Sounds & Fury

Encouraging News

(Note: This post has been updated (2) as of 5:57 PM Eastern on 15 Sep. See below)

'Coup' in Viseu?

Confusion and despair as modernists 'moved in' to faculty positions

There have been conflicting reports this week from Portugal where an apparently modernist professor and faculty have been installed in the acclaimed Viseu New School of Architecture and Urbanism. There is now widespread concern that the work of the tradition-oriented faculty under José Cornélio da Silva will be lost. Reports from a wide range of sources suggest that the President of the Catholic University of Portugal at Viseu, Professor Passos Morgado and his colleague Antonio Carvalho had "orchestrate[d] a take over", without consulting existing teaching staff and in the face of the excellent work that has been done in the last 3 years.

[...]

At the first meeting of the new academic year, faculty report that they were "surprised" to find that they had a new Director of the Architecture school in the person of well-known Portuguese modernist Antonio Reis Cabrita, and a group of 13 new professors all reportedly drawn from Portugal's modernist architectural establishment.

[...]

The group reportedly arrived with a new curriculum, schedules, and all the bureaucratic work in place. When the new curriculum was rejected by indignant members of the existing faculty, a faculty member reported that the group became "confrontational and argumentative". A faculty member reports that, "They told us that they had instructions to change the school in every aspects, from the practical to the philosophical".

(Thanks to City Comforts — who thinks the coup less than encouraging — for the link.)

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Update (3:35 PM Eastern on 15 Sep): BTW, if you're curious to know why I titled this post as I did, read the manifesto entitled, The Declaration of Viseu (it's short). It's the pre-coup declaration of purpose and principles adopted by this self-styled "school of architecture." What a horror.

Update (5:57 PM Eastern on 15 Sep): Just to give you a sense of why in the prior update I enclosed "school of architecture" within scare quotes, here are the required courses for the professional degree program at Viseu New School of Architecture and Urbanism, and at Princeton University School of Architecture (click on Master of Architecture). Understand now?

How Doth Your City Grow?

Says Douglas Kelbaugh FAIA, Dean, A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture + Urban Planning, University of Michigan, in his essay, Seven Fallacies In Architectural Culture:

Our cities are too often like a World’s Fair of one-off buildings, each an exception to the rule and gesticulating more wildly for attention than the next. They are scaleless and abstract, refusing to converse at all with their neighbors. An architectural circus of styles or a typological riot does not a city make. Nor are they emblematic of a democratic city, as Frank Gehry and others claim.

And says one urban planning zealot and weblogger (name withheld for the usual reason), whose highest aspiration for cities is that they be "interesting" and "comfortable," and "pleasant places to live," and who perceives a dichotomy where one must choose between architectural genius and "good rules" in the building of cities:

So many people use the word [genius] in relation to architects such as Wright or Gehry.... Those two might be geniuses or might not; who cares? [...] It is not genius which creates cities worthy of humanity but adherence to time-tested rules. Oh genius is OK, so long as it knows the rules well-enough to know if, how and when to break them. And so long as it has sufficient self-confidence to not need to impress by breaking the rules unless there is a good reason.

Interesting views of the matter. Fact is, though, that neither building styles, nor rules, time-tested or otherwise, nor architectural geniuses create "cities worthy of humanity." The urban needs and desires of city-dwellers alone create cities. The notion that architectural geniuses create (or, rather, are capable of creating) cities is a delusion of that most virulent of architectural types: the ideology obsessed architect-visionary. And the notion that rules create cities, a delusion of nuts-and-bolts obsessed sensible-shoes urban planners with their insufferable bourgeois arrogance born of the conceit that bourgeois concerns are the measure of all things, other concerns being but eccentricities or pie-in-the-sky imaginings to be more or less tolerated — or not.

But the urban needs and desires of city-dwellers need satisfaction in concrete terms. And for that architects, urban planners, and, yes, even cut-rate commercial builders are required, all with their parts to play, but governed always by the overarching principle, Sutor, ne supra crepidam!

Our weblogging urban planner imagines rules are what's really important. But that's the result of the confusing of what's truly important with what's merely necessary. Painters, for instance, require well-made canvas, but there's nothing important about well-made canvas, or about the mechanic who makes it. Both are merely necessary. What's important are the painter and what he paints on that canvas. The business of the maker of well-made canvas is to produce a product that provides the painter what he needs for his work, while presenting the least impediment to the painter in that work. And when the canvas-maker's mechanic's work is done, he disappears from the picture, so to speak, becoming an anonymous and invisible entity forever after.

