He seems to especially like the ideas that underlie the design, as if beautiful abstractions can transform how the tangible thing looks and feels. Actually, I don't get the aesthetic grandeur of the abstraction of "energetic governance," so even if I was sure the building embodied the ideal, it wouldn't make me see the building as beautiful.
Kimmelman stresses that the building is on the "global watch list" of the World Monuments Fund "alongside landmarks like Machu Picchu and the Great Wall of China." But it's on the endangered monuments list because it's endangered, not because it's of equal distinction.
Maybe it should be preserved because it's a distinctive example of a style of architecture that seemed good at the time but most of us happen to hate right now. That swooping arc of taste tells us to be careful. I remember in the 1970s when modern buildings were loved with a doctrinaire certainty and overdecorated buildings reviled. I used to look at Grand Central Station every day, back then, and think that it was a monument to the misguided taste of the past.
Would I have torn it down? No. I have a conservative streak, and I don't trust transitory judgment. I would, however, if given the power, have ripped out that damned Pan Am building that filled the visual space above it.
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I would level the United Nations building.
I've always believed government buildings (including public schools and university buildings) should be Spartan and purely functional. Government should seek the least cost and most efficient and rational solutions possible. The beauty or impressiveness of the structures should not even be an issue.
At the same time I believe Christ would have taken exception to elaborate cathedrals and would have instructed us to focus our money and efforts on the least among us.
I really hate it when "who designed it" becomes more important than "how well does it fulfill the function it is supposed to do." Frank Lloyd Wright may be celebrated in your Monona Terrace, Professor, but some of the houses he designed are not livable. And Fallingwater is, well, falling down. Everyone "artistic" loves the East Building of the National Gallery of Art, because it was designed by I.M. Pei. Everyone loves it except for the people who go there to look at the art on its walls. Then it sucks.
This building seems to be part of the same business. Keep it because it was designed by a famous architect? Or bulldoze it because it is lousy at what it is supposed to do, namely house government offices.
Sell it or rent it out as suggested in the article. It doesn't look like an efficient use of space. What's it like inside?
Its unique looking and ugly, but brutal is a bit of a stretch.
Well, as an example of Brutalism, it's not that bad. (Unlike, say Boston City Hall.)
I suspect that the people that work in the building aren't too happy with the asymmetrical layout. Also, textured concrete is just aesthetically awful. Every time I see a textured concrete building, I experience a skin-crawling fear of road rash.
But what does Pope Francis have to say about this, since Government and Religion are becoming partners again in protecting God's world from men.
A brutal building to house energetic governance sounds like truth in advertising
I've always believed government buildings (including public schools and university buildings) should be Spartan and purely functional. Government should seek the least cost and most efficient and rational solutions possible. The beauty or impressiveness of the structures should not even be an issue.
You're an idiot.
At the same time I believe Christ would have taken exception to elaborate cathedrals and would have instructed us to focus our money and efforts on the least among us.
You're an even bigger idiot than I thought.
I suspect that "energetic governance" is a euphemism for "left-wing orientated meddling that if, not actually socialism, is pretty close to it."
Supposedly the reason that so much of the architecture in the French Quarter still exists (including the iron railings) is that the property value of the area plunged for a while after the interstate was built so close to it, making it economically unfeasible for the property owners to redevelop their property. It took a couple of decades before preservationists started working to preserve the area because they recognized the historical and aesthetic value of the buildings.
"What's it like inside?"
The inside is already ruined by a renovation.
But it's hideous?!
Anglelyne said:
You're an idiot.
Thank you for your insightful and well reasoned comment. Please forgive me for authoring such an ignorant opinion.
I wonder if that building shows up in Two Weeks Notice (Sandra Bullock). I'll have to check if that was it.
Good flick.
"Would I have torn it down? No. I have a conservative streak, and I don't trust transitory judgment."
This hints at a dilemma for many conservatives who distrust transitory judgment and favor the accumulated wisdom of tradition.
It gives an edge to Progressive Brutalists of many kinds, who do not share the same scruples. They put up an in-your-face monstrosity, or impose Brutalist regulations, or hand down a revolutionary court decision, and then imply: if you are a real conservative, you will distrust transitory judgment and preserve the settled wisdom of tradition. Stare decisis! Brutalism is a permanent Progressive taunt.
I think the movement to re-purpose metal shipping containers into work and housing units is probably the single most government-suited architecture movement I've seen to date.
