Membres du jury

Mlle. Imane Benkirane

Mr. Abdessamad Sekkal
Mr. Hassan Kharmich
Mr. Adil Sadik
Fait par
Afrad Abdellah
Encadr par
Mr. Larbi Bouayad
Ecole Natonale dArchitecture
2011-2012
URBAN IDENTITY
&
ICONIC BUILDINGS
Acknowledgement
Thank you to everyone who made this work possible.
Thank you to my friend, teacher and supervisor Dr. Larbi Bouayad.
Thank you to all members of the jury: our very friendly and helpful
teachers and friends, Miss Imane Benkirane, Mr. Abdessamad Sekkal,
Mr. Hassan Kharmich and Mr. Adil Sadik.

Great thank you, full of tenderness and love to my father and my
mother my two suns, the women in my life my soeures Fatim, Naima
and Mina, and my two favorite brothers Mohamad and Brahim.
Big thank you to all my friends Long live the friendship :) Big thank
you to all the staff of the school and all the people I met along my
course of study in the ENA or elsewhere.

4
Introducton 10
I. URBAN IDENTITY
1. Defniton .......................................................................................... 12
2. Urban image ......................................................................................13
3. Urban identty and its components................................................... 15
1.1 According LYNCH
a. Paths ................................................................................... 15
b. Edges .................................................................................. 17
c. Districts............................................................................... 17
d. Nodes ................................................................................. 17
e. Landmarks.......................................................................... 17
1.2 According Ledrut....................................................................... 17
a. Living centrality.....................................................................17
b. Dead centrality......................................................................17
4. Urban identty and contemporary challenges ...................................18
4.1 Urban identty and globalizaton................................................18
4.2 Civilizatonal identty and globalizaton ......................................19
4.3 Urban identty as publicity .........................................................19
II. THE ICONIC BUILDING
1. Genesis .........................................................................................................22
2. Iconic buildings Specifcites .........................................................................24
a. The concept....................................................................................24
b. Materializaton of the concept.......................................................26
c. Integraton ....................................................................................28
d. The signifcance..............................................................................30
3. Conteporary architecture and iconic buildings...............................................31
4. The actve forces in the materialisaton of iconic buildings ............................33
a. The client..........................................................................................33
b. The architecte..................................................................................34
c. A society or a community?..............................................................36
SYNTHESIS......................................................................................39
Summary
RELATION BETWEEN URBAN
IDENTITY ANDICONIC BUILDINGS
1

5
Introducton.........................................................................40
I. OVERVIEW OF THE PRITZKER ARCHITECTS
1. Cartography of starchitects export.....................................................42
2. Cartography analysis...........................................................................42
II. CASE STUDY............................................................................................46
1. UTZON and the Sydney Opera House ................................................47
a. A unique architect ..........................................................................47
b. The Sydney Opera House............................................................... 48
c. Architectural concept......................................................................49
d. Recepton.......................................................................................52
e. Synthesis ........................................................................................54
2. Gehry and the Guggenheim Museum ...............................................56
a. An architect in the PICASSO way.....................................................56
b. The Guggenheim museum .............................................................59
c. Architectural concept ....................................................................59
d. Reception.......................................................................................61
e. Synthesis ....................................................................................... 65
3. Renzo PIANO et le centre culturel jean marie TJIBAOU.....................68
a. The poet architect ......................................................................... 68
b. The Jean-Marie TJIBAOU cultural center.........................................68
c. Recepton.......................................................................................73
d. Synthesis.........................................................................................77
GENERAL SYNTHESIS...................................................................78
2
RELATION BETWEEN ICONIC
BUILDINGS AND URBAN IDENTITY
6
3
THE CITY OF AGADIR
La ville dAgadir
Introcucton..............................................................................80
I. AGADIR BEFORE AND AFTER ITS MEMORY LOSS....................................82
1. Agadirs historical context........................................................................82
a. Agadir Before the Protectorate.............................................82
b. Agadir During the protectorate..............................................83
c. The reconstructon or the beginning of amnesia..................87
2. Problematc of the contemporary context.............................................91
II. VOCATION OF THE PROJECT AND SELECTION OF THE SITE...................98
1. Vocaton of the projet ........................................................................98
2. Selecton of the site............................................................................98

4
THE PROJECT
I. SITE ANALYSIS......................................................................................102
II. DIAGRAMS.............................................................................................108
III. DOCUMENTS TECHNIQUES ................................................................. 131
7
A building becomes iconic when its form is simple
and unique. If you can draw a building with a few
sweeps of the pen and everyone recognises not only
the structure but also associates it with a place on
earth, you have gone a long way towards creating
something iconic
1
Tom WRIGHT
It was with this explanaton that Tom Wright justfed his concepton
of Bordj Al-Arab, his most famous achievement, built in Dubai, United Arab
Emirates. The defniton provided here by the architect to iconic buildings
results from a purely formal percepton of these buildings, but it enlightens
us about their raison dtre which is to become a part of some wheres
perceived identty.
Iconic buildings are not a modern inventon, they exist since man learned
to build and live in community. These buildings used to born from distnct
and clear contexts. From Their contextual diferences arose formal and
technical diversity in the constructon methods in the diferent civilizatons.
The Egyptan pyramid, for example, difers from that of the Maya, however
both are the icons of their respectve civilizatons in what makes its identty:
religious beliefs, politcal system, traditons, etc...
Today this is no longer the case; globalizaton has caused that all
around the world we build in the the same cultural model. From mirrors of
societal identtes, iconic buildings become simple merchandises imported
and exported, sold to those who can buy, investments that need to be
proftable, and for this purpose are stripped of their meanings.
This observaton is alarming and consequently, increasing lanes
rises to denounce this rupture. Indeed, the climate of uniformizaton has
legitmized for some cites wishing to keep their urban and architectural
originalites, the willingness to dip into their historical references. However,
contemporary percepton of architecture of yesteryear is ofen superfcial;
consequently the atempts to use it as a reference usually end by pastche.
Thus, the objectve of this work is to defne a conceptual approach to
design iconic, contextualized and valued projects. However, a major queston
challenges us :
What is the relaton between urban identty and iconic architecture?
1
Tom WRIGHT (2000), extracted from the documentary Superstructure 7 star hotel,
Discovery Chanel.
Introduction
8
This queston requires number of other questons in our study, whose aim is
to reach, through its theoretcal nature, the qualitatve informaton.
At frst a refecton in the concepts is needed to fully explore our topic
What is identty?
How is it manifested in a city?
Do we need it? Why?
What are its components?
The answers to these questons requires other concepts, which impose
additonal questons concerning the noton of iconic buildings :
What is an iconic building?
What are the elements that defne it?
What are the elements that distnguish it from other types of
buildings?
Accordingly, we will proceed to the study of practcal examples of the
interacton between iconic buildings and urban identty in diferent situatons
in the contemporary context. We fnally pass to the study of the city of Agadir,
in its relaton to our topic.
9
RELATION BETWEEN
URBAN IDENTITY AND
ICONIC BUILDINGS
INTRODUCTION
In this chapter we will frst try to
determine the existng interacton
relatons between the identty of a city and
its iconic buildings. For this purpose, we
will highlight the concept of urban identty,
its defniton, its meaning, its spatal
components, the actng forces involved
in its crystallizaton, its importance and
fnally its relatonship with the iconic
building. Then we will discuss the iconic
building, its history, its defning elements,
and its relatonship with urban identty.
10
1
1
11
12
I. THE URBAN IDENTITY
1. Defnition
Identty is a complex term. It is
supposed to represent an immaterial concept,
non-quantfable or measurable that updates
itself contnuously, therefore unstable. The
defnitons of the word abound and vary
depending on point of view or the science by
which it is approached.
Le Pett Robert 1965
1
gives three
defnitons of the word identty :
What makes something exactly of the
same nature as another
2
, so it is here
defined as the concept of the same and
the identical.
Permanent and fundamental
character of someone, a group [...]
conviction of an individual belonging
to a social group, based on a cultural,
geographical or linguistic sense of
community, and resulting in certain
behaviors.
3
. Here appears on one
hand both the singular and collective
intrinsic character of the concept, and
on the other hand membership and
adherence to the norms and values
related to culture.
And fnally, all facts and laws that
allows someone to be individualized.
4

In this defniton diferentaton and
individualizaton prevail.
We may therefore deduce from these
defnitons that the identty refers to the same,
1
French defnitons were translated into english by
us
2
ce qui fait quune chose est exactement de mme
nature quune autre
3
le caractre permanent et fondamental de quelquun,
dun groupe [] convicton dun individu dappartenir
un groupe social, reposant sur le sentment dune
communaut gographique, linguistque, culturelle et
entranant certains comportements
4
ensemble de donnes de fait et de droit qui per-
metent dindividualiser quelquun
the unique, the collectve, the belonging and
fnally the individuaton. These defnitons
convene contradictory and paradoxical
concepts.
However in this work we will study the concept
of identty in its interacton with the city, we
will study therefore the urban identty. But
what is urban identty ?
It is difcult to give a positve and
concrete defniton of it, due to the fact that
the concept of identty was frst processed in
the feld of psychology applied to people. Lets
then make a projecton, we defne a person in
a simplistc way, as a combinaton between a
body and a soul, one material and the other
immaterial and each one cannot exist without
the other. The same goes for the city, which
also has a body that grows and changes shape
and face with tme; the full and empty spaces
arising from its topography, and a soul full of
life and fantastc stories and events fashioned
by its inhabitants. Heidegger says, the human
being built in order to make a place for him in
the world, this process makes buildings in the
same tme as identtes. We inherit a part of
this built identty, but we also obligatory built
a part of it.
Thus, the urban identty can be defned
from this point of view, as both the result and
the process through which, all the mental
images of specifc characters in a partcular
city, viewed from internal and external groups,
get structured in order to symbolize its unity,
diference and permanence in tme, at a
given moment in its history. Thus the idea of
an urban identty becomes efectve, from
the moment we consider an urban entty as a
united and distnct social actor
5
.
5
Blaise GALLAND, Les identits urbaines . In :
Cultures, sous-cultures et dviances , Conventon
romande de 3e cycle de sociologie, 2eme session,
Bulle 24-26 novembre 1993.
13
This defniton can be truly understood only
through the explanaton of the two terms,
namely the mental image we call in the feld of
urban space image and specifc characters as
part of the urban identty. We will discuss these
concepts basing on the work of Kevin Lynch in
his book The image of the city
1
.
2. Urban image
Architect, Lynch is considered a pioneer
in the study of the urban image, being the
frst to write about this subject. He gives of
it the following defniton: The image of an
environment is the result of an operaton back
and forth between the observer and the milieu,
the environment suggests distnctons and
relatons and the observer selects, organizes and
charges of meaning what he sees, depending
in his level of adaptability and according to his
objectves, the image set limit and amplifes
what is seen
2
.
Lynchs book deals exclusively with
the formal collectve image of the city, or to
follow our refecton, its corporeal identty,
which he said was the result of shared mental
representatons of large numbers of inhabitants
of city, areas of agreement that can be expected
to appear without the interacton of the same
physical reality of a common culture or similar
physiological nature. . His study based on
formal analysis of three U.S. cites: Boston, Los
Angeles and Jersey City allowed him to defne a
new concept, the imageability:
For a physical object it is the quality, thanks
to which it is very likely to cause a strong image
in any observer. It is this form, this color, or
disposition that facilitates the mental imaging of
the environment strongly identified, powerfully
structured and very useful. (...). A regular and
1
Raymond LEDRUT, Les images de la ville , Anthropos.
Paris, 1973.
2
Kevin LYNCH, op cit. P : 7, mutats mutandis.
responsive observer could receive new sensory
shocks without them breaking most of his image,
and each new impact is repercuting in a large
number of existing elements in the image
3

LLynch believes that the observer would
be well oriented and easily by accentuatng
spaces imageability in the city. By that, the
individuals would acquire a deeper awareness
of their environment and possess a beter image
of it, which will generate a greater sense of
emotonal security. They may therefore establish
a harmonious relatonship with the world that
surrounds them.
The French sociologist LEDRUT,
whereas favored the noton of urban experience
in the constructon of the image, it was therefore
important to follow the sociological variables
distnguishing the inhabitants of the center
and those of the periphery, genre, age, socio-
professional categories and the inactve people.
For him, the image of a given city deals whether
or not it has a symbolic unity. Thus, the image
always has an emotonal resonance. It triggers
an emoton and expresses a global report from
man to city, which is personifed in this way,
the city becomes a person, and the emotonal
relatonship ofen takes a maternal coloring.
LEDRUT fnds a clear diference in the percepton
of identty and structure between European
and American subjects. According to him, this is
probably because of the existence of a historical
center in European cites, the monument is the
preferred landmark to city dwellers, but it is not
the history of the monuments that mobilizes
the city but much more widely seniority. The
personality of the city is defned for most of its
inhabitants by its ancient or qualifed as such
monuments.
LYNCH and LEDRUT studied the image of the
city only from the physical and material point of
view; they were interested with its body ignoring
3
Kevin LYNCH, op cit. P : 11
14
its soul that is just as important if not more in
defning its identty.
Image formaton :
Considering that the city is composed
of a duality of moments: its concepton and its
percepton. These two points intersect, since all
cites are designed in a certain percepton of the
CITY, and that city produces the society at least
as much as the society produces city. We will be
interested here only at the tme of percepton,
since the design of cites is the jealously guarded
privilege of a minority of architects and decision
makers.
According to Britsh philosopher, J. L.
AUSTIN (1971): any perception would be
an internal phenomenon commonly called
sensitivity, perception would be as a cognitive
act to access the understanding of a world that
we would interpret as our identity
1
According
to this thesis. Perception is, therefore, a
knowledge-led, by which the individual would
know what motivates him and seems real in
order to establish his personal mental image of it.
But is it true that we control our perceptions or
rather the feelings that a space inspire us?
The Swiss epistemologist Jean Piaget says
on this subject: There is space representaton
from the moment the symbolic functon appears,
in other words when signifers diferentates
as image-symbols or signs, the conceived
architecture would be a reconceived architecture
from its physical realites and the psyche of the
person who experiences on it the actvity of
percepton
2
.
The word psyche means to Piaget, knowledge of
the individual, his identty, his memory and his
powers of recall, interpretaton and evaluaton,
which he seems to share only with those of
the collectve memory to which he belongs.
Memory plays therefore an important role
in urban percepton, it stmulates it because
1
J. L. AUSTIN cit dans : Caroline LECOURTOIS, Perception
architecturale et image urbaine, le cas de Caen, Colloque
Internatonal Images et citadinit . Alger, Novembre
2005. P : 2, Mutats mutandis.
2
Jean PIAGET cit dans : Caroline LECOURTOIS, Perception
architecturale et image urbaine, le cas de Caen, Colloque
Internatonal Images et citadinit . Alger, Novembre
2005. P : 2.
percepton is also a kind of evaluaton by which
the individual try to interpret and redesign the
Existng relatvely to what he knows and what he
has experienced; his memories. In architecture,
buildings, monuments or areas recognized
as carriers of some memories, , are common
heritage, because they represent the physical
materializaton of memories, people, or events
which they celebrate. This selecton leads to
think that its inclusion in a collectve memory
partcipate in the creaton of a heritage-of the
architectural or urban seen, is imposing this as
a refecton of urban identty. This assortment
leads to think that its inclusion in a collectve
memory partcipates of a patrimonialisaton
of the perceived architectural or urban space,
imposing its self as a refecton of urban identty.
The relatonship forged by individuals in
the West between the physical propertes of a
real space and its symbolic meanings thus show
the importance of its socio-cultural inscriptons,
which can only be based on a collectve memory.
The Italian architect and theorist Aldo Rossi
said: The city itself is the collectve memory of
peoples, and as the memory is linked to events
and places, the city is the locus of collectve
memory
3
. This suggests that for any given
city, there is a collectve image which is the
envelope of a series of collectve images, each
corresponding to a large group of citzens who
in turn have their own individual percepton of
the city. There is only one village in a village but
an infnity of cites within a city. Each personal
representaton is unique, some of its content is
rarely or never communicated, yet they all join
into the collectve image .
It is therefore clear that generally a
defned community that shares values, beliefs
and collectve memory, maintains a special
relatonship with its historic monuments and
urban space, it creates a distnct image that difers
from the image a foreign person, although the
monuments and urban space are physically the
same for everyone. What makes the diference
are the values, beliefs, and collectve memory.
But to know by heart the story or religion of a
community is not enough to perceive its space
in the same way, a cathedral for example isnt
perceived in the same way by a Christan believer
3
ROSSI Aldo, Larchitecture de la ville, ed. lEquerre, Paris,
1981.
15
and another non-believer, to get the same
percepton one must adopt the same values and
beliefs , so the diference in percepton here lies
in a spiritual level.
It is therefore established that a person
forms a mental picture of the city, startng with
the physical image composed of various elements
of the urban space, thanks to his knowledge,
identty, memories and his capacity for recall,
recogniton, interpretaton and evaluaton.
Constructng, with this cognitve efort, an
urban world from his references and building his
own symbolic city. Therefore a person forges a
representaton of the city; he shares only with
those with whom he shares a collectve memory,
even if the urban space and its components are
physically the same. It is consequently important
to know these components to beter understand
this.
3. Urban identity and its components
The components that consttute the
identty of a city can be divided into physical
substantal and intangible non-physical. These
elements are the raw materials of the image
and identty of the city. They can resonate and
amplify the power of each other, or confict and
destroy each other. The essence of immaterial
identty of a city revolves around its people,
its religion, its culture, its values, its traditons,
its moods, its practces of space, its social
signifcance, its functon, its history or even his
name.
for example the Muslim urban space,
the organizaton type of the medina is derived
from the principles of the Islamic religion,
source of guidance concerning the unifying
doctrines revealed giving the basics of acton
whatsoever including qualitatve moral concepts,
and principles of identty in its suprahuman
reference. Compliance with these guidelines
is not necessarily a restricton on a formal and
precise and defned aesthetc model, its purpose
is to guide the design of a Muslim space valued
in accordance with the cultural characteristcs of
its inhabitants.
EConcerning the material components of
urban identty we will once again will base on
the two works of LYNCH and LEDRUT.
3.1 According LYNCH
1
:
The components of the formal identty
of a city can be classifed according fve types of
components :
a. Paths: routes along which people
move throughout the city. the image
of some channels is enhanced by
certain spatal characteristcs such as
how they are presented to the viewer,
or the view they ofer. distnct and
clear paths have a stronger identty.
a. Edges: boundaries and breaks in
contnuity.
b. Districts: large parts of a city
characterized by common
characteristics for example textures,
space, shape, symbols, types of
construction, placement, type of
activity, inhabitants, degree of
maintenance, topography, etc.
The resulting thematic unity is
characterized by the contrast with
rest of the city that can immediately
recognize.
c. Nodes : focal and strategic points of
a city. The meetng point of routes or
concentraton of certain functons or
certain physical characteristcs, large
squares, linear extensive forms, or
entre central neighborhoods or even
entre towns. Elements placed in a
focal point automatcally become
signifcant because of their locaton.
Nodes can be important even if their
appearance is formless and elusive,
but where space has a clear and
comprehensible form, the impact
is much greater, the node becomes
unforgetable. The perceived image
cannot stand too many nodal centers.
It seems the most successful node
is the most distnctve, or the one
that is intensifying a feature of its
surrounding environment.
1
Kevin LYNCH, op cit. Troisime chapitre, mutats mutan-
dis.
16
fg 1 Elements of a citys image
17
d. Landmarks: physical elements
whose scale is variable within wide
limits, they serve as guides thanks
to their uniqueness and physical
singularity appearance by which they
stand out from the context; these
are the iconic buildings. Having a
predominant spatal positon makes
elements landmarks by two ways:
either by making elements visible
from diferent angles, or creatng a
contrast with adjacent components
like a variaton in alignment or height.
Its also possible for an element to
become a landmark when a story a
value or a sign is atached to it.
These elements can change interpretaton: a
highway can be a path for the car driver and an
edge for the pedestrian, an area in the center
can be a District in a small town, and a node
when considering the entre metropolitan area.
In his book, LYNCH focused on
architectural landmark since that they hold the
greatest signifcance and their image includes
those of other cited components.
3.2 According LEDRUT
1
:
Having studied the city centers, privileged
place of crystallizaton and exhibiton of urban
identty, LEDRUT distnguishes two centrality
types exhibitng two distnct identtes:
a. Lliving centrality : corresponding to
the commercial and administrative
business center, dominated by the
spectacle of the goods, and that
LEDRUT qualifies of full city..
b. Dead centrality : orresponding to
the historic center, witch possesses
a deep symbolic but not connected
with the contemporary history.
Nevertheless, it is seen as a must
see place in every city being the area
that gives much information about
its identity. This dichotomy shows
that urban symbolism is built in an
abstract and outdated registry while
1
Raymond LEDRUT, op cit. Mutats mutandis
the economic and social activity
takes place in another concrete and
practical registry. For LEDRUT this
phenomenon of urban alienation cuts
off the individuals urban experience
from its symbolic elaboration. Today
the historic center, by the very fact
of its symbolic power, has become a
favorite site of cultural reaction and
interaction. The historical value of
the frame is a secure element which
shows that urban spaces longevity is
much higher than humans: We are
mortal but Rome is eternal.
The percepton of tangible and intangible
elements that make up the identty of a city
leads to conceive an image that is supposed to
be distnct, but can we stll speak of singularity in
this climate of globalizaton?
4. Urban identity and contemporary challenges
Words like naton, civilizaton, culture,
identty did, even in Europe, birthplace of
modernism and globalism, a comeback in the
politcal vocabulary, especially in recent years.
Such meanings reactvate interrogatons of socio-
politcal and philosophical aspects. Nevertheless,
the discourse on the protecton of natonal or
civilizatonal cultural identty is not new. Why
insist on the promoton and enhancement of
urban identty?
4.1 Urban identty and globalizaton :
The promoton and development of
urban identty have become a necessity, frst,
because few actons are able to achieve the
strategic economic objectves in the absence
of a clear identty strategy. Then, because the
development and compettveness of an urban
space, is based on its ability to highlight its identty
and specifc characteristcs. Finally, because the
feeling of belonging to a neighborhood, a city,
a region or a naton is a natural need of the
individual who cant live in the deracinaton .
Identty is a human leitmotv, encouraging
thinking, acton and abandoning private interests
for communitys interests, in its relaton with
urban space, collectve appropriaton of land
is the way it translates its self. There isnt a
18
stable and one-dimensional identty; it is by
essence dynamic and hybrid. Thats why urban
identty occupies an important place in the
current debate on globalizaton witch is for
some, the abominable monster responsible
for the misfortunes of the world, but what is
globalizaton ?
Le Pett Robert says
1
:
Globalisaton (n.f. 1953) : the process enabling
fnancial and investment markets to operate
internatonally,largely as a result of deregulaton
and improved communicatons, trade
liberalizaton, leading to an interdependence
of countries . Globalizaton is a phenomenon,
it has a reason, initators, it is the result of an
acton, a desire: globalism..
Mondialisme (n.m. 1950) : Universalism; the
attude or policy of placing the interests of the
entre world above those of individual natons.
By consttutng politcal unity for humanity .
1
French defnitons were translated into english by
us.
Therefore, globalizaton is a phenomenon
trying to universalize humanity in all its aspects
including culture, architecture, urbanism, etc...
Architecture is the frst human tool, the frst
instrument that enables mankind to detach
from nature. It carries utlity functon, but
also symbolic values, representatve of what
consttutes human culture; the Civilizaton.
4.2 Civilizatonal identty and
globalizaton:
IBN KHALDOUN argues that: city and
civilizaton were synonymous concepts to such a
degree in history, that destroy a city has always
seemed the best way to destroy the civilizaton
of which it is a sort of archetype. Thus, it
appears useful to defne the term civilizaton to
beter clarify the issue of globalizaton :
In ancient sense, close to culture, civili-
zaton means all specifc characteristcs
of a society; area, people, and naton, in
all areas: religious, social, moral, politcal,
artstc, intellectual, scientfc, technical,
etc... The components of civilizaton are
Fig 2 Ruins of Persepolis, Iran. The capital of the empire was destroyed by Alexander the Great to signal his victory over the Persian
civilization, as was destroyed by Rome Cartage.
19
transmited from generaton to genera-
ton through educaton. In this approach
of humanitys history, there is no value
judgment. The meaning is then close to
culture
1
.
In a more modern sense, the term
civilizaton refers to the progress of
living conditons, knowledge and
standards of behaviour or manners
(called civilized) of a society. Civilizaton
which, in this signifcaton, is used in
the singular, introduced the notons of
progress and improvement to a universal
ideal generated, among other things,
from knowledge, science, technology.
Civilizaton is the situaton reached by a
given society, as opposed to barbarism,
savagery.
2
1
In the French dictonary of Trvoux du 17
th
century , it
says that the term civilizaton is used to ... sociability ...
Religion is unquestonably the frst and most useful brake
humanity: the frst instance of civilizaton. It preaches
us, and constantly remind the brotherhood, sofens our
heart.
2
Dfniton of civilisaton in : htp://www.toupie.org/Dict
ionnaire/Civilisaton.htm
Unlike the frst sense of the term civilizaton,
which carries no value judgments, the second
meaning is established in a grid of judgments
for diferent civilizatons, based on the criteria
defned from a universal model, the Western
model considered as the evaluaton model.
the concept defned by the term civilizaton,
shouldnt be based on the superiority of a race,
predisposed to progress while others can only stay
in a statc primitve level. It is this racist view of
civilizaton, common in the West untl the middle
of the 20th century even in the ofcial discourse,
that Spenger Oswald critcized in his famous book
The Decline of the West :
It is self-evident that for the Cultures of the West
the existence of Athens, Florence or Paris is more
important than that of Lo-Yang or Pataliputra.
But Is it permissible to found a scheme of world
history on estimates of such a sort?
3

