What I hate about Boston

Would it be fair to say all the Modernists you admire are probably well versed in the Classics and those who are responsible for the junk forgo the Classics entirely?
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I wouldn't.

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statler said:
I seem to remember you doing a rather lengthy post about Classicism. In in you showed a few examples of thoroughly Modern buildings that still (secretly?) followed Classic form.
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Yeah, that didn't get much response. Don't even know where to find it anymore.

The point there was that classicism continues as a living tradition. We're still rooted in it because it's the basis of our culture, and folks who think it's only in the past are deluded. That's why I get so bored with all this "be true to present times" blather.

Would it be fair to say all the Modernists you admire are probably well versed in the Classics...
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Sure.

It's a small group, and I've been able to enjoy conversing with many of them. But you wouldn't really expect someone who's a force to be ignorant of the history of his field, would you?

...and those who are responsible for the junk forgo the Classics entirely?
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No, the converse doesn't hold, as the Albany Mall illustrates.

Kind of a "you need to know the rules before you can break them" sort of thing?
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That ... yes.

Otherwise you're just a bull in a china shop.
 
Akin to Miles Davis (have "Live-Evil" on in background) The guys in the band know the rules of classical music, and that lets Miles or John riff off them now and then. If if was all honks and squawks, you couldn't make a record out of that (or I guess you could and would call it "Two Virgins".)

It is harder to be a brilliant soloist than one of the boys in the band because it can go so wrong so fast! The wrongness only seems more obvious if you are doing something different and fail. For a quick A and B, compare the mawkish and superficially classical 125 Summer Street (which unjustifiably flies under the critical radar) with the Fiduciary Trust Building across the street.
 
ablarc said:
Again, the problem is Modernism. You have to be super, super smart to make it yield paydirt. If you know how to do a classical building, you don't have to be a genius to come up with something satisfying. Ornament goes a long way towards pleasing people, and Modernism is the only style that forbids it. I bet Pete Sampras could beat you even if he were playing in handcuffs --but your local tennis pro couldn't.
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This will sound really erm...uneducated; but what happens when the architecture (the shapes, and lines, and forms) actually turn into the ornament? It's not modernism, because modernism isn't ornamental. It's not po-mo because it doesn't have ornaments. The structure itself is an ornament. Is it still modernism? Forgive my lack of understanding of the different styles, I'm still trying to fully understand all of the rules.
 
From ablarc's defense of City Hall (I think this is related to your question):

Their building?s tectonic components are the structural and mechanical systems, and there?s precious little else to this building (except glass infill where the structure isn?t). The structural materials are brick and two kinds of concrete: poured-in-place and precast, which has a different nature.

And here?s a surprise: in their reductionist zeal, they made the upper levels? structure double as the mechanical system. Concrete ducts !! You can see them clamber up the building?s outside; that?s what those massive cement fins are that function ?decoratively? at the upper levels, like colossal dentil molding. Simultaneously they serve as the building?s structure and enclosure. To synthesize, to hang together, to do more with less.
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kennedy said:
...but what happens when the architecture (the shapes, and lines, and forms) actually turn into the ornament?
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Then you end up with what Venturi called a Duck:

By contrast, the duck is a building that has morphed into an ornament, where the decoration is the building. The "architectural systems of space, structure and program are submerged and distorted by an overall symbolic form...building-becoming-sculpture we call the duck in honor of the duck-shaped drive-in, 'The Long Island Duckling'". The duck no longer feels or looks like it is a building, because the key structural elements are concealed within its overall, ornamental form. The shape of the external appearance of the building has "submerged" and "distorted" its internal structures and function - the form has superseded the function.

http://www.usp.nus.edu.sg/writing/folio/vol2/duck1.html

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Duck

It's not modernism, because modernism isn't ornamental.
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Well, actually it is. Being a Duck is Modernism's only access to ornament. The whole building becomes ornament. Boston has excellent examples in City Hall, the Carpenter Center and the ICA.
 
So... City Hall's ducts are a ducks!

