A'" .~ (Pe>S- 0 SOUTHERN EDUCATIONAL COMMUNICATIONS ASSOCIA Tlon SECA PRESENTS ® Firing Line

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II FIRinG Line

"WHY AREN'T GOOD BUILDINGS BEING BUILT?" Guests: Ada Louise Huxtable James Rossant A'" .~ (Pe>s- 0 SOUTHERN EDUCATIONAL COMMUNICATIONS ASSOCIA TlON SECA PRESENTS ® FIRinG Line

Host: WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY,JR. Guests: Ada Louise Huxtable James Rossant The FIRING LINE television series is a production of the Southern Educational Subject: "Why Aren't Good Buildings Being Built?" Communications Association, 928 Woodrow St., p. O. Box 5966, Columbia, S.C., 29205, and is transmitted through the facilities of the Public Broadcasting Service. Production of these Student Participants: Jeff Feingold - Pratt Institute programs is made possible through a grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Leslie Blum - Pratt Institute FI RING LINE can be seen and heard each week through public television and radio stations Roger Ferri - Pratt Institute throughout the country. Check your local newspapers for channel and time in your area.

FIRING LINE is produced and directed by WARREN STEIBEL

This is a transcript of the FIRING LINE program recorded in New York City on November 2, 1971, and telecast on PBS on November 7, 1971. Cover Artwork· Ronald G. Chapiesky SOUTHERN EDUCATIONAL COMMUNICATIONS ASSOCIATION

© Board of Trustees of th Leland Stanford Jr. University. MR. BUCKLEY: Ada Louise Huxtable is the when I go to see some of the work of our architectural critic for the New York Times, most prestigious artists and architects." whose opinion on new buildings or new I should like to begin by asking Mrs. urban projects is awaited as solicitously as Huxtable: what makes bad architects? the opening night reviews of a new play. She has served as Assistant Curator of MRS. HUXTAB LE: What makes bad Architecture at the Museum of Modern Art, architects? is the author of several books, most recently a collection of criticism called Will They MR. BUCKLEY: Yeah. Ever Finish Bruckner Boulevard? And those of you who do not immediately understand MRS. HUXTABLE: Or what makes bad that there is a Bruckner Boulevard in your architecture? Do you want to separate the life are better off viewing another channel. two? Do you want to take them separately, Mrs. Huxtable, who has honorary or together? doctorate degrees from several colleges, won her most recent journalistic award this MR. BUCKLEY: Which would you prefer? morning for her review of the Kennedy Center in Washington. MRS. HUXTABLE: I'd rat~er say: why do Mr. James Rossant is a graduate of the we get bad buildings? Because I don't blame Harvard Graduate School of Design, a it completely on the architect. member of the architect and planning firm of Mayer & Whittlesey, a lecturer in MR. BUCKLEY: Do bad architects make architecture at Columbia, New York bad arch itecture? University, and M.I.T., best known as the designer of the planned community near MRS. HUXTABLE: Bad architects make bad Washington, D.C., at Reston, Virginia. architecture. Bad clients make bad architecture. Bad laws make bad MR. ROSSANT: Excuse me. Correction: architecture. Bad union practices make bad © 1971 SOUTHERN EDUCATIONAL Conklin & Rossant has been the name of the architecture. It's an extremely complex firm for the past five years. subject, and there are many things that COMMUNICATIONS ASSOCIATION contribute to it. MR. BUCKLEY: Oh, I'm so sorry. Conklin & Rossant. Excuse me. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, suppose we ask: what I hope to get from Mrs. Huxtable and is it that causes some people who have had, Mr. Rossant some ideas about the teachirlg let's say, an identical experience - if any of beauty, which will commit us, of course, two people do have an identical experience to an examination of the architecture of - but roughly a comparable cultural beauty. Everyone here appears to be experience - to permit their names to be committed to the idea that a conscious affixed to pieces of architecture which you effort along the lines of teaching about would find scandalous? Is it all those beauty can, if not solve the problem, extrinsic reasons, or is it that they consider mitigate the problem. it to be beautiful, and are wrong? Mrs. Huxtable, in her book, quotes from the autobiography of George Kennan: MRS. HUXTABLE: I don't think I quite "No one, to the day of my graduation from understand your question. Do you mean: Princeton," he wrote, "ever taught me to why would an architect let his name be put look understandingly at a painting or a tree, on a building that responded to all of these or at the facade of a building." Another factors over which he really didn't have writer wrote, a few years ago: "If I were a much control? teacher, I do not know what techniques I would use beyond attempting to stimu late a MR. BUCKLEY: Yeah - while his fellow mere interest in the question. Perhaps I architect was creating beautiful buildings. would try showing the children slides of various buildings and asking, 'Is this ugly? Is MRS. HUXTABLE: Well, I think we should this beautiful?' and bringing down a ruler on ask Mr. Rossant. the knuckles of the blockhead who grunts the wrong answer. I will do so," he wrote, MR. ROSSANT: I would put the question a "with due recognition of the hazard of my bit differently, or at least the answer a bit undertaking, because my own knuckles are differently. If you're talking about how we constantly being rapped; as, for instance, are conditioned to appreciate or even design

© Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Jr. University. a beautiful building, I think it has a lot to do necessary goods, to ship them out, to import person who plays it atrociously. NoV\(, this done with buildings, because buildings are with the framework of buildings. Much as a them; but beyond that, one should live in can't be stopped, because there's an in-built not so easily transportable. And we're not theatre is the framework of plays, the city is the country, in tranquility. And you find spontaneity in the playing of a particular used to- the framework of buildings. We have been this, after all, in Thoreau, Emerson, and piece in front of an audience which, conditioned 111 ihls COU,ltry, throughout our Jefferson - a great abhorrence of the city. however, does not apply to architecture, MRS. HUXTABLE: But, Jim, you're still history, in ;r·mp.thinj of an anti-urban Thoreau, of course, in Walden, was one of where yOll make the sketches and a whole thinking of a building in context. philosohy, or 0,'" . ban condition. We are our most vehement anti-urbanists. lot of people - colleagues and so on - look taught to !1;,t.. cities, to hate brick and at them; and yet you can, even spending the MR. ROSSANT: Of course. Buildings must mortar and, on the contrary, to love trees MRS. HUXTABLE: I just wanted to say that same number of dollars per cubic foot, come be in context. and nature, from our Founding Fathers. I find this a completely 19th-century view of up with something that both of you are Jefferson detested cities. the city, rather than a 20th-century view. entranced by, or something that both of you MRS. HUXTABLE: But as an object - as an We had escaped the evils of Europe, abhor. object in context - and the evils of Europe were personified in MR. ROSSANT: I agree. the cities. Over here, I think - MRS. HUXTABLE: Perhaps for different MR. ROSSANT: Yes. MRS. HUXTABLE: I think that we are not reasons. MR. BUCKLEY: But so