Long accustomed to basing its reputation on the grandeur of its old buildings, the city now finds it almost impossible to agree on how to build new ones.
In recent months, traditionalists have blocked efforts to introduce contemporary architecture in the historic core [...]. Modernists are rolling their eyes at new buildings that copy traditional styles, arguing that they pervert a record of architectural progress long documented in mortar and stone.
— nytimes.com
Don't miss these heated discussions on the subject matter:
167 Comments
That up there is Gaudi, of course - catenary arches in brick.
This is Eladio Dieste:
You could argue that this is also modern brick, but it might not be; it could easily be too expressionistic to be Modern.
Andres Duany is a fucking douche. New Urbanism is for slow witted dilettantes.
aalto and botta of course should be in here too.
thanks EKE. I do spend some time occasionally doing repair and restoration work and have ridden scaffolds on the face of numerous buildings, so even though trained in 'design' modern, I do have an appreciation for the traditional beyond style - specifically 'function' of the material and it's placement.
Donna - I think Adolf Loos limited our options to make 'modern' expressionistic, it's almost like decoration = expressionism...even though a 'free flowing' Mies plan is a Mondrain painting.
Davvid - there are plenty of 'modern' architects I think who could do a great building in Charleston. I don't think Steven Holl or David Chipperfield would be denied in Charleston.
"I don't think Steven Holl or David Chipperfield would be denied in Charleston."
What are you basing that on?
prove me wrong davvid.
Mario Botta - brick
aldo rossi brick
Chris, How can I prove you wrong? Its impossible...
And I don't even want to prove you wrong. I want you to be right. I want Holl and Chipperfield to build in Charleston.
I can only base my analysis on the Clemson/Allied Works saga, the fact that Charleston has not reached out to anyone of Holl or Chipperfield's calibre, and the fact that they recently reached out to Andreas Duany to set architectural standards.
Why do you want Holl or Chipperfield to build in Charleston?
PoMo is long dead and buried, and with good reason.
Where is surixurient?
Yep. The good Pomo architects are now contemporary classicists. :)
"Why do you want Holl or Chipperfield to build in Charleston?"
Because they're excellent architects who FULLY embrace context (physical and historical). See Chipperfield's Neues Museum.
Watch this lecture that Chipperfield gave at Columbia "What is the future of the past?":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfizDUjvomA
Agree about Chipperfield, to some extent. I've seen the video before.
But Holl is a different matter altogether. If you think that what he built at the Glasgow School of Art qualifies as appropriately embracing context, well, I'm afraid we'll never see eye-to-eye. In Glasgow, Holl performed the role of vandal.
davidd, I agree and it's equally impossible to prove me right unless it happened or someone proposed it (had the taste and money to do so)
EKE - if I am correct in relaying what I've read about Steven Holl from other critics, he is from the school of Corb's and continues Corb's language, and based on my personal experiences in Holl's spaces (Finland comes to mind now) the manner in which the details were executed do express some form of 'contextualism', or translation of place to the architecture language employed.
I see we are all in agreement on Chipperfield (more or less).
----------------------------------------------------
The problem with continuing 'Classicism' is you have two choices really on how to do it with regard to 'style'
1 - You make EIFS, thin slabs of mechanically fastened stone, etc...PRETEND to be actual stone. You enter a whole new world of waterproofing, damproofing, and insulating when you replace real stone with thin slabs, etc...So technically the visual can be achieved but the function is altogether different (bullshit - see image below)
2 - At a high cost you replicate exactly the past detailing. It's a high cost because the construction industry has changed and you essentially have to find a company that might still work with cast iron....(they do exist) or for a mass produced version of cast iron and glass see Circle Redmont
The last option which I think davvid is getting at, and most would not consider an option as it stands outside of style; which I was trying to show via the 33 Vesty street project is that you could still be 'contextual' and in certain ways with regard to consideration for a material's placement and performance still be 'classical'.
Kind of like my preference for the 'esquisse' process over the DARists process, which doesn't mean the output would resemble 'classical' architecture.
