Musings on Architecture, Urbanism, Politics, Economics and Religion.
When my older brother was going to college in San Antonio, he would mention to me a particular architect that had designed much of the campus. During my visits, I found each of the buildings to be of distinctive modern design and the spaces between them intimate in scale and responsive to the steep site. My brother praised the quality of the architecture by this apparently celebrated designer, O'Neil Ford, and continues to insist to this day that it was one of the most beautiful environments he had ever lived in. I had never heard of this architect, and I would soon forget about him until a couple of years later, he had me visit a house that belonged to a family whose son he was tutoring. There was a particular crispness to the exterior sillhouette, fine detailing and an original palette of materials and finishes. Inside, the rooms were layed out along a hallway gallery, which functioned as an strong axial spine permitting uninterrupted views of a beautiful large garden beyond. Sure enough, this handsome home was an O'Neil Ford design, which thus piqued my curiosity about the man and his buildings that would endear to my continuing interest in how local and and global influences could interact in a meaningful way.
ic corporate pioneers in its trademark industries of oil, retail and microchips. He would lecture and teach at the most celebrated architecture schools, and would even serve on arts commissions under president Lyndon Johnson. San Antonio's skyline would be indistiguishable without its 750 foot tall Tower of the Americas, which Ford designed as part of the 1968 World's Fair. Great swaths of historic building fabric that help make San Antonio the most picturesque city in the state were preserved by Ford's important advocacy. He introduced innovative structural systems to buildings, exploring the possibilities of thin-shell concrete and paraboloid roofs for industrial and civic buildings, including some of the most elegant laboratories for Texas Instruments.
cultural life (eg. Williamsburg), La Villita was to be integrated into San Antonio's cutlural life and produce artifacts that would help define the city's identity. There was little desire to recreate the look and feel of a place a specific point in time. Instead, the district would serve as an architectural panorama of the passing of time, emphasizing the evolving spirit of the diverse inhabitants and their affect on the built fabric. Ford's guiding reason for the district's redevelopment was "not archaeological-but rather attempt to preserve the spirit of architecture that is Texan". 
In either the modernist or historicist mode, there seems to be an unfortunately tragic sense of cultural confidence. We are either anybody or we are somebody else, anywhere or and somewhere else, but never are we confident enough to reflect who we really are. An architecture that celebrates place and demonstrates a connection to its passage of time is therefore an affirmative act that will ensure the survival of a people's identity in the future. O'Neil Ford, along with his other global contemporaries trying to define a regional response to Moderism, serves as a model towards generating authentic solutions to modern problems that effectively preserves an authentic identity and spirit in the face of changing times. The practice of historic preservation and adaptive reuse is also signicant in achieving a cultural confidence through time, since one should never forget who they are and where they have been. Far from being a reactionary and defensive response to progressive calls for 'change' the appreciation of tradition as it has evolved in time encourages originality, spirituality and an overall depth that is sorely lacking in much our modern world. 
In many ways, religion exists in America as marketplace. We have the freedom to pick and choose what we like about it, and what we don't, and we shop and buy accordingly. Its moralism is, one might argue, deeply stained into the fabric, the culture of America, and this is most apparent by what a "religious" country America is. America is far from morally perfect, but it can be a convincing argument that much of America is a morally positive place with a strong religious component. But, without borrowing from pietist or legalist strains, and without trying to ride too proudly on my high horse, I wonder how deeply that religion runs. It often just feels like a superficial clothing to an otherwise secular body, a moral garment to a wordly wardrobe. 
