First, elements of a design...
First, elements of a design ARE supposed to come together. Surely, we can all agree on that. I do not see how persons can look at Johnson's buildings and see that--wonderful though their elements are--they never unify. His buildings, except when he works with a single block, always remain a series of blocks connected mechanically. Frankly, they look more like schematics of buildings than the schematics themselves. This tendency no doubt reveals a man pursuing a vision with determination and skill, but visions are not necessarily successful architectural unities, as Frank Gehry's work reveals from time to time today.
Second, all artists in all media work with opposites, dichotomies and various grades of difference, as the materials of their media permit. The quickest way in fiction to get a strong effect from a reader is to pit Pauline against a mustache twittling villain, virtuous, innocent, kind, brave Luke against Darth Sidious, the evil emperor of the Dark Side; that is myth. Take opposites and reconcile them in an organic whole that that proves cathartic enough for the audience to experience the tale as an inextricably entwined unity. The hero and the villain must be carefully counterbalanced to allow the audience's minds to experience the unity, lest they focus on one, or the other, or on first one and then the other, but never both at once. Johnson's buildings, in my eyes, and in my mind, NEVER achieve unity. Their parts NEVER come together. They are like looking at the pieces of a machine laid side by side. Each piece is meticulously designed and engineered, but the machine is not assembled and so it is NOT a unity of the machine. And I'm only using the metaphor of a machine, because modern's kind of liked "a house is a machine for living in." Looking at some of the lesser known buildings of Johnson, I am reinforced in my POV on this. Each block element is skillfully designed, but they sit side by side, or on top of one another and fail to form a unity. Likely as not, this was the nature of Phillip Johnson. While a possessor of superb intellect and technical proficiency, and a very fine shit-detector, he simply was piece by piece guy, and not some one naturally gifted at integrating the whole design.
Second, I am in no way calling Johnson a hack, or a no talent. I place him on the 2rd tier of the finest modern architects of the 20th Century; that's not exactly a slap in the face. As they like to say on the boards, the guy's got chops. But he doesn't finally achieve architectural unities the way a Louis Kahn routinedly did in his work and I bet Johnson would have admitted this without a wince, or a blink. My god, Johnson WAS an important architect. He WAS an exceptionally deep and penetrating thinker about architecture. He DID make some fine buildings. But everyone can't be the ultimate, or there wouldn't be an ultimate. There has to be a few penultimates and that is what he was in modern architecture.
Heath...
The image of Brighton Pier consisely exemplifies the processional in a secular, commercial structure. Thanks.
I also found a lot of processional architecture in Florence, Italy. I mention this because Florence was a hot bed of enlightment once and it suggests the processional need not be fundamentally at odds with the rational; that it can be (dare I say ought to be) combined with the rational in architecture. The Ufizi Gallery in particular winds one around the renaissance, then through antiquity, then gives looks at the river (apparently the river of life and of history, i.e., the well spring of Florentine culture) before reorienting U-turning ones procession back towards the city of Florence. The processional aspect of the architecture actually subordinates some of the greatest art in Western history to the experience of something even greater--the human historical drama, or pageant, if you will. Good stuff.
I mention the Uffizi for certain reasons. Mentioning it in conjunction with Brighten Pier conveys how the processional can operate seamlessly both in architecture in high and low secular cultures, not just in Gothic religious cathedrals. There are processional aspects in most facets of life, not just the theocratic, or aristocratic ones. I also mention the Uffizi, because it, like Brighten Pier, rarely gets much respect in architectural criticism for its looks. Both at best are treated to back handed compliments, and perhaps that IS what they deserve in terms of their looks. But regardless of how one judges their looks, both structures are masterful in their processional aspects.
I actually think what led to the unfortunate proliferation of McMansions was not just easy money and baby boom affluence primed by globalization. These boomers were looking desparately for the processional in their housing that was built in and taken for granted in earlier housing dramatized in a lot of TV shows of their childhoods. Most persons look at McMansions and scorn their excess of space and their tacky aesthetics, but I see exaggerations of the two-story, TV houses of the 60s--Beaver's house, Donna Stone's house, and David and Ricky Nelson's house. Home is not just where the heart is. Home is where the procession was thought possible to be. Home was where the idealized, immaculately coiffed housewives with strings of pearls and tight-laced waists descended or ascended democratically grand stair cases to nurture adolescents through childhood's vissisitudes. It was where impossibly beautiful, but virginal girls descended stairs to go to proms and so on.
The ranch house, expecially modernist intepretations of the ranch house, for all its practical virtues, is processionally barren.
McMansions were a reach, albeit a kind of pathetic one, toward the processional in architecture.
So was gentrification (i.e., rehabbing) of old houses and commercial buildings.
Pt. 2...
Boomers suffering through day after day after day of work glass box sterility, of the dread cubicle, of all that was bad with modern (and only infrequently with what was good with modern), and then finding themselves next straight jacked in the worst of modern transposed with vacuous, vapid ornamentation and cynicism called PoMo, retreated to their houses for comfort and protection from the commercial and governmental world, just like a bunch of Frank Lloyd Wrights without his taste or design skills. And they built these McMansion fortresses against the hideous lack of the processional in both Modern and the Post Modern. Pathetically, perhaps, they defaulted to a tele-memory of what they wished their own childhoods had had and what they wished their adult world had.
Wouldn't it have been nice if modern architecture had embraced the processional the way Frank Lloyd Wright kept pointing the way toward? He built it into every building of his I have experienced. I have even begun to think that he built the Guggeheim, a building so brutal he HAD to be making a point: its the procession, you dummies! Don't you get it after all of my buildings? Alright, I'll build you one of these horribly brutal structures you seem to insist on viewing as the only thing modern can be, and then I will make it so processional that even you fools won't be able to overlook it.
Maybe had we gotten the message of the processional, all of the McMansions today would be superbly designed modernist structures that really advanced the quality and utility of homes, rather than just the bunch of gingerbread grotesques that they are.
Johnson's IDE Center
Now that we got the lecture, here's one of Johnson's most famous buildings
http://www.ids-center.com/
The ranch house, expecially m...
The ranch house, expecially modernist interpretations of the ranch house, for all its practical virtues, is processionally barre
check out the new book on Cliff May The modern Ranch House by Daniel Gregory maybe you wont feel this way after looking at the book
Does every society get the...
Does every society get the architecture it deserves? Pretty cynical but a greedy society wanting instant gratification will allways find it hard to build much more than rubbish, with an exhasuting array of finishes and materials available its hard to get harmony.
A restrained palate!
There is an island somewhere where the only choice the villagers have is what colour to paint their front doors, I think its in their constitution, not sure.
LRF,
Will...
LRF,
Will do.
Heath,
I do believe every place gets the kind of architecture its combination of resources, rules, ethics and tastes make feasible. I view human communities as ecologies, or less abstractly in the vein of Michel de Montaigne, who I am reading presently and finding stimulating, reefs.
Some communities thrive on choice. Others on its elegant diminution. There are many ways to commune.
There is little doubt, however, that good and bad solutions can be obscured by too much chaos, or too little.
We need just the right amount of chaos. 🙂
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