Here is a constant refrain: Why is so much new building junk? [...]
The truth is that architects don’t have that much power. Architects don’t design most buildings; they are designed by developers or contractors working from cookie-cutter plans. Perhaps an architect signs off. [...] In any number of ways—our building codes, our housing policies, our preservation statutes—we systemically encourage bad building.
— artsblog.dallasnews.com
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We are at an interesting point in the History of Architecture. We are at the point in time where several physical and virtual phenomena intersect. The Old School Draftsman who could put together a whole structure with a pencil and scale on a sheet of vellum are disappearing. It has been replaced with a Digital computer aided / automated system of "design" which simultaneously has all the answers yet lacks the sophisticated nuances of a discerning eye. To "Copy and Paste" is convenient, dangerous, and far more prolific than changing the title block on that old sheet of vellum. Meanwhile the double edged scale of this 3Dimensional age is the "Wonder" of the Virtual building. It may contain the floating people, inappropriately landscaped entourage, the bicyclist in the foreground going the wrong direction, the confused shadows, all wrapped up into an irrelevant color scheme. Or conversely the glorious image depicting a dull box. I see HUNDREDS of mind-numbing LIKES on images that are horrific in way shape or form. My favorites are the "green" projects that illustrate weeds, yes literally weeds growing from, surrounding, and obscuring an under-designed structure. The Obama library comes to mind or those 400$ renderings from China with serious scale issues. In 2015 I believe we are advanced in technology, yet catching up with the subtle refinements of the past.
"I see HUNDREDS of mind-numbing LIKES on images that are horrific in way shape or form."
By judging the horror of a "shape or form" based on the image, aren't you essentially doing exactly what the "LIKES" did?
touche
I thought the OP was referring to the ease with which "work" can be produced today with the aid of computers in comparison to the requisite depth of knowledge and experience necessary in the past and the differences in quality between the two.
Architecture critics are now making obvious and boring polemics that are common knowledge. The current crop of critics seem to be better at arguing against. How about show me something good or tell me how to make things better rather than woe is me. I guess critics can't offer a better future, it's up to designers/developers.
Why is so much architecture junk nowadays? Just look at the attached photo. Modernism eliminated the craft of design from the curriculum. Who is to blame? The schools who refuse to train young architects in the art of architecture because of a modernist ideology that rejects historical precedents as a source of knowledge and inspiration. What can we do about it? Teach students to love architecture regardless of what era in the past it's from. Show them how to employ the architectural riches our ancestors have bequeathed us and that make our older streets the opposite of the ‘junk’ he claims to bemoan. That's the short answer. Deciphering Lamster's prejudice takes a little more time.
Pivot from decrying junk architecture to attacking New Urbanists after the first paragraph. Even when complimenting the CNU for tackling what is arguably the most egregious environmental disaster in the 20st century, auto-centric suburban sprawl, he lampoons the two examples of NU selected as ‘faux perfect, white-picket-fence fantasy, largely auto dependent’, and only for the wealthy. That tells you right away this is an ideological hit piece more interested protecting modernism’s monopoly of academia rather than learning from those tackling the problems on the street like the CNU. He ridicules New Urbanism’s "traditional aesthetics" when the photograph he uses to illustrate bad architecture could be vastly improved by those very aesthetics. At this point you know your embarking on an epic journey of denial and double talk.
"This has led to considerable friction with the mainstream architectural community, which understands modernism not as a monolithic historical evil but as an evolving, progressive, and diverse way of thinking and practicing."
In Lamster’s black and white world view, someone prefers a traditional aesthetic sees modernism as a monolithic evil. You’re either with us or your against us, yet just before that he calls the New Urbanists 'progressive urban designers' who responded ‘to sprawl and inhumane urban development’.
"As with the Tea Party, it is typical to hear New Urbanists bemoaning the “indoctrination” of students at elite universities."
Could it be because those universities are where one is taught to ridicule traditional aesthetics? Aesthetics that so happen to have evolved in the pedestrian city before the automobile and air-conditioning… that created opposite of the junk architecture you thought he would be writing about.
“And here we come to the crux of the problem with the CNU’s rebuilding architecture session. Its assumption is that the problem with the built environment, the reason that there is so much junk building out there, is because architects have lost their design principles…The truth is that architects don’t have that much power. Architects don’t design most buildings; they are designed by developers or contractors working from cookie-cutter plans… A developer looking to make a quick dollar by building and flipping property has little interest in building for the long term.”
So are we to believe that architects had more power before the current era of junk architecture? Were the robber barons and developers of the Gilded Age less concerned with making a quick dollar? Look at the pattern books before and after modernism became the default setting of our ‘elite’ universities and ask yourself a simple question. If those cookie cutter plans are responsible for most of our built environment, why do we seek to preserve our pre-modernist heritage while calling today’s output junk?
“Here is the good news about CNU: it is changing. A younger generation is coming into the movement, a generation not interested in tendentious arguments about traditionalism and modernism, but instead focussed on the task of building the kinds of walkable urban centers that progressive thinkers of all stripes can embrace.”
To get back to the author’s question at hand, why is the building in the photograph ‘junk’ if it has nothing to do with traditionalism and modernism? We could start by focus on what makes ‘good’ architecture that promotes the “kinds of walkable urban centers that progressive thinkers of all stripes can embrace”. Now that we’re not tea-partiers but simply fellow progressives of a different stipe… could it be that a pedestrian appreciates a humanely scaled building on a well-defined street? Maybe it’s the articulated and ornamented facades of ‘traditional aesthetics’ that give the pedestrian something to admire while walking as opposed to modernism’s minimalism as exhibited in the author’s photograph.