In its universal dimension, Western
globalizaton ignores the diferent cultures that
3
SPENGER, Oswald. Le Dclin de lOccident. Gallimard,
1948, Paris. p.29. Translated into english by us.
Fig 3 Globalization in its current form benefts some countries over others.
20
contains the humanity and seeks to destroy as
Jean BAUDRILLARD says:
For the world powers, just as fundamentalist as
the religious orthodoxy, all diferent and unique
shapes are heresies. As such, they are destned
either to return by force in the world order, or to
disappear. The mission of the West is to submit
by all means multple cultures to the ferce law
of equivalence. A culture that has lost its values
can only take revenge on those of others
1
.
It is, therefore, an atempt to create a culturally
united world, on the Western model considered
the most advanced and most suitable. A large-
scale cultural evoluton towards a Westernizaton
of the world, to the adopton of a cultural and
therefore architectural model which ignores the
spatal characteristcs of each people.
Edward T. Hall describes in his book
The Hidden Dimension taking these spatal
characteristcs for example, proxemic diferences
between the Japanese and the Europeans, the
various reports that each other show toward
walls, boundaries, and where the dispositon of
furniture results from diferent tactle and sensory
reports. Two culturally diferent communites
live in two distnct universes, therefor the idea
of universality can only be considered inside
one society. The Chinese universe is not the
American universe, nor the Muslim universe,
etc... And inside the same country there may
be large diferences among diferent cultures
composing its natonal identty. The elaboraton
of architecture in a specifc culture is according
its peoples percepton of space and according
their people.
2
Globalizaton and identty are, from their
respectve defnitons, concepts that work in
opposite directons, but at the same tme cannot
be ignored, because in the current environment,
1
COLLECTIF. Altermondialistes de tous les pays . Le
Monde diplomatque, Manire de voir n75, juin-juillet
2004.
2
Pierre COMBARNOUS, Architecture et
altermondialisation , Ed lHarmatan. P : 83, Mutats
mutandis.
where the world has become a small village,
diferent cultures civilizatons, technologies,
problems of our world, etc.. Belong and
relate to all of humanity. This contemporary
circumstances can be considered as a form
of globalizaton, and at the same tme, a new
concept of identty; a global and mutual identty
to all mankind, which is an inseparable part
of each communitys identty. From this point
of view, urban identtes represent a legacy to
preserve and at the same tme to share and
update with support from the rest of humanity.
At this point in the refecton, it should be noted
that to withdraw in ones exclusive identty is
unthinkable in this era where globalizaton is
the inevitable major challenge of this century.
At the same tme, the assimilaton of the others
dominant culture, is intolerable because no
naton is ready to abandon its essental values
and culture on their awn free will
4.3 Urban identty as publicity:
A veritable market of cites has appeared, visible
at diferent scales from local to internatonal
level, and in this context, the atractve or
repulsive image of a city sometmes becomes
a double-edged sword in territorial marketng
or townbranding. Policies promotng territory
image started to base its acton in star projects,
highlightng the most visible areas on the urban
scale. It is thus, in most cases, public space or
buildings meant to become visual landmarks in
the city and simultaneously icons advertsing
and representng urban image, at least visually,
for its inhabitants as for people from other cites
or other countries, but these iconic buildings,
do they really refect the urban identty of the
cites in which they appear, or are they just an
advertsement designed to atract tourists and
investment?
21
Fig 4 The world has become a global village, but what identity for this village?
22
II. THE ICONIC BUILDING
Said too, monumental building, starchitecture, postcard buildings or show building, an iconic building
is supposed to be a symbol, or a kind of graphic shortcut visually in relaton with what it symbolizes. It
creates a virtual and condensed image of it; so it is here all about percepton and symbolism, but isnt
it true that all architecture is symbolic? What diferentates buildings considered iconic of the average?
What is the source of their power?
1. Genesis
Perhaps that the most famous example
of the power that a single building can have on
the percepton and the fortunes of an entre city,
is the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain.
Built in the early 90s by Frank Gehry, in a city
that was struggling to get out of its problems,
the building was built as part of a regeneraton
program in which he was to be the icing on the
cake, it was such a success that the impact it
had on the city was called the Bilbao efect. The
building, alone costed $ 150 million, it hosts one
million visitors a year, has contributed so far
to the tune of two billion euros in the Spanish
Basque Countrys economy and generated
45,000 jobs
1
. In an interview published in the
book of Charles Jencks the iconic building,
Gehry said: ... from Bilbao, we began to call me
to make Frank Gehrys buildings thats what
they tell me, we want a Frank Gehry building, it
1
Source Wikipedia : Guggenheim museum
Bilbao.htp://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mus%C3%A9e_
Guggenheim_(Bilbao)
Fig 5 Stonhenge, England.
23
really created a lot of problems when I come up
with a concepton and was told Oh! ... Well, this
is not a Gehry!
1

This shows the connecton between the
iconic building and starchitect commissioned to
do the design. Economist Robert. P. Inman states
that it is the combinaton of exceptonal design,
the starchitect and the interest shown by the
public through the media coverage that makes
a successful iconic buildings, and the atracton
they have on clients looking for fnancial gain or
large-scale world-renowned, saying that iconic
buildings will always be popular shortcuts to
reinvigorate a city as long as their media cove-
rage will be ensured.
1
Charles JENCKS The iconic building : the power of
enigma . Frances LINCOLN, London, 2005. p : 9.
Frank Gehry is certainly not the frst to have
had this approach toward iconic buildings. It
is obvious that the intenton to create massive
and symbolic structures is not new, and the
remains of buildings belonging to the neo-
Paleolithic period, such as Stonehenge proves it,
as MUMFORD Lewis says in his book the City in
history: The glorifcaton of power is expressed
through representatons also disproportonate,
coming from deep within the subconscious and
set by the art styles and its unalterable models.
2

The architecture is of course one of these
Invariant models, which served to the efectve
glorifcaton of power, and maybe the story of
the pyramids is the best example for that success.
2
Lewis MUMFORD. La Cit travers lhistoire . Seuil,
Paris. p.45. Translated into english by us.
Fig 6 Pyramid of Djoser
24
The frst pyramid was built in Egypt during
the reign of King Djoser in the year -2750, by his
vizier and architect Imhotep. It was part of the
largest funerary complex ever built in Egypt, and
was intended to represent the grandeur, power
and divine sonship of the king, for eternity.
The frst pyramid may not be be the biggest or
the most elegant one, but it has inspired the
constructon of all those that followed, including
the Pyramid of Khufu, the most majestc and
wonderful of the seven wonders of the ancient
world. Thanks, therefore, to its ingenuity and
innovaton, Imhotep invented a form that has
become a symbol not only of the power of the
kings of Egypt, but also of an entre civilizaton
and that for the whole world. He became the
frst Egyptan, which was neither king nor idol, to
leave his name in known world history; he is the
frst starchitect who produced the frst known
real iconic building, which is perhaps also, due
to its maintenance through history, the most
iconic of all.
The main characters in this story are the pyramid
that represents the iconic building, Djoser, the
building owner representatve of the state, of
power, and the architect Imhotep, the designer.
But an invisible character has not been mento-
ned: the society since Djoser ordered Imhotep
built the pyramid to impress his subjects and the
neighboring natons, before and afer his death.
Lets Start by explain what characterizes the
iconic buildings
2. Iconic buildings Specifcities
very iconic building is represented by a set of
criteria that are somehow their common points
common with all other types of buildings namely,
the need for an architect, a client and a society.
But to access the status of icon, a building must
be distnguished through the following three
specifcites :
a concept Materializing iconicity
Integraton or lack of integraton in its
environment.
the meaning and singnifcance .
Lets explain :
a. The concept :
In the case of iconic buildings, the
architect is asked to invent a new concept
that will represent the new image of the city
or society for which it will be produced. All
design choices are based on a theoretcal basis,
expressed or suggested, and harmonizes with an
ideology that motvates its main purposes. The
design here is essentally related to intellectual
abilites whose purpose is to generate ideas and
choices to set optons of materializaton before
taking acton.
Highlight the features of the ideologies guiding
the producton of space is essental due to the
abundance of the apprehension processes of the
architectural and urban reality. The reactons of
each other to the essental values of Man, his
history, culture, or toward nature, modernity,
progress, the urban fact, architecture, or society
itself, leads to refecton modes that in its turn
leads to diferent answers toward the same
questoning and the challenging reality.
Western thought currents in architecture
and urban planning gave birth to two types
of competng visions, progressive vision and
culturalist vision..
Progressivism is an ideology of progress,
of the renewed man with the fresh spirit, which
wants to rewrite everything again from scratch,
forgetng the past and what made it what it is
(tabula rasa). It boasts the principles of modernity,
which promotes urban and architectural models
not concerned with past and history. The Athens
Charter wrote under the care of Corbusier at the
frst Internatonal Congress of Modern Architects
(CIAM) in 1931, fxed the urban objectves of
this architectural style. The k eys to this planning
are: live, work, circulaton and recreate, with
a zoning separatng these functons. Critcs
describe progressivism as the belief in progress
without critcism or sense of tolerance, with the
dogmatc convicton of possessing the truth and
to be installed in the Blameless
1

Culturalism is when to him, inspired by
an ideology of culture where the architectural
1
Pierre-Andr TAGUIEFF, cit dans Wikipdia, Racton
(politque). Adresse internet : htp://fr.wikipedia.org/
wiki/R%C3%A9acton_(politque)#cite_ref-2
25
Fig 8 Guggenheim museum, Bilbao, Spain. Gehry.
Fig 7 The Walt Disnep Concert Hall, Los Angeles, USA. Gehry.
Fig 9 Experience music project, seattel, USA. Gehry.
26
and urban producton cannot be done without
consideraton of the cultural context. It is calling
for a community life in the polar cites that
preserve and develop their cultural identty and
seals, as a cultural unit that has to satsfy more
than the existental aspiratons of its people;
their spiritual needs, and where buildings must
remain diferent, as are men, and demonizing
globalizaton and modernity that tend to produce
human and universal architecture. Culturalist
vision gives greater importance to the history,
culture and built traditons. The architectural
regionalism for example, which can be related
to a culturalist view of the architecture, it is a
style that draws its inspiraton from the forms of
regional vernacular architecture, without taking
part, consciously, to the universal. According
to critcs, culturalists are called reactonists
advocatng a return to order, authority,
restoraton of values [...], or the worship of
heritages and identtes
1
.
However this ranking progressive /
culturalist is a simplistc and outdated layout,
containing only the two extreme and opposed
versions, which rarely exist today in a pure state
where both are doomed. From another point
of view, even modernism can be defnitely
considered in the West as a natural evoluton
of the society since the Renaissance; therefore,
the expression of a culture that has lost wile
evolving or deliberately changed its essental
values without external infuences.
Today we speak increasingly, about
globalocales cultures shared by all humanitys
interconnected cultures, updatng together in
a global context where technological advances
belongs to all humanity, but also in identty,
social, geographic and climate Context distnct
to each region.
The interest in studying the conceptual
approach of the architect toward architecture is
not putng labels on the back of architects, but
whether, witch one of these approaches should
be adopted as a principle in the design, in order
for the building to gain iconic acceptance by so-
ciety. An iconic building is supposed to be a short-
cut to the graphic identty of the city and the
1
Daniel LINDENBERG, cit dans Wikipdia, Racton (poli-
tque). Adresse internet : htp://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/
R%C3%A9acton_(politque)#cite_ref-2
society for which it is built. It must undeniably
be inspired by the local culture and what defnes
it, but at the same tme respectng contempo-
rary temporal context in the West would be the
equivalent of using the architectural language of
the monuments already accepted by a specifc
society and therefore take a shortcut to accep-
tance and favorable recepton of the building
through the common subconscious of society.
But this formal approach to culture is incomplete
and can lead to pastche, as the exterior of the
building is as we have said, the result of a logic
design which was based from the beginning on
essental and substantal elements of each civili-
zaton that need to be known before startng the
project.
Aesthetcally speaking, the balance
between progressivism and Culturalism in ico-
nic buildings is perhaps one of the few ways that
can defne a real diference and sit real contex-
tualizaton of iconic buildings, given their Mon-
dialist character. Gehrys Guggenheim Museum,
for example, could have been built anywhere
in the world, because it has no specifc cultural
reference, except for the globalized Western
culture, the proof is the Los Angeles Walt Disney
Concert Hall which is a very similar copy of the
Bilbao museum. Gehry has also tended judging
by his works, to repeat himself from Bilbao.
b. Materializaton of the concept
The success of the iconic architecture
relies heavily on the concept of innovaton.
But untl a few decades ago, technological
development was far from following the
expansion of the imaginaton of designers.
Perhaps the best proof of this in the history of
contemporary architecture is the Sydney Opera
House, designed by Danish architect Jrn UTZON,
whose design was ahead of its tme. Marek
Krawczyski UTZONs collaborator in this project
in a admited TEDx
2
conference that the form of
the draf, sailboat for some, for others shell was
so complicated and unusual that it has proved
extremely difcult to materialize. This explains
that its constructon took 14 years, from 1959
to 1973 and has been marked by the departure
of UTZON in 1966 following a dispute with its
2
Marek KRAWCZYNSKI, confrence TEDx. Site web : tedx.
com
27
Fig 10 Bordj Khalifa world tallest tower located in Dubai, which shows that the technology has pushed the boundaries of the possible
28
Australian clients. The building costed 13 tmes
the originally expected amount in 1957, 102
million Australian dollars instead of 7 million.
It was a completely diferent story
for the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, the
design was created in a climate of technological
development at impressive speed, where almost
everything can be modeled with the computer-
aided design. The building was extremely
innovatve and much more complicated, formally
speaking, that of UTZON. But he was able to
beneft from the latest technological advances
in areas that have nothing with the architecture
used since Gehry used sofware developed by
Dassault Systems, initally meant to aviaton and
automotve industry (sofware CATIA), to trace
the curves defning the building.
1
The architectural concepton of the
project in general, and iconic buildings in
partcular, has experienced unprecedented
revoluton due to technological progress, which
led to the liberaton of architects imaginaton and
the appearance of unprecedented architectural
forms whom materializaton was made possible
thanks to advances in executon technics .
It is essental for the iconic architecture,
in order to innovate, to use all available
technology. But this presents a trap for the
exhibiton of advanced technology may become
a goal. The high-tech architectural style with no
theoretcal reference is a living example of that,
realizatons resultng of it despite their success
in the West, are more similar to constructon
than architecture .
c. Integraton
2
:
Generally, iconic building take place in a
densely and formerly built urban environment,
atemptng to integrate into an existng urban
stratfcaton, while actng of urban manifesto
1
Source Wikipedia : Guggenheim museum
bilbao.http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mus%C3%A9e_Gug-
genheim_(Bilbao)
2
we based in this sub-chapter on Maria GRAVARI-BARBAS
research, prsented in the colloque Tourismes et
Territoire organised by lInsttut de Recherche du Val de
Sane Mconnais, 13-15 september 2007. Translated into
english by us
likely to ensure its mediatsaton. It must
comply with the constraints of the program
and the environment. But the growing
instrumentalizaton of buildings fagship built
not only to host a functon, but also to create an
urban event, makes this arbitrage more difcult.
The iconic landmark building does indeed make
sense only if it is opposed to the alleged banality
of the surrounding urban fabric. The iconic
building cannot accept competton with his
entourage at risk of self-annihilaton. Analysis
of the most notable iconic architecture in
recent years highlights the report, ofen difcult,
between the architectural project signed and
his entourage. And maybe the new Acropolis
museum in Athens the example that illustrates
the best difcultes of arbitraton between the
desire to stand out and the need to integrate.
Through this museum, authorites tried
to introduce Athens in the galaxy of internatonal
touristc cites to help it play the touristc
and economic role that she pained to occupy,
despite its major assets. The museum had the
obligaton to ft in an urban, architectural and
archaeological context in which the constraints
and difcultes have no similar elsewhere
because of the proximity of the antque sacred
rock. The concepton of the Swiss-American
architect Bernard TSCHUMI was intended
from the beginning to be an iconic building:
closed internatonal competton for leading
fgures in internatonal museum architecture,
fnal selecton of an architect among the most
mediatzed in the worl, etc... But when it was
completed, architects and politcians found
that there was a huge problem of visibility from
and to the sacred rock. To setle the problem
the sacrifce of natonal heritage buildings was
required.
The new Museum of Athens was built
on a block in the district MAKRYIANNI. The
selecton of this site is due to the will of the Central
Council of Archaeology, Ministry of Culture,
systematcally underestmatng or ignoring this
choices many inherent complicatons. As noted
by the Greek photographer N. VATOPOULOS, it
is ironic that in the interminable soup of their
capital, the Greeks went stuck the new museum
in one of the few beautful places of the city, not
Fig 12
Plan and section on the site
of the new museum of the
Acropolis in Athens
Fig 11
This photography shows the
sensitivity of the site of the new
Athens museum
30
to coexist with what there was previously, but to
its disadvantage
1
.
The construction of the museum started,
despite strong reactions concerning its volume
considered too massive for such a sensitive
urban context. It is authorized thinks to the
mode of construction on stilts that has kept
visible majority of the archaeological remains
discovered during the excavation, and because
the new building, surrounded by buildings that
line the street Aeropagitou is not visible from the
public highway. According to the report of the
Central Council of Archaeology: The question of
the relationship between the museum and the
rock of the Acropolis has been resolved and it is
estimated that the museum is not visible from
the street Aeropagitou, and therefore does not
penalize monuments and buildings classified as
to be conserved on both sides of the street.
Afer completon of constructon, we
quickly realized that the two buildings, natonal
monuments, which had served to allay fears,
prevented the new museum to unveil to the
general public, and interposed between the
visibility between the sacred rock and the
museum. This is how the decision was made
to demolish them; this decision that have been
contested at natonal and internatonal level.
We spoke then about Tschumis architectural
tsunami efect.
In the design stage, the big challenge was to
adapt the project to the site. It was reproached
its gigantsm and monumentality. The adaptaton
was done in extremis through two buildings that
served as visual barrier and the project was
approved. But as soon as the museum was built,
and won his fame, it was now about adaptng
the site to the building.
This single example is sufcient to explain
the problems that can result from the issue of
the integraton of iconic buildings in their sites.
How to integrate or how not to integrate? This
is the queston. But integrated or not, a building
becomes iconic only society chooses to accord it
this status.
1
Nikos VATOPOULOS quoted in the research of Maria GRA-
VARI-BARBAS, colloque Tourismes et Territoire , orga-
nised by lInsttut de Recherche du Val de Sane Mcon-
nais, 13-15 september 2007. Translated into english by us.
d. The signifcance
Iconic buildings are receptacles of values
and signifcances that society decided to drop
into it, a newborn iconic building in an
urban landscape may at frst mean nothing to
its society, especially if it is not drawn directly
from its constructon mode or its culture. But
over tme, it earns its status and identty, and
connectons begin to develop between it and
its users. It ends either by becoming an integral
part of spatal practces, or being rejected. The
tme factor is crucial to determine whether a
building is a success or a failure.
The importance of some historical
monuments comes from their relatonship
with the society, a relatonship that sometmes
persists even afer these buildings have lost their
functons, their signifcance or even afer their
destructon. The best contemporary example
and most signifcant, of the iconic buildings
aferlife may be, according to Charles JENCKS,
the twin towers of the World Trade Center in
New York, destroyed on September 11. The
project supposed to emerge on their old site
Ground Zero, will instantly become an icon,
inheritng the symbolic value that the two
buildings acquired afer they were destroyed.
How many self-proclaimed iconic buildings can
produce a similar efect of strong atachment
toward society? Probably very litle, but the
functon and symbolic value play an important
role in this phenomena.
An iconic building designed by starchitect,
which is supposed to host the headquarters
of a multnatonal is undoubtedly subject to
become a strong urban landmark. But it is rare
for it to have any intmate relatonship with its
society, because its functon doesnt concerns
or concerns only a limited part of its society.
Unlike a building whose use is public, accessible
to everyone as a library, a cultural center, or a
gym. This kind of building is much more likely
to access the status of a formal symbol of an
identty.