Most of the great Roman and Renaissance buildings were concrete or brick structures that had cladding material appled to the structural walls, either plaster or stone veneers. So doing that is not new, and it's only a recent fetishizing of "honesty of materials" that has made that a taboo.
In Charleston, most of the original structures are probably either brick or wood-framed.
Regarding Holl... I know there is extensive predesign intellectualizing going on. He develops an elaborate rationale for how the form of his buildings are developed. Some of that probably includes references to locale in some oblique way. But it is all so abstract and attenuated that the resulting buildings have no direct aesthetic connection to the local context, at least in a way that the person on the street can appreciate. If someone walking down the street of an important historic neighborhood, sees the building, and says, "whoa...that is weird, it's disruptive, it doesn't fit...", well, I think you have failed as an architect.
In my opinion, Chipperfield would do a better job, since he understands and is interested in classical tectonics, at least at the level of overall building form. But he' s still a modernist, fascinated with abstraction, so while his buildings may exhibit ordering systems that remind us of classical architecture, they only operate at the scale of the very large, and they have none of the fine-scale detail that connects us at the scale of a few meters.
This is a problem I have with a lot of modernist architecture - I think that it individuates at a scale that is too large for human pattern recognition to function properly. Get too close to it, and it no longer engages us. But it looks great from a distance in a photo in Architectural Record.
In one of the previous threads about this topic someone raised the point that there is already a diversity of architectural styles in historic Charleston. But because of the passage of time and our vantage point from 2015, the architecture of Charleston seems homogenous to the untrained eye. And architects like Duany are codifying the perceived homogeneity into a banal muzak traditionalism.
This leads me to suspect that if Charleston had embraced more recent architectural history, over the last 125 years or so, that "blend" phenomenon would still occur, even while the diversity is apparent to the more trained eye.
What is it about this issue that modernists just can't seem to let go of? Why the intolerance and out right anger with something so obvious that anyone on the street would understand? Building in a stylistically harmonious style is somehow ruled out simply because you've been indoctrinated to do so and now repeat that pablum because you aren't able to practice in traditional styles. I have no problem working in modernist styles, but I'd wager the reverse is not the case.
"The problem with continuing 'Classicism' is you have two choices really on how to do it with regard to 'style'"
There is no problem with continuing classicism any more than there is in continuing modernism or any other style one wants to build in. We may not agree which one is more appropriate for a context, but if you can build it, then what is the mental hang up?
Chris, you are presenting a false exclusion of options inconvenient to your world view. Expand your thinking and vision and you'll see that there are many more ways to skin a cat if you remove your ideological blinders. Either Eifs or replicating traditional methods...really? Just look at the option davvid proposed, which "stands outside of style". That's the most idiotic statement in architecture, as if style was a disease that infects a truly great work of art. Absolutely counterfauctal, but essential for promulgating an bankrupt and obsolete ideology. Why not employ the pallet of Aldo Rossi without the adherence to 'rationalism' or a minimal level of abstraction? It just can't resemble classicism, anything but that, please noooooo!
"
"Why do you want Holl or Chipperfield to build in Charleston?"
Because they're excellent architects who FULLY embrace context (physical and historical). See Chipperfield's Neues Museum. "
Bullshit. Abstracted to with-in an inch of it's aesthetic life. In any other art form this kind of thinking would be laughed out of the room, but somehow architects must contort themselves into mental pretzels to keep the story straight.
"In one of the previous threads about this topic someone raised the point that there is already a diversity of architectural styles in historic Charleston. But because of the passage of time and our vantage point from 2015, the architecture of Charleston seems homogenous to the untrained eye"
You just don't get it. Those hundred years of historic architecture stand apart from modernist output, and not to see that betrays the depth of your eye.
Nobody gives a shit about these debates other than architects and a few intellectuals. The rest of the world wonders why we have to live in such an ugly world when we have the technology to reproduce just about any form the human mind can think of. So disqualify anyone who dissents and continue to live in the hip historic districts that historic preservationists saved. No one is saying you can't have abstract modernism just about anywhere in the world, but these few traditional gems of urbanism must be colonized. Absolute hypocricy.
