Reflections in a Giant Golf Ball...Riyadh 2011

Al Faisaliah Tower is one of the two landmarks on the Riyadh Skyline, referred to some as the pen and by others as something out of Star Wars, whether you love it or hate it the tower does make for a dramatic silhouette against the desert sunset. With its gently curving columns framing office floors, mechanical levels, a spherical  restaurant and finally communications dishes before coming together to form a point at the top, hence the reference to a pen.  Unlike my previous visit to a Foster landmark, the Commerzbank Headquarters in Frankfurt, this one is open to the public if one is prepared to spend a minimum of 100 Riyals in the restaurant or alternatively 35 Riyals to ride in the elevator which at approximately 8 Pounds Sterling is on a par with any of the visitor attractions in London, a view over Riyadh at 40 storeys is well worth a look.

On the ground the way into the base of the tower is less obvious, hidden behind the curving glass west facade along the drop off protected from the overhead sun by a series of deep louvres. A closer look at the planar glass wall reveals a shopping mall that like the rest of the city appears to be distinctly closed. A walk round to the South reveals a similar facade with opening times, it seems that nothing really happens until night time, and when it does it is ‘Families only’. A continuation of the walk around to the east side on Olaya Street reveals yet another curving glass facade beneath the louvres, but this one has doors that appear to be open. a young Indian guy is busy polishing them after brief enquiry and pleasantries it is into the cool air of the Faislaiah mall, lined with designer shops that appear the same in London, Birmingham, Dubai...except that there are no women, even in a lingerie shop the sales assistant is male. All around the shops are targeted at women, jewelry, lingerie, designer dresses, killer heels...which is a bit ironic really as women are not allowed to be seen in public without being completely covered in a black abaya, which considering the heat, the air temperature is 48 degrees Celsius, is the last colour you would want to wear outside.

At the top level of the mall an air conditioned glass corridor becomes a bridge that runs along the full width of the lobby before terminating at Kenzo Tange's Khozama Centre and King Faisal Foundation Headquarters, a masterpiece in Metabolism, raw concrete weathers well in this climate and still looks pristine as it did when opened in 1976. A brief walk around the shaded plaza the white concrete, deep shadows and planting in neatly ordered raised beds gives the sense of a modern university campus and for a while its is easy to forget that you are in Riyadh. The lobby of the Al Khozama Centre is a dramatic space, an inverted ziggurat to the North side, steps in to meet its partner a shear facade of glass, at the top of a six storey atrium where very little direct sunlight is admitted overhead. At the ends a clear glass wall protected from the sun allows light to burst into the space casting dramatic shadows and reflections off the glass.

Back onto the air conditioned glass bridge and into the Faisaliah lobby, and what a lobby! a wall of petals four storeys high, sloping down to meet the plaza, heavily filtered daylight gives a sense of protection from the heat. Outside Ferrari's are parked in full view of the restaurants that occupy the wings on either side of the green plaza that contains the base of the tower giving a tiny fragment of the glamour of Dubai . Beneath the plaza a ballroom the size of football pitch with a network of movable dividing walls that can sub-divide the space into any number of permutations.

Back beneath the bank of petals and into the lift lobby and up to the globe, the golden geodesic orb that is so distinctive on the skyline. The view from the globe reveals the true extent of the sprawl that makes up the city of Riyadh. Horizon to horizon, low rise blocks form an endless continuum of of villas, ranches and private resorts hidden away behind concrete walls, in an ever expanding grid relentlessly marching over the desert, obliterating any geographical features, each new block contributing to the constant drone of air conditioning units that release more heat and Carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Riyadh has no real public transport system at present, so the grid is constantly alive with cars in an ever increasing stampede of people moving in and out of the city.

Closer to the base of the Tower the city fabric becomes a patchwork of vacant lots, construction sites, where portakabins forming site offices sit precariously at the side of a five storey hole in the ground, vertical faces cut out of the bedrock. Two parallel roads running North - South: King Fahd Road to the West and Olaya Street to the East form a strip that is home to Riyadh's towers, to the South, the Ministries with their fortified perimeters and signs politely telling you that photography is forbidden. To the North 2000 metres away is the Kingdom Tower, the counterpoint to Al Fasialiah on the skyline, elegantly reflecting the view of the changing city fabric in between. The two roads running to the north give an impression being torn from the city fabric where the edges have formed a wall of towers on either side. Further to the north visible only as a black mound in the beige continuum is the future of Riyadh, 300 hectares of office space under construction at King Abdullah Financial District, a symbol of the ongoing 'greening' of Riyadh.

All along the Watchtower, Frankfurt 1998

In my previous post 'Boob Tube or the New Birmingham' I made reference to the interface with New Street, High Street and the new Bull Ring feeling like Frankfurt, it is only fair that I also share my impressions of Frankfurt, this is a piece that has existed in notes and memories from a visit to the city over 15 years ago and has never found a reason to be written up...until now.

