City squares, skateboarding, and art mueums

Two of the PPS's webpage on the best and worst parks (and squares) include amongst the worst examples Tate Modern (London) and the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art . The Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (abbreviated as MACBA), which is situated in the Plaça dels Àngels, in El Raval, Ciutat Vella, Barcelona, opened to the public on November 28 1995, in an area that back then was a run down working class neighbourhood. Likewise Tate Modern, when it opened in 2000, was to become the centrepiece to an urban redevelopment in a part of central London that had missed out on previous investment due to the timeline of Southwark's industrial and urban fabric, social and economic condition being by-passed by the West End and the City of London immediately across the River Thames. The construction and site of MACBA development had a very specific strategic purpose to transform this area of Barcelona, and is important to see this local strategy in relation to the wider transformation of the city that took place in the late 1980's as the city began preparing for the Summer Olympic Games of 1992.

According to Wikipedia the history of the museum begins in 1959:

In 1959, art critic Alexandre Cirici Pellicer formed a group of contemporary artists showing work in a series of 23 exhibitions with the hopes of beginning a collection for a new contemporary art museum in Barcelona. It was not until 1986 that the Barcelona City Council recommended the American architect Richard Meier & Partners (1987–1995) to design the museum.

Richard Meier's vision 'to situate the building amongst some of Barcelona’s oldest streets and buildings, in addition to revamping the public space of the Raval' has led to the building being described by the local media as "the pearl" set amongst an urban fabric with those rich and various textures revealing the patina of history.



The building's presence has the quality of a modernist spaceship that has landed in this city square, but unlike the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, the design includes a transitional zone between the architecture and the public space but as part of the building rather than as part of the square. The square becomes the empty space that allows a view of the architecture, but also skate boarders.



During the night, while the museum is closed the square is available for the skateboarders of Barcelona, because it is empty space, and empty of other possible uses. The potential for other uses having been suppressed the skateboarders are going to take over the space and create a particular form of social fabric that has its own value.

Meanwhile the art public is encouraged to move from an outside space to the inside space where there is plenty of designed focus in the changing exhibitions of modern art.

Another square in Barcelona is in the Hall of Shame, the Placa Paisos Catalans.



The square was opened in its current form in 1983, built over the station rail yard, and architect Helio Piñon and Albert Vilaplana were awarded that year's FAD Prize by the Foment de les Arts i el Disseny. prizewinning schemes are not always the ones that prove successful over time, and this place is another favourite for Barcelona's skateboarders, Whilst the design scheme is visually impressive it is an impossible space for people to use and occupy in a sustained way.



This is a place for fleeting moments, meeting and then passing through as quickly as possible. Besides being popular with skateboarders, demonstrators have often gathered there, most infamously by ultra far-right groups during the 1990s and early 2000s.





Under the name The destruction of the Plaça dels Països Catalans an exhibition took place at the Col·legi d'Arquitectes de Catalunya in 2011 documenting the effects of urban decay in the area in stark contrast with the architects' original concept and intentions. This square is now the subject of an ongoing debate and critique, a classic example of a modernist visual programme excluding the potential for a human and social presence.



Not even a Lichtenstein can do much more than emphasize a sense of loneliness and abandonment.



Back to Tate Modern and the landscaping of the space facing the river and around the new developments, it seems that the principle at work is that the visual takes predominance. The schemes proposed for landscaping the spaces between the new building developments and the new Tate Modern extension are award winning, yes, but they also reinforce the pathway as a place for transit not settlement. Between the old power station and the river the wind often blows, vortices set up by the architecture itself and the temperature gradient between the water and the bankside. This is a reminder of nature and its power but these are not conditions where it is easy to create a place for people to use, except on hot and sunny summer days. The strategy in this case seems to be to pretend there is a public space with grass and silver birch trees, but even skateboarders cannot find a use for these often empty spaces.



There is a museum related space that works, not so much by design, but how people occupy the space.



The Place de Georges Pompidou slopes down from street level to the entrance ways of the Pompidou Centre, and just as in medieval times the space in front of Notre Dame de Paris was occupied by fairs and frolics, so the people who perform and those who spectate, sitting or standing, make a place for street theatre. No skateboarders!