THE ART OF MODERN ARCHITECTURE IN BOSTON
On this board we see architecture mostly in aesthetic terms. We debate a building?s massing, materials, surfaces, detailing and workmanship much as if it were a work of art.
Yet today --as ever-- few buildings actually rise to the level of art.
A century and a half ago, buildings with artistic aspirations were often referred to as ?high? architecture and designed by architects, while more common run-of-the-mill background buildings were referred to as ?low? architecture and not designed by architects.
Because of mission creep instituted by state architectural licensing boards, even the smallest and most insignificant modifications to commercial, institutional or multifamily residential buildings now require an architect?s participation. A loading dock canopy, however, is rarely an instance of the art of architecture.
I think we can agree that a building by Jung/Brannen also fails the test. At the spectrum?s other end, few would dispute that Pei?s Hancock Building richly qualifies. You can add to that list the same architect?s Christian Science Center. After that, you?re bound to get some arguments from those who set art?s bar high.
Boston hosts a few early modernist buildings attributed to Walter Gropius (Harkness Commons; Gropius House, Lincoln), but Boston?s Modernism can be judged a post-Sixties phenomenon.
In 1932, Philip Johnson, in his first incarnation as MoMA?s architectural curator, produced an epochal exhibition titled ?The International Style.? In the exhibition catalog he ticked off Modernism?s virtues: unadorned white planes, horizontal windows, asymmetry, structural ?honesty,? cantilevers, and above all, freedom from ornament. Finding no American examples, he grudgingly included Hood?s McGraw-Hill and Daily News Buildings while taking issue with the former?s impure coloration and decorative top (clearly deco) and the latter?s bas reliefs.
A modern building?s artistic merit is judged by different criteria from those we?d use for the Custom House or Chrysler Building. These rely on devices that modernism disdained as arbitrary, ornamental and decadent.
That of course is precisely what we like about the Chrysler Building, now rehabilitated and again esteemed. But in the mid-sixties Modernism had sold its message to the public, which is what accounts for the relatively modest outcry over Penn Station?s demise. After all, something much better than Penn Station?s derivative symbolism and suspended plaster vaults had just been built across town: Saarinen?s TWA Building. Here was a building that looked forward to the jet age, not backward to the age of steam.
Here?s a reprise of the list of Modernist and Postmodern Boston buildings that might qualify as art in the eyes of an art historian. It?s not a long list, and it?s in order by how secure I personally reckon is the building?s long-term hold on its status as art. Only the first six indisputably qualify, imo. With the exception of the Federal Reserve, the last four are estimable buildings with strong virtues, especially in their urbanism, but they don?t display the intellectual consistency, organizational rigor and passion of true art --which is inherently monumental.
The three best buildings on this list are currently much hated by the public and many members of this board. This is a natural condition of their Brutalist style?s current unfashionability and will abate with time --if they survive the next decade:
City Hall (Kallmann & McKinnell, 1968)
Hurley Building (Rudolph, 1971)
Carpenter Center (Le Corbusier, 1964)
Stata Center (Gehry, 2004)
Hancock Building (Pei, 1976)
Christian Science Center (Pei, 1974)
Hauser Hall (Kallmann & McKinnell, 1994)
Rowe?s Wharf (SOM, 1988)
75 State Street (Gund, 1988)
Federal Reserve Bank (Stubbins, 1983)
Beton Brut: sorry for the omission of Aalto?s MIT dorm and the collected works of J-L. Sert (Peabody Terrace, BU Law Tower, Holyoke Ctr., Science Center).
Another list. This one is of recent eyecatchers that enjoy varying amounts of approval, but don?t really qualify as art, IMO:
111 Huntington (CBT, 2001)
Institute of Contemporary Art (Diller & Scofidio, 2006)
Simmons Hall (Holl, 2002)
Apple Store (BCJ, 2007)
ART HISTORY OF (MODERN) ARCHITECTURE
Not too long ago the Teutonic scholar Siegfried Giedion collaborated with modernist architects to decide what was modern architecture and what was not. In a weighty tome purporting to trace the course of architectural history from about the French (or Industrial) Revolution to the time he was writing in the Fifties, Siegfried laid down the ground rules for consideration of architecture as art.