Just so the urban planner. He must do his necessary mechanic's work by laying out the city's grid with due attention paid to the accommodation of traffic flows, utilities, public transport, zoning, etc., all consistent with the needs of present and foreseeable future populations; establish the most minimally restrictive building codes possible explicit enough so that compliance can be ascertained with little or no ambiguity or application of individual judgment; and then disappear forever so that the important work, the design and building of buildings, can begin unimpeded, all design decisions, in compliance with the minimally restrictive building codes, made exclusively by the only persons entitled to make them: the individual architects or builders and their clients. And if an architect also happens to be an architect of genius, well, so much the better for his client and for the city that will emerge from their work and the work of other architects, builders, and their clients — spontaneously.

In that way, and in that way only, do vital, exciting, nourishing, and enriching cities get built and grow; messy, contradictory, and complex affairs where good spaces coexist with bad ones, and where buildings run the full gamut from bad to good; from the thoroughly tawdry, to the quotidian utilitarian, to the great work of art. The one prescription for sure death for any city is to have individual building design decisions intrusively determined or overseen by rule-besotted urban planners, or, worse, visionary architectural ideologues, the end result of the operation of which always being an imposition of the same restricted vision on the fabric of an entire city.

If you want great cities, "cities worthy of humanity," then insist the rule-makers recognize their proper and very limited place, and that they disappear forever after their initial and necessary mechanic's work is done, leaving architects and builders free to get on with the important work of designing and building buildings to fulfill the needs and desires of their individual clients, as only by and through such a process, and of itself, doth "cities worthy of humanity" grow.

Art And Leaky Roofs

Apropos this post, a reader writes,

I think I understand your point, but it seems to me that any architecture (in your terms) which fails to meet the (again in your terms) lesser standards of mere building is still a failure. Architecture may indeed be art but if the roof leaks you haven't got a building but a sculpture - and I don't want to live or work in a sculpture.

And some time ago a weblogger wrote,

Would you want to live in one of [Frank Lloyd Wright's] houses? I wouldn't, for two main reasons. Most important is the way a Frank Lloyd Wright house never becomes your home; instead, you move in and become the curator of one branch of the Frank Lloyd Wright museum. You're just the custodian in a monument to his genius. For the other, I wouldn't want to be in charge of (let alone pay for) the upkeep. Wright couldn't resist trying out innovative building techniques — which has meant in practice that many of his houses are in semi-constant need of expensive repair.

[...]

The buildings work as they're supposed to only if you first submit to FLW — and submit totally. Give over to his genius, and then you'll have earned the right to experience the full, transcendent FLW experience. What if, on the other hand, you prefer to live by your own rules and you expect your house to play along?

So, to address the question in terms of a house specifically, what's wrong with these sentiments? I mean, it all sounds perfectly reasonable, does it not?

It does indeed — if you're talking about a tract house, or a stand-alone designed and built by one of those so-called New Urbanist or New Traditionalist architects, or by a builder along more or less conventional commercial lines. Such bourgeois concerns, however, are inappropriate when what's under consideration is a house designed by an architect of real aesthetic gift, and entirely out of place when what's under consideration is a house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, an architect of genuinely transcendent aesthetic gift.

Wright's houses are notorious for their leaky roofs. As a house is the most elemental and paradigmatic instance of a shelter, a leaky roof would seem a most damning and fundamental fault. And so it would be were the house merely a building. With the possible exception of his very earliest work, none of Wright's houses qualifies as a mere building. They're all, as is all genuine architecture of any sort whatsoever, first and principally works of art. That's to say, a concern with the aesthetic trumped all else in their design, and that's only as it should be as that concern is architecture's principal defining characteristic. Such has it been from architecture's earliest beginnings, and such shall it always be.

Should Wright have taken more care in working out the nuts-and-bolts engineering details of his house designs? Perhaps. But it's not as if his houses were ever dangers to, posed undue difficulties for, or were even experienced as inconvenient by, their original owners; not even the structurally problem-plagued, cutting-edge-innovative, and justly aesthetically world-famous Kaufmann house, "Fallingwater", which only today, some 65 years after its building, is (was) in danger of collapsing without extensive (and wildly expensive) correction of its fundamental engineering faults. Like Kaufmann, Wright's clients were invariably thrilled by, and felt privileged to own and occupy, what Wright gave them.