It recycles an existing, commoditized item. It's easy to add on more units or take away some. The units are made to last under the harshest conditions. And they are cheap and easy to work with since they are in a standardized size.
It's one thing for government to spend on grandeur for the people: A park, for example.
It's another thing for government to invest in grandeur for itself - say, for example, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's office renovation of a building built in 1976 and that is only leased to the CFPB.
In regards to the destruction of buildings that were considered overly ornate, here are a couple of pictures of the original Birmingham, AL train station.
http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=birmingham+al+train+station+picture&qs=AS&sk=LC1AS3&FORM=QBIR&pq=birmingham%20al%20train%20stat&sc=6-&sp=5&qs=AS&sk=LC1AS3#view=detail&id=D88F32DF2838472B20F86441743557A940564F4B&selectedIndex=2
http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=birmingham+al+train+station+picture&qs=AS&sk=LC1AS3&FORM=QBIR&pq=birmingham%20al%20train%20stat&sc=6-24&sp=5&qs=AS&sk=LC1AS3#view=detail&id=8D56296F474D2453CF0A3348D6D33AC20FD0A404&selectedIndex=3
and this is what they replaced it with
http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=birmingham+al+train+station+picture&qs=AS&sk=LC1AS3&FORM=QBIR&pq=birmingham%20al%20train%20stat&sc=6-24&sp=5&qs=AS&sk=LC1AS3#view=detail&id=52F9B91176BE1253F78B4520D583801FF94B2642&selectedIndex=55
Speaking of "brutal", Dallas City Hall was an appropriately brutal set for Omnicorp World Headquarters.
I worked downtown then, in the old Sangers building across Pacific from where they filmed some of the interior gunbattle scenes.
Or maybe it was Laws of Attraction (Julianne Moore). NY legal procedings there too.
". . . energetic governance as a democratic ideal."
I think that he meant "energetic governance as a government ideal." How can government love democracy and hate the people?
Well, as an example of Brutalism, it's not that bad. (Unlike, say Boston City Hall.)
This is the example I would have used. Brutalist architecture fits nicely with the liberal thought of governance- cold, impersonal, nonhuman scale, etc. Though the outdoor public courtyards intended for political protest makes for a wonderful gathering place when the Patriots win...
They are terrible as practical structures as well. Impossible to heat and cool, roof and walls leak, vulnerable plumbing angles.
It looks like the main design objective was to maximize the heating bill during winter.
I believe Christ would have taken exception to elaborate cathedrals and would have instructed us to focus our money and efforts on the least among us.
Jesus would have said Apollo 11 was a waste of better-spent money, right?
How many generations of masons, wainwrights, teamsters, muralists, tapesters, goldsmiths, clothmakers, carpenters, stonecutters, chandlers, etc. etc., -- AND THEIR FAMILIES AND THE COMMUNITIES THAT SUSTAINED THEM -- did the construction and maintenance of a Chartres or Canterbury feed?
Read up on how Brunelleschi re-invented engineering and architecture when he and his workers closed the dome of the Florence cathedral.
@Big Mike: Really? I love the East Wing of the National Gallery. And I know others who do. The actual gallery sections are perfectly fine as museum spaces.
The East Wing is actually meant to be 'fun'. The notorious sharp edge is pretty fragile and many people tried to talk Pei into beveling it a little but he insisted. There's some nice footage of Pei, standing next to The Edge, happy as a clam, pointing out how the edge is worn away at about 4 feet from the ground where people just had to touch it.
Oh well, De gustibus non est disputandum.
It's not bad, as brutalist architecture goes. There's more visual interest here than you see in the Soviet-style blocks of concrete, and the interiors actually look pretty interesting. If you have a distinctive building in reasonably good repair it seems petty to ruin the distinctiveness if there's a reasonable alternative.
The "ideas" don't count much - the same style served for everything from parking garages to museums. But the "social aspirations" as embodied by government are fundamentally brutal and ugly, and the more we're reminded of that the better off we all will be.
FWIW, when I saw this photo I was reminded of a building in Wisconsin, which is in my desktop wallpaper rotation:
Circa 1963. Milwaukee Art Museum (War Memorial Center), Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
http://www.shorpy.com/node/16775
I would describe the concrete as striated, not corrugated. The fenestration provokes the eyes.
It is a three-story, unfunished game of Cold War Jenga with concrete rectangles. The white window treatments symbolize the surrender of the individual to the state. The lack of uniformity among the white drapes, curtains, and blinds either the only sign of individuality or the incompetence of government.
