Maybe I sympathize with the public because I am one of them now. Finish this sentence, anyone: "It is ok to design a building that has a leaky roof or melts plastic across the street because ______________." What about that mantra of protecting the safety and welfare of the public. Oh, that isn't real, that's right. 

Curt, what do you have against cornerstones?

i don't think modern buildings are required to melt plastic or leak.  if you're trying to suggest that buildings which leak and melt plastic are not well designed, i would agree with that.  if you're suggesting all modern buildings leak and melt plastic, whereas all traditional buildings don't, i would disagree with that.

i don't think buildings should fall down either.  like this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beauvais_Cathedral

so if i wanted to turn your question around, it would be "it's ok to design traditional buildings that fall down because ______"  but i wouldn't ask that, because the whole idea that there is a debate between 'traditional' and 'modern' architecture styles is ludicrous, and we're all to smart to think one style is always good while the other always bad.  except suri and thayer.  they're not smart enough to realize that.

my opinion on cornerstones is mine alone, and i'm not projecting that on anyone, and i'm not asking NAAB to re-write their regulations or requirements to cater to my opinion.  i'm not so narcissistic to think all of the public is centered around some random opinion i happen to hold, because that would be dumb and i don't want to be dumb.

Helps when you have a traditional urban fabric for your spaceship.

all of those people chose to hang out near the spaceship instead of the other historic areas.  it's almost as if they didn't even ask you what their opinion was supposed to be.

In your mind, place Pompidou in La Defense and then rethink that position. If you place any building in that space in the 4th arrondissement you'd have heavy pedestrian activity. You could make it in the shape of a giant poop draped in American Flags and clad with Cheeze Wiz cans and I doubt the street presence would change one iota. That's the beauty of Haussmann's plan.

trip, you're saying if i use my imagination, i could come up with a scenario where people might not want to gather around a building that is not traditional?

what i'm saying is, people like good architecture.  whether that architecture is 'tradtional' or 'modern' is a construct of a few people who want to create a fight over 'tradtional' v. 'modern' architecture.  pretending the pompidu is somewhere else has nothing to do with supporting or rejecting that notion.

in other words, you're insistence that there has to be a line is the problem.  what do you gain by creating an 'us v. them' argument?  all that does is give you a pulpit to cry for attention like the tea partiers at a public forum.

I'm not sure if you're purposely feigning ignorance about the interaction and integration of individual building and overall context.

Do you really think that people come to that plaza because of the architecture of the Pompidou?  :) :) :)

i'm fairly certain that you're going to come up with an excuse as to why people gathering around what you consider a 'modern' building doesn't count, or you will consider the building to be 'traditional' for any building, any place, at any time ever. 

you have an ideological bias that is so strong you refuse to see the world for what it is.  i'm not defending any sort of 'modern' style, i'm trying to point out where your 'tradtional v. modern' belief system has failed.  and it has failed.  but you will rewrite all of history to defend that position.  would your psyche really get bruised that bad if you paid attention to what was actually happening?

you could say that i'm biased or that i'm just trying to indoctrinate the youth, but as said above, i'm not defending a position, i'm negating your position.  you've firmly established a black or white situation, and i'm saying that is fundamentally flawed because the black and white foundation of your belief system doesn't exist.  i am not defending the opposite of what you're defending, because i'm not defending anything.

that's the same for pretty much all of the professors you think are indoctrinating our youth in to the modern school.  they're not on the 'black or white' theme you're on.  anyone who has actually studied the history of architecture should be able to see all the different variations and all the different options that open up more than a binary possibility.  once you get rid of your ideological baggage, you might be able to learn what those professors were trying to teach you.

why would it be so horrible for you accept that sometimes people like new buildings, or that sometimes people like buildings without ornament, or that sometimes people like buildings you might not like?  or do you really believe people are incapable of sitting next to a 'modern' building, despite the obvious evidence to the contrary?

eke, they go there because it's somewhere to go.  the style of the pompidu is just a relevant as the style of the paris city hall.

you're saying people flock to traditional architecture due to the style, and the flock to modern architecture due to some other factor, such as the traditional architecture somewhere nearby?  that doesn't sound just a bit ideologically biases?  like maybe you're trying a little to hard to promote the term 'traditional?'