I'm perfectly willing to confess freely that Wright played fast and loose with the nuts-and-bolts engineering details of all his buildings. After establishing that a design he envisioned could be built without subsequently falling down or otherwise causing harm to his client, he considered attention to that sort of detail to be merely a nuisance, most especially if closer attention to such engineering details might have indicated that an aesthetic detail(s) would have to be altered in consequence. Wright's attitude to his buildings, and to his clients and their use of those buildings, is best summed up in his (in)famous retort to a client who, at first, bitched to Wright about the leaks in the roof of his new house. Said Wright, "That's what happens when you leave a work of art out in the rain."

Glib, arrogant, cavalier, and the effusion of a monstrous ego most certainly, but in Wright's case, essentially true nevertheless. And only an architect of Wright's transcendent genius could (or should) get away with saying — and brag about saying — such a thing.

And what about the whine of, "...a Frank Lloyd Wright house never becomes your home.... [...] You're just the custodian [of] a monument to his genius. [...] What if....you prefer to live by your own rules and you expect your house to play along?"

In short, and straightaway to the point, the answer is you let your fingers do the walking through the Yellow Pages, and from there select a good, solid, bourgeois builder to build your house for you, and leave the all-too-rare Wrights of this world free to serve those worthy of their genius.

See how that works?

From The Inbox

Two readers objecting to my conclusion in my post on Architecture, Utility, and Aesthetics wrote to express their objections. One eMail read, in part:

Are you saying that a building built for beauty first can still be called good architecture, no matter how uncomfortable and ill-adapted it is for its tenants, even if it's almost unusable?

And one — written by the person whose name was charitably withheld in this previous post — read simply (and I quote the eMail in its entirety):

My advice is that you might want to stick to music.

Both these readers seem to imagine that architectural beauty is something applied from the outside, disconnected and separate from, and undetermined by, a building's program (the specifications for a building's intended use and purpose, it's mechanical systems, the manifold accommodations required for those using the building, etc., etc.). Architectural beauty is, of course, nothing of the sort. Architectural beauty grows from, and is intimately bound up with and determined by, a building's program. That's the singular hallmark of all great architecture from Imhotep's time to the present. Louis Sullivan may have codified in trenchant epigram the concept that "Form follows function," but great architecture has, without exception, obeyed that dictum from Day One. And it's by a building's aesthetically imaginative realization of that dictum, and by that aesthetically imaginative realization alone, that a building's architectural beauty is determined, and its architectural worth judged.

Seeing to it that roofs don't leak, that ceilings are high enough so that one doesn't bump one's head against them, that building maintenance is within reasonable bounds, etc., are engineering considerations of the most quotidian and taken-for-granted sort, the successful carrying out of which is part of an architect's fundamental professional obligations; ones that are dealt with as matters of course, and not worth special remark. Failures in that realm are failures of professional responsibility, not architectural failures, and are inadmissible as criteria for the judging of a building's architectural worth.

The revolutionary Pyrex glass roof of Frank Lloyd Wright's Johnson Wax Administration Building was (is) a brilliant engineering, and aesthetically breathtaking architectural, solution to the problem of bringing light into the building's vast interior spaces. That the roof leaked because the engineering technology of the time was incapable of dealing with it adequately may be viewed by sensible-shoes bourgeois as a failure by Wright of his fundamental professional responsibility, and a mark against the architectural worth of the building. Or it may be viewed, as it was by the building's owner who paid for and commissioned Wright to design the building, as part of the price one must at times pay for the privilege of owning and working and/or living in a building of surpassing architectural beauty and worth.

Architecture, Utility, and Aesthetics

(Note: This post has been updated (1) as of 3:16 PM Eastern on 3 Sep. See below)

The subject is architecture, and the question is one of a building's utility as a valid measure of architectural worth.

Here's a précis of a typical argument pro:

Some of the "beauty trumps all else" crowd seem under the impression that their opponents are weirdos for raising such questions as livability and flexibility [i.e., so-called "adaptability"], let alone whether or not you're going to go broke trying to keep the place together — why, they're just missing the point of True Architecture (let alone True Greatness)!