many of the cities really so much guilty of that as the 19th MRS. HUXTABLE: is the way you're were so beaut it· century was. I think the problem is so much MR. BUCKLEY: Yeah, but let's leave that defining it. more basic in judging why a building is bad, aside for one minute. Why is it that there is why it's satisfactory, why it's unsatisfactory. MR. ROSSANT: Not to the intellectuals and such a disparity in judgment? Is there an MR. ROSSANT: Yes. It has to be. And the Founding Fathers of the time. To them, And if you notice, I'm studiously avoiding expertise, or is it really something the world "beautiful" - that's how an architect works. He works the cities may have been attractive, but they subjective? Are you really gambling on a with the land, he works with client, with the did represent the kings, the royalty, the historic verdict when you denounce this bureaucracy that may be acting on him at MR. BUCKLEY: Yes, I know. building or praise another one? oppressors. They represented evil, in other the moment. He works in the city, and he words. Everything that was bad about the works in the street. A building, unlike all system of politics in Europe was represented MRS. HUXTABLE: - because beauty is a MRS. HUXTABLE: I never think of it in subjective judgment to which we are all other arts, is very much of the world and of and personified by the city. terms of gambling, because I subject it to the ground. entitled - such painstaking analysis. I think "gamble" MR. BUCKLEY: But it was refugees who is taking a chance on something. MR. BUCKLEY: Is it? MR. BUCKLEY: While understanding what built cities like Plymouth, and non-refugees you say- who built cities like Akron. How does one MR. BUCKLEY: Yeah, but you could be wrong. There'd be no reason to suppose this account for that? MRS. HUXTABLE: I think so. And I think MR. ROSSANT: Yeah. its relevancy, to use that terribly overworked might not be wrong, right? MR. ROSSANT: They had to build cities. A word, is questionable in terms of cities, MR. BUCKLEY: -I do encourage you to city like Akron was an economic machine. because we are just finding out that the basic MRS. HUXTABLE: Of course. I've been try to be a little bit more concrete, if you Even Jefferson recognized the necessity to problem of architecture is the basic problem wrong already. Certainly. think you can. And the reason I say that is build a New York or a Boston as a port, or of the environment, which is extremely because, you know, for instance, when an Akron as a tire-manufacturing base. There complicated. It deals with society. It deals MR. BUCKLEY: For instance, can you George Kennan says, "Nobody taught me was some necessity for cities; but on the with human behavior, with how people think of buildings that you didn't appreciate how to look understandingly at a building or whole, cities were hated as personifying the relate to bu ildings, how they relate to the which, now, you do appreciate? tree or painting," he means that he monsters who ruled the people in the old world around them. It deals with people acknowledges that there is an expertise, that country. We still have this in America, even relating with entirely different social MRS. HUXTABLE: Only in historical terms. people could save him a lot of bad - and in every political hue, I think - from backgrounds, with entirely different I had to grow up to appreciate the baroque experience. And I would like to put you to the right wing to the left wing - there are educational backgrounds, who have different fully. the test, if I may - or you know that I'm those who detest cities, and detest the things desires and needs to be met by the same going to- that inhabit cities and make up cities, which buildings and by the same functions. So that MR. BUCKLEY: Mm hmm. are buildings. what we're actually dealing with is MRS. HUXTABLE: I'd love to answer that. something we know very, very little about. MR. ROSSANT: I think, though, that MRS. HUXTABLE: May I ask a question? It's like Dr. Skinner in his behavioral architecture, maybe unlike other arts MR. BUCKLEY: What's that? science: it's a completely new and very maybe it is like other arts - is redefined MR. BUCKLEY: Yes. empirical field. And we are not going to have each time a building is designed. And it's MRS. HUXTABLE: I would love to pick answers - easy answers - on how to make very true, because a building is the that up just for a moment. MRS. HUXTAB LE: Does this, in your mind, better cities and better buildings within a combination of its function, its client, the explain why cities are bad? Or what is wrong short time. people who inhabit it, the designer, the MR. BUCKLEY: Sure. with cities - the fact that people don't like ground, and lastly - and quite important, I them? MR. BUCKLEY: No. I agree with you. But think - the city, the street that it's on. AM MRS.HUXTABLE: I think the tendency, here's what I don't understand. If, let's say, it is a work of art in context. particularly among architects, is to judge a MR. ROSSANT: Yes, I would think, in great you have two artists who are asked to Now, a painting can be displayed in building as an object, as a work of art, with part. Cities were "okay" to the Founding interpret a Bach partita, and one plays it the artist's studio, which is becoming the input of all of these factors determining Fathers and their successors, if they were inspiringly and the other plays it atrociously, fashionable, or in the museum, or in a it, but ultimately as a designed thing, and production machines to produce the there is an instant reaction against the newspaper, or in a book. This cannot be how it is designed. ~nd I think of a story

2 3 © Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Jr. University. I about Alvar Aalto, who is one of our MR. BUCKLEY: Well, I'm aware of the fact MR. BUCKLEY: And how would it look if Americana Hotel that both of you have -? greatest architects. He is small Finnish that you will undoubtedly resist this, but is were more expensive? It cost $25 per gnome of tremendous taste and talent, who you've agreed to do it - and somewhere cubic foot. Suppose it had cost $34 per MRS. HUXTAB LE: Oh, there's that classic is now in his eighties, and who has designed here we have some slides of a few buildings cubic foot? Would it have looked different? line for that, you know: it's a good hotel, some of the most humane buildings, I think, that both of you have praised, and also of a but too far from the ocean. in the history of 20th-century architecture. few buildings that both of you have MRS. HUXTABLE: Not necessarily. Ttley're great buildings. They're not terribly denounced. And the object of this exercise is MR. BUCKLEY: (laughs) Is that what's photogenic, but the experience of them is to see how easy it is, or how difficult it is, to MR. ROSSANT: Aren't you glad it's cheap? principally wrong, the fact that it's situated It won't be here that much longer. really marvelous. communicate instantly what it is about where it is? Now, when Aalto had the job to something which strikes you right away as (laughter) design a hospital, he started this way: when objectionable. On the list of buildings that MRS. HUXTABLE: It says a lot. he woke up in the morning and he was lying you don't like, we begin with the Pan Am in bed, he would think, "I am a patient, and Building. What's so obviously awful about MRS. HUXTABLE: Well, you MR. ROSSANT: What's principally wrong I'm here, I'm flat 01'1 my back, and I'm that, Mr. Rossant? know, we're not discriminating about what with it is, again, there's