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College of Architecture Building, University of , 1986, John Burgee Architects with and Morris*Aubry The Hot House Architects, architects; south elevation Italian NewWave Design Andrea Branzi "A knowledgeable and well-illustrated history, particularly valuable on Italian design ol the 50s " -Suzanne Slesm. IheNew York Times 160 pp 408 illus . 128 in color S15 00 Master Johnson's American Design Ethic A History ot Industrial Design Arthur J. Pulos Pulos discusses the influences and fashions as well as Ihe maior figures and schools of design from Colonial times to ihe 1940s to find oul whal is uniquely American about American design This is a big. important, even a Ihnllmg story, House of Education and a story well told." -Interior Design 456 pp 350 illus S22 50 John Kali ski

The University of Houston's new College that extends northward from the campus studios constantly have people moving The MIT Press of Architecture Building has been the center. The walk from the original heart about them. What was lacking in the subject of controversy since the choice oi of the university, the venerable Ezekiel previous buildings of the architecture 28 Carlelon Street Cambridge. MA 02142 John Burgee Architect with Philip W. Cullen Building (1950, Alfred C. college, the sense of a community Johnson as architect, associated with Finn), past the library green, and onward gathered together - audibly, visually, and Morris*Aubry Architects, was to the College of Architecture is now the physically - for a common purpose Is announced in the fall of 1982.' Even most impressive stroll on the campus. present in this space. before the drawings of the design were This jaunt actually gives the student or released in May 1983 some faculty faculty flaneur the feeling of being on the If architecture were as simple as chtx>sing members of the college were grousing. campus of a major university, With the an appropriate idea, most buildings would Though Johnson's neo-historical designs huge mass of the architecture building as be gotxl and many more would be great. from the mid-1970s to the present have a focus, spaces and vistas that before were What prevents Burgee and Johnson's proved popular with developers and interminably large are perceived as Giflege of Architecture Building from CEOs, they were anathema to the ideals of smaller and more reasonably sized. Before transcending the competent and goo*! i^ "advanced'' members of the college's the construction of the college one always the assticiated architects' inability to faculty. Johnson's design, a direct felt that University Park just oozed resolve the symbolic dynamics of the quotation of an unbuilt project for a effortlessly from unremarkable buildings program and their slapdash attitude "House of Education" by the French to remarkably large parking lots. The towards the craft of building. There are Enlightenment architect Claude-Nicolas physical presence of the architecture constant reminders of what happens Ledoux, only added fuel to the fires of building gives a sense of boundary to the when a building goes from initial internecine academic controversy. Elgin Avenue edge of the campus which it conception through construction with previously lacked. very little design development. For Dismissing the polemics associated with instance, the axis from the center of the cases of design plagiarism as irrevelant At the terminus of the pedestrian axis, campus passes through the court where, (after all, the argument went, what standing before the south entrance of the to judge by the plans, it is intersected by a architect doesn't rely on precedent?), the College of Architecture, one cannot help cross axis. This cross axis is also defined administration of the college concentrated but notice that this building towers over on the exterior by two minor wings to the on putting its best public relations ftxit the adjacent (not so small) Fine Arts north and south whose end facades are forward while attempting to resolve with Center (1972, Caudill Rowlett Scott) articulated by centrally placed arched the associated architects the space- reinvigorating the old saying that entrances. Unfortunately, one soon planning problems that occur when a "architecture is the mother of all the discovers that these minor entrances lead complex program is stuffed into a arts." As one enters the architecture not to the central court but to a fire stair preconceived form. The result is a public building (to continue the analogy), one and what appears to be a truck dock. relations triumph: a building which arrives within the womb of Architecture From within the building, one's grandly, though awkwardly, meets the herself, a giant six-story court about comprehension of the cross axis is further needs of the architecture college. which the building is organized. This obscured by the unforgiving geometry of Awkwardly, because of the unresolved space is not, however, akin to a Hyatt the main stairs. As these stairs rise to the nature of the design and its deficient hotel. In