Oh? What's weird isn't worrying about bumping your head, or the rising damp, or whether you're going to have to put out buckets in the middle of the living room to catch the leaking rainwater — these are normal concerns, and more than valid in a discussion of a building's worth. What's weird is trying to confine a discussion about an architect's work to the sole question of whether or not it's beautiful.

[...]

So, focusing on beauty and beauty alone in a discussion of architecture? OK, sure, fine, and I'd be the last person to try to pass a law against it. But let's get one thing straight: historically speaking, it's weird.

In support of that argument, the writer invokes the Western Ur-architect, Vitruvius.

This isn't just my perverse opinion, by the way. Here are the terms by which architecture has almost always been discussed: "Commodity, firmness and delight." (From Vitruvius, the earliest ancient whose writings on architecture we have.) Which means: the appropriateness and fitness of the design to what it's intended for; the quality of its construction; and its beauty. (And notice the order these criteria are presented in.) Through all of recorded history — the modernist era aside, of course — these are the terms by which the judgment and discussion of architecture have taken place.

Problem is, of course, Vitruvius never said that. The poet Henry Wotton in his 1624 treatise on architecture, The Elements of Architecture, said that. In that treatise, Wotton (wrongly) paraphrased and condensed what he thought Vitruvius was saying concerning on what architecture depends, and that condensed paraphrase has since gained currency far and wide as Vitruvius's final word on the matter.

So, what did Vitruvius actually say? What he said was (this from the classic Gwilt translation of 1826),

Architecture depends on fitness (ordinatio) and arrangement (dispositio)...it also depends on proportion, uniformity, consistency, and economy....

And just what did Vitruvius mean by those terms?

Fitness is the adjustment of size of the several parts to their several uses, and required due regard to the general proportions of the fabric [material]: it arises out of dimension (quantitas).... Dimension regulates the general scale of the work, so that the parts may all tell and be effective. Arrangement is the disposition in their just and proper places of all the parts of the building, and the pleasing effect of the same; keeping in view its appropriate character.

[...]

Proportion is that agreeable harmony between the several parts of a building, which is the result of a just and regular agreement of them with each other; the height to the width, this to the length, and each of these to the whole.

Uniformity is the parity of the parts to one another; each corresponding with its opposite, as in the human figure. The arms, feet, hands, fingers, are similar to, and symmetrical with, one another; so should the respective parts of a building correspond.

[...]

Consistency is found in that work whose whole and detail are suitable to the occasion. It arises from circumstance, custom, and nature.

[...]

Economy consists in a due and proper application of the means afforded according to the ability of the employer and the situation chosen; care being taken that the expenditure is prudently conducted.

[all bolding mine]

Those are the principles, Vitruvius said, upon which all architecture depends. And with the possible exception of economy, all those principles refer to but one thing and one thing only: aesthetics (surprise!).

I've remarked frequently in my posts on architecture that genuine architecture is art first, and building second. No art, no architecture, which is to say that any building in whose design aesthetic considerations were not treated as primary is an example of mere building, and not architecture. And so for critical purposes a distinction must be made between mere building and architecture. "Bumping your head...the rising damp...whether you're going to have to put out buckets in the middle of the living room to catch the leaking rainwater" are all valid primary critical criteria in judging the worth of a mere building. They are in no way valid primary critical criteria in judging the worth of a work of architecture. As I've hammered home ad nauseam here and elsewhere, concern with aesthetics — art — is always and forever architecture's primary defining characteristic. It's that alone which separates architecture from mere building, and is alone architecture's — and the architect's — sine qua non, and very raison d'être..

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Update (3:16 PM Eastern on 3 Sep): See this post for objections to the above post, and my answer to those objections.

Philistinism: An Object Lesson

I'm in a really pissy mood this morning. I point this out by way of apologia for taking even the slightest notice of the mindless bourgeois philistinism below remarked upon, and for the modicum of my time required to make remark. But it seems to me that in the rabidly populist and rampantly promiscuous equalitarian era in which we today live, such mindless philistinism needs occasional skewering if only to make small attempt to balance the scales somewhat.

