The Baghdad Affair. How diplomacy supplanted one of the last major projects by Le Corbusier
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract: After the Iraqi Republican Revolution of 1958, the resultant government commissioned two parallel projects for two great Stadiums in Baghdad, with similar complementary features: one to the Swiss architect Le Corbusier – who had developed a previous project (1955-1958) for the monarch Faisal II –, continuously designed in his Paris studio until his death in 1965; another to the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, in Lisbon, entirely funded and supervised by this institution, and designed by two prominent Portuguese architects at the time: F. Keil do Amaral and Carlos M. Ramos. Facing a progressive administrative and financial chaos in the country, the Iraqi authorities opted for the Gulbenkian Foundation’s solution – built between 1962-1965 and inaugurated in 1966, after an intriguing diplomatic process -, postponing Le Corbusier’s proposals yet without breaking their contract with him. This essay presents an explanation for this mysterious “affair” based on a recent research conducted at the Presidency Archive of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, but also at the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) where different documents reveal the continuous mismatch between Le Corbusier’s will and the Iraqi authorities procedures. Resumen: Después de la Revolución Republicana iraquí de 1958, el gobierno resultante encargó dos proyectos paralelos para dos grandes estadios en Bagdad con características similares: uno a lo arquitecto suizo Le Corbusier - que había desarrollado un proyecto anterior para el monarca Faisal II (entre 1955 y 1958 ) -, diseñado de forma continua en su estudio de París hasta su muerte en 1965; otro a la Fundación Calouste Gulbenkian, en Lisboa, totalmente financiado y supervisado por esta institución, y diseñado por dos destacados arquitectos portugueses de la época: F. Keil do Amaral y Carlos M. Ramos. Frente a un caos administrativo y financiero progresivo en el país, las autoridades iraquíes optaron por el proyecto presentado por la Fundación Gulbenkian – construido entre 1962-1965 e inaugurado en 1966, después de un intrigante proceso diplomático -, posponiendo las propuestas de Le Corbusier todavía sin romper su contrato con él. Este ensayo presenta una explicación para esta "trama"misteriosa, basado en una investigación reciente - llevada a cabo en el Archivo de la Presidencia de la Fundación Calouste Gulbenkian, sino también en el Centro Canadiense de Arquitectura (CCA) -, en la que los diferentes elementos documentales revelan la falta de correspondencia continua entre la voluntad de Le Corbusier y los procedimientos de las autoridades iraquíes. Keywords: Le Corbusier; Baghdad Stadium complex; Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. Palabras clave: Le Corbusier; Estadio de Baghdad; Fundación Calouste Gulbenkian. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4995/LC2015.2015.645
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.024 | 0.015 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.011 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.013 | 0.002 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".