If it is not obvious to most people already, there is no doubt: the current economic recession has had devastating consequences to the building trades, in particular architects. As any of my colleagues can tell you, our profession is very sensitive to economic cycles, and a feeling of vulnerability accompanies us throughout our careers. Being laid off multiple times is not unusual (sometimes it's seen as a right of passage) and is one of the reasons people leave the practice of architecture in droves in favor of something more economically immune and higher-paying. Once an economic recovery is underway, firms suddenly realize that the pool of employable talent is remarkably thin, as the previous downturn harvested some of the best and brightest towards other more productive endeavours. In a perverse way, part of one's advancement in the profession is therefore to simply stick it out by working one's way up the ladder as vacancies are left unfilled.It is implied that high-budget private commissions unleash the baser instincts from high profile architects, while injections of government policy and its attendant largesse will naturally bring out our more noble, and thus better, selves. Government is seen in this context to be the great arbiter of what 'matters', since private investors with the free-market system puts too low a price tag (which translates into mattering little) on things that are highly valuable (in a cultural and political sense) to the community at large. Government involvement in the construction businesses is lauded by many architects, since it allows for an ideal harmony between one's professional duty and his desire to insert himself in helping solve the supposed social or environmental problems.
Not enough of this was happening in during the recent global real-estate bubble, apperently. At at time when architecture firms around the world were swimming in private cash flows and freer than any prior time to push the envelope, the profession's leading lights failed to deliver. Or so it would seem from a blog post's comment about the quality of architecture of the first decade of the 21st century:
Take this article from New York Magazine on the architecture of the last building boom. None of it is great. I don't think any of it is good. Most of it is mediocre. A lot of it is awful. Architects not only got drunk on the methylated spirits of the last building boom, they went blind as a result. As a historian I seem virtually nothing of worth in this decade. Recently I had to give a lecture on the architecture of network society and I found plenty of it by OMA, MVRDV, Herzog and de de Meuron, FOA, and others. Unfortunately all of it was from the last century. Am I getting old? I ask my younger friends and they can't identify anything good new either. CCTV? That is a sad joke, an example of a once great architect doing a lousy imitation of Peter Eisenman for an evil client. I can't take it seriously. Good thing Corb never worked for Mussolini. You can only imagine what he would have done. Overexposed and uninteresting, I predict CCTV will sink like a rock. Gehry hasn't made a single good building since Bilbao, although he has built some unbelievably awful structures at MIT and on the West Side Highway. Herzog and de Meuron are boring beyond belief. I guess whatever talent worked for them in the 1990s went its own way. It's bad out there.
While I will admit that I have become over time more and more bored by the current architectural output that graces the magazines, I don't think it's fair to judge their merit until time and critical distance have had a chance to inflate (or deflate) their significance. The author does seem to suggest that the past decade's building boom seems to have clouded the judgment of these highly-regarded designers. Almost all of the architects mentioned above experienced tremendous growth in the number of staff, the variety of building types and services offered in the last ten years. Once they had won praise for a singular project (often realized during times of financial struggle within the firm) that would eternally cement their worldwide reputation for the rest of their career, these top designers aggressively tried to grow their practice to enable them to tackle even more opportunities that were previously closed to them. Their studio-like practice soon became a business, catering to an endless train of foreign and institutional clients that would require sustaining large teams of designers and builders. This development, however, often risked diluting what made the firm distinctive in the first place.
Had the leaders of such reputable firms refused to grow in this manner and instead focused exclusively on government or institutional projects, which are often awarded by competitions, they would no doubt be much smaller. Fewer architects would be employed by them and with it fewer young minds being offered the opportunity to learn from masters and participate in sophisticated design practices. Granted, firms shouldn't exist simply to provide jobs to those who want one. Rather they exist as a manifestation of the designer's core values. It's just that often this admirable loyalty to core values makes pursuing architecture career much less accessible for many people. It is not a coincidence that countries in which the state is a major client coupled with a comparatively weak private sector (eg. France, Spain, Germany, Japan, Finland, etc.) are home to some of the world's most celebrated firms, which not known for their volume of work but for their discipline in taking the time to do quality work. They are also places where many bright young people who prepared themselves for an architecture career face very limited opportunities. The few who are fortunate to practice do so with the likelihood of meager financial gain and fragile job stability. The rest go to the U.S or the U.K. to work for corporate firms that will sponsor their visas.
