Work 2.0–smell the sawdust

“Knowledge workers,” according to the conventional wisdom, are America’s ticket to prosperity and happiness in the 21st century. Armed with graduate degrees in obscure scientific, technological and financial subjects, these new workers will sit at computers endlessly reinventing the world as we know it, adding “value” to products and services, and generating billions in new wealth.

Why then, are so many younger people jumping off the bandwagon and starting small handicraft businesses? Why has “homemade” music entered the lexicon of popular culture? Why do many sustainability gurus advocate low tech, handmade solutions?

To those of us who deal with craftsmanship and handwork as a matter of course, the answer is simple–people need to feel connected to the things they produce. This principle guided the leaders of the Arts & Crafts movement over a century ago. It has come to mean more to today’s disaffected workers as the bubble economy fades each week amidst concerns about job security. This week’s New York Times Magazine legitimized this trend with an article by Matthew B. Crawford, a young man with a Ph.D. who works as a motorcycle mechanic and loves his job.

“The trades suffer from low prestige,” he writes, “and I believe this is based on a simple mistake. Because the work is dirty, many people assume it is also stupid. This is not my experience.” Crawford’s positive experience is a revelation only because our society has so skewed the relationship between work and what John Dewey called “the materials of life.” As children proceed in school, their learning takes them further and further from the hands-on joys of things like gardening, woodworking, household arts, and mechanical repairs. By the time our children reach college, they have been brainwashed into believing that working with their hands is a low class option. Even when they see plumbers, stone carvers and woodworkers earning higher wages than they do, they persist in reaching for “knowledge work.”

This situation contributes to a sickness in our society. People in all walks of life are suffering from anxiety, low self esteem, despair over their future, and a general malaise in the workplace. Especially among the so-called working class and recent immigrants, the misplaced desire for betterment through “higher” education robs children of their natural intelligence when they are discouraged from working with their hands.

There is only one college in the United States devoted solely to the building trades–The American College of Building Arts in Charleston, S.C. Europe has myriad schools of this kind, and children there find alternative courses that lead to jobs in the culinary arts, handicrafts and other endeavors that do not require advanced degrees. It is time that American educators recognized the need for such avenues to self-fulfillment. Perhaps with the demise of Wall Street, we will wake up and smell the sawdust.

Renzo Piano, stealth classicist

The opening of Renzo Piano’s new Modern Art wing at the Art Institute of Chicago has won him another rave from critics throughout the U.S. Even the New York Times’s Nicolai Ouroussoff, generally a curmudgeon when it comes to Piano’s work, granted him a positive nod. His only complaint was that the country was feeling the effects of “Renzo Piano fatigue” as a result of his slew of recent commissions  in America. Why should this be the case?

Piano is a suave, cultured and disciplined designer who engenders confidence in institutional clients, both in the U.S. and abroad. His success is  hard won and, in my view, entirely deserved. While other international starchitects like Daniel Liebeskind, Rem Koohaas, and Zaha Hadid plop their trademark works in cities, expecting adulation for ignoring their local audience and trashing the urban environment, Piano carefully knits his buildings into the fabric of the places he encounters. While there is a superficial similarity to his work–most buildings are light, glassy and structurally innovative–he tries, sometimes to a fault, to find a balance between his interventions and the character of the buildings which set the stage for the new work. This is true at the Morgan Library entrance pavilion, which must attach to three disparate urban buildings (including the greatest classical building in New York–Charles McKim’s original library of 1909). It is also true of his California Academy of Science in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, a building that effortlessly includes an older Beaux Arts museum into a larger new facility while providing numerous sustainable systems that make the structure as contemporary as possible. His light, beautiful, and classical museum so outshines its clumsy Herzog & DeMeuron neighbor (the De Young) that visitors may wonder how the Swiss architects were ever considered for their commission at all.

There are moments when one architect achieves a pre-eminent position in the global marketplace, often because his work strikes a chord with stylemakers, critics and politicians. This was the case with Frank Gehry around the time of his Disney hall and Guggenheim Bilbao projects. It was surely the case when Louis Kahn unveiled his brilliant Kimball museum and Salk Center designs. Today’s master builder is Renzo Piano, an architect who has found a contemporary answer to the world’s need for a classical balance and assurance amidst chaos and uncertainty. He has made his mark quietly, largely without pandering to avant-garde critics, and the patronage network has responded with the best institutional commissions of the last decade. On balance, Piano has given us work that will outlast the flash-in-the-pan quasi-sculptures of Gehry, and perhaps rival the serene masterpieces of Kahn. That is an achievement worth celebrating, and Americans should be pleased with their good fortune and good judgment in choosing an architect of such gifts.

