Oz

Volume 22 Article 10

1-1-2000 Sometimes a Colonnade is Just a Thomas L. Schumacher

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Recommended Citation Schumacher, Thomas L. (2000) "Sometimes a Colonnade is Just a Porch," Oz: Vol. 22. https://doi.org/10.4148/2378-5853.1354

This Article is brought to you for free and open access by New Prairie Press. It has been accepted for inclusion in Oz by an authorized administrator of New Prairie Press. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Sometimes a Colonnade Is Just a Porch: Concerning a Facade in Pittsburgh

Thomas L. Schumacher

the ’s facade. The project Coupling contemporary wasn’t about glorifying Hitler, said to the evils of Adolf Hitler is a devastat- one of the students, “The use of the ing condemnation. Were it limited to images was more of a medium to this sound-and-light show this could show the negative connotations the be seen as an unfortunate incident, but building conveyed.”2 soon afterwards a group of architec- ture professors at CMU chimed in with Thus began an article in theChronicle their opinions, and some concurred of Higher Education, a publication of with the demonstrators evaluation.3 the AAUP. The Chronicle piece concen- Quite simply, our students and their trated on the sanctions that these five mentors have misread both the how students faced when their little cha- as well as the what of architectural rade was taken for racist propaganda, symbolism. This essay is intended to explaining, “...some passersby didn’t explain and contextualize these opin- get it...Jewish students, in particular, ions and evaluations. I will first trace thought it was tasteless—or worse, a a particular mind-set of contempo- Fig. 1. CMU Purnell Arts Center, 1999, Michael Dennis Associates. Photo Schumacher glorification of Nazism.” rary American architects that leads them to mistakenly associate some The history of modern architecture ugly, unfunctional, out of context, or The Purnell Center is part of a cam- very general architectural forms with in the twentieth century, and into the irrelevant. It must be Communist or pus-wide master plan by Dennis’s very particular political orientations. twenty-first, is periodically concerned Fascist; or worse, Nazi. firm. This building presents a re- Second, I will briefly criticize some with the questions: who is Modern, petitive brick-colonnaded facade to of the critics’ further evaluations of what is Modern, what is Modern The new Purnell Arts Center at a quadrangle, and faces an almost the building. enough, and what does Modern Carnegie-Mellon University has been equal , also designed by Dennis. mean in social and political terms? condemned for allegedly resembling The protesters limited themselves to In our nation’s we find fasces In a practical sense, the ideological the architecture of Albert Speer. The the facade of the Purnell Center, not carvings on Memorial Bridge and battles between the “Moderns” and building, designed by Michael Dennis its internal organization or spaces, the Lincoln Memorial. In the United the “Ancients” over the past century and Associates,1 [Fig. 1] was the venue which presumably do not remind States Senate, the Marshall brings have resembled the politics of a banana for a political “demonstration.” them of Nazi rituals and practices. out a fasces at the beginning of im- republic. You are either a communist Despite the fact that the building portant legislative events. Pick up a or a fascist, and neither side will admit Four architecture majors and a possesses no detail stylistic simi- pre-Roosevelt dime, and you’ll find a that there is any position in between, or drama major...thought the univer­ larities to the classicism of Albert fasces on the verso. The fasces was an outside the line between those poles. sity’s new arts center was reminiscent Speer—it is patently Modern in style ancient Roman emblem (which is why Likewise, both Modernists and Clas- of oppressive of the Third and detail—our student protesters it could be used on American archi- sicists have attempted to associate Reich. So they applied for a $500 obviously thought that the very pres- tecture), but it was also the symbol of their ideas and styles with politically grant and presented an art exhibit ence of a certain number of repetitive the Italian Fascist Party. It is banned acceptable motives, and their enemy’s in protest: They bathed the building bays, along with open of a in Italy, the same way the swastika ideas and styles with politically sus- in red light and projected images particular vertical proportion, were is banned in Germany. Aside from pect movements. It’s not enough to of Adolf Hitler, Nazi buildings, and enough to link the building to fascist/ visiting Italians, only those Ameri- 44 call your adversary’s building stupid, goose-stepping German soldiers onto nazi architecture. cans who