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Eric,

I just returned from Phaeno last week. It is indeed an inspiring, fun  
building with a rich collection of science, art  and perception  
exhibits/pieces. Ansel Associates Inc. did a fantastic curatorial  
job, as did the vendors, artists, and Dr. Wolfgang Guthardt and the  
entire Phaeno team who will now take "Die Experimentierlandschaft"  
forward. Put it on your to do (and notice) list!

Jamie


On Nov 28, 2005, at 2:49 AM, Eric Siegel (optonline) wrote:

> ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of Science-Technology  
> Centers
> Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related  
> institutions.
> ********************************************************************** 
> *******
>
> From today's NY Times, it sounds like a wonderful project.  Joe  
> Ansel has been directing the exhibition program, I think, and I  
> know that Trimpin did a large centerpiece.  Sounds wonderful.
>
> Eric Siegel
>
>
>
>
> November 28, 2005
> Architecture Review | Phaeno Science Center
> Science Center Celebrates an Industrial Cityscape
>
> By NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF
> WOLFSBURG, Germany - Architecture fans have been logging a lot of  
> air miles lately. Groupies seeking to whiff out the state of the  
> profession are more likely to find it in places like Seattle,  
> Cincinnati, Porto or Basel than in New York or Paris.
>
> Now they can add another destination to the list: Wolfsburg.  
> Designed by the brash London-based architect Zaha Hadid, the city's  
> new Phaeno Science Center is a hypnotic work of architecture - the  
> kind of building that utterly transforms our vision of the future.
>
> Ms. Hadid has never had much patience with the sentimentality that  
> leads some planners to seek inspiration in the 19th-century urban  
> model. Instead, her roots lie in the flowing freeways, modern  
> housing developments and industrial landscapes that define the 20th  
> century. The science center is the next step in that evolutionary  
> chain. Propped up on sleek cone-shaped columns, its sensual forms  
> draw strength from the energetic cityscape that surrounds it.
>
> One could argue that Wolfsburg has been preparing for this moment  
> for more than half a century. Founded in 1938 by the Nazis as a  
> factory town called KdF-Stadt - for Kraft durch Freude, meaning  
> "strength through joy" - it churned out what would become known as  
> the Volkswagen Beetle for a newly mechanized Germany. The ominous  
> brick smokestacks of the city's Volkswagen factory, the largest in  
> Europe, still loom above the city, separated by the Mitteland Canal  
> from rows of bleak workers' housing.
>
> In the late 1950's, city officials set out to spruce up Wolfsburg's  
> image, enlisting help from some of the world's most enlightened  
> architects. Alvar Aalto of Finland designed the city's marvelous  
> culture center, with its flowing lines, central roof terrace and  
> naturally lighted interiors, as well as a Lutheran church. The  
> jagged external forms and expressionist interiors of Hans  
> Scharoun's theater complex make it an architectural jewel.
>
> Ms. Hadid's design flows directly out of Wolfsburg's history. The  
> center - housing physics, biology and chemistry exhibits - rises on  
> a site just east of the city's train station and north of a sprawl  
> of generic 1990's office and shopping developments. High-speed  
> trains ramble by on tracks to the north, with the canal and factory  
> towers just beyond.
>
> Rather than turn its back on that context, the science center  
> embraces it. By positioning her dynamic concrete shell atop  
> enormous cones, Ms. Hadid allows pedestrian traffic to flow beneath  
> the building. A portion of the pavement ramps up to meet the  
> bookstore entrance; at other points the pavement sinks down to  
> steer visitors to an open public plaza directly under the belly of  
> the building. A sinuous blue strip embedded in the asphalt pavement  
> guides pedestrians through the plaza to a narrow bridge that  
> crosses the canal to the north.
>
> Architects may see a dreamy parallel to Le Corbusier's concrete  
> 1950's apartment-block housing in Marseille, raised up on rows of  
> streamlined columns. Yet Ms. Hadid's design draws as much on the  
> serpentine freeways of Los Angeles and postwar Europe's industrial  
> landscape as it does on such High Modernist precedents. Its  
> imposing, muscular forms celebrate the heroic large-scale urban  
> infrastructure of an earlier era, allowing us to see it with fresh  
> eyes.
>
> Lured from the surrounding street grid to the building's  
> underbelly, pedestrians enter what feels like a secret underground  
> world - a compressed pocket of energy amid the grayness of everyday  
> life. The cones are not merely structural supports, but house  
> functional spaces like the bookstore, conference room, a 250-seat  
> theater and the museum entrance.
>
> Stepping into the largest cone, visitors soar up an escalator to  
> the science center's main exhibition floor. Here, floors warp,  
> ceilings are distorted and walls seem to melt away. At one  
> juncture, the floor curves up to shape a series of loosely defined  
> exhibition areas. Above, the steel framework that supports the roof  
> swoops down at various points to give the spaces an added sense of  
> intimacy. At one end of the hall, an elaborate ramp spiraling down  
> through the bookstore guides visitors back out into the street.
>
> Ms. Hadid has described the layout of the exhibition space as a  
> sequence of exploded particles, like marbles scattered around a  
> room. By fostering openness, freedom and random choices, it  
> encourages the audience to create its own narrative. Your eye is  
> constantly drawn across curved surfaces and around corners to  
> unexpected views that lead you to make surprising connections.
>
> Born in Baghdad in 1950, Ms. Hadid is rooted in the modernist  
> belief that enlightened design can further social progress. She was  
> reared in one of the first Modernist houses built in Baghdad; as a  
> young student, she witnessed the construction of Gio Ponti's  
> planning ministry, which symbolized Iraq's entry into the modern  
> world, from the balcony of her school. Since then, of course, she  
> has watched that Iraqi dream unravel.
>
> I've always suspected that such memories are what imbue her work  
> with its heroic dimension. She sees modernity as a project that was  
> left incomplete, not as a lost cause, so her buildings set out to  
> resurrect a forgotten dream. The Phaeno center is the most  
> exhilarating expression of that vision yet - and a refreshingly  
> humane model for the future.
>
>
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Jamie Bell
Program Director, ExNET
The Exploratorium
3601 Lyon St.
San Francisco, CA 94123
Phone 415-353-0442
FAX 415-353-0433
[log in to unmask]

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