Elbphilharmonie Case Study: Why Ugly Buildings Cost So D*** Much, Pt. 2
The second half of the case study dives into the myriad issues created by specialization and over-thinking.
Continuing from last week’s article, I will look at the remaining issues I noticed in the Elbphilharmonie: over-specialization, over-engineering, and over-promising.
Over-Promising
This is a rather straightforward problem. The architects simply thought up too much. They wanted to surround the concert hall with a luxury hotel and apartments, with a grand entry-way through the warehouse, an observation deck atop the original structure, and a cafe in the top floors of the warehouse, all for €77 million.
This project demonstrated that architects cannot eat their cake and have it, too. They achieved all but the cafe; though in return, the budget came in over 10 times higher. Had they stuck to the budget, every item, including the concert hall, would have been cut.
Over-Specialization
The divorce between architects, engineers, and builders becomes bitingly clear in the first 15 minutes of the documentary. I have to assume that the architecture firm has their own, in-house engineers, and that they were consulted prior to the start of the construction. There are clear moments, however, when the engineers are just beginning the grapple with the architects’ vision.
I laid out the complex acoustic issues in my last piece. Nevertheless, these are true of any concert hall, and the architects are not to blame for requiring expensive outside consultation. What really shows their shortcomings, however, is their desire to perch the Elbphilharmonie atop the warehouse. Though the documentary does not dwell on it or provide details, it notes in passing that the curved escalator to reach the top floors is the tallest in the world and is difficult to design.
Additionally, throughout the process of construction, lapses in the architects’ judgment drastically increased the costs and time to build the Elbphilharmonie. Principal among these are the windows. Their odd shape requires that they be cast in large frames. Their size, however, makes them very vulnerable to swaying in the wind. If the wind exceeded 40 km/hr, then the workers would have to stop for fear of the windows crashing into the structure or injuring someone. This, of course, happens regularly on the wharf of a port city like Hamburg.
I struggle to believe that all these issues would have arisen if the architect and engineer were one and the same. Vitruvius, in his writings, shows an extreme concern for engineering issues, as the architect will have to solve all the problems he creates. In our modern world of specialization, however, these can be passed off to someone else. Additionally, since the architects and project managers are also divorced, the architect does not have to deal with the implementation of the solution, nor do they get blamed when the project runs over budget. Vitruvius, on the other hand, said any architect worth their spit is a good accountant and project manager.
Pre-modern architects often limited themselves to a maximum of one or two innovations or engineering feats per project. These were necessities, not points of vanity, as they had to find an economical solution and see it through to the end.
“There are three principal ways to lose money: wine, women, and engineers. While the first two are more pleasant, the third is by far the most certain.”
- Edmond de Rothschild, apocryphal
Over-Engineering
Springing from the deadly combination of over-specialization and the over-innovation that I analyzed last week, over-engineering drastically drove up the costs of the project before it had even broken ground. It also kept increasing costs throughout. It is not really a primary cause of cost overrun, but is instead the only solution to the previous problems.
I discussed how the design choices of the city and the architects drastically increased the complexity of the project, necessitating ever-more expensive and contrived solutions. The acoustics generally, and the ceiling tiles particularly, required very precise modeling, measurement, and fixing. Only the most elite and specialist consulting firms could even dare approach the problem, and even they showed great apprehension at the project's success. The solution required specialist machinery, a one-off program, extensive managerial oversight, and specialist installation. All of that, to me, screams $$$.
Further, as the project progressed, unforeseen engineering issues emerged: the glass structure was far heavier than predicted. To fix this, the interior of the warehouse had to be demolished, leaving only the brick façade so that the interior could be filled with concrete pillars capable of supporting the behemoth. In the end, the promised cafe was replaced by a parking garage…
Finally, the roof itself created a unique issue. Its rolling, undulating shape, meant to imitate the waves of the harbor, did not agree with the straight, rigid steel girders required to build it. A thousand steel girders had to be uniquely cut and assembled to form the shape. Further, the aluminum disks on the roof had to be hand placed to ensure the angles were just right. Again, “unique” in the world of construction is a sly way to say “expensive.”
Final Assessment
To finish the documentary, the producers ask concert goers if the price and wait were worth it. They all say “yes.” For €866 million, it better have been! That is all well and good, though they set out to design the greatest concert hall on Earth. The reviews of the sound quality are generally positive, though one hardly finds a critical critic these days... Regardless, given how much they spent, I will give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that the acoustics are perfect.
“It certainly was worth the money, and also, this is what it is like in Germany. Had anyone said at the start, this will be over [€]500 million, then nobody would have built it. There would never have been an approval, so you start small and later, when it’s there, it’s such a terrific thing that you don’t think about money too much anymore.”
- Concert goer, 49:03
For me, the real question is could they have built a better concert hall for €866 million? The way I see it, only a fool would say they couldn’t. So much money was invested in working back to square-one because of the poor location and obscene height that the project was deep in the hole before the first worker ascended the warehouse. The narrator of the documentary notes that many residents of Hamburg became angered with the project because it consumed all of the city’s cultural budget for the better part of a decade.
I would wager that they could have built a concert hall with equally good acoustics of a higher architectural quality for right around the original budget, had they stuck to the norm.