What I find interesting looking back over old notes are the observations made from an English perspective, and how far behind we are in terms of planning in England. In 1998 the Midland Metro was a new concept and a bit of a joke in the local press. Today a scaled down new scheme for the long awaited expansion has been released by Centro, see: http://www.expressandstar.com/news/2013/09/04/glimpse-at-31m-midland-metro-extension-through-birmingham/

At Bockenhiem Worte, is the university building with its student halls that are to be home for the next few days. This part of the university is ideally situated, adjacent a market square, main shopping street, McDonald's, bus route, tramway, and underground station (U-Bahn). Across the square stands a tower built in the middle ages looking like something out of the brothers Grimm’s fairy tales, a former watch tower at the town’s edge, the city wall is no longer there, the town’s edge has since moved as the city has expended. In the distance stands a communications tower with flying saucer and traffic cone. German students are very sociable, we are welcomed by at least twelve sitting around a large circular table in the large communal kitchen area, sharing cigarettes, everyone smokes here.

Below in the square streams on people emerge from the U-Bahn station, browse around the stalls at the open air market, fresh olives seem to to be the favourite, and walk across the square to hop on one of the numerous and frequent trams and buses that pass by the end of square. Everything seems to be well joined up here, mixed use is not an issue because it was never separated out.

A walk between the market stalls and into the U-Bahn through the most striking entrance, a railway carriage tilted at about thirty five degrees and driven into the ground, enter through the end and move downward along an escalator running through the carriage, into a light and spotlessly clean space to purchase tickets and proceed to the platform to be board a tram??? yes exactly the same as those on the surface running under ground. A friendly female voice announces arrival at each station over the on-board public address system, and very swiftly our destination at Kontsablewache is reached. A walk up the steps to be addressed by a distressed pigeon, cooing at its mate laying dead on the pavement, looking like an aerial courtship display has resulted in a fatal collision with the ironwork that supports the canopy to the station entrance.

The square at  Kontsablewache is surrounded by modern buildings unashamedly sitting alongside historic ones, this is a large square with a stage being dismantled from a event that has just finished. The bustle of passing traffic gives the feeling of a very lively city centre. A short walk off the square and into the Medieval city centre dominated by the intricately carved spire of the Der Kaieserdom  St Bartholomaus. It is lunchtime and Dom Platz is absolutely buzzing, it is April and not exactly warm but the locals are happy to sit outside the restaurants and cafes, 'doing lunch' and sharing cigarettes, it is very much a smoking culture here. The facades above the restaurants look every part the romantic chocolate box image that signifies the Europe of the brothers Grimm. I later learnt that the square had been bombed during the war and had been rebuilt exactly as it was before. The new trams running along the cobbled streets between the Medieval Buildings create a sense of juxtaposition where the new and old coexist in balance with each other.

Sunday afternoon and the Birmingham Pub is showing F1 Grand Prix, Coulthard in the McLaren versus Schumacher a thrilling race which would be more interesting to watch it the management did not keep switching off every time that Schumacher lost the lead. Race over, Schumacher won, luckily, I don't think we would have been allowed to stay if he had not, and time to look around the rest of the main shopping area. The Birmingham Pub is situated in the middle of Ziel, a totally pedestrianised area, a street linking Konstablerwache at the East end and Hauptwache at the West end, I love these German names, one that absolutely leaps off of the fascia is Peek & Cloppenburg for no other reason than conjuring up the image of the opening scene of Monty Python and the Holy Grail...clop clop clop! clop clop clop! I don't think they sell the two halves of coconut though.

The most contemporary intervention along the Strasse is the Zeilgallerie, architecturally a high-tech playground designed by Kramm + Strigl, out of the same vein as Archigram, Piano, Rogers, Grimshaw. Externally a folded frame less glass facade defines the front of a narrow central space of the retail environment that is dominated by escalators and glass lifts and expressive steel structure with pin joints and cables. The rubber moving handrail of the escalator usually black, is red. A ride up to the top level, ten in all, and a slow walk down a continual slope lined with shops selling anything from  home accessories to comic books. A ride in the glass lift back up to the topmost level and a walkway threads its way around the atrium to emerge outside to a rooftop observation deck, and the panorama of Frankfurt am Main spreads out below. Glass towers pop up from among the sea of tiled rooftops and tree lined Strasses in a scene dominated by Foster's elegant Commerzbank Tower, which at 56 storeys is the tallest building in Germany, and well worth a closer look.

In New York an observation that was continually repeated was that the skyscraper builders were continually extruding blocks from the grid and merely making ornamental tops to them to mark their presence on the skyline. With the exception of very few it seems as though the designers were unable to make their buildings meet the ground. On walking through Frankfurt’s financial centre the skyline is dominated by skyscrapers, some of them seem  pretty anonymous, however on the ground there is wealth of sculptures in the plazas outside them. The most dramatic being the Commerzbank Tower, here the design of the tower extends to the space that the tower sits in, it is a plaza slotted in behind the historic buildings that make up the street frontage.

The main entrance to the triangular tower is via a long, wide, flight of steps that rises in procession from the street forming a kind of mediating space between the street level and the entrance level, with sculptural almost triangular slots that abut the adjoining buildings. In essence the landscape that the tower sits in has been carved out of the existing fabric to make a space between two buildings and a great deal of care has been taken here. allowing this prominent tower to actually touch the ground really delicately. The setting back of the tower from the street edge makes it a successful intervention into the urban fabric.

On the opposite side of the sunken plaza that opens out onto a large public square, and reads as a secondary entrance to the tower but contains the plaza restaurant and crèche, that further assists in the sitting into the urban grain another sculpture that is actually a signage screen for the building rotates at closing time, slowly extending on both sides to close the plaza and complete the street frontage to Gross Galastrasse, nicely done.

On reflection The Frankfurt of 1998 was way ahead of its twin Birmingham, and in some ways it still is.