no street left. What looking at the ceiling, and that is all I can we destroy. We destroy the good things just Sixth Avenue was when we still loved it and see."And this is a typically Aalto approach. I MR. ROSSANT: You can't tell from this as quickly as the bad ones. Not necessarily affectionately called it Sixth Avenue, were honestly don't think it's a typically slide anything that's obviously awful about better, no. You can have a very expensive the del icatessens, the dives, the camera shops architectural approach, but I think it is that- building, like the Rayburn Building, which is and so on. This one has no street action, significant, because this same humanism extremely bad. nothing going on in the street. That's its trouble. carries through to every aspect of this man's MR. BUCKLEY: Yeah, I was afraid you'd MR. BUCK LEY: Yes, so you've remarked. design, at the same time that he has say that, yes. What about the General Motors Building? tremendous taste. Aesthetically, it is very MRS. HUXTABLE: It's got pizazz. beautiful stuff, but it is not a matter of MR. ROSSANT: - because one must look at MRS. HUXTABLE: But that's really MR. ROSSANT: I don't mind what it looks looking at it abstractly as shape, size, Park Avenue as it was with the Grand pretentious, because that really trades on the like. volume, mass, color, chiaroscuro - all, of Central Tower, the old one, at its head fact that people are impressed by a lot of course, shaped by sociological factors. To and remember that - and see the new marble - that marble makes something very MR. BUCKLEY: You don't mind? me, that is still kidding yourself. You are building, which blocks that view and grand. And this building uses a lot of marble, still dealing with an art object, and I destroys the grace that the Avenue once had, and really is not designed in any creative or MR. ROSSANT: No. personally don't think architecture is an art I think. impressive way at all. object. I think that its aesthetic quality, its greatness as an art, is an intrinsic part of it; it MR. BUCKLEY: So it's what it replaced, MR. ROSSANT: Well, in my view - and MR. BUCKLEY: Do you mind what it looks is very important, but it is not primary. I rather than it itself? Is that right? maybe at the risk of being too consistent -I like, Mrs. Huxtable - if the ocean were up front? object to the fact that the architect is oftEm think it's the wrong building in, perhaps, the primarily concerned with his work as an art MR. ROSSANT: Yes, it's the building in right place. object. context. A picture of a building without its MRS. HUXTABLE: Well, I would like it surrounding - MRS. HUXTABLE: Absolutely. better. Actually, I don't mind too much on MR. BUCKLEY: Because you think it's Sixth Avenue. I think New York can absorb essentially synthetic? MR. BUCKLEY: Yeah. MR. ROSSANT: It makes a plaza where a a great deal; it's the great melting pot. I'm plaza wasn't needed - and rather a strange not mad for that kind of architecture. I MRS. HUXTABLE: I think that is a MR. ROSSANT: - without the world sunken plaza. I think that as a street facade think it's full of tricks and gimmicks, and I fallacious approach - around it, is meaningless. building somewhere else, it's just one of a think art is simplicity. Art is making the number of sort of fabric patterns that many complicated look simple. MR. BUCKLEY: Yeah. MR. BUCKLEY: Yeah. What about the modern buildings make up. It's simply the General Motors Building? wrong building in perhaps the right location. MR. BUCKLEY: Making the complicated MRS. HUXTABLE: - to something that look simple. must be shaped by all of the factors that Mr. MRS. HUXTABLE: May I say one thing MRS. HUXTABLE: But you notice that Rossant mentioned, plus the fact that you about the Pan Am Building? even the marble begins to look like Tiletex. MRS. HUXTABLE: Making the hard look are dealing with people, primarily, with a There's just something basically wrong about easy. That is great art. very complex kind of humanitarianism. MR. BUCKLEY: Sure. the way it's used. And it does create a redundant plaza which now, I think, has MR. ROSSANT: Now you're thinking about MR. BUCK LEY: Yeah, well, when you're MRS. HUXTABLE: I think it's terrible in artificial grass. I think that's the latest. architecture as art again, which you said you looking at Napoleon's tomb, you're not itself. I think it's a bad building in itself, shouldn't. dealing with people really, are you? because it's a very big, basically very cheap MR. BUCKLEY: Artificial grass? building, and it's masquerading as a very MRS. HUXTABLE: It is art. It is art, MRS. HUXTABLE: You're dealing with impressive monument. MRS. HUXTABLE: Yes, I've heard. certainly. what people want to think about themselves in terms of immortality. It's a very human MR. BUCKLEY: So it's pretentious. MR. ROSSANT: But you take the brunt of MR. BUCKLEY: What about the Kennedy kind of sentiment. criticism, not your profession only. Center? That's next on the list here. MRS. HUXTABLE: Yes, it's pretentious and MR. ROSSANT: Yes. cheap. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, what about the MRS. HUXTABLE: I might have to leave

4 5 © Board of Trustees of the Ueland Stanford Jr. University. town. (Buckley laughs) I did have to leave pablum that won't offend anyone. MRS. HUXTABLE: Does the political figure sllould study architecture. I think Jefferson, Washington. himself actually interpret his time? although he hated cities, was an architect MR. ROSSANT: Another thing is that the himself - MR. BUCKLEY: Now, you just finished politician, the leader, probably doesn't MR. ROSSANT: I think he relies on getting an award because of what you said interfere with architects quite enough. He taste-makers, who are usually pallid MR. BUCKLEY: Yeah. about the Kennedy Center. Your principal doesn't lead them enough. personages. I wish they had more guts in criticisms of it, presumably, aren't inferable choosing somewhat controversial advisers MR. ROSSANT: - and his creation of the from what we see on that little screen, are MRS. HUXTAB LE: How can they? take a chance. University of Virginia set the pattern for all they? campuses built since - MR. ROSSANT: He always has in the past. MR. BUCKLEY: Give 'em their rein. MRS. HUXTABLE: No, it's very hard. Hitler knew what he wanted, God help us, MRS.HUXTABLE: Ah, but here's a man of Judging a building from a picture, anyway, is and he built it. MR. ROSSANT: This is the kind of country, great sensibility. practically impossible. You've got to have one that can stand radical solutions, even the three-dimensional experience of moving MR. BUCK LEY: Yeah. Well, Rayburn has representing conservatIve - MR. ROSSANT: - and his country house, through it, sensing the materials, the spaces, influenced - Monticello, set the pattern in this country and reacting to all of that. MR. BUCKLEY: Mm hmm. Well, here are for all landed gentry's houses ever since. I MR. ROSSANT: - it's unfortunate that some successful buildings, by your reckoning think that was, perhaps, a mistake. But, in MR. BUCKLEY: And your principal Kennedy and Johnson, and perhaps Nixon, - beginning with the Lever House. Again, any case, he was a great architect, and a criticism of it? don't really know what they want to be subject to the limitations of viewing it great President. two-dimensionally, what is it about the remembered by in architecture. Maybe they MR. BUCKLEY: What about the Ford MRS. HUXTABLE: It's the biggest, most Lever House that makes it successfu I? should study architecture. Foundation? Your