31
3. Conteporary architecture and iconic buildings
In the footsteps of Bilbao, several local
actors have sought to build on architecture as
an essental part of their repositoning in the
service economy. Give us a new Bilbao is
the command passed to the architects. But for
this to be done architects must provide the
symbolic capital of their own signature which is
possible only by being a part of the internatonal
architectural star-system.
The last decades of the twenteth century have
certainly introduced signifcant changes in the
relatonship between contemporary architecture
and iconicity. Globalizaton has afected the
architectural producton, that became one of
the principal elements that have territories to
diferentate and distnguish its self. The most
amazing architectural forms emerged in recent
years, since the building-event of Gehry.
Anna KLINGMAN
1
compared the
globalizing trends observable in the late
1
Anna KLINGMAN, cit dans : Maria GRVARI-BARBAS et Io-
ana IOSA, monumentalit urbaine au XIXe et XXe sicle .
LHarmatan, Paris, 2011. p : 168
twenteth and early twenty-frst century
and contemporary architectural producton.
According to her, in the experience economy,
where the proposed product is the experience
itself, we are moving from the consumpton of
objects to the consumpton of sensatons and
ways of life, or Lifestyles. In contemporary society,
the buildings are no longer seen as concrete
objects but as advertsements and destnatons.
According to the author, the design of the
urban environment as landscape skyline gives
way to the design of signed environments,
Brandscapes produced by eponymous designers
who bring not only the value of their project, but
also their signatures.
Contemporary starchitecture uses
the methods and concepts of branding and
urban marketng, in the sense of a strategic tool
for cultural and economic transformaton. In
architecture, the Branding has been assigned
the mission of expressing an identty, whether
for a corporaton or a city in which the building
is constructed. In this sense, New York, Bilbao,
Dubai used architecture in order to improve
their image, generate economic growth, to
Fig 13 Les tours jumelles du World Trad Center, avant le 11
Semptembre
Fig 14 3D Du nouveau World Trad Center, New York, USA
32
beter integrate into the global economy, to
engage in tourism or to consolidate their place
among internatonal touristc destnatons.
These consideratons are closely related to issues
of territorial identty. The call for a mediatzed
architect was operated by local ofcials as
well as the launch of major festve event, or
enhancement of heritage, architecture plays
a major role in the constructon or renewal of
local identtes.
More than other functons, public buildings
with a cultural vocaton such as museums, have
focused these trends over the last decade, but
these iconic buildings ofen take place in an
existng urban and societal context with, or
against which they must deal.
Indeed, if the Guggenheim of Bilbao
was built in a large abandoned industrial area,
completely rewriten it goes diferently
for most iconic buildings that must ft in an
inhabited urban district. The impressive prisms
of the Denver art museum by architect Daniel
LIBESKIND stand out so prominently by their
shapes and their volume from the urban
landscape around them. The Kunsthaus by Peter
COOK and Colin Fournier, Graz, with its radically
diferent form from those of the surrounding
buildings, according to its designers, is an alien
landed in this nice small Austrian town, etc...
In some cases, the constructon of an iconic
building can give coherence to existng urban
fabric, traumatsed with past urban hazardous
operatons; it is for example the case of the
Bullring shopping center in Birmingham, which
helped the restructuring and retraining of the
district of the same name. But it can ofen
undermine secular urban forms that lose their
formal symbolic value.
The study of iconic buildings and their
infuence on the environment requires a look in
the role of each actve force in the process that
generates them.
4. The active forces in the materialisation of
iconic buildings
There are three driving forces in the
process of materializaton of the iconic buildings:
the client, the architect, and society. These
players are the same for all the other buildings,
yet here their characters are diferent.
Fig 15 Kunsthaus. Peter COOK and Colin FOURNIER, Graz Austria
33
Lets explain :
a. the client
He is the holder of a power that he
wants to materialize through the design of the
architect. The architectural historian Charles
JENCKS states that untl the nineteenth century,
the relatonship between architects and clients
in the West was clear ; the customer has the
power to guide the design of the architect
or even impose his perceptons and sense of
iconography, which was in most of the tme
shared by both.
The best example of this may be that untl the
Renaissance, most of the architectural work was
linked not to their designers, but to their awners.
LThe proof is that the architects of most of the
cathedrals of the Middle Ages are unknown
1
,
while the kings who have ordered their
constructon are easily identfable. But things
began to change because of the changes brought
by the Renaissance, the Industrial Revoluton, the
1
Traditonal art oeuvres stayed generally anonymous, untl
nowadays where the modern individualism caused the at-
tempts to atribute it to the few names in history, and these
atributons are ofen very hypothetcal.
two world wars, colonizaton, globalizaton, etc...
These changes have led to the multplicaton
of symbolic spatal models and change, or
even eliminaton, of values and traditons that
once served as guides for society in all areas
including architectural and urban. Therefore,
the uncertain client focused only in obtaining
an architectural symbol, abandoned more spot
to the architect, sole holder of knowledge and
scholarly architecture, to conceive it. JENCKS
states that the Bilbao efect completed the task,
citng the case of Walt Disney Concert Hall in
Los Angeles (WDCH)
2
, whose constructon was
stopped due to the extravagance of the Gehry
design, and has contnued afer the success of
the Guggenheim Bilbao, where Gehry resumed
2
The Disney Concert Hall by Gehry was stopped, desig-
ned in 88, it wasnt going to go ahead tl Bilbao(...)The
Bilbao Efect had an efect on (Gehry), I mean he could
build (the WDCH)! Now everybody wants one, and thats
driving architecture. Its a real double-edged sword, as I
was saying last night. Youre in a double bind(...)you know,
astonish me, excite me, show me something. Wow! Thats
never been done before! And make it cheap, efcient
functonal, da-duh-da-duh-da, and make it ft in. JENCKS
Charles, Interview with John Jourden.
http://archinect.com/features/article/29809/charles-
jencks-being-iconic
Fig 16 Denver art museum. LIBESKIND , USA.
34
much of its original design from the WDCH. But
for JENCKS, the client and the architect should
take responsibility together to face societys
expectatons.
b. The architecte
The normal role of an architect is to
design and materialize the desires of the client
in the context of determined society and
geography. Projects of symbolic importance
have always aroused the interest of architects,
but have consistently been conferred to the elite
because of their competence and expertse, but
also because of their names and signatures are
supposed to bring glory and mediatsaton to
their works.
Therefore, we can distnguish among architects,
two broad categories: stars, and others. Their
work is not so diferent. However stars are
those who realize the great iconic, public and
private projects and partcipate in prodigious
internatonal compettons, while later have
lower scale projects and a weaker relatonship
with governments and private corporatons and
clients, and therefore fewer resources. as saie
architecture critc Franois CHASLIN :
The epoch, magazines, the media system in
general, and even the most modest architects
(what whatever they pretend and whatever
their frustrated exasperaton), are primarily
concerned with a thin cohort of stars, those
who for a reason or another, were able to focus
a clearly identfable part of the architectural
refecton of the moment
1
.
These stars of contemporary architecture, which
we call here starchitects are the contemporary
equivalent of the architects of the Renaissance
and Antquity as VITRUVIUS, Palladio or
MICHELANGELO, with a reputaton that makes
them iconic fgures for their respectve societes,
and gives them above a power, accentuated
by their role in the social organizaton and
the creaton of built identty of cites and
natons. Most of their projects are huge urban
operatons of great importance; contemporary
urban monuments, museums, theaters, public
buildings, ofces of major corporatons and
1
CHASLIN Franois, quoted in LArchitecture
dAujourdhui, n 272, December, 1990. P: 14. Translated
into english by us.
some wealthy homes that allow them some
experimentaton, as it was for early modern
architects, Le Corbusier and company.
Others share small public compettons and
private commands the cultural and economic
elite. They fght on the same territory with
starchitects, but with less power and freedom
because of the mediatzaton, sometmes with
less talent also. They are struggling to fnd their
place when they fail to become internatonal
starchitects, or even local, they almost all run
behind this same dream. Finally they are forced
either to comply with the formal requirements
of commands, forgetng their convictons,
or to imitate the starchitects, or at least the
image of their architecture. The architecture
of starchitects is ofen rejected by the neophyte
populaton. It is every tme an extreme example
of the idea that architects are expensive and
fantasist, and yet they are the reference and the
majority of other architects, by following their
model, move away a litle more from popular
aspiratons, which are a reality that the architect
should normally take into account when
conceiving if he wants to have a real impact and
fulfll his role in society
2
.
The lifetme work of an architect, star
or not, is an anecdotal given the vastness of
architectural producton. However, because
of the contemporary phenomena of formal
pastche, were starchitects are being imitated
we observe their model spreading by the hands
of other architects, it starts well before becoming
an architect in architecture schools, as said by
Philippe Tretack in his book Should we hang
architects? :
What is taught, it is the ideology of the genius
or nothing.[...] Naturally, all students dream
of becoming one day a LE CORBUSIER, Louis
KAHN and since few years, a Frank O. Gehry,
Rem KOOLHAAS or a Toyo ITO. You cannot
blame school for giving ambition to students
that it forms; this megalomaniac hypertrophy
has excellent aspects: outstanding efforts and
creative lyricism. But the flip side is blinding:
defiance of public opinion, inability to engage
a dialogue and communicate, to act otherwise
than an artist cleared of any social obligations,
2
Pierre COMBARNOUS, Architecture et
altermondialisation , diton lHarmatan, 2010. P :70
mutats mutandis. Translated into english by us.
35
promoting architectural objects, of the sculptural
architecture
1
.
Therefore the Western architect is taught
to respond to Western preoccupatons that
can be summarized today in the formal image,
and not to worry about cultural diferences
while conceiving. And this accentuate more the
cleavage between him and society .
c. A society or a community?
Society is the raison dtre of architecture
in general, and iconic architecture in partcular.
It is the catalyst and the judge who accepts
or rejects it but never ignores it. However,
the relatonship between a society and its
architecture is a relatonship of contnuous
interacton, because the architecture is also
involved in the defniton of the society that
created it.
Despite the fact that iconicity and
banality are two contradictory concepts, they
both result from the regard that a society, at
a defned moment, has in its architectural
landscape that is built to politcal, economic
and cultural objectves constantly renegotated
between the diferent actors involved in this
process.
The banal just as the iconic are contnually
changing with the changing in societys values.
For example, Nazi monuments that survived
to the Second World War were all destroyed,
because they contrasted with the new ideologies
and values of the afer war Germany. Their image
has become representatve of an unwanted past,
while a few decades ago; it was the promise of a
beter future for the Germans. This also applies,
in another level, in the case of certain GAUDIs
works, such as Casa Mila, which was nicknamed
La Pedrera literally the career as a sign of
ugliness or at least of unusual appearance. His
owner refused even, at frst, to pay the architect.
Yet today, the image of this iconic building
has changed. It has become a popular tourist
destnaton and a sign of distncton of the formal
identty of the city of Barcelona and all Catalan
region in Spanish society.
1
Philippe TRETIACK, Faut-il pendre les architectes ?
Seuil, Paris. 2001. P : 94. Translated into english by us.

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36
In the Moroccan context, the pre-colonial
Medina was probably considered ordinary by its
inhabitants as it was part of their daily community
life. But his image in the end of the protectorate
and the frst decades of independence has
changed. The majority of what composed its
elite has moved to the new cites, synonymous
for them to Western contemporaneity, adopted
by the bourgeoisie as a new lifestyle. Medina
was abandoned losing its community image
and inspiring now insecurity and urban chaos.
She is now a dead center as LEDRUT would say,
and is a model of constructon, and may be of
civilizaton that no longer exists, but it stll carries
a strong identty, iconic and nostalgic, which
contrasts with the extramural environment
of contemporary cites that has become at his
turn banal. This explains the growing interest of
authorites, for its restoraton in order to make
it proftable. Because even in countries that
give birth to modernism and globalizaton, we
begin to realize the importance of the legacy
of the past in the constructon and valorizaton
of the present and future. But this renewed
interest in the past is not driven by an interest
with qualitatve values and traditon
1
, but
rather by the desire make money from it. To
limit the interest with traditonal legacy to the
economic side may distort the interpretaton of
this space and make it fall into a folklore and a
traditonnalesque
2
percepton. This percepton
we fnd especially in the architecture of Las
Vegas, United States, where casinos have a
competton to atract more customers through
copying pictures of iconic exotc buildings and
civilizatons, for example the Egyptan pyramids,
the Eifel Tower etc...
Iconicity and banality of architecture
depends entrely on the judgment of society.
But this process can be infuenced by the media
sometmes that sometmes plays the lawyer,
sometmes the hangman, and in both cases,
that is in the favor of the building, according
1
By traditon we mean the set of essental values, including
religious suprahuman recommendatons .
2
What is generally produced and will continue to be
produced in a consumer society, it is not the traditional
building, but the traditionnalesque. A pastiche of the past
this is what society is looking for and what its mercantilist
designers produce . Charles JENCKS & William CHAITKIN,
Architecture today , 1982.
to JENCKS insults are sometimes tumultuous
welcomes, the controversy is a desired effect
that it is selling the building, this is advertising
3