His magnum opus, Space, Time and Architecture, is noteworthy more for its omissions than its inclusions. You look in vain for serious discussion of the Empire State Building, Woolworth, Chrysler, Grand Central, Penn Station, the Fontainebleau, Mussolini?s mad Milano Stazione Centrale or Speer?s Kanzlei. Though socialist in his leanings and Stalinist in his selective presentation of history?s greatest hits, Giedion also omits Moscow?s wedding cakes from his chronicle.
The reason is quite simple: here is laid out a linear timeline of the orderly development of an idea. Purged of all messy detours, deviations or counterproposals, Giedion tells the tale of Modernism?s inevitable linear development: history as inexorable force. This is shown to have goose-stepped from Ledoux and Schinkel, through Morris, Ruskin and Viollet-le-Duc, by way of Richardson, Sullivan and Wright succeeding each other like railroad cars, past Adolf Loos to the full flowering of Gropius, Mies and Corbu.
With this last trio architecture had arrived at its inevitable terminus. These three luminaries were the Leonardo, Raphael and Michelangelo of their age, the classic fulfillment for which history had so long yearned.
Thereafter ?for the art-historical cycle to be complete as described by Woelfflin-- only mannerism and baroque elaboration remained to be accomplished. This was conveniently provided by Saarinen, Rudolph, Breuer and perhaps Nervi.
Even the redoubtable Vincent Scully bought this edited version of recent architectural history; his slim, seminal and popular volume, Modern Architecture, shows a similar disregard for the Beaux-Arts and Deco; maybe that?s why he thundered only mildly at Penn Station?s impending death.
With nowhere left to go stylistically and modernism corroding what was left of our cities, post-modernism seemed a natural. It turned out to be a flash in the pan, but it introduced much-needed eclecticism into modernism?s severe and constrained vocabulary.
We?re currently in the throes of a modernist revival.
.
On this board we see architecture mostly in aesthetic terms. We debate a building?s massing, materials, surfaces, detailing and workmanship much as if it were a work of art.
Yet today --as ever-- few buildings actually rise to the level of art.
A century and a half ago, buildings with artistic aspirations were often referred to as ?high? architecture and designed by architects, while more common run-of-the-mill background buildings were referred to as ?low? architecture and not designed by architects.
Because of mission creep instituted by state architectural licensing boards, even the smallest and most insignificant modifications to commercial, institutional or multifamily residential buildings now require an architect?s participation. A loading dock canopy, however, is rarely an instance of the art of architecture.
I think we can agree that a building by Jung/Brannen also fails the test. At the spectrum?s other end, few would dispute that Pei?s Hancock Building richly qualifies. You can add to that list the same architect?s Christian Science Center. After that, you?re bound to get some arguments from those who set art?s bar high.
Boston hosts a few early modernist buildings attributed to Walter Gropius (Harkness Commons; Gropius House, Lincoln), but Boston?s Modernism can be judged a post-Sixties phenomenon.
In 1932, Philip Johnson, in his first incarnation as MoMA?s architectural curator, produced an epochal exhibition titled ?The International Style.? In the exhibition catalog he ticked off Modernism?s virtues: unadorned white planes, horizontal windows, asymmetry, structural ?honesty,? cantilevers, and above all, freedom from ornament. Finding no American examples, he grudgingly included Hood?s McGraw-Hill and Daily News Buildings while taking issue with the former?s impure coloration and decorative top (clearly deco) and the latter?s bas reliefs.
A modern building?s artistic merit is judged by different criteria from those we?d use for the Custom House or Chrysler Building. These rely on devices that modernism disdained as arbitrary, ornamental and decadent.
That of course is precisely what we like about the Chrysler Building, now rehabilitated and again esteemed. But in the mid-sixties Modernism had sold its message to the public, which is what accounts for the relatively modest outcry over Penn Station?s demise. After all, something much better than Penn Station?s derivative symbolism and suspended plaster vaults had just been built across town: Saarinen?s TWA Building. Here was a building that looked forward to the jet age, not backward to the age of steam.
