The 1960's

TheBostonBoy

TheBostonBoy

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Hey everyone, I have to do my junior thesis paper this quarter at school and it is a huge project (10 pages of information). We got a decade assigned for our class and we had to pick a topic and prove/evaluate and describe an event or topic that happened during the time period. My classes decade is the 1960's and my "broad" topic is architecture, and I am gonna talk about the refinement of modernism during the time period, and the development of a true American structural type. I was just wondering, can anyone here interject about some of this stuff during the 60's and explain some it to me as kind of a primary source. It'd be cool to hear what you guys have to say about it because it will help me write my paper better with a little extra information and points of views. So ya, please if you know anything about those topics, post in this thread!
 
It was a heroic and revolutionary age. The old order would be swept aside. Socially, the pig culture of materialism and acquisition would yield to flower children, pacifism and drugs --at the same time that architecturally the pig culture itself swept aside the last vestiges of traditional urbanism and construction in favor of slick, fresh, revolutionary, international Modernism. Leading the charge were Mies with his prescient Seagram Building, SOM (Chase Manhattan), Eero Saarinen (CBS, TWA), Louis Kahn (Yale Art Gallery), and in Boston, Kallmann and McKinnell (City Hall and Garage), Paul Rudolph (Hurley Building), Walter Gropius (JFK Bldg.) and Jose Lluis Sert (Holyoke Center, Peabody Terrace, B.U.).

Cheerleaders and facilitators for the new age of Urban Renewal were Robert Moses (New York) and Ed Logue (Boston). These worthies and their business and political allies unleashed an orgy of destruction that claimed the West End in Boston, almost Greenwich Village and SoHo (Jane Jacobs saved these by defeating Moses), and various Beaux-Arts monuments as chronicled here: http://www.archboston.org/community/showthread.php?t=937&page=42.

Ironically, we're at this moment contemplating doing the exact same thing to the artistic monuments that resulted --and using the identical arguments: Boston City Hall and the buildings of Rudolph and Sert are declared to be ugly, obsolete, dirty and sitting on valuable land primed for more progressive development.

Who says history doesn't repeat itself? In architecture, the cycle's about 40-45 years; that's how long it takes for a style once thought to be cutting edge to descend to its popular nadir. If it can survive the ensuing quarter-century-or-so of being hated, it can expect to be nicely spiffed up for immortality. If City Hall survives the next twenty years, it'll be with us in the year 2200 (don't know about us, though).
 
I can't add much to what the resident scholar has already said but I'll put in my two cents.

If you think 10 pages is a 'huge' project, you are in for a shock when you get to college. ;)
I'm not sure if you can cite archboston.com/forum as a source. If you can, than times have really changed since I was in school or you have a very laid back teacher.

Back to your topic.
It may be a herculean task, but if can, try to read these four books, they hopefully will be available in your friendly neighborhood library:
Garden Cities of To-morrow by Ebenezer Howard
Though written well before the 1960's (1902, in fact) it laid the groundwork for a lot of what was built then.
The City of Tomorrow and its Planning by Le Corbusier
Ornament and Crime by Adolf Loos
Another really old book (essay, really) that was a cornerstone of Modernism.
And last but by no means least:
The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Saint Jane Jacobs
A must read.

ablarc, justin or Beton will probably be able to add to this list or put these books in their proper context for you. They may not be as important as I think there are, but they all seem to get mentioned in most discussions of Modernism.

You might find these helpful as well:
watch

watch
 
That movie scares the crap out of me. Let's tear everything down and build it all around cars! How ironic that we're now trying to get away from that vision, of separation of land uses and elevated highways everywhere. I suppose it's no coincidence that the movie was made by General Motors.
 
Though Norman Bel Geddes is nominally this plan's designer, the real author is LeCorbusier.

And the plan has been realized; it's all around us --outside a handful of old city centers.
 