We might observe the judgment of
society on an architecture, which this tme is
foreign, for example, in Current refectons
in the implementaton of mosques in Europe
that becomes necessary given the number
of European Muslims. Projects have troubles
reaching for symbolic reasons, but architects
research on these forms is quite interestng.
With such a program, spaces modes of use
are necessarily from the Muslim culture but
the formalizaton that contemporary architects
conceive should be pertnent responses to the
opportunites and aspiratons of the twenty-
frst century, in compliance with the required
functonality. There is, moreover, an interest
specifc to the symbolic decoratve elements of
Islamic civilizaton: the colors, the principles of
ornamentaton forms, etc.
It seems clear that, in the realizaton of a religious
building, religious practces and the spaces they
require may not be truncated or discredited,
even by an outside culture that seeks to integrate
it into its urban landscape and identty. However,
the crystallizaton of fears about the symbolism
of minarets, which produced the Swiss vote, will
probably lead to a new form for the European
mosques. Miscegenaton is here, a fact and a
fatality which would have been very diferent if,
as in the past, the realizaton of these religious
buildings is made in conjuncton with a territorial
conquest and thus a dominant positon.
The counterexample of this lies in the
history of Alexander the Great and his architect
Dinocrates who conceived all 70 cites during
the conquest of the Persian Empire by the
Macedonian king, all the cites were called
Alexandria all built on the Greek model. If an
iconic building has the power to symbolize and
crystallize the identty, a city can probably do
the same. In the long term these Alexandrias
probably come to be accepted by the indigenous
people, but in its most authentc form, they
contnue to be a foreign way of constructon,
symbol of another culture and conquest sufered
by another civilizaton with its good and bad
3
Charles JENCKS, op cit. Mutats mutandis
37
consequences. Moreover History tells us that
these cites built by Alexander served points of
difusion of Hellenistc culture.
Architecture, urbanism and their tech-
nics, are a legacy accumulated and passed down
from civilizaton to civilizaton, each of them ac-
cept this heritage, but always try to adapt it to
its needs and principles. Especially in the case
of iconic buildings that are in all civilizatons, the
pinnacle of their architectural and technical pro-
gress in the service of the religious, politcal or
economic glory, or the combined enttes, the-
reby crystallizing its essental and substantal
identty. These buildings, their architectural mo-
dels and what they represent, have normally a
unanimous acceptance in their societes, but it
happens that this changes.
In countries formerly colonized a civilizatonal
rupture occurred, in economic, cultural identty
levels etc... This rupture has led to what can
be considered an inferiority complex, among
the ordinary people, mostly illiterate, but also
among the economic and cultural westernized
elite who questoned the system values and
societal images in these countries, triggering an
unprecedented identty crisis. As so aptly puts
it Ibn Khaldun in his Prolegomena, assimilatng
the imitaton attude of the defeated toward
the winners doctrines in a religion of defeatsm
1
,
liability or docility, the conquered always
imitates his conqueror. . The dominant culture
has become THE MODEL to follow in how to eat,
talk, dress and also build. Most of those who
could aford it have lef their traditonal habitats
1
In arabic ibn khaldoun called it :
to those built in the European way, who could
not had its image etched in themselves.
It was at that tme that the civilizatonal model
slid and changed. And it is normal even afer the
declaraton of Independence of these countries
that this inferiority complex contnues, on one
side, because of the chronic retard accumulated
in all areas, and on the other side because of the
economic and cultural success of their former
colonizers. These former colonies like Morocco,
thus fnd themselves in a complex situaton,
difcult to diagnose. Because architecture that is
supposed to be iconic in their contexts, despite
all what it is supposed to represent, is not from
the respectve cultures of these countries, but
from the western dominant civilizaton. Valued,
distnct, rich and unique Architectural model
Fig 21 The Paris Hotel in Las Vegas, in the background the
Effel tower.
Fig 22 The Luxor hotel in Las Vegas. a blue-eyed Sphinks
Fig 23 La grande mosque de Cologne, en Allemagne. lune des
plus grandes en europe
38
do exist in these countries, nevertheless almost
all the iconic large-scale projects are assigned
to Western architects, or conceived in western
model by local architects.
We are therefore enttled to ask ourselves,
what is the purpose of these projects, impress
the West or serve the people? The Third World
societes are dazzled and atracted to Western
architectural style but this may be due to the
fact that this model is the only one present in
the internatonal scene? An architectural design
inspired by what composes the identty of a
community in all its aspects, isnt more capable
to positvely mark its users?
What is the soluton for those trying to produce
an iconic architecture inspired by identy, follow
the trend established despite the fact that it is
the result of an anomaly, or try to swim against
the current, taking the risk of being called a
reactonary?
before answering these questons, it is important
for us to frst study concrete examples of iconic
buildings.
39
Synthesis
Identty is a complex concept as its
components have not been clarifed. This term,
as we have seen, is in close connecton with
human being and the defniton he gives to
himself and the culminaton of his refectons on
what he is. Since the Renaissance, Western Man
began renouncing to his spiritual side politcally
and spatally. The advent of modernism in
architecture, which advocated a tabula rasa
creatng a break with the inherited traditons
and values, had direct repercussions on the
identty of cites in the West. Architecture and
urban planning were reduced to the material
dimension; functon, stability, form, etc And
to quanttatve, spatotemporal and customary
values, therefor variables and tangible aspects
of identty and values.
It is therefore not strange to note, in
this context, the limits that LYNCH and LEDRUT
showed in their analysis of the identty and the
urban image by reducing it to its substantal
aspect amputatng its form its essental side. It
is also true that in the modern Western context,
the essental aspect of identty has no more
importance in the eyes of society, at least not
unanimously. However, LEDRUT mentoned the
atracton of the old center of European cites
representng an unconscious reminder of the
essental principles formerly applied and now
lost in the Western and Westernized context.
Indeed, this formalistc approach to space,
nowadays, tends to export to non-Western
countries, including Morocco. One of the main
channels of its export is the iconic building.
They have, existed in every civilizaton
and held an important role in the crystallizaton
of the collectve identty of their communites
through their identty message and its great
symbolic power that integrated social context
and this in all its civilizatonal aspects; cultural,
economic, politcal, etc
But in the contemporary context where
modern culture is dominant, the Western
model of these buildings has become atractve
because of its fnancial success. Thus, we see all
around the world, its adopton at the expense of
local traditonal models.
These new buildings are supposed to
be a way to advertse and promote their cites
in the business market and the natonal and
internatonal tourism. For these reasons, more
and more decision makers entrusted the task of
creatng these iconic fagship projects to renow-
ned architects, part of the Internatonal Western
architectural elite, which, most of the tme, is
foreign to the context where will be placed the
project. This partcularly concerns us :
- If the role of contemporary iconic
buildings is the to showcase the cites
where they will be built, isnt it more
appropriate to base their concepton
on the contextual identty of these
cites ?
Since we determined the theoretcal
relatonship between urban identty and iconic
architecture and the characteristcs of both, we
will begin now, the study of living examples of
contemporary iconic buildings.
39
40
RELATION BETWEEN ICONIC BUILDINGS
AND URBAN IDENTITY
Introduction
We demonstrated in the previous chapter, that the iconic
modern buildings are the exclusive afair of starchitects part of the
internatonal starsystem, and untl recently were involving only
Western countries, where most iconic buildings are built. Iconic
buildings were here playing the role of manufactured products,
imported and exported in the western circle. We mean here by
Western countries: Europe, especially Western Europe, North America,
Australia and Japan although holder of a culture and identty diferent
of the other countries mentoned, is a globalizing country .
But in the current climate of globalizaton, especially because of the
syndrome of Bilbao, more and more countries out of the Western
circle use iconic architecture and therefore, western architects
of the star-system to positon itself in the global tourism market,
or sometmes simply to imitate the formal model of developed
countries. Therefore, a queston arises by itself: when non-Western
countries request a starchitect to conceive an iconic building, would
this architects be able to be objectve enough to forget his cultural
background, and make a valued architectural design, corresponding
to the percepton and the values of a community, other than his own?
In this second chapter, we will try to analyze a variety of
iconic contemporary buildings, which have reinvented their model,
representatve of the diferent features that we discussed in the
previous chapter to extract the elements that will help us in the
design of our project. For this purpose, we will make a selecton of
starchitects, identfy their diferent conceptons and perceptons of
things and their architecture and its refecton in their culture and
foreign cultures when it is exported. For this selecton not to be
arbitrary, we choosed to study the supposed highest elite of architects,
that were awarded the Pritzker Academy, the equivalent of the Nobel
Prize for architecture, and a special category of their architectural
productons; the cultural buildings.
2
41
2
42
I. OVERVIEW OF THE PRITZKER ARCHITECTS
1. Cartography of starchitects export
In the following cartography of
starchitects export, are only considered the
award winning architects since 1979, date of
birth of the Pritzker Prize, and their respectve
achievements. To take into account a greater
number of global architects would certainly have
changed and enriched the map, but it would
also made it difcult to read.
It is clear that the majority of the
awarded are American, European and Japanese,
and their work is exported, and imported mainly
on these three regions. Some Gulf countries,
Africa and Southeast Asia also receive this global
architecture, but without exportng it. Even if we
take into account a greater number of architects
in this cartography other than the winners of
the Pritzker Prize, these regions do not provide
their own starchitects, simply because they
are generally formed in the West or with a
westernized educaton. Therefore it is difcult
for them to produce an architecture specifc to
their culture. The concept of starchitect could
not be applied in the case of an export of the
non-Western model to the West, because of the
fact that if these architects are stars, it is only
because the West has defned them so.
2. Cartography analysis
All U.S starchitects export in the
world, in diferent contexts, a purely Western
acculturated architecture, whose main job is
a formal and spatal refecton for a Northern
command most of the tme, although located
across the globe. One of the best known fgures
of this architecture, Frank Gehry is the designer
of the famous museum in Bilbao. It is the same
for European archistars, with some diferences,
however, expressed by positons and diferent
acton.
In southern Europe, two architects
difer in their approaches, and therefore we are
interested in : Renzo PIANO and Alvaro SIZA.
Portuguese architect Alvaro SIZA exports himself
very litle and mainly to Galicia and Brazil, both
regions very close culturally to Portugal, due
to geographical proximity and colonial tes. In
the work of Alvaro SIZA, there is a refecton
on the Portuguese medieval city and its maze
streets, simple volumes that compose it and
the efect of natural light on the frame, allowing
him to develop an architecture built with the
same space research of his contemporaries, but
integratng into the framework of its own space
culture..
Renzo PIANO has quite a unique course in
the sense that he became famous during the
emergence of high-tech architecture, but was
able to get of this label to explore other paths.
He exports his architecture a lot, and, untl
recently, only in a Western representaton mode.
But in 1998, he surprised the world by designing
the cultural center Jean-Marie TJIBAOU in
Noumea, New Caledonia, which by its shape
and organizaton expresses an original research
efort, inspired by the site and even more by
Kanake culture identty themselves.
MURCUT Glenn, one of the last to be
awarded, is as much a landscape designer as
architect and his research on the implementaton
of his architecture, ofen of small-scale, respect
for the site and search for poetry show certain
sensitvity to the architecture approach of
his country. He works exclusively in Australia,
a western culture country, alongside an
Aboriginal populaton, that like other indigenous
populatons of the New World, frst sufered the
invasion of their territory before being shelved
by the dominant society. He is not in the line
of the Danish Jorn UTZON, also one of the last
awarded. The designer of the famous Sydney
Opera House, World Heritage of Humanity by
Unesco and considered one of the most famous
buildings of the twenteth century, with its
globalized architecture, and its monumental and
symbolic power. And that became the symbol of
43
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44
Sydney and one of the worlds most famous
symbols of Australia, as said by Australian
Prime Minister Kevin RUDD
1
.
The advertsing impact of the Sydney
Opera House resembles in many aspects to the
one that has had the Guggenheim museum of
Bilbao conceived by Frank GEHRY awarded in
1989, which also has great symbolic power and
generated a real rush to the iconic architecture
around the world in what has been called the
Bilbao efect.
Tadao Ando, awarded in 1995 is the
only one to be autodidact he stands out from
other architects with his exceptonal originality
and formal purity. He is one of the iconic fgures
of Japanese minimalism with its specifcites
that he expresses with consciousness and
objectvity in relaton with his own culture. Yann
NUSSAUME said in describing an interview
with Tadao Ando: His philosophy is clear, to
understand the essence of a building, one must
know the society in which it was built. For
TADAO Ando, postmodernism is absorbed by
formal consideratons and diverted from deep
consideratons
2
.
Among various social responsibilites of
architects, the most important is, in my opinion,
to refect the culture, ie to use the architecture
to show that each country has its own culture
3
.
Rem KOOLHAAS, awarded in 2000, is
perhaps one of the few architects who have
theorized about the relatonship between man
and the city, despite his statstcal and ratonal
approach. KOOLHAAS has, moreover, many
disciples among the internatonally acclaimed
architects such as MVRDV group and the Iraqi-
Britsh architect Zaha HADID who was the frst
woman to receive the prize in 2004. She was
formed in London, her work focusing on ultra-
formal architecture, with work on lines, cracks
and bends, is like many others, the expression of
1
Kevin RUDD, quoted in : Jrn UTZON, Wikipedia.
Translated into english by us.
htp://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%B8rn_Utzon
2
NUSSAUME, Yann. Tadao ANDO et la queston du
milieu . Ed. le Moniteur, 1999, Paris. Translated into
english by us.
3
Tadao ANDO, quoted in : Yann NUSSAUME. Op.cit. p.152.
Translated into english by us.
an internatonal architecture, acculturated and
globalizing.
Jean NOUVEL, awarded in 2008, is
one of those who advocate more relatonship
between architecture and culture, but most of
his achievements are stll expressing a fashy
formal architectural spirit .
Startng in 2009, the climate of the global
economic crisis and resultng world changes str
up refectons about the role that should play
architects in this conjuncture. The PRITZKER
Prize starts to encourage contextualized
architecture, as opposed to extravagant formal
experiences of previous winners. In 2009 the
prize was awarded to Peter ZUMTHOR the
following year the duo Kazuyo SEJIMA and Ryue
NISHIZAWA, and in 2011 Souto De MOURA, all
three minimalist and contextualist architects .
45
Fig 25 Zaha HADID
Fig 26 Grand thatre de Rabat,
Morocco
Fig 27 : Jean NOUVEL
Fig 28 Torre Agbar, Barcelona. its
shape was very criticized
because of its great
resemblance to the Swiss
Re Building in London by
Norman Foster.
Fig 29 Tadao ANDO
Fig 30 Suntory Museum, Osaka
Japan. one of the most
expressive buildings of
ANDO.

Fig
46
II. Case Study:
Among the architects mentoned above, we chose to talk about three of them, who have rea-
lized three projects considered landmarks regarding our problematc, three cultural iconic projects that
atained the status of urban or natonal icon :
Sydney Opera House by Jrn UTZON, Australia.
The Guggenheim Museum by Frank Gehry in Bilbao, Spain.
The Jean Marie TJIBAOU cultural center by Renzo Piano in Noumea, New Caledonia.
Fig 31 : Jorn UTZON Fig 32 : Frank Gehry Fig 33 : Renzo Piano
Fig 34 : Sydney Opera
House
Fig 35 : Guggenheim museum Fig 36 : the Jean-Marie Tjibaou cultural
Center
47
1. UTZON and the Sydney Opera House
We discussed in the frst part about starchitects. This global elite which is called, normally in
exceptonal to conceive exceptonal iconic commands, and whose names and signatures are supposed
to bring renowned and mediatsaton to the projects. But in the case of the Sydney Opera House an
excepton in the rule occurred by designatng as the winner an unknown architect, Jrn UTZON, to build
what will become one of the most famous buildings of the twenteth century.
A unique architect :
Son of a naval architect and nephew
of a famous sculptor, Jrn Oberg UTZON was
born in April 9, 1918 in Copenhagen. Young, he
showed a talent for drawing and began working
with his father at the age of 18, before studying
architecture at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts
in Copenhagen, with teachers as Kay FISKER and
humanist Steen Eiler Rasmussen, both known
for their theoretcal writngs. Afer graduaton
in 1942, he moved with his family to Stockholm,
as Sweden was one of the few neutral countries
during World War II, before leaving for Finland
where he had the opportunity to work for a
few years with Alvar Aalto, one of his three
great spiritual masters, with Gunnar ASPLUND
Swedish architect internatonally renowned and
Frank Lloyd Wright, with whom he discovers
organicist theories, which will mark his sensibility
to natural forms.
Afer the war, he returned with his family
to Denmark, where he opened his own studio
and began traveling. At that tme, his world is
enriched by afnity and unusual interest for his
generatons architects: the architecture of Japan
and ancient China, its monuments and treates.
The ancient Mesoamerican Mexico, where he
discovered pre-Columbian architecture and its
monumental image that will inspire him later. In
the United States, he is interested in the several
facets of Wright and his American house, the
Guggenheim Museum in New York and artstc
protest movements like the Cobra group. In
1947, he worked for a few months in Morocco
where he experienced Islamic art which will have
a decisive infuence on his work. He uses this
culture of observaton for his early Scandinavian
projects, few but various at the tme, from
churchs to urban plans. His frst projects are
original and remarked.
With his own home in Hellebaek
he introduced the free plan in the Danish
domestc architecture. The two villages he built
then (in Helsingor in 1956 and Fredensborg,
1959), are intended to be an alternatve to
lotssements that proliferate around Danish
cites. By reinterpretng an old model - the pato
house - he comes with several types that he
distributes following the topography, UTZON
achieves a perfect balance between confictng
requirements: the private home and the sense
of community, aspiraton interior comfort and
the desire for shared public spaces, fexibility
of utlizaton and architectural coherence, the
afrmaton of human interventon and respect
for the site.
But his undisputed masterpiece is the
Opera House in Sydney that has become the
icon of the city and one of the worlds most
famous symbols of Australia, in the words of
Australian Prime Minister Kevin RUDD. Among
his accomplishments also included a church
in Bagsvaerd, a suburb of Copenhagen, two
houses on the island of Majorca and the colossal
Parliament of Kuwait in the early 1980s.
In 1985, his children Jan and Kim begin
to work with him. And since Jrn UTZON retired,
they continue the activity of the agency UTZON
Architects. They were, moreover, responsible
for monitoring the development and restoration
of the Sydney Opera House, in particular the
internal design. The opera was classified World
Heritage Site in 2006.
Like his meteoric career, the unclassifable
nature of his architecture may explain that
UTZON remained misunderstood. The radical
artst fed with traditon, the humanist and
48
utopian, who wanted to work beyond the
possible traversed through the landscape
of European post-modernism like a luminous
enigma.
UTZON receives in 2003 the Pritzker Prize
for his lifetme achievement. He died at the age
of 90 on November 29, 2008 in Copenhagen.
The Sydney Opera House
The Sydney Opera House is a prime
example of contemporary iconic building.
Indeed, it is considered one of the most famous
and most visited monuments of the twenteth
century. But paradoxically, it is also one of the
most overlooked. Its name evokes unparalleled
forms, hulls, sails, opalescent peaks in the
extraordinary landscape that is Sydney Harbor,
one of the most beautful in the world. It has
become the emblem of a city and country.
The project for an opera in Sydney was
born in the late 1940s. It is carried by Eugene
Goossens, director of the Conservatory of
Music of the State of New South Wales with the
support of the Prime Minister Joseph Cahill, who
commissioned a study.
Bennelong Point, a peninsula in the Bay
of Sydney, was chosen among 31 possible sites.
And it was in 1956, during the highly mediatzed
Melbourne Olympics that the competton was
launched for the constructon of an opera. 233
candidates representng 32 countries send their
project. The originality, or error made in the
competton, was that candidates werent asked
to draw a constructble project, but only a style
study. The judgment was therefore based on
purely formal criteria, the most remarkable and
most striking proposal would win.
In 1957, UTZON won the internatonal
competton for the new the Sydney Opera House.
a big surprise because, the thirty eight years old
architect, it is barely known. Indeed, he does
not ft in the profle of starchitects that normally
are assigned to such megaprojects, even if he
gained some fame in Denmark and Sweden by
winning several architectural consultatons and
urban planning, which did not result. But the
jury was categorical, they chose UTZON and his
project because given the design of the project,
we believe that this opera will become one of the
great architectural works of the world.
1
Architectural concept
Without visitng Sydney, UTZON gives
the landscape of the city and the competton
1
La dclaraton du jury Cit dans le site Australie-Aus-
tralie. Adresse internet : htp://www.australia-australie.
com/opera-de-sydney/
Fig 38 The Sydney morning herald, the frst and second prize
winning projects, it described the project Utzon as
controversial
Fig 37 Location of the city of Sydney, Australia
49
program an audacious response slicing with the
proposals of the other compettors. He wants to
build on the promontory of Bennelong, white
shells that covers like sails, two concert halls
contained in a monumental stone base, inspired
by the platorms of pre-Columbian architecture.
The concept of UTZON came in one hand from
the conditons of the contest and the special
context of the country and city that launched
it, and on the other hand from his personal
architectural experience.
Australia, the smallest contnent and
the largest island in the world, is the latest new
land discovered and colonized by Europeans. It
is described as the far end of the world because
of the distance that separates it from Europe
(20,000 km). The frst setlements were penal
colonies. Its indigenous populaton like in the
American contnent was partally murdered
and robbed before being excluded from the
politcal and administratve machinery. its
society is, therefore, exclusively composed of
the descendants of European setlers, but also
of immigrants from Asian origins. A young and
cosmopolitan society that lacked elements that
symbolize its unity natonally and internatonally.
At the tme of the establishment of the
Australian federaton, two cites were competng
to become capital, Sydney and Melbourne. The
issue was resolved by building from scratch
Canberra. But the two rival cites contnued to
challenge. When, Sydney Harbor Bridge was
built, the widest and highest arch bridge in the
world, Melbourne hosts the Olympic Games
in 1956. The same year Sydney launched the
contest of the Sydney Opera House .
In fact the contest was a competton
between ideas in which candidates were asked
to present concepts and not a constructble
project. A concept that should be bold and
formally innovatve in order to distnguish the
city of Sydney from Melbourne on the natonal
and internatonal level was asked. An iconic
project with an image outside the norm and
away from its social, formal and urban context.
The site itself expresses this query because it has
been chosen out of the city and at the same tme
visible from all its strategic angles. The project
was meant to be exposed. Therefore It had to be
a real work of art.
UTZON has not visited Sydney before
concepton. His approach has been, here
diferent from that adopted by Renzo Piano in
the TJIBAOU cultural center. But this fact may
be what worked in his favor. On an other hand,
Australian society is historically a globalized
Western society on the Anglo-Saxon model,
which in its social and demographic compositon
Fig 39 View of the bennelong point and Sydney Harbour before
the consrutction of the opera
Fig 40 Ground plane of the site
50
is very similar to the North American society,
especially that of the United States, a country
that the architect has visited . These are both
countries where the new dominant populaton
has no history or building traditons other than
what it brought with it from the European
contnent, and therefore could not ofer him a
source of formal or social inspiraton for a real
distnctveness.
But, the context was interestng to UTZON
because of its special situaton geographically and
topographically speaking, the tp of a peninsula
in the middle of Sydney Harbor, which is among
the largest and most beautful in the world and
assists to the passage of hundreds of boats per
day. Thing that sets everything that could be built
in it the heart of the urban landscape of the city
and at the same tme in the heart of the sea and
harbor, moreover, worth notng that Sydney has
played in the consttuton of Australia the same
role as that of New York for the United States.
The opera was, therefore, meant somehow to
become the monument of Sydney in the same
way as is the Statue of Liberty for New York.
UTZON also drew on the experience he gained
from his travels around the world, where he
studied the monumental architecture of other
cultures, including that of the pre-Columbian
architecture in Mexico, where he he has been
inspired for one of the elements of his concepton:
the platorm. For UTZON, the platorm is a
fascinatng architectural element. I was frst
fascinated by these platorms in a study trip to
Mexico in 1949, where I found several variatons
of the idea and the size of these elements. They
radiate a large force.
1

In additon to the context in which
occurred the design and the formal input from
the experience of the architect, the intenton
behind the project for the Opera is part of a
movement of return to the form, proper to
UTZON generaton. Young architects react
against the drying of the formal modernism of
their elders and bet on new technologies, here
the thin reinforced concrete shells, to embody
their claim for a larger plastc freedom and foster
the emergence of a new architecture.
Therefore UTZON has conceived a unique
and extraordinary sculptural building with
aesthetcs thoroughly studied. The architect
has even thought of the ffh facade, because
the opera was also to be seen from the top of
the Harbor Bridge. He was inspired by boat sails
that were calling in the bay, by the conditons
of competton, the unique locaton of the site
and has permeated his work with his personal
experience and the climate of rejecton against
the modern architecture that existed in his tme.
He wanted to recreate the concept of the opera
declaring on Australian television at the tme:
We will not need the name of opera house on
1
Jorn UTZON quoted in the site Australie-Australie. htp://
www.australia-australie.com/opera-de-sydney/
Fig 41 Panorama of Sydney Harbour, taken from the Harbour Bridge
51
a sign to know that this is an opera, but we will
recognize it as such as we recognize a church
1
.
The result was as described by himself instead
of a square shape, I made a sculpture, I wanted
this shape to be a living thing, that something
happen to you when you pass near, so you are
never tred of watching it moving with the clouds,
playing with the sun, the light ... . The ceramic
coatng refects this game with natural light that
changes the appearance of the building and
ofers multple optons for night lightng that
completely changes its appearance.
2