There goes the neighborhood

This week’s  New  York Times featured two disturbing articles that reinforce points made in earlier posts on this blogsite. Both suggest that the built environment of New York City, its wonderful urban fabric and historic neighborhoods, is not getting the attention it deserves from those who design and govern it. Santiago Calatrava’s transit hub for the World Trade Center site, years in design, has been beaten to death by bureaucrats eager to cut costs and improve anti-terrorist features. The Spanish architect works best when he is given relatively free reign, and this work shows him at his worst (as Nicolai Ouroussoff rightly points out). Give the Port Authority and the city government an “F” on this one. The WTC/Ground Zero site was the last best chance for the city to create a significant urban design with monumental features and parks. That chance is gone now.

On the other side of Manhattan, the neighborhoods that comprise an expanded South Village historic district bordering the Lower East Side, have fared no  better in the hands of the Landmark’s Preservation Commission. For two years the LPC has dragged its feet on scheduling hearings to designate the new historic district. Meanwhile, at least three of the area’s most important historic structures have either been demolished by greedy developers or renovated unsympathetically, voiding their significance. Robin Pogrebin has been following the controversy, and her story paints a depressing picture of the machinations of the one civic organization that is supposed to protect the neighborhoods of America’s greatest city. The LPC is letting the foxes in the henhouse; be afraid.

General Motors and the University

I spent almost 15 years in academia, teaching graduate and undergraduate architecture students at three universities as a full-time professor. When I left full-time teaching, I was convinced that the system I helped sustain was broken beyond repair. Today’s New York Times Op-Ed page confirms my assessment. Everyone who cares about higher education should read Mark C. Taylor’s brilliant condemnation of the American system: “End the University as We Know It.”

Taylor has made a name for himself as one of the most far reaching scholars in America, writing books on many topics including architecture, death, literature, and philosophy. He doesn’t teach in any of those fields. In fact, he is chair of the religion department at Columbia. At Williams College, where he spent most of his career, he pioneered interdisciplinary methods of teaching and research. Taylor is a polymath and a generalist in a field of myopic specialists, a breath of fresh air in the stuffiest of disciplines.

I have often thought that the American university was similar in its intransigience to General Motors. Both institutions have operated for decades on an unsustainable model, resisting change at every level, ensuring jobs for life for professors and line workers, and chasing immediate cash rather than looking to the furture health of the institution. Taylor agrees: “Graduate education is the Detroit of higher learning.” His prescription for improving the university is to dismantle the entire system and rebuild it from the bottom up. Can we do for the University of Michigan what we are about to do for Chrysler? Well, as anyone who has spent time in an academic department will tell you, changing things at Chrysler will seem like a picnic compared to restructuring a modern universtity.

Nevertheless, it is clear that if the U.S. intends to create a future that ensures prosperity and a high standard of living for its children, the university system will have to change, and change drastically. Taylor has six bitter pills that no college president will want to swallow. The last, and most important is: “Impose mandatory retirement and abolish tenure.” You can bet that Taylor will be getting some cold stares at the next faculty meeting. If you think that the ire of displaced automobile workers is hot, try dealing with the resentment of an aging full professor who loses his corner office and graduate assistant. It’s really ugly.

An Escape Pod by the Blobmaster

[Previous versions of this blog were incomplete]

I never cease to be amazed at the paucity of real domestic architecture that is published in the home design issues of the New York Times Magazine. Last Sunday’s issue was even more disappointing than usual, with nary a feature on what most Americans choose to call their houses–whether apartments, townhomes or single family dwellings. Pages and pages of advertising make a concerted effort to sell home products to consumers, but the writers and editors find it beneath themselves to actually acknowledge the taste of their readers. Avant-garde design continues to be their target, even when examples of this elusive animal are scarce.