know Italian history even take notice of the fasci on our build- it stemmed from the Classical or the Fast forward to the inter-war period: early twentieth century, but also for ings. Had the student protesters at Medieval. Architects who didn’t totally the style battles between the World those architects who, through Giedi- CMU projected a fasces instead of a embrace the most extreme directives Wars for the hearts and minds of the on’s lens, began to view even American swastika, passersby would not have and forms of the International Style general public and the power elite were governmental architecture of the 1930s stopped. Yet all these emblems are (e.g., Robert Mallet-Stevens and W.M. waged in Europe, not America. The as “fascistic” (small ‘f ’). This was be- much less abstract than Michael - Dudok) were relegated to a second- European Modern movement came cause the Jazz Age/Depression Era ar- nis’s facades in Pittsburgh. What is class category.4 Others (e.g., Peter to America with Mies van der Rohe chitecture of the nation’s capital, along it about our students’ sensibilities Behrens and Auguste Perret), who ap- and Gropius just before World War II, with various train stations, courthous- and education that encourages com- peared to be “almost-modern” were de- and was wholeheartedly embraced by es, and numerous post offices across parison with Speer, and would most picted as “transitional figures.” Doubt- American architects only after that war. the land, looked vaguely like the only likely lead them ignore the fasces on less, these architects never thought Any association with anti-fascist and twentieth century non-International the Lincoln Memorial? of themselves as “transitional,” but as anti-totalitarian politics that the Eu- Style buildings these post-World War II the saying goes, “the propaganda of ropean Modern movement architects architects knew. The public, of course, The Purnell Center is indeed remi- the victor becomes the history of the assumed for themselves was irrelevant has always considered Washingtonian niscent of some of the architecture of vanquished.” in America. Hence, it was unnecessary neo-Classicism the very quintessence the first half of the twentieth century. to contrast the modernists with the of democracy, some of it even built With its long colonnades, , and A small sampling of the eclectic clas- traditionalists on this side of the At- under the ultra-liberal Works Progress moldings, the building refers back to sical architecture that wasn’t deemed lantic vis-à-vis political orientation. Administration. the period of academic and traditional proto-modern was also included in None of the Americans who practiced architecture, the styles which graced the histories of Modern architec- traditional architecture after World In the 1950s and 1960s, when the “New many of our famous college campuses. ture. It was presented as counterfeit War I was even examined. As famous as Monumentality” of Edward Durrell To grasp why some architects, and and dangerous. They were the bad they were in their own day, they became Stone, Minuro Yamasaki, Harrison only architects, might object to this guys (e.g., McKim, Meade & White non-persons by the 1950s. American and Abramovitz, and others was in we must rummage the historiography and Richard Morris Hunt). This was architects educated after 1945 knew vogue in the United States, some ar- of modern architecture that was the in contrast to the equally derivative who the bad guys of the 1930s were in chitects thought they saw a resem- underpinning of post-war architectural (albeit neo-Medieval) work of H.H. Germany, Italy, and the Soviet Union, blance to the totalitarian design of the training. Richardson, which was presented as but knew nothing of Americans whose thirties. A few critics even imagined proto-Modern. Louis Sullivan, Rich- architecture was stylistically similar that they could discern the generic The popular histories of twentieth cen- ardson’s heir in the apostolic suc- to that of Marcello Piacentini, Boris salient characteristics of a “fascistic” tury architecture were written in the cession to Frank Lloyd Wright and Iofan, Paul Ludwig Troost, and Albert (small ‘f ’) architecture: lack of “human 1930s and 1940s. The single most influ- beyond, had claimed in 1893 that the Speer. Names like Paul Cret, Bertram scale” (whatever that means), rhetori- ential book to have been published in Classicism of the Chicago Columbian Goodhue, Ralph Adams Cram, Arthur cal or piers, vast unadorned English was Sigfried Giedion’s Space, Exposition would set back the course Brown, and John Russell Pope were surfaces. Again, their fears were not Time and Architecture, first issued in of architecture by fifty years. And so, unknown to the generations educated shared by the general public, and while 1940, with succeeding editions through for fifty years and