enthusiasm for it - banal building I've ever been in in my life. There's absolutely nothing distinguished MRS. HUXTABLE: Johnson does. Johnson MRS. HUXTABLE: Now, you're going to say the nice things, and I'm supposed to say MR. ROSSANT: A great client, a client who about it. And again, there is pretention. has the library, and he- the bad things. Here's a nice one. understood and loved architecture. Our best buildings, incidentally, are done for MR. BUCKLEY: Do you agree -? MR. ROSSANT: Well, he has one of the MR. ROSSANT: It was audacious and early. corporation presidents who want to make better buildings left by Presidents. themselves famous and remembered in MR. ROSSANT: I agree wholeheartedly. history, and this is an example of that, of a And I would add that if you're going to do MR. BUCKLEY: Yeah. MRS. HUXTAB LE: - he got an architect foundation that wanted its building to this kind of white marble building to match who understood him perfectly. represent itself. the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington MR. ROSSANT: That's about as far as I can obelisk and so on, really do it - you know, MR. ROSSANT: But we are what we build. go. It came first. It was a leader and paved the way for the architect. The architect has a MR. BUCKLEY: Well, does it help ifthey're really match their grandeur - and I don't Churchill understood this so well, and had a egotistic? think this one does that. great reverence for architecture. He was an great problem, because in America - and maybe in other countries - he has no amateur one himself, and built lots of walls. MR. ROSSANT: Oh, yes. MRS. HUXTABLE: Do you want us to But I think that the politician, if anything, dialogue with the owner; the owner has no continue to talk about this, or should we should get more involved in the building dialogue with the user. They don't talk to MRS. HUXTABLE: Yes. move on? process. This is what the architect, I think, each other or understand each 0 the r, so needs. That would help. that - MR. ROSSA NT: Sure. The more egotistic, MR. BUCKLEY: Yeah, as long as you're the better the building - always in context. interested, sure. MR.BUCK LEY: So as to communicate his MR. BUCKLEY: Why does the architect own- have no dialogue with the owner? MR. BUCKLEY: In context of what? MRS. HUXTABLE: Well, I'm interested MR. ROSSANT: The architect has no because this building has been sold in these MR. ROSSANT: Yes. We will take the risk MR. ROSSANT: In context of the dialogue with the owner because the owner specific terms to the clients and to the of more Vittorio Emanuele - su rroundings. does not become a student of architecture public, which is that it gives timeless himself, which I think- elegance. MR. BUCKLEY: Yeah. Right. (laughs) MR. BUCKLEY: It didn't work with Hitler, obviously - MR. BUCKLEY: He's not equipped to talk MR. ROSSANT: And dignity. MR. ROSSANT: - disasters, as Rome has- to him, then? MRS. HUXTABLE: What about in context MRS. HUXTABLE: It doesn't partake of MR. BUCKLEY: Yes. of society, precisely? MR. ROSSANT: He's not equipped to talk any straight, definite period that you can to him, I believe. identify, and yet it does not offend by being MR. ROSSANT: - in order to get more MR. BUCKLEY: What's that? too avant garde. Of course, I think this is a input from the great political figure, who MR. BUCKLEY: But you were just urging a complete fallacy, because any great building should, I think, interpret his people and his MRS. HUXTABLE: What about in context moment ago that our Presidents - oh, but is immediately of its time, and expresses its time. of society? before talking to the architects, they have to time and all of the theory and emotion and study architecture, is that the -? feeling and art of our own time. So that to MRS. HUXTAB LE: Does he do that? MR. BUCKLEY: Yeah. me, it's almost criminal to sell a kind of MR. ROSSANT: I think the Presidents building as timeless when you are just selling MR. BUCKLEY: Does who do that? MR. ROSSANT: Well, we have picked here, 7 6 © Board of Trustees of the eland Stanford Jr. University. I guess, good buildings - those which are certainly isn't saying if you've got all the expensive automobile - the results will be the percentage rate of the money borrowed not housing, and don't represent the - money in the world you can create fine manifest, right? to build the building and buy the land would architecture; but you're saying that you solve all our problems. MRS. HUXTABLE: No, you're picking the can't create fine architecture without having MRS. HUXTABLE: Yes. buildings that represent money. as much money as is needed to make it MR. BUCKLEY: Now, is this something MR. BUCKLEY: That's a good argument for excellent and give it quality, right? which tends to compound itself - i.e., as Henry George, isn't it? MR. ROSSANT: Oh, I didn't pick 'em. you see a lot of ugliness, you get habituated MRS. HUXTABLE: You can solve a to it. You, therefore, attach less of an MR.ROSSANT: Yes. In its land value. MRS. HUXTABLE: No, I mean "you," problem on a minimum budget; if you go importance to your office, or to your home generically. We, you, have picked the about it properly, you can provide a and, therefore, you are prepared to spend MR. BUCKLEY: Yeah. buildings that represent money, that satisfactory solution. But even a minimum less money- represent a client who will spend money. budget today is almost astronomic, because MR. ROSSANT: Yeah. Building today is terribly expensive. In fact, it just costs so much to build. MR. ROSSANT: But your example was a we can't even afford it. That's one of the good one, and that is the car, Imbue the MRS. HUXTABLE: And the cost of problems - it's a basic necessity that we MR. ROSSANT: But if one follows your American with as much love of, on the one borrowing money. can't afford. But if you get a client who will argument to the logical conclusion, should hand, city, and on the other hand, his subscribe the money, an architect will we not go back to - well, as Peter Blake building, as he lavishes on his car, and allow MR. BUCKLEY: Same thing. produce. If you get a government that will said, the only society that can produce great him to renew the building as often as he appropriate the money, you can build architecture is one of slaves, you know, or does the car - accept all that - and then MRS. HUXTABLE: Yes. communities or housing. This is one of serfs and kings, where they - we'll have great cities. the basic problems of good building. MR. BUCKLEY: Same thing. MRS. HUXTABLE: No, I think my MR. BUCKLEY: How does one go about MR. ROSSANT: But one mustn't connect argument is just the opposite. I'm sorry. doing that? MR. ROSSANT: It's a minor figure. Let us only money with greatness in architecture I say, one percent of the total cost. Wouldn't think. A Greek island is beautiful, despite MR. BUCKLEY: Yeah, but granted that MR. ROSSANT: First, I think, let us all you say? the fact that it was cheap. It was very cheap costs are higher than ever, so are the residual decide that we are going to have cities. MRS. HUXTABLE: Well, at least you to do. We love it. resources higher than ever, aren't they? I They're going to be big cities. They're going wouldn't have gotten spotted granite in the mean, a chateau was a much greater to be tough to live in. Let's build examples lobby. MRS. HUXTABLE: Talking about now, imposition on fifteenth century France than of great places for Americans to live. Let's today, with the cost of building. the Seagram Building is on- experiment a little. MR. ROSSANT: Yeah.

