MONEY PERSPECTA 47 THE YALE ARCHITECTURAL JOURNAL Fool’s Gold JT Bachman Each image in this series features pyrite (commonly known as fool’s gold) in a foreign yet mundane context. The meaning behind each image is intentionally vague, yet as a collection they are intended to evoke a discourse centered around the built environment, ambition, progress, happiness, and cost. Bachman graduated from the Yale School of Architecture in 2012. There is an elephant in the room. It sits at every client meeting. It chooses every material, sets the length of every cantilever, and decides the height of every tower. It contextualizes every style and every urban form. It destines some projects to paper, yet lays the foundation of every built work. From its roughest sketches to its finest details, architecture is a product of its financial environment. Can the Egyptian pyramids be disconnected from the monumental wealth of the pharaohs? Can the embellishments of the Baroque be separated from the openhanded patronage of the Catholic Church? Can the steel frames of Modernism be detached from the economic efficiencies of mass production? Formless itself, money forms architecture—but the academic community remains hesitant to broach the subject. Students are introduced to architecture through forms, materials, masters, and styles, but rarely through economic imperatives. Architects are notorious for underpaying interns, overspending budgets, and sacrificing fees to answer a higher calling than the bottom line: to be stewards of design quality and public welfare. Many designers pursue artful building above all else, maintaining that a great project is its own reward, but establishing value in the marketplace is an art in itself. Does architecture reach its potential when untethered from economic realities, or must it harness them to contribute meaningfully to the built environment? Money investigates architecture’s complex relationship with a subject we cannot afford to ignore. James Andrachuk Christos Chrisovalantis Bolos Avi Forman Marcus Addison Hooks August 2014 14 77 MONEY, VALUE, NOTGELD ARCHITECTS, BUILDING Nina Rappaport Phil Bernstein 85 21 INTERVIEW ROT MUNCHING ARCHITECTS Christo Mark Foster Gage 95 27 INTERVIEW WORK Thomas Gluck Peggy Deamer 105 40 INTERVIEW INTERVIEW Hasty Johnson and Jerry Lea Robert A. M. Stern 113 47 RICHARDSON’S DEATH, THE COST OF BUILDING TRASH AMES’S MONEY, AND Vivian Loftness THE BIRTH OF THE MODERN ARCHITECTURAL FIRM 51 Jay Wickersham and INTERVIEW Christopher Milford Gregg Pasquarelli 128 57 ECOTECTONICS? BUYING BRAND-NAME Alejandro Zaera-Polo BUILDINGS FOR RURAL REVITALIZATION IN JAPAN: 139 THE CASE OF KENGO KUMA’S WHAT’S ON THE FACE OF A COIN? HIROSHIGE ANDO MUSEUM Elisabetta Terragni Mira Locher 143 66 INTERVIEW INTERVIEW Robert Shiller Frank Gehry 147 68 A VALUE PROPOSITION ARTHUR ERICKSON: Kevin D. Gray MONEY, MEDIA AND CANADIAN ARCHITECTURE 155 Michelangelo Sabatino “ARCHITECT: WILL CRIT FOR COFFEE” THE ECONOMIES OF ARCHITECTURE Charles Holland 161 209 EATING PUBLICITY: DOHA: ARCHITECTURE THE POST-ACCUMULATION CITY IN THE AGE OF MEDIA Todd Reisz Peter Eisenman 219 166 MICRO-MANAGING PARANORMAL ACTIVITY: MESSINESS: ARCHI-SPECTRAL PRICING, AND THE REFLECTIONS ON THE COSTS OF A DIGITAL AESTHETICS OF AUSTERITY NON-STANDARD SOCIETY AOC Mario Carpo 172 227 INTERVIEW LAUNCH Cesar Pelli and Fred Clarke Keller Easterling 179 INTERVIEW Naomi R. Lamoreaux 185 THE ARCHITECTURE OF FINANCIALIZATION Kazys Varnelis 195 THE PRICE OF A PARADIGM David Ross Scheer 198 THE FISCAL TOPOGRAPHY OF THE SHRINKING CITY Brent Ryan and Lorena Bello 205 ARE WE THERE YET? A CALL TO ACTION FOR INNOVATION INVESTMENT Andrew Waugh and Michael Green WHAT’S ON THE FACE OF A COIN? Elisabetta Terragni 139 140 Buildings cost money and often a montage: an aerial overview with d’Habitation.5 The new coin matches appear on tender, be it Monticello on the lateral façade projected onto the up elevation and section, whereas the U.S. nickel or the White House ground and ships seen head-on.4 On the ancient one combines front and on twenty-dollar bills. How can the other