beyond, Sullivan’s in the wake of the Bauhaus takeover of many of these buildings are ugly, it is 1967. This book and most of those that prophecy was self-fulfilled by later the educational system in America that hardly necessary to tar them with a followed were propaganda tracts for authors, and those architects who began in the 1940s. fascist brush to establish that fact. But the International Style. The authors replicated the classicism of the Co- such name-calling is easy, and can be condemned any trace of traditional lumbian Exposition were excluded So much the worse, not only for these effective in indoctrinating architecture form and style in architecture, whether from the histories of architecture. putative “retardataire” masters of the students. 45 Charles Jencks began his 1973 essay, Like so many modern critics, Jencks transference of anxiety concerning “Recent American Architecture: was unable to separate politics from monumentality. That is, since the Camp-Non Camp,” with the follow- his preconceptions of style, even if only twentieth-century monumental ing caution: he could separate politics from the architecture that the architect has stylistically acceptable architect. An experienced is totalitarian, a phobia There is...one aspect of [recent Ameri­ equally narrow viewpoint made it pos- against all monumental architecture can Architecture] which is all too sible for a band of vigilante censors thereby ensues. clearly comprehensible and that is to force the cancellation of an exhibi- the official architecture of American tion of the work of Armando Brasini Fascist architecture (capital ‘F’) is corporations and the government at Columbia University in the 1980s. Italian architecture under the Fas- [sic]. Its resemblance to Fascist archi­ Brasini’s work was unacceptable at cist regime, no more and no less. It is tecture of the thirties is, alas, all too Columbia because he was “Mussolini’s represented by both modernist and great. One only has to compare Mus­ architect.” Yet Brasini the classicist traditionalist buildings. Thankfully, the solini’s Third Rome with Ed Stone’s was no more Fascist than the modern- post-World War II demonization of the Fig. 2. Lincoln Center and Zeppelinfeld, from Perpetual Savings and Loan Associa­ ist Giuseppe Pagano. I can’t imagine traditionalists, and the mythologizing Jencks, C., Modern Movements in Archi- tion, 1961, or any number of cultural anyone objecting to Pagano’s work of the modernists as anti-Fascist or tecture, p.184 centres appearing across the United being on display at Columbia, or any at least politically neutral, finally has States with the architecture of the other American architecture school. been demystified. Through serious Third Reich to be convinced of this.5 A complete understanding of history scholarship we now understand that certainly would be missed, however, the Italian modernists were at least Looking back at the illustrations that as photos of Pagano in his black shirt, as Fascist as the classicists.9 Perhaps Jencks used to establish his compar- chatting with Mussolini, would have more so. It seems perfectly logical that ison—Lincoln Center in New York to be omitted. this be the case, since most of the mod- and Speer’s Zeppelinfeld in Nürm- ernists were still attending architecture burg—one is truly baffled by the lack As late as the mid-1980s, Heinrich school when Mussolini hijacked the Fig. 3. Dept. Interior, Washington, DC, Waddy of any significant resemblance. [Fig. Klotz, like Jencks, denounced the most Italian government in 1922. They were Wood, 1935. Photo Schumacher 2] Jencks could have chosen any num- abstract, benign, and remote resem- much more impressionable than the ber of Washington buildings, like the blances to traditional configuration in older classically oriented architects, Department of the Interior Building, contemporary architecture, implying who were the children of a bourgeois 1935, by Waddy B. Wood, [Fig. 3] Paul a totalitarian (if not specifically Nazi) Risorgimento. Cret’s Federal Reserve of 1937, [Fig. affiliation: 4] or the U.S. Health and Human Ser- About twenty years ago I was driv- vices Building (1939–41; Office of the The moment when trees are planted ing with an Italian friend through Supervising Architect). [Fig. 5] These in rows like marching soldiers and Rome. He is a painter, not an archi- buildings actually look like Speer’s columns fall in step to make colon­ tect, born in the late 1930s. As we Fig. 4. Federal Reserve Bank, Washington, DC, Zeppelinfeld. But they didn’t fit his nades, when are built em­ passed Adalberto Libera’s Aventine Paul Cret, 1937. Photo Schumacher argument. bodying hierarchy and symmetrically Post Office (1934) Giuseppe remarked, repeating all their features... then the “I hate that Art-Deco Fascist style.” Had Jencks looked closely at Fascist great backward fall...is complete.7 [Fig. 