Leave it to those editors, and to Nicolai Oroussoff, to pick one of the most inept examples of single family house design ever published in the Times–a small residence in California by the vaunted master of “blobitecture,” Greg Lynn. Does the house resemble the free form globules that are Lynn’s trademark? No, it is a rather boring box with a large translucent window on one end. The rooms inside and the plan suggest the work of a first-year architecture student at a small midwestern college. Lynn has, according to Ouroussoff, turned his back on building any of his work so as not to sully its purity and computerized wizardry. In his forties, the “young” architect has built nothing of consequence. Add this ineffectual building to his oeuvre.

How did Mr. Lynn, the purist, get the commission? An employee of his firm married a rich Hollywood film maker and became both the project manager and the client, a convenient arrangement. What kind of budget did he have? Almost unlimited it appears, with the added perk that the interiors would be hung with obscenely expensive contemporary art.  And the furnishings? Most are built in and made of Corian, a material that sane architects refuse to consider these days (it’s petroleum based, expensive, and mainly used as faux stone). Some pieces echo the classics of trendy mid-century modern designers–Charles and Ray Eames, Eero Saarinen, and Florence Knoll.

Apparently oblivious to the irony of his commentary, Ouroussoff admits that Lynn’s little plaything is “a nice if cautious work,” “a perfect little fairy tale,” and “an exercise in good taste and high craftsmanship”–all comments that should make a design hipster want to vomit. You can hear Lynn’s student admirers running for the exits. Where is the edge, the shock value, the perversity that made Lynn a superstar for a few months in the late ’90s?

Grasping at straws, the critic and the magazine are more or less admitting that this article, and the house it puports to critique, have been “placed” by a public relations agent for the client and his architect. (Remind you of Architectural Digest during the Bush years?) Even Ouroussoff, clearly an admirer of Lynn’s work, can’t bring himself to drink the Koolaide and dole out the proper adulatory prose. The bathroom cabinetry “speaks of luxury,” the child’s  bedroom is Spielbergesque, as in “E.T. phone home.” The ultimate put-down for a shock-jock architect? “Rather than confront uncomfortable realities,” [Lynn's house] is “designed to insulate us from them.” Didn’t we just elect a president who promised to bring us back to reality after years of delusion? It now appears that “blobs and shards” were just the flip side of an architecture of escape, little different in psychological terms from their doppelgangers, the Disney-theme-park houses of those Wall Street derivative kings we’d like to tar and feather.

Nostalgia, drug of the unwashed masses

Well, Nicolai Ouroussoff has now decided to take on baseball fans, after aiming his critical jabs at museum goers, preservationists, and virtually every citizen in New York. The New York Times architecture critic offered his assessment of the city’s two new baseball stadiums in time for opening day, and had little good to say about either one. Both, he opined, were dragged down by their obeisance to “nostalgia,” his term for everything that is wrong with contemporary architecture. Never mind that baseball is America’s most tradition-bound sport, and that both Yankee Stadium and Shea Stadium had seen their fair share of sports history through the years. History, it appears, has no place in serious architecture.

“American stadium design has been stuck in a nostalgic funk,” wrote the critic, “with sports franchises recycling the same old images year after year.” His view of the generally acclaimed turn towards “old fashioned” baseball parks with the Camden Yards design by HOK Sport about a decade ago was the same as his view of most American architecture–the Baltimore stadium was an example of populist design that eschews the avant garde in favor of mass appeal. Lowbrow culture was dragging down the quality of sports architecture as it had the rest of the public realm.

This kind of elitism has been the posture of “progressive” architects and critics for more than a century, and it led to the kind of cold, indifferent stadiums that are now being demolished throughout the world. The sporting public, at least those who cared enough about their teams to buy season tickets, demanded a more intimate and evocative environment in which to enjoy their hard-won leisure time. Down went multi-purpose stadiums in Houston, Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Cleveland and many other top sports venues, replaced by special venues for baseball, football and soccer. Fans loved the “new-old” look in many of these parks, and owners made significant profit from an increase in corporate boxes.

Of course, the age of excess that we have just left behind fueled some rather grandiose and wasteful spending on mega-stadiums for owners like George Steinbrenner and the partners in the New York Giants franchise. Old Yankee Stadium might well have been saved with Fenway Park had Steinbrenner not needed his puffed up revenue to buy more aging talent. The money and the architecture were tangentially related, as is often the case.

