In a message dated 98-01-19 18:27:21 EST, [log in to unmask] writes:

Lawrence,

The dialogue between yourself and Bruce Marcus concerning the modern is quite
educational. I'd like to intrude a few of my own reflections on your comments.

>  does not contradict a realization that these
>  structures -- or many other structures plainly worthy of preservation --
>  were driven by some very bad ideas.

>  The ideology of the International Style was that everything else was bad
>  and dishonest, and the success of that ideology led *inevitably* to the
>  mediocre miles of glass boxes on Park Avenue, and hundreds of thousands of
>  others in every corner of the country.  I am willing to agree that we're
>  better off for having Lever House; I am NOT willing to agree that we're
>  better off because our world was shaped by that ideology.

I sense that a portion of the overarching authority of the International Style
ideology was connected to the novelty of a maturity of a set of particular
manufacturing capabilities for steel and glass, to the shortening of time with
improved transportation and communication (phone, transatlantic cable, radio,
airplanes), and as well to the limits of the architectural medium... and a
tinge of manifest destiny, "we can make a lot of noise and we can do this". I
consider the limits of the architectural medium, not on paper where the
imagination has no limit, but in the reality of the building which is limited
by the performance characteristics of the materials in respect of the natural
environment. I believe that somewhat prior to the expansion of the
International Style there was a reduction in the labor intensive production of
stone quarries, possibly displaced by an increased capacity in the cast iron
and steel industry, which was in part driven by the expansion of the
transportation system, in particular, railroads. In effect, the manifestation
of the International Movement was limited by the efficient and affordable
availability of materials. To be in the historic situation and to state that
any other method of architecture would be immoral seems to me to be a
convenient rationalization on the part of those modern architects to make the
best of their poverty. If there had been a profound variety of building
materials concurrently available during this period then I suspect that the
need of the moral/immoral argument would have not received the ascendancy that
it has. In part I intend to imply that the statement of any architectural
style as being immoral is in itself a fraudulent and immoral action insofar as
stating anything to be true which cannot logically be true except by force of
coercion, is in the least an aesthetic fraud.

I also am not ready to agree that we're better off because our world was
shaped by the exclusive license of the International Style to proliferate
itself so pervasively in poor taste. Neither do I believe that the world is
better off for the atomic bomb or the insane expansion of the nuclear energy
industry by utility managers (which we on Long Island will have overshadowing
our dreams of historic preservation for many years in the future due to paying
off for the the construction of the never activated Shoreham reator), as well
I wonder about the ultimate sanity of the TVA and Hoover Dam. Unfortunately,
it is done and we need look to the next day.

Returning to stone, the technology of stone quarrying has developed and we now
are able to build buildings with skins of stone 1/4" in thickness, as
laminates to corrugated aluminum and glass fiber. We now have the stone
quarriers complaining that the architects do not understand their materials,
and the quarriers, and importer are increasingly pushing the architects to use
stone. I think if an architect is given an opportunity to build a buldge, or a
setback, or a cornice... even if they feel that they are in sin, they will
take the adventure (they might even inhale) and increasingly, particularly
with the advent of computerized production capabilities, unique and
polymorphous details will become more prevalent and acceptable. I predict that
someone will follow along to revise the ideology once the whole set of tools
is more cohesive (but never in a final place of idea fixe). My thesis is that
the ideology does not drive the architecture placed upon the physical
environment, but that the physical manfestation of the building, and economic
convenience, drives the architectural ideology through practical neccessity.
I'm sure this would prove an uncomfortable position for the architect, but if
form follows function, then ideology follows manifestation. No more damned
then any of the rest of us forced to live in a relativist space/time.

>  But they were reformers who, by watering down the worst strictures, made
>  the ideology slightly more palatable in practice; they did not revolt
>  against it.
I think the examples of BBB on the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, Grand
Central Terminal, and the NY State Thruway rest stops (modern transportation
structures with a sense of human scalethat work in well with the environment,
the sense of NY history, gas islands and RoyRogers) works against the simply
"watered down" condition. The problem is BBB is  an exception in a very small
field of excellent preservation architects.

>  NWhat is nice about most older
>  urban neighborhoods is their adherence to human scale and context and to a
>  vocabulary of form and ornament that developed across thousands of years
>  of civilization.
Most apt, but not affordable an environment for those of us lost in Levittown
or the unHamptons. Ezra Pound early on said a poem should not be written
without a compulsive need for it to exist. As well, I don't believe that
buildings and neighborhoods should remain to exist unless someone has fought
to keep them. I'm not sure if this is not a variant of architectural
Darwinism.

>  One of the precepts of the International Style which has fortunately been
>  discarded even among professional architects is that physical context is
>  irrelevant.
This precept is an unfortunate stupidity and would inevitably lead to
buildings being built in styles unsuitable to their climate.

Bruce said:
>  > My creative nerve responds best when I have the opportunity to take
>  > what I know from the past and include it in a design that makes sense
>  > in terms of my experience, which is a world that included jets, e-mail,
>  > VCRs, WWII, rural roads with cars driving at 50 MPH, Ezra Pound,
>  > Duchamp, Alben Berg, Artaud, etc., etc.

>  But I am always skeptical of
>  arguments that take as a premise that we in the present are suddenly
>  unique in human history, that there are no precedents for anything that is
>  happening now, etc.
I agree that we are not unique in human history. Technology puts us to sleep
regarding our ability to survive in style. I do believe that we are each
unique individuals and that full creative individuation would require
excercise of the complete psyche. My list would be very different than Bruce's
list, but it does not mean that we cannot share our lists and learn from each
other. I don't believe anyone has a fixed ideology, for one thing, and if
there is such a thing, then I further believe that it is self deception for an
individual to conclude that they know their own ideology. A persons ideology
can only be known dimly by their bumbling actions and judged in a clear light
of which we all have none.

>  Faced with someone with whom one
>  has a deep and fundamental disagreement, bring up details and cases and
>  specific situations, in hope of finding agreement on the small things that
>  is impossible on the big question.
Interesting strategem.

I'm a Theocratic Anarchist.

][<en Follett