Architecture

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.

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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.

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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,

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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;

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SATORI ON LOCUST STREET

With apologies to Jack Kerouac. In Satori in Paris, one of his last books, he describes the Japanese word satori, or sudden illumination, as a “kick in the eye.” Précisement! I was sitting in an Uber, being driven down Locust Street. We passed by a three-story building, probably built in the 1970s, a handsome composition in brick and precast concrete trim. Not bad, I thought, at least it’s not just glass, which seems to be the one-note tune played by architects today. A few seconds later we drove by another building, . This one was taller—five storyies and older,

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A BANQUETING HALL FOR THE WHITE HOUSE

The State Dining Room in the White House seats 140. The larger East Room, at the same density, would seat about 240. A reasonable size for a new, third dining room, let’s call it the Banqueting Hall, would be large enough to seat, say, 500. Assuming a two-square plan, that would be a room 55 by 110 feet, which happens to be about the same size as Inigo Jones Banqueting House in Whitehall. That room is a double cube, which is one of the things that makes it so beautiful (see above). The White House Banqueting Hall would need a 55 foot ceiling,

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THE OLD RULES

The Louis Kahn/I. M. Pei generation of architects were modernists who had dispensed with many of the previously essential aspects of architecture such as ornament, but they still believed in buildings ordered by rules, especially the old rules of geometry, symmetry, centering, axes, and so on. That didn’t mean that they didn’t diverge from those rules—in Pei’s case quite often—but when they they did so they were always aware of the break and compensated in some way. That seems to be what is missing in current architecture. There are no rules, broken or unbroken, which too often results in mere confusion.

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HOW BIG?

The State Dining Room of the White House seats only 140, in crowded but charming intimacy, the small size adding to the atmosphere of exclusivity. Still the idea that a larger banqueting hall would be a useful alternative to outdoor tents on the South Lawn strikes me as a sensible proposal. The challenge is to balance the need for seating capacity with the need for an appropriate size that suits its setting. Three times larger than the State Dining Room would be the capacity of Inigo Jones’s beautiful Banqueting House in London (above). The proposed White House ballroom (it is really a banqueting hall) was initially to have a capacity five times as large (600),

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