MR. ROSSANT: Even so, I can't agree. I MRS. HUXTAB LE: Now, you're really MR. BUCKLEY: Is this an authoritarian MR. BUCKLEY: Well, why hasn't there don't think - coming to the crux of it. precept? In other words, are you saying that grown up some sort of an ethic? I mean, a this now has to be a situation in which the doctor, for instance, would refuse to operate MRS. HUXTABLE: The cost of building is MR. BUCKLEY: What? local building czar simply asserts himself, without lights, even though, presumably, it ludicrous today. A building - the land, contrary to public will, and exercises sort of would be cheaper to do so. Why don't labor, materials - MRS. HUXTABLE: You've come to the a pedagogical discipline? architects refuse to build cheap buildings? absolute crux of it. We will have as good MR. ROSSANT: Yes, but you know building as we want. And if you say, "Why MR. ROSSANT: That is perhaps one way of MRS. HUXTABLE: Again, ask the architect. yourself that the difference between a fine don't we have better building?" one of the going about it. I don't know that that's the apartment house and a cheap, disgusting basic reasons is that we, as a people, really most democratic way. I think people are MR. ROSSANT: Why do we refuse to? We apartment house is a fraction. It does cost don't want it. We don't want it because we demanding of their governments - of their try our damnedest to build cheap buildings. more - but so little more. don't understand it; we don't want it local governments - better cities. They're I think if the builder were truly a because we're not willing to pay the price stuck in the city. They can't get out of the MR. BUCKLEY: No, but cheap buildings, citizen of New York - or any other city that for it- city. If they get out of the city, they have which are also aesthetically offensive. he happens to live in - and loved the city, the same problems that they had back in the he would not perpetrate upon his own MR. BUCKLEY: Well, for instance, let's say city. I think they are beginning to demand MR. ROSSANT: Yes. brother citizens such monstrosities. We don't you have a culture in which people are much higher quality "downtown" than ever have the love of city. prepared to spend 20 percent of their before. MR. BUCKLEY: Why don't they refuse? monthly income on rent, and an adjacent Why don't you refuse? Have you ever built MRS. HUXTABLE: Now you're talking one in which they are prepared to spend MR. BUCKLEY: You say that it doesn't an ugly building? about values, and that's another basic only 15 percent on rent. Now, in both cases cost that much more money to build an problem. you can get architects that will give you an acceptable building. What percentage more, MR. ROSSANT: I hope not. I don't think apartment. In the one case, it's going to be would you say? For instance, the Pan so. No, of course not. MR. ROSSANT: The cost. significantly improved over the other case, American Building cost $100 million. How right? Now, if people don't care to spend many more million dollars would have MR. BUCKLEY: Of course not? MRS.HUXTABLE: Yes. that much on the buildings in which they lessened that in it which is most atrocious, live, or on the buildings in which they work forgetting the context of it? MR. ROSSANT: Of course not. MR. BUCKLEY: Yes, but there is obviously - preferring, let's say, to accumulate that the point of a budget, right? Mrs. Huxtable which is left over in order to buy a more MR. ROSSANT: A drop of one percent in (laughter)

8 9 © Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Jr. University. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, are your buildings enjoying much the same kinds of activities as question, and a basic city question. difference, which is - it's extreme. more expensive than other people's our friend, the Italian, in his plaza. buildings? MR. BUCKLEY: Well, is it an architectural MR. BUCK LEY: You would provide for the MRS. HUXTABLE: I'd like to ask a very question in the sense that no community is seals and all the other wildlife? MR. ROSSANT: No. difficult question about that. Suppose you proof against its vulgarization or suddenly excommunicated all of white tribulization by the wrong kind of MR. ROSSANT: Yes. We design all that. MRS. HUXTABLE: Are you sure? middle-class Reston -I know it's an inhabitants, or are you saying that some integrated community - let's say, all of architectural achievements are proof against MRS. HUXTAB LE: It's part of the MR. ROSSANT: I'm positive. white and black middle-class Reston, any kind of mistreatment? architect's job today. because it is middle class - suppose you MR. BUCKLEY: Well, is that just simply brought in the underpriviledged classes and MRS. HUXTAB LE: No. What I'm saying is, MR. BUCKLEY: We have some students of ingenuity on your part, or husbandry? put them into Reston? What would happen we don't know enough about the manmade architecture here, who'd like to question to that environment? The people who, world, the world - the environment - that you. Mr. Feingold? MR. ROSSANT: Design. I think that would theoretically, have not been taught how to the architect makes. We don't know enough be the answer. live, who are called multi·problem families about its use by certain kinds of people. We MR. FEINGOLD: We have a pretty good what would happen? can't build anything fool-proof, but neither understanding that architecture represents, MR. BUCKLEY: Ingenuity. can we fool ourselves that because we've you know, pieces of history. In other words, MR. ROSSANT: I think they'd enjoy it even built something beautiful, it's an answer. if you'd go back as far as the Renaissance, MR. ROSSANT: They're designed to be more than the whites. you'd have an understanding of what the both beautiful and cheap. MR. ROSSANT: I really don't agree with people of the Renaissance were like by their MRS. HUXTABLE: I think it would turn this. We are building now, in Baltimore, a architecture, by the quality of the cities, by MR. BUCKLEY: I want to show that Reston into a slum. This is why I feel so strongly community built in the local Harlem of how they used the materials - all that. And thing that you built in Virginia. Would you about sociology in architecture. Baltimore, called Old Town, where every I think if we apply that to today, we might flash forward to that? Take your time. decision made about living patterns, housing have some kind of an understanding of what Describe the background of this project. MR. ROSSANT: What do you mean by patterns, was made by meetings, day by day, kind of people live in our cities, and what This was a ex nihilo challenge, wasn't it? "turn into a slum"? You mean there'd be with the people. They made all the they think they want. wash hanging in the plaza? Wonderful, decisions. We showed them the alternatives. I was wondering if, possibly, they're MR. ROSSANT: Yes. This was a new town, wonderful. not really sure what they want. In other I guess the first one built after the war, in MRS. HUXTABLE: This is part of a words, they like the car. You mentioned Virginia, as an innovative- MRS. HUXTABLE: No, I don't mean revolution in the practice of architecture. before that they do like the car. They something pictlITesque like wash hanging in understand the car. They know what they MR. BUCK LEY: Before Levittown? the plaza. I mean real destruction - garbage, MR. ROSSANT: I really think that Reston want with a car. But yet, we've given them dope, all of the things that destroy a society can be inhabited by anyone, from something, you know, which weighs three MR. ROSSANT: After Levittown. We dOl1't and an environment. Hottentots to Laplanders, and it will appeal tons, which they drive a mile or two, to buy consider Levittown a new town in the to them the same way. a paper. The car spews fumes. They throw classical sense. Reston was an experimental MR. ROSSANT: Oh; there is dope in paper out the window and all that. But it's project to see whether it is possible to build Reston. It has all the evils of our urban MR. BUCKLEY: Well, but surely you mean what they want, and this is what we've given urbanity, or to build delightful urban society. How could it escape it? Reston has the kind of Reston that you would build in them. qualities into the suburb. had many cases of - Lapland would appeal. You don't mean that And I wonder if looking for solutions you could bring Laplanders to this city, and to architectural problems in the city or in MR. BUCKLEY: Can you get that from this MRS. HUXTABLE: But it has good living· it would appeal to them, do you? I mean, the cou ntry or wherever is not the (the slide) or doesn't it communicate the patterns. It has people who were brought up there must be something - architect's problem. I think it's the people's atmosphere at all? with an idea of how to live socially, problem. What is it they really want? Do considerately of their neighbors. MR. ROSSANT: Well, there are certain they know what they want? MR. ROSSANT: That one? Well, that one cultural - shows the main square of the first village of MR. ROSSANT: But the point is, they knew MRS. HUXTAB LE: Are you asking anyone Reston, with cafe tables and with loitering next to nothing about how to live in an MR. BUCKLEY: There is something special? on the square, which here in Reston is not a urbane place. All they knew about before indigenously American, isn't there, about crime, but a virtue. And this one shows the they moved to Reston was how to live what you've created in Reston? MR. FEINGOLD: Oh, anyone. Anyone. same square from a different aspect. This isolated in a house on a road. was plunked down into suburban, MR. ROSSANT: Yes. Certainly, yes. MRS. HUXTABLE: I think you're making a fox·hunting Virginia, not far from where the MRS. HUXTABLE: But they're not very important point It is that people are Kennedys used to chase foxes, an area which anti·social people. MR. BUCKLEY: So it would go in Lapland, trapped today in tremendous conflicts. They represented the Jeffersonian ideal of would it? are conflicts brought about by a series of anti-urbanity. And suddenly, it appeals to MR. ROSSANT: They moved to Reston, revolutions - of changes in life style and the local inhabitant, who quits his TV set, and they suddenly are enjoying this place as MR. ROSSANT: No. No, I mean, in Reston, technology, in the functions of cities, in the forgets about his car, and learns to relax and if born to the manor. And I don't think - people leave their townhouses and jump in a way people live and work in the twentieth enjoy urban living - loitering in the plaza, sailboat in front of their houses; whereas, in century - so that they are presented with talking to his neighbor, watching the MRS. HUXTABLE: Well, I bring it up Lapland they would jump into the sailboat alternatives that cannot be resolved. You fountain, letting his child run free - because I think it's a basic architectural to hunt for seals. I mean, there is that may have this marvelous large automobile to

10 11 © Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Jr. University. enjoy and drive and give you pleasure and must do the whole world." He is not the renewal group. MR. BUCKLEY: No, it isn't. take you away from everything, but at the interested in that. same time it is going to destroy the MISS BLUM: So that's almost using the MR. ROSSANT: But you're a young environment in which you must live. MR. BUCKLEY: But won't there always community as guinea pigs. You're not architect. Don't you seriously think that Now, I don't think they know the survive at least enough vanity to - talking about the real architectural some slums are more acceptable to you, as answers. I don't think we know the answers profession - the people who have the an urban environment, even as an yet. I just think this is an extremely MR. ROSSANT: Oh, yes. He'll go on to establishment and the credibility to their architectural environment, than Beverly Hills problematic age, full of these conflicts. libraries and churches and other things. names, the architectural degrees and or Scarsdale? credentials. MR. FEINGOLD: Well, why is the architect MR. BUCKLEY: Sure. To cause people to MISS BLUM: But the issue - the word you the person who has to lead us out of this? want individuation. MR. BUCKLEY: May make this use, "slum," is very crucial to that. It's not observation? Your constituency thinks the fact that it's a slum, it's the kind of MRS. HUXTABLE: Who said he was? MR. ROSSANT: Exactly. nothing of paying Barbra Streisand $50,000 interactions that go on. for one concert, and yet - MR. FEINGOLD: I think that the people are MR. BUCKLEY: Or will it - in a "Skinner MR. ROSSANT: I didn't use "slum." I leading the architects. I think people are world" - will it be suppressed? Would it be MISS BLUM: You're not speaking of my didn't use the word "slum." expecting the architects - suppressed? constituency. (laughter) No, that's not us. You're not talking to us. MISS BLUM: Yes, you did. MRS. HUXTABLE: The architects are MR. ROSSANT: It might be. listening to the people, but they are also MR. BUCKLEY: This is a Woodstock nation MR. ROSSANT: Oh, did I? banking on the fact that they have a certain MR. BUCK LEY: Is this one of the traps? that supports her and the Beatles. amount of training and expertise, and they MISS BLUM: Yes. (laughs; general laughter) can translate people's wishes. But what if a MRS. HUXTABLE: I don't think you'll ever MISS BLUM: But that's being able to It's the interactions that go on on the person says - suppress the architect's ego. control your own life - making an personal scale, the way people relate one to individual decision. another, and the way they have control over MR. BUCKLEY: Besides which, a lot of MR. ROSSANT: I don't believe in the their own lives, that make those kind of architects are technicians anyway, aren't "Skinner world." MR. BUCKLEY: If they get that kind of spaces and environments important to they? enthusiasm, why can't you pay for a good people, and important to preserve. MRS. HUXTABLE: Long may it live. architect, if you care that much about it? MRS. HUXTAB LE: Yes, they are. It's not a matter of the absence of the MR. ROSSANT: I don't want to leave my MR. BUCKLEY: I don't either. Miss Blum? dough, is it? car when I drive through Beverly Hills. I MR. BUCK LEY: Just the way a lot of cooks want to stay within it's air-conditioned are technicians. MISS BLUM: Yes. I would like to know, MISS BLUM: I'm not talking about me. I comfort. On the other hand, when I go along the same line of people beginning to happen to come from a middle-class home - through Harlem, I kind of want to open the MRS. HUXTABLE: Certainly. control their own lives, how a community windows and let the world come in. without the access to money and power that MR. BUCKLEY: Well, I'm talking to you as MR. BUCKLEY: And there's no reason why the wealthy have in this country - the a symbol- MR. FERRI: And not get out of your car, they should feel, as a class, that they need to people who put up the Lever Houses, the right? assert leadership, except in speaking to the Kennedy Centers - how do they begin to MISS BLUM: - but talking about