Architecture

Palladio’s Villa Rotonda has provided inspiration for architects over the ages, starting with Vincenzo Scamozzi, Palladio’s student who completed the Villa Rotonda after his master’s death. Scamozzi built La Rocca, a hilltop villa in nearby Lonigo. Inigo Jones designed several bi-axial houses, but never found a client. In the eighteenth century, there were at least four British Rotondas, the most celebrated being Lord Burlington’s Chiswick House. There are a number of more recent examples; I have seen a house inspired by Rotonda on the outskirts of Pittsburgh, designed by Alvin Holm,

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I’ve always wondered where the continuous zigzag form came from (it has no name). Rem Koolhaas used something like it on the Educatorium, where a line suggested—improbably—that the roof and the floor were actually the same surface,  just bent. Since then the ZZ Shape has proliferated, mostly on fashionable façades. Diller Scofidio + Renfro  used it on the ICA in Boston, and in their proposed Eyebeam Museum in New York.

I came across the Ur-ZZ the other day. In 1923, Walter Gropius designed a pair of newspaper stands as part of his office redo in the WeimarBauhaus.

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An old student of mine who recently opened his own office in Washington, D.C. asked me why I thought the new homegrown architecture of that city was, to put it kindly, uninspired. After serving eight years on the Commission of Fine Arts I’ve seen a lot of projects. Apart from a few buildings by outsiders (Richard Rogers, Bing Thom, David Adjaye) most of the work has been pedestrian, architecturally unambitious, and lacking any real critical thought, that is, intellectually mushy. Without constructive and challenging criticism—which can only come from colleagues, not from critics or clients—practitioners easily get lazy. While there is an enviable amount of construction in DC—federal,

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During my nineteen years at Penn I have served as a faculty member in two departments, architecture in the School of Design, and real estate in the Wharton School. I discovered many small differences: the real estate faculty is more social, with a Christmas party and an end of year barbecue; architects are less punctual and more long-winded than economists; the business school has better box lunches at faculty meetings. But what struck me most was the differences in academic cultures.

Medical schools do medical research, business schools advance the theoretical state of the art,

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Every year a ranking of schools of architecture comes out, most recently compiled by Design Intelligence. A couple of years ago, I decided to do an unscientific ranking of my own, not based on what architecture deans think, or who employers are hiring, or the current enrollment statistics, but on the long-term product, that is, which schools produce the largest number of really outstanding architects. I compiled a list of the “best” living architects by starting with Priztker Prize winners, AIA Gold Medal recipients, Driehaus Prize winners, and then adding as many names of first-rank prominent practitioners (not academics) as I could think of.

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