UN demobilised - View - architecture exhibition - Brief Article

Architectural Review, The, July, 2002 by Raymund Ryan

Having achieved an international reputation with the 1996 Erasmus Bridge in Rotterdam the office of van Berkel & Bos has morphed in recent years into UN Studio. UN stands for United Network, their evolving interdisciplinary matrix of design experts and strategists. UN also stands, of course, for a certain New York-based global organizational brand. This presentation of current work picks up on that wordplay and that New Dutch brand consciousness. Its title UN Studio UN Fold seems to recognize geometric tendencies in the duo's built work to manipulate ground, wall and ceiling surfaces into contiguous spatial experiences. But the installation occupying the double-height Main Hall in Rotterdam is oddly static. Designed in-house (literally and figuratively) by the NAi, it takes the form of a nine-square arrangement of high, hollow cubes, each with a single entryway (three of the nine cubes are lower to negotiate existing structure). The work presented inside each introverted gallery is informed by mobility and cr oss-fertilization, by the interpenetration of infrastructure with the flow and idiosyncrasy of real life. Unfortunately these temporary pavilions, painted grey baby blue like the Erasmus Bridge tself, disallow any such dynamic or nuance within the exhibition. Several cubes are dedicated to key UN Studio projects: the Erasmus Bridge, the Mobius House (AR September 1999), Het Valkhof museum in Nijmegen (AR March 2000), a basalt-clad electricity substation in Innsbruck, and a vast transportation interchange in Arnhem already partially constructed. One cube contains very limited information on eight new proposals including a competition-winning strategy to enlarge the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut. Another houses two further competition successes. In Genoa Harbour, the Ponte Parodi pier is to be redeveloped as a cruise terminal and 'a three-dimensional plaza'. Near Stuttgart, for the Mercedes-Benz Museum, a circulation diagram will be extrapolated and stacked as a volumetric logo.

UN Studio UN Fold allows for a lively presentation within each cubicle; it is the interstitial cross-streets that are devoid of life. Technical drawings are joined by occasional water-colours, calligraphic gestures by van Berkel that strangely evoke the essence of particular projects. There are formal models plus informal working maquettes from the initial design phase of several projects. For the Erasmus Bridge and for Arnhem, video footage allows exhibition visitors a virtual tour of those only relatively remote locations (that of the Bridge celebrates its construction and opening festivities). Then there are superscaled photographic prints. That of Innsbruck - Fire Mountain - instils some sense of a contemporary sublime.

Typically, these montages combine views of abstract architecture with images of atmosphere or of people. Reminiscent of occasionally haunting canvases by David Salle, diptychs that juxtapose High and Low Art, the UN Studio prints are characteristically attentive to surface (not unlike, perhaps entirely by chance, )aintings several decades ago by the artist Audrey Flack). Intrigued by new methods of both construction and representation, van Berkel & Bos are especially attentive to contemporary social change and to consumerism. As such, the accompanying NAi catalogue with its magazine-style spreads and short narratives by Bos, is closer than the formal exhibition to the spirit of this innovative practice.

UN Studio UN Fold at the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAi), Rotterdam 26 May. IS September 2002, www.nai.nl