Posted on 01/01/2021 6:26:47 AM PST by Kaslin
In his 1981 diatribe against contemporary American architecture, "From Bauhaus to Our House," Tom Wolfe notes that seemingly every American child "goes to a school in a building that looks like a duplicating-machine replacement-parts wholesale distribution center warehouse." Anecdotally speaking, this still seems to be the case in East Coast metro areas like Washington and New York City, where suburban teens shuffle in and out of buildings that could double as minimum-security prisons.
Wolfe traces the problem to the Lost Generation, which internalized the notion that "they do things better in Europe." In architecture, this outlook was made manifest in the insipid giant glass boxes erected up and down Sixth Avenue in Manhattan and in other major cities from the 1950s to the 1970s. On Wolfe's mind was the demolition of the original Beaux Arts Penn Station -- "the Roman Temple of transportation," one paper called it -- and the construction of the modern Madison Square Garden. Across the country, American towns were being blighted by unsightly and cheerless concrete structures masquerading as utilitarian art much in the same way that the walls of dentists' offices were being hung with third-rate Jackson Pollock knockoffs posing as abstract expressionism.
When President Donald Trump signed a rather toothless executive order encouraging the use of classical architectural styles -- Neoclassical, Georgian, Greek Revival, Gothic -- over modernist styles in new federal buildings, "absent exceptional factors necessitating another kind of architecture," there was the usual grousing. It was Trump, after all, so complain they must. But the president -- his own kitschy taste notwithstanding -- wasn't wrong to note that most federal buildings put up in the past five decades are "undistinguished," "uninspiring" and "just plain ugly." Long before Trump came to town, it was tradition in D.C. to grumble about how these buildings tarnish the place.
Most-often cited for ugliness is the J. Edgar Hoover Building, but the soul-sucking Washington edifices that house the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Department of Energy are just as aesthetically depressing. The technical architectural term for these buildings is "brutalism," but ideologically speaking they are "fascist aspirational."
Brutalist architecture, which Theodore Dalrymple once described as arising from the "spiritual, intellectual, and moral deformity" of totalitarianism, is the ideal style for the gigantic bureaucratic institutions that were built to lord over Americans. So perhaps a city that houses such massive bureaucracies deserves its joyless structures. And if you're under the impression that they aren't political statements, consider that, even today, architecture professors take to the pages of major newspapers to romanticize these monstrosities as places "envisioned as being monumental symbols of how important the civic realm was."
Surely, in more than one sense, Thomas Jefferson would be appalled by the sight of the James V. Forrestal Building, which was built in the 1960s on what was once a neighborhood of Victorian row houses. Demolishing architectural gems of the late 19th and early 20th centuries to erect edifices that feel like the East German Housing Authority Headquarters is an act of cultural sabotage. It's un-American. But then again, so is the Department of Energy.
While Washington doesn't need retro-fascistic boxes of concrete, it could use more thoughtful or uplifting new buildings. I don't imagine myself any kind of expert on architecture -- and it should be pointed out that the Trump executive order is narrowly crafted for buildings that house government agencies -- but the knee-jerk detestation provoked in some people by any contemporary architecture is confusing.
In Denver, where I lived for nearly a decade, the prominent art museum expansion resembles one of those Jawa sandcrawlers from "Star Wars." It's fantastic. Down the street, there is the gentrified LoDo District, where old warehouses and factories have been turned into upscale modern condos, preserving the architectural integrity of the 20th century, but interspersed with new, imaginative structures. There is Larimer Square, with its Victorian houses, and exurbs dotted with midcentury modern homes; just outside the city is the so-called Sleeper House, the space-age domicile made famous (once) in Woody Allen's movie. All of this diversity gives Denver an interesting look and vibe.
Surely, D.C. has enough Greek Revival architecture to last us another 200 years. My God, does it get boring. And does any major city have as tedious a downtown as D.C.'s? Just a bunch of nondescript 10-story boxes, exuding the thoughtfulness of a midsized city's tech center. The rare interesting contemporary construction is usually modernistic, sometimes tepidly "brutalist" -- the DuPont Circle Metro station, the Hirshhorn Museum, or the National Museum of African American History and Culture, the last of which tries its best to balance out some of the oppressiveness of the bureaucratic government buildings nearby.
Good luck.
TRUE
T post
Art is man’s metaphysical mirror; what a rational man seeks to see in that mirror is a salute; what an irrational man seeks to see is a justification—even if only a justification of his depravity, as a last convulsion of his betrayed self-esteem.
Between these two extremes, there lies the immense continuum of men of mixed premises—whose sense of life holds unresolved, precariously balanced or openly contradictory elements of reason and unreason—and works of art that reflect these mixtures. Since art is the product of philosophy (and mankind’s philosophy is tragically mixed), most of the world’s art, including some of its greatest examples, falls into this category.
Ayn Rand
Have you taken a look at the monstrosity called the african american museum on the National Mall?
Hey I know that building, and have seen worse.
Art (including literature) is the barometer of a culture. It reflects the sum of a society’s deepest philosophical values: not its professed notions and slogans, but its actual view of man and of existence.
The importance of that experience is not in what he learns from it, but in that he experiences it. The fuel is not a theoretical principle, not a didactic “message,” but the life-giving fact of experiencing a moment of metaphysical joy—a moment of love for existence.
The Romantic Manifesto, 38
As a re-creation of reality, a work of art has to be representational; its freedom of stylization is limited by the requirement of intelligibility; if it does not present an intelligible subject, it ceases to be art.
The Romantic Manifesto, 75
Ayn Rand
Is piss christ art?
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I think I have...but I’ll take another look on Jan 6 2021
The larger problem is there are a lot of ugly people inside these buildings.
Someone should post a pic of the giant NSA headquarters in Fort Meade. Or is a glass fronted building not brutalism?
Freegards
Absent that, I want government buildings to be as simple and functional as possible. In a free nation they ought to be small, with hardly anyone working there.
In my ideal world, the most majestic government facility would be a highway department maintenance yard.
First question about “Public” buildings is Do they have the authority to do what they are doing?” Most buildings in DC come from bloated corrupt un-constitutional layers of Goobermint. Cut off the money first, reduce the reach, then let’s only build what we need.
Guv buildings like guv itself, best is small, un-intrusive, efficient and constitutional.
Victorian is groovy, but don’t ever want to have to repaint.
MCM is cool, like Sinatra. But he could also wear that hat.
Big fan of “Dwell” magazine and their website.
Like Brutalist”s that smoke really good weed.
The Container Home craze is just that, crazy.
But Andrew’s castle was a very cool project.
Art is man’s metaphysical mirror;...
You want to see a work of art? A creation of beauty? Look in the mirror.
happy new year 2021
Denver airport comes to mind.
That thing looks like the architect used a piece of electrical equipment for a model.
I remember Wolfe stating at the end of the book that, decades later, even when directly commissioned to design a building in the old style, American architects couldn’t do it. Their imagination had been lost.
And the Parisians wisely told Le Corbusier where to stuff his “radiant” plans for Paris.
Wow, that’s truly hideous.
Look up Konigsberg Castle, in what is now Kaliningrad, and then what replaced it in the 1960s.
The replacement was never finished, either...apparently the designers failed to research little things like soil stability, and it began sinking during construction.
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