poor very few, right? get access to architectural services? communities who have no control over their MR. ROSSANT: All right. (laughter) That lives and their destinies. happens, too. MR. ROSSA NT: Exactly. I think, as an MRS. HUXTABLE: Do you know? example of that, the architect in the field of MR. BUCK LEY: Because they don't assert MISS BLUM: Okay. Roger, you go ahead_ residential architecture is proceeding to MR. ROSSANT: I don't quite understand control! commit suicide. That is, he will no longer be "access:' They can pay for it. MR. BUCKLEY: Mr. Ferri? building our housing. He is attempting to MISS BLUM: That's not true. They don't design beautiful boxes with our new MISS BLUM: Well, what if they have no have access to that control. MR. FERRI: I'd like to approach it sort of technology. money? How do they begin to control their on a step-by-step basis. I think that your lives? MR. BUCKLEY: But you stress the word analysis of the main issues presented is very MR. BUCKLEY: Yeah. "poor." "Poor" was the operative word similar to those put forth in architectural MRS. HUXTABLE: No, I think there's here. I'm saying that "poor people" in schools. I think it's essentially poetic and MR. ROSSANT: Once he does design the advocacy planning. There's advocacy America spend, by historical standards, non-analytic. I think that your first box that is built by General Motors planning and advocacy architecture. Is that enormous sums of money - certainly statement, that the problem with building is somewhere in the millions, he will be what you mean? There are actually many enough to subsidize very fine architecture, that there are so many impinging interests, abdicating his role. people like yourselves, not even waiting for don't they? such as laws and zoning and clients and so graduation, but doing their field work as on, is an elitist view. I don't mean that in the MR.BUCKLEY: Uh huh. Like Thoreau's - they study by going right to the MISS BLUM: Yes, but it's coming from rhetorical sense; I mean that very communities and trying to translate their above rather than being a grass-roots specifically. It sort of reflects the inability of MR. ROSSANT: And he's very happy to. He wishes and their needs and be sort of an movement. It's coming from a government, the architect to deal with these as doesn't have a kind of built-in grit, an "I intermediary or spokesman to the city or to handed down to communities. constraints in a problem-solving process.

12 13 © Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Jr. University. MRS. HUXTABLE: How I wish you were haven't addressed yourselves to architectural expensive to build today - the costs of the cost of building by making a great drive right! These are reality - cold, hard, verbal education directly. I think you sort of everything involved have skyrocketed so toward·building fantastic cities- reality. implied your- that to get a minimum decent product costs an indecent amount of money, and that MR. BUCKLEY: Yes. MR. FERR I: Well, I'm addressing myself as MRS. HUXTABLE: Not at all. without that money you can hardly build. per your conversation, which didn't reflect MR. ROSSANT: - which is what I think we that point of view. Further, I think that MR. FERRI: - points of view about it, but I MR. ROSSA NT: That's true. should do. architecture, looked at as social process, is a think you should expand on it a little bit much more fruitful way of attacking, you becau se of the cou rses - MR. BUCKLEY: In which conclusion you'd MRS. HUXTAB LE: How can you cover up know, why architecture is where it is now. disagree with Mr. Rossant, right? Well, you free· market housing at $200 a room in New And, in fact, I think your work is classic. MR. BUCKLEY: What about architectural do, obviously, because- York City? How many people can afford You're sort of the king's architect in the education? In your opinion, is there a lack $200 a room? That is the core of the cost of Eastern region, I think. of esprit de corps there, a lack of MR. ROSSANT: No, I think the housing. professional pride, a lack of aesthetic pride? disagreement was: fine architecture, or good MR. BUCKLEY: Well, what is the question? Do you think it's become too routinized? architecture and bad 'architecture, what is MR. ROSSANT: No, I'm saying that society I don't quite get the question you're posing. Do they accept, what you call, these "hard the cost difference? Is that what we should pay a subsidy - as it does in the case realities:' too resignedly? disagreed on, or -? of the automobile industry, where it pays MR. FERRI: It's not just the question. I'd zillions for highways, and other hidden like to get the question later, but I'm sort of MRS. HUXTABLE: I don't know. I am not MRS. HUXTABLE: We don't disagree, subsidies in oil·depletion allowance, and so responding somewhat. really among the students. I am not in the because I don't put that on a cost basis at on. architecture schools. I am subject to the all. I simply start with the premise that you MR. BUCKLEY: Uh huh. constant pressures of hard journalism, so really can't afford to build anything - any MR. BUCKLEY: Well, it depends- that I only occasionally come in contact housing in this country today has got to be MR. FERRI: Is that acceptable, or -? with that. subsidized, directly or indirectly, because it MR. ROSSANT: And it could do the same just does not match the income level of thing in the field of architecture in our MR. BUCKLEY: Well, I think it'd be better MR. BUCKLEY: You just see the product? people who can live there. That's just one cities. if you asked a question, since they've been example. invited to answer questions. MRS. HUXTABLE: I see the product. I see MR. BUCKLEY: You may have chosen a the process. I find the process extremely MR. BUCKLEY: Well, of course, that's a bad example, because as many zillions are MR. FERRI: I'd just like to sort of preface faulty. I think the product, the aims, the hallucination, because the same people who paid in gasoline taxes as are, in fact, spent on the question with sort of developing - education - all of these - have got to be are building it are paying for it, in devious building highways. In fact, usually there's a completely reevaluated, and I think we are ways. They don't know that they're paying surplus. MR. BUCKLEY: With a short history of it. in this process now. for it, but they are, of course. MR. ROSSANT: Yes, except a tax is hidden. (laughter) MR. ROSSANT: I'd agree. I think the MRS. HUXTABLE: Well, the whole thing MR. FERRI: Yeah, exactly. I think that if schools of architecture have gone through, about subsidy is hallucination. It's a very MR. BUCKLEY: Sure. Sure. you take something like Welfare Island, and are going through, a tremendous strange, concealed kind of thing. which is a very large project, the politicians upheaval, as they always reflect periods of MR. ROSSANT: It's the product. do, in fact, have a very large influence on it, external upheaval beyond them. And I think MR. BUCKLEY: Yeah. from Governor Rockefeller on down it's all been very healthy. I hope Pratt has MR. BUCKLEY: Well, it's not all that through these various - gotten somewhere, and all the other schools MRS. HUXTABLE: But the reality is, you hidden. When you go to fill your car with a in this area. But I do think they have gone have to make up the cost somehow. tank of gas, there's a great big thing that MRS. HUXTABLE: Disastrous influence. through this upheaval that you're talking says, "Gas 19 cents, tax 25 cents," and so on about. MR. BUCKLEY: Yes, but what I'm saying is and so forth. That's