As we have said, the original concept
of UTZON allowed him to win the contest.
However, the architect and engineers are quickly
confronted with the reality: the impossibility
of building the Opera without changing the
project, because the technology that would
allow its constructon had not yet been
invented. To beter understand how the opera
was to be built, it must be separated into three
components corresponding to the three phases
of its constructon. In the frst place, there
is the famous platorm or Podium, which
corresponds to the foundatons. Then there are
the roofs and the white sails that have made
the reputaton of the building and have caused
its biggest constructon problems. Finally there
is the interior design. Foundaton constructon
began December 5, 1958 when the London
1
Entretent avec Jrn UTZON, source You tube.
2
Jorn UTZON, op cit.
agency engineering struggled to calculate the
geometry of the shells that were to be fled
despite the use of the frst computers. It is fnally
the architect who found the soluton in 1962;
he proposed that the shells should be all taken
from the same theoretcal sphere, which makes
their surfaces proportonal, and ratonalizes it
and allows economical producton. But, by the
tme we found the soluton, the platorm was
already completed and its structure could not
bear the hulls that became much heavier than
originally planned. Therefore the basement has
been blasted and the structure reconstructed
from scratch.
These technical complicatons have
resulted in a considerable delay and an
explosion in the inital budget, which led to the
deterioraton of relatons between the architect
and politcal high-ranking ofcials especially afer
the electon of Prime Minister Davis HUGHES. In
1966 UTZON resigned seven years before the
completon of the project, lef Australia, and
never returned. A team of three local architects
was commissioned to complete the project that
fnally didnt respect the interior design of the
architect .
The opera will be completed with 10
years of retard, October 20, 1973, 16 years afer
the start of constructon. It was inaugurated by
Queen Elizabeth II, UTZON did not atend the
ceremony, and he never saw his work completed.
His name does not appear on the plaque at the
52
entrance of the Opera. With a cost of 102 million
Australian dollars, it will have cost 14 tmes more
than the inital budget of 7 million Australian
dollars.
Completed, the Opera is 183 meters long
and 120 meters at its widest point. It has an area
of 1.8 hectare. It is supported by 580 concrete
pillars which penetrate up to 25 meters below
sea level, Its electrical needs are equal to those
of a city of 25 000 inhabitants. Electricity is
distributed by 645 kilometers of electrical cables.
The roof is composed of 1,056,006 white ceramic
tles, inspired to UTZON by bowls he marked in
Japan. The building is the frst to use silicone as
a structural element and large scale suspended
glass. The over 34 m high central bay window, is
suspended without intermediate support.
This story is told as a legend to 7 million
tourists who visit the opera each year. Making
it the most visited monument in the southern
hemisphere. With a capacity of 6000 spectators,
opera sells more than a million tckets and hosts
over two thousand shows a year. It is thus the
most actve theater in the world and a major
source of income and publicity for the city of
Sydney and Australia.
Recepton
The opera received such a favorable
recepton in Sydney and across Australia by the
government, and by Australians, that seven years
afer its inauguraton, it had already atained
the status of natonal symbol and icon, and
the government presented its candidacy to the
World Heritage List of Unesco, something that
was denied because the building was not old
enough. But in 2006, the building is listed in the
list of the organizaton described as a beautful
urban sculpture, [...] since its constructon this
building has a great infuence on the world of
architecture. It combines various innovatve
currents from the point of view of architectural
form and structural concepton .
1
From a certain point of view, the Sydney
Opera House is undoubtedly one of the most
successful, most famous and iconic world
1
Site ofciel de lorganisaton des natons unies pour
lducaton la science et la culture. Adresse internet :
htp://whc.unesco.org/fr/list/166.
landmark buildings. Its story worthy of a novel
amplifes its image and adds a romantc touch.
But its great success has other reasons.
One of these reasons is the urban context in
which it was built. In the ffies, the city of Sydney
was a prosperous city, but it clearly lacked iconic
elements. Indeed, apart from the Harbor Bridge,
no other building could claim to have enough
iconicity to compete with the iconic newcomer.
Therefore the opera, come to occupy an empty
seat for which it was specially designed, in a
poor and symbolically speaking climate.
The functon of the opera and its dynamics
are also part of these reasons because Opera
was built to meet the growing demand of the
audience that the old theater no longer met. This
demand is accentuated by the great dynamic
of the opera house, where over two thousand
shows are organized every year. Demand and
social functon is, therefore, a key element in the
reputaton acquired by the building.
Another reason is that by leaving Australia,
UTZON also lef the front of the internatonal
architectural scene. His parallel projects stayed
inbuilt: the strange bulbs designed for ASGER
Museum Jorn in Silkeborg, Denmark, the foatng
tablecloths for Zurich Theater; the modular
pavilions for his own residence in Sydney. As
argued by the Dane Bent Flyvbjerg in Harvard
Design Magazine: The real price of the project
of the Opera does not lie in its huge overruns.
The controversies that have accompanied these
excesses prevented defnitvely UTZON from
giving us other masterpieces. . The opera
is, therefore, the only work of this scale of the
architect who may be, if he had the acclaim that
had been given to similar talented architects,
would have other commands that would have
competed with the opera formal image. As
is the case, for example, of the Guggenheim
Museum in Bilbao by Frank Gehry, which refers
the inspiraton source for the majority of the
architects projects .
In 1999, UTZON 86 years old, agreed
to rework the common parts of the building
but from Denmark, it is his son and daughter,
architects in his ofce that will follow the work.
In 2003, he received the Pritzker Architecture
Prize. According to the jury Jrn UTZON created
53
Ground plane 1
st
Floor Plan
2
nd
Floor Plan
North facade
South facade
West facade
East facade
Axial section B-C Axial section A-C
Fig 42 Technical drawings of the Sydney Opera House
54
one of the greatest architectural icons of the
twentieth century, an image of great beauty
known worldwide. Besides this masterpiece,
he worked his whole life laboriously, brilliantly,
quietly and without a single false note.
Synthesis
The Sydney opera house is a singular
example. We are facing an architect whose
projects have indisputable historical and
traditonal reference, critcal toward the modern
architecture and the tabula rasa, and which,
moreover, is not reluctant to learn from the
architecture of other cultures and civilizatons,
which prove that he is an open minded architect,
would it be only from the formal point of view.
But in this project, he created a building that, at
the tme, could be described as an architectural
object even in the Western context, without
visitng the site and without any consideraton
of its social context. Therefore, the symbolism of
the project does certainly not exceed the formal
aspect. The iconicity of the opera is formally
powerful but incomplete in its other aspects
because essental identty dimension has been
neglected in its design.
This is primarily due to conditons of competton
which do not encourage a culturalist approach to
the project, but a formal and aesthetc approach.
It did not ask for simple building to occupy a
functon, the functon itself was only an excuse,
but rather a work of art, an exceptonal object to
show, a graphic symbol that serve as advertsing
for the city and the country. This project
was chosen for this purpose, a real outdoor
showroom very similar to the small island of the
Statue of Liberty in New York. The social context
of Sydney too, has to do with this acculturaton.
Australia consisted of a global cosmopolitan
young society, formed mostly of descendants of
Britsh and European setlers, who did not have
substantal or essental elements expressing
their natonal identty. Besides this mater of
identty was irrelevant and did not exceed the
formal aspect.
UTZON has thus created a building
inspired by the geographical site, by his personal
experience and even by architectural climate
prevailing at the tme, but not by the local social
context. This is, perhaps, because there wasnt
actually a distnct social context, and that the
sponsors have not given importance to identty
dimension in the contest conditons. This did not
prevent the building from being accepted by the
populaton, or its image to meet unparalleled
global success. It has become the architectural
symbol of Sydney and Australia and the
reference which inspired many starchitects who
build in the city as did Renzo Piano in Sydney
tour. The modern Western context made the
acceptance of this building possible but the
Opera house cannot, so far, be considered as the
representatve of an Australian distnct social
identty, if this distnctveness happened to exist
at that tme.
The elements that made the great success of
the Sydney Opera House cant be understood
individually. They reinforce each other, increasing
the power of each other. They can be classifed
chronologically as follows:
First, the large media campaign that accompanied
the launch of the competton and the progress
of the work, it has a great role in the insinuaton
of the building importance to the public.
Then the extravagant architectural concept of
the architect in complete ideological and formal
rupture with what was done untl then.
his strategic site for its visual accessibility and
beauty of its landscape.
His great functonal strength, which makes the
opera worlds most actve.
And fnally, the fact that the building tells a story
that strs the imaginaton, the circumstances
that prevented an artst to complete his greatest
masterpiece.
55
Fig 43 Sydney Opera House during the Sydney lights festival
56
2. Gehry and the Guggenheim Museum
Frank Gehry is considered in the West as one of the worlds most successful architects. His
unconventonal design approach has earned him great respect in the architectural world and a global
celebrity quite before his most famous project, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, which has changed
the percepton of the role of architecture in the city, and led to the birth of a new phenomenon the
Bilbao efect .
An architect in the PICASSO way
Frank Owen GOLDBERG was born
February 28, 1929 in Toronto, Canada, in a Polish
family. His father worked in the constructon
materials trade and his mother was a music
lover. This relatonship feeds the sensitvity of
personality. Very young, he shows a heel for
drawing and sculpture. His family moved during
his adolescence in Ontario where his classmates
nicknamed him Fish. In 1954, he changed his
family name GOLDBERG to GEHRY.
He studied at the University of Southern California
and Harvard Graduate School of Design. Freshly
graduated from college, he meets painters and
sculptors and discovers European culture; which
he opposes to Californian architecture without
respect for the environment. Years later, he
summarize: I was a committed Liberal and I
loved art, and these two facts together made
me an architect.
1

Gehry has worked in many agencies. at

Welton BECKET & Associates between 1957 and
1958, Victor GRUEN between 1958 and 1961 in
Los Angeles, as well as in Andr Remondet in
Paris in 1961. Then he created his agency, the
Frank O. Gehry and Associates Inc. in Los
Angeles in 1962. He is an Architecture professor
at Yale University, and holds a number of awards
for his projects including the Pritzker Prize in
1986. He is considered one of the greatest living
architects. And his buildings are generally noted
for their original and twisted appearance .
Gehrys career spans four decades during which
he designed public and private buildings in
North America, Europe and Asia. At the end of
the twenteth century, Frank Gehry has become
one of the most recognized architects in the
West. It is among a handful whose extravagant
1
Frank GEHRY quoted in : Frank GEHRY, Wikipdia.
Adresse internet : htp://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_
Gehry
and widely known projects bring architecture
into neophytes people conversatons.
In the late 1970s, he began to break the
cubic space. He ventured into a totally unknown
territory through an architectural experience:
his own litle pink bungalow in Santa Monica
becomes a laboratory in which he can try all.
Gehry moves walls, adds new ones, making it
difcult to distnguish inside from outside.
He uses common materials such as chain link
fencing as architectural elements, which is
quickly associated with his work. Afer 1989,
computers and specialized sofware give him the
freedom to create inventve ways to defne space.
Even today, Gehry contnues to use the design
process he experienced during the renovaton of
his own home. Buildings are usually composed
of discrete volumes shaped by curvilinear roofs
that undulate freely. He uses ofen metal panels,
of stainless steel or ttanium, as platng. The
result is a collecton of buildings unrelated with
historical architectural design. The century
ended with the selecton of the Guggenheim
Museum in Bilbao (Spain), designed by Gehry as
the building of the century
2
.
This project is the origin of what has been called
the Bilbao efect. It was so successful with the
public and tourists that architecture enthusiasts
invaded the small town of Bilbao to come admire
the realizaton of Gehry. The Guggenheim Bilbao
is the perfect example of the impact of the choice
of a well-known architect, like Gehry to design
a building; he can atract thousands of visitors,
and cause a Bilbao efect. Museums and other
cultural and public insttutons around the world
have followed this example, hoping to fnd the
2
The Canadian encyclopedia.
http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/articles/fr/
frank-gehry
57
same success as the Guggenheim.
The Guggenheim museum
The Guggenheim Museum of Bilbao came
to light thanks to two main factors: the desire for
expansion of an American art foundaton that is
one of the aspects of cultural globalizaton, and
the eforts of the autonomous government of
Spanish Basque Country to beautfy its image
and emerge from the economic crisis .
On one hand, we have a prestgious
cultural insttuton, the Solomon R. Guggenheim
foundaton established in New York in the famous
spiral museum designed by Frank lloyd Wright.
Since its creaton by an American millionaire,
the foundaton began the promoton of abstract
art in the United States and especially in New
York. In 1988, the new museum director Thomas
Krens, based on the fact that only 5% of the
Guggenheim collecton was exhibited in New
York, began to realize an ambitous idea, create
a franchise system with foreign governments
to install museums satellites to which the
New York-insttuton , will lend by rolling its
prestgious collecton. The objectve of Krens is
to increase benefts of the museum and make it
more famous, economic and cultural objectves.
The foundaton wants to start its expansion
strategy in the old contnent. Given the prestge
of the Guggenheim brand there were lots of
candidates, Including in partcular the cites
of Salzburg in Germany, Paris in France and
Venice in Italy which already houses the private
collecton of Peggy Guggenheim, the niece of
Solomon, in Spain they would choose Madrid,
Barcelona or Seville but not Bilbao.
Indeed, for the Basque country, and especially
its capital Bilbao, 80s are black years. Suddenly
confronted with internatonal competton afer
Fig 44 Guggenheim Museum of New York by Frank Lloyd Wright
58
the death of Franco in 1975, this region, whose
entre economy was based on the iron industry,
undergoes full brunt of the global energy
and steel crisis. The bankruptcies illustrate
the dismantling of the naval industry and the
closure of the main plants in the region. The
legacy of the post-industrial period is heavy.
Between the years 1975 and 1986, 150,000 jobs
are deleted. The rate of GDP growth is negatve
and unemployment is up to 35% in some cites in
the Basque region. Not to menton the polluton,
outdated infrastructure and urban breakdown
that led to a populaton decline throughout the
region.
To overcome this crisis, the Basque
Government undertook in 1989 a large-scale
economic and urban regeneraton by creatng
the company Bilbao Ria 2000, a limited
company with shareholders for the Basque
Government, the province of Biscay and
municipalites concerned. The fnancial efort
is substantal: 735 million euros are invested
to recover the land released by the closed or
relocated factories and integrate it into the
urban of the city by landmarks projects. It is in
this climate that decision makers are planning
to create a cultural facility for the general public
that would give a visibility to Bilbao, and thus
enhance its atractveness for investors, like what
happens in cites such as New York or Frankfurt
that perceive culture not as an expense but as
an investment and a real engine for economic
development.
Therefore, the objectves of both sides
coincide. Krens wanted to implement the
Guggenheim in Europe and Bilbao ofered him
a great opportunity because, unlike Paris and
Salzburg, the museum will have no compettor
able to erase the image of its presence. On the
other hand, Bilbao needed the Guggenheim
foundaton and its worldwide fame to improve
its image, which was one more argument to put
on the table during negotatons.
Krens as described by the future Bilbao
museum director, Juan Ignacio VIDARTE, is an
ambassador of culture who knows how to speak
about money
1
, visits the Basque country and
end fve months later, in September 1991, by
signing a Memorandum of agreement with the
local government in the utmost discreton, as
it had to convince the public and the Basque
public opinion of the questonable choice of the
politcal elite.
Protesters critcize the project mainly
from cultural and economic points of view. Ibon
ARESO, Bilbao Mayors assistant, discusses the
problems that faced the museum in the project
1
Juan Ignacio VIDARTE quoted in le rapport de presse de
linsttut France Euskadi de 2007.
htp://www.france-euskadi.org/site/templates/euskadi2/
UserFiles/File/dossier%20Guggenheim.PDF
Bilbao
Spain Portugal
The museum
Fig 45 Location of the city of Bilbao in Spain Fig 46 Location of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, yellow
color are areas released after the removal of industrial
activity outside the city.
59
phase:
The biggest problem has been the significant
rejection generated by the project to the citizens
of the city of Bilbao, who did not understand that
we invest so many resources in the construction
of a museum, while the economic crisis was
at its full and the financial investment of the
administration should be primarily designed
to save jobs, by providing help for industries
in crisis. [...] In this unfavorable climate - we
were seen as Europe idiots that have agreed
for what nobody wanted. We pay tribute to the
Coca Cola culture and American imperialism
by building a MacGuggenheim , we faced
with critcs with a strategic challenge : build a
museum that has the potental to become the
emblem of an entre city [...].
1
. An agreement
was fnally reached between the government
and the politcal oppositon and an architectural
competton was launched where Frank GEHRY
will fnally be declared winner.
Architectural concept
When was announced the internatonal
competton designed to select the architect
responsible for the design plans of the
Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Basque
insttutons formed the hope that the winning
project would be recognized as one of the
1
Interview with Ibon ARESO Bilbao mayor assistant in
January 2010 Etats Gnraux du Commerce 2010. P : 2
most representatve buildings of the twenteth
century, with excellence artstc level of iconic
buildings of the internatonal sphere. In the
competton terms, there is no menton of the
obligaton to be inspired from the city context or
the Basque identty that is nevertheless rich and
claim its distnctveness. Therefore, the designer
is totally free.
The proposal of Frank O. Gehry met the
conditons sought. Like the Guggenheim
Museum in New York designed by Frank Lloyd
Wright, the building was designed to express the
potental of the project; the integraton of the
building into Bilbaos urban network and its plan
for economic regeneraton.
Before designing the museum, Gehry
was already famous in the architectural world
with his artstc approach toward space, for
which the critcs ranked him as belonging to
the deconstructve style, and compared him
to Picasso and his cubism. his architecture is
distnguished by its abstract and unusual forms
that would have been very difcult to materialize
without the assistance of advanced modeling
programs that transforms his research models in
habitable volumes. Gehry considers architecture
as an art, used to enhance the context of which
it was derived and inspired. But the noton of
inspiraton for gehry is closer to that of Picasso
in his cubist works when he is inspired by the
human body to draw his paintngs; he takes his
Fig 47 The site of the Guggenheim museum before its
construction
Fig 48 Gehrys sketchs, showing that the site was chosen for its
high visibility of all the strategic points of the city.
60
Fig 49 Sketchs Of Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. Frank Gahry
Fig 50 3d visualisation of the project
61
inspiraton model and then forgets it.
The Bilbao Guggenheim Museum may
very well be compared to the famous Sydney
Opera House, which is its precursor in its
approach to non-standard design and formal
freedom. But unlike UTZON, Gehry knew how
to manage tme and budget that have been
allocated to him, thanks to his wide experience
in the design and constructon of such buildings
and his team of experts in modeling technologies
which facilitate the processing of study model
to computer model quantfable in terms of
cost, structure and materials. Gehry agency is
a master in the feld and excelled to the point
that a new frm called Gehry technologies has
detached and is responsible for the development
of digital architectural projects for Gehrys and
other agencies.
Gehrys building looks like a large
sculpture of a total area of 24,000 m2
(auditorium, library, restaurant, etc.). A singular
and extraordinary fgure formed of surprising
and unique materials. From the north side,
the river side, the volume plays with water,
undulatons and fuid forms of chaotc look, bent
and covered with 25,000 m2 of ttanium and
large glass walls, frst to play with the sunlight
and secondly to refer to the industrial past of
Bilbao. In the south side, the building speaks
with the city. The forms are regular, covered with
stone. The corners are straight and the windows
are aligned. The building is organized around a
central axis, the atrium, a monumental empty
space crowned with a glass and metal dome
at its zenith, letng in, and through the glass
walls, a light that foods the whole. All around
this empty space, a system of curved walkways,
glass fronted elevators and stair towers put in
relaton nineteen galleries where are combined
classic rectangular spaces with forms and spaces
of unique forms and proportons.
This variety and multplicity of spaces in the
museum grant exceptonal versatlity. Thus, the
collecton is distributed chronologically along
the rectangular galleries with a total area of
11,000 m2, housed in the volumes of ttanium.
Temporary exhibitons and large-format works
fnd their place in an exceptonal gallery 30 m wide
and 130 m long approximately, free of columns,
housed in the volume which extends beneath
the colossal bridge La Salve and culminates in
a tower soluton that integrates the bridge at
the intersecton of volumes that compose the
building. The relatonship between the exterior
and interior of the museum is ambiguous. It is
difcult for visitors to recognize the locaton of
each gallery once outside. The Highest corridor
is 25m from the ground while the highpoint of
the museum is 53 m, between the two an area
inaccessible to visitors. The relatonship between
the exterior and the interior is upset by the loss
of reference. The new Museum will present
a leading artstc program to let Bilbao take a
prominent place among the major internatonal
circuits .
The geometric modifcaton of the
complex shapes is achieved thanks to the
sofware CATIA, that was untl now exclusively
used by the aerospace industry and now widely
used in the worldof of architecture for complex
shapes. The frst spark of the design was analog
(drawing or model). But the transiton to digital
tools is immediate, in a process of formal
elaboraton passing from analog models to
digital models and ends by models cut by CNC
machines. In additon, all the engineering and
material producton required to achieve the
curves and complex shapes components are
entrely based on digital technologies.
In terms of technology implementaton, the
highly variable curved shiny surfaces could be
materialized through a system derived from
aerospace industry: fexible ttanium plates,
usually used to realize the spacecraf surfaces.
Recepton
The investment in the building is huge,
150 million euros. To amortze it, the objectves
are very ambitous from 250,000 to 500,000
visitors with paid admission, while the Museum
of Fine Arts in Bilbao is hosts 100,000 even if the
entry is free. In additon, opinion polls conducted
on the eve of the inauguraton in October 1997
showed that 70% of the Basque populaton
then felt that the public investment made to
the museum is not justfed and that the funds
should have been used otherwise. And nearly
55% of them, said that the most emblematc
62
Fig 51 Technical plans of the museum
Ground plane
1st Floor Plan
River side faade
City side faade
Transverse section
Longitudinal section
63
project of Bilbao was the subway designed by
Norman Foster opened two years before
1
.
The inauguraton was in a Sunday, October
19, 1997, and the reactons are immediate at
natonal and internatonal level.
The Western press is unanimous to the
appearance, the wonder, the diamond
point, but it is mainly the U.S. mediate that
commented the most, since the Olympic Games
of Barcelona, there were never so many artcles
devoted to a Spanish event, all evoke the miracle
of Bilbao, a museum that became fascinatng
to the eye as the Eifel Tower. But behind this
enthusiasm many wondered about the viability
of the museum and its ability to atract, as
predicted by the Basque public authorites,
500,000 visitors per year.
The results were impressive as explained by Ibon
Areso Bilbaos Mayor assistant :
[...]. The conducted feasibility study estmated
that 400,000 visitors per year were needed to
justfy the planned investment of 132,220,000.
[...] The frst year [...] this Chifre has tripled to
reach 1,360,000 visitors. Today, the average
atendance [...] is from 900,000 to 1,000,000
visitors per year. [...] A study prepared by the
consultng frm KPMG Peat Marwick with its
business model, provide us with the following
results: in the frst year of the museum operaton,
from October 1997 to October 1998, the increase
in GDP in the Basque Autonomous Community,
derived solely from the existence of this
museum was 144 million euros. No conventonal
investment, recover the investment in less than
a year.
On the other hand, the increase of wealth
earned the Treasury Basque additonal revenue,
the consequences of which, during the inital
three years, brought together the 84.14 million
that has cost the museum and in fve years the
132,220,000 total investment. the numbers
from the last study, corresponding to the year
2006, say that, considering the direct, indirect
and induced efects, the actvites of the Bilbao
Guggenheim Museum has been the source of a
wealth generaton of 211 million euros of GDP
for this year, resultng in additonal revenue
1
Source le rapport de presse de linsttut France Eus-
kadi , op cit.
of 29 million euros for the Basque Treasury.
Wealth generaton mentoned - according to
KPMG consultancy mentoned involved the
maintenance of 3,816 jobs during the frst year
of operaton, which during 2006 totaled 4,232
jobs.
As a reference we can say that the Euskalduna
shipyard, located in the same area, during its
best years of actvity, ofered 4,000 to 3,000
direct jobs and 1,000 indirect in sub-industries. In
its last years the total employment generated by
this shipyard was 2,300 jobs. For all this, we can
say that the museum is able to support the same
number of jobs of the shipyard at the tme of its
peak (50-60 years) and twice what it ofered in
its fnal phase...
2
.
The museum has, therefore, been a total
economic success that has exceeded even
the most optmistc forecasts of the Basque
Government and the municipality of the city
of Bilbao. But beyond its economic impact, the
museum has certainly had an efect on the
populaton.
The panel dressed in the hall displays
a large Gu we in Basque language and in a
smaller character ... ggenheim a statement as
a set of words that highlights the link that the
museum wants to create with the Basque people.
A bet largely won as expressed Ibon ARESO:
... But there are also other less predictable
earnings, [...]. Im talking about the recovery
of Bilbao societys self-esteem, which has
experienced a decline with the industrial crisis
and negative indices of unemployment that
it has produced. A clear shift in the process of
decline occurred even though we still have a
lot work to do, we strongly begun the path to
economic revitalization.
3