Thayer,
"You just don't get it. Those hundred years of historic architecture stand apart from modernist output, and not to see that betrays the depth of your eye."
I'm not convinced that there is a clean break. I think its an evolution.
If there was a clean break, where in history do you pinpoint that break? Is it happening in 1874 in Louis Sullivan's brain while he is studying in Europe and being inspired by the inventiveness of the Renaissance?
:)
EKE your diagram reminds of a passage from John P. Eberhard quoting research that indicated children think that is how a house looks, that's the way my daughter draws it at nearly 7 years old...I live in a partially 1855 Victorian farmhouse anyway, the other half is poorly built 1930's depression (beams on stone on sand)...
perlite/vermiculite- plaster over stone is equal to sheetrock over metal studs, so not much of an argument there EKE, it's the same thing, it's still technical.
I don't necessary disagree with the problem with 'abstraction', that image is from a Blank Space fairy tale entry where I explain why I don't like 'abstraction' But you can't tell me 'tradionalism' and 'classicism' does not abstract as well.
abstraction = bullshit.
materials in reality can only be abstracted so far until the math represented in chemistry and physics can't make the impossible happen. 12" of stone is much different than 1" of stone.
Stone is not glass is not brick is not gypsum.
Thayer-D I can only presume based on your statement with regard to 'style' that you and I will never agree, but I wonder how much have you built? I realize I am using my real name here and if you spend 5 minutes on archinect you would presume I haven't built much either, then you can proceed to my resume via my website, and I can assure you that's 1/10th of anything I've worked on...so as far as I am concerned thinking anything can be built in accordance to a 'style' is absolute ignorance of gravity and reality.
"Either Eifs or replicating traditional methods...really? " Thayer-D show me a real an example you did.
People who geniunely create are always 'outside of style', and this is the philosophical basis for 'modernism' that is not a style.
Style is for the hacks, the fakes, the less talented, the ones who care less about the right solution and more about presenting themselves well. Style = bullshit.
I do agree though 'modernism' can be style and so is 'classicism', and what I care about is building according to the materials, and neither style is appropriate anymore most the time.
Style is never appropriate.
Charleston is a rich mix of "styles" or "solutions" if you don't like the term "styles". Families from Boston were among the first to arrive followed by the English and other European nations as Charleston was a thriving, wealthy seaport. A lot of early settlers arrived from Bermuda followed by people from the Bahamas and Africa. A lot of the settlers from Africa were "free blacks" and not slaves. Each brought elements of their own past and styles they were familiar with. The Bahamian architecture seemed especially appropriate to the Charleston climate. Added in to the mix are hundreds of years of public and private landscaping and the interaction of the buildings with each other and the landscaping. Many innovative features were added to Charleston homes such as the house "front" door to the street which opens onto a porch at right angles to the street. You walk down the porch halfway to access the "real" front door of the home. I don't see how anyone can propose to add to a place like Charleston without considering all that has gone before, the history of the peoples and their contributions and styles, and only states an intent to build "according to the materials".
volunteer - Geroge Oglethorpe would tell you otherwise - Charleston was main station slavery...but I realize that may be some weird re-write of Georgia history (my source on this)
"You walk down the porch halfway to access the "real" front door of the home. I don't see how anyone can propose to add to a place like Charleston without considering all that has gone before, the history of the peoples and their contributions and styles, and only states an intent to build "according to the materials".
So volunteer the porch was a 'stylistic' decision? Nothing to do with the south's climate and environment? The porch decision was no different than choosing siding that is red or blue? Really? You think the porch was some ridiculous whim of some tea sippin' southerner?
let's talk tea? why tea? was that a 'stylistic' choice as well?
volunteer, that was a very weak argument, if not detrimental to your agenda, whatever that may be.