9] I kept silent, thinking that we Architecture in Italy he might have architects did not directly link the compared Philip Johnson’s New York Colonnades are the symbols of to- Fascist Regime with Libera’s style, but State Theater at Lincoln Center to talitarian oppression? Tell that to the rather with Marcello Piacentini, a so- a building it actually looks like: Gi- residents of Paris, Bologna, or Torino. called “Monumentalist.” As we drove useppe Terragni’s competition proj- [Fig. 7] Comparing trees planted in up Piacentini’s Via della Conciliazi­ ect for the Palazzo dei Congressi in rows to marching soldiers is not only a one toward Saint Peter’s and Rome, 1939.6 [Fig. 6] While I doubt cheap metaphor, it calls into question then turned up the Janiculum Hill, that Jencks picked on Philip Johnson any allée of trees planted anywhere, at Giuseppe was silent. I asked him why because of Johnson’s association with any time. [Fig. 8] The origin of plant- he made no similar comment about the Nazis in the 1930s, like most other ing trees in rows is in agriculture, not Piacentini’s street, which was built critics he would surely have overlooked political pageantry. I won’t even touch to commemorate the Lateran Pact Terragni’s membership in the Italian the symmetry question.8 signed in 1929 by the Pope and the Fascist Party, as well as the fact that Duce. [Fig. 10] He said, “Oh, that; it Terragni’s most famous building was An architectural psychiatrist might wasn’t finished until 1950 [seven years Fig. 5. Office of the Supervising Architect, HHS 46 a local Fascist Party headquarters. diagnose Klotz’s attitude as the after Fascism fell]. It’s not Fascist.” I Building Washington, DC, 1939-41 think it was then and there that I lost law-breakers.10 Like Lombroso’s all belief in the existence of “fascist” pseudo-science, the link between (small ‘f ’) architecture. architectural typologies and politics is a chimera at best, and at worst Of course, the Fascists and Nazis also leads to an aesthetic McCarthyism. adored gemütlich kitsch townscape All connections between politics and and intimately-scaled vernacular vol­ architectural form are historically karchitektur; but then so do people in specific, and vary with actual events. democratic societies. Why isn’t this The Russians blew the swastika off brand of sham vernacular associated the Brandenburg . They didn’t with Nazism? blow up the gate. As any linguist will argue, the signifier is always It is also interesting to recognize arbitrary. that, for the International Style ar- Fig. 6. Terragni, Pal dei Congressi, Rome 1939, unexecuted. Fondazione Guiseppe Ter­ chitects of the 1920s and 1930s and One can only imagine the results of ragni, Como their post-war apologists, architec- extending such symbolic proscrip- ture was somehow determined by tions into other design disciplines. history and sociology when it was We might eliminate leather over- modernist, and determined by geog- coats because the SS wore leather raphy and politics when it was tradi- coats. The color combination red tionalist. For reasons that have always and black, also a Nazi scheme, would been opaque to me, Farkas Molnar be unacceptable. And let’s ban the Fig. 10. Marcello Piacentini, Via Dell in Hungary, Antonin Raymond in Ja- Volkswagon Beetle. It was, after all, Conciliazione, Rome, 1927–50. Cour­ pan, Werner Moser in Switzerland, designed by Ferdinand Porsche for tesy University of Maryland School of Walter Gropius in Germany, and Le the Führer.11 Architecture Slide Library Corbusier in France were all operat- ing in concert with an all-pervasive Some of the architecture professors socially progressive Zeitgeist; they at CMU obviously share the attitudes were “International.” Sir Edwin Lu- limned above; indeed, a few would tyens in England, Arnaldo Foschini appear to subscribe to the doctrine in Italy, and John Russell Pope in the of “fascist” (small ‘f ’) architecture. United States ostensibly were out of With a disarming disinterest, Omer synch with the Zeitgeist and mired in Akin portrays the Purnell Art Center regionally retardataire nationalisms. facades as “perhaps just a little Nazi, Fig. 7. Amadeo Castellamonte, Via Po, Fig. 8. Montepulciano, Madonna di San Biaggio, In reality, there was as much family re- ma non troppo.” And he accepts that Torino, sixteenth/seventeenth centuries. allée. Photo Schumacher semblance amongst the work of Clas- others might interpret the buildings Photo Schumacher sical architects in various countries in some other ways, if we please. “Oh, in the 1930s—whether democratic or yes, I see the Speer connection, and I totalitarian—as there was amongst see other connections, too, but the that of the modernists. Speer connection must be there; after all, I see it.” Any attempt to establish the fixed elements of a “fascist” (small ‘f ’) I will not address all the criticisms