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Green Building, Red Tape
Some colleges have decided to build sustainably but skip costly LEED certification. (Photo courtesy Northern Arizona U.)
Princeton Review Will Issue 'Green' Ratings in Coming College Guide
Guest Blogger: Xarissa Holdaway
Unconsciously, many universities follow smart-growth principles
Guest Blogger: Lawrence Speck
A few words in praise of Modern buildings (a few of them, at least)
Other News
Thieves hit U. of Michigan Stadium Construction Site
Jahn's Library Dome at U. of Chicago: Elegant Minimalism or Self-Indulgent Object?
Anticipation Builds for U. of Louisville Health Research Facility
New campus buildings
Multimedia
Modernism in Albany
(An audio slide show)
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About Buildings & Grounds
Buildings & Grounds is written by Scott Carlson (left) and Lawrence Biemiller (right). Scott Carlson writes about architecture, facilties, energy, and sustainability, among other topics. Lawrence Biemiller writes about architecture and facilities and contributes to Notes from Academe. What's happening on your campus? Let us know.
Don't Be So Quick to Knock Down Modernist Architecture
Love it? Hate it? Either way, Modernist architecture — like Edward Durell Stone’s work at the State U. of New York at Albany — is an essential part of American architectural history. (Chronicle photo by Lawrence Biemiller)
Midcentury modern architecture certainly has its detractors. The architecture critic Catesby Leigh has been pushing his alma mater, Princeton University, to give up modern design and return to traditional forms. “Everyone — aside from most architects — is just coming around to the fact that traditional architecture works better than Modernist architecture,” he told the Yale University student newspaper recently. “Marci,” a frequent Buildings & Grounds commenter, never passes up an opportunity to slam Modernist architecture on this blog. “Modern architecture looks great until the morning,” she once wrote.
But hold on. Midcentury modern has reached that unloved age that all architectural styles pass through — and midcentury modern will pass through it too. Let’s not forget that when Modernist buildings were going up, all of those antique architectural styles that are so beloved now were considered by many to be outdated and overly ornate. In the era of urban renewal and at other points in our history, we tore them down, and now we regret it. Will the same thing happen to modern architecture?
Lawrence Cheek, in an article in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, raises the question of what to do with these buildings, a good number of which can be found on college campuses, thanks to a postwar building boom.
Don’t be so fast to knock them down, he says. “Here’s a basic truth about architecture: A style is almost always held in contempt by the children of the generation that produced it” he explains. “It’s the grandchildren who finally begin to treasure it.”
We should even keep some of the mistakes, he says: “Most of these midcentury movements led to dead ends. The minimalist International Style offered too few possibilities in form, surface, and decorative detail to sustain interest, and Formalism buckled under the dead weight of its own empty pretensions. Brutalism never enjoyed any affection outside the architectural journals. But their disgrace is actually a reason in itself to preserve some monuments of Modernism.”
Scott Carlson | Tuesday April 29, 2008 | Permalink | Contact usComments
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Modern architecture is to architecture what professional wrestling is to sports — money making but fake, sometimes entertaining in the cotton candy sense but ultimately lacking any substance or merit. Woody Allen had it right 20+ years ago in Sleeper — modern art and architecture is mostly trash.
— Bob Sarbane Apr 29, 03:48 PM #
I couldn’t agree more with this article. SUNY Albany, seen in the accompanying photograph, has been almost universally disparaged, but I’ve always thought it was beautiful. I am apparently one of the few who still appreciates the optimism, simplicity, and the love of light and grand space that modernist architecture represents.
Fortunately, I believe that the style will come back into vogue before the greatest works of Philip Johnson, Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, etc. are torn down. When they were built, architectural critics generally hated the twin towers of the World Trade Center. However, after they were gone, the architectural historians waxed poetically about the missing icons of the NYC skyline.
— Dan Apr 29, 04:20 PM #
Thankfully this is simply a blog entry – a subjective, point of view piece on aesthetics. The facts about modernist contributions to domestic architecture, its roll in the US’s 20th century population, cultural and academic-setting explosion(s) tell quite a different story.
— ModernSanDiego.Com May 2, 10:50 AM #