BUILDING:Creative businesses and artists are moving into Low Road spaces, those abadoned buildings left behind by recession-hit companies, writes FRANK McDONALD
SLACK SPACES – vacant shops, abandoned factories, old warehouses and new buildings in raw shell-and-core state – are becoming the norm as the recession takes its toll. And it’s in these types of spaces that we’re much more likely to see the seeds of recovery sown than in sleek high-spec office blocks.
American writer Stewart Brand has dubbed them “Low Road” buildings, inspired by Robert Frost’s line about how taking the road less travelled “has made all the difference”. It explains why, for example, unconventional architect Dominic Stevens works in a one-time refrigerated container in the wilds of Co Leitrim.
Or why the National Sculpture Factory in Cork chose to be in an old warehouse rather than in a much less flexible modern building. Or why Merritt Bucholz, head of the school of architecture at the University of Limerick, took over a disused church at King’s Island as a laboratory for new urban thinking about the city’s future.
The old Temple Bar, where artists were able to rent space cheaply from CIÉ before it was re-made as Dublin’s official “cultural quarter”, was a perfect example of how slack spaces can be turned to good use. So are the Fumbally Exchange off Lower Clanbrassil Street and the Hendron Building on Upper Dominick Street.
“Low Road buildings are low-visibility, low-rent, no-style, high-turnover,” Brand says. “Most of the world’s work is done in Low Road buildings, and even in rich societies the most inventive creativity, especially youthful creativity, will be found in Low Road buildings, taking full advantage of the licence to try things.”
He cites a conversation in 1990 with John Sculley, a former president of PepsiCo, who became Apple’s chief executive for 10 years. Asked whether he preferred to move into old buildings or make new ones, Sculley replied: “Oh, old ones -- they are much more freeing.” Which is not what you’d expect a trained architect to say.
So what was Google thinking when it paid nearly €100 million for Monte Vetro, that ugly hulk bestriding a corner of Grand Canal Dock? It had been built as speculative offices with a standard fit-out, rather than custom-made for a particular client. Might Google’s creativity have been better served by finding freedom in an old warehouse?
By far the best example of the genre was Building 20 in Massachusetts Instititute of Technology (MIT), a sprawling three-storey timber structure that was hastily built in 1943 as a research facility; it was in Building 20 that invaluable radar technology was developed to assist US forces during the second World War.
Afterwards, instead of being demolished (as was intended), it housed MIT’s electronics laboratory, where much of the science underpinning modern communications was developed, as Brand notes in his essay, Nobody cares what you do in there: the low road. It was also where Noam Chomsky inaugurated the science of linguistics.
“Innovative labs for the study of nuclear science, cosmic rays, dynamic analysis and control, acoustics, and food technology were born there: the Tech Model Railroad Club on the third floor, E Wing, was the source of most of the first generation of computer ‘hackers’, who set in motion a series of computer technology revolutions.”
In 1978, the MIT Museum put together an exhibition on what was so appealing about Building 20. Various alumni who had worked in it mentioned things like “windows that open and shut at will” and “the ability to personalise your space and shape it to various purposes. If you don’t like a wall, just stick your elbow through it.”
Others noted that “if you want to bore a hole in the floor to get a little extra vertical space, you do it. You don’t ask”, or, “We feel our space is really ours. We designed it, we run it. The building is full of small micro-environments, each of which is different and each a creative space. Thus the building has a lot of personality.”
Brand asked Jerome Wiesner, a former president of MIT, why he thought Building 20 was still around after half-a-century. “It’s a very matter-of-fact building. It puts on the personality of the people in it.” He kept a hideaway office there after he became president because “nobody complained when you nailed something to a door”.
As Brand says, “Building 20 raises a question about what are the real amenities. Smart people gave up good heating and cooling, carpeted hallways, big windows, nice views, state-of-the-art construction, and pleasant interior design for what? For sash windows, interesting neighbours, strong floors, and freedom . . .”
But MIT’s “most loved and legendary building”, as he called it, did not survive. It was demolished in 1999 to make way for the Ray and Maria Stata Center, a ghastly heap designed by Frank Gehry, the demon king of deconstruction. Opened in 2004, it reportedly cost $283.5 million (€214 million), of which $15 million (€11.3 million) went to Gehry.
Boston Globe architecture critic Robert Campbell gave it a rave review, in which he ironically noted that the Stata Center “looks as if it’s about to collapse. Columns tilt at scary angles. Walls teeter, swerve and collide in random curves and angles. Everything looks improvised, as if thrown up at the last moment.”
To him, that was the point: “The Stata’s appearance is a metaphor for the freedom, daring, and creativity of the research that’s supposed to occur inside it.”
But to others, all those sloping walls induced vertigo and the building was also seen as insensitive to the needs of its inhabitants and poorly designed for day-to-day use.
In 2007, MIT sued Gehry and the builders (Skanska USA and NER Construction Management) for “providing deficient design services and drawings” which caused leaks to spring, masonry to crack, mold to grow, drainage to back up, and falling ice and debris to block emergency exits. The lawsuit was settled in 2010.
Meanwhile, Limerick-based curator Annette Moloney’s pamphlet Art in Slack Spaces (published in 2010) notes that artists are increasingly making use of the recession as an opportunity to use vacant shops or commercial units for art projects, pop-up or “guerrilla” galleries, or to set up their own studios/workplaces.
“Signs of support, albeit locally and at times sporadically, are evident through pilot schemes but these are not necessarily supported nationally.
“This situation – in many ways a battle of capitalism versus culture – may change over the coming, and no doubt challenging, years,” she wrote, more in hope than expectation.
Since then, one of the most successful alternative arts venues – The Complex, in Dublin’s Smithfield – has fallen prey to dark forces. After two years in operation as a raw concrete space for performance and visual art, as well as challenging theatre, it had to vacate the premises last Christmas to make way for a planned Tesco Express.
After losing her battle with Nama and debt-laden landlords Fusano Properties, director Vanessa Fielding has set up an office in nearby Queen Street and is scouring the northwest inner city for a suitable building in which to re-establish The Complex and deliver “innovative, inclusive, socially relevant arts programming”.
Stewart Brand's essay, Nobody cares what you do in there: the Low Road, appears in The Innovator's Cookbook, edited by Steven Johnson
