City Limits Frederick Steiner

Oz Volume 24 Article 5 1-1-2002 City Limits Frederick Steiner Follow this and additional works at: http://newprairiepress.org/oz This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License. Recommended Citation Steiner, Frederick (2002) "City Limits," Oz: Vol. 24. http://dx.doi.org/10.4148/2378-5853.1371 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at 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]. City Limits Frederick Steiner his service in the French army during What can the plans for Austin, Texas the First World War. While teaching put forth by these two Philadelphia- and directing the architecture atelier based immigrants teach us about the at Penn, Cret maintained a robust nature of city making? We will look practice in Philadelphia designing at each plan in some detail, and then such buildings as the Pan American reflect on their larger significance for Union in Washington, D.C. (1907–1917), the present state of the city. the Indianapolis Public Library (1917), and the Detroit Institute of the Arts The Eyes of Texas (1920–1927).2 Texans aim high, and, early on, they set their sights on a great state university. The second plan was prepared by Bolstered with oil revenue from state Ian L. McHarg (1920–2001) in 1976 trust lands, a permanent university for the Lake Austin area. McHarg endowment fueled the construction of was the most prominent planner a physical plant worthy of these aspira- and landscape architect in the world tions. Paul Cret’s plan and subsequent during the 1970s. After apprenticing buildings for the Texas campus were as a landscape architect in his native preceded by the noteworthy work of I inhabit a city that is reluctantly the University of Texas campus in 1933. Scotland, he served in the British others, including that of the inven- urban. My workplace and homeplace Cret was one of the most prominent commandos during the Second World tive architect Cass Gilbert. But it was lie within the Austin city limits. Deep architects in the United States from War. Afterwards, McHarg studied with Cret that the university found an in the heart of Texas, Austin simultane- the first decade of the twentieth cen- landscape architecture and city plan- architect who matched its confident ously stands as the state capital and tury through the 1930s. During the ning at Harvard University, a school enterprise. as a state-of-mind. The city epitomizes latter half of the twentieth century, his then dominated by Walter Gropius Texan-ness while providing a contrast reputation plummeted with the rise of and the Bauhaus.3 The Texas Board of Regents retained and a foil for the rest of the state. the International Style. The modern- Cret as consulting architect in March ists opposed the Beaux-Arts tradition In 1954, McHarg went to the University 1930, a post he retained until his death Cities evolve through the cumulative and Paul Cret bore the standard for of Pennsylvania, where he taught until fifteen years later. In addition to his impacts of many plans and designs the French school in America. his death in 2001. While teaching, 1933 comprehensive development as well as numerous unplanned and writing, and chairing the landscape plan, Cret participated in the design undesigned activities. Unintended Paul Cret first entered the Ècole des architecture and regional planning of nineteen campus buildings as well consequences flow from both designed Beaux-Arts in his home city Lyon, department at Penn, McHarg (like Cret) as many terraces, retaining walls, and and unplanned actions. My neigh- France. In 1896, he won the Paris Prize, maintained a vigorous, Philadelphia- inner-campus roads.4 borhood and my campus resulted in enabling him to study at the most based practice. His firm, Wallace, part because of two plans. The plans important architectural school in the McHarg, Roberts and Todd (WMRT), Cret’s “Report Accompanying the affecting my office and my home were world then: the Ècole des Beaux-Arts was responsible for many plans including General Plan of Development” con- completed several years apart. in Paris. He came to the United States those for the Twin Cities Metropolitan tains careful analyses of the exist- in 1903 to teach at the University of Region of Minnesota (1969), the Denver ing buildings, previous plans (most The first of the two plans was prepared Pennsylvania.1 He stayed in Philadel- metropolitan region (1971– 1972), and notably those by Gilbert), and the site.5 20 by Paul Philippe Cret (1876–1945) for phia until his death in 1945, except for The Woodlands, Texas (1973–1974). The plan also presents a clear vision Paul Phillippe Cret Drawings. The Alexander Architectural Archive, The General Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin. for the future. His scheme respects Beyond the historicist facades, Beaux- ing those groups about axes. Elasticity open space, the east–west orientation precedent and context while charting Arts architects