I think you're misunderstanding my position here, curt. I'm not knocking Pompidou (though I can't say I really enjoy it, myself), what I'm saying is that people are enjoying the environs around it for the same reason they're enjoying the environs around the adjacent, more anonymous buildings in the plaza. It's all about the overall composition in such cases. In this case, the composition is, for the most part, 19th century Paris. 

Can't we all just get along?

I admit I went to see the Pompidou last time I was in Paris (OK, 16 years ago now), specifically going to that locale to see that building. That is not to say I liked it in the pictures I saw before hand or the actual building on site, but it was an attraction.  Sometimes you don't have to like an attraction to go see it.

Curt, I'm glad you had some more flexible professors, I did too, but that was quite awhile ago now (actually, during the height of PoMo).  My understanding from what I hear today, and my own experience in bringing forward the thought of teaching about traditional architecture at my local school (not teaching historical styles, btw), is that the idea of doing a traditional building in a studio today is frowned upon quite strongly. In fact, it is frowned upon officially in many instances too, such as when doing an addition to a historic building, or building a new building in a historic district (or in a historic park in one of my own projects).  The historic preservation professionals have a very narrow interpretation of what it means to design "a new addition in a manner that makes clear what is historic and what is new." (Secretary of the Interiors Standards, p.112) That means they can decide what is " imitating a historic style or period of architecture" that is "not recommended" (in practise read "not allowed") and so if an addition is traditional, they can call it "imitation" and say you can't do that.  And I have dealt with that attitude often. The same mindset is found in the UK (I will quote Robert Adam on that in a separate comment to follow).

I accept that people like new buildings, even modernist new buildings. I even like some of them. My problem is when traditional design (and I know we still are grappling with this definitional problem, but until someone comes up with some clarity that we all can agree on I still feel the need to use the terms) is not allowed a place at the table. Here is my quote from Robert Adam, of Adam Architecture in London (oh, and BTW, I don't like everything they have done, either), which refers to the Tate Britain project by Caruso St. John I posted about yesterday and then talks more generally (posted here with Robert's permission):

"Caruso St John are well-known for their more open attitude to tradition as, in their own way, are FAT.  To keep their credibility with most of their peers, however, they have to have some clear indication of their ‘difference’ or modernity.  I think for some younger architects, the whole style war thing is boring or irrelevant and tradition is not so much an enemy as a mystery.  I recently took part in a ‘classical seminar’ for the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland (RIAS) in a context more to do with curiosity and diversity than any attempt at a challenge.

"On the other hand, modernism has become so institutionalised that we are finding that a mindless pervasive insistence on modernism has seeped into everyday bureaucracy.  In the last few weeks I’ve resigned from an awards assessment panel because, notwithstanding my presence, only modernism ever gets through; I’ve had to ask a city council why its planning policies say they promote design ‘of its time’, that does ‘not mimic’ and should demonstrate ‘a contemporary approach’; I’ve had to go to the top to stop a heritage officer promoting modernism on a new project; I’ve had to challenge another city council for a design statement that promoted modernism and so on.

"The hope is that once something is institutionalised it is more open to challenge from enquiring and creative minds that resent a bureaucratic straightjacket and, combined with a non-hostile attitude to tradition, this could lead to a change.  At the same time, the current economic and political atmosphere is away from uniform internationalism to some, albeit limited, return to the protection of national or regional hegemony.

"Lest we get too euphoric about this, when I have projects published in the professional press and it goes onto the journal’s website the routine and personal abuse that frequently follows in the comment columns from the, not always anonymous, trolls can be quite breath-taking.  I usually challenge it, much to the trolls’ surprise, and they either get more abusive, are surprised or just shut up.  They may be trolls but the regularity of the phenomenon and the apparent anonymity of the internet reveals a very disturbing underlying deep hostility."

