It's embarrassing to say that "paper architecture" was used,
chidingly, during my school years 1956-62. I dimly recall it
being attributed to Frank Lloyd Wright when he lambasted
architects like Le Corbusier for "build a building, write a book,
build another building, write another book." And against those
who only did conceptual and graphic architecture for publication.
To be sure, Wright did a mountain of paper architecture himself,
writing more books than his master Sullivan, when work was slow
and he and Sullivan needed to attract clients in competition with
those giant firms doing most of the built work.
Indeed, it is hard to imagine any architectural firm surviving
without doing paper architecture of some kind, whether conceptual
work, brochures, proposals, competitions, books, articles,
teaching, seducing the young and underpaying them (or like
tightfisted Wright, charging them to work for you, using them as
household help, and, rumors say, for baser duties -- practices
well emulated today among the self-drunkards).
To stretch my memory well into fantasy, it is possible that
"paper architecture" could be traced to Viollet le Duc, grand
master of the architecture of paper about architecture. Viollet
was the great role model of all the modernists giants, among
them Wright, and he has not been surpassed, in my humble
opinion, as an intellect who genuinely knew architecture and
construction and all in between as well as practiced them
(along with radical politics and military engineering), perhaps
the last person who truly combined theory and practice and
political risk and not merely pretended to.
Who has the capability to do all those these days of niche
belovedness?
So you don't think this is my original thought on Viollet, it is
derived from John Summerson, who explicated the debt all
the moderns had to Viollet, and none of them ever denied
it, indeed freely lifted from Viollet since there was no better
fountainhead. And probably still not. Though few honor
Viollet for basic ideas employed for modern architectural
theory and design, instead conceal the theft, perhaps in ignorance,
by deriding Viollet's historic preservation work (which was so
far beyond what passes for preservation today that the two
seem related only by today's lip gloss. What has not been
written, as far as I know, is how much Venturi stole from
Viollet, and then there's shallow Scully's glossworks, and
on to Frampton and other fey inconsequentials).
Can you imagine anybody today doing a Catalogue Raissonnee
of the world's architecture -- not just the crud-rich mainstream
and insipid intellectual natterings but all the broader world's
theoretical, ethnic and unrecognized constuctution as well?
Let me be high-handed: No scholar, no practitioner, comes
close to Viollet for paper or any other kind of architecture. Which
may account for why most architecture is done by people who
would not dream of themselves as architects, and why architects
who love the designation are so unhappy, incapable of functioning,
outside their adorant hives of molehills.
Hello, Ken, good to see you here. Now 20 years younger.
chidingly, during my school years 1956-62. I dimly recall it
being attributed to Frank Lloyd Wright when he lambasted
architects like Le Corbusier for "build a building, write a book,
build another building, write another book." And against those
who only did conceptual and graphic architecture for publication.
To be sure, Wright did a mountain of paper architecture himself,
writing more books than his master Sullivan, when work was slow
and he and Sullivan needed to attract clients in competition with
those giant firms doing most of the built work.
Indeed, it is hard to imagine any architectural firm surviving
without doing paper architecture of some kind, whether conceptual
work, brochures, proposals, competitions, books, articles,
teaching, seducing the young and underpaying them (or like
tightfisted Wright, charging them to work for you, using them as
household help, and, rumors say, for baser duties -- practices
well emulated today among the self-drunkards).
To stretch my memory well into fantasy, it is possible that
"paper architecture" could be traced to Viollet le Duc, grand
master of the architecture of paper about architecture. Viollet
was the great role model of all the modernists giants, among
them Wright, and he has not been surpassed, in my humble
opinion, as an intellect who genuinely knew architecture and
construction and all in between as well as practiced them
(along with radical politics and military engineering), perhaps
the last person who truly combined theory and practice and
political risk and not merely pretended to.
Who has the capability to do all those these days of niche
belovedness?
So you don't think this is my original thought on Viollet, it is
derived from John Summerson, who explicated the debt all
the moderns had to Viollet, and none of them ever denied
it, indeed freely lifted from Viollet since there was no better
fountainhead. And probably still not. Though few honor
Viollet for basic ideas employed for modern architectural
theory and design, instead conceal the theft, perhaps in ignorance,
by deriding Viollet's historic preservation work (which was so
far beyond what passes for preservation today that the two
seem related only by today's lip gloss. What has not been
written, as far as I know, is how much Venturi stole from
Viollet, and then there's shallow Scully's glossworks, and
on to Frampton and other fey inconsequentials).
Can you imagine anybody today doing a Catalogue Raissonnee
of the world's architecture -- not just the crud-rich mainstream
and insipid intellectual natterings but all the broader world's
theoretical, ethnic and unrecognized constuctution as well?
Let me be high-handed: No scholar, no practitioner, comes
close to Viollet for paper or any other kind of architecture. Which
may account for why most architecture is done by people who
would not dream of themselves as architects, and why architects
who love the designation are so unhappy, incapable of functioning,
outside their adorant hives of molehills.
Hello, Ken, good to see you here. Now 20 years younger.