The single house door opening up to the
The "single house" with the door opening to the end of the porch was an original idea that modified existing Federal and Greek Revival style homes. The shaded porch opening up to the garden with trees made the house cooler as well as more attractive. Use of transom windows over the interior doors and taller than normal ceilings were also means of increasing circulation within the house. These homes were not exact reproductions of Boston or English homes, which was my whole point. Also, Charleston is in South Carolina, not Georgia. I am unfamiliar with George Oglethorpe. James Oglethorpe planned the city of Georgia, another beautiful city that maintains its beautiful center core.
haha, meant James, and didn't say Charleston is in Georgia, it doesn't read that way anyway, although unclear...
and you just proved my point anyway by talking about climate and location, increasing circulation etc...nothing to do with 'style'.
not sure what the styles have to do with any of it frankly. Maybe you can clarify why Federal was Federal and why Greek Revival was Greek?
What Charleston really wants:
No, you brought up Oglethorpe and Georgia out of the blue, when the discussion was about Charleston, South Carolina. Federal style is an adaptation of Georgian architecture, sometimes it is called the Adams style. Greek Revival style and the Adams style were popularized in this country by Thomas Jefferson as a means of expressing democratic values in the New World. The designs quickly were adapted to homes as well as government buildings,
this is true Volunteer, I brought it up because from what I read, Charleston, SC was the center of the slave trade... it apparently made it hard for Savannah, GA to remain Slave free....and since you were just trying to write that out of the history magically in your paragraph above - like 'out of the blue'....I thought I would just provide a counterpoint, granted I got James first name wrong and didn't write in English to well...(it's not like I'm working or trying to watch football or anything)....
so there we go "...as a means of expressing democratic values in the New World. "
That appears to be the only argument for this 'style' that was modified as you described above. (and EKE can now re-post East Germany 'modernism')
I can't imagine anything more democratic than making our values expressed in architecture out of EIFS.
Fake rhetoric, like it was the first time right?
I am sure that Charleston, SC, was a center of the slave trade as was Savannah. I have visited the slave auctioning area in Savannah, it is along the riverfront. The people of Savannah are not proud of it but they accept that it happened and have no desire to pretend that it didn't. Charleston has a museum dedicated to remembrance of slavery in one of the buildings that housed the sales so they are not pretending the practice didn't exist either. I really have no idea what point you are trying to make.
Chris,
I'm not sure what your essay on our history of building was supposed to prove but I will believe anything you tell my as it concerns you since I have no personal beef with you or anyone else on this site. We are talking about ideas and buildings, not people. But when talking to non-architect people, I prefer to make my self as clearly understood as before I entered architecture school.
"so as far as I am concerned thinking anything can be built in accordance to a 'style' is absolute ignorance of gravity and reality."
What gravity and reality have to do with style, I have no idea, but you're inability to employ this word as the general population uses it is fascinating. I've been familiar with this phenomenon for decades now and it still reminds me of George Orwell, and our Department of Defense, as they say. Are there any other common words that you invest so much ideological baggage in? I'll just leave you with this statement from someone who's spent a long time studying the history of architecture...
"a bored impatience with the logical absurdities of orthodox Modernism's 100-year-old platitudes, phobias, and taboos." Don't you ever get bored with the game?
Volunteer guess you had to duck and go?. Thayer-d I only mention all that as I am used to dealing with Miles.....anyway I agree with the term 'style' being useful for communicating to the public, but Not as a method for execution of design....
I have a better idea. Gut the town.
Thayer,
Who made that "100-year-old platitudes, phobias, and taboos" statement?
If I ever move to Charleston Im building a house surrounded by pornographic caryatids... a traditional one of course...
Who in Charleston is interested in preserving [or even discussing?] the century-old tradition of building communities of longhouses, or of wattle and daub houses with thatched roofs, sometimes raised on platform mounds? -- which predates the 'traditional' architecture discussed in this thread by about four centuries. Does this have something to do with the "democratic values" being expressed in colonial architecture?-- which must have seemed awfully modern to the natives, if not outright alien to the social and physical context of the land.
What did the 'Charleston, SC' of the time of the Stono Tribe look like?