With private commissions drying up and in the spirit of times we live in, many architects are looking forward to a sort of government bailout for themselves. As part of his strategy to stimulate a weak economy, the incoming President Obama proposes massive infrastructure spending, which includes increasing efficiencies in government buildings by making them greener and in promoting alternative energy sources. By way of either massive deficit spending or by printing more money (inflation), many architects are elated that federal money will be headed their way not only to stabilize their shrinking practices, butalso to put their talents to more virtuous uses. They recall fondly of the Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal programs, in particular make-work programs such as the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and how it yielded elegant federal buildings, stunning infrastructure projects (Grand Coulee Dam and TVA) and beloved monuments. While the New Deal policies of the Great Depresssion did help foster memborable works of architecture, the historical record shows that it failed in reducing permanent unemployment and had a negative effect on economic growth. The more recent example of Japan during its "Lost Decade" of the 1990s is evidence that a massive program of public works projects throughout the decade delayed its economic recovery for more than ten years. Sure such Japanese luminaries like Tadao Ando, Shigeru Ban and Arata Isozaki were able to benefit and create some spectacular institutional buildings with all the government largesse available to them, but at great cost to the overall dynamism of the Japanese economy.
The main reason major public works campaigns fail to generate a meaningful stimulative effect is that they fail to allocate resources and capital efficiently. By taking capital away from the more efficient and accountable private sector (tax collections) and transfering to the most inefficient and unaccountable player in our economy (the government), productivity declines and with it economic growth. The free market is the most efficient way to choose winners and losers, between those that fulfill real needs and others that don't, in spite of other important, yet uneconomic, values. A market interfered heavily by the government yields the opposite result, since government, blinded by political gain and philosophical idealism, chooses winners that should often be the losers (Big Three auto bailout, anyone?). Thus our national competitiveness is futher compromised and growth languishes from the declining productivity of enterprises that would not survive without the state propping them up.
But who said that architects behave as homo economicus? For many among us, the quality of the built environment is of paramount importance and is always in need of an enlightened architectural response. It transcends concerns about monetary policy, pricing mechanisms, market values, interest rates--things that, though difficult to understand, tend to make the world go round. There is an admirable moralism that drives the agenda of many architects which unfortunately isolates them from a healthy curiosity in the inner workings of systems that govern how money moves around and how goods and services are exchanged. It's the reason why many of the prescriptions we give to solve urban problems tend to fail, favoring the directness of inefficient subsidies over the indirect yet more bountiful result of long-term profitability. It is also the reason why many architects tend to favor top-down solutions, that, while enabling the construction of what they would prefer, has the effect of making the practice a studio (which are economically difficult to sustain) instead of a business (which are structured to be economically viable-or at least try to be).
Just as the political winds maybe shifting in the midst this deep recession, leaders in the architectural profession will have to decide what policies they want and how to structure their firms accordingly. Should we continue to make the practice of architecture profitable and viable way for many people to have fulfilling careers and answering to real economic needs, or should we emulate the studio model that relies on government patronage, closed to only the most elitely talented and self-sacrificing individuals who often deliver delightful buildings no economic value? Architecture salaries grew at the fastest rate in the last decade due to the real-estate bubble. Is this trend worth abandoning so that we can make buildings for the "greater good" even as it impoverishes us?
UPDATE: Further reinforcing my argument that economic downturns encourage designers, rather than the opposite, take a look at this article in the New York Times.
There are times when all one can do is remark at the rareness of freedom. For so long I have taken it for granted. But the more history I read, the more impressed I am with the American experiment, its founders, and most of all, its success. Freedom actually worked here, even while it has failed so often amid power grabs, ego and corruption. The basic statements worded so well by Jefferson, that men have certain inalienable rights, should never be assumed, as long as there is any chance someone can gain at someone else's expense. I feel quite fortunate that I have been able to take such freedom for granted, and freely experience, as much as I've been willing to venture, the fullness humanity has to offer. 
This was the first year that KRob accepted international entries. Jungsoo Kim of South Korea won the ignaugural International prize with his series of renderings depicting an enormous fissure breaking open the ground plane to reveal an oversized man-made canyon. Some of the perspectives inside the fissure remind me of the parting of the red sea in the film "The Ten Commandments" only with more haze and and softer light. If you look at the top left corner of the drawing there is a temple complex at the end of the fissure's axis, indicating the space's function as a part of a spiritual procession. The earth is rendered powerfully here, and reminds us of our inevitable becoming a part of it upon our deaths. Glowing lights beaming out of from the surface add a magical quality to the drawing's overall expression.
