Dusseldorf: Whimsy and Wonder in the Transformation of a Channel

Dusseldorf proved to be a big surprise.  We had come to see the trio of Frank Gehry buildings which line the harbor channel of central Dusseldorf, drawn both by the iconic beauty of the three buildings and by an amusing story of how the particular circumstances of their financing led Frank Gehry to their design.  It seems that these three buildings were financed by a trio of backers, each with a particular sense of their own uniqueness.  With three different visions pushing the project design in different directions, Frank Gehry came up with an innovative solution - three different buildings, each with a character and material all its own, balancing each other, and inviting the casual stroller to nestle-in near a favorite, and enjoy.

The sight of Gehry's trio of buildings as seen from the appropriately named cafe Gehry's

The metal brother is hiding in the center here, barely visible among it's more imposing looking siblings

As in so many of his steel and titanium buildings, the interplay of light of a Frank Gehry metal building (the middle one in the Dusseldorf trio) is magical as the day goes by.  When he was still establishing himself as an architect, Frank Gehry experimented a lot with metal, looking to move the materials of architecture forward.  To study the interplay of sunlight with titanium and with stainless steel, he nailed up undulating pieces of the metal to the telephone poles outside his Los Angeles offices and watched the effects of light on the curving metal as the sun went down.  When I met him for the first time at his offices this summer, I went outside after our meeting to look at the telephone poles - sure enough, you can still see the nails and staples which held on the metal for these early experiments.

None of the colors you see on this building - the reds in the windows, the blues on the bands, the yellow-whites which dapple the exterior - actually exist on the building.  They all simple reflect the colors of the waning sun in Dusseldorf on a the Saturday this past week when we were there.

We found Diane tightrope-walking in a park above Gehry's Dusseldorf trio, and she was kind enough to let us take these photographs as she practiced her balance in front of Frank Gehry's vision of balance.

This trio of buildings is a great example of how striking differences with a few unifying design elements can create an integrated, comfortable, inviting design experience.  Using different building materials - brick, metal, and whitewashed cement - but unifying the buildings with clever site arrangement, similar jutting "Frank Gehry windows," and with movement generated by angles and curves, the effect is very warm and inviting.

We have had a similar feeling - that STRIKING DIFFERENCES WITH UNIFYING DESIGN ELEMENTS can create a beautiful eclectic harmony - at several of the locations where we stayed during our trip.  One is certainly today's London, where striking, modern, inventive buildings by Norman Foster and Renzo Piano (Gherkin and Shard) share the Thames Rover skyline with Tower Bridge, London Bridge, the Great Wheel, and the Tower of London.

I will post another time on whimsy, design, and the comforting similarity of eclectic differences, as we have experienced them in our surroundings, both outside in the architecture we have seen, and inside in some of the private apartments, artist studios, and houseboats we have been fortunate enough to stay at through our lodging bookings on Airbnb.com this trip.  I'll go back and add the link here when that blog post is complete.  You see a lot more into the minds of the artists of a culture if you don't stay in homogenized hotels, but at people's private apartments, offered to others through the magic of the Internet.

Dusseldorf also features a 500 foot tall sky tower, which stands imposingly over the harbor.  The top features downward-angled windows which look down to the ground, and at the top is the obligatory rotating restaurant from which you can see the city.  You can see the tower in context of Gehry's building here.  This tower really hit me as we walked below it along the harbor to Gehry's buildings.  It made me think.  And it wasn't happy thoughts

The structure to me is singlularly uninviting.  I don't know if it is the cold beige cement of the base itself, bringing a drab industrial quality to 90% of the structure.  Could Antoni Gaudi with his curves and tile have made this tower base attractive?  Would it have looked beautiful and inviting in Calatravsa white tile?  Or is the problem more fundamental - the somber nature of the structure, so different than the inviting Gehry play space of three buildings and a cafe below.  Something just doesn't work here.  I can't quite put my finger on it.  Any thoughts?