"i do not consider the beam in the seagram's building to be ornament."  Why is that?  Because you like it?  Maybe it's your big bird on the wall

This thread will just not die. It's stuck in permanent oscillation. Sigh. I guess I have to weigh in after all.

When I was teaching design studios, this subject came up quite a bit. Unlike most other studio professors, I did not have a policy of outright banning historic or traditional design languages for projects in my studio. As part of that, I required that every student in class prepare a narrative explaining why they had chosen the design language they had for their project (regardless of "style" or whatever - this was a blanket requirement for every project). Then they also had to prepare a description of what that design language IS. My point being that you can make the design decisions you want to make, but you'd better be prepared to explain why you made them that way. This approach was generally quite successful.

I use "language" here in a very intentional, specific metaphoric sense. As an analogy, I would explain that if I was asking them to write a story, and they came to me and said they wanted to write it in French, second-person form, I'd want to know why. What about the story is best expressed using French rather than English or Mandarin? Why the second-person form? These decisions are not arbitrary. They must serve the purpose and intent of the work and its audience.

So, when a student comes to me and asks if they can design their project in a "traditional" style, my first question is: why? The second question is: which one specifically? And the third question, akin to the story written in French: do you know how to speak that language fluently, and if not, what do you intend to do to learn it?

To be fair, I ask the same questions of the students who come in with modernistic or parametric approaches as well. I don't give free passes on that stuff just because you came up with something that matches my personal taste.

There's a lot of really horrible "traditional" design out there, just as there's a lot of really horrible "modern" (or shall we say "contemporary") design out there. In fact, I can generalize from that and say that most architectural design is incoherent shite done without much thought for reasons of fashion, laziness, inertia, or some combination of the three. So it doesn't really matter whether or not your work is "modern" or "traditional." What matters is: is it any good? I will say categorically that if you can't explain clearly why you're working in a particular design language, whether it's historically established or personally idiosyncratic, your odds of producing anything of quality are very low.

curtkram,

I'm starting to feel sorry for you.  You keep making statements that are simply strange.

why would it be so horrible for you accept that sometimes people like new buildings, or that sometimes people like buildings without ornament,

No rational person would ever think these things, yet you keep insisting that they are real.  I did infact have a hard time with my like of traditional work in school, but knowing most of my professors lived in traditional buildings, it didn't take a genius to figure out I'd be able to make a living at this gig, I just had to get out of the fun house where someone says something incomprehensible and everyone nods in agreement.  And I did have some normal (regarding archtiecture) professors that while modernist, didn't think the whole world had to share their taste.  Thank god for them.  Everything you where taught and believe can still be right, it just dosen't make what others think wrong.

gwharton, I wish more professors where like you.  Once you get beone the language, it's still up to every architect to show a good design or not.

How do you all feel about this one?

That is one of the most out of proportion and badly detailed column and entablatures I've seen in a while.  It proves that you can suck in any style, not that one style is more valid than another.

I wasn't trying to prove anything, I was simply posing the question. The building's owners and users seem thrilled with it, though. Does that suggest that the general public may not have a clue as to proper architectural styling?

Thanks for commenting gwharton. I too wish there were more professors like you. To have to defend why you use a particular language in your design should indeed be required for all student projects, and, dare I say, would be equally good to do in the outside world after you graduate.

I did find it telling that you said "Unlike most other studio professors, I did not have a policy of outright banning historic or traditional design languages for projects in my studio." This has been one of the themes of my comments in this thread, and I would like to see such outright banning done away with, and replaced by a coherent defense of the language used, as you have done. Of course some professors, like many preservation professionals, will have their own standards for what passes as a coherent defense, which some traditional languages will not pass for them.

SneakyPete, I like the materials and the general layout of the building, proportions of openings, etc. (which are obviously relating to the existing context, so kudos there)  What I don't like is the detailing of the pilaster capitals and the entablatures.  To me they are clumsy and poorly proportioned.  

The other end of the building is interesting as well.