Whatever else one might think about San Francisco, this is how one lays out a Civic Center.
Oldthinkers unbellyfeel Ingsoc.
Aren't the Egyptian pyramids the first example of out-of-control architectural brutalism in the service of out-of-control government power?
Our modern liberals are seeking to ape the ancient pharaoh.
I think Tom Wolfe mostly got it right about such things in his book, "From Bauhaus to Our House," but, hey, convince this philistine otherwise, if you can. Why not ask the people who worked in it or had to frequent it if they liked being in it. Is that a jury whose opinions the architectural clerisy would accept?
@Ficta, I believe yours to be a minority viewpoint.
Just look how the author describes this building: "It’s made of corrugated concrete and glass, organized into three pavilions around a courtyard, like an old wagon train around a village green."
How far removed from reality does one have to get to use such a description? Wagon train? Village green? It more closely resembles a not-too-skillfully-built Lego project. It might be architecturally significant, but it ain't no wagon train. And one can safely bet no villager has ever used the spaces between to tend sheep.
It looks like metastasizing cancer cells or virus.
A perfect metaphor for government.
"At the same time I believe Christ would have taken exception to elaborate cathedrals and would have instructed us to focus our money and efforts on the least among us."
Tsk. Cathedrals were the WPA projects of their time, taking wealth from the nobility and aristocrats and passing it to artisans and workers. Such projects contributed to the creation of a middle class.
Reminds me of an old "Life" special issue on architecture.
One of the buildings - a university classroom building - had a picture of it as a burned out hull with the architect sitting outside on the grass loking rather disconsolate.
In the final paragraph the interviewer asked him why the university had not re-built the structure, and he said it was because the entire math-physics faculty had threatened to resign in a body if the university tried to make them move back into that building.
Bobber Fleck: Thank you for your insightful and well reasoned comment.
I'm sure that you, too, encounter statements that make you realize that there is such a huge divide in fundamental view - political, cultural, what have you - between you and the person who made the statement, that any attempt at reasoned argument would be pointless.
For me, an assertion that ugliness is perfectly acceptable in public architecture, as long as it's "functional" and affordable, is such a statement. (And yes, it follows from declaring beauty to "not even be an issue", that ugliness isn't an issue with you, either.) Anything other than an expression of exasperation would, I know, be a waste of time.
Though I guess I could have suggested that you ask "the least among us" his opinion of the meaning and purpose of Gothic cathedrals and the like, before you proceed with "improving" public space for his benefit.
Please forgive me for authoring such an ignorant opinion.
I didn't say your opinion was ignorant, BF. It may be well-informed, and flow from many years serious thought on the purpose and meaning of public architecture. It's still idiotic, which is beyond any powers of forgiveness to remedy.
Trashhauler said...
Cathedrals were the WPA projects of their time...
So Christ definitely would have taken exception to them...
He seems to especially like the ideas that underlie the design, as if beautiful abstractions can transform how the tangible thing looks and feels.
Like RAS743, I immediately thought of Tom Wolfe reading Althouse's post. The theme is also in Wolfe's "The Painted Word," applied to painting rather than architecture. Following a "beautiful theory," despite the ugly reality that results, is the underlying fault of modernism in all its aspects.
Fortunately for Philadelphia, the urban planners and modernists plans to demolish City Hall did not succeed.
I call this "All the good ideas were taken" style architecture.
"Energetic governance as a democratic ideal"?
So, even the idea behind it was wicked and corrupting?
(And what Big Mike said.
Wright made a lot of houses nobody wants to actually live in.
And the roofs leak.
They did when they were new, because flat roofs are stupid.)
"energetic governance"
"I own that I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive." -- Jefferson
@Anglelyne
Your insults diminish this forum. I now realize I don't belong on any board you frequent.
Ann Althouse said.... I used to look at Grand Central Station every day, back then, and think that it was a monument to the misguided taste of the past.
I'm curious, Prof: what do you think of Grand Cetnral today? If your aesthetic opinion has changed, do you think that change is due to your fundamental tastes, or instead in the way you form your opinion/judgements on such matters?
Some quotes from the article:
Those who want it torn down: 'Haters'
The building is:
'organized into three pavilions around a courtyard, like an old wagon train around a village green'
and can achieve:
'communal, townlike connectedness..'
'lofty social aspirations, making tangible Rudolph’s concept of energetic governance as a democratic ideal'
I would level the United Nations building.
