Speaking of Starchitecture, "After the buzz disappears, so do the crowds"

Cincinnati's Contemporary Arts Center: a victim of celebrity architecture. Contemporary Arts Center photo by Roland Halbe.

According to an article in today's SF Chronicle by John King, about the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati. From the article:

When architect Zaha Hadid strutted her stuff on Sixth Street in 2003, critics swooned and attendance soared -- two reasons the Contemporary Arts Center in this long-struggling downtown hired her in the first place.

Three years later, the building's still there. The crowds aren't, judging by what I saw earlier this month. And this would-be icon stands as a cautionary tale: In an age when celebrity architects are courted by cities and institutions desperate to make a splash, brand-name buzz can fade quicker than a fresh coat of paint. Not that you'll find much paint adorning Hadid's energetic concoction at Walnut and Sixth streets, a jabbing collage of concrete piled atop glass.

The exterior resembles an interlocked and overlapped set of unadorned cubes starting to pull apart. A long black form shoves out toward Walnut Street, while a gray slab that looks like a squat sideways L is perched on thin concrete stilts above the ground floor's glass wall.
Step inside and the sharp-angled confusion continues; the only curve comes as the floor slides up to become the rear wall, a move that Hadid dubbed the "urban carpet" whisking the city into the institution. Alongside it, a black ramp slices upwards five stories through a thin atrium. At each stop there's a varied jostle of galleries -- connected by twists and turns rather than the spacious art-lined passages you expect in a museum....

"Hadid's architectural pyrotechnics haven't reversed the tide. Granted, I visited on a bleak day in bleak midwinter. But empty storefronts and "office for rent" signs aren't seasonal."
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Creating complete destinations and sustainable experiences is more than starchitecture and faith in "if you build it they will come."


Index Keywords: urban-revitalization