Sneaky pete,

That kind of makes sense.  The detailing had the clumsy touch of an archtiect who enjoys slapping two distinct languages together to make a point, one lost on the public.  Does that suggest that the general public may not have a clue as to proper architectural styling?  inquiring minds want to know.

Where is this project located?

Although the language does look strange, I think the it would be improved if the colonnade "supporting" the curtain-wall section was removed.

Whereas you're presuming to know the intentions of the designer, I referred to the actual opinions of the public which see and use the building. So I will ask again. Does that suggest that the general public may not have a clue as to proper architectural styling?

Agreed, SneakyPete, interesting at that end as well.  I rather like the melding of the two languages here.  Without seeing it closer up I don't know whether I agree with Non S regarding the colonnade (which does, I am sure, support the building above, although the columns covers do not, but aluminum column covers wouldn't be supporting the building above either, as in both cases that are column covers).

I think the general public does have a clue about "general architectural styling" but they may not, in general, have as much of a clue about architectural detailing. Although given a choice between a detail done properly and one done poorly, I would venture to guess they would pick the properly done detail most of the time.

I guess I'm well used to seeing the whole 'juxtaposition' idea.  I'd be happy with a more coherent design that didn't feel the need to make polemic statements at the expense of aesthetics, but again, I only speak for thayer and the trees, for I am the Lorax.  I still think it's not the best building, but considering it's context, I'm glad they went with some brick vs. landing yet another space ship.  Maybe modernists are aliens???  I jest of course!

I'd agree with aojwny on the people's choice award.  Like previous comparisons to a McMansion tudor and a 1920's Evanston tudor. Prego,  It's in the ingredients.

It's on the campus of Penn State.

http://bbh.hhd.psu.edu/

there is no there asks "I don't understand why no one cares if the roof leaks a la Gehry @ MIT or if the building barbecues the neighbors across the street or if the plaza is inhospitable or if the stairwell is a crime scene waiting to happen. Why is it that you can design poorly hospitable spaces that leak, offend the neighbors and are maintenance nightmares and still position yourself at the top of your game? I think I know why I'm not an architect anymore. Thanks all for this. It has been, and will continue to be enlightening to hear what people think about architecture. The profession is in crisis!"

This paragraph is rhetorical right? Conflating Gehry's aesthetic choice & the School's choice of his aesthetic has noting to do with the leaking roof. A bad detail is a bad detail. People were committing crimes in niches, stairs and porte cocheres well before steel pilotis came around. Maintenance of a building is independent of style as well. Bad design is bad design. Bad craftsmanship is bad craftsmanship. Irregardless of style.

Your frustration with architecture seems to stem not from style necessarily but from your prior experiences with it.  You can draw the greatest details in the world, specify nearly maintenance-free materials and do it in any style you choose. But if the contractor can't put it together and build it properly then it doesn't matter if it's Gothic revival, Mid-century modern, or strip-mall traditionalism.

If you have a client that couldn't care less about quality of construction, just so long as they can get the building open by a certain date and let the lawsuits sort things out, there's not much an architect can do if they're contractually obligated to stick around. I've seen it happen on public projects before. 

"By the way, try doing a school studio project with brick (oh to be so unhip). There was a kid in my class that designed a brick building, it had precast lintels and a cornerstone with the date stamped into it too. He got crap for it from many but there was a prof that stuck up for him too."

Ah the good old anecdote as proof of academic rejection of traditional design. Well here's my retort. I juried a 3rd semester studio last night. The project was a school for the building arts. Where artisans came and taught traditional trades like masonry, plaster, wood and metal crafts. The building was situated in a residential neighborhood with adjacent commercial uses. The architectural students were required to use brick as one of the materials! There was no dictating to the students about what style they had to design in. The buildings varied in style, scale and articulation. The students seemed more overwhelmed about resolving the complexities of the program and being able to communicate their concept than actually worrying about whether or not they had dentils or lintels. Really the criticisms given were to look more closely at the context and scaleability of their projects and in what manner would they respond to that context and scale.

