The architect, who implicitly exempted himself from that 98%, might have been arrogant, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t right.
[...] many if not most buildings are the work of contractors, not architects, and that this has been and will likely always be the case. Unfortunately, architectural education and criticism tends to focus on important buildings at the expense of the common and ordinary.
— forbes.com
5 Comments
Wow. Quite a work of writing to conflate Gehry's '98% of buildings are shit' statement with a call for pattern-books based on Classical norms. What a half-assed, thoughtless and lazy article.
There is a lot of value in studying traditional architecture and urban spaces to appreciate the qualities that make places wonderful. In fact most architects I've encountered love visiting old cities like Florence, Kyoto, or Munich and appreciate the beauty of this architecture - most of us would like to bring this richness to our work too.
But it's lazy and inaccurate to group all this as "classical" - nor would following pattern guides fix the problem. Isn't that exactly what a McMansion is - a little Palladian villa / Tudor villa / Tuscan villa shoved onto a tract of ex-urban sprawl? I think the author has twisted his mind into a knot, and proposed a solution which is in fact a source of banality.
The fact is we don't develop land in the slow, worked-over and human-centered way that was traditionally necessary - and which leads to organic growth adapted to the way people live. The great monuments of architecture history upon which academic studies on style were based were exactly that - monuments - which stood outside everyday life for most people most of the time. The houses, shops and modest spaces they used seem charming today, but I suspect were no more loved in their time than our suburban sprawl is today.
Pattern-book housing isn't going to make sprawling tract housing charming and humanistic. It won't individualize mass-produced houses. It won't make the highways go away, it won't make desirable housing affordable, nor does it make poverty a desirable lifestyle. It won't make waiting in line at the TSA checkpoint pleasant, nor will it make parking lots into rich healthy landscapes. It won't do anything to address the 98% of architecture being built by those who don't think about architecture, nor the economic pressures that lead people to choose buildings they don't like as places to live, work and do business. I would say in fact it won't do anything worth doing.
Stupid stupid stupid. It makes me mad to read someone sympathetic to architecture being so completely thoughtless.
best avoid the wafting flatulent gizm0d0 clickbait then, unless you like huffing more than the recommended daily dose of idiocy.
Actually, there's a lot of truth to what he says. I wouldn't subscribe to his particluar devotion of classicism per say, but what he says about how cities developed is true. So many of the cool Brooklyn streets that hipsters love were built as he says, an uncomfortable fact but true.
"Unfortunately, architectural education and criticism tends to focus on important buildings at the expense of the common and ordinary."
Exactly. How many architects get to design the next McGuggenheim museum? Yet one sees this typology all over design studios. The rules of composition will serve everyone well as they do music students at Berkley in Boston today or any other artistic form of expression. Like in grammer, it isn't stifling one's creativity unless they aren't creative to begin with. Rather, it gives one the basis to fly higher, should they be inclined to. One simply has to look at the early modernists with their "pattern book" educations to see that it need not entrap one in a traditional straight jacket. The geniuses will always take care of themselves, but the majority will do everyday commisions. How well prepared are they?
To appreciate his thesis, simply look at builder stock of 100 years ago compared to today. Assuming the older stuff has had modern upgrades to interior utilities, would anyone argue that today's work stands up to a typical flat in Haight Ashbury or Fort Green?
I think the idea that we might be mere craftspeople makes our bourgeoisie sensibilities shudder. We are no mere trades people but thought leaders and sophisticated intellectuals. We don't traffic in pattern books, yet when I read (here) of some architect riffing off another's work, what's the difference?
Any article that talks about art and shit and doesn't cite Delvoye's Cloaca is manure.
Just like 98% of everything else.
or - when you have to deal with shitty car-centric infrastructure, how good can buildings really be? where is the humanity in a mall parking lot?
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