The Role of in "New Historicist" : As Seen Through the Work of Johnston Marklee

DES 3367: Today's architects' ambitions: in search of a new narrative canon

Michael Matthews

M. Arch II May 1st, 2017 The Role of Modernism in "New Historicist" Architecture - Matthews

The upcoming 2017 Chicago Architecture Biennial poses the question: what is the role of in contemporary architecture? Is there too much emphasis on "newness" in contemporary practice? And can contemporaneity be informed instead by a careful re-evaluation of historical architecture? The artistic directors of the 2017 Biennial, Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee of the Los Angeles-based practice Johnston Marklee, have been exploring such topics in their own work. Their office is at the forefront of an emerging in contemporary practice called "New Historicists". Coined by Alejandro Zaera-Polo, who has attempted to classify 21st Century architectural practices into comprehensive taxonomies, the group of New Historicists are identified by their intent to embrace "historically-informed design". The term — "New Historicists" — is at once excitingly open-ended and confusingly ambiguous. It does not clearly capture the exact attitude towards history. And so the 2017 Chicago Architecture Biennial offers a unique opportunity for this group of practitioners to explore what exactly this attitude might entail. Until then, one can seek to understand the meaning of historically-informed design through an analysis of the writings and built work of one of New 's main ambassadors: Johnston Marklee.

The label "New Historicists" is ambiguous partially because of the ambiguity already inherent in the term "history". What about history exactly? It could be pointing towards the consciousness of the history of a physical site (the spatial), the specific language and of historical architecture (the stylistic), or of the architectural agenda of a previous era (the disciplinary). To Johnston Marklee, a historical perspective seems to encapsulate all of these interpretations of the word history and tries to combine them into a holistic perspective: approaching history from all angles.

In a recent 2017 interview with Archinect, Johnston Marklee reject contemporary architecture's obsession with newness. Since the advent of computers as a design tool, the digitalization of architecture has created an attitude that every single project needs to be a complete departure from what came before it, and to try out something that has yet been explored architecturally. But this fixation with newness often comes at the expense of the of the built artifact — it's as if the simple act of new has become more important than the building itself. In the digital age, newness has become a tyrannical force. Mark Lee summarizes its effects:

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The Role of Modernism in "New Historicist" Architecture - Matthews

" Now we feel that with today's abundance of , with the abundance with the overflow of images, everything becomes almost ahistorical, everything is flatlined, everything has become available. At this moment, our understanding of history, of understanding where things come from, is more important than ever. So it’s not tyrannical. This is something that is positive." ("Johnston Marklee Tackle the “Tyranny of Newness”, Archinect, 2017)

In this statement, there are echoes of Francis Fukuyama's landmark essay "Now is the End of History", in which Fukuyama argues that liberal have plateaued as the final form of governance and not evolve into something different, signaling the end of history. It suggests that we have entered into a new era defined as being atemporal. Johnston Marklee are tapping into this broader ideological shift, and explicitly denouncing the idea that history is no longer relevant in today's age.

It is initially surprising, then, that Johnston Marklee simultaneously identify as New Historicists and as Modernists. After all, modernists had such a hostile view of history. At the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, Walter Gropius famously ridded the school of historical artifacts as well as eliminated historical survey classes from the curriculum, deeming them no longer relevant. One of the core values of modernism was to strip architecture of its ornament or of any direct reference to the past or to , and to instead embrace abstraction as a means of divorcing architecture from precedent.

It is only possible to be both historicist and modernist in contemporary times; such a combination would have been contradictory in the early modernist era. This is due in large part to the dominance of the Beaux- design immediately prior to the advent of modernism. There was one, dominant prevailing narrative of how to design a building according to the Beaux-Arts ideals: symmetrical, hierarchical, neoclassical, et. al. To assert its legitimacy, modernism needed to fully dismiss its forbearer — the Beaux-Arts was so predominant that the two could not peacefully co-exist, and could only exist in opposition. Meanwhile, in the vacuum and multiplicity of contemporary architectural , an architect is more free to pick and choose different approaches, or to hybridize supposedly contradictory approaches, as in the case of historicism meets modernism.