That's very enlightened and humanitarian of you. I tend to think that people who would wish to work at the United Nations deserve to suffer working in the United Nations building. It is the best sort of punishment - self-inflicted.
It gives an edge to Progressive Brutalists of many kinds, who do not share the same scruples. They put up an in-your-face monstrosity, or impose Brutalist regulations, or hand down a revolutionary court decision, and then imply: if you are a real conservative, you will distrust transitory judgment and preserve the settled wisdom of tradition.
Luckily for conservatives, Brutalist architecture is also, by and large, grossly unsuited for long-term habitation and tends to fall into disrepair and ruin all on its own. Given enough time, they will beg us for the right to tear them down.
And we'll look down and whisper "no".
The opposite of brutalism is a kind of architecture that tries to find the natural pattern of the person or persons to be using the building or land area. I admit that when I read about it it seemed absurd. I mean how could you find how people in a government agency or a town would move about until the agency or town already existed in building or on some kind of street plan? However in furnishing places now I go minimalist till I see the natural plan I'm trying to follow and I like the result (which is still evolving).
Perhaps even brutalism wouldn't have been as bad if people had been allowed to change and modify it in their own way. But concrete sets the first plan in brutal hard simplicity - like concrete
Xmas already mentioned Boston City Hall, which it looks an awful lot like and which is of a similar age (1968). They are both ugly.
And the big outdoor courtyard is no longer used "for a wonderful gathering place when the Patriots win..." (rehajm) Security doesn't like so many people in one place so there will be a parade instead.
Is this the same Orange county with the guys who build custom motorcycles? It took me like three years to figure out they weren't in California.
Is this the same Orange county with the guys who build custom motorcycles?
Yep, and if you think this building is ugly, you should see the over-sized and ugly sculpture garden visible from the NY Thruway thereabouts.
The joke around Upstate New York in the '70s was that Rockefeller had an "Edifice Complex" and he built ugly buildings like this all over the state.
Oh. My. God. I remember that one, having spent most of my early life in Orange County.
What is it with government buildings, anyway? Everywhere they are, well, not the same, but ugly in different ways. The civic center in Albany, NY is stultifyingly ugly, but different. Marin (CA) County's Civic Center is by Frank Lloyd Wright, and looks like nothing on God's green earth outside of fiction (my own pet name for it is Farpoint Station).
Yes, tastes do evolve and it is generally best not to destroy things that are simply out of fashion. But the Beaux Arts (Grand Central Terminal) was a grand tradition that had been around a long time. You hated it in the '70s because you were young and foolish. (BTW apparently Gropius originally intended for the then Pan Am building to run North and South, with the long sides to the East and West; he disastrously turned it 90 degrees at the last minute.)
OTOH Brutalism was basically a thought experiment that came and went in about a decade which no one much liked except the artistic and cultural avant garde of the moment. This building and Boston City Hall and the Whitney Museum in NY should be documented, photographed, memorialized in nice little models, and torn down.
PS I am not talking about modernism in general - Seagram and Lever and the UN can stay (generous of me, I know), though there are a lot of unfortunate knock-offs.
What do you think of churches built to look like alien motherships. There is one in Easley SC that even has a Jetbridge from the Baptist departure terminal across the street.
www.rockspringsbaptist.com
A lot of us now see "energetic governance" not as a lofty ideal, but as a nightmare.
Marin (CA) County's Civic Center is by Frank Lloyd Wright, and looks like nothing on God's green earth outside of fiction (my own pet name for it is Farpoint Station).
The MCCC starred as Gattaca Corp HQ.
Is it true that "Christ would have taken exception to elaborate cathedrals and would have instructed us to focus our money and efforts on the least among us"? (Bobber Fleck in comment 2)
I doubt it. Read John 12:3-5 (KJV): "Then took Mary a pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair: and the house was filled with the odour of the ointment. Then saith one of his disciples, . . . 'Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence, and given to the poor?'"
I've omitted the name of the disciple so you can guess which one. Scroll down if you can't guess.
(Judas, of course.)
Oclarki said...
Is this the same Orange county with the guys who build custom motorcycles? It took me like three years to figure out they weren't in California.
It took me one episode to realize they aere a bunch of hacks and I quit watching.
Sigivald said...
(And what Big Mike said.
Wright made a lot of houses nobody wants to actually live in.
And the roofs leak.
They did when they were new, because flat roofs are stupid.)
The Johnson and Johnson building in Racine.
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