TheBostonBoy said:
I am gonna talk about the refinement of modernism during the time period, and the development of a true American structural type.
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Look no further than this guy. John Lautner studied with Frank Lloyd Wright for 6 years, before settling in the Silver Lake section Los Angeles and opening his own shop. Almost his entire output is residential (from modest homes and apartments to futuristic estates for the mega-rich). Your phrase "a true American structural type" is almost a paraphrase of what Lautner was trying to achieve; his larger homes are often built of board-form concrete, with thin-shell roofs designed by brilliant engineers (Felix Candela & Pier Luigi Nervi, both big influences on Santiago Calatrava). It's rare to find a designer of that era whose work more forthrightly expresses its structure. His work was widely published at the time, and there are excellent books on his work written in the last ten-or-so years. A competent documentary film by Bette Jane Cohen was made in the early 90's, before Lautner's death in 1994; a new feature-length documentary is currently in post production and will be shown at a retrospective exhibition at UCLA this summer and fall. Info is here.

Spiritually, Lautner and Paul Rudolph are "cousins," but only Rudolph got to work "big." Also, Rudolph's work is generally wedded to a grid or unit system (similar to Wright, though he didn't study with him). Lautner's work became increasingly free-form in the 60's and 70's.

In terms of reading, I say put some Bruno Zevi (another Wright student) in your diet, though his books are dense, tough to find, and mostly in Italian.
 
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Couple of more sources, considering the incorporation of the vernacular into Modernism.

Charles Moore and Lawrence Halpern worked together on the Sea Ranch development on the coast of Sonoma County, CA (roughly 110 miles north of SF). The project is significant, in that its design drew together a variety of disciplines, and the vibe feels like "The Sixties."

The plan of the buildings reflects a keen awareness of the area's ecology and topography, filtered through the concept of "the captured landscape," a concept taken from traditional Chinese landscape painting (i.e. the line of the roofs mirrors the distant hills). The buildings' forms and materials (board & batten siding, standing seam metal roofs) are inspired by barns and fish-houses found in Northern California.

The Sea Ranch represents an important moment of architectural synthesis that some critics have come to refer to as Critical Regionalism. The meaning of this cocktail party term is designers' awareness of region-specific values and aesthetics, and the act of imbuing these concepts into their work.
 
Beton Brut said:
The plan of the buildings reflects a keen awareness of the area's ecology and topography
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And how! Wonderfully atmospheric and evocative.

filtered through the concept of "the captured landscape," a concept taken from traditional Chinese landscape painting (i.e. the line of the roofs mirrors the distant hills).
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A powerful concept, applicable anywhere.

The Sea Ranch represents an important moment of architectural synthesis that some critics have come to refer to as Critical Regionalism ... designers' awareness of region-specific values and aesthetics, and the act of imbuing these concepts into their work.
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Something everyone talks about and hardly anyone does. If practiced more, you'd always know where you were. As it is, you're almost always anywhere.
 
I understand you can rent Charles Moore's condo in the original building for about $450/night.

"Close" to home examples of Critical Regionalism include, Eero Saarinen's work at Yale (Stiles & Morse Colleges), and Edward Larrabee Barnes' Haystack Mountain School in ME (similar to and contemporary with Sea Ranch).
 
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Thank you everyone for all your help! I passed my paper in last Tuesday (all 10 pages of it haha) and I spent a lot of hard work and time on it, so hopefully I get a B+ or A. Once again though, thank you for all your input everyone! A lot of the books were great sources I used.
 
I love it ... "maybe I'll get a B+!"

That's my mantra in life ... set realistic goals and always reach them.

Setting unrealistic goals only leads to disappointment and heartbreak.

A word from the wise, Mr Boston BOI!
 
...unless you're a developer in Boston, in which case, setting unrealistic goals at the outset is the only way to achieve anything.
 
B+ lol
It was a solid 88....she said it was great, I just got most of my points off because I kinda messed up my works cited page lol I forgot to alphabetize my sources
oh well, i am happy with my grade lol
thanks for all your help again everyone!
 
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