of architecture through an analysis Purnell offered by the CMU faculty, of abstract formal characteristics but rather I’ll concentrate here on a will inevitably descend to the level small cluster of assertions, mainly of the famous Italian criminologist those in Professor Akin’s essay. He Cesare Lombroso, who typed crimi- states the following: nal behavior. Lombroso’s of the physiognomy of criminals—slitty The pomp part is the one that gets eyes, strong jaw, crooked or flat nose, it closer to Speer. The loggia...is and even left-handedness—produced of gigantic proportions (fit for a a convenient cinematic stereotype, 25-foot tall person), relentlessly Fig. 9. Aventine Post Office, Rome, 1934, Adalberto Libera. Photo Schumacher but did nothing to apprehend real repetitive (the most that the Beaux 47 Arts style allows is 11 columns on I take professor Akin’s implication Akin neglects to include the rest of and some Washington buildings, the a facade) and oppressively monu­ to mean that Purnell lacks “human Kostof ’s description, in which he con- very fact that those buildings—espe- mental.12 scale.” But because scale, like propor- textualizes his criticism: cially those so close to the Holocaust tion, is relational and not absolute, Museum—are not widely perceived Let us take these assertions one by one: it would be irrational to speak of It is in fact a widely current official by the public as in any way Fascist “human” scale per se; we may speak style that has left its heavy imprint or Nazi is itself prima facia evidence 1. “The pomp part is the one that gets of “intimate,” or “residential,” scale, from Madrid and Paris to Rio de for the vacuous oversimplification of it closer to Speer.” “Pomp,” which is, or of “grand,” or “public,” scale, and Janeiro and Tokyo. Once again, as coupling these abstract formal proper- “...dignified or ostentatious display,”13 it is indeed possible for a building to so often in the past, a convention ties to symbolic meaning. If visitors to is apparent in any space used for any be “out of scale” with its surround- of forms serves as a receptacle into the Holocaust Museum make no such ceremony, from my aunt Ella’s liv- ings, program, or social purpose. which states can pour their very dif­ connection, then why should visitors ing , to an ancient Mythraeum Whether Purnell is, or is not, must ferent ideologies. to the Purnell Center make one? (found typically in a cellar), to gradu- be specifically argued. It was not. On ation ceremonies at Carnegie-Mellon the contrary, the buildings are quite Classical architecture had two dis- Further, any implication that “stripped” University, to the Mall in Washing- well-scaled to the original Hornbos- tinct advantages: recognition and or “starved” classicism was the exclu- ton. The assumption that pomp leads tel campus. The “giant” orders on the universality. It was the most familiar sive, even the preferred, international straight to Nazi architecture is absurd. colonnades are a way of bringing the of architectural conventions, and it choice for State architecture is mis- But, Akin hasn’t even established that scale of smaller and lower buildings had the ability to transcend narrow leading. “State” values have just as of- the Purnell Center is pompous. He up to that of the older, taller ones. symbolism, to mean different things ten been embodied in highly decorated simply states it. In these terms, and in terms of the to different users.15 and intricate classicism, such as Ulisse dimensions of the outdoor spaces Stacchini’s Milan Train Station 1931, or 2. “The loggia is of gigantic propor- that Dennis has made, the scale of Professor Akin quoted Kostof out of the United States Library of Congress, tions...” Proportion in architecture, as Purnell and its neighbors is perfect, context for obvious reasons. 1886–92, by Smithmeyer and Pelz. In in anything else, is unrelated to size. something many architects as well fact, the oscillations between highly The proportions of the Corinthian col- as “lay” Pittbrughians have noted. By calling this style “starved” Kostof decorated classicism and “stripped,” or umns on the Basilica of Saint Peter in makes it clear he doesn’t particu- more planar (and plainer) classicism, Rome are the same as the Corinthian 4. Professor Akin also quotes a fa- larly like it. (Most critics call the style are just that: oscillations of taste. And columns on a wedding cake (or so mous architectural historian, the “Stripped Classicism,” a less loaded sometimes simplicity­­­­­­­­ and planarity they should be). To speak of “gigantic late Spiro Kostof, who argued that term.) Kostof declines to explain why go with the “­eologically correct” proportions” is an oxymoron. American “State Architecture” (like this architecture is any more “starved” composition and proportions of the the United States Mint in San Fran- than Etiene Boullée’s or