Here?s a reprise of the list of Modernist and Postmodern Boston buildings that might qualify as art in the eyes of an art historian. It?s not a long list, and it?s in order by how secure I personally reckon is the building?s long-term hold on its status as art. Only the first six indisputably qualify, imo. With the exception of the Federal Reserve, the last four are estimable buildings with strong virtues, especially in their urbanism, but they don?t display the intellectual consistency, organizational rigor and passion of true art --which is inherently monumental.
The three best buildings on this list are currently much hated by the public and many members of this board. This is a natural condition of their Brutalist style?s current unfashionability and will abate with time --if they survive the next decade:
City Hall (Kallmann & McKinnell, 1968)
Hurley Building (Rudolph, 1971)
Carpenter Center (Le Corbusier, 1964)
Stata Center (Gehry, 2004)
Hancock Building (Pei, 1976)
Christian Science Center (Pei, 1974)
Hauser Hall (Kallmann & McKinnell, 1994)
Rowe?s Wharf (SOM, 1988)
75 State Street (Gund, 1988)
Federal Reserve Bank (Stubbins, 1983)
Beton Brut: sorry for the omission of Aalto?s MIT dorm and the collected works of J-L. Sert (Peabody Terrace, BU Law Tower, Holyoke Ctr., Science Center).
Another list. This one is of recent eyecatchers that enjoy varying amounts of approval, but don?t really qualify as art, IMO:
111 Huntington (CBT, 2001)
Institute of Contemporary Art (Diller & Scofidio, 2006)
Simmons Hall (Holl, 2002)
Apple Store (BCJ, 2007)
ART HISTORY OF (MODERN) ARCHITECTURE
Not too long ago the Teutonic scholar Siegfried Giedion collaborated with modernist architects to decide what was modern architecture and what was not. In a weighty tome purporting to trace the course of architectural history from about the French (or Industrial) Revolution to the time he was writing in the Fifties, Siegfried laid down the ground rules for consideration of architecture as art.
His magnum opus, Space, Time and Architecture, is noteworthy more for its omissions than its inclusions. You look in vain for serious discussion of the Empire State Building, Woolworth, Chrysler, Grand Central, Penn Station, the Fontainebleau, Mussolini?s mad Milano Stazione Centrale or Speer?s Kanzlei. Though socialist in his leanings and Stalinist in his selective presentation of history?s greatest hits, Giedion also omits Moscow?s wedding cakes from his chronicle.
The reason is quite simple: here is laid out a linear timeline of the orderly development of an idea. Purged of all messy detours, deviations or counterproposals, Giedion tells the tale of Modernism?s inevitable linear development: history as inexorable force. This is shown to have goose-stepped from Ledoux and Schinkel, through Morris, Ruskin and Viollet-le-Duc, by way of Richardson, Sullivan and Wright succeeding each other like railroad cars, past Adolf Loos to the full flowering of Gropius, Mies and Corbu.
With this last trio architecture had arrived at its inevitable terminus. These three luminaries were the Leonardo, Raphael and Michelangelo of their age, the classic fulfillment for which history had so long yearned.
Thereafter ?for the art-historical cycle to be complete as described by Woelfflin-- only mannerism and baroque elaboration remained to be accomplished. This was conveniently provided by Saarinen, Rudolph, Breuer and perhaps Nervi.
Even the redoubtable Vincent Scully bought this edited version of recent architectural history; his slim, seminal and popular volume, Modern Architecture, shows a similar disregard for the Beaux-Arts and Deco; maybe that?s why he thundered only mildly at Penn Station?s impending death.
With nowhere left to go stylistically and modernism corroding what was left of our cities, post-modernism seemed a natural. It turned out to be a flash in the pan, but it introduced much-needed eclecticism into modernism?s severe and constrained vocabulary.
We?re currently in the throes of a modernist revival.
.
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