IWAN BAAN: Moments in Architecture

In today's media landscape, a book review is often a slap on the back. A handshake among colleagues that says, “well done.” But we have never been afraid to offer critique when critique is due. In our print section Berlin Reviews, we've always tried to take the propositions of a book seriously and push them to their extremes.

My only memory of the 2000 Summer Olympics is of the Sydney Opera House. Often shown after commercials for the Olympics, the building, shot from a blimp, appeared heavenly in the golden sunlight. The critic Jörg Häntzschel suggests that this look represents the principal strategy of architectural photographers, who aim “to depict a building under ideal conditions.” Devoid of people and filth, edifices are typically exhibited as sublime ideals in earthly form.

Award-winning Dutch photographer IWAN BAAN, however, reveals what comes before and after starchitects’ projects occupy prime real estate. In Baan’s photos of Rem Koolhaas’ CCTV Headquarters, for instance, we see construction workers welding rebar and sharing meals. Baan discloses the human face of labor and the structures’ inherent contradictions — hence the photos of workers’ squalid tents pitched in front of the majestic building. What comes afterward is banal. People chat on street corners or take selfies in front of world-famous monoliths. Baan isn’t averse to the aerial; pictures of finished projects from helicopters abound in the catalogue for his show at the Vitra Design Museum. Showing both the ideal and the real is what makes Baan’s work so strong. The buildings are magnificent, even if they’re only a backdrop to our drama.

Iwan Baan: Moments in Architecture is published by Vitra Design Museum (Weil am Rhein, 2023). www.design-museum.de