The tale of Pygmalion and Galatea remains one
of the most enduring descriptions of the transformation of art into life.
Pygmalion, repelled by the representatives of the female sex surrounding
him, sculpts the embodiment of his ideal woman. So cleverly does his art
conceal his art that he falls in love with his creation, dressing it up in
fine clothes, and generally treating it as if it were alive. At the festival
of Venus, Pygmalion implores the goddess to give him a woman to match his
ideal; she, guessing his true desire, animates the statue. This act of
vivification is confirmed the moment the statue blushes under the assault of
Pygmalion’s kisses. Colour is life. Art is superficial.
Although through Tate Modern, Swiss-based architects Herzog & de Meuron have
achieved popular fame for a building that houses works of art, the interest
of their buildings more generally lies in the extent to which they are works
of art. In this respect, the external surfaces of their buildings often play
an important role. The Ricola-Europe SA storage facility in Mulhouse,
France, for example, incorporates a leaf motif, derived from a Karl
Blossfeldt photograph, as a serial tattoo across the building’s glass
exterior. At the Library for the Eberswalde University in Germany, the
façades bear a pattern of images selected by Thomas Ruff from his archive of
newspaper photos and printed onto the glass and concrete panels of the
building’s cladding. In both cases, the imagery initiates a complex dialogue
between interior and exterior, form and function, and hints at a layered and
concealed spatial narrative. Yet perhaps the most intriguing aspect of such
buildings remains the striking way in which they reveal their art: via an
emphasis on surface, the consequent play between two- and three-dimensional
space, and the privileging of communication as the primary motive of
architecture.
Located in Deptford, the Laban Centre is Herzog & de Meuron’s first new
building in London (Tate Modern having been a conversion). When it opens
later this year, it will lay claim to being the world’s largest
purpose-built dance centre, incorporating a 300-seat theatre, twelve
studios, lecture rooms, a library and archives, a café-bar and public
gardens. Yet, in the context of Tate Modern, its scale will always appear
modest.
The architects describe the organisation of the Laban Centre’s various
spaces in terms of ‘a small city or village’: streets, courtyards, squares
and other urban features will articulate the interior space. Though
deploying a system more generally associated with the largest of scales (the
urban), the architects aim to break up the building into a relatively
intimate network of smaller spaces. The concept evolved from a study of
Laban’s existing premises in New Cross, which the Centre’s press releases
evoke using such colourful expressions as ‘chaotic beauty’ and ‘constructive
informality’. Herzog & de Meuron’s interpretation of this is an attempt to
negotiate between the public and private aspects of the building, and rests
heavily on the social and physical experience of an amorphous urban form:
the neighbourhood.
On entering the Laban Centre one is immediately confronted by a massive
sculptural object: a spiral staircase. In many ways, as its location might
suggest, this serves to define the experience of the building. Cast in rough
concrete, it appears like a huge abandoned drill bit, coring through the
two-storey structure. Enter the staircase and elegantly shallow steps guide
you upward in a graceful pirouette. Apart from fulfiling its literal
function, the staircase’s importance lies in the choice it presents those
who have entered the building: walk left or right to move around it, or
embrace it and travel upwards, a choice which compels an instant engagement
with the building. (Compare this with Tate Modern, for example, where,
having rolled down the entrance ramp into the turbine hall, one is propelled
upwards by escalators that set a tone of passive engagement with the
surroundings.) Through this active experience of a shared physical
environment you will have joined the neighbourhood. At the same time, and
despite its immediate impact of mass and physicality, the staircase
introduces themes of movement and circulation as key concepts within the
building. And in so doing, it cleverly articulates the essence of the Laban
Centre’s programme: the art of movement.
The building contains three such staircases, corresponding to three
wedge-shaped ‘streets’ that run through the building from front to back.
These are the most prominent components of a network of arteries that run
around the theatre, the ‘red heart’ of the building. One is constantly
reminded of the building’s function as a place for performance. And, as one
might expect of a work by Herzog & de Meuron, the façade is where much of
this performance takes place.
