GETTING IT RIGHT
An article in The Architects Newspaper titled “How Trump’s arch gets classical wrong” gets it wrong. I’m not here to defend the design of the memorial arch proposed for a site near the Arlington National Cemetery, but to say that the arch represents “category error” because it doesn’t commemorate a military victory, like its inspiration, the Arc de Triomphe and the ancient Roman original, the Arch of Titus, is misleading. There have been several twentieth-century arches that do not commemorate victorious battles. The National Memorial Arch at Valley Forge, designed by Paul Philippe Cret and inaugurated in 1917 doesn’t, neither does the Gateway of India, built in Bombay in 1924 to celebrate the visit of King George V and his coronation as Emperor of India. The Black Star Gate in Accra, Ghana, was commissioned by Kwame Nkrumah in 1957 to commemorate his country’s new sovereignty. The Ghanaian gate is not modeled on a Roman arch and it’s not huge—40 feet high. The Valley Forge arch is 60 feet, only slightly taller than its model, the Arch of Titus. The Gateway of India is 85 feet, which happens to be the height of another famous arch, the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin.
LIBRARY TOWER
A design for the Trump Presidential Library has been unveiled: a highrise tower in downtown Miami. It’s an original idea that puts me in mind of Henry Van de Velde’s Booktower for Ghent University, Paul Cret’s library tower at UT Austin (above), and Charles Klauder’s Cathedral of Learning at the University of Pittsburgh, although the last is not a library. Klauder’s building is Gothic, Cret’s is stripped classical, and Van de Velde’s is his Art Nouveau-jnfluenced brand of early modern. Oddly enough the Miami tower is neither classical nor traditional but a warmed-over “contemporary” highrise.
STARCHITECTS
I’ve recently come across several articles on the demise of the starchitect. While this may or may not be true, what strikes me is the general misunderstanding of the starchitect phenomenon. It is not a plot to promote certain architects. It is not a media invention. It is not a system. It is not merely a reflection of celebrity culture. The term ”star” derives from Hollywood. The movie star is an actor or actress who achieves exceptional public name recognition. This is ultimately an economic measure because it means that, all things being equal, the participation of a star in a proposed movie can make it bankable. That is, a star adds real economic value. Clothing manufacturers discovered this early with designer jeans. Similarly, the presence of a starchitect can add real economic value to a building project. This does not mean that the starchitect is the best architect, anymore than the Hollywood star is the best actor. It means that name recognition can facilitate promotion and fund-raising in a new concert hall, increase attendance in a museum, raise rents in an office building, and increase sales in a condominium tower. Although an early example is the office buildings that Philip Johnson designed for Gerald Hines in the 1970s,
ONE THING ON TOP OF ANOTHER
In his 1977 classic, Morality and Architecture, the late historian David Watkin, while discussing the early roots of European modernism, wrote: “Here is a belief that design, which is surely of its very nature contrived, ought somehow to be ‘honest’ and uncontrived.” The notion of honesty, whether in structure or materials, is one of the tenets of modernism, from Frank Lloyd Wright to Louis Kahn. Yet one of the basic architectural decisions has always been what to reveal and what to conceal (such as in Mies’ beautiful Barcelona Pavilion, under construction above). With the exception of igloos and log cabins, building construction tends to consist of layers, one thing on top of another. Veneers, in the form of mosaics and thin marble slabs characterized traditional building, and non-load-bearing skins of varied materials continue to be the basis of contemporary construction. The reasons are both economic and aesthetic. Something inexpensive behind something nice. In other words, a contrivance.
FEDERAL BUILDINGS
It is not unreasonable to conclude that something went terribly wrong with the architecture of federal buildings in the (modernist) postwar era, producing clunkers such as the FBI Building, the HUD Building, and the Forrestal Building in Washington DC, and various bland federal buildings around the country. Surely prewar classical buildings represented something better? So, it is not unreasonable for the President to lead the conversation, taking the baton from Jefferson and FDR, who both had strong architectural opinions.
It is important to recognize that a “solution” will be complicated. Not easy to define what made those old buildiongs good; surely not simply Corinthian columns. For example, the competition brief that produced the Federal Reserve Board Building (above) specified that classical motifs such as pilasters and columns were not required—and Paul Cret included none. So, is the Fed building classical, or something else? It is also necessary to recognize that there were good postwar federal buildings (Walter Netsch’s Air Force Academy, Harry Cobb’s courthouse in Boston, Moshe Safdie’s courthouse in Springfield). What made them good?
The sensible thing would have been for the White House to form a sort of brains trust. Pick leading senior traditional-minded architects (Tom Beeby,
THE HUMAN CITY
Demetri Porphyrios invited me to contribute the foreword to King’s Cross: The Making of a Master Plan which describes a 67-acre urban development of disused railway lands in central London. The planners were Porphyrios Associates and Allies & Morrison. The project, which was a finalist for this year’s Stirling Prize, includes buildings designed by David Chipperfield, BIG, Heatherwick Studio, Maki & Associates, Porphyrios, Wilkinson Eyre, As I wrote, King’s Cross is “an important landmark in the longstanding debate between modernists and traditionalists . . . and answers the question of whether it is possible to combine traditional urbanism and contemporary architecture with an emphatic ‘Yes’.”
