Interesting colloquium at Columbia this past Saturday addressed the issues
of Modernism and Preservation. Paul Bentel -- adjunct professor at the GSAPP
-- presented a paper that addressed the simultaneous evolution of the
"Townscape" movement and the "Preservation" movement in which he suggested
that Modernism and Preservation had / have more in common that most
modernists or preservationists are willing to admit. Essentially, he asserts
that both modernists and preservationists are trying to address problems in
the built environment; the modus operandi of one group doesn't jibe with
that of the other, but the goals are essentially the same. He touched on the
"post-modern reaction against the International Style" as growing from the
increased interest in preservation, but didn't take it much further -- or
lost me when he started talking about the similar moral imperatives of
Modernism and Preservation.

The trouble I had with his talk -- as well as several others -- was that
they had a view of preservationists as more broad thinking than many may
actually be. At one point he asserted that he didn't think most
preservationists were reactionary and inherently conservative; not to
mention all yearninig for some better time in history where architects were
real men and women and mechanics were craftsmen. Other than BP I don't think
his description adequately characterizes many preservationists at all.

Paul Byard -- who is now the director of the preservation program at
Columbia -- put together this colloquium; seems the proceedings were
recorded on cassette tape. Can we hope they will actually publish these
papers?

Sign me,

Glad-I-missed-Click-and-Clack.


-----Original Message-----
From: Met History [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Sunday, February 13, 2000 9:02 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: "architecture in New York is an interrupted art"


"Until Christian de Portzamparc's LVMH Tower opened last year on East 57th
Street, Manhattan had not seen a serious piece of modern architecture in
years.  In fact, since 1966, the year the Ford Foundation building was
completed, the city has scarcely seen serious architecture of any kind. The
collapse of New York architecture is a direct result of the postmodern
reaction against the International Style....  If New York hadn't lost
confidence in its creative energies, the Rose Center would look  less
startling....  But architecture in New York is an interrupted art.  The Rose
Center interrupts the interruption."

-- Herbert Muschamp, review of the American Museum of Natural History's new
Rose Center for Earth and Space, The New York Times, February 13, 2000.

I concur with this observation, but not necessarily this thesis.  I weep
that, in the last three decades, our buildings have had most of the nerve
and
wit ironed out of them.  But there must be some reason beyond (or at least
in
addition to) the "postmodern reaction against the International Style".
Have
not other cities, indeed the entire nation, had the same or similar
reaction?
   Does our strong preservation law/constituency have some connection?

Christopher Gray