The top of the tower is at the very least interesting, and could even pass for attractive after a few beers:

But something still doesn't work.  I am beginning to ask myself - and I'm fighting this creeping thought tooth and nail - if height itself is not the problem.  We have visions of transforming Boston's skyline with Trinity Spire - of building a 900-1000 foot tall structure which serves as a beacon to America for those outside it, and which serves as a symbol of Boston and of America to the future as surely as the Eiffel Tower serves as a symbol of Paris and France to the world.  But if height looks like this, and moves the feelings from joy and accessibility to those of remoteness, pomp, and grandeur, then height is an enemy of the good.

I can't quite bring myself to use the phrase here, but when I met with architect Moshe Safdie this past summer - the first architect kind enough to meet with me about this crazy plan, and the creator of Expo '67's Habitat, a breakout architectural project in sustainable living - he asked me the following question before we began to discuss design: "Are you planing to build another giant p***s in the sky?"  After I picked up my jaw off the floor, I laughed.  When it comes to lots of architecture, he certainly calls 'em like he sees 'em.  This is distinctly not what we are after.  When my friend Neal observes that to him the skyscrapers of Dubai simply take a twentieth century obsession with building height and recapitulate it in the twenty first century, I am left truly reflecting.

Can we design and build something transformational of the skyline of our city, but also inviting, warm, inclusive, and welcoming of the people who inhabit it.  Norman Foster's Gherkin is warm, whimsical, inviting, and - oh, by the way - very tall.  Height must be a means and not an end.  If we cannot create the feeling of community, crowdsourcing, inclusiveness and the commons, and include skyline-transforming height, then we cannot transform the skyline.

As Frank Gehry told me, the hard part of architecture is what you let go for what is essential.  We need to decide what is truly essential.  A monument from the people, and for the people.  Not an intimidating edifice.  That is essential.

A problem for another day.  

But this nagging question about WHAT IS TRULY ESSENTIAL will be our companion from here forward to the tall towers of Dubai, Kuala Lampur, and Tokyo. And indeed from this time forward, I now understand the questions both great architects were asking.

Two other thoughts on Dusseldorf, about the transformation of a channel, and about whimsy.

One possible site for Trinity Spire is in the Fort Point Channel area along the water, what Boston is now calling the Innovation District.  The Innovation District will in many ways be the legacy of our two-decade-serving mayor Tom Menino, as he has fought, championed and cajoled an area once dominated by parking lots and chain link fences into what will soon be a new hub for start-ups, artists, and innovators in New England, a new Palo Alto, a new Cambridge, along the water in Boston.  Today, the Channel itself is dominated by a two story brick Postal Service warehouse and distribution center on one side, and by a similarly drab low-slung razor-blade making factory on the other.  In 100 years, I am certain that neither structure will be there.

What Dusseldorf did with the transformation of their harbor channel is instructive on what Boston might do with ours.  Their channel itself is drab - in many ways far more drab than ours - flanked by high walls of cement and grey water.  But a combination of extraordinary architecture, a tolerance for inventiveness and eclectic disharmony, and a certain sense of whimsy have made the channel the walking center of the city, filled with families, young lovers, and older Germans out for a stroll.  How did they do it?  They created bits of green, lovely plantings, and architecture, architecture, architecture.  

In Dusseldorf, this boring industrial warehouse, complete with graffiti....

... became this:

Look in the lower right of the building, and you can still see the same graffiti.

Suddenly, through the magic of whimsical sculpture, the building has gone from a drab, uninspired nothing, to a trendy office of architects, designers, and startups.  Fantastic!

I watched children run across the bridge over the channel to get close to this building, laughing as they ran.

The crawling frog-people scale the face of the building:

Climb to the top and exult in triumph:

And swarm the place like they own the joint:

Love it!

Other buildings along the channel embrace this whimsical spirit of art and design for its own sake:

 

And it's not just limited to the buildings:

 

Dusseldorf.   An unexpected joy.  A place of STRIKING DIFFERENCES WITH UNIFYING DESIGN ELEMENTS.  A playful SENSE OF WHIMSY.  A place bringing reflection on the limits of height and the essence of what really matters in designing a place.  A place where the spirit of Theodore Seuss Geisel - better known as Dr. Seuss - is alive and well.

And to think that we saw it on Old Kurze Street....