{"id":584,"date":"2011-09-13T20:19:55","date_gmt":"2011-09-14T02:19:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/?p=584"},"modified":"2011-09-13T20:19:55","modified_gmt":"2011-09-14T02:19:55","slug":"calatrava-doa-at-dia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/?p=584","title":{"rendered":"Calatrava Plan DOA at DIA"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, not exactly dead on arrival<\/a>, but close.\u00a0\u00a0 Almost from the start the great Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava\u2019s designs for Denver International Airport\u2019s South Terminal Project were assailed by critics<\/a> \u00a0for disrespecting the original (and now iconic) Curtis Fentress design of the main airport terminal.\u00a0 Then, last April, plans for a\u00a0 Calatrava-designed commuter rail bridge<\/a> over Pena Boulevard were scuttled because of cost.\u00a0 Thus, Calatrava\u2019s resignation from the South Terminal project last week because\u00a0of insufficient funding and creative differences with project<\/p>\n

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South Terminal Model, DIA (Santiago Calatrava\/Associated Press)<\/p><\/div>\n

partners comes as no surprise. \u00a0The issue at present is what DIA has bought in the way of Calatrava concepts for the cool $12.9 million that\u2019s already gone into design work. \u00a0Lawyers are working on it<\/a> while others want some accountability<\/a> from those who got DIA involved with Calatrava in the first place. There\u2019s also a little hand-wringing about what Calatrava\u2019s resignation at DIA means for Denver given the earlier departure of another starchitect, Stephen Holl, from the Denver Justice Center<\/a> Project for basically the same reasons.<\/p>\n

Last week’s story<\/a> in The Denver Post<\/em> has three local architects deconstructing things for us.\u00a0 George Hoover suggests that Denver is now at risk of acquiring a reputation as a city that high profile architects should avoid if they expect to see a project through to completion.\u00a0 He suggests that when an architect pulls out of a project it’s not a matter of \u201cprima donna mentalities\u201d but rather of \u201crealistic expectations and experience.\u201d \u00a0Still, \u00a0the Calatrava firm\u2019s \u201cDear John\u201d letter (to Kim Day, DIA Manager of Aviation, available here<\/a>) certainly has a bit of a prima donna flavor given that it attributes to other parties \u201cthe circumstances that make it impossible for [Calatrava] to perform\u201d while underscoring his firm’s apparently exhaustive efforts \u201cto find solutions\u201d to financial, scheduling, and other problems. No doubt the issues are complex, and no doubt the money matters.\u00a0 Shrinkage of the project budget by almost 25% from $650 million to $500 million is significant.\u00a0 Thus, a second Denver architect, Dennis Humphries, defends Calatrava\u2019s decision by suggesting that any compromising of an artistic vision to fit a budget is “career damaging” for an architect at the Spaniard\u2019s world-class level.\u00a0 But Humphries also notes that other Great Ones have made compromises with a city to get things built; e.g., Michael Graves and his Denver Public Library<\/a>, a building that has become one of Denver\u2019s most beloved.\u00a0 Plus, I\u2019m not sure the \u201cuncompromising\u201d thing \u00a0plays very well in an economic climate that\u2019s required many people to compromise their visions to fit a budget, or that\u2019s left them with no roof over their heads at all.<\/p>\n

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Denver Public Library<\/p><\/div>\n

It\u2019s much more difficult to find fault with the third Denver architect quoted in The Post<\/em>\u2019s story, Curtis Fentress himself.\u00a0 Fentress is said to view large-scale projects through the lens of social responsibility to the community, an ethos that\u2019s probably lost, perhaps for good reason, on your typical starchitect. \u00a0For Fentress, \u201cit\u2019s not about the architect’s ego, its about the community and the purpose of the building.\u201d\u00a0 Susan Barnes-Gelt, a veteran observer of the Denver architectural and urban design scene, opines that we don\u2019t need a world famous architect to design buildings\u2014we have great civic architects right here in Denver.\u00a0 This is almost certainly true, and our local talent will now be put to the test at DIA<\/a>.\u00a0 But I\u2019d also like to believe that we\u2019ve reached a tipping point (if only occasioned by economic necessity) at which both people and<\/em> place<\/a> have begun to matter more in the way that we imagine our city.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, not exactly dead on arrival, but close.\u00a0\u00a0 Almost from the start the great Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava\u2019s designs for Denver International Airport\u2019s South Terminal Project were assailed by critics \u00a0for disrespecting the original (and now iconic) Curtis Fentress design […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[4,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-architecture","category-denver-urbanism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1H2bI-9q","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=584"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}