Someone should challenge a preservation law arguing that it violates their freedom of speech. If art and even money is protected speech, perhaps architectural style is too.
it has probably been mentioned that Holl has a building in Seaside. and Trahan architects built a modern museum in the heart of Louisiana's oldest city. they point it out on the carriage ride. fits in just fine. all this discussion could have been avoided if Sherman hadn't bypassed Charleston on his march through the South. Because after he finished with that first seditious state there wasn't much left to preserve.
@ fineprint of fantacies
It seems that they do allow for byzantine architecture, at least if finely blended with local traditions.
http://www.newworldbyzantine.com/index.html
@davvid,
I'm afraid I can't tell you who wrote that with out getting their prior consent, but it could speak for me any day. Art, beauty, harmony, those ideas are human ideas and no one style, philosophy or outlook will make them go away, even classicists who get off on the exact proportioning systems of Palladio. But if you want to read yet another lament over the destruction of our historic cities, I found this to be very informative, and it's beyond style, so you might appreciate it.
http://anewdomain.net/2015/01/21/gutting-of-dayton/
There's no doubt that historic cities can take wildly expressionistic modernist structures, and even some Chinese follies. What seems hard to grasp for many here though is that certain places have great character and sometimes it's worth preserving it. That means when building with-in them, it's advisable to blend in rather than overwhelm. At some point, another Holl or Zaha or Gehry building will reach a tipping point and destroy the harmony of a place built up over time with-in a common lexicon. This is how we've lost so many wonderful places and why many guard the remaining ones religiously. This isn't the 1920's when Mies's shining glass office building was remarkable in it's dreary 19th century setting, at least how he rendered it. Today, those glass office buildings dominate many of our downtowns, making one indistinguishable from another. Is it really such a mystery why so many hipster millenials are flocking to these once abandoned and despised downtowns? Instead of getting hung up on how the building is carrying it's decoration, how about worrying about the character of a place and what it means to the inhabitants? Just a thought.
fineprint of fantasies, What you want to be sure of... isn't what I was saying, as you well know. Holl, Hadid, and Gehry are stand-ins for modernists who abnegate a historical context. Like I said, one, two, or even five might not detract from an historic streetscape, and might in fact compliment it, but as just about any main street in America will demonstrate, there's a tipping point when the historic street loses it's coherence. But I might as well be trying to make a blind person see, as you don't seem to appreciate the kind of beauty I am talking about, and seem willfully ignorant of the fact that many others do.
It's a matter of degrees, not a zero-sum equation. Something's are harder to quantify, but that doesn't mean one isn't able to feel them. If you prefer hard and fast rules to understand or accept these facts, then I can't help you.
Rejecting context is in modernism's DNA. See Corb's Villa Radieuse and his many acolytes.
But again, if we don't see the same thing when looking at a city, why bother?
I don't deny that many of Gehry and Hadid's works are beautiful (not so much Holl) but I'm talking about the whole, not the individual creation. I'll stick with Jane Jacobs, Chrissie Hynde, Joni Mitchell, Rachel Carson, and anyone else who appreciates the larger picture. In the mean time, count me as one who will fight to preserve Charleston's character, among the many places our ancestors have left us that are worth preserving. And how this should be seen as constricting architectural progress, or impinging on someone's freedom of speech, I'll leave that up to you.
Albany's Empire Plaza? Who knows. Let's just say the world will be richer for our differing view points. Actually, let's say your right, modernist glass boxes in Boston's Back bay would be wonderful We just have a different perspective on this, I guess.
Villa Radieuse not built? The Germans made a good start at it right before WW II. Just google ' Prora Resort photos'. Im sure Corbu was proud!
Postmodernism, modernism, irony, innocence. When do humans actually buy into this kind of world view? How about post-bullshit? Any person who can't say 'I love you' because somebody has already written it has bigger problems than any ism can cover.
BTW, everything is in the past, it's only the modernist who erects arbitrary barricades between periods of time to justify their ideology.
