Good vibration
For Jon Jerde, the California architect behind the city's Złote Tarasy, buildings (or at least his creations) are not inanimate objects. In fact, using his best marketing parlance, he says, buildings are all about "energy" - and they should be alive.
He recently took this architectural philosophy to the nth degree as he fielded recent criticisms of his first and only creation in the country.
The renowned architect of large retail and multiuse edifices in key developing cities all over the world believes that recent opponents of The Jerde Partnership International's design Złote Tarasy should re-evaluate what they say.
For, similar to his experience drafting structures in cities such as Las Vegas, Fukora, Japan and Rotterdam, the Netherlands, the €250 million project will only become praiseworthy when Varsovians are finally able to experience the finished product, which is expected in 2005.
The computer-aided renderings usually presented to investors and critics alike, he explained, offer a less than skeletal and a lifeless depiction of the building site's future.
Though critics may comment on the form and structure of a Jerde-designed building, he said that it isn't until the retail, office and, probably most important, pedestrian space is filled and juxtaposed with the cityscape that one of his buildings is actually complete.
Before that point, critics beware.
He is markedly aware of the recent critiques that Warsaw-based architects have rained on Złote Tarasy.
And he deftly tries to put critics to rest.
"I am very sorry that the materials that everybody has at this point are so generalised in terms of very large, all-encompassing computer drawings of a built reality that has tremendous complexity ," he said. "You can't see that, so it's very difficult to criticize."
And to those specific architects that have censured his work, he dismissed them just an expected facet - albeit a disagreeable one - of being an architect, something he has experienced in the 25 years since he created the firm, which boasts buildings on every continent except Antarctica.
One Warsaw-based architect has even dismissed Złote Tarasy as "commercial chewing gum."
Jerde does not take this personally.
"I can see a whole lot of other reasons why other professionals want to criticize," he said. "This happens to be the disease of architects all over the world. No architect can tolerate another architect's architecture because it's a competition. The story will be told in time."
He is outspoken about his work, yet he tends to let his CV speak for itself. His firm has designed Fremont Street Experience, in Las Vegas, Horton Plaza in San Diego, Universal CityWalk in Los Angeles, Mall of America in Bloomington, Minn., Canal City Hakata in Japan, and the Beursplein in Rotterdam.
He divides his buildings' components up into two types of "energy": static, the unused energy and emotion the locked up in a design on paper, and kinetic, the actual energy it exudes when it finally opens to the public.
The kinetic energy, he described, is comprised of the shoppers, businesspeople, sales people and people-watchers all taking part in his mixed-use projects.
As such, Varsovians have only experienced the static energy portrayed by inadequate renderings, he explained.
"The project will be well received in Poland," he said. "You have to remember we are walking three steps into the future here."
He added that it was his intention in designing the building was connecting the city's past with a future that no one knows yet - something he said that is very challenging to do.
He seems to communicate much of his work in the general terms of static verses kinetic energy.
"It's the kinetic story that enters into the game of life, not the static story," he said. "You can't take static renderings and see the kinetic story."
So, he confidently claims that in Złote Tarasy he has connected the past, as he knows it, to the future.
He recently took this architectural philosophy to the nth degree as he fielded recent criticisms of his first and only creation in the country.
The renowned architect of large retail and multiuse edifices in key developing cities all over the world believes that recent opponents of The Jerde Partnership International's design Złote Tarasy should re-evaluate what they say.
For, similar to his experience drafting structures in cities such as Las Vegas, Fukora, Japan and Rotterdam, the Netherlands, the €250 million project will only become praiseworthy when Varsovians are finally able to experience the finished product, which is expected in 2005.
The computer-aided renderings usually presented to investors and critics alike, he explained, offer a less than skeletal and a lifeless depiction of the building site's future.
Though critics may comment on the form and structure of a Jerde-designed building, he said that it isn't until the retail, office and, probably most important, pedestrian space is filled and juxtaposed with the cityscape that one of his buildings is actually complete.
Before that point, critics beware.
He is markedly aware of the recent critiques that Warsaw-based architects have rained on Złote Tarasy.
And he deftly tries to put critics to rest.
"I am very sorry that the materials that everybody has at this point are so generalised in terms of very large, all-encompassing computer drawings of a built reality that has tremendous complexity ," he said. "You can't see that, so it's very difficult to criticize."
And to those specific architects that have censured his work, he dismissed them just an expected facet - albeit a disagreeable one - of being an architect, something he has experienced in the 25 years since he created the firm, which boasts buildings on every continent except Antarctica.
One Warsaw-based architect has even dismissed Złote Tarasy as "commercial chewing gum."
Jerde does not take this personally.
"I can see a whole lot of other reasons why other professionals want to criticize," he said. "This happens to be the disease of architects all over the world. No architect can tolerate another architect's architecture because it's a competition. The story will be told in time."
He is outspoken about his work, yet he tends to let his CV speak for itself. His firm has designed Fremont Street Experience, in Las Vegas, Horton Plaza in San Diego, Universal CityWalk in Los Angeles, Mall of America in Bloomington, Minn., Canal City Hakata in Japan, and the Beursplein in Rotterdam.
He divides his buildings' components up into two types of "energy": static, the unused energy and emotion the locked up in a design on paper, and kinetic, the actual energy it exudes when it finally opens to the public.
The kinetic energy, he described, is comprised of the shoppers, businesspeople, sales people and people-watchers all taking part in his mixed-use projects.
As such, Varsovians have only experienced the static energy portrayed by inadequate renderings, he explained.
"The project will be well received in Poland," he said. "You have to remember we are walking three steps into the future here."
He added that it was his intention in designing the building was connecting the city's past with a future that no one knows yet - something he said that is very challenging to do.
He seems to communicate much of his work in the general terms of static verses kinetic energy.
"It's the kinetic story that enters into the game of life, not the static story," he said. "You can't take static renderings and see the kinetic story."
So, he confidently claims that in Złote Tarasy he has connected the past, as he knows it, to the future.
