John Silber's Architecture of the Absurd

[JohnAKeith]

Fine Form

By Tom Palmer
McDermott Ventures
Monday, January 26, 2009

John Silber thinks original thoughts, and sometimes he just says what others may think but are too timid to say. "Firmness, commodity, and delight" are requirements of good architecture, he avows, quoting the Roman writer and architect Vitruvius. And his view is some of the modern celebrity architects are just fooling clients into accepting the absurd.

Silber, 82, was president of Boston University from 1971 to 1996, and chancellor then to 2003.

"Dr. Silber made Boston University a thought leader," said Jim Stergios, the Pioneer Institute for Public Policy Research's executive director. His clarity of thinking owes to the ability to go back to foundations, Stergios said, and nowhere is that more evident than in his criticism of architecture.

Silber's critical thinking on the subject began when he was a child, son of an architect. Silber's book "Architecture of the Absurd: How 'Genius' Disfigured a Practical Art," came out in 2007 -- with one of his unfavorite examples of the architecture of today on the cover.

It's the Stata Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, by Frank Gehry.

Silber stopped at the Somerset Club last week to speak to a few dozen people assembled by the Pioneer Institute about his view, articulated in the book and originally in a speech to the Texas Society of Architects in 2003, that the "theory speak" of high-priced architects has overwhelmed the good sense of many clients.

"As this book makes clear, I have never been impressed by architects who think they are fine artists first and builders only second," Silber wrote. His short book (endorsed by Tom Wolfe, who decades ago in "The Painted Word" applied similar treatment to the world of art) is a detailed discussion of the architects and their work; in his talk he addressed why this state of affairs exists.

"Firmness" requires that a building be sound (and doesn't leak). "Commodity" is usable, functional space. "Delight" speaks for itself.

The buildings that fail are predominantly products of nonprofit organizations like museums, Silber charges, where executives have "no experience in buildings," are spending other people's money and have little personal risk at stake, and are working with a "persuasive architect, a spinmeister" who is part of today's raging celebrity culture.

Silber said that, when he became involved years ago in discussions about architecture at the University of Texas, he be believed building form would never follow the route to the absurd that art (Robert Rauschenberg's White Paintings), music (John Cage's four minutes and 33 seconds of silence), and theater (Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot") had.

"I couldn't believe anybody would pay for it," he said. "How could I have been so wrong?"

Silber priases Antonio Gaudi's Sagrada Familia Barcelona and Simon Rodia's Watts Towers.

He condemns the critics, who encourage "absurdity." Quotes The New York Times former architecture critic Herbert Muschamp's view that, "The ideal of 'not pleasing' is fundamental to modern art and modern criticism." And a Times art critic, John Rockwell, as holding that "great art is always shocking."

And playwright Edward Albee's advice to Emerson College students that "each play is an act of aggression against the status quo."

In his book, Silber holds I.M. Pei responsible for the catastrophic failures that resulted in falling glass panels of the new Hancock Tower in Boston's Back Bay. ("Firmness" missing.) Nevertheless, he says, after the owner paid millions to correct the problem according to the architect's wishes, "it is not an example of the architecture of the absurd for now it is a stunningly beautiful and efficient building."

Likewise, he praises Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater residence in Pennsylvania, even though deteriorated early and had to be, well, firmed up.

Silber blames Sigfried Giedion, author of "Space, Time and Architecture," for encouraging "genius worship" and bad design. "He said architects are just like artists," Silber said. An example: Ayn Rand's fictional character Howard Roark, "who didn't give a damn about the client."

Silber described how Le Corbusier proposed eliminating the Casbah in Algiers, replacing it with a modern city and highways along the coast. "Not even the Nazi puppets would endorse his plan, so he had to look to the New World," he said.

Silber takes credit having worked with architects and builders closely at Boston University, to prevent the absurd from taking shape.

Still, he describes a student Union that "has plenty of ventilation, because it never closes properly." And an open, geographically inappropriate Mediterranean-style plaza that was stifling in the summer and snow-filled in the winter, on which the university spent $100,000 annually controlling leaks. (It has since been enclosed, at a cost of $1 million. "The Metcalf Ballroom can seat 2,000. And it paid for itself in 10 years, because it doesn't leak.")

Daniel Libeskind, who has designed the New Center for Arts and Culture building planned for the Greenway in Boston, won a 1990s competition for the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Silber said he "played skillfully on the vanity and fears of the board members," and the project was killed after projected costs skyrocketed and a donor backed out.

Silber's view is that the economics -- smart clients watching the money, insisting on value -- is what keeps creative and talented architects on track.

Gehry, Libeskind, Calatrava -- he's got harsh words for their creations, but not all of them. "Gehry has done fine work," Silber said, citing the IAC headquarters of Barry Diller's company in New York. "In this building Gehry had a client who knew what he was doing," Silber said. "He was spending his and his stockholder's money and insisted on quality."

"When the trustees are not paying for the building themselves... , they have no defense against theory speak."

Silber reservesed much of his specific criticism, in the book and in lecture, for MIT's Stata Center, which he said resembles Dr. Seuss's "crooked house" from the children's rhyme -- but had a 90 percent cost overrun, was years late, and leaked. "Being scientists," he said of the occupants, "they have numbered the leaks."

Silber said he appreciates novelty, praising the Sydney Opera House in Australia; Louis Kahn's Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas; the Yansong Ma's Absolute tower in Toronto; Beijing National Stadium (the "bird's nest," by China Architecture Design and Research Group) created for the Olympics; and the Beijing National Aquatics Center, a creation of PTW Architects, an Australian firm.

Turning closer to home, Silber commented on Newton North High School, a Graham Gund design that has been at the center of a chaotic political and decision-making process in the Garden City. "If anybody needs a salesman they ought to hire the architect," Silber said. "They didn't need to spend that much money.... It's a good example of irresponsible government."