size and proportion, it is second floor, insufficient vertical clearance execution at the level of building craft. extraordinarily generous in relation to the forcibly blocks the path along the minor And awkwardly also because of the area of the surrounding loft floors. axis. The visual connection from the building's ambiguous pedagogical role as Second, unlike the stacked pancake effect campus entrance on the south to the an example of the unconcealed truth of of most hotel atriums, this space is ringed architecture library on the west is thus present-day architectural praxis. by tiers of painted columns, stacked one broken. If one attempts to move directly upon the other, demarcating four interior from the court to the library, there is the The College of Architecture is big. levels. The vertical thrust of the columns very real risk of cracking one's skull Despite the published renderings, few creates a tremendous sensation of upward against the stair. realized the impact the finished building movement, which is contained, then would have on its surroundings. From the released, within the transparent lens of Meanwhile, the auditorium, the formal Gulf Freeway, Burgee and Johnson's the sixth and final cubic void, the lantern. meeting place of the school, suffers from design dominates one's view of the What struck me most strongly, however, its placement off the northeastern university. Capping the building and was not the size but the acoustics of this quadrant of the court. Here, the building floodlit at night, a cubic lantern, centra] space. is narrowest in depth and, consequently, constructed of Doric-like columns and the proportions of the space are long and topped by a cornice, glows like a three- The central court of the College of thin. The architects nevertheless insisted dimensional billboard advertising the Architecture sounds right for a school of on placing the seats so that the view of presence of the University of Houston. If architecture. The hard surfaces of the the screen or lectern is toward the long the freeway vision of the building columns, the terrazzo paving of the floor, dimension of the room rather than the suggests an invitation to "come on down" and the glass of the skylight echo and narrow dimension. Sight lines thus are to the school (and perhaps sign up for a redistribute the sound coming from the obscured, rendering many of the seats course?), within the boundaries of oddest corners of the building. One useless. University Park the architecture building moment one can listen-in on a design brings into focus one's sense of the studio on the fourth floor, the next to a Hindsight, of course, is 100 percent campus as a coherent whole. conversation between a faculty member correct, Still, I cannot understand why the and a student on the second floor. People auditorium was not placed on the eastern Johnson's design smartly terminates and yell and whoop to each other across the flank of the building where it would have lends a sense of scale to a pedestrian axis void. The stairs leading to the design complemented the library. In this location Cite Summer 1986 17 _ [ L s 1

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Wha t does it tell us and physical balance might have about the aspirations of the architectural For Johnson, first a disciple of, and then permeated the entire structure. The profession? What lesson does it offer an early dissident from, the modern style, library and lecture hall would have been students of architecture who dwell within the College of Architecture might be highly visible first-floor counterparts to its space? interpreted as an attempt to reestablish the elevated design studios - studios for architecture students the correct which now, physically and symbolically, On first glance, the University of Houston historical link to the foundation of overwhelm these equally important College of Architecture Building's modernism that his own generation is functions of the school's educational diagram, a quadra partite cross axial plan often accused of neglecting; one last program. organized volumetrically about a large clarion call admonishing the next Environmental Signage and central well, is conceptually suited to the generation of architects that "you cannot Design Consultants The library and auditorium are only two site and program at hand The building's not know history." In this view, the of the many problems not resolved in the formal disposition well demonstrates reconstruction of the neoclassical "House design of this structure. By rigorously Johnson's stated notions on the making of of Education" returns the modern adhering to the initial elevations of the architecture. In a lecture at Columbia tradition to its earliest and purest root. Library, Health Facility building the architects left many of the University given in 1975 he described his The College of Architecture becomes a Educational and Corporate design studios without windows. Faculty intentions as follows: built symbol of modernity and modern Signage Programs and offices are difficult to