Claude Nich- elements, whereas highly decorated 3. “...fit for a 25-foot tall person....and cisco) resembled the architecture olas Ledoux’s late eighteenth-century surfaces are often less academically oppressively monumental.” Scale in of totalitarian regimes of the 1930s. Classicism, a style that is often cited interpreted. architecture is a function of the size Akin adds that similar buildings are as leading to the Modern move- relationship between a person and a to found very close to the United ment. The large expanses of blank Likewise, the development of a taste building. If a building that we would States Holocaust Memorial Museum unadorned on Boullée’s project for a stripped-down, volumetric, expect to be “residential” were to have in Washington. In fact, the one il- for a French National Assembly (1792) cubic, “pure” classical expression in quadruple in size to our lustrated here is directly across the are colossal compared to the unre- nineteenth- and twentieth-century expectations, then we might imagine street from the Holocaust Memorial lieved facades of John Russell Pope’s architecture is unrelated to political a 25-foot tall person should inhabit Museum. [Fig. 11] National Gallery of Art in Washington motives or State ratification. It fol- such an edifice. But, because grand (1937). And both of these buildings lows a progression—if not an unbro- houses also have grand windows, Kostof (quoted by Akin) called Fascist display far bigger empty expanses ken line—from Boullée and Ledoux a specific contextual comparison architecture “starved classicism”: than Michael Dennis’s buildings at through Schinkel and Labrouste to would then be needed to establish CMU, which are replete with intri- Cret and Goodhue, and beyond into that the building is “out of scale.” It [starved classicism] worked with cately patterned brickwork, recesses, the post-World War II era. [Fig. 12] The One cannot in the same breath call large expanses of blank wall and voids, pilasters, mouldings and cor- simplified style adorns residences as a building “oppressively monumental” rows of shallow unframed nices, all of which bring down the well as ministries, even Synagogues. and then tell us we are too small for openings. was simplified scale. If a “State-scaled” architecture The Adas Israel Synagogue in Wash- it. The very essence of monumental into angular accents that receded were needed here, Purnell would fall ington, by Frank Grad and Sons, [Fig. architecture is to exhibit elements into the masonry. This public archi­ far short of expectations. 13] displays many of the characteristics which we understand to be large. tecture of America...looks very much that Kostof attributed to “starved clas- The Parthenon, with far fewer scale like the public architecture of the ’30s Moreover, while Kostof and Akin are sicism”:“...large expanses of blank wall clues than Purnell, does not require in Hitler’s Germany, Mussolini’s Italy perfectly correct in noticing some and rows of shallow unframed window 48 a 25-foot tall person. and Stalin’s Russia.”14 formal similarities between Speer’s openings. Ornament...simpli­fied into angular accents that receded into the 1855: 18 bays (on each block). Henri m a s o n r y.” 16 Labrouste’s Bibliotheque St. Genevieve, Paris, 1850: 19 bays. Jacopo Sansovino’s Stripped Classicism did not die im- Library of St. Mark, Venice, 1553, 21 mediately with the close of World War bays. Mauro Codussi’s Procuratae Vec- II. One finds remarkable resemblances chie in Venice, circa 1500: 50 bays. The amongst buildings built between 1938 South Stoa at Corinth (circa 325 B.C.): and 1948 in Italy, the United States 70 bays. The Royal Crescent at Bath, and France. Like Adas Israel, the En- John Wood, eighteenth-century: about gineering School at the University of 90 bays. And then there is Amadeo Fig. 11. U.S. Printing Office, Washington,DC, Fig. 12. K.F. Schinkel, Schauspielhaus, Ber­ Maryland was designed in the late Castellamonte’s Via Po in Torino, Louis Simon, 1936. Photo Schumacher lin, 1821 1940s, and fitted with porticoes that seventeenth century (a small portion closely resemble the frontispieces of of which is pictured above, Fig. 8): a many 1930s public edifices, such as kilometer and a half of who-knows- Cret’s Federal Reserve (illustrated how-many equal bays. above).17 [Fig 14] In another faculty critique published Lastly on this point: Why isn’t a build- in Focus, Ulrich Fleming derides what ing that could easily serve as an aes- he implies is the inauthenticity of thetic paradigm for “stripped classi- Purnell’s structure, arguing, “...sup- cism”—Palladio’s Villa Poiana—consid- port elements [are] technical fakes: ered “stripped” or “starved” classicism? each contains inside a slender steel [Fig. 15] that does all the load-bear- Fig. 14. Skidmore Owings and Merrill, School Fig. 13. Adas Israel Synagogue, Washington, 