The virtually unanimous glowing critical and journalistic praise, here and abroad, for architect Frank Gehry's Walt Disney Concert Hall, recently opened in downtown Los Angeles, is pretty much unparalleled in our era for an architectural work, Gehry's own Guggenheim, Bilbao perhaps excepted; a testament to Gehry's genius, the Disney's astonishing and profound architectural beauty — beauty plainly manifest even in two-dimensional exterior and interior photographs — and the by all accounts superb acoustics of its performance space.

That unanimous praise, however, is seen by at least one proud-as-punch philistine as nothing more than an instance of "mass hysteria," and "bow[ing] and scrap[ing]" idol and "hero worship." This sensible-shoes bourgeois — an urban design zealot, and a professional in the field, whose name, as is our practice in such cases, is being withheld here as an act of charity, and because we don't intend this skewering as a personal matter — takes it upon himself to do his own critical "analysis" of Disney Hall in a post on his weblog wherein he focuses on such crucial architectural matters as the "nice pastel color theme" of the signs in the building's underground parking facility (helps you remember where you parked), the urban design quality of the building's street frontage (mostly bad because nothing more than a blank wall on three sides), the TV monitors in the building's snack bar (what could they possibly be showing?), the snack bar location (too deep inside the building), the outdoor lighting (too harsh), and the toilet facilities (not enough).

While all these are undeniably design considerations of some architectural concern, focusing on them when confronted with a new and important building of such breathtaking architectural accomplishment is a bit like .... well, let me simply quote myself from a comment that I left in the comments section of the weblog post in question; a comment which was deleted within hours of its being posted (surprise!).

Your response to the Disney calls to mind nothing so much as an image of someone seeing for the first time a Rembrandt or El Greco, and considering of major importance and worthy of extended comment the frame over which the canvas is stretched, and the fasteners that secure the canvas thereto.

Interesting perspective — and sense of proportion.

And this zealot's professional assessment of the architecture itself? "[A] goofy, 'arty,' 'post-something' building"; "a 'precious object'"; "cold and sterile, and with a (largely) bad pedestrian environment"; "gimmickry"; "freaky"; "a freakish series of swooping roofs"; "eye-candy trivia"; "freak-show architecture"; all this accompanied by multiple sneers at the very idea of genius, which term this bourgeois philistine childishly sees fit to always enclose in scare quotes so that we won't miss that he's making a statement.

He closes this sharp-eyed critique of the Disney thus:

So don't get me wrong. The Disney is not a complete failure; the failure is in the critics total and complete failure to be able to view the building as anything but a cartoon. The building indeed has got some positive attributes. But it's basically an example of freak-show architecture and should be considered in that light. I can understand that some people might like freak-shows but I can also recognize that they are not a good model for how humans should evolve. Freaks stand alone and isolated by their unfortunate and tragic nature.

The parallel tragedy of course is that had Gehry paid more attention to the edges, to truly "taking things to the edge," he and Los Angeles could have had a comfortable urban building and a glamorous precious object. There is, to my mind, no inherent contradiction. The Disney could have been a truly great urban building had Gehry followed [certain rules which constitute this professional's simplistic formula for good urban building design].

That this zealot's critical "analysis" of the Disney is at polar odds with almost all the expert architecture critics would be perfectly OK had he even the vaguest idea, the most rudimentary aesthetic sense, the most fundamental knowledge, of what architecture is about; critical prerequisites this bourgeois philistine appallingly lacks (appalling because of his putative professional expertise in his field) as his repeated purblind and ignorant whining on his weblog about what he considers the general horribleness of the great architecture of the past century makes manifest, as do his purblind and ignorant whining complaints against the knowledgeable critical commentary of first-rate architecture experts (he has an especial hatred for former New York Times architecture critic Herbert Muschamp; but, then, what bourgeois philistine doesn't), which critical commentary is clearly beyond this philistine's woefully limited architectural understanding.

Is such public ignorant and purblind whining a triumph of democracy, democratic thinking, and the democratic process, or is it something else entirely?

You decide. I've said quite enough, and quite sufficient. In any case, it's all the time and words I'm today willing to devote to the matter.

By the way, did I mention I was in a really pissy mood this morning?

Oh. So I did.

The Devil's Way

Over the last decade or so, anti-modernism polemic has become the critical sphere's lingua franca in all the arts, and nowhere is it more zealously, passionately, and stridently voiced than in architecture's critical sphere where anti-modernism has taken on the characteristics of a religious cult, complete with cleverly deceitful dogmas that are the proselytizing tools of all religious cults. Witness, for instance, this anti-modernism screed centering on the great and justly celebrated architect Louis Kahn by university mathematics professor and self-styled architectural theorist Nikos Salingaros, one of the most strident voices of the anti-modernism architecture cult.

