The Battle for the World's Skyline

(page 3 of 3)

This is how it was — until the financial crisis hit. The crisis itself was triggered in 2007 in the United States by an overheated market for mortgage loans that private citizens had taken out to buy houses and condominiums. Since then, the banks have been far more tight-fisted. Ironically, it is more or less the real estate industry's own fault that it has now been so difficult to borrow money. The boom is over.

A high-profile casualty of the credit crisis is a complex in Las Vegas called the Cosmopolitan Resort Casino. The shells of the two 180-meter (590-foot) skyscrapers are already up. For the lobby, developer Ian Bruce Eichner had ordered nine-meter (30-foot) robots that would play the song "Disco Inferno" on oversized guitars.

The project is now headed for foreclosure, the Wall Street Journal recently reported. One of the investors, Deutsche Bank, is at risk of losing about $1 billion (€645 million).

Another example is in Los Angeles, where construction on the Grand Avenue Project has been delayed several times. The collection of hotel, apartment and retail towers was intended to revitalize downtown Los Angeles at a cost of $3 billion (€1.9 billion). The complex was designed by Frank O. Gehry, another top name in the US architecture scene known for buildings clad in stylishly shimmering materials.

The work, initially scheduled to begin last December, has now been postponed until next February. The developers, Related Companies, blamed the delays on the real estate crisis. Soon one of the investors — Calpers, which is California's largest pension fund — withdrew from the project. Now the developers hope their new primary shareholder, the royal family of Dubai, will take a more patient approach.

Part 2: Hard Times, NY

Yet another of Gehry's urban improvement ventures has run into difficulties. Gehry was commissioned to transform an industrial wasteland in Brooklyn into a mixed-use architectural pearl. The price tag of the Atlantic Yards project — which New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg praised as a "colossal achievement of one of the world's leading architects" — was $4 billion (€2.6 billion). But demand has been unsatisfactory, and Gehry was forced to reduce the size of the largest tower in the complex. According to the developers, construction of several of the planned buildings will be placed on hold.

It's a tough blow for New York. For real estate aficionados, it remains the "ultimate 24-hour American city," a place that attracts the global elite. But it takes some effort and a constant series of facelifts to keep it that way. Where else but in New York is there so must distaste for any form of inertia?

The mayor had a plan to revitalize Manhattan, the heart of the city, with a special focus on the west side. His vision included building a modern train station, which would have required tearing down the well-known arena, Madison Square Garden. But now Bloomberg no longer knows how he is going to raise the $14 billion (€9 billion) the project is estimated to cost.

The original plan also called for an ambitious expansion of the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, a project that has now been considerably scaled back. And the search for an investor for the new Hudson Yards business district — a project that even jaded New Yorkers describe as "megalomaniacal" — recently became nothing short of embarrassing.

Tishman Speyer, a real estate development company, had initially planned to cooperate on the project with German-American skyscraper architect Helmut Jahn. But then it surprisingly withdrew. Now Related Companies has stepped in to take advantage of what may well be a historic opportunity. It could take months before the contracts are worked out and before a series of cliffhangers finally comes to an end. This in a city where the sky has traditionally been the limit.

Old Europe?

And what about Europe? Will the old world have to start getting used to the idea of becoming a museum — picturesque, but without any real chance of keeping pace with the iconography-rich growth of other continents?

According to a study by the Washington-based Urban Land Institute, a large number of major European deals that were until recently in the planning stages are now "clinically dead."

Perhaps Vittorio Lampugnani, an Italian architect who works in Milan and teaches architectural theory in Zurich, is merely trying to comfort himself when he says that he doubts whether cities like Shanghai will remain attractive in the long term. As he sees it, with their "layers of history," European cities "offer the sort of quality of life that will be in demand in the future." This is what Lampugnani calls "enduring cityscapes."

At the same time, a sharp division is naturally emerging. Lampugnani admits that the newly minted architects who opt to go to Asia are essentially building skyscrapers right off the bat, while graduates who stay in Europe can count themselves lucky if their first commission is to design a weekend home for their parents.