“Nostalgia,” a buzz word like “theme park architecture,” has taken on a new significance in cultural criticism of the kind practiced by Ouroussoff and many highbrow architects. Its mere invocation is meant to swipe away all pretense of design quality. A society infected by a desire to embrace the past in any form, according to this view, is a society in steep decline, and one that cannot support “new ideas” in architecture.  Should baseball fans, who carry around the history of the game in statistics and iconic performances, be branded with this epithet? Emphatically no; their allegiance to the history of their sport is no more a cultural stigma than the opera buff’s thrill at entering a grand old theatre. Mr. Ouroussoff is treading on thin ice when he attacks one of America’s most loyal sporting communities for their nostalgia, for he places himself in a political posture that tramples on a central myth of our democracy, the rights of the polis to its aesthetic choices, whether based upon tradition or rational judgment.

Are we a nostalgic culture? Probably not, but to the extent that our enduring values depend upon tradition and history, there is nothing wrong with a little nostalgia, especially as an antidote to “unprincipled change,” David Lowenthal’s term for the crushing march of technological progress. Using “nostalgia” as a pejorative code word is a weak critical strategy. Just as political name calling dragged our democratic process through the muck of several bitter presidential contests, finally giving way in 2008 to a new civility, it is time that cultural criticism shed its warlike subtext. Leave baseball alone, and let the fans enjoy opening day.

Mortars, pestles and limes

Since readers seem to have liked my last post on preservation issues, here is another pet peeve of mine. I have worked for years with historic masonry and, like many architects who appreciate the best craftsmanship, have been consistently frustrated by the poor quality of re-pointing in many restorations. Even when the mortar used is a so-called “soft” or “historic” mix of Portland Cement, sand, and lime, the resulting mortar never looks as beautiful as the historic example that is being “replicated.” My colleagues in the field explained years ago that it was impossible to duplicate these natural lime and sand recipes because they were weak and would never stand up to modern codes. Besides, where was one going to get old fashioned slaked lime?

Well, after years of wandering in the wilderness, preservationists have a saviour. Virginia Limeworks is a company that believes in old fashioned construction techniques and has backed up their preference with products that perform beautifully and have been tested to modern standards. I have used their products and swear by them. Mix’n'Go is a premixed mortar containing only sand and natural lime. It is a mason’s dream, according to tradespeople I’ve talked to. The advantage to lime mortar is twofold: 1) the resulting mortar is completely breathable, just like the stone and brick it complements; and 2) the natural color of the sand stands out as in no other mortar mix. One never has to use a colorant or admixture. Simply get the local sand that the original masons used and combine it with lime for a beautiful wall.

Check out Virginia Limeworks when you do your next repointing project, or insist that your mason call them up. And if you are a purist, simply buy their natural lime and mix everything yourself. No need to slake the lime or grind the mortar with a pestle. Unless of course you want to risk burning your eyeballs out.

Preservationists Don’t Do Windows

As one who has spent his career trying to convince others of the value of historic buildings, I am amused by the new alliance between the green energy folks and the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The Trust has its purpose in this democracy–mainly to remind civic minded people that “heritage” matters–but it often sounds as if it is preaching to the choir rather than leading a new movement. The Trust is always behind the curve, proclaiming yesterday’s news to people who love the past enough to tolerate a little deja vu.

The most recent issue of Historic Preservation magazine, the Trust’s main mouthpiece, featured another “green” issue, close on the heals of the first one issued last year. Not much has changed in a year as far as preservation technology is concerned, but one or two things emerged that caught my attention.  Articles on the adaptive re-use of historic buildings started to make sense as models of energy efficiency, not because the buildings were better insulated or more advanced than new structures, but because they maintained their “old” materials and technologies. It turns out that when considered holistically, older structures often make sense as examples of environmental conservation even if they haven’t been modernized.

To an architect who lived through the first energy crisis in the 1970s, and saw the preservation movement through its highs and lows, this revelation was not news. Many traditional buildings use passive heating and cooling, clever means of ventilation, and inherently sustainable materials. One bugaboo, however, has existed since I began restoring houses 30 years ago–the question of what to do about “leaky” single glazed windows. Conventional wisdom was to throw them away in favor of double glazed sashes that would seal the house and keep heat and cold inside in hostile climates.

Finally the tide has changed and preservationists have started to look at windows as pieces of the treasured fabric of older buildings that don’t need to be sacrificed to the altar of sustainability. It turns out, according to recent research, that a well-made wooden double-hung or casement, equipped with tight-fitting wood storm sash, can perform almost as well as a double-glazed unit in terms of thermal resistance and infiltration. Moreover, the cost of replacing beautifully-crafted wooden sash continues to rise, increasing their potential “embodied energy.” There is really no compelling reason to remove character-defining wood windows from any historic structure, if storm/screen units can be installed outside.

