Curious that DCPL chooses to sponsor a discussion about Modern Architecture but not at the Mies "gem" that is their own main facility.

Somehow Forgey's presence does not auger well. He has an odd tendency to suggest that modernist buildings in obnoxious proximity to a well liked traditionalist building somehow complement or enhance it (eg, the MLK library near the National Gallery or the Third Church and St. John's Episcopal.) Makes one wish a building could sue for defamation.

by Steve on Nov 20, 2008 2:54 pm • link • report

I've always thought the Pan American Health Organization building looked like a giant automotive air filter.

by Chris S on Nov 20, 2008 3:23 pm • link • report

@Steve,

I think DCPL=DC Preservation League here, not DC Public Libraries.

by thm on Nov 20, 2008 3:31 pm • link • report

It Does! Like a Claes Oldenberg sculpture with a function.

by Bianchi on Nov 20, 2008 3:31 pm • link • report

@thm

That would explain it, thanks.

by Steve on Nov 20, 2008 3:36 pm • link • report

I'd very much enjoy reading a post on the panel event no matter which of those it turns out to be (persuasion or evaluation).

by Arlen on Nov 20, 2008 3:36 pm • link • report

Thanks for the plug for Charlie's Place. In the past two months, they found housing and/or jobs for two dozen of their clients.

Their case load is up 30% this year, and the economy is getting worse. Their donations are down. It's been a tough year.

If they get 55 more walkers Saturday, they'll get a ten thousand dollar bonus, which will pay for a lot of hot meals and social services.

We may disagree on many things here at GGW, but I hope we agree to help those private agencies that work hard, spend money wisely, and are effective in helping the least among us.

Please join us Saturday.

by Mike Silverstein on Nov 20, 2008 3:39 pm • link • report

$20? Yikes. That's pretty pricey. I just submitted an application to DCPL a couple weeks ago, but haven't gotten any membership packet yet. I wonder whether I can argue for a discount?

by Reid on Nov 20, 2008 5:05 pm • link • report

It's only $10 for members. I'm sure they would give you the discount on your word.

David

by David Alpert on Nov 20, 2008 5:13 pm • link • report

I thought the rationale for closing Franklin was this new program to move homeless into their own housing. Now that's not even happening? And Franklin's closed? Snap! Fooled again.

by Jazzy on Nov 20, 2008 6:45 pm • link • report

I went to that DCPL panel discussion last night. I'll say that there were some feints towards saying that some modern structures aren't significant. But one suspects that everyone on the panel would love to keep all modern buildings around in perpetuity, regardless of their significance (let alone hostility to good urbanism).

I was tempted to ask whether good urbanism should be a measure for these building's significance (as a measure of their "context"), but the discussion period wrapped up before I could. In the end, I was in a room full of architects, which is to say I was in a room full of sculpters. I doubt many of them have read Jane Jacobs, and I suspect they would resent many of her principals.

I only joined the DCPL recently, and maybe I just didn't realize what I was joining, but I don't think I could have disagreed more with what I heard last night.

by Reid on Nov 21, 2008 9:53 am • link • report

Everyone has their "religion" of sorts. Ours is urbanism. They'd probably be appauled if they went to a new urbanism seminar, thinking that the whole concept cheapens the purist pursuits of their field.

by SG on Nov 21, 2008 10:37 am • link • report

I think one of the reasons architects have such little regard for the average pedestrian's urban/architectural experience is because they can't fathome their role as being anything but sculptors. Architecture schools brainwash them into believing they are the interpreters (in built form) of our time's zeitgeist, a relic of German Nineteenth century Romanticism. Therefore they (modernists) think nothing of trashing all presedence before modernism and the latest architectural fashion magazines at the expense of the pedestrian/user. That's not to say modernism can't produce a humane building, but it's a lot more difficult when the founding documents are so antithetical humanity and so in raptured to the latest technological gizzmo.

by Thayer-D on Nov 21, 2008 11:01 am • link • report

Anyone of the last three posters been to an architecture school in the last 10 years? You all need to stop listening to Kuntsler, and think independently.