find. Classrooms architectural education in the ironic cloak Protect Management and such ancillary spaces as lounges are . . . three aspects, the Footprint, the Cave, of Enlightenment neoclassicim. cramped and dark. The sense of the Work of Sculpture, do not in confinement and lack of connection to themselves give form, but they are what I Johnson's familiarity with the sources of natural light experienced in think about in the night away from the architectural history of this time further many of the minor rooms is difficult to boards, when I try to brush away the informs h i m that the original "House of accept in a building which in section is cobwebs of infinite possibilities and try to Education" was placed in Ledoux's ideal permeated by the light of a huge central establish some way out, . .' and authoritarian city of Chaux. W i t h in well the symbolic protection of the At the College of Architecture, T h e reconstructed architecture school, the The building is also unremarkable in its Work of Sculpture" is akin to the properly educated student learns to design materials, details, and craftsmanship. On Volumetric presence of the building, for the modern world; a modern world the exterior, a crudely detailed paper-like which attracts one's initial attention. The where the architect is not simply the veneer of black granite appears to be "Footprint" can be thought of as the axis designer of objects but the spearhead of pasted to the base of the structure. The which leads from the center of the designed political and sociological change. skin of the building is painfully flat; campus to the entrance of the architecture neither the brick nor the solar grey glass building. From the entrance one passes While the message of the image of this sheets offer much visual relief. The into the "Cave" and up the stairs to the building may appear to be naively The Design Office of overall experience of the exterior is one of studio lofts. Following through with optimistic, a closer questioning of these Steve Neumann & Friends thinness and fragility, not unlike the Johnson's logic, one might then ask; whar projected assumptions leaves one with a cheap buildings one often sees in besides this menage a trois gives the more pessimistic view, Historical research 3000 Richmond Ave., Suite 103 surburban office parks. Other incongruous building "form?" In the evolution of since the 1950s has demonstrated that it Houston. 77098 external touches include the "Victorian" lulmson's work since 1975 the answer is problematic to think of Ledoux as Telephone: 713/629-7501 lamp standards (picked from a catalogue), clearly is imagistic historical recall. revolutionary in any but a formal which flank the entrance, and the sleazy compositional sense, and ridiculous to entry doors, which appear to be made of a Philip Johnson's choice of Ledoux's House assume that he was "modern." thickened version of the type of panelling of Education as a precursor for the Scholarship (ironically done at the used in basement recreation rooms. College of Architecture no doubt derived College of Architecture'1) has shown that Fragility, thinness, incongruity, even from his long love of Ledoux's work. In Ledoux's architectural endeavor was to sleaiiness when properly executed, can be an essay on his Glass House published in reconcile Newtonian science with a tradi- exhilirating. Here they are simply dull 1950, Johnson revealed (uncharacter- tional transcendent view of the cosmos and and common, bespeaking only the prosaic istically for an architect of the 1950s) his the nature of divinity. Ledoux and other necessity of cladding the building in the sources of reference. Not only Mies van "revolutionary" architects were nut cheapest manner possible. der Rohe, but the Parthenon, Schinkel, Le attracted to simple volumes and stripped G>rbusier, and Ledoux all were claimed by surfaces because they anticipated 20th- The lack of design finesse exhibited on Johnson as precursors, Of Ledoux he century abstraction. Rather they chose the outside continues inside. The columns wrote: these forms because they sensed within ringing the perimeter of the court do not their Platonic geometry an affinity with line up with the columns of the exterior The cubic, "absolute" form of my glass Newton's concept that God and Nature's cupola. If this break of visual continuity house, and the separation of functional laws were related by the mathernatii^ ol was not visible through the skylight, units into two absolute ihapes rather than physics. For the 18th-century scholar of nobody would notice, Since it is, however, a major and a minor massing of parts architecture and metaphysics, the most one is left wondering whether a polemical comes directly from Ledoux, the 18th- telling examples of the laws of attraction point about the capacity of modern century father of modern architecture. and repulsion were the spherical heavenly engineering to ignore classical stability is The cube and the sphere, the pure bodies. To Ledoux, a "House of Educa- 18 Gte Summer 1986 rion" was nor a gesture of compositional