Architecture Here and There

Illustrations: Above, last week's YouGov survey, taken in Britain before the Stirling Prize was announced; below, Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater; below that, the newly rebuilt Frauenkirche, in Dresden; next to bottom, the Stadtschloss, in Berlin. Bottom, Palace of the Republic (1976) before demolition in 2008, with, at left, the Berliner Dom, after a 1820s design by Karl Friedrich Schinkle. (Dresden photo by Nathan Walker.)

* * *

THERE HE GOES AGAIN! No, it's not Prince Charles who said that but Richard Rogers, after winning Britain's top award for architecture, the Stirling Prize, on Sunday.

The traditional taste of the masses has been the bane of modern architects for decades. Maybe that is because "the physical environment and the quality of life go hand in hand. You can't separate the two. . . . Architecture is the physical manifestation of our spiritual being." Charles? No, Rogers again!

Last June, Charles clobbered Rogers by laudably meddling in one of his projects, inciting the public to respond in online polls. By a margin of two to one, the public rejected his design for the Chelsea Barracks project in London, preferring that of classicist Quinlan Terry. Rogers lost the commission.

Since the Chelsea Barracks imbroglio, I have collected a sheaf of recent evidence to confirm the public's preference for traditional architecture.

Leaving aside the poll known as the private housing market (where buyers freely choose the style of house they want), the most compelling proof of the public's traditional taste was a poll of 1,804 citizens done in 2007 by the American Institute of Architects for its 150th anniversary. The public turned a vigorous thumbs down on modernist buildings. The highest on the list of 150 favorites was Fallingwater, by Frank Lloyd Wright, finished in 1938. It ranked 29th. (The World Trade Center ranked 19th for reasons of sentiment.) Crestfallen modern architects no doubt wished the AIA had kept its trap shut.

In 1999 and 2000, Dresdeners supported the concept of rebuilding the Frauenkirche, a monumental Baroque church destroyed in World War II, and its surrounding Neumarkt in their original styles by 80 percent and 91 percent respectively.

In a 2008 survey, 3,594 Germans voted on whether to rebuild the Hohenzollern Stadtschloss, an 18th Century Baroque palace razed by the communists in 1950, or to build a modernist building on the site. The tally was a lopsided 53-to-8 percent in favor of rebuilding; 10 percent wanted a park and 24 percent wished that the Palace of the Republic (built on the site in the '70s) hadn't been razed in 2008. The same 24 percent perhaps also wished that the Stasi (East Germany's KGB) had not been disbanded.

Traditional projects have earned wide public support in Potsdam, Bologna, Oslo and many other European cities, and elsewhere in the world where authorities permit the measurement of public will.

Last May, Le Figaro asked Parisians which buildings they'd like to have demolished. Tops with 33.4 percent was the Montparnasse Tower (1972), the only tall slab in central Paris; next was the Beaugrenelle Towers, a set of modernist skyscrapers outside Paris, with 31.4 percent; third (and to me the most gratifying), 22.7 percent wanted to raze the Centre Pompidou. Parisians clearly have good taste.

Last week, a survey asked 1,042 Britons: "Please imagine a new building is planned to be built near where you live. Four different designs are proposed. Please look at each of the designs. Which one would you most like to be built near you?" Two were traditional and two were award-winning modernist designs. All were of similar massing and use. The traditional ones were preferred by 77 percent.

The poll is said to have been commissioned to challenge the Stirling Prize, with its six modernist buildings nominated this year. Yet the winner, Lord Rogers (who had two entries!), ended up unintentionally challenging the prize in his victory remarks, quoted above. Apparently, any combination of words on the subject of architecture that makes sense tends to make mincemeat of modernism. Even modernists can't resist a natural force. This tendency of nature's logic to support tradition I'll address in an upcoming column on the theories of Nikos Salingaros.

[Okay, so you want to see the Berliner Dom, a cathedral, close up! So do I. It was destroyed in WWII and in 1973 rebuilt by the communists just as the Palace of the Republic was being erected nearby. Go figure! Here it is. . . . Ahhh! . . . Click to enlarge, courtesy of Wikipedia.]

Providence City Beautiful

Tomorrow and on Saturday a symposium sponsored by the Providence Preservation Society, with the Rhode Island School of Design and the Providence Athenaeum, will explore the role of Providence in the national City Beautiful movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

With all of the beautiful venues available for such a symposium, the decision to stage some lectures at RISD's modernist Chace Center displays PPS's wit, which comports well, alas, with its philosophy of historic preservation. (A more suitable philosophy has been suggested in a new book, The Future of the Past: A Conservation Ethic for Architecture, Urbanism and Historic Preservation, by Steven Semes.)

For more information about the symposium, contact PPS at (401) 831-7440 or visit www. ppsri.org/symposium.

David Brussat is a member of The Journal's editorial board (dbrussat@projo.com). His blog at projo.com is called Architecture Here and There.

 Tags  AIA Architecture Berlin Dresden Nikos Salingaros Prince Charles Richard Rogers

Comments

Please be civil. Vicious comments, personal attacks and profanity are not allowed. Name and email are required; email address will not publish.

IAF said:

While I find these ideas presented here interesting, I think you are engaging in some extreme acts of oversimplification. Many of the examples you provided were not placed in any historical or social context. The decision to rebuild the Frauenkirche in Dresden is as much about the German wartime and post-war experience as it was about the aesthetics of Baroque architecture. Rebuilding a destroyed traditional building is a different act than constructing a new building in a traditional style--even if the results look similar.

You also write: "The same 24 percent perhaps also wished that the Stasi (East Germany's KGB) had not been disbanded." What a preposterous comment! To equate the two is absurd, and you are doing the discourse a disservice by doing so.

Link | October 23, 2009 9:46 AM
Report Abuse

---

David Brussat said:

IAF - Those are fair criticisms. Clearly a limit of 800 or so words forces upon the writer a certain degree of simplification, and I recognize that context of many sorts is missing from each of my examples. But the point was to pile up examples, and even without context the examples are pertinent, given my limited goal of ennumerating the popularity of traditional architecture. I occasionally write about singular examples of this (such as my separate columns on the AIA survey and several pieces on the Chelsea Barracks style wars), and there you will find lots of context.
As we all know, there is a percentage of people in a totalitarian state that benefits from such a form of rule. It may be unfair to say the exact same 24 percent who regretted the loss of the Palace of the Republic (have you ever seen a picture of it?) also regret the demise of the Stasi, but if you will consider it a jocular remark, then maybe you will find it less unfair. It was, in fact, intended to be a wry twist on the unhappy fact that not everyone in the East welcomed freedom with open arms.

Link | October 23, 2009 3:46 PM
Report Abuse

---

Leave a comment

Name:

Email:

URL:  

Remember personal info?

Captcha:

Type the characters you see in the picture above.