Architecture: Doing what comes culturally
While Luxembourg splashes out, Liverpool is taking a more parochial
approach, says Hugh Pearman
In Luxembourg, they are finishing off their new cultural buildings,
nicely in time to be Europe’s Capital of Culture next year. There’s the
new Musée d’Art Moderne (Mudam) by IM Pei, he of the Louvre pyramid.
There’s the virtuoso twin-chamber concert hall by Frenchman Christian de
Portzamparc, its facade like a giant stringed instrument. These take
their place in a £200m cultural quarter planned by Spain’s Ricardo
Bofill, which also boasts a new convention centre. Nobody except
bankers, steel magnates and Euro-politicians used to go to Luxembourg:
they will now.
In 2008, the cultural baton passes from Luxembourg and Sibiu in Romania
to Liverpool and Stavanger in Norway. There is a lot of new building
going on in Liverpool, too, but, as in nearby Manchester, it’s nearly
all commercial boom-time stuff. Some of this will be ready for 2008, but
most of it only by coincidence, and very little of it specifically
dedicated to culture. The difference, of course, is that Liverpool is in
the UK, where grand, publicly funded cultural gestures are regarded with
intense suspicion. Post-millennium, we prefer to leave building to
private developers. We remember the Dome.
cont'd....
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2101-2256819,00.html