Before examining this charming piece of anti-modernism propaganda, we should first try to make clear just what it is that's meant by this cult when it uses the terms modernism and modernist in referring to architecture and architects as the cult's acolytes don't use the terms historically, but descriptively. Best we can make out, what the term refers to when used by these True Believers is 20th- or 21st-century architecture that eschews literal or recognizable use of "traditional" (i.e., pre-20th-century) architectural forms, relationships, and ornament, or when applied to architects, those who eschew the same in the design of their buildings.

With those necessary prefatory remarks out of the way, we now can proceed to examine Dr. Salingaros's essay on Louis Kahn.

Dr. Salingaros begins his essay with a splendid rhetorical flourish. Writes Dr. Salingaros:

Which Kahn?

First let's get the architect's identity straight. There are three Kahns in American architecture: Albert Kahn; Ely Jacques Kahn; and Louis Isadore Kahn.

Is that a fact. Well, in a manner of speaking, I suppose it is. But the above question is a bit like asking:

Which Jesus?

And then answering:

First, let's get this redeemer's identity straight. There are three Jesuses in redeemer history: Jesus Jones; Jesus Aloysius Smith; and Jesus The Christ.

In point of fact, in the world of architecture the name Kahn without further qualification means always and without exception Louis Isadore Kahn and no other. Albert Kahn, in the first half of the 20th century, specialized, and was influential, in the design of American industrial buildings (and very good he was at it, too), but is known for nothing else; and Ely Jacques Kahn is little more than an historical footnote in architectural history, if he's that. Louis Isadore Kahn, on the other hand, is numbered among the giants of architectural history — not merely American architectural history, and not merely of the 20th century, but of world architecture, and of all time.

But let's not berate Dr. Salingaros too severely for that opening flourish. His essay is, after all, intended to gather new True Believers into the fold by vilifying and making a demon of his cult's archenemy, modernism (as defined by this cult), and vilifying and demonizing as well all modernism's practitioners, admirers, and fellow travelers.

In pursuit of this end, Dr. Salingaros then continues,

The third Kahn [i.e., Louis Kahn] was the champion of modernism that we know so well — the Kahn of "what does a brick want to become?"

Well, that goes well beyond rhetorical flourish, and straightaway into the willfully deceitful.

Kahn was, of course, no "champion of modernism"; either the cult's definition, or the architectural historical one. Kahn was a one-off, and if he championed anything it was his own unique and profound aesthetic vision. No follower he, and no ideologue or promoter of ideologies, modernist (in its architectural historical sense) or other. Dr. Salingaros must, of course, have known that; ergo, my charge of willful deception on his part.

But he doesn't stop there. He then compounds that act of willful deception by uttering another willfully deceitful statement.

The "official" histories of architecture are written so as to imply that genuinely homegrown American innovation in architecture really took off with Louis Kahn and Philip Johnson.

That statement is so egregiously in error that one can only wonder on which planet the "histories of architecture" referred to by Dr. Salingaros could have been written. Any accurate "histor[y] of architecture," official or otherwise, would almost surely assert, not merely imply, that genuinely homegrown American innovation in architecture really took off with Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright; certainly none so late as Kahn and Johnson, neither of whom, in any case, were responsible for "homegrown American" anything.

But, you see, that last willfully deceitful statement has a special purpose beyond being merely misleading, and that is to act as the straw-man setup for what immediately follows; viz.,

To think this way is ridiculous, but it represents modernist dogma and is not meant to be supported by either reality or facts. To criticize Kahn's work [as Dr. Salingaros is about to do] amounts to criticizing the spirit of American Architecture.

See? Dr. Salingaros now, in one fell swoop, gets to label all modernists as ridiculous dogmatists and willful deceivers (in Freudian terms, Dr. Salingaros's labeling modernists in that way is what's known as "projection"), and preemptively charge those who would criticize his following criticisms of Kahn's work with being nothing other than lackeys of modernism.

Pretty slick, huh?

Then, to lend greater weight to his pronouncements in what follows in his essay, Dr. Salingaros invokes the cult's Magic Name — the name of the cult's undisputed Guru — in tandem with his own.

