The abiding issue I have with the Neo-Trad, New Urbanist and out-and-out Luddites (who probably have a name, but it has passed by me — is it properly TradArch?) is their willingness to speak ahistorically to prove points, or to bend their interpretation to fit conveniently to a predisposed point that is more induced by misattributed nostalgia than analysis. Now, that’s one of those comments that, after substituting the reference points, could apply to any dogmatic theorist or critic, but the acute focus on history of these various positions would seem to mandate more rigor and analysis than you might get from, say, Greg Lynn (who, for all I know, may posit that his work is rigorously positioned within a historical continuum).
Curbed pointed to an post recently by John Massengale that discusses the recent article by Nicolai Ouroussoff (the article is appended to Massengale’s post) about the changing Manhattan skyline, particularly the proposed residential tower by Santiago Calatrava. One of Massengale’s points is that “extreme symbolism of the power of wealth is the worst element of the design” and I’m normally not one to poke at anyone who seems to hold that such an accumulation of wealth is fundamentally immoral. And I happen to agree that its display in this form is egregious. But this practice is steeped in social and architectural history, one that is rarely criticized by the TradArch folk (as I know them, at least). Allowing history to flatten prior inequities you are willing to criticize in the current day is potentially a more damnable act that simply shrugging and turning aside from such behemoths, past and present. Stretching from the pyramids, through Versailles, Mount Vernon, the Breakers and landing (or just hovering, like a cheap tease) in Peter Lewis’ backyard, architecture as we know it is an act of the most conspicuous consumption, for better or worse (and you can trot out all the Bataille you want to assuage yourself of that fact). Why Massengale wrings his hands over this point confuses me, since the best-known proponent of traditional architecture owns Buckingham Palace (well, not yet). It doesn’t get much more conspicuous than that.
His second point is that all the recent towers are part of an insidious cabal of practitioners he (among others) dubs ‘Starchitects’. Again, you get lots of sympathy around here in trying to stop the assembly-line tripe you get these days from the upper echelons of American architects. Though he certainly lumps in the likes of Koolhaas in his derision, when you consider over time, the yardstick applied is that architects are form-givers, first and foremost, Koolhaas fares far better (along with some of the European luminaries such as Herzog & de Meuron, Peter Zumthor and MVDRV) than the prepackaged work you see from Gehry, Childs, et al. Where he falters a little is his unwillingness to indict one of his masters, Mr. Original Prick hisself, Frank Lloyd Wright. The man may not have invented the starchitect phenomena, but he polished it in a way that even Stanford White couldn’t have, even if White had kept it in his pants long enough to try.
So the principle is strong, but its application is weak. And that’s unfortunate, since there is much to not like about the Calatrava project. Massengale calls it a “a bad idea from a good engineer”. I would even qualify that last bit, but that’s for another discussion. This leads to his comment on conspicuous consumption, but the most glaring failure is that it is a failure of type. There is very little in the way of precedent for residential buildings at this scale. You are surely saying, “but what of the scourge that is Costas Kondylis?” Well, exactly. Simply because that man has produced a panoply of officious ‘luxury rentals’ does not make them any good. Their presence speaks more to a failure of planning and zoning (and public investment in housing) than any formal extension of type. They are simply the end state of the International Style tower farms, which begat the public housing schemes of the 50’s and 60’s — now universally derided even as evidence persists that the failures were as much managerial and policy based, not because of inherent design flaws. So it is a rich irony to see it circle back again, in the cycle of gentrification, the appropriation the housing of the ghetto as the future of affuluent dwelling.
The upscale embrace of the Kondylis type heralds a dismal future for housing in New York. Even with the views afforded, when $30 million does not get you a townhome or appreciable amounts of outdoor space, we are in for a dystopian future. When you look at the evolution of housing based on market pressure and available stock, you go from pre-war sixes and eights, which ballooned into some truly magnificent spaces on Park Avenue, and the loft redevelopment of SoHo to the behemoths of TriBeCa, even the humble brownstone to palaces on Fifth Avenue, you see a noticeable trend: the extension of a modest (in scale of building and even unit size), but not humble certainly, type that is then doubled, tripled, and then some, once it becomes desirable. So it is perversely rational, though not terribly inspiring, to take those shoeboxes in the sky on Sixth Avenue and make them into sterile white boxes, albeit huge.
Zoning works against this model, since they cannot be planted in any desirable neighborhoods, unless you are crafty (Trump) or coming at the tale end of a massive development fight (TW Center). So it is irreproducable, and that’s probably a good thing, since it is a rather uninteresting extension of the worst elements of residential design of the past fifteen years. Given the scope of the project ($360 million in sales revenue!), that a chance to produce a form that would be inspiring to residential development, no matter how conspicuous, would have been welcome. Instead we get something that recalls the hot thing back when I still carefully tracked the buzz words of the latest jargon: ‘weak form‘, which was becoming a privileged way of justifying one’s work, as opposed to strong form, which was, if I remember it correctly, what you get when the ideology of the dominant paradigm produces work that is expressly domineering (sort of if Donald Rumsfeld were an architect). Bowing to our local idiolects, the Calatrava projects strikes me as landing somewhere in the middle, and from this, we can coin a new iteration: schlong form.
