Architecture

THE PAST AND THE FUTURE

I was listening to a podcast of “The Remnant” the other day, on which Jonah Goldberg made the observation that while political conservatives have usually gotten their ideals from the past, progressives have looked to the future. It struck me how much this applied to the history of architecture. Architecture has traditionally been conservative, not only because buildings were expensive and had to last a long time, but also because clients—the monarchy, the Church, and the merchant class—were conservative. For centuries, architectural ideals were rooted in ancient Greece, Rome, and the Middle Ages. This began to change at the end of the nineteenth century,

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NEW BLOOD

I recently came across an article in The Architect’s Newspaper titled “The future of our profession depends on diversity.” The author argues that the architectural profession needs to take specific steps to increase diversity. “The architecture profession runs the risk of becoming irrelevant if we do not adapt and create pathways for minorities to enter and lead the profession,” he writes. Received wisdom, but is it true? Or, rather, hasn’t it always been true? When I studied architecture in the 1960s, there were no women in my class, no blacks, and no aboriginal Canadians. But we were a mixed group: five immigrants (two from Hong Kong,

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IN MEMORIAM

Ten years ago I joined the jury of the Driehaus Prize for Classical Architecture. I came to know Richard H. Driehaus (1942-2021) as padrone of the prize and as a munificent host on my periodic trips to Chicago. But his passing this week touched me in an unexpected way—I had lost a friend. Like anyone who met him, I was impressed by his curiosity and intelligence. And by his generosity. Over the years I occasionally sent him pieces of my writing that I thought would interest him—and everything interested him: people, buildings, art, cars. I once introduced him to a public gathering as a true son of the great Daniel Burnham.

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THE REAL THING

My wife and I live in a downtown Philadelphia loft in the Larkin Building, a 12-story industrial building built in 1912-13. The builder was the Larkin Company, which a decade earlier had hired Frank Lloyd Wright to build its headquarters building in Buffalo, N.Y. Our building was designed by a lesser light. C. J. Heckman was a Buffalo-based architect about whom the internet provides no information at all. Was he the Larkin house architect, or did he simply specialize in industrial buildings, the lowest rung on the practitioner’s ladder?  Perhaps the latter, because our building is a very early example of reinforced concrete construction,

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HATS

The old Lit Brothers department store (built and expanded between 1859 and 1918) on Philadelphia’s Market Street has a sign over one of its corner entrances, that has always puzzled me. HATS TRIMMED FREE OF CHARGE is embossed into the metal fascia of the canopy. It’s the only such sign. But whose hats, men or women? Did it refer to a hat bought in the store, or was it—as I suspected—an enticement to walk in and get your hat “trimmed,” whatever that meant? And why was this procedure so important—and so common—that it had to be emblazoned over the store entrance?

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ROADBLOCKS

The pandemic lockdown has turned me into a podcast listener. One of my favorites is GLOP Culture, with Jonah Goldberg, Rob Long, and John Podhoretz. In a recent conversation about woke bullying at the New York Times and Slate, Long made an interesting observation. There are too many wannabe journalists chasing too few jobs. What if wokeness is simply an expression of careerism, the young finding a way to make room for themselves by pushing out the old? A recent wokey article in Architect magazine, the official journal of the AIA,

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CONVICTION

I’ve come to the conclusion that what I value most in architectural work, apart from skill and competence, is conviction. That is why I appreciate the work of Louis Kahn and his teacher Paul Cret equally, because while their work is quite different, it’s executed with a strong sense of purpose. Absent that, architecture risks becoming merely a weak-kneed copy-book reproduction, whether it is modernist or classicist. There is nothing weak-kneed about one of my favorite Philadelphia buildings, the Main Branch of the U.S. Post Office on Market and Thirtieth Street (today it houses the IRS). It was built in 1931-35 and designed by the leading local firm of Rankin &

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RADICAL CHIC

The architecture group, Superstudio, was founded in Florence in 1966, the year I graduated from architecture school. I remember their projects from the Italian design mag Domus, which I used to leaf through in the library. I didn’t like them then and I don’t like them now. “Although Superstudio built very few actual buildings, its witty photo collages and designs, presented in exhibitions and glossy magazine spreads, opened up new possibilities for what architecture and urban planning could be,” opines a fawning article in the New York Times. The new possibilities included a nihilistic view of architecture masquerading as a fashionable left-wing critique.

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