Christopher Alexander and I were talking about famous modernist architects, and Louis Kahn's name came up.

And what did Guru Alexander (about whom we wrote here) have to say about Kahn?

I cannot bring it in my heart to criticize the guy, since he always went out of his way to be nice to me when I was a young man. He really liked me, and amazingly, he sounded just like I do when he talked. Very philosophical; emotional; conceptual; overwhelming; inspiring. Pity his buildings don't do the same thing.

Do we really need to comment on anything about that, both in itself and on its placement within the context of Dr. Salingaros's essay, or would such comment be merely superfluous, the thing speaking loud and clear for itself.

Of course. And thank you for saving us the onerous task of having to explicate the obvious.

The rest of Dr. Salingaros's essay consists, for the most part, of his personal impressions of several of Kahn's buildings, and personal impressions ought not be gainsaid so we'll not even make the attempt (and, similarly, we resist, as an act of charity, making comment on Dr. Salingaros's interjection of his "index of architectural 'life' of famous buildings according to a mathematical model"). We would here simply point out that Dr. Salingaros's personal impressions are merely that, and therefore of no importance, weight, or consequence beyond what they mean for Dr. Salingaros, and speak more loudly of his aesthetic sensibilities than they do of anything having to do with architecture in general, and Kahn's work in particular.

Finally, we feel it further incumbent upon us to point out that Dr. Salingaros uses the terms modernist and modernism some 17 times in his mere 2800-word essay on Kahn. As we've previously noted, those terms have an idiosyncratic architectural meaning when used by Dr. Salingaros and his fellow True Believers. To better understand what's really behind Dr. Salingaros's use of those terms we suggest that when you read Dr. Salingaros's essay you on each occurrence replace the term "modernist" by the term "Devil worshipper", and the term "modernism" by the term "the Devil's way". With reference to what's really intended to be conveyed, the essay will read lots more clearly that way.

Christopher Alexander: Another View

Some time ago, I read a passionately enthusiastic encomium of A Pattern Language, a best-selling 1977 book on architectural design by architectural theorist Christopher Alexander. I've not read the book, but one thing makes its worth instantly suspect: The book was (and apparently is still) a best-seller; "among the most widely read architectural books of all time." That the book was (is) a best-seller makes its worth instantly suspect because, well, it's a best-seller. Best-seller means mass-market acceptance, and we all know what that means: Populist gibberish, more likely than not.

Reading the at-length overview of Alexander's ideas in the balanced and fair-minded article written by Wendy Kohn for The Wilson Quarterly amply confirms that suspicion.

[Alexander's] fame rests on A Pattern Language — a book that appeared 25 years ago—and a stream of subsequent writings. Translated into six languages and often one of the 1,000 top-selling titles on Amazon.com, A Pattern Language is among the most widely read architectural books of all time, and is commonly called a design "bible." When it appeared in 1977, Architectural Design magazine [not an architectural journal] declared that "every library, every school, every environmental action group, every architect, and every first-year student should have a copy." Today, it has legions of devotees, some of whom simply value its practical advice, while others savor its New Age speculations. The enthusiasts include yuppies fixing up their country houses in Vermont, gray-haired do-it-yourselfers in comfortable shoes, and ponytailed counterculturalists. Real-estate agents proudly present copies to their clients once the deal is done and renovations are about to begin.

[...]

In 253 individual lessons, or "patterns," A Pattern Language shows how to weave together a "language" of patterns to form everything from window seats to cities in ways that satisfy the human need for functionality and beauty. It breaks places down into component parts, such as fronts and backs, stairs and floors and windowsills, or roads and parking lots and stores. It then describes how to make a good rendition of each particular part and how to assemble the parts into a whole. The text speaks directly to "you," in plain language, about where closets should go in your house (between rooms, on interior walls) and where sports facilities should go in your town (scattered throughout, easily visible from the street). It's a book of architectural recipes.

Uh-huh. Got it. Architecture by Lego™ — architecture Of The People, For The People, By The People.

And then there's this from Alexander himself:

It [Alexander's way of building, called by him, and the title of one of his popular books, The Timeless Way of Building] is so powerful and fundamental that with its help you can make any building in the world as beautiful as any place that you have ever seen.

It is so powerful, that with its help hundreds of people together can create a town, which is alive and vibrant, peaceful and relaxed, a town as beautiful as any town in history.