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The Role of Modernism in "New Historicist" Architecture - Matthews

The precise role of Modernism in the work of Johnston Marklee was addressed in their 2017 interview with Archinect. Mark Lee writes:

" I would say we are certainly modernists. I mean modernist is a big disposition, there are many different strains in terms of modernism... We believe in modernism in terms of , but for us progress has to be embedded within the long cultural . We believe in a much more evolutionary model than revolutionary model, let’s say. That’s why an understanding of history is very important for our practice. We see our practice coming from many layers of history that came before us." ("Johnston Marklee Tackle the “Tyranny of Newness”, Archinect, 2017)

A key distinction between the historicist and the modernist disposition is concerning the tabula . Modernism, ever devoted to the idea of the plinth divorced from context, embraced the tabula rasa mentality out of the drive to assert itself against predominant architectural thought of the Beaux-Arts School. The plinth became a symbol of an architectural strategy to announce the introduction of a completely new purely abstracted design , alienated from historical and physical context. Conversely, as Johnston Marklee articulated in the "Tyranny of Newness", a contemporary embrace of modernism can be more attuned to the many layers of history. It can address many the different schools of thought of modernism, or even of other historical eras. New Historicists are modernists while at the same time fully rejecting the attitude of the tabula rasa, and instead choosing the tabula strata: from a blank slate to a layered slate.

This shift from a denouncement of history to the collection of history is most notable for its shift in tone: history moves from something negative to something completely neutral. This neutrality is encapsulated in Johnston Marklee's 2017 interview in Metropolis Magazine:

" We see history really as something that is neutral. It’s neither positive or negative in the way our predecessors thought. We don’t see history as something that one is subjected to or something that has to be reacted against, as happened with Modernism. Nor is it something that you have to latch onto, like the architects of previous generations were doing with . Instead, we see history as being intelligence accrued over

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The Role of Modernism in "New Historicist" Architecture - Matthews

time." ("Johnston Marklee Says Its Time for Architects to Rediscover Architecture”, Metropolis, 2017)

It's important to clarify that does not reject newness itself, but rather the necessity of newness. There is a freshness to the work of Johnston Marklee and that of other New Historicists that demonstrates how newness can emerge from the adaption of architectural history to contemporary times. Often, it seems newer and fresher than the work of more outwardly formal architecture, which is more a prisoner of newness, flailing to create novelty through over-expressivity, bombast, iconicity, and formalism.

One of Johnston Marklee's preeminent upcoming projects, the Menil Drawing Institute in Houston, United States, demonstrates this delicate mix of newness through historicism, of an homage to modernism, and of an embrace of the many layers of history. A discussion of the Menil Project, however, must begin with Renzo Piano's original contribution to the Menil Campus in 1986, as it provides a very convincing precedent. The project very successfully integrates into an unusual physical context for a muesum: a low-slung neighborhood of wooden bungalows in the Montrose neighborhood of Houston. Piano's response is at the perfect scale relative to the surrounding neighborhood in that it is small enough to fit in but large enough to stand out. The project combines a vernacular, shed-like facade with a high-tech canopy of ferrocement "leaves". Both elements are highly contextual, with the gray, wood board siding mirroring the surrounding bungalows, and the delicacy of the cement trellis system responding to the pervasive oak canopy of the Montrose neighborhood. As is often the case in Piano's better work, it is the small details that make the . The museum's wooden siding, for instance, is a nod to the domestic, but it is surrounded on all edges by a trim in white painted steel, differentiating itself just enough from low-brow domesticity and blending it with high-brow details that recognize it as a cultural institution. It's through this blending of contextual references that the project achieves the exact right tone.

Johnston Marklee's Drawing Institute sets out to strike a similar balance in tone. It seeks to recognize the tree-lined domestic setting while recognizing the stature of a museum building, and does so through a diverse mix of contextual and historical references that combine to form something unique and new. Upon first glance, the design's most striking attribute is its quietness. The exterior and facade have a reserve which is perhaps unusual for a museum, but

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The Role of Modernism in "New Historicist" Architecture - Matthews

seems to be a response to the Piano building's muted exterior and also to the domestic setting. At its tallest point, the building is only 16 feet (4.8 meters) tall. The flat roof of the exterior clearly evokes the modernist era. The portico that wraps around the perimeter is similarly modernist. But surprisingly, the portico lacks the typical colonnade, and instead, is structured by intermittent flat, thin planes. The planes read as an even further abstraction of the portico typology, eliminating the regularity of a colonnade for a less obvious and less traditional structural system. The strategy evokes the abstracted thin vertical planes of many Mies van der Rohe buildings, such as the thin marble planes of the Barcelona Pavilion.