Perplexed at the announcement of the project,
impressed by the work on the worksite, the
bilbotarrak (inhabitant of Bilbao), will soon give
way to enthusiasm and pride when discovering
the futuristic titanium ship which stands on the
banks of the Nervion river, [...]. The structures
that surround the museum like Puppy the big
flowery dog by Jeff Koons, or like the giant spider
2
Ibon ARESO op cit. P : 3
3
Ibon ARESO op cit. P : 4
64
by Louise Bourgeois are the new daily landmarks
of a transformed city.
1
The economic and cultural success of
urban policy in Bilbao, which the Gehry Museum
is the emblem is recognized and appreciated
at natonal and internatonal level to such an
extent that the Bilbao efect now, interests
many cites searching a new image and a new
dynamism. This phenomenon interested also
many cultural renowned brands such as the
Louvre and the Pompidou center and the
Hermitage looking to export itself as did the
Guggenheim Museum. Architecture and marks
begin to associate to produce a logo holding a
great memorizaton potental.
The Guggenheim Museum, itself, had a
great efect on architecture theory and in the
procedure of concepton and percepton of
iconic monumental architecture in partcular.
Its organic shape, its extravagant design, and
1
Press Insttute France Euskadi press release in August
2007. P: 15.
especially its media and economic success,
henceforth connected to the Basque miracle, led
to a greater liberaton of architectural forms and
design. Projects with extraordinary shapes that
before the Bilbao efect would never have been
executed are now built all around the world. As
JENCKS states in an interview with John Jourden:
... But this produced at that time an extraordinary
building, which would never have been built ten
or fifteen years ago, [...]. The Disney Concert
Hall by Gehry was stopped, designed in 88, it
wasnt going to go ahead until Bilbao [...] The
Bilbao Effect had an effect on (Gehry), I mean
he could build (the WDCH)! Now everybody
wants one, and thats driving architecture. Its
a real double-edged sword, as I was saying last
night. Youre in a double bind [...] you know,
astonish me, excite me, show me something.
Wow! Thats never been done before! And make
it cheap, efficient functional, da-duh-da-duh-da,
and make it fit in
2
2
JENCKS Charles, Interview by John Jourden.
http://archinect.com/features/article/29809/charles-
jencks-being-iconic.
Fig 52 Abondoibarra area 1970 Fig 53 Abondoibarra area 2007
65
Therefore, culture is no longer seen as
a charge but as an investment where. More
The building is extravagant and more likely it is
to replicate the Bilbao efect where it is built.
Starchitects have become free in budget and
concept levels, but also in the referental level,
this is the air of architect emancipaton.
The success experienced by the
Guggenheim Museum is due, of course, to the
innovatve architecture of the building but also
to two other reasons.
The frst is the great mediatsaton and
marketng of the project, on the one hand
through the choice of an art foundaton
internatonally renowned and a starchitect
winner of the Pritzker Prize, and on the
other hand through the mediatsaton
by the Basque Government and the
Guggenheim Foundaton in two fronts.
The second component is the good
administraton, the dynamism of the
museum and the involvement of the
populaton in the actvites. During the
frst ten years of its existence, more
than two and a half million people have
partcipated in at least one of the 50
educatonal programs that the museum
organizes every year for diferent groups
(schools, teachers, families, youth,
children, disadvantaged people and the
general public) in order to provide them
with tools that will help them understand
and appreciate the works of art exhibited
in the museum. To this must be added
the considerable social support for this
insttuton through its group of Friends,
which has nearly 15,800 members, the
largest in Spain and the third in number
behind the Louvre and the Tate Gallery.
Synthesis :
The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao,
designed by American architect Gehry, is one
of the few iconic modern buildings that have
achieved such a degree of fame and commercial
and media success. And by this achievement
Fig 54 Bilbao Guggenheim museum visitor numbers

Fig 55 Number of spent nights in the province of Biscay, where
the museum is located
66
gilded the urban image of the Bilbao that was
once negatve.
The architect created an iconic building whose
purpose was from the beginning to be a work
of art that may atract the atenton of a global
audience..
The building was extremely successful in
this task and created ex nihilo a new economic
actvity that did not previously exist in Bilbao:
tourism, of which it has become the main
atracton. An artstc and cultural tourism whose
goal is not the Basque culture, In fact, tourists
who visit Bilbao are, for the most, atracted by the
architecture of the building event designed by an
American architect, for an American foundaton,
in order to house the works of American art. The
building is indisputably a success in its context
but, but it presents a problem from the cultural
and identty perspectve..
Although the building has a cultural
vocaton, the architect was not inspired by
the culture of the Basque country, besides the
competton conditons did not require architects
to do so. The purpose of the building was not to
refect any identty, but to atract tourists, create
a new icon for the city, to proft of an investment
and especially to be a break with the unwanted
industrial past. The cultural functon is therefore
a pretext for the creaton of wealth. The real
purpose of the museum is economic disguised
with cultural habit.
From another point of view, Bilbao is a city that
has experienced the industrial revoluton early
in its history thanks to UK investors. So, as in all
major European cites, the true identty rupture
took place in the nineteenth and twenteth
century. It is true that Basque society remained
distnct even within the Spanish society, but this
distnctveness is relatve and concerns mainly
the language.
We are in front of an extraordinary
architectural project, but that could have been
built anywhere in the world, because it has no
historical or cultural references. It now refers to
a city only because of its distnctve shape, but
not to a distnct identty.
The shape of the museum tends to lose its magic
Fig 56 Panorama of the museum and its direct landscape

67
since Gehry tends to repeat the same concept
1
.
UTZON opera was also, of extraordinary
architecture, but it managed to become one of
the symbols of the city of Sydney and Australia,
and one of its cultural and architectural
references before be classifed a World Heritage.
This is likely what awaits the Bilbao Guggenheim
Museum. In any case, only tme can show
whether the successful launch was caused by
the hype and surprise, or a magic genius that will
contnue captvatng the generatons to come.
LThe elements that made the success
of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao are the
same as those of the Sydney Opera House, but
we fnd more:
First, discreton and rapidity with which
the agreement between the Guggenheim
Foundaton and the Basque Country was signed.
1
In an interview published in Charles Jencks book the ico-
nic building , P : 9. GEHRY dit : ... from Bilbao, we began
to call me to make Frank Gehrys buildings thats what
they tell me, we want a Frank Gehry building, it really
created a lot of problems when I come up with a concep-
ton and was told Oh! ... Well, this is not a Gehry!.
Then using of the latest technologies in
concepton and executon, thereby avoiding the
drama of UTZON and his opera recurrence.
And fnally, the careful planning of the project
proftability that silenced all objectons of
cultural nature, because of the fact that the
project is proftable justfed in that context of
critcal economic crisis, to be without cultural
reference

68
3. Renzo PIANO et le centre culturel jean marie TJIBAOU:
Renzo Piano is a well-known architect when he realizes the Jean Marie TJIBAOU cultural center.
Unlike hid previous high-tech projects, this one was inspired by the local culture of a pacifc island
but at the same tme integrated into its temporal context. He surprises the architectural world with it,
because he was able to translate a cultural model through architecture.
The poet architect
Renzo Piano was born September 14, 1937
in Genoa, Italy. In a family where architecture is
inherited from father to son (his father, grand-
father and uncle are architects). He studied in
Caltanisseta and Milan where he graduated in
architecture from the Polytechnic School De-
partment in 1964, working then with his father,
then under the leadership of Franco Albini. From
1965 to 1970 he worked with Louis Kahn in Phi-
ladelphia and in Z. S. MAKOWSKY, London. From
1971, he worked with Richard Rogers (PIANO &
ROGERS), with whom he designed the Pompi-
dou Center, and from 1977 with Peter RICE (Ate-
lier Piano & RICE), untl his death in 1992.
Renzo Piano currently heads his frms in
Genoa, Paris, and Berlin under the name Renzo
Piano Building Workshop, a group of over a
hundred employees, architects, engineers and
other specialists.
Renzo Piano distnguishes between style
and coherence and combines architecture with
the act of exploring in order to know the site,
the client and society. Culturally, historically,
psychologically, anthropologically, and topogra-
phically, every job is diferent.
1
For him, every
project should, frst of all, start by visitng the
site, to get a basic idea of the context. The archi-
tecture does not necessarily seek to integrate
the most important is that it brings something to
the community, that it contributes. Renzo Piano
considers the site visit a fundamental element
in its conceptual approach. He does it in a poe-
tc way trying to understand a basic and funda-
mental emoton, because it is all about building
emotons .
2

1
Renzo PIANO quoted in Architectural Record, Oct. 2001.
2
Renzo PIANO op cit.
The Jean-Marie TJIBAOU cultural
center
The cultural center Jean-Marie TJIBAOU
designed by Italian architect Renzo Piano in
new Caledonia, is Perhaps the most relevant
contemporary example of an iconic architecture
designed by a starchitect, and since the
concepton phase, was designed and dedicated
to represent architecturally and culturally
whole naton. An architect from the North for
a command in the South. It is true that this
archipelago of the Pacifc, New Caledonia is
French since France has taken possession in 1853,
but it holds its own culture, the Kanak Culture.
However, to understand the motvatons
behind this extraordinary culture approach, we
must frst know the ciconstences its constructon.
We must know that the TJIBAOU center
is not born of a spontaneous initatve of the
French state, in order to rehabilitate the Kanak
culture long despised by France policies and
by the European Caledonian, but it came in
response to cultural demands of the Caledonian
independence movement, including Jean-Marie
TJIBAOU the charismatc leader who became the
undisputed icon of the cultural demands of his
people afer his murder in Noumea, becoming
the martyr of Kanak cause.
For TJIBAOU the philosopher, it was
essental to associate into with the space reclaim
initatves to break the barrier of disrespect
and misunderstanding of his people since the
beginning of the colonizaton. He aspired through
the new center to give his compatriots the pride
in their culture, but without being stuck in the
past because as he so ofen said, The search
for identty, the model for me is ahead, not back.
69
It is a constant reformulaton. The identty is in
front of us
1
.
The architecture of the cultural center,
therefore, was supposed to become the icon of
a Kanak culture rooted in traditon but open to
the world and contemporaneity. It is with this
objectve that Renzo Piano was interested in
what composes the built identty on the island,
the aspects that could guide him toward a
contemporary design for a localized project. As
he said :
to provide a standard product of Western
architecture with a superficial camouflage was
not possible, it would have been like a tank ,
masked with palm leaves
2
.
The constructon of the center placed
the architect, before a perilous choice. Either
1
Jean-Marie TJIBAOU quoted in htp://www.tour-du-
monde.nc/tjibaou/index.html
2
PIANO Renzo, quoted in : WINES, James. LArchitecture
verte Taschen, 2000. p.126. Translated into english by us.
Fig 57 Centre Pompidou, Paris. Renzo PIANO
Fig 58 Jean-Marie Tjibaou
70
he decides to get rid of any reference to the
Melanesian world imagining strictly functonal
spaces whose forms would refer only to
contemporary Western culture of the useful, or
he tries to fnd visual correspondences between
his creaton and Kanak universe. By optng for the
second choice, PIANO, it must be emphasized,
took the foor against the attude that he
adopted with Richard Rodgers when realizing
the Centre Georges Pompidou: This building was
then thought of as explicitly a break with the old
Paris district of Les Halles, and even more as a
challenge to the then prevailing conceptons
of heritage. With Beaubourg, new reports with
art and culture were realized signaling the
ideological liberaton that the key year of 1968
made possible
1
.
For the TJIBAOU center it was another
scenario, PIANO works on continuities between
ancient Pacific architecture and todays Western
architecture. By engaging in this path, he had
imperatively, for the first time in his career
to call a specialist in the anthropological and
ethnological field. This could only be BENSA
Alban, an ethnologist professor in the School of
1
Alban BENSA, architecture et ethnologie : le centre
culturel TJIBAOU , 2000, Paris, Adam Biro. mutats
mutandis. Translated into english by us.
Higher Studies in Social Sciences, specialist in
KANAK culture, which had just published a book
on the Caledonian indigenous culture at the
launch of the competition.
Most tme, it is expected from
anthropologist sought outside their research
feld that they enrich a situaton with a touch
of local picturesque or that they guarantee the
authentcity of a partcular practce transformed
in custom. Here, the architect did not use
anthropology to afx traditonalist label to the
project, but in contrary to make the ancient as
close as possible so that its meaning can be
strongly perceived in the present. To this purpose,
the conceiver intended the ethnologist to furnish
elements, shapes, symbols, images, materials,
ideas, etc. that will allow the architecture to
exceed the Kanak world, for Kanak world and by
itself.
But how to imagine Kanak supposed ways,
to design a roof, to fow into a cultural center, to
enjoy a garden or to organize into it customary
festvites? Build a building whose specifc
requirements are not those of a traditonal old
house or those of a todays apartment, but a
public place dedicated to culture and art, while
maintaining an explicit link between this building
Fig 60 Location of Nouma, New Caledonia Fig 59 Location of New Caledonia
Nouma
71
and the Kanak identty, where there is no model
for buildings other than the traditonal huts.
PIANO announced when his team had
won the competton: We will have to be
aware of copy. Efectvely the desire to make a
central place to the Kanak culture could take the
project to the pastche: a folkloric architecture,
it would have derived toward a remake of folk
accents and engage the project towards a bias
enclosed in a regional style. In contrast, building
completely far from its Kanak reference would
have outsourced the project completely away
from New Caledonian context and history. It
was, therefore, essental to avoid both pitalls:
the reconsttuton of a traditonal village and
that of building a strictly European building.
Ethnology that had therefore to clarify the local
partcularism, should not in any way limit the
horizon of architectural design at the sole New
Caledonia. Rootng sought in the Melanesian
context therefore had to be balanced by an
integraton of the project in contemporary
architecture diferent set of references.
Other than the cultural constraint, the
building had also to adapt to its sensitve site.
According to the claims the cultural center has to
be built in the capital of New Caledonia, Noumea,
which was historically the city of the colonizer,
and thus few indigenous lived there. Eight
hectares of land was, assigned free of charge to
the development agency of the Kanak culture,
a peninsula on the outskirts of the capital part
of a densely wooded natural reserve and prey
to violent winds during the bad weather. It was
therefore necessary that the new cultural center
signal its presence in the city despite its eccentric
positon, that it could withstand winds of over
200 km / h and at the same tme integratng into
its ecological environment. For this project, it
was always clear that we had to build a building
that blends with nature.
1

