The reunification of Germany in 1989 not only had a great impact on the lives of many Germans, especially those living in the former DDR, but together with the decision to move the nation’s capital from Bonn to Berlin resulted in two major international design competitions in 1992: the first was to convert the existing Reichstag building into a home for the German parliament, the second being the Spreebogen planning competition, which included a chancellery for the head of state as well as needed buildings nearby for the Federal government.
Many will recall that the Reichstag competition was won in a second stage by Norman Foster. The difference between the firm’s initial proposal in the open stage and the final solution in the second stage would seem to lend credence to the rumor that others in the firm were responsible for the initial proposal, though Foster himself may have seen it before it was submitted.
The 1992-93 Spreebogen planning competition, the most significant urban planning competition to occur in Europe in the 20th Century, drew 825 entries from around the world, including 96 from the U.S. It called for 5 million square feet of new government buildings, including the Federal Chancellery, the Federal Council and the Reichstag together with its related facilities on the Spreebogen site. Won by Schultes/Frank of Berlin by a very large majority of the jury vote, it was followed by opposition from powerful politicians, who were successful in demanding a second, final stage to be contested by the First, Second, and Fourth Place winners who were to respond to a list of criticisms formulated by the Ministry of Regional Planning, Building, and Urban Design. The revision stage was completed in June 1993, and, once again, confirmed by a large majority, the Schultes/Frank scheme was the jury’s overwhelming choice.*
It was almost immediately followed by an invited competition for the Chancellery building itself—also won by Schultes and completed in 2001. This was the first building block of the Spreebogen design, followed by the construction of several government buildings to the north of the Reichstag and spanning the Spree River to the east.
The final, western phase of the Spreebogen concept has recently been approved by the government and will address needed additional space for the Chancellery. Already ten times the size of the U.S. White House, it will be connected by a bridge to the Winter Garden park on the other side of the Spree to the west, and have room for 400 offices now scattered throughout in the city. Scheduled for completion in 2027, the complete realization of the Spreebogen plan will then have taken no less than 44 years.
*Karen van Lengen, competition juror, COMPETITIONS, Vol. 3, #3 (1993) p. 12
In July 2019 the Vilnius Concert Hall competition jury began its deliberations to identify a suitable design for this major performing arts project. As one might have anticipated, two of thejurors on the seven member panel, Ole Gustavsen (Snohetta) and Andreas Cukrowicz (Nachbaur Architekten) had won high profile competitions for similar music center projects—in Oslo and Munich.The jury was confronted with a formidable task, as the competition, organized according to UIA regulations and anonymous in its format, had attracted 248 entries from around the world. For this one-stage competition, the organizers listed the following evaluation criteria, whereby the order of the criteria was not to reflect any priority:
Form and Dichroic Light Scott Hall at Carnegie Mellon University Michelle LaFoe and Isaac Campbell OFFICE 52 Architecture Forward by Cesar Pelli, FAIA Introduction by Michael J. Crosbie, FAIA Leete”s Island Books, Maine USA Hard cover; 96 pages in color ISBN 9780918172709
In his introduction to Form and Dichroic LIght, Michael Crosbie never mentions the term, “wild card,” to describe Office 52’s participation in the invited competition for the Carnegie Mellon Engineering Building. The four finalists, picked from a list of 17 firms, also included three household names: ZGF, Wilson, and BCJ (Bohlin Cywinski, Jackson). So what possible chance could a firm, which had just recently opened a small office in Portland, Oregon, have against a competition lineup of this magnitude? But as OFFICE 52 Principal, Isaac Campbell explained, as a small firm, “we were quite nimble,” and the $50,000 stipend the firms all received to produce a design could allow OFFICE 52 more time to undertake the research involved than might be the case with a larger office, where a cost controller is constantly focusing on the operation.
Memorials to commemorate atrocities committed by the Nazis during World War II have taken many forms. Holocaust museums such as the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. by Pei Cobb Freed or the Jewish Museum in Berlin by Daniel Libeskind, all endeavor to paint a broad picture, including narratives covering most of the major events and sites. Former concentration camps such as Auschwitz, Dachau, Theresienstadt and Buchenwald have been frequent tour destinations. In the case of Buchenwald, the local city of Weimar has placed pictures of “Witnesses” throughout the downtown area as a reminder of the Nazi legacy.
Detroit’s Dia Plaza competition is hardly unique in initiating a search for urbanistic solutions to a cultural cluster. Vienna, Berlin, Mesa, Fort Worth, Chicago’s Millennium Park and Paris’ Parc de la Villette are just a few examples of projects where the focus on spaces between buildings, and arriving at a connective plan to infuse new energy into the site, has been the primary goal of other projects. All of these have been faced with their own challenges: solutions for some have been relatively simple—Vienna’s Museum Quarter and Berlin’s Forum—while others such as Paris’ La Villette and Mesa’s Downtown Plaza represent a more challenging subject spatially. In the case of Detroit, the aim of the competition was clear: “The design competition centers around enhancing and enlivening the DIA’s exterior campus and aims to connect all the institutions with a beautiful series of settings that support all types of programming and public art.”
Milton Keynes, known simply as MK, represented one of the more significant results of the UK’s “new town” programs from the 1950s and 60s. Situated almost equidistant between Oxford and Cambridge, and within easy access from London, the city had everything one might expect from a modern community—except a university. For a city having a population exceeding 250,000, and projected to have 500,000 inhabitants by 2050, that will all change, as a competition supported by the MK Council (MKC) and Cranfield University has resulted in five firms competing for the opportunity to design a higher educational institution to eventually accommodate 15,000 students.
If cities in the U.S. are anticipating funding from government entities to solve a dire need for affordable housing, they should be prepared for a long wait. The national government, a traditional source of funds for such projects, has shown little if no interest in the issue, and state and local sources are at a minimum. To exacerbate the problem, the construction cost of affordable housing has risen exponentially the the past few decades. Gone are those days when architects such as Oakland-based Michael Pyatok could build affordable housing for $100 a square foot.
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