In the hand-drawing category, the jurors were impressed by the winning professional entry by Scott Tulay which interprets the phenomena of light, shade and structure. The blue, black and grey charcoal palette helped emphasize the contrast light and mass, while the composition of intersecting beams and framing elements abstracted the reality of the interior of a barn or warehouse into a rich yet haunting spatial pattern. Tulay's drawing does recall in my mind the Cubist paintings of the early twentieth century, which attempted to reveal a more abstract and universal reality.
and over to give the drawing a sense of time in space. The smeared graphite sprinkled over the page (likely the result of dirty parallel bar wheels) is evidence of Mr. Sander's patient yet positively 'fussy' attempt put seemingly disparate elements into a whole. What the relationship was between the sheds and the tower (and that dog!) spurred lengthy debate , and made the drawing and example of how the story or its ambiguous meanings gave it special meaning beyond its common technique.
uturistic blimps, the hive-like vegetated hillsides of densely packed dwellings and the buzzing human activity at the landing strips are just a few of many different elements that encourages the viewer to immerse themselves in another reality. Influences from science-fiction movies are obvious, and it turns out that the drawing is part of a visulization for a film project. It reminds us that one of the major objectives of an architectural rendering is not necessarily to depict a future building as realistically as possible in its given context, but rather to offer a glimpse of a more inspiring reality once the building is fully realized.
the jurors uncovered and were impressed by the drawing's complexity of information. With the manyfold effects of this drawing revealing itself with each glance, and from the breadth of discussion it stimulated among the jurors, Mr. Shigeta's urban diagram was awarded the KRob's Best of Show. 
The result did not necessarily mean that the jurors decided to embrace the new. Each of the three jurors could choose a personal citation of a work that they felt strongly about. Two of the jurors selected works especially for their deference to traditional delineation. Dawn Carlson's watercolor of a Gothic church harkens back to the refined compositional drawings of the Beaux-Arts cu
rriculum that were prevalent in all architecture schools before the onset of Modernism. The flat, non-perspectival picture of a city by J. Arthur Liu emulates the Oriental artistic tradition of depicting cities from above, which functioned as a sort of map of the area, and were featured in books, murals, and tapestries. For its incorporation of a technology unrelated to architectural drawing, Richie Gelles' entry showing a series of X-Ray slides describing his concept for a hospital won the admiration of the jury. 
Overall, the winners of this year's competition were a diverse group. The jury was often split on many of the selected finalists, and often the debates about why they chose one over another were passionate. The value of these debates can not be overstated, and it is the desire of the organizers of the competition to create a more accessible forum for all to participate in the dialogue regarding the changes affecting architectural drawing. The success of the Ken Roberts Competition is critical to the continuation of this dialogue, and it invites all students and professionals to contribute. 
This past election put two different personalities and two different generations on a stage for all to see. On the one hand was the old-school John McCain, the grumpy maverick who seemed glaringly inflexible and at times repetitive. On the other was the "coolest" politician since JFK, someone who appealed to young voters and monopolize the issue of change. Barrack Obama epitomizes, and personifies, so many of the values that have come to define almost two generations: flexibility, open-minded, post-racial, post-partisan, maybe even post-American. Scores of Americans are over the past, over history, or at least over a sense of history. Since American history is mostly negative, they might say, it's time to move on to bigger and brighter things. In that regard, McCain never had a chance. Even though he has been a rare individual among the groupthink in D.C., he was a product of a bygone generation that most young Americans would prefer stay that way: gone.
As a simple intellectual exercise, I’d like to quibble about semantics. Just in case your ears didn’t perk when Barrack Obama said the above statement in a previous presidential debate, I wanted to draw attention to a fundamental understanding of what a “right” is. No matter where we stand on the political side of things, I think this is a question worth asking and answering, from a philosophical viewpoint. When asked if healthcare was a right, Obama responded, “Well, I think it should be a right for every American.” So the question for me is, “Should healthcare be a right?” Or, “Is it already a right?” The questions are entirely different. If he had said “Healthcare is a right” instead of “Healthcare should be a right,” I might disagree in the end, but wouldn’t be as perturbed. 
