Architecture Here and There

Tomorrow's column is not what I had intended to write at the start. It is impossible to open to a stray page of Steven Semes's "The Future of the Past" without alighting upon a passage so pregnant with pungency that it must be quoted. It is therefore difficult to map out an argument on, say, why today's preservation ethic is destructive without getting sidetracked. So this column will morph into next week's column. How far the process will elongate is anyone's guess, but readers of tomorrow's column will understand that however delightful the journey may be (and it might well turn out to be excruciating for the more hardline of modernist-besotted preservationists), the book itself must be heaven.

Semes has the gift of elucidating ideas about architecture clearly and with panache. His sentences and paragraphs completed my simple feelings on the subject. It is almost as if I had never really thought about architecture. This is not an easy admission for a writer to make, but I make it with joy and gratitude. Semes's defenestration of the reigning preservationist orthodoxy, however diplomatic, must crush its adherents' sense of sophistication. The ideas of "architecture for our time" and of "buildings as documents of their time" are no longer sustainable as pillars of preservationist philosophy.

The cover of the book, left, features Soldier Field, in Chicago, whose recent renovation brings to mind an alien space ship landing on a Greek temple. A more sensitive treatment of an addition to a historic building is pictured on top. Brown University built an addition behind the John Carter Brown Library on its main campus green. The original, completed in 1904 and designed by Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge, is graced by the 1991 addition's elegant retreat, designed by Hartman-Cox, of Washington, D.C., from the original's Beaux Arts classicism.

I had figured I might be able to write two or three columns about "The Future of the Past," not including my review back on Dec. 17. Now it looks as if five columns or even ten might not be sufficient to mine the many nuggets of gold buried in them thar pages.

 Tags  Architecture Modern Architecture Preservation Steven Semes The Future of the Past

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