If it's me, would you ever have a problem designing a building that's entirely traditional? I don't mean Chipperfield or Rossi, I mean Quinlan Terry, Stern, etc. Would you, could you... in a box?
Coolio. Stern or Terry wouldn't be my first choice either, but picking a contemporary architect who does undiluted traditionalism is all. Didn't know about William Jay, but looks very nice.
So, what was all the kvetching about if the client, in this case, Charleston, is asking for something a little less cheese graterish and a little more Jayish? Right now, they are talking about re-doing the Air and Space museum on the mall in DC. I think one of those high tech British guys would do a bang up job regardless of Burnham's classical vision (although the new African American Museum is hideous, if you ask me). But Charleston is one of those special places, like a Cotswald Village or a Romanesque town in Southwestern France. Why is it hard to imagine not wanting an off note in an otherwise serene melody? Just laugh the fuddy duddies off and keep moving towards a new architecture!
I wouldn't agree with your characterization of Charleston's motives, as these kinds of guidelines have led to some wonderful places historically. The difference being that most architects today are not trained to handle traditional idioms and thus result in a lot of the boredom and kitsch you rightfully refer to when asked to harmonize within a historical context. Then again, the average background building in historic/traditional settings is hardly the life of the party, so I'm not sure that's much of an inditment. Like any exciting moment, the novelty inevitably dies down, and what you're left with is a middle age building with regrettable tattos and piercings. That's not to say we should fear the new and avoid risks, but a casual appraisal of the postings on just this site will clearly demonstrate that we are in no danger of retreating into our architectural shell. There are times and places to be humble and sensitive, as you say. Charleston is one of those places.
Fineprint: In what way do you think that the new Clemson design truly exhibits "sensitivity" to the neighborhood?
In your opinion, should there be no guidelines whatsoever? If we are interested in maintaining the integrity of historic districts, are we to simply rely on the goodwill of avant-garde artist/architects?
I guess we should be happy in the above example that it wasn't the Queen of the Netherlands giving Nelson Rockefeller a tour of the sketchy parts of her city. She could have flattened several hundred homes, filled in a few dozen canals, and built four identical, very ugly skyscrapers in a line - and thoroughly destroyed the fabric of Amsterdam.
Nice one, Volunteer. Says a lot about the effect of the European modernist masters arrival on to our shores and the subsequent effect on our cities in general. Can't see why they didn't go for Villa Rad in Paris. Don't they know all that 19th century Von Haussmann icing is faux?
Fineprint is exactly right. The Allied Works design was a sensitive design in its scale, relationship to the street and material choices. It was also undeniably contemporary, which should be ok.
EKE, there could be some guidelines that limit scale, height, land to building ratio, material reflectivity etc but the guidelines should be stated in such a way that provides clients and designers the freedom to experiment and discover new styles.
No one ever said that those buildings which aim to fit aesthetically shouldn't aspire to the highest standards of quality. In fact the Mayor makes the same criticism you and I agree on that a lot of traditional work devolves into kitsch when hoping to fit in through a cartoonish imitation of traditional forms, executed as a drive-thru suburban bank. Conflating quality and style is an often used argument for those who are against traditional designs, but it's pure sophistry.
You're right that institutional buildings should stand out from the field, which I assume you'd then be alright with an average building in a thoroughly traditional idiom. But the hierarchy you allude to is usually a matter of sophistication and scale rather than a clean aesthetic break as the Clemson design would have represented.
You have every right to like and even admire the Clemson proposal. Some even described the perforated element of the side façade as an abstracted interpretation of the ubiquitous Charleston louvered shutter, never minding that one can't actually 'operate' a façade or that the adjacent elevation was made up of glass walls. But to characterize the cities' desire for new buildings to blend in as a "stage-set", you distance yourself from an architectural tradition as old as urbanism. 'All the world's a stage' is an idea that has informed some of the greatest public spaces in the world. This idea is anathema to modernism where the building is the object in the field, but most plays, like life itself can't be full of protagonists, as much as we'd all like the attention. This isn't a stance I would associate with 'mature sensitivity'.
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