21 ing...” This is perfectly true, as we see of Engineering, University of Maryland, Col­ DC, 1950, Frank Grad and Sons Criticisms that are related to, but do from a construction photo. [Fig. 17] lege Park, MD, 1948–52. Photo Schumacher not directly support the claim of Nazi In fact, the broad piers do not reach association, are also prominent in es- the soffit; they are not established says in this issue of Focus. Ratcheting as structural members, but as mod- down a notch, Akin argues that the ern equivalents of pilasters, which Purnell Center’s bays are, “...relentlessly any architect worth his salt would repetitive (the most that the Beaux realize, and therefore would not be Arts style allows is 11 columns on a fa- fooled.22 This is a convention, a fiction, cade)” Purnell has fourteen bays, three not an exact description of the steel more than Professor Akin’s “Beaux structural members. Fleming’s is a Arts” limit.18 But whose limit is this, common critique laid at the feet of anyway?19 While it is certain that many architects who choose to interpret Fig. 15. Palladio, Villa Poiana, Poiana Mag­ Fig. 16. York and Sawyer, Department of teachers at the École des Beaux Arts structure as rhetorical form. He as- giore, 1556. Photo Schumacher Commerce, Washington, DC, 1932. Photo (and at American schools under its in- sumes that a “truthful” projection of Schumacher fluence) limited the allowable number the structural dimension onto the of equal bays to eleven, they didn’t all facade is the proper way to express do that. The Department of Commerce the structure. Only architects would I do agree with the critics on one point, This essay was prompted not by a Building (1932) has twenty-seven bays notice this, but then only architects however: the new quadrangle could criticism of a building I happen to (I think that’s it, I may have lost count). would care about it. Why these critics use some trees (preferably planted in like, designed by an architect I con- [Fig. 16] This building is very the quin- never seem to criticize the opposite rows, like at the University of Virginia sider talented (both of which are tessence of “Beaux Arts.”20 condition, i.e., the “masking” of a steel or Cornell); also, some more street true). It’s one thing to write harsh or concrete column with a mullion of lights (maybe like those in the Tuil- criticisms about a building. One can But why confine ourselves to the École a more slender profile (as in much leries?); street , pathways legitimately make negative comments des Beaux Arts, when we can go di- of Mies’s work), has always been a through the grass, etc. Perhaps a concerning the appropriateness of rectly to the source of the Beaux Arts? wonder to me. In the Seagram Build- monument or a fountain. Presumably, a given work. Calling it Nazi-like is It might be useful to cite some more ing in New York, Mies made it look it will ultimately be fitted with these another matter. “original” and “authentic” buildings. like all the mullions are structure, (or, urban accouterments, against which Vignola’s Loggia dei Banchi in Bolo- alternately, that none are structure). the repetitive rhythms of the almost The continuing influence of the or- gna, sixteenth century: 15 bays. Rue It’s okay to “fake it” by going thin, but matching facades will provide a most thodox histories of Modern architec­­­ de Rivoli, Paris, Percier and Fontaine, not thick? rhythmic continuo. ture, coupled with the myopia of mod- 49 ernism’s extreme ideology, denies our CMU students an appreciation of works like the Purnell Arts Center. [Fig. 18] Dennis’s buildings at CMU are prec-edented by many sources, including Asplund’s Stockholm Public Library, Michelangelo’s Campido- glio, Giacomo della Porta’s Università della Sapienza, Vasari’s Uffizi, and his Loggia in Arezzo. [Fig. 19] The cognoscenti will see these and other inspirations.

The student protesters’ motivation is understandable. They have been Fig. 17. Purnell Center, CMU, Michael Dennis and Associates, construction photo. Photo taught that architecture exudes Schumacher meaning, and they are anxious to infuse their own designs with the loftiest of sentiments. In their courses they are being taught that allegorical and political symbolism can attach to edifices, that these constructions are not just assemblies of function, form, and structure. What they are not being taught, it seems, is that they and their professors do not decide public politi- cal symbolism. The people do. I can stand in front of the Lincoln Memorial and rant all day about the fasces. I can stand in front of a synagogue and tell the worshippers that the swastika I carry is just a neutral Indian sign (I doubt I would last the day). Or, I can stand in front of the Federal Reserve with a sign that says, “This Building Resembles Adolf Speer’s Zeppelin- feld.” My ravings will not change a single perception.