not very - MR. FERRI: - layers of bureaucratic that the cost is actually provided by the procedure. They have more impact on that MRS. HUXTABLE: I think they're still same people who think they are being MRS. HUXTABLE: It'd be great ifthey did series of site plans and buildings than do you going through it. subsidized. This has been proven time and that with apartments, too. as the designer. FHA requirements on the time and time again by economic structure of housing determine the rigidity MR. FERRI: I would like to address myself archeologists. MR. BUCKLEY: Yeah, it would. Yeah, it of the housing stock, both programmatically to another area which you started touching would. Yeah, it would. Are you making the and in terms of - on, and which was - you said that, MR. ROSSANT: Yes, and the cover of point that building is uniquely expensive - subsidization is society's desire or value essentially, more money means better system. MRS. HUXTABLE: That's what I was arch itecture - MRS. HUXTABLE: It is uniquely expensive, saying. I think, in our society today. MR. BUCKLEY: Mm hmm. MRS. HUXTABLE: No. MR. ROSSANT: Of course, I think that's MR. BUCKLEY:- or that people don't care MR. ROSSANT: Isn't it? what you were referring to. I think you MR. ROSSANT: No. enough about a building to allocate to it that were. proportion of their salary which is MR. BUCKLEY: Yes, it is. MRS.HUXTABLE: Let me correct that appropriate? MR. FERRI: The other thing is, I think you immediately. I say that it is so ludicrously MR. ROSSANT: That is, we could cover up MRS. HUXTAB!.. E: Both. I think these are

14 15 © Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Jr. University. not self·cancelling at all. factors. and, therefore, we should just pretend it and good finishes, and not somehow isn't there. Even if it won't go away, we can abandon it all and - MR. ROSSANT: I think buildings are like MR. BUCKLEY: There are contributing turn our backs on it. The Venturis say, the tip of an iceberg. What is expensive in factors. "Oon't turn your backs on it; it's there for a MRS. HUXTABLE: Mr. Venturi is the first our bu ildings are the land, the mortgage rate, reason. It is fulfilling certain needs for one who says, "Mine are not necessarily the the lawyers, the highways that feed the MRS. HUXTABLE: Yes. Americans; and if it is really fulfilling those answers. I don't even think they are the houses, the utilities, and all of these kinds of needs, it must have something to teach us." answers. This is right for me." costs. MR. BUCKLEY: Mr. Feingold? So that I think it's like Jane Jacobson's city planning: the function is to open people's MR. ROSSANT: Yes. MR. BUCKLEY: And taxes, yeah. MR. FEINGOLD: Getting back to the eyes, so that they stop thinking in cliches upheavals in the architectural schools, I and begin to look at things more freshly. MRS. HUXTABLE: "But look - look and MR. ROSSANT: Certainly. The house is a think since then there's been an accent on learn." fraction. At Reston, for instance, two or the interdisciplinary subjects, you know, MR. BUCKLEY: Yeah, Malraux said it three million dollars was paid for what was those studies which are related to about artists when he said, "But that's the MR. BUCKLEY: Thank you, Mrs. Huxtable, above ground, 18 million dollars for what architecture in a general sense, but not way our artists paint." Right? In effect, he Mr. Rossant, ladies and gentlemen of the was below ground - which is the built-in necessarily specifically. Do you think that was telling us that we have got to consider panel. Thank you all. cost of a new town. this sudden interest in Venturi has anything it- to do with that? Because when you MR. BUCKLEY: Yeah, but it's also true, understand really how people live, and you MRS. HUXTABLE: Yes. isn't it, precisely, because a lot of people understand how this changes throughout the who come, say to New York, where they country, and when you start to think about MR. BUCKLEY: and attempt to face that kind of problem, or even Reston, the relationship between the country and understand it. could go elsewhere where the land is the city- cheaper, taxes are cheaper and so forth, and MRS. HUXTABLE: It's there for a reason. make their way there, if in fact they attach MR. BUCKLEY: You'd better explain who Like Mount Everest, it's there, and you that kind of value to the house that they live Mr. and Mrs. Venturi are before you answer don't just ignore it, you climb it. in. Right? that, if you don't mind, because some people - MR. ROSSANT: But essentially, there's MR. ROSSANT: And lesser value for the something of an opiate to the masses about three-hour trip back to where they work. MR. FEINGOLD: Well, I think Venturi it. If we fool ourselves into thinking that our represents this - environment - MR. BUCKLEY: That's right. Or attempt to build a community. Some people have there. MR. ROSSANT: I never heard of him. MR. BUCKLEY: It's a little sycophantic, There are noble cities in New York State isn't it? where you can get a room for $30 a month, (laughter) not $200 a month, and they're empty, a lot MR. ROSSANT: - is artistic and beautiful, of them. So it is an expression of value, isn't MR. FEINGOLD: kind of pop therefore we can live a little bit easier from it, that causes people to want to live, even to architecture. He has taken all the ugliness of it and abandon tendencies. There's live in Hong Kong? Main Street - or what we think of as the something of that in there - not too much, ugliness of Main Street - and truly but a bit. MRS. HUXTABLE: No, it isn't just an represented it in his architecture. I think this expression of values. People go where they is what he's trying to do. You know, he's MRS. HUXTABLE: I think you're stretching are near work, or where jobs are available. always been saying that - the rubber the wrong way. This is still a wage-earning society. MR. BUCKLEY: Would a diner that looked MR. ROSSANT: I mean, there's something MR. BUCKLEY: That's half-true. A lot of like a hot dog be considered a Venturi very delightful about redefining architecture; people leave jobs and go to where there design? and as I was saying previously, every aren't jobs, simply because they are in search building should, in fact, redefine of something else. And I don't disdain this, MRS. HUXTABLE: Well, it would be architecture in terms of its context. And in spiritually, but the free marketplace doesn't something that Venturi would consider an the context of wondering what to do with automatically operate in moving people original, indigenous American design that our environment and our world, I think the around. There are a whole lot of other perhaps we could learn something from. I Venturis are extremely successful. considerations. The great exit from the think the important thing about this couple, South was not primarily an exit from architect and city planner, man and wife, is MRS. HUXTAB LE: I think tliat's- unemployment. It was an exit from that they're opening our eyes to something something else. Is that right? that perhaps we haven't been looking at, or MR. ROSSANT: But in the long run, we have been just dismissing. We've been saying must be interested in our technological MRS. HUXTAB LE: I think society is a very this kind of environment is hideous. It is not techniques, or else we'll be the laughing complex thing, and there are many according to the classical precepts that we stock of the Third World. We must go on controlling factors, but they are controlling have learned in our architectural training with our machine-built houses, if you will,