The simplicity of the building, upon further inspection, is perhaps deceptive, and moving into the interiors there is an underlying complexity. The biggest move is the introduction of faceted, diagonal ceilings in the interior hallways. The diagonal slope frames the hallway using a language of the domestic, and recalls the gabled roofs of suburban houses. Here Johnston Marklee veer towards post-modernism, in that the gabling approaches a direct quotation of the vernacular gables. They still stay far enough away from post-modernism, however, as the gabled geometry undergoes permutations — offsetting, intermitting — that keep the gables more abstracted than their domestic counterparts. It is more of an evocation than a direct quotation. Here it becomes clear that Johnston Marklee's sensibilities of historical memory remain more grounded in modernism than postmodernism. The language of gabling is introduced as an abstracted element, far enough removed from literal gabling, in order to create a particular feeling on the interior, rather than seeking to be recognized as a symbol of domesticity.

The balance between formal simplicity and complexity is noted in Christopher Hawthorne's review of the publicity release of the Drawing Institute:

" But once you take a closer look, it becomes clear that the architecture is not so much spare as it is efficiently layered with ideas and comfortable with contradiction." (Hawthorne, "Review: Menil design by L.A.'s Johnston Marklee is deceptively simple", LA Times, 2016)

The Drawing Institute is also modernist in its treatment of materiality. It features the gray-painted cedar planks in an appeal to the surrounding context, but the majority of the project features

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The Role of Modernism in "New Historicist" Architecture - Matthews

white stucco. The interiors are similarly pervasively white, walls and ceilings in white plaster. The liberal use of stucco shares a modernist sensibility of using whiteness and the absence of materiality to suggest abstraction. Like the modernists, the whiteness is a means to achieve an emphasis of volume over mass, of abstracted surfaces, and of simplicity over ornamentation. Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson once identified these three attributes as the most distinctive attributes of . Stucco as a material encapsulates all of these attributes into one final effect. As New Historicists and Modernists, it's a natural fit for Johnston Marklee, and almost all of their projects features this material.

Organizationally, the Drawing Institute is arranged around three courtyards built around three existing oak trees. As with the gabled ceilings, the courtyard typology is evoked but disrupted sufficiently to avoid quotation and instead seeks to create a unique spatial : a modernist strategy. The courtyards are completely exteriorized within the project, and yet they are nearly entirely enclosed and wrapped by the building on all sides. The effect is actually more of an interior courtyard, and creates an inward-looking spatial experience. Conversely, much of the rest of the interior features floor-to-ceiling glazing, creating the effect of an outward-looking museum interior. The roles of the exterior and interior spaces are reversed. The interplay between interior and exterior is more playful and disruptive than that found in the original Renzo Piano addition, whose courtyards and interiors are both directed inwards. It seems that Johnston Marklee are engaging the historical memory of interior courtyards, but disrupting its typical spatial conditions in order to add their own fresh take to the traditional typology.

The incorporation of references to typological elements, such as a Spanish courtyard or an American shotgun house, diversifies the palette of historical references seen in the work of many New Historicists. Otherwise, they would perhaps be at a fault for simply being New Modernists. For all of their writing on seeing history in a clear, even light and drawing from all historically movements neutrally, they certainly still have their biases and their favorites. In the case of the Drawing Institute, the incorporation of courtyard typologies greatly benefits what would otherwise potentially be just a modernist rehash. The New Historicist school of thought is much richer when the historical references and starting points are themselves increasingly rich and diverse.