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Is that a soaring residential development in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?
The abiding issue I have with the Neo-Trad, New Urbanist and out-and-out Luddites (who probably have a name, but it has passed by me — is it properly TradArch?) is their willingness to speak ahistorically to prove points, or to bend their interpretation to fit conveniently to a predisposed point that is more induced by misattributed nostalgia than analysis. Now, that’s one of those comments that, after substituting the reference points, could apply to any dogmatic theorist or critic, but the acute focus on history of these various positions would seem to mandate more rigor and analysis than you might get from, say, Greg Lynn (who, for all I know, may posit that his work is rigorously positioned within a historical continuum).
Curbed pointed to an post recently by John Massengale that discusses the recent article by Nicolai Ouroussoff (the article is appended to Massengale’s post) about the changing Manhattan skyline, particularly the proposed residential tower by Santiago Calatrava. One of Massengale’s points is that “extreme symbolism of the power of wealth is the worst element of the design” and I’m normally not one to poke at anyone who seems to hold that such an accumulation of wealth is fundamentally immoral. And I happen to agree that its display in this form is egregious. But this practice is steeped in social and architectural history, one that is rarely criticized by the TradArch folk (as I know them, at least). Allowing history to flatten prior inequities you are willing to criticize in the current day is potentially a more damnable act that simply shrugging and turning aside from such behemoths, past and present. Stretching from the pyramids, through Versailles, Mount Vernon, the Breakers and landing (or just hovering, like a cheap tease) in Peter Lewis’ backyard, architecture as we know it is an act of the most conspicuous consumption, for better or worse (and you can trot out all the Bataille you want to assuage yourself of that fact). Why Massengale wrings his hands over this point confuses me, since the best-known proponent of traditional architecture owns Buckingham Palace (well, not yet). It doesn’t get much more conspicuous than that. His second point is that all the recent towers are part of an insidious cabal of practitioners he (among others) dubs ‘Starchitects’. Again, you get lots of sympathy around here in trying to stop the assembly-line tripe you get these days from the upper echelons of American architects. Though he certainly lumps in the likes of Koolhaas in his derision, when you consider over time, the yardstick applied is that architects are form-givers, first and foremost, Koolhaas fares far better (along with some of the European luminaries such as Herzog & de Meuron, Peter Zumthor and MVDRV) than the prepackaged work you see from Gehry, Childs, et al. Where he falters a little is his unwillingness to indict one of his masters, Mr. Original Prick hisself, Frank Lloyd Wright. The man may not have invented the starchitect phenomena, but he polished it in a way that even Stanford White couldn’t have, even if White had kept it in his pants long enough to try. So the principle is strong, but its application is weak. And that’s unfortunate, since there is much to not like about the Calatrava project. Massengale calls it a “a bad idea from a good engineer”. I would even qualify that last bit, but that’s for another discussion. This leads to his comment on conspicuous consumption, but the most glaring failure is that it is a failure of type. There is very little in the way of precedent for residential buildings at this scale. You are surely saying, “but what of the scourge that is Costas Kondylis?” Well, exactly. Simply because that man has produced a panoply of officious ‘luxury rentals’ does not make them any good. Their presence speaks more to a failure of planning and zoning (and public investment in housing) than any formal extension of type. They are simply the end state of the International Style tower farms, which begat the public housing schemes of the 50’s and 60’s — now universally derided even as evidence persists that the failures were as much managerial and policy based, not because of inherent design flaws. So it is a rich irony to see it circle back again, in the cycle of gentrification, the appropriation the housing of the ghetto as the future of affuluent dwelling. The upscale embrace of the Kondylis type heralds a dismal future for housing in New York. Even with the views afforded, when $30 million does not get you a townhome or appreciable amounts of outdoor space, we are in for a dystopian future. When you look at the evolution of housing based on market pressure and available stock, you go from pre-war sixes and eights, which ballooned into some truly magnificent spaces on Park Avenue, and the loft redevelopment of SoHo to the behemoths of TriBeCa, even the humble brownstone to palaces on Fifth Avenue, you see a noticeable trend: the extension of a modest (in scale of building and even unit size), but not humble certainly, type that is then doubled, tripled, and then some, once it becomes desirable. So it is perversely rational, though not terribly inspiring, to take those shoeboxes in the sky on Sixth Avenue and make them into sterile white boxes, albeit huge. Zoning works against this model, since they cannot be planted in any desirable neighborhoods, unless you are crafty (Trump) or coming at the tale end of a massive development fight (TW Center). So it is irreproducable, and that’s probably a good thing, since it is a rather uninteresting extension of the worst elements of residential design of the past fifteen years. Given the scope of the project ($360 million in sales revenue!), that a chance to produce a form that would be inspiring to residential development, no matter how conspicuous, would have been welcome. Instead we get something that recalls the hot thing back when I still carefully tracked the buzz words of the latest jargon: ‘weak form‘, which was becoming a privileged way of justifying one’s work, as opposed to strong form, which was, if I remember it correctly, what you get when the ideology of the dominant paradigm produces work that is expressly domineering (sort of if Donald Rumsfeld were an architect). Bowing to our local idiolects, the Calatrava projects strikes me as landing somewhere in the middle, and from this, we can coin a new iteration: schlong form.