To me, Jean Nouvel's Guthrie Theater seems to be offering us a French kiss. I have to admit the cantilever has its fascinations. I find myself alternately loving it and loving to hate it. The trouble is, the stapler-to-somewhere has an air of desperation about it, as if Nouvel was desperate to make the most of the site, or desperate to jazz up his design.
While I'm looking forward to future refinements in his design, I'm not sure he needs to jazz it up. The rest of the design pays homage to the industrial heritage at the riverfront, and does a pretty fair job of it. Nouvel's theater buildings are not just being slavish to an obsolete local industrial tradition. They bring a loop of architectural influence and inspiration full circle, from around the globe. American industrial architecture, and specifically the kind of silo and mill designs pioneered here in Minneapolis, were a huge inspiration to European designers of the early 20th century. A lot of the European modernism in American postwar buildings is actually our own homegrown creativity sung back to us (like the British Invasion in popular music). That includes everything from the beloved (like the IDS and the old green Minnegasco building downtown), to the despised (like the new Padilla Spear building down the parkway, or the current central library building). Maybe some of Tim Connolly's wistful fondness for the library can be traced to an American directness in its design, like the way the windows open floor-to-ceiling onto the street. I think Nouvel's proposal is simply more direct than most modern buildings in its industrial associations, which seems only appropriate at our central riverfront, where industrial design has set the tone for going on two centuries. We can be proud to see a bearer of its worldwide influence, as Dylan might say, bringin' it all back home. Chris Steller Nicollet Island-East Bank And if it's French kissing anything, it's Southeast Minneapolis _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A Civil City Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
