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:: Thursday, May 27, 2004 ::

The Architectural Blame Game By CHRISTOPHER HAWTHORNE, NY Times
FISSURE. Cracking. Collapse.

Those were the distressing words — the ones no architect, engineer or builder ever wants to hear — that filled news accounts of a disaster early Sunday morning at Charles de Gaulle International Airport in Paris, where part of the new Terminal 2E gave way, killing four people.

But there was another word buried just under the surface of those early reports: hubris. In their descriptions of the elliptical concrete, glass and steel terminal's "ultramodern" and "futuristic" design, journalists were at least implicitly making the case that its French architect, Paul Andreu, and his structural engineers might well turn out to be the primary culprits in its collapse.
In fact, by Wednesday, French officials were speculating that the blame would ultimately be laid, instead, at the feet of the contractors.

'When incidents like this happen, the press loves to trot out this morality play suggesting that the reason for the disaster is that the architect wanted to do something new or unusual,' said Terence Riley, chief curator of architecture and design at the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan.

He added that after four workers were killed in the collapse of a garage at the Tropicana Casino and Resort in Atlantic City last fall, a building with much more straightforward design than Mr. Andreu is known for, 'nobody thought it had been caused by the architect.'

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