For Piano and his team, it was essental for lines,
paths, built structures and circulaton areas
to be worked with relatonship to space and
explicit or implicit Kanak preferences: therefore
the architect needed - to respond to practcal
and technical requirements of the program
and at the same tme invent a design inspired
by the sought pervasiveness of Melanesian
world. The ethnologist role was then to identfy
the forms and practces that could guide him
his choices. The ridge of the old Kanak huts, the
layout of the long aisles where they stood, the
1
Renzo PIANO, quoted in Alban BENSA, architecture
et ethnologie, le centre culturel TJIBAOU . mutats
mutandis .Translated into english by us.
Fig 61 The exceptional site of the Tjibaou Cultural Centre
72
Fig 62 Plan and facades of a typical Kanak Village Fig 63 Piano sketch inspired by Kanak hut
Fig 64 The technical sketches shows taht the shape of huts that Renzo PIANO used here stems from both cultural and climatic
characteristics of new Caledonia
73
habitude of avoiding being seen by walking in
sunken plazas, the use of symbolic plants to say
essental things, etc. From These descriptons
and explanatons, the architect perceived a
line mouving towards the sky, the curve of a
roundabout way, a reminder of a once shade
of a todays material. By getng away from the
formal model of the Kanak architecture while
keeping essental references PIANO obtained a
decreasing number of lines that stll carry traces
of the original model. These signs from the
Kanak world, worked for technical and aesthetc
requirements of the architectural project at the
end of the course gives an image that is not a
true refecton but rather, as PIANO suggests, a
memory of an image and an icon that will serve
as a shortcut for anyone trying to materialize
something as intangible as a culture.
Symbolizing and spacing of Kanak
culture through a building could be achieved
only afer a long process of aesthetc and
symbolic research to illustrate the Melanesian
world using contemporary constructon, and
both traditonal and exogenous materials.
The transiton from traditonal habitat trunks,
bark, branches and straw to a cultural center
incorporatng all the most advanced technics in
the art of constructon, equivalent to a kind of
transfer of world into another
1
.
Impregnated of the words of TJIBAOU, Renzo
Piano has interpreted the identty itself as a
contnuous building site where there is no
possibility of turning back. He thus identfed
many traditonal model huts, and chose the
longest and biggest normally for heads of clans,
he then applied to it this concept by opening
and making it incomplete, which produced an
original design simulatng infnity.
Emmanuel Kasarhrou, cultural director of the
cultural center said explaining the design of the
building:
In the process of project development, the
architect opened the shape of the hut and made
it infnite and incomplete, which for us was a
good architectural response to rethink one of the
most memorable words of Jean-Marie TJIBAOU
1
Alban BENSA, architecture et ethnologie, le centre
culturel TJIBAOU . mutats mutandis. Translated into
english by us.
which stated that our identty is in front of us
not behind us but in front, we create it every day
it is an infnite process. This is not something
that can be sealed. This means that culture is
always infnite, this is the way Renzo Piano has
interpreted this idea in architecture
2
.
What is interestng in the design process
of the cultural center is that the architect, the
anthropologist and the Kanak community came
together for the project to succeed and acquire
powerful symbolic giving to it a central positon
in the Kanak culture it is a collaboratve design.
The Tooth moon, mystcal rock which, according
to local beliefs, is at the origin of creaton, and
which is considered the most important for
Kanak symbolic element, was transferred from
the village that held it, since it fell from the
moon, to be implanted in the garden of the
cultural center, adding a spiritual dimension to
the iconic building .
The result of this efort was a building
with an area of 6970 m, it extends on a ground
of 8 hectares and consists of three villages
which comprise a total of 10 huts, with an
average size of 90 m2 each, and linked by a 250
m long path, defned by the topography of the
site, overlooking the garden. The architect with
each hut with a double skin Iroko wood, fexible
material, therefore, resistant to high winds of
this region.
Moreover, the double skin allows natural
ventilation and environmental center, and
that the boxes sing during the passage of wind
signaling the presence of the building and
thereby symbolizing the presence of the rest of
Kanak Noumea. This has earned the building the
nickname singing the building..
Recepton
The building had an extraordinary
mediatc impact and was received favorably by
the representatves of the Kanak naton and the
architecture critcs. In fact the building is directly
2
Emmanuel KASARHEROU, interviewed by Alexander DE
BLAS.
htp://www.abc.net.au/ra/carvingout/issues/tjibaou.htm.
Translated into english by us.
74
inspired by their essental and substantal identty
and their specifc spatal practces. Lisa Findley
pointed out that through an interestng incident:
the day of the inauguraton of the center, non
KANAK confusion with visitors seeking entry,
while the Kanak recognized it quietly.
1
.
Octave TOGNA, director of the Kanak
culture development agency expresses his
satsfacton with the fnal building, in a broadcast
on French television interview describing :
I talked to a man who has listened to me
... He knew how to demonstrate what he calls
an unfinished society, the KANAK society is
changing ... Caledonian society, this country is
changing !
The famous magazine Architectural
Records describes the building as follows:
The building that sings, the singing building,
1
Lisa FINDLEY, Building change: architecture, politics and
cultural agency (1998, p.3).
Noumea, New Caledonia, with its poetc and
at the same tme dramatc forms, is a concrete
example of this powerful emoton. The frst two
hours of the site visit gave a concept inspired
by traditon, which is a true celebraton of the
Melanesian and Kanak culture .
2
TJIBAOU cultural center is one of the
few projects mentoned in almost all books on
architecture and environment since 1998. It is
not obvious that Renzo Piano claims that label,
but we must recognize that, with this building,
he has been able to point to a problem which
architectural elite ofen ignores.
With his usual humility the architect has again
put his ego aside and ofered an unusual work
that highlights values the site but also the
community for which it is built..
2
Architectural Record, Oct., 2001
Fig 65 Kanak traditional dance in the Tjibaou cultural center
75
Fig 66 Technical Plan of the cultural center
Ground plan
Part of the facade
Hut section
76
Fig 67 Image of one of the huts in the Tjibaou cultural center
77
Fig 68 Insertion of the volumes in the site
Synthesis
Thus, thanks to its great symbolic power,
Jean-Marie TJIBAOU cultural center received
a huge success with the Kanak people who
identfed themselves to it, and also to the
architectural world. This building is, in fact, the
frst contemporary public building, inspired
by the Kanak culture and traditons, built on
the island since the beginning of the French
colonizaton. Despite the small scale of the
project and the great diference between the
budget that was allocated to it in comparison
to the Sydney Opera House or the Guggenheim
Museum in Bilbao, the cultural center TJIBAOU
drew the worlds atenton and made Kanak
culture known through its architecture. In fact
this is a special building as it is a living example of
the full iconicity, despite the fact it was designed
by an architect belonging to the globalized and
globalizing Western culture. This demonstrates
that even when he doesnt belong to the people
for whom he designs, the architect can always
draw on the cultural and traditonal context than
the cultural pressures of the globalized world, to
produce success buildings .
The elements that made the success
of the cultural center TJIBAOU are the same
as those of the Sydney Opera House and the
Guggenheim Museum, but what makes the
specifcity of the building is the collaboratve
design method, adopted by the architect from
the beginning.
78
GENERAL SYNTHESIS
In this phase of study we tried to
determine the set of essental and substantal
factors that make iconic buildings of cultural
vocaton representatve elements of the urban
identty of a city. We have considered three
projects of starchitects among the worlds elite,
winner of the Pritzker Prize. The choice of iconic
buildings is done according to two main criteria:
that the contextual success and fame generated
by the building to the city.
We chose the Sydney Opera House by
Jrn UTZON and the Guggenheim Museum
Bilbao by Frank Gehry as these two buildings
are among the most famous in the world, having
managed to become icons of their cites. Both
buildings have globalized cultural references.
In additon, our third choice was the Jean-
Marie TJIBAOU cultural center, despite its small
scale. In fact, this is one of the most famous
contemporary buildings that have been able to
crystallize spatally a culture and an identty of a
traditonal civilizatonal model.
The study of these three examples has allowed us
to understand that in a cultural model atached
to its civilizatonal identty, taking it into account
is essental for an iconic building to be adopted
by its society. While in the Western context, a
building may very well become the formal symbol
of a city or even a country without any reference
or reminder of its civilizatonal identty in what it
contains of traditons and values. The reference
to these is no longer considered a necessity.
The Sydney Opera House and the
Guggenheim Museum of Bilbao, are undoubtedly
among the most iconic buildings in the world.
They had a positve economic and cultural impact
on their respectve cites. But they tell us nothing
about the distnct identty and cultural values,
at least qualitatve, of these cites. We deduce
that this essental aspect is very important in the
crystallizaton of a complete iconic of a building
in its identty context. UTZON and Gehry
have certainly met the expectatons of their
customers, for whom the essental dimension
of architectural identty is not important. It is
assumed that if the project owners and society
were more atached to their values or rather
to its display in their architectures, the two
buildings would be very diferent, and closer to
a full iconicity.
However, the TJIBAOU cultural center of
Renzo Piano has become the symbol of a culture
and a specifc identty, the most famous symbol
of this Pacifc island. Indeed, from the beginning,
the conditons of the contest were clear: the
Kanak people wanted a contemporary icon
shoutng WE ARE HERE , a distnct icon on
the exogenous colonialist culture and from the
traditons and values of a people proud of their
single sense of belonging and eager to show
it.
The essental aspect of identty or rather
the degree of its presence is precisely what
distnguishes the TJIBAOU center. The physical
aspect cannot exceed the level of pastche when
not essentally valued.
Indeed since the Renaissance and the
Age of Enlightenment, Western civilizaton has
experienced an identty break in essental and
substantal levels, causing the appearance of a
new urban and architectural model that focused
on actual, physical forms neglectng other
contents in architectural design. As we saw in
the frst chapter, identty consists of an essental
part and another that we build ourselves
individually and collectvely as a community.
Thus, the architectural identty of the modern
West is incomplete insofar as it advocates the
ignorance of identty essence. In the West, it is
not considered a problem, even if there always
was within the Western architectural an elite that
has denounced the formalism and functonalism
in architecture.
At this stage of our refecton, it is
important for us to clarify one thing. We studied
Western iconic buildings and their interacton
with the urban identty, because their model
is the dominant model, if not the only one
79
present. It is copied all over the globalized world,
including Morocco. The study of this model
is essental for the development of a cultural,
iconic, and architectural quality. In the context
of authentc Islamic civilizaton, there is no
specifc architectural model for this kind of iconic
cultural facility. However we believe that in its
acculturated aspect, the dominant conceptual
model is not suitable to our authentc context,
therefore is imperatve to be aware not to fall
into one of the two extremes, the imitaton in
one side and the pastche on the other.
The example study also allowed us
to collect characteristcs of these iconic
buildings which helped us make a series
of recommendatons which, hopefully, will
facilitate the design of innovatve and iconic
buildings enrolled in their endogenous context.
Indeed, the iconic cultural buildings
arise as a result of strong politcal will, reported
since the design phase where the conditons
are established clearly. Excellent architectural,
technical and civilizatonal buildings are required
to do so. It is at this stage that are determined
the essental and substantal references that
the architect must take into consideraton in all
phases of the design.
Thus is given to the best architects
the freedom to design shapes guided by the
references established before, supported
by huge budgets, to ensure the buildings
technological advance and to enhance the
mediatsaton of the project..
Given the symbolic and functonal
importance of these buildings, the site should
be easily accessible for pedestrians and
automobiles to increase its visibility, must have
a strategic positon. For an iconic building, the
functon is just an excuse for its existence. It is,
above all, a social symbol, in a city where for
example a break should be expressed with an
old unwanted image, etc..
Once completed, the buildings
administraton is a key element for its iconicity,
because even if it is valued and has an unusual
shape, if it doesnt fulfll its functon as it should,
the society will never give it the icon status .
In the following table we have tried to
synthesize the criteria of iconicity we will follow
when designing our project, conclusion of this
study:
factor
type
Explanatons
Essental
factors.
In the Muslim context, it is
the values and the Koranic
supra-human precepts and the
prophetc traditon including
moral concepts and principles
of universal Muslim identty.
Substantal
human
factors
Local customs and habits
specifc to a distnct community
within the same civilizaton
Al-Aaraf. These factors are
measured with essental factors
but cant contradict them.
Substantal
material
factors
These are the factors coming
from the material and temporal
context concerning aesthetc
and technical areas, it refects
local formal identty inscribed
in its tme. it is at this level that
is defned the formal envelope
with the choice of local building
materials, traditonal or
contemporary
80
3
THE CITY OF AGADIR
Introduction
In this third part, we will focus on the relatonship
between urban identty and iconic architecture in the
case of the city of Agadir. For that purpose, we will
try to understand beter the context of the capital of
the Sousse that will be the place of our architectural
interventon. We believe that this city of southern
Morocco is an interestng case study because of the
fact that it has sufered from two consecutve breaks
at least in terms of its urban and architectural identty.
The frst break was caused by the protectorate that
begins in 1912 which introduced an exogenous method
of constructon to the culture of Morocco in general
and this region in partcular, the second rupture was
caused by the earthquake of 1960, which destructed all
historical monuments and afer the reconstructon gave
birth to a new city in special circumstances.
81
3
82
I. Agadir before and after its memory loss
1. Agadirs historical context
Agadir as we know it today is the result of a turbulent history due to its strategic geographical
positon and its hinterland that has always been coveted .
a. Agadir Before the Protectorate
Agadirs known history begins in the late
15th century, the competton between Spain
and Portugal for the control of the Atlantc coast
of Morocco, wrecked the region in the hands of
the Portuguese. They erected a fort in 1505 by
the name of Santa Cruz da Capo Gue next to a
water source fonte in Portuguese.
since 1506, the neighboring tribes,
especially the Ait Mseguine, which name
was once associated with the port the Porto
Meseguinam react but counterofensive have
litle efect untl the advent of the Saadian
dynasty in the Sousse. King Muhammad al-
Shaykh and his Mujahideen succeeded in driving
the Portuguese March 12, 1541 by building the
Kasbah of Agadir Oufella which assured to them
the strategic advantage over the Portuguese
fort. This resounding victory signaled both the
triumph of the Saadian dynasty and a new phase
in the history of the site and its surroundings.
We soon began to build the port.
In 1572 the Kasbah underwent
renovatons that last seven months to beter
protect the port that has become an important
market, especially for the export of Soussi sugar.
Afer this date the Kasbah and the neighboring
Fount village (which took the Portuguese
name of the source that supplies it with
water) acquires a civil functon without losing
its military and religious vocaton. It is well
equipped with residental houses, souks and
a mosque, its schema and urban organizaton
are not diferent from those of traditonal
Moroccan medina, but there is more places
reserved for social ritual Ahwach. We also fnd
that specifcity in the urban plan of the medina
of Taroudant where there are places that do not
have other functons other than hostng cultural
events such as the Assarague place.
The great elevaton of the Kasbah ofered
an excellent positon to men of piety seeking
both spiritual serenity in the isolaton provided
by the place and the merit of contributng to
the defense of Dar al-Islam by practcing the
Murabata like it has been done in the Oudaya
Kasbah. This ancient military-religious functon
Ribats, seems to have been in Agadir site quite
before the foundaton of the Portuguese fort,
and the coastal surveillance from the site of the
Kasbah contnued well afer the destructon of
the fort of Santa Cruz in 1541. Thus in 1601, the
Qadi of Tarudant Abd Er-Rahman At-Tamanart
had fulflled his Murabata duty here.
Between the 17th and 18th century,
the port of Agadir is a prosperous commercial
port frequented by Spanish, French, English,
but also Dutch and Scandinavians traders.
This prosperity is probably the reason of the
Fig 69 The frst known drawing of Agadir, made by German
Hans Staden after the retaking of the city from
Portuguese
83
repeated atempts of Illighs Sharif to seize the
city and its port Fount that he managed to
occupy in 1637, to then make it his main port
of trade with Europe. The fall of the Principality
in 1670, reduced the role of the city to a simple
trading post in which the Dutch had a monopoly.
The city fnally sank in 1765 afer the closure of
the port, to punish its populaton disobedience.
A part of its inhabitants was moved to the new
port of Essaouira, beter controlled. Few years
later the old Kasbah and the village of Fount
became a simple relay on the way to Sudan. The
English physician Clement Lempire describes it
in 1789 as a deserted city [where] there is no
more than a few crumbling houses .
The city remained in this state untl
the arrival of French protectorate. During its
occupaton in 1913, there were only 1,000
inhabitants distributed between Fount and
Kasbah.
b. Agadir During the protectorate
1