Though this may not sound revolutionary, it frees preservationists from one of the most vexing problems in building conservation. If one wants to be green, don’t install windows made of green wood. Why? The seasoned, old-growth wood in most historic windows will continue to perform better than either new wood units or comparable synthetic or metal sashes (metal conducts heat faster than wood). It turns out that when it comes to windows, they really don’t and can’t make ‘em like the used to.

From now on my answer to clients who tell me their energy bills will be intolerable if they don’t replace their “leaky” windows will be: it’s not easy being green; add some foam to the roof deck.

A Twist of Fate

Previous posts concerning the folly of the New York Public Library’s $250 million dollar expansion plans have proved prophetic. Yesterday’s New York Times front page featured a report on the library’s failed attempt to sell its popular Donnell Library on 53rd Street to a developer who planned to demolish the building for yet another luxury retail, restaurant and hotel tower. Without the inflow of cash from the sale the library may not be able to follow through on its foolish scheme to have Norman Foster gut and redesign the center of Carrere & Hastings’ masterpiece on 42nd Street. Foster’s office announced a layoff of 350 staff, or 1/3 of its employees, as reported in the latest issue of Architectural Record.

Fate plays tricks on both the common folk and the high and mighty. The 10-year boom in expensive, high-rise construction throughout the globe is coming to an end, and architects like Foster, who benefited from the hubris of bigwigs throughout the world, have felt the pinch. It’s hard to feel sorry for him, or for his Arab, Chinese, Turkish, American, German and English clients. Thomas Hastings, the architect of the old library, may be chuckling from beyond the grave. He warned New Yorkers of the disastrous loss of community and urban coherence that would come from constructing tall buildings, and little good to say about modernism. Once again an economic downturn is proving good for preservation. A great building may escape unscathed.

Max Bond’s Journey

Last week the architectural profession lost one of its real heroes. J. Max Bond died following a battle with cancer at his home in New York. Bond was America’s most esteemed African-American architect, and much more. In his quiet way, he paved the way for a generation of younger black designers in a profession that has been resistant to people of color. His journey was hard, but he always seemed to prevail over hardships while maintaining a sense of dignity and grace.

Bond was active in virtually every arena of his profession. He was an educator, leading programs at both Columbia and City College of New York, and impressed students with his intelligence and commitment to social issues. His service to city and community included stints on the NY Planning Commission and leadership in Harlem’s redevelopment. His addition to the famed Avalon Ballroom saved a landmark while providing space behind the building for offices and biomedical labs. He also designed buildings at the King Center in Atlanta and in Africa. Unlike many of his more militant colleagues in the struggle for racial equality, Bond was a soft-spoken leader who proved through his professionalism that his people deserved a place at the drafting table. Moreover, he went beyond academia and practice to insist on a public role for all architects in the affairs of his city.

Born into a prominent African-American family, Max Bond used education to advance his career in the 1950s. But when a Harvard professor suggested that he not be an architect because of his color, he persisted. During the mid-century architecture was one of the whitest professions, and one of the most insular. Few blacks had made significant careers–the main exceptions being Paul Williams in Los Angeles and Julian Abele in Philadelphia–but they were always under the radar. Beginning in Europe and Africa, Bond acquired significant experience outside the avenues available in the U.S. When he returned home in the 1960s, he found himself in a cauldron of social change.

He went directly to work in the community, participating in the renewal of Harlem during the 1970s and 1980s. Instead of joining an established firm, he founded his own partnership and won significant commissions despite being an outsider. By 1990 Bond Ryder James was a major player in New York. When his partner, Donald Ryder, died Bond merged with Davis & Brody, a socially committed firm which had specialized in public housing for the Urban Development Corporation. Bond became the senior partner with the deaths of Lou Davis and Sam Brody, and continued to design major buildings until his death last week.

Max Bond began his career half a century ago, in an America that closed its doors to professional achievement for people of color. He broke down the doors in his path with steely determination and unrelenting spirit. Like Thurgood Marshall, Rosa Parks, Marian Anderson and other heroes of civil rights, he should be celebrated as a pioneer.