revolution, it was an architectural and metaphysical demonstration of the order (ligations • of Nature ruled by a supreme being. FINE PAINTING Speedby's Gifts Thus Ledoux's creative act had a very AND STAIN WORK Are For All different intention than Johnson's clever The City- choke lit iiium. Fur Ledoux, a man deeply Momentous Occasions concerned with the growing relativism of Memory and his age and craft, a "House of Education," INTERIOR like a great cathedral, had to be Invention AND EXTERIOR 17th C-19th C. understood implicitly as a transcendent Architectural Prints experience bringing one closer to an understanding of divinity. Johnson's The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston a capital choice for modernity, on the other hand, requires a Sponsored by the Rice Design Alliance yourfaforile architect course syllabus to explore its labyrinthine In association with The Museum of BUSINESS • intelligence Johnson's choice of image is a Fine Arts. Houston AND RESIDENTIAL I TIII (. Illuminated Initials private symbology understood by an 11 February - 24 March 1986 for the most personal gift already initiated cognoscenti: architects. • "The Vernacular Landscape" Antique Maps of Texas What prevents Johnson's buildings from f. B. Jackson, Craig Francis for excursions of the mind being anything more ih.nl a clever Cullman Visiting Professor • exercise in formal revival is the College of School of Architecture, Rice University Hunting Prints Architecture's lack of plan resolution and craft execution in relation to its potential 27 January • 17 March 1986 Tallybo! symbolic resonance. Ledoux, in his • treatises, spoke of his ". . . dramatic Reviewed by Phillip Lopate Lewis A Flowers & Fruit enthusiasm of the craft, of which we can Seashells only speak but in an exalted mood."4 By general agreement, "The Ciry - Birds & Wildlife Johnson clearly is not interested in this Memory and Invention" was considered Flacks to bring the outdoors in issue except in the most superficial ways. one of the best lecture series the Rice • If Johnson and his associated architects Design Alliance has ever put on. Certainly had confronted this issue, the building the speakers were all solid, well-regarded Lacy Antique Valentines might have, by necessity, veered decisively experts in their field, but this in itself for your love from its model in history; this discussion does not explain the phenomenon of a PAINTING * could have then transcended narrow large, crossover audience fighting for seats As Well as Our Other historical debate. But b y deeming craft to a series of scholarly talks on urban Paper Fascinations and the specific nature of the day-to-day design. Some of us, jaded by the miniscule workings of the architecture school turnouts at other worthy cultural events irrelevant, the discussion of this building in Houston, had to rub our eyes and can proceed coherently only as a discourse wonder if the millenium had arrived. The on tasteful, timely, and witty image- "hot-ticket" syndrome must be taken into making. Unfortunately for the discerning consideration, plus a certain social cachet references student of architecture, Master Johnson's attached to RDA lecture series in general "House of Education" demonstrates both (believe me, I'm not knocking it, I wish it abound w Mm his limits as a historian and his lack of could happen more); but beyond that, it care as a builder. would seem that the large numbers who came were hungry for information about Granted, the University of Houston how great cities are made. The attendance Gdlege of Architecture is a far better day- seemed indicative that a consensus is at 2015-F West Gray to-day environment than the decrepit hand among educated Houstonians to River Oaks Center structures that formally housed the school. entertain at least (if not yet implement) Houston, Texas "019 The nx>f does not leak. As one who visions of ambitious urban design, such as (713)521-9652 survived the final years in the old might help to pull this city a little more 522-3047 Tues.-Sal. IQam-5pm buildings watching drawings get ruined by together. rain and classes interrupted by falling ceilings, this fact is important. The Drexcl Turner, who organized the- te^ies, campus of the university is even enhanced announced in his opening remarks i in Ins by the massing and volume of the college. usual half-serious, half-dryly-self-mocking Yet ultimately, the building works more voice): "The 'Grand Tradition of G t y like an advertising sign than architecture. Planning' is the idea of the series. The It locates the university. It impresses an city as theater." And Grand Tradition it 18-year-old who has visions of being an was, perhaps too much so. The chosen Louis XIV's Versailles architect. It becomes the university's topics - Haussmann's Paris, Schinkel's Guy Walton current object of gixid taste. And like all Berlin, the Ringstrasse and fin de-siecle Louis XIV'S Versailles is a place that has advertisements not backed up by Vienna, Burnham's Chicago, Regency passed beyond historical interest to be- substance, the image