John Young wrote:
>After 27 years of parallel work with poor and rich NYC
>architecture I ask that you pursue this very fruitful lead here
>-- the schools and practice fear to, in my view.
>
>Back and forth from Harlem to the Upper East Side, one for free
>the other for fat fees, teaches me a bit about who is doing
>what to whom.
>
>What I've found is that unsafe buildings are becoming more
>common in all walks of life. More and more, as real estate
>mongers -- bankers, attorneys, contractors, unions, engineers,
>vaporware architects, the kaboodle of property predators --
>dominate urban management, the quality of the environment --
>beauty, safety, health -- is declining.
Is that so? I mean that seriously. Whenever I hear people talk about the
good old days I think of Torquenada and Hitler and I wonder if the
societies that produced them were all so virtuous and had such respect for
doing things right---enough for us to long for, anyway. The fraud and the
phony is hardly the invention of the late 20th century.
Now clearly, the automobile has done enormous damage to the urban
form---made it much less COMFORTABLE for walkers. And the explosion of new
materials has befuddled both architects and tradespeople; traditional ways
of doing things spoke effectively about older forms but new techniques
bounded off by themselves (e.g. the aluminum slider,nothing wrong with it
in theory, but often used wider more often than taller---and hence
ugly---because no one knew any better and they work better with more slide
length.)
Anyway, your concerns---'beauty, safety, health.' Beauty---yes, for reasons
in paragraph above, I think. But 'safety and health'---are you sure? I
wonder how Cesar Ritz' establishments looked in the back rooms. And those
lower east side slums my mother fled...good grief!
As to your larger issue---recital of words instead of reverence for
objects--I agree. (At least I think that was your larger point.) One of the
reasons that we have so much problem with zoning and land use controls is
that the empahsis and discussion is on 'goals and policies' with very
little conversation about real buildings. My disquiet with deCon is that
it, too, is about words and 'ideas' and abstractions (nothing wrong with
them in architecture, btw, so long as one doesn't ignore the real purpose
of a building).
If you listen to the public conversation---even by architects---about the
built environment, I think you'll find that it rarely refers to the details
and techniques of landscape. How often do you hear anyone talk about the
curve of a road even though they can see this year's change in the curve of
decolletage? At least that's so in Seattle, where I listen very carefully.
We are almost all blind and forget to see the trees....much less any bushes
or flowers....as we try to understand the forest.
================================================
David Sucher...author/photographer/etc. etc.
CITY COMFORTS: How to Build an Urban Village
'it's simpler than we think.'
------------------------------------------------
[email protected]
================================================
>After 27 years of parallel work with poor and rich NYC
>architecture I ask that you pursue this very fruitful lead here
>-- the schools and practice fear to, in my view.
>
>Back and forth from Harlem to the Upper East Side, one for free
>the other for fat fees, teaches me a bit about who is doing
>what to whom.
>
>What I've found is that unsafe buildings are becoming more
>common in all walks of life. More and more, as real estate
>mongers -- bankers, attorneys, contractors, unions, engineers,
>vaporware architects, the kaboodle of property predators --
>dominate urban management, the quality of the environment --
>beauty, safety, health -- is declining.
Is that so? I mean that seriously. Whenever I hear people talk about the
good old days I think of Torquenada and Hitler and I wonder if the
societies that produced them were all so virtuous and had such respect for
doing things right---enough for us to long for, anyway. The fraud and the
phony is hardly the invention of the late 20th century.
Now clearly, the automobile has done enormous damage to the urban
form---made it much less COMFORTABLE for walkers. And the explosion of new
materials has befuddled both architects and tradespeople; traditional ways
of doing things spoke effectively about older forms but new techniques
bounded off by themselves (e.g. the aluminum slider,nothing wrong with it
in theory, but often used wider more often than taller---and hence
ugly---because no one knew any better and they work better with more slide
length.)
Anyway, your concerns---'beauty, safety, health.' Beauty---yes, for reasons
in paragraph above, I think. But 'safety and health'---are you sure? I
wonder how Cesar Ritz' establishments looked in the back rooms. And those
lower east side slums my mother fled...good grief!
As to your larger issue---recital of words instead of reverence for
objects--I agree. (At least I think that was your larger point.) One of the
reasons that we have so much problem with zoning and land use controls is
that the empahsis and discussion is on 'goals and policies' with very
little conversation about real buildings. My disquiet with deCon is that
it, too, is about words and 'ideas' and abstractions (nothing wrong with
them in architecture, btw, so long as one doesn't ignore the real purpose
of a building).
If you listen to the public conversation---even by architects---about the
built environment, I think you'll find that it rarely refers to the details
and techniques of landscape. How often do you hear anyone talk about the
curve of a road even though they can see this year's change in the curve of
decolletage? At least that's so in Seattle, where I listen very carefully.
We are almost all blind and forget to see the trees....much less any bushes
or flowers....as we try to understand the forest.
================================================
David Sucher...author/photographer/etc. etc.
CITY COMFORTS: How to Build an Urban Village
'it's simpler than we think.'
------------------------------------------------
[email protected]
================================================