Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day

Herzog & Meuron - The Barcelona Forum Building (2004).

I sometimes get a sneaking suspicion that James Thurber had Guardian reporters in mind when he wrote the modern fable, ?The Sheep in Wolf?s Clothing?. Readers may remember that the moral was ?Don?t get it right, just get it written?. That was the impression I came away with after reading Jonathan Glancey?s purple prose on architecture in Barcelona (The Guardian, May 10, 2004), particularly the bits on Herzog & de Meuron?s Forum Building. For example, we were told that ?Its walls - smooth surfaces seen from a distance - are built of coral-like blue concrete?. In fact, the texture is more akin to the insulation often seen on the sides of new homes during construction. Furthermore, the building is a hideous Prussian blue ? coral it is not. Glancey burbles on: ?...the route now ends with Herzog and de Meuron's mesmerising Forum building, which, in certain lights, blurs and blends into the water beyond it.? Having lived in Barcelona for over a decade, I can assure you this building will only blend in with the sea during pitch darkness. The Mediterranean at this particular spot is any colour except blue, the predominant hue being dirty grey. This is explained by the fact that the Forum site sits atop an obsolete (but fully-functioning sewage plant) and is near the outfall of the polluted Bes򳠲iver.

Glancey, however, is not to be restrained by the dirty and unglamorous truth: ?Here are themes that stretch up to the stars and out to the sea in the same way that Herzog and de Meuron's building does.? The ?themes? here refer to the Forum?s endless vapourings on peace, sustainable development and multi-culturalism (part of a ploy to ?position? the city in the international tourism stakes rather than being the product of genuine conviction). There is not a whisper of the event?s commercial sponsors: Indra (missile projects, arms deals, links with Rayethon Corp.), Nestl頨baby milk scandal in the third world), ENDESA (trampling of indian rights in Chile, environmentally destructive dam schemes), etc.

The Forum Building houses fifteen terracotta warriors, provided by the Chinese government. Given the Forum's multicultural pretensions, it ia a cruel irony that the Tibetan monks were swiftly banished from the beanfeast. The Chinese had used their clout with the Forum organisers to get the monks thrown out. It seems the Peking regime would rather the world did not know of the goings on amid Tibet's Eternal Snows (genocide, cultural annhilation, colonisation, etc.). The Gods must have been angered by the Forum's kow-towing to the architects of Tianamen. How else can one explain the building leaking like a sieve during a Spring downpour, damaging two of the priceless warriors? A more prosaic explanation would be that it was the result of overweening Swiss pride and sloppy Spanish construction standards. Either way, the building failed a basic test - keeping the rain out.

On the subject of water, Glancey notes an interesting feature of H&M?s handiwork: ?...awash with water flowing from the roof to keep the building cool in summer, this is a design Captain Nemo would have prized?. Accordingly, a kind of shallow paddling pool crowns this triangular behemoth. The idea was to allow water to cascade (or perhaps trickle) down the outer walls to keep the building cool. Conventional air-conditioning was ruled out as carrying the wrong environmental message (curious, because the Forum organisers ignored all of Greenpeace's objections concerning coastline destruction, overblown property development, etc.). Anyway, the 'natural air-conditioning' was scrapped as hopelessly impractical. As a result, there is now a nasty growth of algae on the roof, no cascading water, and the Eighth Wonder of the World is a hothouse. I am sure the Babylonians would have done a better job and made some nice gardens too. Instead, we are saddled with H&M's Alptraum.

Glancey, perhaps unsure of himself at this point, drags in a fellow hack: ?...a colleague who has also seen the building describes it as looking like a film set built by James Bond designer Ken Adam. It could well be; an ideal, if not so secret, headquarters for a 007 villain. Today, Barcelona; tomorrow ... the world.? Frankly, I doubt it. No self-respecting baddie would look twice at this leaky, stuffy heap. On the other hand, just imagine what a Guardian journalist could do with it.

Charles Dawson