I have the good fortune of being married to someone who spent several years of her life growing up in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. This is good for a number of reasons, but mainly it was a good excuse to vacation in the beautiful mountains of Arkansas and to see the famous Thorncrown Chapel designed by E. Fay Jones. Sharing a blog with an architect, and stumbling across pictures of Thorncrown via the Internet made seeing the chapel top priority.
The fragility is especially appealing as religion itself is as a fragile enterprise. Religion is dependent in very real ways on the duel saintly and sinful natures of its participants and leaders. History displays serious religious scars, and ultimately what holds the Church together is the fragile faith and hope of a people who believe in a god as yet unseen. Thorncrown seems to welcome this fragility. In a culture where Christians can be zealous, proud and arrogant, Thorncrown ignores that hubris and admits that believers walk by a fragile, but steady faith. The architecture of the self-assured is bulky, dated, and gaudy. It projects certainty, not vulnerability. Thorncrown is, as faith often is, hard to nail down, and hard to know where to begin. It's just there, and even though a whisper of doubt could knock it all down, it holds in spite of looking weak from the outside.
to observe the dependent and interlocking nature of the beams as a reflection of the Christian community itself. I'll just say that what I found particularly impressive was its openness, openness to the outside world, and seemingly, whatever may come its way. There is a place for strong, dramatic and safe religious architecture to convey the strength, certainty and finality of the god we worship. But Thorncrown acts as a reminder that there is also a place for delicacy and fragility, feelings the faithful know all-too-well over the course of a religious life.
Agitate. That’s the key word to understanding what I’ll call classical community organizing. “Community Organizing” is a relatively generic term and can mean a plethora of different things to different people. It’s also a term that has bounced around quite a bit in the past few months, now that Barrack Obama’s history as a community organizer has come to light and become evidence of his leadership experience. But while the term is relatively generic, Obama comes from a peculiar school of community organizing, one I’ve been somewhat exposed to firsthand.
The fact that “reality television” has taken over primetime airwaves isn’t a comment on how much television has changed, but a reflection on our growing interest in personalities. We no longer need to gossip about others in our neighborhood or church to get our nosy fix. Cable television has given us permission to be as nosy as we want, all from the comfort and safety of our living room. We can look as deeply as we like into a vast array of personalities. And not just a bunch of Everyman or Everywoman’s on an island anymore, either. Now we can delve into the personalities of glue sniffers, adulterers, the rich and aloof in Orange County, bounty hunters, former WWF stars (pretty much anything from the 80s is cool again), and of course, your average working stiffs like me who manage to get on television for about 10 of their 15 minutes before executives realize how boring we are. 
After countless months of delay, I got around to watching the recent German award-winning film, The Lives of Others. Relievedebtor had already seen it long ago and wrote a post examining the psychological aspects of Communist totalitarianism portrayed in the film. I was more interested in its depiction of life in East Germany, having lived there for a year not long after the country's reunification. I had already watched a more nostalgic treatment of the subject in Goodbye Lenin!, a somewhat humorous German film in which a young man tries to recreate the look and feel of living in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) so that her mother, who was a radically dedicated citizen to the Communist regime before falling into a coma during fall of the Berlin Wall, would not suffer a fatal nervous breakdown. It was overall an endearing movie which provided a gentle introduction to life in that era for those living outside of it. It did not attempt to examine deeply the long list of injustices that occured at the time, but was rather a sympathetic portrayal of the mundane lifestyle that East German citizens adjusted themselves to.
Despite all the equality they were supposed to have enjoyed a few years before, the rush to bring color and freshness to their lives suggests that they weren't necessarily at ease back then. Inserting beauty in our surrounding seems to be a universal thing we humans do to make things feel whole again, and to expand our purpose in life beyond political ideology. To deny this fundamental need to people speaks of totalitarian socialism's inhumanity.
