Pseudo-Choice

Potato chips, or crisps, come in a fantastic panoply of artificial flavors. BBQ, Ketchup, or "regular" are standards the world over. Then there are also what we might call "regional" chip flavors, such as wasabe in Japan, Dijon mustard in France, or cured ham in Spain. Recently, two very interesting new chip flavors came on the market in Spain: "FC Barcelona" and "Real Madrid".

The rivalry between these teams is legendary, of course, extending well beyond the football pitch and into just about every other aspect of life in Spain, especially politics: FCB is a symbol of Catalan nationalism while RM symbolizes Castilian centrism.



Yet, lo and behold, both of these potato chips taste exactly the same. Their saltiness, texture, color, and even the sound they make when consumed are identical. At least, I would think, one of these might taste like "calçots" and the other "cocido madrileño". No such luck though.



But then, maybe these chips are not about chips at all. In fact, all this really has nothing whatsoever to do with junk food gastronomy. No, this is entirely about merchandising and product tie-in; a perfect example of form over content. The chips are just a pretext for us to "freely" choose and buy a banner through which to assert a "personal" identity.



The scary thing is that sameness cynically and manipulatively disguised as democratic choice--this pseudo-choice--is not just happening in the world of potato chips, but in politics, cities, architecture, product design... wherever things are tarted up on the outside to appeal to a different identity, but in reality contain nothing but more-of-the-same on the inside.



We are what we are sold, not what we eat.

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Not So Different

"Spain is Different" was a tourism campaign slogan coined in the mid-1960s by dictator Francisco Franco's Ministry of Information and Tourism (!), when it was headed by the late Manuel Fraga Iribarne, a man who would transform into a democrat decades later and continue a long-lasting political career until his death this year at age 90. Fraga's slogan became very effective, not only attracting millions of tourists and therefore much-needed foreign currency to revive Spain's moribund economy decades after its devastating civil war, but also serving to re-brand Spain as "hip"and "fun" at a time when it was isolated and only beginning to gradually open up to the world. Fraga is also known for having relaxed censorship laws during the 1960s, leading to the emergence of the popular expression "con Fraga hasta la braga!" ("with Fraga all the way to the panties!"). Such actions led him to be perceived as a relative reformer from within the dictatorial regime, making him relatively popular at that time. After Franco's death in 1975, however, when students and workers protested massively to demand democracy, Fraga was the Interior Minister who publicly proclaimed "La calle es mía!" ("the street belongs to me!") and ordered police to shoot demonstrators, killing five and wounding many dozen. Needless to say, this heavy-handed action caused him to be largely despised thereafter, ruining the relatively good reputation he had enjoyed until then.



Curiously, a multinational corporation that designs and manufactures computer and entertainment products started out by similarly  branding itself as "hip" and "fun" with a slogan that rings quite similar to "Spain is Different". And now, news of some rather heavy-handed and sordid business practices are similarly beginning to ruin its reputation.



Late in his life, Fraga dedicated his energy to an ambitious cultural and economic development project of which he is the brainchild, the City of Culture of Galicia, perhaps in an effort to restore his legacy. He organized an international competition in 1999 that was won by Peter Eisenman (an article I wrote on it can be read here), but curiously, one of the finalists in this competition, OMA, submitted a design for a building in the shape of a ring (a project which for some reason is not published on OMA's website). Coincidentally, the corporation whose slogan is "Think Different" is expected to soon begin construction of a building designed by Norman Foster that is shaped like...you guessed it: a ring.



Who would ever have thought that the story of a veteran politician from Spain and that of the world's biggest IT corporation could sound so similar, or perhaps better said: not so different?

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BMW Welter

Luxury automobiles are fetish items par excellence. The advertising, branding and merchandising of this kind of consumer good is designed to appeal to our emotions, not our rationality. Why else would we buy something that devalues by up to a third the moment we drive out of the dealership? High-end cars are not sold to us based on their technological virtues, even though a great deal of research goes into automotive technology. They are sold on values that tap our desires to be seen to live a certain lifestyle and attain a certain social status. The refrain of “tell me what kind of car you drive and I’ll tell you who you are” is not entirely unfounded, and the mere sight of certain brands of high-end automobiles can conjure all sorts of stereotypes about the identity of the owner. Volvo: tweed-clad, tenured university professor. Porsche: young and nouveau riche. Mercedes: conservative executive. BMW: aggressive entrepreneur with little time to lose. Hummer: I’m super-rich so fuck off.



Over the last decade, a number of automotive companies—especially German ones such as Mercedes-Benz, Porsche and BMW—have embarked on media-friendly architectural projects designed, among other things, to build brand equity. There is now a collection of sophisticated automotive architectural works throughout Germany by the likes of UN Studio, Zaha Hadid, Coop Himmelb(l)au and Delugan Meissl, providing a perfect excuse to fly into Frankfurt, rent a roadster, load some Kraftwerk into the sound system and go on a whirlwind Autobahn tour of these sites.



The most outlandish of these new buildings is BMW Welt in Munich, an "experience" and "customer delivery centre" adjacent to the corporation’s factory, museum and landmark Four-Cylinder office tower. Designed by Coop Himmelb(l)au, BMW Welt has won several awards, including the Wallpaper 2009 Award for “Best New Public Building” (just how public is this building really?), the World Architecture Festival 2008 Award in the “production” category (was there no “consumption” category?) as well as the RIBA European Award in 2008, the jury of which praised its “spectacular cloud-like roof”.