Still, he says, "if Europe manages its heritage intelligently," Lampugnani say, "it can be a huge opportunity, not just for culture and the quality of life, but also for the economy."

But, more than anything else, the economy is standing in the way. In Spain, for example, the association representing Spanish construction companies estimates that the number of new projects in 2008 will decline by more than 70 percent over the previous year.

Many European cities are not at all interested in becoming open-air museums. For example, London — as Europe's most important financial center — would like to liven up its Victorian grandeur with a few more futuristic landmarks.

When Norman Foster placed a bombastic, egg-shaped tower into the center of the old city early in the new millennium, it kicked off a wave of modernization. For the most part, Londoners approached the update of their skyline with humor, and Foster's skyscraper immediately earned the nickname of the "erotic gherkin."

With plans to construct at least 20 other towers in the coming years, London is enthusiastically planning to build itself into the 21st century. Although few of these projects have left the drawing board, some have already acquired nicknames. One skyscraper project has been dubbed the "cheese grater," and another is the "splinter." Others are called "head over heels," "boomerang" and "walkie talkie."

But even in London, where prices had been headed steeply up for a long time, the real estate industry is grappling with a softening market. Investment volume there is expected to decline by 30 to 40 percent in 2008, and Londoners are no longer accustomed to this sort of slowdown.

Almost all major projects in London are now considered highly speculative. And what about the fate of the controversial "walkie talkie" venture? The investor won't say.

A New World for Architect

Of course, shopping malls rarely prove to be aesthetic highlights, and architecture fans probably won't bemoan the prediction that 40 percent fewer shopping centers than planned will be built in Great Britain over the next five years.

But the decline in new construction also affects more ambitious projects. A London architectural foundation that had commissioned British architect Zaha Hadid to build its new headquarters pulled out of the venture, citing "economic nervousness." When stock prices fall, so does charitable giving, and the foundation relies heavily on private donors.

Although she made it clear that she was disappointed, Hadid has already moved on to other projects, for example, in Dubai and Warsaw. The modern architect has become a nomad. Like the itinerant tradesmen of the Middle Ages, architects go where the work is. A route that once may have taken them from court to court, now leads from continent to continent.

German Builders

Germany boasts 121,000 architects, the largest number in Europe. Although the country is considered one of the more stable markets, major urban projects — such as Hamburg's HafenCity — are the exception. Architects are upset that there are so few competitions open to everyone and that the opportunities for young, avant-garde architects to prove themselves are few and far between.

Project cancellations, no matter how discreetly they are handled, are noticed. BMW, for example, decided to cancel plans to build a new "Designhaus," although it now intends to "prioritize" other projects.

It's been only a year since the Federal Foundation for Building Culture was founded in Potsdam, outside Berlin. The new organization has already been sharply critical of the mediocrity of German architecture. Unfortunately, as the foundation's president, Michael Braum, puts it, it's been standard in Germany for quite a while "for owners to want everything, but for half the price."

Distant lands, where developers plan in larger dimensions, seem seductive. Léon, Wohlhage, Wernik (LWW), a Berlin-based architecture firm, made a splash in 2007 when it won a competition with well-known competitors to design the new government district in Tripoli, the capital of Libya. The architecture named their design "Tripoli Greens," combining arabesque minarets with park-like settings. However, construction has been postponed and architect Hilde Léon speaks of "a holding pattern."

As a rule, says Léon, she believes that it is important to work in places where high-quality architecture is in demand. "Some countries simply have some catching up to do," Léon says. At the same time, though, cooperating with controversial regions like Libya's doesn't seem to bother her.

Léon already has her sights set on the next market. It is only a matter of time, she says, before all of Africa will be "the next big thing." In this context, the word "big" is no exaggeration. What a paradisiacal concept for architects: all that undeveloped land for what Friedrich Nietzsche called representative architecture's "eloquence of power."

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

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