No one laughed at the "look" of their buildings - which varied and I couldn't say any adhered to a specific style but none were historically-leaning. I'd say most were agnostic regarding style. The purpose of studio wasn't so much to dictate style but to actually help students formulate their design process to resolve a complex program and design problems presented to them. HOW a student expresses their concept and design on the outside was up to them. Some were more successful than others.

Wrapping a building in brick and replicating a Gothic-revival style isn't any better or worse than wrapping the building in a continuous ribbon of steel louvers. IF both are done in a careful, thoughtful, rigorous and crafted manner - both can be successful and beautiful.

Most students will take aesthetic cues from their peers more so than from any professor. If anything, I've seen students (both in grad and undergrad) that took a historical style they liked and tried to apply it to the program at hand. Most of the criticism they received wasn't related to the specific style they choose but more along the lines of how does that resolve the design problem and does the articulation express hierarchy of program or merely to look good. If a student presented a gothic inspired facade but the plan didn't resolve or relate to the program in question I'd say he fails because he didn't design anything. Same with a student doing their version of a moebius strip and wrapping it in perforated metal.  

I didn't see fully thought-out design resolution until 5th year or grad level studios. Then the attention paid to all scales of a project become more important as that student starts to get closer to creating architecture. Where they go stylistically after that is up to them. School is there to give them a foundation of analytical skills that they hone professionally regardless of style.

Je viens pensé à elle. Thayer-D est vraiment surixurient.

"Unlike most other studio professors, I did not have a policy of outright banning historic or traditional design languages for projects in my studio."

This was my takeaway for the day

Then go to Notre Dame.

If you want to focus on something, then go to the school that focuses on something, if you want to get a watered down exposure of all things, especially the issues relevant to today, then make all schools the same and give an equal amount of focus on "styles". 
Don't go to SciArc because you want to hand draft Palladian Villas, don't go to Notre Dame because you want to design self constructing algorithmic structure. There are schools all across the spectrum, if a "traditional" education is all you care about, then go to the interweb and learn to google what a school offers, then do the google to find the firms that design like that. You literally get out of school what you put into it. You cannot go to school and whine because you did not take the initiative to learn what you wanted to and make it feasible. You do not need to pay 30k a year to learn how to read some books. 

That's the wrong takeaway from what I wrote, surixurient.

As it turns out, the reason many studio profs discourage the use of historic and traditional design languages in school projects is that most students who want to use pre-existing design languages do so as a crutch, and poorly. The effort necessary to direct a student who is trying to design in "French", who does not speak "French" and doesn't understand anything about "French" is large and tiresome. Pretty soon, work with that student becomes all about teaching them "French" and not so much about the deeper subject matter you're trying to cover. So, as a studio instructor, you can either insist that they prove to you they know what they're doing a priori (my own perverse preference), or insist that everything be done in more narrowly defined domain. The latter is easier, so I don't fault professors who take that path.

There is a constant perpetuation of an idea that architects design whatever they want and disregard what their clients want. The "issue" is being far too simplified. Mainstream "architecture" magazines focus almost solely on "traditional" design. Most civic structures are "traditional" designs. Most college campuses are "traditional" designs. Most houses are "traditional" designs. 

I think we probably have a different view on what a mainstream archi rag is. These are the first ones that come to mind:

http://www.architectmagazine.com/

http://archrecord.construction.com/

http://www.metropolismag.com/

I'm not sure I'd exactly classify their features this month (or any, for the most part) as traditional per se. Architecture Digest is mostly an interiors magazine, so I'm not sure if that's one that you were alluding to.

are there modernists that get all pissy about traditionalists the way these traditionalists get towards modernists?

i really think it's a made up enemy.  some guy just wanted to yell and complain about stuff, but there wasn't anyone to yell and complain about, since nobody gave a shit what he was saying.  so he invented 'modernists.'  that way, there was an enemy that almost sounded like something that could exist.......

teaching architecture has nothing to do with teaching 'traditional' or 'modern.'  teaching architecture is about teaching people how to design buildings that can be built.

