These sculptures evoke a type of space cast that appoints a once sacred double space, closer in spirit to a Guarini or a Borromini Church, than to anything conceived in the 20th Century. Constructed from a series of “unattached linings,” (1) , Serra champions a traditionally functional band of separation between a sacred room and a secular urban setting; the space of the city. Originally, this Barroque space is made possible by a mediating boundary of double walls, of “linings” and characterized in the instant case by Mr Updike as “slices of grandeur.”
And what's wrong with a little sacred space in this relentless world of consumption. Well, for one, this central space was sacred once and by its very dissapearance makes Serra's sculptures of semingly spiritual centers sacred in form only. A once guarded, hallow room is replaced by a center of nothing but with much museum-spectacle-commercial currency that these days apparently passes for aesthetics. This "espacio sagrado-serratonico“ is made all the more daring by leaning passages, but where have we seen these before? Well, I've told you, but these so called“slices ...” are also Kahn's “servant space,” this secondary zone of support, lending importance and protection to rooms. These sculptures are a promenade to nowhere and the space is used here for shock value, to entertain and woo the unsuspecting viewer, and is it any wonder that traversing these spaces has left Mr. Updike “No wiser,” well, that's a clue and why should he be surprised to identify a “Playground atmosphere”? It is perhaps that the “Towering masses of metal” might be better understood at the level of the carnival, of “..gravity defying” constructions, for example, than of any purported “Art historical importance.” These objects are a movable architecture, a portable ‘rent-a-space’ for the thrill of visual stimulation. Unquestionably, they are nice to look at, “fun to complete,” but let us not hoodwink ourselves. No matter how we stretch our imagination, no amount of glued-on flaky waterproofing will ever raise the value of these engineering feats and its “many square meters of curved space” to anything beyond an elementary restatement and rediscovery of traditional, Western architectural space.
ov
(1) 'Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture' Robert Venturi, MoMA