Professors are often rewarded and promoted for discovering meanings in architecture. Like the students they teach, sometimes they think that whatever they decide a building means is what the building means. And in the academic culture of Post- Structuralism, Deconstructionism, and Post-Modernism such a viewpoint is perfectly acceptable, even nurtured. Our CMU professors have affected a quiet air of disinterest in dealing with this matter. The affectation does not, 50 however, insure objectivity. Fig. 19. Arezzo, Vasari Loggia. Photo Schumacher Notes 1. Michael Dennis & Associates. Damianos + Anthony, John Fisher Associates. 2. Chronicle of Higher Education, October 8, 1999, Vol. XLVI, Number 7, p. 12. 3. See Focus, a publication of the faculty and staff of Carnegie-Mellon University, Volume 20, No. 1., 1999. 4. As late as 1996 William Curtis places these two architects outside an “inner circle,” claiming, “The International Style had some adherents who only partly understood the underlying principles, and who adopted the forms as a new external dress...The work of the Dutch architect Willem Dudok supplies an example of this competent ‘stylism’; or in France, that of Robert Mallet-Stevens.” Curtis, W., Modern Architecture Since 1900, Upper Saddle River, Prentice-, Third Edition, 1996, p. 266. 5. Jencks, Charles, Modern Movements in Architecture, Anchor Books, New York, 1973, p. 185. 6. I have no idea whether Johnson has ever seen Terragni’s project. 7. Heinrich Klotz, The History of Postmodern Architecture, Cambridge, MIT Press, 1988, p. 2. 8. For the evils of symmetry in modernism, see Zevi, B., The Modern Language of Architecture, Seattle, University of Washington Press, 1987, p. 15–17. 9. See Ghirardo, Diane, “Italian Architects and Fascist Politics: An Evaluation of the Rationalist’s Role in Regime Building,” in JSAH, May 1980, pp. 109-127. 10. See Chorover, Stephan L., From Genesis to Genocide, The Meaning of Human Nature and the Power of Mind Control, Cambridge, MIT Press, 1979, p. 179; see also Hersey, G., The Evolution of Allure, Cambridge, MIT Press, 1996, pp. 112–127. Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer didn’t fit the stereotype. 11. Amongst some Jewish families in the U.S., buying a German car was a political no-no until quite recently. In 1971, when my wealthy uncle bought a Mercedes 380 SL roadster, others in the family said, “Milton, you bought a German car?” His reply was, “If Israel can trade with them, Milton Upsher can trade with them!” 12. Akin, Omer, in Focus, op. cit., p. 4. 13. American Heritage College Dictionary. 14. Kostof, Spiro, A History of Architecture, Settings and Rituals, New York, Oxford University Press, 1985, p. 719. Second edition, 1995, p. 716–717. 15. ibid. 16. NB. This Synagogue is also post-WWII, and therefore Post-Holocaust. 17. The Porticoes at the University of Maryland Engineering School were forced on the architect by the then president of the University. Nathanial Owings of SOM re- fused to design the porticoes, and a local firm was given that part of the commission. Architect Harry Weese resigned from SOM over the flap, and started his own firm. 18. The University Center across the quad, also by Michael Dennis and Associates, has twenty-one bays which almost match Purnell. That building has been up for a couple of years. One wonders why the demonstrations took so long to materialize. 19. In Baroque Italy of the seventeenth century, nine equal bays was considered maximum. I wonder who’s “correct” on this one? 20. NB. Why the repetition of equal bays is a “problem” with classical architecture and not with, say, Eero Saarinen’s Dulles Airport or Mies’s King Library in Washington, DC, is yet another mystery. Incidentally, Michael Dennis has made no claim to being a Beaux Arts architect. 21. Ulrich Fleming, in Focus, op. cit., p. 5. 22. In the same manner, the of the Capitol in Washington, DC is not a dome per se. It is a truss structure in metal that is covered to resemble a masonry dome. Architects who know this fact divide into two groups: those who think the dome of the Capitol is sham and inauthentic, and those who don’t care. Fig. 18. CMU Arts Center

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