College campuses are traditional if they were largely built before the 1950s. 

The whole premise of this thread is bogus, and it has been called out repeatedly, falling on the deaf ears of those who perpetuate this stupidity.

To wit: architects design what their clients want and pay them to do it. If they weren't doing what the clients wanted they wouldn't get paid or even hired. But go ahead and ignore the basic facts of economics, suri, because they invalidate your beliefs.

If you want to talk about what makes a good building, that might make an interesting discussion. This one certainly isn't, although the parade of trumpeting egos is occassionally amusing and the persistent stupidity downright amazing.

You named mainstream architecture magazines among architects, not among people. You have those three, then next you have Dwell and Atomic Ranch, maybe another one or two, and then you go to the "House and Garden Section" and then you see what that majority of people look at and consider architecture and where they get their ideas of what they want. 

The college campuses mostly reflect some "traditional style" except for those buildings built around the 70's, which slowly get replaced with buildings that against reflect their "classical" ideals. I'm from the south east and lived here my whole life, and there is no shortage of "traditional" buildings. 

This all at the level of a 1st or 2nd year architecture student that knows everything about architecture form some books advertising architecture 101 and all the styles. they bought before applying to school .
 

Miles es correcto. 

Disgusting contemporary design! So ugly! Where is the plinth?!?!

Curtram, The Rockefeller Center photo you posted is, of course, an Art Deco series of buildings. The ice rink is defined by the gilded statue of Prometheus. The lights, awnings along the first floor shops, flags, the restaurants along the edge of the ice rink, and the huge lighted Christmas tree and other Christmas decorations all add a human flavor. Most of these elements you would dismiss as "ornaments". None of these features are present at the FBI building recently pictured, which seems to define brutal modernism. In any event the FBI is to move to a new building and hopefully the existing building will be Pruitt-Igoed. The Pompidou Center is a curiosity more that anything. Much like a child's large playground thingy. It creates curiosity and conversation; as a one-off it is interesting.

johndocuments, can you please get me a passport to the past where i can learn architecture from the ecole beaux arts before the architecture program was separated?

Curt, you feel that the bias against traditional design is a fabrication, but the comments from Robert Adam I posted are real-life experience of a well-known senior architect in the UK. His experience is not at all dissimilar to what is found here, as I have mentioned in the context of adding to historic buildings and districts when governmental review is involved (definitely biased against a traditional approach).  The federal government's "design excellence" program also has very real bias against traditional design.

And Miles Jaffe, I don't know how many times I have said this, but many clients today want traditional design (at times I have said "design based on the past" to try and avoid the "traditional" label), and not enough architects have sufficient training to do that well, thus we end up with a lot of bad "traditional" buildings (or decent buildings with some bad traditional detailing, like the Penn State example). And so I have advocated for some training being available in the schools to help architects provide what their clients want.  There are maybe 4 or 5 schools, out of approximately 120 in the US, that have programs that specifically include traditional design in their curriculum.  Other schools may have professors who allow it (or not), but most ignore it, or think that would be concentrating on revival styles (like some people commenting in this thread). Others, at best, tolerate students who lean that way, although I have heard from a number of students who want to lean that way who have been discouraged from doing so.

"Tradition means giving a vote to most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead.”

“Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death. Democracy tells us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our groom; tradition asks us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our father."

G.K. Chesterton

aojwny - Is someone denying those clients traditional design? Nope.

Train architects to design what people want? Tell us again what the people who are paying us to design for them want.

If you want to advocate for something, it should be for educating the people who can afford to hire architects and for training architects in building technology and construction practice. 

Finally, if you think the practice of architecture is an exercise in the application of period style, maybe you're the one who needs some more education. 

"Tradition means giving a vote to most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead.”

“Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death. Democracy tells us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our groom; tradition asks us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our father."

This is certainly a very twisted way to look at traditions.  Traditions are man's way of passing down accumulated wisdom from previous generations.  To suggest that traditions are somehow anti-democratic is just bizarre.