Conserving Everyone’s Energy but His Own
The New York Times, November 23, 2003
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Opening to immediate public acclaim, the renewed Reichstag and its daring design solidified a developing European consensus that important buildings must transcend their everyday functions to represent a community's or a nation's values and aspirations. The threat of pollution-induced climate change is taken so seriously in the continent's largest economies, for example, that important commercial and public buildings are expected to act as research projects, advancing the goal of a building that produces no carbon emissions whatsoever.
Having been founded, to replace the old Greater London Council, in the spirit of anti-big-government conservatism, the Greater London Authority would seem to be an unlikely candidate for such continental idealism. Nevertheless, the acres of glass, the ramp and the inviting "living room" at the top all serve a metaphor that Lord Foster imported from the Reichstag: the literal transparency of governmental processes. (From all over Berlin you can see visitors strolling the spiral ramp that hangs inside the Reichstag dome.) It's certainly apt for a new governing body in London that needs to impress a skeptical electorate with a fresh approach. (On these shores, the best-known accomplishment of London's mayor, Ken Livingston, who works in the building, has been to assess hefty fees on London drivers in an apparently successful effort to reduce congestion.)
It's less clear that the equation between transparent architecture and transparent government will work in London. Though the authority hopes to inspire confidence in open government, it does so in a rather literal manner, without Berlin's tragic history to play against. There, Lord Foster was able to tap into an underlying German faith in art as a means to social betterment-a faith that has somehow survived two world wars and the Holocaust.
Inside the city hall Mr. Shuttleworth doesn't sacrifice beauty to ideals. In the gorgeous Assembly Chamber, an oculus of unusually transparent water-white glass (regular glass has a slight greenish tint) opens the chamber northward through a diagonal fretwork of tubular-steel supports to a splendid vista of the Tower of London and London Bridge. The room is bathed in light as limpid and serene as a Vermeer painting. (This is also part of the low-energy scheme: the Assembly need only switch on the lights for nighttime and televised events.)
There's no architectural finger-wagging; like the engineering innovations (achieved thanks to Ove Arup & Partners) that keep the tilted oval from tipping over, the ecological technologies are invisible, not tacked-on as a reminder of the building's virtue. Indeed, with barely a right angle or a standard piece of steel or glass to be found, the building shows off the sophistication and skill of Lord Foster's construction-skill so highly developed that British architectural critics were stunned when New York failed to embrace his proposal for ground zero. (Instead he's supposed to design one of the office buildings at the World Trade Center site for its developer, Larry A. Silverstein.)
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