Without the help of architects or planners, if you are working in the timeless way, the idea is that a town will grow under your hands, as naturally as the flowers in your garden.

There you have it. We don't need no steenkin architects. And no steenkin artists, either. We're all architects and artists, we just don't realize it — that is, unless we let Alexander show us the way.

Manifestly, what one is dealing with here is a superannuated relic from the Utopian, quasi-Marxist, rabidly (and hypocritically) equalitarian Age of Aquarius, complete with "mystic crystal revelation, and the mind's true liberation," as the '60s hit song had it.

In short, as I'd already intuited, a panderer of New Age populist gibberish.

Want to see what results when putting Alexander's "timeless way of building" into practice?

Here y'go (this one in California):

What's that you say? Looks like something European from a few hundred years ago?

Au contraire. Timeless is the word you're looking for.

If that's not enough for you, there's more, and even worse, of this cozily familiar retro stuff. Just take a look here.

And if one has any doubts concerning Alexander's '60s demagogic cum fascist proclivities and provenance, one has only to read this by Ms. Kohn:

It comes as no surprise [to learn from Alexander's friends, acquaintances, and I daresay, enemies] that Alexander is not tolerant of others' ideas. He has a reputation for fits of anger, showers of insults, and storming from rooms when opposed.

and this from one of Alexander's former students:

"Chris's answer to my doubts about The Timeless Way of Building was to say 'Find out your psychological problem that prevents you from agreeing.' His technique is to attack one's motivation for questioning."

to dissolve any doubts.

What's that? Where did Alexander teach?

Why, at the University of California, Berkeley.

Imagine that. Who woulda guessed.

Not uninterestingly, after reading some dozens of reader comments on Amazon.com concerning the two above mentioned books by Alexander, I discovered that some of the books' biggest fans are not those looking to build a house, but designers of computer software.

Sounds crazy, yes?

Well, no, actually. Wendy Kohn made note of the fact in her above referenced piece, and after Googling a fair number of articles describing the sorts of design problems and their solutions dealt with in these books (and do keep in mind, please, I've read neither book), and as a one-time dabbler in object-oriented programming, it very much sounds to me not so crazy. It would seem rules that result in the sort of retro-design houses Alexander trumpets on his website are nevertheless capable of producing superior software code.

There's a lesson to be learned there somewhere, but I can't quite put my finger on just what it may be.

Finally, it might be asked how I can make critical comment as I have in this post without ever having read Alexander's two books.

About like this:

I once publicly savaged a new production of Wagner's Parsifal by declaring it a "grotesque perversion," and suggested the Konzept director be very slowly boiled in oil, then drawn and quartered (also slowly) for perpetrating such an outrage on a paying public. I stated clearly and up front that I hadn't seen the production, but had relied merely on a description of its physical features (mise en scène, costuming, stage action, etc.), act by act, from several sources that could be trusted to straightforwardly report what they'd seen in reliable physical detail. I was, of course, immediately accused of blowing hot air (to phrase it genteelly).

My answer to my accusers was that one does not have to actually attend a production of Parsifal where the Grail Knights are clothed in WWI uniforms, celebrate the third act ritual of the unveiling of the grail in a 20th-century railroad shed complete with steel tracks and a choo-choo train cum steam locomotive, and where, at opera's end, Parsifal walks off along those tracks out of the shed and into the sunrise hand in hand with Kundry, to know with absolute certainty that the production was precisely as I had declared it sight unseen.

Similarly with Alexander's two books. No matter how valuable and on-target — even surpassingly brilliant — his design principles may be per se, his categorical assertion that utilization of those principles cannot do less than produce a genuinely beautiful piece of architecture, and his further assertion — nay, insistence — that those principles in the hands of ordinary people is a viable alternative — is in fact preferable — to the design work of gifted architects, is nothing other than what I declared it text unread: New Age populist gibberish. And I need know nothing more about his design principles to know that with absolute certainty.

Had Alexander instead suggested, for instance, that gifted architects might benefit in terms of, say, clearer aesthetic vision and / or efficiency in developing their designs by use of his principles, that would have been something quite different, and would not have called forth so much as a word from me pro or con without my first having made a detailed study of those principles, and perhaps not even then, depending on how well I understood them and could relate them to contemporary architectural practice.

See now how that works?