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The Role of Modernism in "New Historicist" Architecture - Matthews

The combination of a muted exterior with an underlying formally complex interior of the Menil Drawing Institute can be found in other projects by Johnston Marklee. In a 2017 interview, Sharon Johnston articulates their general attitude on such a contrast:

"I think it’s a project that’s emblematic of something that is of interest to us in projects of every scale, which is a certain kind of decorum about the exterior, a certain kind of order that perhaps is less revealing of a spatial ambition, but a certain respect for the context, and the sort of rowhouse almost order and massing of things. But then in a contradictory way, a lot of the formal energy and spatial energy happens on the inside. I think that kind of contrasting quality is something that courses through a lot of work." ("Johnston Marklee Tackle the “Tyranny of Newness”, Archinect, 2017)

The idea of the need for a decorum for the exterior to pay respects to context is an idea also shared by many modernists, perhaps most notably by Adolf Loos. His development of the Raumplan shrouds a formally complex interior of sectionally shifting spaces within an austere, muted prism. One of Loos' most enduring quotes is concerning this dichotomy, arguing that a "house must dress a certain way". The exterior must have a "gentlemanliness" to uphold outward appearances, whereas the interior, behind closed doors, can be free to do as it pleases.

It is interesting that the work of Johnston Marklee does not shed formalism altogether. If contemporary architecture can be divided into two main streams — the formal / iconic and the formless — their work belongs more in the former, but engages both streams. It is indeed formless on the exterior, but the interiors are often formally rigorous, ultimately indicative of a hybridized approach.

Upon further analysis, the work of Johnston Marklee appears to be a hodgepodge of historical references. In the particular case of the Drawing Institute, it borrows the Loosian attitude of dressing a certain way on the exterior. It recalls the Miesian treatment of abstracted vertical planes. It uses the traditional Modernist palette of materials. The final effect is an architecture of disparate references, that are at peace with their diverse sources and do not need to necessarily combine to create one single identity, but can co-exist separately and equally.

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The Role of Modernism in "New Historicist" Architecture - Matthews

This attitude of treating a fracture of sources with an equality and evenness has emerged as part of the core philosophy of the New Historicist school of thought. The should be given a neutrality so that its various tools at different times can be treated objectively. If history is not treated neutrally, with certain portions obscured by positive or negative biases, then these tools become more subjective and their value becomes clouded. It is important to see architectural history in a clear light.

The final effect of such an approach is embodied in the work of Johnston Marklee. Their buildings become an eclectic mix of references, where through their combination, are reborn into something entirely new. In the taxonomy of 21st Century architectural practices, their particular practice eschews the supposed dichotomy between the iconic and the formless, as demonstrated by their design for the Menil Drawing Institute. In fact, their practice seems to move past this broader trend in general, and instead fixates on how hybridizing history can instead create its own type of newness.

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Bibliography

“Alejandro Zaera - Well Into the 21st Century The of Post-?” El Croquis. Accessed May 4, 2017. https://elcroquis.es/products/batestx3. Hawthorne, Christopher. “Review: Menil Design by L.A.’s Johnston Marklee Is Deceptively Simple.” Los Angeles Times, February 19, 2014. http://articles.latimes.com/2014/feb/19/entertainment/la- et-cm-menil-design-by-la-firm-johnston-marklee-is-deceptively-simple-20140219. “Johnston Marklee: Architects Need to Rediscover Architecture - Metropolis.” Accessed May 2, 2017. http://www.metropolismag.com/architecture/johnston-marklee-qa/. “Johnston Marklee Tackle the ‘tyranny of Newness’ in 2017’s Chicago Architecture Biennial.” Archinect. Accessed May 3, 2017. http://archinect.com/features/article/149997746/johnston- marklee-tackle-the-tyranny-of-newness-in-2017-s-chicago-architecture-biennial. “Johnston Marklee’s Sharon Johnston Interview at Los Angeles Studio.” Designboom | Architecture & Design Magazine, November 9, 2016. http://www.designboom.com/architecture/sharon- johnston-marklee-interview-los-angeles-11-09-2016/. “JOHNSTONMARKLEE.” Firm Website. Accessed May 4, 2017. http://www.johnstonmarklee.com/. "The Modernists Revenge" Carter Wiseman. LLC, New York Media. New York Magazine. New York Media, LLC, 1992. “The End of History - Fukuyama-End-of-History-Article.pdf.” Accessed May 3, 2017. https://ps321.community.uaf.edu/files/2012/10/Fukuyama-End-of-history-article.pdf.

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