The French commander Jean Baptitien
SENES in charge of taking the city describes his
first visit to the Kasbah :
We climbed under a scorching sun paths cut
into the rock this cone 245 meters hight, and I
entered the inviolable citadel between a double
row of Mokhanzis and armed warriors and a
crowd of silent and serious people. The entire
town is enclosed in a rectangle of high walls
and old mansions of the middle ages it seems
clean and has a Jewish quarter. A stone minaret
dominates the landscape, walls are covered
with terraces where lie broken carriages and
old gunfire (naval gun cast of the eighteenth
century). It contains a thousand people
2
The city was no more than a small town in
the useless Morocco , its sole importance as
1
This chapter owes much to the informaton contained
in the Revue africaine darchitecture et durbanisme ,
issue 4, 1966.
2
Text of J. Allain relatng the words of Captain Jean-Baptstn
SENES. September 1912. Cited in a study by Alhabib Nouhi
and Ahmed SAYER of the IBN ZOHR University.
Fig 70 Aerial view of the Kasbah of Agadir Oufella
84
always stemmed from its strategic geographical
positon, especially for French militaries that
arrived in 1912. In 1916, the frst pier was built
near Fount a simple jety, later known as the
Portuguese jety. Afer 1920, under the French
protectorate, a port is built and the city knows a
beginning of development with the constructon
of the former Talborjt neighborhood located on
the plateau at the foot of the hill. Two years
later, beside Talborjt the district YAHCHECH,
more popular, began to be built.
The development of the city was slow
compared to other cites of the kingdom; this
is mainly due to the rebellious nature of its
hinterland which was not fully pacifed untl the
early thirtes.
A colonial district began to appear according
to Henri Prost plans, Director of Protectorates
Planning Service. The frst development plan
adopted a horseshoe layout based on the
waterfront around the Lyautey Avenue. In the
1950s, urban development contnues. Michel
Ecochard Director of urban Planning of Morocco,
traces a second development map for the city in
Fig 71 Aerial view of the Kasbah of Agadir Oufella
Fig 72 Founti village and the Kasbah at the top
85
1945 plan, he says about it :
Agadir has a special situation compared to
some cities in Morocco, wedged between the
mountains and the sea; it has a minimum of
developable surfaces. Agadir, which should
become economically speaking the second
largest city of Morocco, will no longer have
the possibility to grow on very large areas. It is
therefore now that we should reserve locations
for future high buildings, even if the plans are not
to be executed immediately. If we do not want
to stifle Agadir for the future, it is necessary that
the personal interests give way to the future
general interest
1
.
Agadir gave the impression of an overly
ambitous work, impossible to complete. Too
large, it had heavy loads of equipment to
support its development that was therefore
slow untl 1945, when started the development
of canning industries. It included small and poor
neighborhoods but dense and lively as Fount,
the Kasbah, Yachech, which were covered with
1
Amush, online magazine dedicated to contemporary
architecture in Morocco, www.amush.org.
traditonal and nonresistant constructons,
as well as less modest neighborhoods like
TALBORDJT which had a commercial vocaton.
The administratve board, the horseshoe and
the mixed sector were not much occupied.
Plots of lavish ways delineated many vacant
lots, where scatered a few buildings and a
villas. Two industrial districts were formed
spontaneously, one in the north of the city, 4 km
from the port: Anza, the other was the south.
The working class citys industrial south district
ofered since 1950, an area of development for
low-cost housing.
The city therefore had no center or unit. The
density diagram atached expresses the very
uneven distributon of built-up areas and their
dispersion in the urban area. This situaton was
the direct result of land speculaton..
The architecture produced in Agadir, at
the beginning of the colonial period tried to adapt
aesthetcally speaking, to the global Moroccan
context, but not to its regional context. Typical
traditonal decoratve elements were taken from
traditonal interior facades in medinas riads and
applied to exterior facades, which has produced
Fig 73 The new colonial city has developed at the foot of the Kasbah
86
buildings resembling to what was done in
other cites of the kingdom without taking into
account the local context . Later, the infuence of
modernism is felt with stretched and horizontal
with sleek forms and unadorned buildings. The
achievements of that tme had an avant-garde
aesthetc quality and character built with highly
advanced techniques; these buildings were
lined with squares and wide avenues.
In 1952, under the leadership of Mr. ECO-
CHARD, Agadir and its Southeast suburbs were
incorporated in an urban group: a zoning plan is
applied since then. This regional plan legally
binding, had the merit of protectng all foster
spaces (including irrigated areas) and all natural
areas that shouldnt receive constructon (sand
dunes, forests, etc..) And reserve sectors to ex-
pansion of housing and industry.
With the opening of new commercial
port, the city developed with fshing, canning,
agriculture and mining. It also begins to open
up to tourism thanks to its climate and its hotels.
Several years later in 1952, the city hosts the
Agadir Grand Prix and the Grand Prix of Morocco..
Very dynamic, Agadir was destned to become
an important economic and touristc pole; the
Internatonal Congress of travel agencies was
organized there in November 1954, bringing
together representatves of all countries of the
Fig 74 The modern city center in 1956
Fig 75 Schematic of roads in the city of Agadir before the
earthquake
87
world. this economic developement contnued
even afer Independence in 1956.
Untl then, the city of Agadir like all
other Moroccan cites, had a typical Moroccan
traditonal architecture and a colonial district
imprinted with modern architecture.
But in February 29, 1960, Agadir, which then
had a litle more than 40,000 inhabitants, is
devastated by an earthquake of 5.7 magnitude
on the Richter scale.
c. The reconstructon or the beginning
of amnesia
The number of earthquake victms
was never established precisely, however it
was estmated at 15,000 inhabitants, which
is sufcient to measure the magnitude of the
disaster.
On the material side, 3650 buildings
were destroyed, 250 others had to be repaired.
Many reports have described the form and
nature of the disorder caused by the earthquake
constructon, the nature of the terrain; the type
of constructon and type of materials used have
played an important role. Thus, the Kasbah of
Yachech and Fount, consistng of traditonal
adobe buildings or poor quality masonry with
heavy terraces were completely destroyed.
Fig 77 The Kasbah after the earthquake
Fig 76 The earthquake destroyed principally buildings constructed with traditional techniques
88
Instead, steel structures, reinforced concrete
vaults, prefabricated buildings resisted well.
In general, the extent of the damage
appeared to be inversely proportonal to the
quality of the constructon and implementaton
of materials. On the other hand, in the colonial
and modern buildings, the heterogeneity of
materials, links (slabs and foors simply laid,
walls and bulkheads not rooted in framing, etc..)
Is causing major damage.
We can say that the earthquake has erased all
traces of the traditonal architectural and urban
network of the city of Agadir and its colonial
heritage.
The High Commission for the reconstruc-
ton of Agadir is created. It will be invested with
full powers and will paymaster of Reconstruc-
ton and a series of major legislaton. Among the
most efectve legislaton is the creaton of the
solidarity tax and the general expropriaton of
all land in the area of interventon of the future
development plan, the High Commission will be
invested of powers for municipal authorizatons
to build, it will have for 2 years, the possibility to
expropriate through a special procedure. It will
replace the administratons to reconstruct their
buildings.
The tabula rasa advocated by the
precepts in the Athens Charter was there. The
earthquake, although a tragic event ofered here
to modern architects another chance to execute
their theory. Afer the determinaton of the
site of the future city, 2 km south of the former,
far from the Kasbah and its historic center. A
group of Moroccan and foreign architects was
appointed by King Mohamed V, all belonged
to the modern movement. It was during this
period that was held last CIAM congress
(Internatonal Congress of Modern Architecture)
in Casablanca. It therefore considers that the
peak of this movement is in Agadir in the urban
and architectural ensemble of the city center.
The architects responsible for rebuilding
the city included among others BEN EMBAREK,
Fig 78 Agadir development plan after its reconstruction
89
Azagury, ZEVACO De MAZIERE and AMZALLAG
who were all carrying a double culture, they were
born in Morocco, where they grew up, but all
have studied in France where they are recruited
early in Parisian workshops where they adhere
spiritually to modern precepts.
For this generaton of architects, Morocco was
the ideal place to achieve their highest ambiton.
They will be called the architects of the break
and will be described as hostle to the medina;
they do not hesitate to be radical by assuming
their weak inspiraton of traditons and regional
values as evidenced by their realizatons. For
them, the traditonal architecture that didnt
evolve was no more suited to contemporary
context, especially in Agadir where most of the
victms of the disaster were recorded among
the inhabitants of these traditonal buildings.
The architects of the reconstructon
will therefore advocate the break. The past
represented death and the new city had the
difcult task of representng hope, Hassan II
strongly expressed it in his speech we had
to think to everything in order to dominate
everything ... do new living work, essentally
turned to future, to restore mens will to live and
hope.
1
.
The development program of the new city
adopted the recommendatons of the Charter of
Athens. Three core functons will be recognized
in Agadir: administratve functon, commercial
and industrial functon and tourist functon.
The new planning and architectural projects
that were born therefore had to respond only
to these four functons. The guidelines of the
plan and the role and relatve importance of
each area were determined by the economic
and technical requirements. On a cherch lier
les quartiers par des lments construits,
crant un semblant dunit urbaine pour viter
tout cloisonnement social. We tried to link the
neighborhoods by elements built, creatng
a semblance of urban unity to avoid social
segregaton. The variety of architectural forms,
1
Revue africaine darchitecture et durbanisme, Issue 4.
1966.
Fig 79 Reconstructing Agadir
90
arising from diferent functons and purposes,
was sufcient to create diversifed interests in
each neighborhood. In general, we focused on
fnding a clear plan and admited to construct
preferably on high points to accentuate the
site, reserving thalwegs or low areas to public
gardens, sports grounds and woodlands.
This modernist exogenous and especially ex-
situ approach refused the use of historical and
traditonal reference, preferring imaginaton and
reason. Thus, urban planning and architecture of
the reconstructon of Agadir was a quest for non-
conformity. The city will be conceived based on
a zoning system, each zone will have its internal
logic and unlike classical planning, it will not be
drawn from structural axes. Architecture and city
planning will be inspired from la cit radieuse
producing buildings of brutalist architecture of
contemporary architecture. Piles, raw concrete,
horizontal bay windows, low ceilings, all signs for
the new inscripton demanded by the modern
architects of the tme..
Each architect of the reconstructon team
interpreted modern architectural vocabulary in
diferent ways. Banishing the decor, they will use
the constructve elements to develop a visual
vocabulary (structural skeleton piercing the
Fig 80 New building spirit in Agadir
Fig 81 Census and projected number of people in Agadir
91
envelope, beams displayed and assumed, etc...)
The result is an architecture with brutal plastcity
showing of its muscles to prove that unlike to
that which preceded it, is not ready to crumble
so easily.
It should be noted that the main
orientaton that led to the reconstructon was
to build a city of 40,000 inhabitants; the pre-
earthquake populaton is estmated at 35,000
inhabitants. But planners couldnt foresee in
1960 that the city would become the center of
a city that will host, 50 years later, more than
one million inhabitants
1
and would become one
of the most important touristc cites in Morocco
with more than 20,000 beds and from the last
city of southern Morocco, Agadir will become
the geographic center of the country, afer the
recovery of the Sahara in 1975.
It was In that period that were constructed
the buildings that composes todays modern
1
Projectons of the urban populaton of the provinces and
prefectures from 1994 to 2010 CERED.
architectural landscape of Agadir; the A Building,
the seat of the urban district, the famous market
dome, the seat post, the municipal market or
the former Court of Appeal and the memory
Wall. These architectural assets refect the
commitment of rebuilding of a period with its
positve and negatve aspects.
Fig 82 The frehouse of Agadir designed by ZEVACO
92
93
94
2. Problematic of the contemporary context
Agadir is today, as are all the cites of
Morocco, facing a huge identty problem. Its
urban space and its architecture, as they are
produced from the end of the reconstructon,
show us that only the material dimension is
considered. By removing other dimensions, the
produced space is anonymous and detached
from its cultural, social and geographical
context and therefore from its identty. The
proliferaton of exogenous constructon models
helped dematerialize the landscape, making it
insignifcant and unatractve. Agadir afer fve
decades of contnuous development and support
became a mosaic of disparate pieces composed
of urban buildings devoid of real cultural
reference. Its socio-spatal organizaton refects
a signifcant imbalance between a structured
city center, serving as administratve and tourist
pole, and other city-neighborhoods that have
gradually established concentrically around the
center, causing an efect of oppositon center /
periphery, in a kind of marginalizaton inducing
an efect of ruralizaton inside the city. The city
center was not socially appropriated by the
populaton, which did not recreate places of real
centrality, of animaton or urban mix leading
to the creaton of a unique identty for the city
of Agadir. This has resulted in further isolaton
of the touristc sector and the emergence of a
formal and functonal ghetoizaton. Indeed
Agadir is the only city in Morocco where a
neighborhood is entrely organized and reserved
around and for tourism.
This problem afects all Moroccan cites,
but we believe that Agadir is more touched
because the earthquake has erased its past by
destroying its historic core that is an essental
element in the urban structure of other kingdom
cites.
The reconstructon has increased the break that
occurred by adoptng an acultural modernist
approach in its urban structure layout as in the
architecture of its structural equipment. The
cultural functon was ignored despite the fact
that the city was already before the earthquake
the capital of a culturally distnct and rich region.
Today the city has turned its back to what
remains of the Kasbah, its historic core, and
to its essental and substantal identty, which
Fig 83 Al-Huda district
95
deprives it from important referental elements
in the genesis of its urban landscape.
The architecture of landscape projects
that have been realized in Agadir at the tme
of reconstructon was probably a revolutonary
aspect at that tme. It contnues to refect an
important and unavoidable phase in the history
of the city. But the facts are here, the hype is
over and the iconicity of these buildings has
much diminished if hasnt disappeared. Today
it has no longer the necessary criteria to make
it iconic neither from the essental nor from a
formal point of view.
Despite this fact, these buildings are the most
remarkable in the Gadiri urban landscape. This
is due on one side to the great poverty of the
citys iconic architecture and on the other hand
the deterioraton of the architectural quality
of buildings. This descripton is no longer
appropriate to the status and importance of
the economic, administratve and cultural role,
that the city occupies today as the capital of its
region, and that it is destned to become in the
near future in the new regionalizaton policy,
administratve policy that will give the Souss-
Massa-Draa, which Agadir is the capital and
other regions of the country more freedom to
manage their internal afairs.
More and more decision makers fnd out
about this situaton that may make of Agadir
one of these artfcial and superfcial touristc
cites in the Mediterranean coasts, soulless
cites without history or identty, devoted to the
cult of mass tourism. Where culture is folkloric
and treated as a consumer product reserved
exclusively for tourists.
In 2006 design frm was hired to try to fx
this problem, the idea at the tme was to create
a brand image that can assure Agadir singular
identty that diferentates it from compettors.
The agency Pentalfa was responsible for
processing in parallel all the signs that the city
emits. But the approach of the management
and design frm was purely commercial and
neglected the cultural and identty aspects,
the result was therefore questonable in many
respects. It is therefore clear that we leaders
have failed to defne the problem, always giving
too much importance to tourism in this identty
equaton in spite of the local populaton.
Fig 84 Inside the Kasbah today
96
We believe that despite the great
importance of tourists to the economy of the
city and the region, the actons undertaken
to beautfy and qualify it should frst focus
in serving its inhabitants, especially when
these actons claim and aspire to cultural and
identty objectves. Agadir may be considered
as a product to sell, but it is above all the living
environment of a populaton that identfes itself
with it and considers it an integral part in its
collectve and individual identty.
How will Agadir deal with these
challenges? Today we talk about the
establishment of an architectural charter soon,
but is this enough to deal with various excesses
and give an identty to the city? The charter is
necessary but not sufcient. It is necessary
to the extent that it will establish a new basis
for common refecton shared by all actors, on
which must be added the consultaton of the
populaton.
We believe that a city is not supposed
to be neutral, as it is the holder of an identty
that its monuments help translates spatally. In
our case, the only historical monument present
in Agadir, and that has a symbolic big enough to
be a powerful icon of the city, is the wall of the
old Kasbah of Agadir Oufella, rebuilt afer the
earthquake on its original site, surrounding now
a great void.
In order to restore to the city of Agadir the
identty unit that lacks, we advocate the
constructon of cultural facilites, architecturally
and symbolically powerful, in strategic locatons,
and of functons close to all age groups of the
populaton, cultural highlights with a complete
iconic architecture that takes into account the
essental and substantal factors of its company
while society in its temporal context.
Fig 85 The new logo of the city of Agadir
97
II. Vocation of the project and selection of the site
1. Vocation of the projet
Before startng this research that has
allowed us to develop this work we knew
that eventually we would have to design an
architectural project for public purposes that
should be integrated into an existng urban
structure that we might be brought to modify.
We tried to fnd a raison dtre for that project.
Indeed we believe that the project itself is not
an fnality but a way to positvely serve the
community. Based on this logic we got interested
in the contributon that this kind of buildings, we
have chosen to call iconic, are supposed to bring
to our contemporary society.
Our research has led us to focus on
the issue of urban identty. This choice is not
fortuitous, but a result of the impact of our
urban landscape being as a resident of Agadir.
The raison dtre of our project was precisely
there, help restore its memory through the
design of an iconic and contextualized project
based on the identty of its society.
The functon of this project should
thus be closely related to the actvites of the
diferent age groups of the populaton, mixing
the serious and entertainment, places of
centrality, animaton and urban mix resultng
in the creaton a unique identty for the city of
Agadir. We thus choose a cultural functon.
2. Selection of the site
The site must meet the criteria that we
have deduced from the second part; the stra-
tegic positon, the high visual accessibility for
pedestrian and automobile, as well as the beau-
ty of its landscape. It must also be located in a
highly frequented area in the agglomeraton of
Agadir.
The current site of the marina of
Agadir meets these criteria, it represents the
culminaton of the cornice that may be the only
urban area where there is a real social diversity,
we believe that the constructon of the marina
Fig 86 View of the city from the Kasbah in the foreground the marina
98
Fig 87 The cornice of the city of Agadir may be the only urban area where there is a real social mix at the entire city of Agadir
Fig 88 The cornice leads to the marina of Agadir, with a traditionnalesque architecture
on this site was an error, since it is actually
a luxury residence that accented formal and
psychological ghetoizaton of the tourist district.
Therefore we choose to design our project for
the same site of the marina.
99

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bureau plaintes
bureau animation du park
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bureau directeur
bureau securit
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Vide sur
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billeterie
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souvenir du muse
sallon du muse
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Bureau
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Restaurant
isuue de secour
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Bureau
Salle de runion
Bureau directeur
Plan 2 me tage
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Hall de la
mosque
A
B
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Magazin
Magazin
Magazin
Magazin
Magazin
Magazin
Magazin
Magazin
Magazin
Garderie
Magazin
Magazin
Magazin
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Bureau
Restaurant
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Vide sur place
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Bureau
Bureau
Salle de runion
Bureau directeur
Plan 2 me tage
0 50 25 100 75
Hall de la
mosque
A
B
B
Magazin
Magazin
Magazin
Magazin
Magazin
Magazin
Magazin
Magazin
Magazin
Garderie
Magazin
Magazin
Magazin
139
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laboratoire
laboratoire
laboratoire
gallerie
Restaurant
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place minrale
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Plan 3 me tage
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HALL
A
B
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Magazin
Magazin
Magazin
Magazin
Magazin
Magazin
Magazin
140
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laboratoire
laboratoire
gallerie
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place minrale
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Plan 3 me tage
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Magazin
Magazin
Magazin
Magazin
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Bureau
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Bureau
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Salle de confrence
Salle de cours
Salle de cours
Salle de cours
Salle de cours
Salle de cours
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Bureau
Bureau
Bureau
laboratoire
laboratoire
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Plan 4 me tage
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Salle de cours
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laboratoire
Vide sur place
Hall de la
mosque
Plan 4 me tage
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Hall mosque
Ablution
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143
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Kevin LYNCH, Limage de la Cit , Dunod. Paris. 1976
Raymond LEDRUT, Les images de la ville . Anthropos. Paris, 1973.
Caroline LECOURTOIS, Percepton architecturale et image urbaine : le cas de Caen, Colloque
Internatonal Images et citadinit . Alger, Novembre 2005.
Dictonnaire de Trvoux du 17me sicle
Blaise GALLAND, Les identts urbaines : Cultures, sous-cultures et dviances Conventon
romande de 3e cycle de sociologie, 2eme session, Bulle 24-26 novembre 1993.
Edward T. HALL, La Dimension cache. Seuil, Paris. 1984.
Pierre COMBARNOUS, Architecture et altermondialisation , lHarmatan, Paris. 2010.
Oswald SPENGER. Le Dclin de lOccident . Gallimard, 1948, Paris.
Charles JENCKS The iconic building : the power of enigma . Frances LINCOLN, London, 2005.
Lewis MUMFORD. La Cit travers lhistoire . Seuil, Paris. 1989.
Maria GRVARI-BARBAS et Ioana IOSA, monumentalit urbaine au XIXe et XXe sicle .
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Maria GRAVARI-BARBAS, colloque Tourismes et Territoire Insttut de Recherche du Val de
Sane Mconnais, 13-15 septembre 2007.
Philippe TRETIACK, Faut-il pendre les architectes ? . Seuil, Paris. 2001.
Alhabib NOUHI et Ahmed SAYER, Agadir-oufella un patrimoine sauvegarder . Universit
IBN ZOHR, Agadir.
Yann NUSSAUME. Tadao ANDO et la queston du milieu . Ed. Le Moniteur, 1999, Paris.
Anne RAULIN, Anthropologie urbaine . Armand Colin, Paris. 2001
Lisa FINDLEY, Building change: architecture, politcs and cultural agency . Taylor & Francis,
Philadelphia. 2005
WINES James, LArchitecture verte Taschen, Kln 2000.
Alban BENSA, architecture et ethnologie : le centre culturel TJIBAOU . Adam Biro, Paris.
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COLLECTIF. Altermondialistes de tous les pays . Le Monde diplomatque, Manire de voir
n75, juin-juillet 2004.
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Anna klingman, Brandscapes: Architecture in the Experience Economy . The MIT Press,
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Site : htp://www.toupie.org/Dictonnaire/Civilisaton.htm
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htp://www.abc.net.au/ra/carvingout/issues/tjibaou.htm
163
Figure
numro
page nom source
10-11
Image of introducton f
irst
part bordj al-Arab
ficker.com
1 16 Elements of a citys image ficker.com
2
18
Ruins of Persepolis, Iran. The capital of the empire was de-
stroyed by Alexander the Great to signal his victory over the
Persian civilizaton, as was destroyed by Rome Cartage.
avaxhome.com
3 19 Globalizaton in its current form benefts some countries
over others.
wikipdia.com
4 21
The world has become a global village, but what identty for
this village?
5 22 Stonhenge, England. ficker.com
6 23 Pyramide of Djoser
deviantart.com
7 25 The Walt Disnep Concert Hall, Los Angeles, USA ficker.com
8 25 Guggenheim museum, Bilbao, Spain. Gehry.
deviantart.com
9 25 Experience music project, seatel, USA. Gehry.
deviantart.com
10 27
Bordj Khalifa world tallest tower located in Dubai, which
shows that the technology has pushed the boundaries of
the possible
deviantart.com
11 29 the sensitvity of the site of the new museum in Athens.
archdaily.com
12
29
Plan and secton on the site of the new museum of the
Acropolis in Athens
archdaily.com
13 31
The twin towers of the World Trad Center before 11
semptembre
skyscrapercity.com
14 31
The new World Trad Center, New York, USA
skyscrapercity.com
15 32
The Kunsthaus, Peter COOK & Colin FOURNIER, Graz. Austria
ficker.com
16 33
the Denver art museum, USA.
skyscrapercity.com
17
35
MICHEL-ANGELO
deviantart.com
18 35 LE CORBUSIER skyscrapercity.com
19 35 Frank GEHRY skyscrapercity.com
Tableau des illustrations
164
20 35
Rem KOOLHAAS
deviantart
21 37
The Paris Hotel in Las Vegas, in the background the Efel
tower. ficker.com
22 37 The Luxor hotel in Las Vegas. a blue-eyed Sphinks ficker.com
23 37
The Grand Mosque in Cologne, Germany. one of the largest
in Europe
ficker.com
24 43 Cartography of the export of starchitects
Ouvrage de Pierre
COMBARNOUS
25 45 Zaha Hadid skyscrapercity.com
26 45 3D du grand thatre de Rabat skyscrapercity.com
27 45 Jean Nouvel skyscrapercity.com
28 45
Torre Agbar, Barcelona. its shape was very critcized because
of its great resemblance to the Swiss Re Building in London
by Norman Foster.
skyscrapercity.com
29 45
Tadao Ando skyscrapercity.com
30 45
Suntory Museum, Osaka Japan. one of the most expressive
buildings of Ando.
skyscrapercity.com
31 46 Jorn UTZON skyscrapercity.com
32 46 Frank Gehry skyscrapercity.com
33 46 Renzo Piano skyscrapercity.com
34 46 sydney opera house skyscrapercity.com
35 46 Guggenheim Museum skyscrapercity.com
36 46 Jean-Marie Tjibaou culturel Center skyscrapercity.com
37 48 Locaton of the city of Sydney, Australia
wikipdia.com
38 48
The Sydney morning herald, the frst and second prize win-
ning projects, it described the project Utzon as controversial
Sydney Opera Hou-
seappoint docu-
ment
39 49
View of the bennelong point and Sydney Harbour before the
consrutcton of the opera
Sydney Opera Hou-
seappoint docu-
ment
165
40 49 Master plane of the site
Sydney Opera Hou-
seappoint docu-
ment
41 50-51
Panorama of Sydney Harbour, taken from the Harbour
Bridge
ficker.com
42 53 Technical drawings of the Sydney Opera House
Sydney Opera Hou-
seappoint docu-
ment
43 55 Sydney Opera House during the Sydney lights festval ficker.com
44 57
Guggenheim Museum of New York by Frank Lloyd Wright ficker.com
45 58 Locaton of the city of Bilbao in Spain wikipdia.com
46 58
Location of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, yellow color are areas released
afer the removal of industrial actvity outside the city.
Bilbao ria2000.com
47 59
The site of the Guggenheim museum before its construc-
ton
Bilbao ria2000.com
48 59
Gehrys sketchs, showing that the site was chosen for its
high visibility of all the strategic points of the city.
ficker.com
49 60 Sketchs Of Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. Frank Gahry ficker.com
50 60 3d visualisaton of the project ficker.com
51 62
Technical plans of the museum
le document de
nominaton de
lopra de Sydney
52 64 Abondoibarra area 1970 Bilbao ria2000.com
53
64
Abondoibarra area 2007 Bilbao ria2000.com
54 65
Bilbao Guggenheim museum visitor numbers
www.aam-us.org
55 65
Number of spent nights in the province of Biscay, where the
museum is located
www.aam-us.org
56 66-67
Panorama of the museum and its direct landscape
ficker.com
57 69 Centre Pompidou, Paris. Renzo PIANO ficker.com
58 69 Jean-Marie Tjibaou ficker.com
59 70
Locaton of New Caledonia ficker.com
60 70
Locaton of Nouma, New Caledonia ficker.com
61
71
The exceptonal site of the Tjibaou Cultural Centre ficker.com
63
72
Plan and facades of a typical Kanak Village
architecture et
ethnologie
166
62 72 Piano sketch inspired by Kanak hut
architecture et
ethnologie
64 72
The technical sketches shows taht the shape of huts that
Renzo Piano used here stems from both cultural and climat-
ic characteristcs of new Caledonia
architecture et
ethnologie
65 75
Kanak traditonal dance in the Tjibaou cultural center
architecture et
ethnologie
66 76
Technical Plans of the cultural center ficker.com
67 77 Image of one of the huts in the Tjibaou cultural center ficker.com
68 77 Inserton of the volumes in the site ficker.com
69 82
The frst known drawing of Agadir, made by German Hans
Staden afer the retaking of the city from Portuguese
agence urbaine
dAgadir
70 83 Aerial view of the Kasbah of Agadir Oufella
agence urbaine
dAgadir
71 84 Aerial view of the Kasbah of Agadir Oufella
agence urbaine
dAgadir
72 84 Fount village and the Kasbah at the top
agence urbaine
dAgadir
73 85
The new colonial city has developed at the foot of the Kas-
bah
agence urbaine
dAgadir
74 86 The modern city center in 1956
agence urbaine
dAgadir
75 86
Schematc of roads in the city of Agadir before the earth-
quake
agence urbaine
dAgadir
75 87
The earthquake destroyed principally buildings constructed
with traditonal techniques
agence urbaine
dAgadir
77 87
The Kasbah afer the earthquake skyscrapercity.com
78 88 Agadir development plan afer its reconstructon
agence urbaine
dAgadir
79 89 Reconstructng Agadir
agence urbaine
dAgadir
80 90 New building spirit in Agadir
agence urbaine
dAgadir
81 90
Census and projected number of people in Agadir
agence urbaine
dAgadir
82 91
the frehouse of Agadir designed by ZEVACO
agence urbaine
dAgadir
92-93 Situaton of public equipment in 1960
agence urbaine
dAgadir
83 94 Al-Huda district ficker.com
84 95
Inside the Kasbah today ficker.com
85 96 The new logo of the city of Agadir ficker.com
167
86 97
View of the city from the Kasbah in the foreground the marina
ficker.com
87 100
The cornice of the city of Agadir may be the only urban area
where there is a real social mix at the entre city of Agadir ficker.com
88 101
The cornice leads to the marina of Agadir, with a traditon-
nalesque architecture
ficker.com
89 101
Locaton of the site relatve to its immediate environment
Agence urbaine
dAagadir
168