the entire day of MCHAP
transformed Crown Hall into a building worth
even more than its previous significance owed to
Mies, and it also opened up students’ eyes to the
real world of architects practicing remarkable
architecture around the globe today.

 

Photos by KhaleeIa Zaman

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