Frankfurt Architektur (4 - english)

Towers of Glass and Stone Article by Prof.Dr. Thilo Hilpert on the project "Campanile" by architect H.R.Hiegel. Published in the renonwed japanese magazine a+u, 8603 , Tokyo, pages 43 - 47. Beyond the attraction of drawings and designs exists a further information of the architectural project which only indirectly communicates with the beholder, but which, however, is part of the fascination of the project. It is the information about new ideas, about another "Zeitgeist" which has to be decoded, for it has exceeded the intelligble and historical pattern. Since the beginning of a classical avant-garde, glass prisms have been promised - shining at night, reflections, melting at the horizon. In view of the sarcophagus of the historism, its burdensome monumentalism, not only the futurist have pronounced themselves in favour of new aesthetics and have discovered potentials of the metropolitan scenery such as volume consisting of light and the transparency of new filigree constructions. Indeed this is exactly the point we are missing by looking on realisations in our neighbourhood, for example the silhouette of Frankfurt, which - arisen by the period of modernization - referred to a lot of programmatics - disconcerted from the distance, but only with a minimal value of approximation. The honesty of such assimilation of space is one of the polemic references of this work. It does not want to ignore any longer the already excecuted revolutionizing change of our perceptive apparatus which have deeply penetrated our conceptive habits and impressed our aesthetic sensations. For the realizations we know in our neighbourhood, are indifferent to both points: to their own architectural right as well as to the urban context they are put in. The stacking up of floors, which ignores in this country a new architecture of towers having been a historical experience, has coined a new type of architecture. This project arises against the real ignorance of the urban space as well as against aesthetic potentials able to be developped and demands aptitude in taking up new perceptive habits as well as accuracy in integrating architectural innovations into the context of urban architecture. Sometimes manifestos arise from the unprejudiced dealing with stale debates which have long ago assumed the character of conferences. The disputes of another generation concerning the reference to a traditional kind of building up, took place 10 years ago and has been evaluated. Strange, meanwhile the chest note in which the once daring manifestations of the classical modernism are made responsible for the passionless executions of assidous administrations. Also here a reference is opened which was blocked - but not only as a reference. Architecture is needed as an efficient invention in a double sense: as structured space and as tectonic sculpture - an invention instead of a copy. The tower is the product of the town instead of just over-stacking floors. An area is interpreted, which follows the traditional pattern of an urban context. And yet the situation receives a new quality. This belongs to the systematic qualities of the project. This tower has a socle which is a hall, but which is derived from the modular system of the ancient urban space, the parcels and volumes of houses. Therefore this tower can also equip the urban space with the new quality of distance. Thus: lightness and heaviness, nearness and distance, obtained the synthesis of the project. This realistic vision has got away from the stair-pyramid of Hugh Ferris, he decreed in 1922 for the North-American town, as well as from the glass dome of Bruno Taut, which expressed for the last time the monumentalism of a perspective sight of the town in an universal s ystem centred in perceptive rays an vanishing points.(The nulity of the "vertical box" as a dominant factor whereupon a whole urban space is shortened, optically folded up, has become within European townplanning an out-of-date form of expression of an imperious gesture, which prohibits the potential of an architectural dialogue.) It`s a new kind of space interpretation which took shape in this project. This interpreation considers the town in historical and functional aspects as a system of vertical layers and formulates a space city of the third dimension. The analogies of the interpretation to which the project of a tower refers to will rather be found in San Giminiano in Italy and Shibam near the Indian Ocean, than in the character of cities of Babylon or Rome. New syntheses which are necessary and whose total motivation we can`t understand, syntheses which were inspired by experiences and which solve problems therefore don´t harmonize with the copies of the still valid conventions. It might be surprising, it surprised me, that this work was done by such a young architect. Isn`t it meanwhile supposed that this country has broken with ist traditional courage for architectural innovation and that it doesn`t offer any space for talents, that it is only sensible for the importation of over-due and often already tired talents with exotic sounding names. But avant-garde never was recognizable by the ornament, but by the contradictions by which it invites to disputes. H.R.Hiegel (Website) please visit also:http://archidose.blogspot.com/search?q=frankfurt (a wonderful arts blog, worth to be mentioned.)