like Cret gave careful was achieved by ‘organic extensions’ of of the central campus, sun angle and a bold, new course for action. Cret’s attention to the relationships among existing and projected buildings and weather conditions, breezes, and topog- work is deeply rooted in Beaux-Arts buildings. They organized these rela- by the creation of secondary courts raphy contribute to the arrangement design principles. tionships to build physical commu- around the primary one at the center of buildings and circulation systems. nities. Although (to my knowledge) of the campus. The whole composition Traffic flow between the university Carol McMichael characterizes Beaux- they never used the word explicitly, was guided by goals of ‘interrelation, and the city of Austin is an important, Arts buildings as “axially and sym- this approach is “ecological”—that balance, and symmetry.’ Interrelation recognized challenge. Because the metrically disposed particulate plans is, concerned about the relationship was directed toward realizing elastic- Jeffersonian north–south, east–west …[with]… historicist elevations derived between organisms (in this case “aca- ity; balance and symmetry, toward grid of the campus is shifted from from a careful study of the architec- demic organisms”) with each other formality.”9 the original southwest to north–east tural monuments of antiquity and and with their environments. grid of the city, the tenuousness of the the Renaissance.”6 Furthermore, she Cret viewed the plan as flexible and connections is exacerbated. describes the oppositions between Cret’s plan consisted of large, carefully adaptable, writing, “a general plan Cret’s “traditional Beaux-Arts” and rendered watercolor plan and perspec- prepared today will have to be modified Cret envisioned the stream, Waller “modern purist concepts” as: “(a) tive drawings as well as a written from time to time, to take account of Creek, running along the east side of symmetrical, compartmentalized report. His scheme sought to achieve changing conditions.”10 He recognized the campus as an important oppor- plans vs. asymmetrical, open plans, (b) an “elastic formal plan” derived from “to make an elastic formal plan is by tunity to link the campus to the city. mass-dominant buildings vs. volume- the writings about architecture as a no means an easy matter.”11 “This element of the campus,” he dominant buildings, (c) particulate “civic art” by Werner Hegemann and wrote about the Waller Creek cor- masses vs. unified masses; and (d) Elbert Peets.8 According to McMichael, The plan plays careful attention to site ridor, “can be developed into a most ornamented surfaces vs. unornamented “Formality was achieved by grouping conditions and the relationship of the attractive feature, without entailing surfaces.”7 buildings around courts and arrang- campus to the City of Austin. Vistas, large expenditures.”12 21 One of the most noteworthy aspects of Cret’s plan is its acknowledgment that change is inevitable. He presented careful provisions for growth. In particular, Cret recognized sports would be an important driver of campus change. He observed, “the future of intercol- legiate athletics, and especially of the exhibition games requiring very large accommodations for the public, is a subject of great controversy.”13 Design with Nature Plans to expand the football stadium in 1970 generated “great controversy” indeed. The expansion plans encroached on the Waller Creek corridor. Student activists, including many from the university’s School of Architecture, chained themselves to trees and bulldozers and the Austin environmental movement was born. As the city expanded in the early 1970s, its leaders initiated the “Austin Tomor- row” planning process. A centerpiece of that process became Ian McHarg’s Lake Austin Growth Management Plan.14 In 1974, the Austin city council authorized the preparation of a plan for the ninety-two-square-mile area encompassing Lake Austin and the watersheds of its tributaries. Located to the west of the then-limits of the city, the planning area covered an oak-dominated undulating terrain 22 Paul Phillippe Cret Drawings. The Alexander Architectural Archive, The General Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin. situated over the Edwards Aquifer. Barton Springs, Austin, Texas. Photos by Frederick Steiner. The area was clearly fated for new particular attention to the suitabilities guidelines for the development zone later buildings clearly exhibited the growth but also possessed significant for future growth, conservation and in one region (for example, the Lake influences of the CIAM movement. environmental amenities. Accord- development principles, and suggested Austin Corridor Region) differed from Ian McHarg entered Harvard with ing to McHarg and his colleagues, public policies to manage growth. the other three physiographic regions academic modernism in full bloom.

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