Jane Jacobs is on every curriculum, and I was sent on a research assignment using her technique. "Zeitgeist" and "Modernism" are taught as historical terms. Dissent and ornament are quite tolerated as long as you can give a better reason than "it's pretty." Most of the time in theory is spend deconstructing the history that Le Corbusier promulgated through CIAM.

The real problem is that critics are all too often superficial, interested in cool looks and reductivist points. But even then that is resolvable: nobody starts a practice out of school. They are forced to confront their Ideas and deal with real world problems when they start work at a firm.

To suggest that the founding documents are ant-human is a deep misunderstanding. They're often wrong, but written with only best intentions, and many of their ideas have been carried into practice quite well. Not all modern architects were fans of technology - Hugo Häring, Louis Kahn, and Pierre Jeannaret come to mind, and they all built buildings to a human scale.

I hear too many critiques of style and murmurs of bad urbanism here, I would appreciate it if someone took a look at Garden Cities of Tomorrow, or Houses of Cards, or Urbanisme and understand what Andres Duany is getting mad about.

by The King of Spain on Nov 21, 2008 9:13 pm • link • report

If architecture schools in the last 10 years have changed that significantly, I stand corrected, but I'm not so sure based on your post though.

Let's start with the word "pretty" which is the diminutive form of "beautiful". If architectural schools still regard the persuit of "beauty" as irrelevant, they will never connect with the public they aim to serve.

Secondly, if the schools are still obsessed with LeCorbusier either from a constructive or deconstructive view point, they are wasting their time. Anyone who so patently disliked human beings has no place in schools.

Thirdly, why should students be forced to "confront their ideas and deal with real world problems"? Shouldn't their schooling provide something useful rather than destroy their fantasies and leave some intellectually apathetic?

Lastly, how can you carry "wrong" documents "into practice quite well"? And if the early modernists spoke of machines for living etc. I'd like to see someone finagle the human through that machine.

The problem is that so many people have invested their time, energy, and reputations in this modernism mythology, and much like it's political bretheren communism, it's dead.

This is not to say that ALL history shouldn't be studied, it wouldn't make any sense to repeat the mistakes of the past, but let's not repeat the mistakes of that past.

by Thayer-D on Nov 24, 2008 7:24 am • link • report

Oh my, Thayer. It's difficult to argue with you when you express such hostility to my profession. I'd like to know more about your opinions before I respond.

Have you ever been in an architecture program, post-grad even? My perception from older associates is that they talked a lot about beauty until Modernism failed and Peter Eisenman showed up. Where did I say that beauty is irrelevant? I just said you had to have some kind of underpinning with intellectual rigor.

Philosophy majors still study Socrates, and he was pretty wrong. Who says that spending a good amount of time discussing someone who affected theory as much as him is a bad thing? It also assumes that every thing he said and did is wrong, which is far from the truth. On that note, who wrote the phrase "A house is a Machine for living in," and what exactly did he mean? If you answer the second part you might understand where the human fits in. Can you show me intent on the behalf of the 'Busier to hate humanity? I'm sure you can't objectively antihuman sentiment in Gropius or Scharoun.

You assume that people lose their ideas when they face real world challenges and criticism. They simply augment them and modify them with humanistic detail if that was missing before. Not everything in their designs were wrong, and in the face of practice they have to create realistic applications. The only thing that disheartens people is the cost of building anything interesting. My friend who went to Notre Dame was so disheartened at the probable costs of her traditionalist buildings that she quit and now works for a developer. Is that because her classes didn't teach her useful techniques?

The same is true about the first generation modernists. Have you ever compared the built work of the Mies to his writings? All architects develop over time.

I am having a hard time telling if I am not being clear or whether you are misconstruing my arguments. The ego-investment argument is usually not something I hear about architects, and I'm not going to touch it because it is not something I can know. How can you read their minds with such certainty. I do like your literary flourish at the end though.

by The King of Spain on Nov 25, 2008 12:11 am • link • report

PAHO is one of my favorite buildings too! I tell visitors it's the air filter trade association.

by dcBill on Nov 25, 2008 6:30 am • link • report