of the College of London, and Mussolini's Rome - come a part of legend. In this superbly Architecture ultimately wears a bit thin. comprise a Greatest Hits of Urban written study, Walton considers the Sun Design, being precisely those episodes King's accomplishment in detail. He has most written about in recent years. But if examined thousands of original drawings The building of a school of architecture, and related documents as well as sheltering students of architecture, should this strategy risked a certain stateness, it architects' plans, views of Versailles in represent for those students the highest also provided the general audience a prints and paintings, and written accounts aspirations of their chosen path. I am left useful summation of these celebrated of occupants, guests, and house artists. to wonder whether Philip Johnson's cases - as such, laying the groundwork The book features over 150 rare design does not too acutely, too easily, admirably for what I hope will be a illuslra lions. remind the students and faculty of the sequel, dedicated to lesser-known, non- Cloth $2495 256 pages College of Architecture of a world in European sagas of city planning like 157 halftones which most construction is debased by Tokyo, Rio de Janeiro, New Delhi, marketing concerns into another fatiguing Sydney, or Moscow. category of Trivial Pursuit. The The Architecture of University of Houston College of The first lecturer, Spiro Kostof on Rome, Richard Morris Hunt Architecture Building too quickly becomes gave a talk that was absolutely satisfying. Edited b\- SUSM K. Stein another one-line answer to a one-line Not only is Kostof a dynamic, charismatic Hunt (1827-95), the "dean of American question rather than a thought-filled and speaker, which helps, but he organized his architecture" to his contemporaries, thought-through pedagogical act of material with shape and point. What designed many notable structures, among architectural creation." struck me most was his fusion of the them the Fifth Avenge wing of the architectural with the psychological, by Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Notes focusing on the contradictory personality pedestal of the . The of the man in charge, Benito Mussolini. II First book on Hunt's architecture, this \ 1 See Mark A. Hewitt. "Much Ledoux Aboui Duce, noted Kostof, needed Rome as the volume draws extensively on the wealth Nothing?", Cite, Fall 1983. Hewitt's essay is a showpiece of his imperial pretensions, On of material at the American Institute of testimony tu his analytical capability. Some of the one hand the dictator was a Architects Foundation's Octagon the ideas for my essay, particularly the use of Museum. preservationist, putting a stop to Johnson's 1975 lecture, "What Makes Me speculation and encouraging archeological Cloth $3995 Paper $1695 Tick?", were first developed by Hewitt in his 224 pages 16 color plates, excavations. Mussolini's position was that prescient analysis. "We must liberate all of ancient Rome lfiH halftones 2 Philip Johnson, Writings, New York, Oxford from the mediocre constructions of University Press. 1979, p. 263. 3 Many of Johnson's opinions on today." and make room around the Mies van der Rohe Enlightenment architecture were formed by monuments. This policy of isolating A Critical Biography the writings of Emil Kaufmann. Johnson monuments and turning them into spectacular stage sets, however, Franz Schutzc particularly cites Kaufmann's 1933 book Vom Ledoux bts he Corbusier. Kaufmann's general paradoxically led to the destruction of m assoCHfJOO with the Mies van der Kobe study of this period is Architecture in the many ancient ruins, paved over and Archive of the Museum of Modern Art Age of Reason, Cambridge, Harvard bulldozed when they got in the way of "The most comprehensive book ever University Press, 1955. new broad avenues connecting key sites. written about the master designer and, 4 Alberto Perez-Gomez, Architecture and the "The Fascist way is the straight line. It is by any measure, the best.'—Raul Gapp. Crisis of Modern Science, Cambridge, MIT the straight line which does not lose itself Chicago Tribune Press, 1983. Perez-Gome* taught at the "This book has obviously been a long College of Architecture and wrote the final in the meanders of Hamlet-like thought," labor of love and respect for which no draft of his book when the Johnson design one architectural ideologue of the day source has been left untouched.'—Ada was revealed. Appalled at Johnson's misuse explained. Louise Huxtable, New ibrk Times Rook of history, he specifically placed an Review illustration of Ledoux's "House of Education" A further contradiction in Mussolini's Cloth $3995 3SO pages in his book as a legacy to the University of urban policy was that his love of Rome as Houston which he left in 219 halftones , n T T T r , * v-» J-V a grand set went against his views of city Pnaa 1983. The University of C H I C A G O life as harmful, to the extent of even 5 Perez-Gomez, p. 148. 5H01 South Ellii Avenue. Chicago. II. 60637 sapping the "virility" of the masses. New