Sunday, May 15, 2005
Today's New York Times Magazine is devoted entirely to the subject of preserving modernism. James Traub's introduction, "The Towering Problem" says , "It's hard to preserve what you do not love." The rest of the magazine seems to say yes, without having a clear focus on what specifically in the modernist movement should be preserved and why. It is nostaligic rather than factual.
Traub illustrates his point with pictures of New York's Avenue of the America's, 6th Avenue to me growing up in the 40s and 50s. There is a clear demonstration of the sameness of the high rise office buildings, their total turning their back on the city around them and abandonment of the active pedestrian street that its neighbor to the east, 5th Avenue, so clearly celebrates.
The succeeding articles sing the praises of Oscar Niemeyer and the Cambodian architect, Van Molyvann who has designed and built his version of Asian modernism. His National Sports complex looks like the UN turned on its side; and the Library of the Institute of Foreign Affairs is reminiscent of various modernist attempts to design the modern church, and failing to do so. In both cases, the architects' work is either totally alien to the local vernacular, Vann Molyvan, or sits in the middle of and contributes to a very pedestrian unfriendly plan for Brasilia, by Lucius Costa, reminiscent of some of the space cities in Star Wars.
The Deconstructivists-Gehry, Koolhaus, Hadad, and associates-are referenced in such a manner that suggests their designs represent the future, beyond modernism. In none of these articles is the city mentioned. Style is the central focus of the Magazine, and, thus, architecture is but one of any number of modernist examples, as if it were a chair, pottery, or other kinds of industrial design.
The first architect who came to mind whose buildings represent a very early version of modernism really worth preserving is Louis Sullivan. The following images are of the Guaranty Building in Chicago:
The Guaranty building emphasizes its verticality and division between the pedestrian level and the offices above. What gives it its tie to more traditional, classicist architecture are the deeply set vertical "ribbon windows" and the sense of the building's structure. Take a look at the pictures of Avenue of the Americas in Traubs introduction. The expression of the modern Guaranty Building repeated over and over again up the avenue leaves out these three very important urbanist components.
Here is a detail of the entrance to the Guaranty Building and the street level division of the facade. The entrance is marked both by arched and rectangular recessed openings. The sense of the building and its various functions is easily understandable. Note again the comparison with the modernist buildings on Avenue of the Americas. Everything is vertical and undifferentiated and the groundfloor is hard to ascertain.
In this photo, Sullivan's mastery at handling the pedestrian level is demonstrated in detail. Both the horizontal and vertical divisions of the rectangular street level openings provide a rhythm along the street wall, allowing the pedestrian to get a sense of places to stop and look and then proceed down the street. Much if not all of this is missing in "modernist" versions.
Back to the question of what to preserve of the "modernist" movement. I suggest that it is the classical handling of modern materials that are connected to everyday living and accessible to people in a familiar and comfortable way. I include in this the Magazine's examples of furniture and dinner ware, which are refinements of and evolve from the predecessors' style, that was more decorated and complex. In the case of architecture, it is a little more difficult to offer examples of even the most refined styles, classic in their own era, because to a greater or lesser extent they either leave behind the lessons of Sullivan or they are totally abstracted from the city around it, and/or give no credence to the street.
My personal favorite modernist architects are the classic Mies, Eero Saarinen, Louis Kahn, Kallman-McKinnel in their recent work at Harvard, and the DC Holocaust Museum from the Pei-Cobb practice. Most of my selections and preferences have to do with the "classic/refined" handling of materials, the expression of form related to function in many cases, their pleasing-to-the-eye forms, and their acknowledgement, not always successful, of the street. On the other hand, the designs of the Decon school leave me adrift in a strange land, not unlike Brasilia, where I feel I cannot safely walk or are even allowed to walk the streets.
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