(so very sorry)
 
ablarc said:
...the Deco Style. It's still modern, it's due for a revival, and its vocabulary is rich enough to satisfy both journeyman and genius.

It also makes great cities.
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Amen.

I always wished that the art deco-inspired stuff of the late '80s (see the Americas Tower in NYC) would've led to a full blown revival. Alas, that strain fizzled out with the real estate crash of the early '90s, and now we're firmly entrenched in a '50s/'60s/'70s revival. I guess we can try again in a decade or two.

In the meantime, let's hear it for asymmetrically spaced windows!
 
ablarc said:
Then you end up with what Venturi called a Duck:

By contrast, the duck is a building that has morphed into an ornament, where the decoration is the building. The "architectural systems of space, structure and program are submerged and distorted by an overall symbolic form...building-becoming-sculpture we call the duck in honor of the duck-shaped drive-in, 'The Long Island Duckling'". The duck no longer feels or looks like it is a building, because the key structural elements are concealed within its overall, ornamental form. The shape of the external appearance of the building has "submerged" and "distorted" its internal structures and function - the form has superseded the function.

http://www.usp.nus.edu.sg/writing/folio/vol2/duck1.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Duck

Well, actually it is. Being a Duck is Modernism's only access to ornament. The whole building becomes ornament. Boston has excellent examples in City Hall, the Carpenter Center and the ICA.
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So, the Oscar-Meyer Weiner-mobile is modern? So technically, if I drew a building that didn't have ornament, but the structure itself drew the eye certain ways (like art), it would be modernism? Even if it weren't City Hall-esque? Say, something like this:

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or the pictures of Amsterdam (I think) that czsz posted in the "They Got The Seaport Right"...thread, are both modern? I'm not challenging you, I'm really curious.
 
^ Yup.

(But scratch the Oscar Mayer wienermobile.)

A book for you to read: "The International Style" by Philip Johnson.

Seminal, earth-shaking definitive exposition of the ground rules of Modernism. One of the most important books written on architecture in the 20th Century.
 
I'll add it to my list, my next question was going to be: "What reading would you suggest on urbanism and architecture?" The Death and Life of Great American Cities should come in a brown box sometime this week :). I'll check out The International Style next.
 
A shame about the Sydney Opera House: the closer one gets, the worse it looks. The brown underwear in that shot reminds me of City Hall's unseemly bricks.
 
ablarc said:
A beauty that caused its architect a lifetime of pain and conflict.
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Much of this as a result of a political pissing contest. On the upside, the building really launched the career of Ove Arup. The firm he founded is an astonishing hive of creative problem solving.

That said, Utzon's done okay for himself. His kids are (from what I can tell) good architects, his son Jan is working to better realize his father's vision for the interiors of the Opera House.

czsz said:
...the closer one gets, the worse it looks. The brown underwear in that shot reminds me of City Hall's unseemly bricks.
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Some plinths are better than others. This was a well-published project -- maybe Kallmann, McKinnell and Knowles lifted the idea.

Utzon was trying to evoke many things with his design, among them clouds over a rock outcropping.

The Economist said:
What he wanted for Sydney was the effect he had noticed when tacking round the promontory at Elsinore, of the castle?s piled-up turrets against the piled-up clouds and his own billowing white sails; the liberation he had felt on the great platforms of the Mayan temples in Mexico, of being lifted above the dark jungle into another world of light; the height and presence of Gothic cathedrals, whose ogival shape was to show in the cross-sections of the Sydney roof-shells; and the curved, three-dimensional rib-work of boat-building, as he had watched his own father doing it at Aalborg. The load-bearing beams of the Opera House shells he called spidsgattere, in homage to the sharp-sterned boats his father made.
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Like many of his peers, Utzon was a better artist than urbanist. But he did have a strong hand in creating Critical Regionalism. Where would Gehry and Calatrava be without him?
 
Gehry would have stayed in Boston and done relatively pedestrian work. Calatrava would have remained an engineer and produced more unique cable stayed bridges than any other individual in history before dieing of old age or something falling on him.
 
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