Instead of empirically analyzing the question at hand as one would expect of a good progressive, the author steers the reader into an ideologically inspired attack piece against one of the few organizations that is working to improve the built environment today. By the way, if you look at the left hand corner of the photo you’ll see a typical office building from 100 years ago, presumably when so much architecture wasn’t junk? It’s a run of the mill Beaux Arts styled office building, humanely scaled and nicely articulated with ornament and rhythm to enliven the street for pedestrians. But never mind that, let’s bash those tea-partying New Urbanists!
Lamster is shocked, Shocked! That Dallas, like many American cities sees modernism not as a craft but as a way to cut costs.... Guess what these reductive debates just polarize people into self identified camps that mean nothing. Modernism is too many things... To me it is a craft that uses current materials. Go to the Latin American show, or see Kahn, Ando, Safdie, Mies, etc, etc to see how a culturally educated person can use classical elements, and artistry with modern materials. There is so much you can do, and most good arch schools emphasize this--though quality is perhaps going downhill as schools search for the hot hot professor instead of the ones who know how to build.
Thayer-D, I don't follow your reading of the piece. Lamster's critique was focused on the notion that architects are the masters who control the design - his point is that the CNU overestimates the agency of architects in the design of these kinds of generic constructions.
FWIW I don't think most people doubt good architects can make nice buildings when they get the chance. Even parking garages.
I also don't think anyone considers something like that Dallas parking garage an example of good architecture. Is that because the architects were poorly trained, or because they just don't care? I'd guess the latter. And sometimes that kind of indifference is exactly what clients want.
Midlander,
I agree there are many factors working against the production of good architecture, but his view on what's good is unnecessarily narrowed by his prejudice. Many famous buildings have benefited by having to bow to a clients wish or a strict budget...the two that some to mind are Michelangelo's Campidoglio (client) and Root's Monadnock (budget).
My point is if you deny the teaching of architectural composition as a craft to those tasked to design buildings, then no matter what client or budget, a building's design will suffer. Lamster is one of many anti-traditionalists who mask their prejudice with platitudes about progressivism and open mindedness with out questioning his own assumptions.
It's a cop-out that we can't do better because of the desire to make a buck. Just look at all the humble towns across the globe that are laden with the beauty and humanity that's so evidently lacking in the photograph he uses to make his point about junk architecture. Only a fool or a devoted ideologue would fail to see this.
This is a debate that happens endlessly, but I just don't like when a critic lazily explains, "architects don't have power." Well, perhaps that is self defeating... Maybe if architects drew more, defended craft more, and had a better understanding of the value of design, we could get somewhere. I was hoping that BIG could speak to this (and the value of hand drawing in creativity) but their recent work seems anti architecture.
Also good to study the beef between Frank Lloyd Wright and the European International style hipsters of their day for a clue into how dogma can ruin design.
It's a cop-out that we can't do better because of the desire to make a buck.
No, it's a perfect description of how the capitalist ideal has ruined everything from the environment to the Middle East to the economy.
If all you care about (as a developer, client, architect, contractor) is profit then everything else (quality, function, performance) suffers to serve that goal.
Well that's the current nature of hyper-short sided hedge capitalism, which is a toxic version of it... Traditional capitalism values design because quality means higher sales, and a circular economy that pays you back in the end. I give the city a good product and the city rewards me in prestige and money. But now the toxic and corrupt version of capitalism means I sell you a crap product that you think is good but is a hoax. Branding companies are then hired to to sell you the image of the product instead of the actual thing. The media diverts you from reading or caring about the toxic effects of disposable crap products.
So, vote Elizabeth Warren 2016
Miles, as a flaming liberal who would like nothing better than see Elizabeth Warren kick those big shot bankers in the balls, I think it's vital that we re-frame profit as a long term proposition rather than the growth based economic model we currently have. That being said, I don't think we are going to legislate our way out of greed. To me, the question is how do we harness that all too human instinct so as not to destroy the world our children will inherit. But what I was talking about has to do with craftsmanship of design, regardless of economics.
As my mentor Henry Hobson Richardson once said, 'I'll design anything a man wants, from a chicken coop to a palace.' I'll assume he'd do a pretty kick ass chicken coop.
As my mentor Henry Hobson Richardson . . .
holy shit you must be old. HHR died in 1886, so if you were about, let's say 15 when you started working with him, and to be conservative let's say that was 2 years before he died (just enough time to learn at least a little bit), that would put you at about 146 years old? no wonder like you traditional stuff so much, it was contemporary for you.
Yes, photoshop filters are fun aren't they.... Yawn.
Silly memes are what killed the Folk Art demo opposition.
it all makes sense now. his formative years fell at the end of high-seas piracy, towards the start of the industrial revolution. the baroque era was just fading as he would have entered his early teens. he just hung on to his teenage angst for a couple centuries longer than some of us might think 'normal.' the first hundred years must have really been an exciting time to be alive, until the guilded age started really screwing stuff up.
"Silly memes are what killed the Folk Art demo opposition."
Do you really think thats true? Are you referring to the #FolkMoMA thing?
Well, they didn't help.
Anyway, I feel like this is kind of a boring topic built for "feelings journalism." I'm sure there is a space in the NYTimes op-Ed section for generic exaggerations. I don't think going to the middle of Texas and calling everyone Neanderthals is gonna win you hearts and minds. Maybe you can educate the public and they will turn around. This just makes people defensive and set in their ways. Be the change you wish to see, like Gan-D
Quondam, nobody wants to see your junk.
i liked it
Definition of junk.
Like I said, nobody want to see it.
It definitely puts a damper on conversations.
Why are lefties such philistines about the past?
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/10/lefties-philistines-heritage-downton-clandon-stately-home
that doesn't apply to the US. that article was written for people on the other side of the pond.
maybe modernism doesn't apply to the US also! Just kidding;)
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