Now, I suppose three esteemed architectural award juries can’t be wrong, but I have tried and tried and cannot for the likes of me see the virtues of BMW Welt. The building is an automobile and motorcycle showroom the size and feel of an international airport terminal. Its idiosyncratic architecture has no shortage of entertaining quirks, folds, twists, whims and conceits, but I can't help but think that these tricks are trying pathetically to make the building feel less commercial and more artistic. They seem more like hollow gestures. Naming the roof a “cloud”, the floor a “landscape” and the entrance feature a “whirlwind” is cute, but it is still an oversized commercial showroom.



Yes, the building is formally complex and impeccably crafted down to the last detail. It is architectural bravado, but that's just about all. Despite the beautiful cars, beautiful salespeople, and beautiful views onto the neighbouring Olympic Stadium and BMW buildings from the 1960s, BMW Welt feels empty and devoid of soul.



If the architecture is supposed to build up the company’s brand equity the way its highly effective television and print advertising campaigns have consistently done, then this building falls short in comparison. Give me the BMW ads on TV—they are more thought-provoking.











Too bad the stylist didn't know all the connotations of the word "lemon"...

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Welcome to the Hotel Barcelona

In case anyone hasn’t noticed, Barcelona is in the tail-end of a hotel construction boom. And Barcelona being “Barceloooooonaaaaaa” means, of course, that these have to be designer hotels. Designery types such as Richard Rogers, Dominique Perrault, Carlos Ferrater, Oriol Bohigas, Juli Capella, Enric Ruiz Geli, Oscar Tusquets, and Ricardo Bofill (to name only some) all have a four- or five-star hotel in the works if not recently completed.



Interestingly, a number of new hotels are high-rise point-towers à la Benidorm, which is not in itself a bad thing since the city has nowhere to grow except in height. But others are being built in some rather questionable areas. One new hotel has recently been built on the side of Montjuïc hill, a public park of historical importance in which the construction of new buildings is strictly prohibited. It is painted dark green in a pathetic attempt to blend in with the hill’s vegetation; yet another example of what I have termed "everyday camouflage" (see Lotus International #126). Another hotel—an embarrassingly awful clone of the Burj al Arab Hotel in Dubai—is going up right at the edge of the sea, another non-buildable zone. One can’t help but wonder if the city isn’t making some very special concessions to hotel developers. Perhaps that is why the Ajuntament (City Hall) launched the advertisement campaign “Visc(a) Barcelona”, some months ago; a wordplay that in Catalan that means both “I live in Barcelona” and “long live Barcelona!” This latest campaign is obviously aimed at making residents proud to be living in a city well on its way to having the most hotel rooms per capita next only to Las Vegas.



Now I’m thinking to myself: this could be heaven or this could be hell.



Fine, but what does this mean for architecture? Well, for one thing it means that the hotel is possibly eclipsing the museum as architecture’s favorite building type. When designing a hotel, an architect can show off their talent much more than with a museum, since one can design a whole way of life from the building itself down to the toilet paper dispenser. When designing a museum, an architect must restrain herself from upstaging the art, but a hotel is an architect’s wet dream: a chance to do a work of "total design"; to control absolutely every aspect of the life lived inside. The fact that people usually only inhabit hotels for a relatively short period of time makes total design tolerable, even attractive. Hey, it might even be fun to try out a totally designed environment for a holiday experience. Architecture, once the stuff of Grand Tours and now that of global media events, has always been better suited to tourism, travel and temporary inhabitation than to dwelling, Being, or everyday life. Perhaps we can say that architecture has finally found its true "home".



Hal Foster, in his incisive book Design and Crime (and other diatribes), argues that, not unlike the turn of the last century, around the time that Adolf Loos published “Ornament and Crime”, we have once again entered an era of total design, one that he terms “Style 2000.” Perhaps Foster was responding to Mark Wigley, who asks in Harvard Design Magazine #5 “Whatever Happened to Total Design?” In any case, the hotel has eclipsed the home as the locus of total design today. Loos's "poor little rich man's home" is today the poor little rich man’s home away from home.



They’re living it up at the Hotel Barcelona. Such a nice surprise. Bring your alibis.

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World Glamor Festival

The “World Architecture Festival” is being launched in Barcelona in late October. Is this good news or bad news?



The first thing that should be pointed out is that “WAF08” is being organized in London, not Barcelona. A click on “about us” at worldarchitecturefestival.com reveals the following bit of information: “The Festival is being launched as an annual event by Emap, the media group which runs other festivals including the World Retail Congress and Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival” (my italics). Hmm.



The second thing that needs to be mentioned is that a three-day visitor pass to this festival costs 600 euros. For students, the cost is “only” 150 euros.



It seems that this promises to be an architecture event “Cannes style”. Will there be walks along the red carpet? Will Lord Foster arrive in his helicopter? Will the paparazzi be out in force? Will Entertainment Tonight provide those of us who can’t attend this event (due to conflicting agendas, of course) their detailed analysis? Look, here comes a famous patron from Dubai!



What will Wolf Prix talk about at his keynote address celebrating 40 years of Co-op Himmelb(l)au—how he went from being anti-establishment in 1968 to building for multinational corporations such as BMW today?



Too bad I can’t make it.

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