Living in the dreams of starchitects

Every city loves an iconic building that attracts attention. But the truly impressive designs are those loved by the people who live and work in them, writes GEMMA TIPTON

WHEN WAS IT that “starchitecture” entered our vocabulary? Probably just over a decade ago, when Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Bilbao first thrust its curvaceous titanium form on to the scene. Suddenly, the public and the media, even those not often given to discussing the niceties of architectural expression, got in on the conversation, which went along the lines of “amazing shapes, but is it any good?”

Architecture that pushes the boundaries didn’t start with Gehry – it’s as old as architecture itself – but what is it like to live or work in an iconic or award-winning building? And do buildings win awards for the right reasons?

A visit to the offices of Temple Bar Properties, back when it was at 18 Eustace Street in Dublin, saw a whole wall of award plaques, many of which had been bestowed on buildings I had worked in, and at least three of which I had found plenty of problems with.

Arthouse (designed by Shay Cleary) was probably the “trickiest” of these. Part of the issue was that Arthouse (now Filmbase) had first been mooted when “multimedia” meant using different materials together, rather than working with digital technologies – and the brief for the building morphed as time went on. I liked the way Arthouse made (with Temple Bar Music Centre opposite) a new curved street, but not its strange arrangement of walkways, a staircase that only got you part of the way into the building, or the basement that felt cut off.

Arts buildings are notoriously difficult: they’re the commissions that get architects excited about experimentation, but they need to work both for artists who want to push the boundaries and for those producing quieter works of art that demand space and seclusion to be seen at their best. The other issue with galleries is that empty white cubes don’t look exciting in photographs, while wild curves and intersecting windows with dramatic shafts of light are a photographer’s dream. These days the majority of us see most architecture in magazines and books before experiencing it for real – if we ever do.

It's not just in galleries that there's a gap between reputation and practical reality. In the 2003 film My ArchitectNathaniel Kahn goes on a journey to try to learn about his dead father, Louis Kahn, through the latter's buildings. The Richards Medical Research Center at the University of Pennsylvania has been hailed, at an exhibition of Kahn's work in New York's Museum of Modern Art, as "probably the single most consequential building constructed in the United States since the second World War. It is principled, vigorous, fundamental and exhilarating. This building is Kahn's greatest achievement".

In the film Kahn jnr speaks to those who inhabit the building. “People come by all the time,” says a student, “taking pictures of this ‘awesome’ architectural wonder, and we just sit upstairs in the window and laugh at them, because it’s not a good place to work.”

“I don’t feel comfortable in my room, in my lab,” adds a professor.

The younger Kahn concludes: “This was Lou’s only major building in Philadelphia, and I wanted to like it, but I had to agree it was kind of disappointing.”

A more recent icon is Norman Foster’s St Mary Axe in London, also known as the Gherkin. Anecdotally, those who work there have complained that views are restricted and that, after a while, the wonder of it palls, even to the point of being tiresome – though Russell Higginbotham of Swiss Re, the reinsurance giant that is the building’s major occupier, is impressed overall.

“It’s light and airy,” he says. “And I particularly like how the circular footprint of the floors allows you to catch the eye of colleagues a fair distance from your desk. The open-plan layout we have on the Swiss Re floors is very conducive to teamwork. I also like the natural ventilation, which kicks in when ambient conditions allow – the windows open and the air conditioning shuts down.”

Some now-reviled buildings were visionary in their time. This was true of the Ballymun towers, which were a flagship for the "new Ireland" when they were built, in the 1960s, and of Scotland's Cumbernauld. Begun in 1956, Cumbernauld was groundbreaking, designed by Geoffrey Copcutt with a town centre on concrete stilts that included Britain's first indoor shopping mall. It won awards and featured in the 1981 film Gregory's Girl.By 2005 the entire town had "won" a Channel 4 competition for Britain's worst building on its series, Demolition. It is still standing.

