Architecture

FECKLESS FORUM

The New York Times reports on the opening of the Humboldt Forum, a new Museum in Berlin. When I showed the photograph (left) to my wife her reaction was “It looks like a prison.” She wasn’t referring to the Baroque facade, of course. I haven’t seen the museum, but the photograph is like a beauty contest—Baroque vs Modernist—and it’s pretty obvious who is the winner. The Forum sits on the site of the Berliner Schloss, the immense royal palace that had been greatly expanded by Frederick the Great in the early 18th century and whose dome was based on a design by Karl Friedrich Schinkel.

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TRUMPITECTURE

Alex Beam’s article in yesterday’s Boston Globe has a provocative title (for a liberal paper): “Trump may be right about one thing, architecture.” The author seconds Trump’s critique of Brutalism and quotes me that too often we get “courthouses that look like corporate office buildings and atrium-equipped government buildings that resemble casinos or upscale resort hotels.” Beam refers to traditional or so-called Classical buildings as “Trumpitecture.” Catchy, but  misleading. Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s mansion in Pal Beach, is a Moorish-Spanish confection designed by Marion Syms Wyeth and Joseph Urban in 1934-37, and his apartment in New York’s Trump Tower is decorated in an ersatz Louis XV style,

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PARISIAN PUZZLE

Every time I leave the Larkin Building in downtown Philadelphia, where we live, I admire the office building across the street. It’s a French Renaissance pile, three stories on top of a half basement, with an obviously more recent top floor addition. The original building, very handsome, is brick with limestone and marble trim. The raised entrance is surmounted by a wrought iron papal balcony. I’ve looked inside and there is a glass-roofed atrium in the middle. I’m impressed, but also puzzled. The building looks at least a hundred years old, and when it was built this was an industrial neighborhood with a scattering of modest Philadelphia row-houses.

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ROUGHLY CLASSIC

Earlier this week I watched a live video webcast of a roundtable concerning the debate over the future of federal architecture, that is, on whether federal buildings such as courthouses should have a mandated classical style. There was immediate confusion because two of the participants–Notre Dame University professors–stated that classicism wasn’t a style at all. Then what was it? There was talk about local materials, green buildings, and load-bearing construction, which wasn’t much help. But if classicism wasn’t a style what exactly would a federal mandate entail? The confusion was compounded further by the interchangeable use of “classical” and “traditional.” Classical refers to the Graeco-Roman tradition;

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PHILLY PANTO

Do we still celebrate Columbus Day? This summer, statues of the intrepid explorer were defaced, beheaded, and toppled. In South Philadelphia, the City shrouded a Columbus statue and recently announced its removal. It is unclear what will happen to the Columbus Memorial near the Delaware River. The 106-foot ersatz obelisk was designed by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown in 1992. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, “The Delaware River Waterfront Corp., which maintains the monument but was not responsible for its construction, said in a statement Tuesday that the statue ‘does not align with DRWC’s mission to create and maintain a safe and welcome space for all.’” In order to “protect public safety” and “reduce continued pain” the now offensive text at the base of the obelisk,

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THE USUAL SUSPECTS

The City of Philadelphia has announced a $2.2 billion development on the Penn’s Landing site beside the Delaware River. The twelve towers include apartments, offices, and a hotel, the architects are Pelli Clarke Pelli and Bjarke Ingels Group. PCP has already designed high-rise buildings in the city; BIG is a newcomer. Both continue the recent pattern of importing outsiders such as Vinoly, Foster, Gehry, Snøhetta, Williams & Tsien, Pei Cobb Freed, Ennead—the usual suspects. Philadelphia, like most big cities, once had its own stable of eminent practitioners—Strickland, Walter, Furness, Cope & Stewardson, Eyre, Trumbauer, Cret, Howe—and their buildings gave the city its own particular character.

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COSY GLASS BOX

The current exhibition at the Farnsworth House gets rid of all the Mies furniture, which was never a part of the original decor, and recreates the interior as it was when when Dr. Farnsworth actually lived in the house. There are Moroccan rugs  on the travertine floor, and wooden chairs and chaises longues—mostly Scandinavian (Risom, Matthson, Wegner), although the curators didn’t hang stuff on the pristine primavera as the good doctor did. I notice that she turned the   freestanding closet ninety degrees to create a more intimate bedroom (there is such a thing as too much glass). The result is a revelation—the house is,

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WHAT’S NEXT

Last week, the University of Pennsylvania announced plans to remove its statue of George Whitefield, a famous eighteenth-century British preacher, due to his condoning slavery. What was the statue, made by R. Tait McKenzie in 1919, doing at Penn? Whitefield was a lifelong friend of Benjamin Franklin, the founder of the university. Moreover, as the Penn website notes: “Franklin chose the Whitefield meeting house, with its Charity School, to be purchased as the site of the newly formed Academy of Philadelphia which opened in 1751, followed in 1755 with the College of Philadelphia, both the predecessors of the University of Pennsylvania.”

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