The outer skin of the building is constructed of polycarbonate panels, which
the architects have used to choreograph a striking alliance of colour and
light. The translucent panels carry a sequence of three colours – magenta,
green and turquoise – each of which appears in three tones. Those familiar
with the work of Michael Craig-Martin will recognise these as some of his
signature colours, and indeed, with the Laban Centre project, he joins Ruff,
Rémy Zaugg and several others who make up the list of Herzog & de Meuron’s
artist collaborators. Craig-Martin’s expertise at manipulating and merging
the experience of two- and three-dimensional space makes him ideally suited
to this role. (His 1973 work An Oak Tree – in which he famously claimed to
have changed a glass of water into an oak tree – might be said to represent
his own version of the Pygmalion myth.)
Talking about the Laban Centre, Craig-Martin (who Herzog & de Meuron first
met in his capacity as a trustee at the Tate) emphasises the fact that, from
the very first, it was never stipulated that the collaboration with the
architects would necessarily result in the creation of a specific artwork.
In part this has proved to be the case, for – with the exception of a mural
on one of the external walls of the theatre – it is almost impossible to
tell where the work of the architects stops and where that of the artist
begins. The colours which ‘wrap’ the façade correspond to those used to
distinguish the three wedge-shaped arteries (a chromatic system of street
naming), creating a link between exterior and interior. This is a further
elaboration of the sense of literalness and simplicity in the relationship
between form and content that Herzog & de Meuron have managed to preserve
throughout the building, despite the apparent complexity of its internal
structure.
By day, natural light will filter through the building, causing colour to
‘leak’ into the various studio spaces. By night, the lights in active parts
of the building will project that colour outward, onto the water of Deptford
Creek to the rear and across the landscaped public space in front of it.
Building and surroundings will ‘breathe’ together following the movement of
the sun and the rotation of night and day. This blush, in turn, helps to
dissolve the barrier between the walls of the building and the ‘village’
beyond, creating the artificial illusion of a neighbourhood. As with all
buildings, there is a community inside and a community outside.
Last year, Herzog & de Meuron won the Pritzker Prize – the architectural
equivalent of a Nobel Prize, awarded annually to a living architect whose
built work has resulted in ‘significant contributions to humanity and the
built environment through the art of architecture’. The Laban Centre
certainly satisfies these criteria in terms of the community dance
programmes and public facilities it offers, and in the claim that its new
building (which has the backing of Lottery funding and other public monies)
can play a central role in the projected renaissance of one of London’s more
deprived areas. Physically, the building is a confident articulation of this
promise, and its landscaped gardens (the ‘village green’) will offer the
area a new public space. Whether the medium of dance can provide social
development on a equivalent scale remains to be seen. Indeed, one of the
problems with any culture-led development of urban space is that, like
Pygmalion, it simply replaces the deficiencies of reality with an ideal
vision. The real trick is in bringing that ideal vision to life.
Yet, with the Laban Centre, Herzog & de Meuron have conclusively proved that
they can work with art in a way that goes far beyond the superficial. Like
Eliza Doolittle, Bernard Shaw’s early twentieth-century Galatea, their
buildings have consistently attempted to disprove the dictum that ‘you can’t
be a nice girl inside if you’re a dirty slut outside’. As other commentators
have pointed out, Herzog & de Meuron’s celebration of tattoo, ornament and
spectacle flies in the face of the disdain for these populist forms that
held sway from the nineteenth century until the last few decades of the
twentieth. Moreover, such works mark a sophisticated embrace of the neon-lit
spectacle of advertising and marketing that characterises the late
twentieth-century city. But whether the carnivalesque spectacle of street
life at the Laban Centre is convincing enough to merge with the actual
street life of Deptford – the extent to which their art can conceal its art
– may well prove to be the true test of the building’s success. When Bernard
Shaw revisited the theme of Pygmalion in his 1912 play, it was to insist,
despite pressure that he indicate the possibility of a happy ending
(eventually satisfied when Hollywood turned the play into the musical My
Fair Lady), that ‘Galatea never does quite like Pygmalion: his relation to
her is too godlike to be altogether agreeable’. There is always the danger
that the people of Deptford will feel the same.
Mark Rappolt is the Architecture Editor for contemporary