Social problems, as well as issues with system building, played a large part in Ballymun’s downfall, and often the problems are of building itself rather than architecture. At O’Donnell + Tuomey’s Timberyard social-housing complex on Cork Street in Dublin, which has won several awards, including the Riba International Award and the AAI Downes Medal, residents’ complaints are to do with “snagging”, such as sticking doors, broken handles, cracks, drainage and sewerage. Dublin city architect Ali Grehan praises Timberyard for the generosity in its design.

“The link,” she says, “between the award-winning (impressive) and well-functioning (well-loved) buildings is generosity. Generosity is, I think, what elevates the former to become the latter. By this I don’t mean size but generosity in the design of routine elements through discovery of opportunities for greater enjoyment in use. This in turn creates distinctive, memorable and even delightful places. It is often forgotten.”

The expertise, or lack of it, of builders and building technology has always been a bugbear of boundary-pushing architecture. Gehry’s Bilbao Guggenheim became a possibility only when the Catia system – computer-aided three-dimensional interactive application – for building fighter planes allowed him to realise the shapes in his imagination.

Famously, Le Corbusier’s “seminal” Villa Savoye leaked from the very first rainstorm. “It’s raining in the hall, it’s raining on the ramp, and the wall of the garage is absolutely soaked. What’s more, it’s still raining in my bathroom, which floods in bad weather, as the water comes in through the skylight,” wrote Mme Savoye.

Le Corbusier blamed builders who weren’t yet up to the task of realising his creations.

The architect Niall McCullough says that, when considering awards, you have to take into account what the architect was aiming for – but new design thinking is not always immediately understood. Another O’Donnell + Tuomey building, the Irish Film Centre, was one of those award-winners on the Temple Bar Properties wall, but it wasn’t open long before the stunning interior was refitted to give it a fake-Irish-pub appeal.

Ali Grehan praises Fingal County Council’s offices in Swords, and particularly the council chamber. “I experienced the room again when Fingal held its World Design Capital workshop there,” she says, “and was struck by how, all other things being equal – we had brilliant sessions in Tallaght and Dún Laoghaire – this workshop seemed to be the most relaxed. This view was shared by other people who attended all three sessions. All meeting rooms should be round and full of light.”

Back to the world of galleries. The Irish artists Anne Cleary and Denis Connolly have recently exhibited in two prima donna venues of the gallery world: the Pompidou in Paris (designed by Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano) and what they describe as “the great sprawling monster” that is London’s Barbican (Chamberlin, Powell and Bon).

The Pompidou, says Cleary, has “open airiness and civic splendour” in the public areas “contrasting with the claustrophobic darkness and humming functionality of the steerage decks below”. More than 1,000 people work in the building, which “has long been considered the world’s most famous sufferer from ‘sick building syndrome’, holding several French records for numbers of staff on sick leave”. Cleary and Connolly describe the staff at the Pompidou as imbued with “fashionable Parisian bad humour. In contrast, the staff of the Barbican in London, a building from the same era and with a similar programme, couldn’t be more helpful, charming and unfashionably good-humoured.” Cleary is uncertain whether it is the Pompidou or Parisians themselves that are to blame.

“Iconic buildings,” concludes Grehan, “are an ostentatious expression of civic identity and are essential to a city. But they must be imbued with meaning, and they work only if the ground conditions are right and they respect those conditions.”

But, as Cleary and Connolly found out, the people inside those buildings matter too.

Shape changing?  AAI winners

• Dining hall and atrium, Trinity College DublinBy De Blacam and Meagher; award in 1987. Tricky proportions in the atrium make this a "problem" space.
• Irish Museum of Modern ArtBy Shay Cleary Architects; award in 1992. Not much to work with in a listed building, though the glass staircase was a marvel in its day.
• Cliffs of Moher Visitor CentreBy O'Riordan Staehli; special mention in 1994. Won an award long before it was built. The current controversy is less to do with the building than whether the centre or the cliffs are the "event".
• Model Arts and Niland, SligoBy McCullough Mulvin; award in 2001. Award-winning, but when the gallery extended, a different firm got the job.
• And the RIAI People's choice for 2010? HJ Lyons's Criminal Courts of Justice, the one building everyone wishes never to visit.