end of the scale, relatively side elevations in one plane. The something so large and complex be small objects, such as the Temple of comparison draws on the essen- condensed into a token image, and Janus (the altar of peace), also find tially domestic pattern of the façade what does it reveal of its object? their place on coins, as do triumphal and the staggered arrangement of Key historical events—such as arches and pieces of sculpture. apartments (as only a section can going to war, founding institutions, reveal). Unintentionally perhaps, or entering a new era—have been the meaning of Janus in Roman commemorated on coins since antiquity and the significance of the antiquity. The tradition returned to Unité d’Habitation in modern culture full vigor in the Renaissance, when converge in the god’s connection to rebuilding the church of Saint Peter peace, the passage of time, the solar was celebrated in 1506. The medal year—remember Le Corbusier’s cast for the occasion preserves insistence on the cycle of night and Bramante’s original idea of the day in many of his drawings— project better than the surviving and the inauguration of a modern drawings or the building as it stands form of collective dwelling. today.1 What shape do buildings take Le Corbusier saw his Unité as and from what viewpoints are they directly connected with peace when represented on coins and medals? he argued against rearmament and In the medal for Saint Peter’s Previous page Medal commemorating the in favor of urban housing, including Caradosso depicted the “rock”— Beheading of the King and Queen of France, 21 the somewhat doubtful observation symbolic of Peter as the stone on January 1793 on the (future) Place de la Concorde. that freestanding high-rises would Above Brass Sesterce with the Colosseum, issued which Jesus built his church—which by Emperor Titus, 80 AD. be less vulnerable to bombard- was included in the cornerstone for ment than the traditional city. What the turreted and domed temple.2 links the ancient Roman coin of the Collecting the funds for the church’s While the difficulties of rep- Temple of Janus most closely with construction triggered a revolt in the resenting a building on the small the new rendering of the Unité is its Germanic lands and stirred Luther face of a coin are obvious, the great- detailing, the geometry of balconies into secession from Papal authority, est challenge lies in capturing its and windows that conjure the vision shaking the rock to its foundation. features to convey its public signifi- of peacetime domesticity that the Ironically the medal’s message cance. To introduce these issues, architect desired for postwar recon- celebrates consolidation while its I asked students in a course on struction in France.6 These buildings financing brought the Church to the visual studies at the Spitzer School were to shine with the “splendor of brink of schism. of Architecture at the City College of rough concrete” as the material most The figural relief on a coin is New York to design and cast a com- appropriate for the times. In reac- necessarily minimal and often crude, memorative image of a contemporary tion to the importance of concrete, but it is always related to three- building inspired by those on coins the coin was cast not in metal but in dimensional objects such as the coin and medals since antiquity. cement as a bearer of the material’s itself. Compressed into shallow relief, From among the attempts special significance. a building appears starkly abbreviated to capture the connection both and reduced to its defining features. of architecture to money and of a Typically a temple or an arch is seen building’s physical character to its in elevation with just a slight sugges- representation, the following experi- tion of depth, whereas monumental ments produced interesting results, structures such as the Colosseum or each showcasing a different set of a harbor require a synthetic image characteristics, in a different mate- combining different views.3 On the rial, and with a different technology Brass Sestertius issued by Titus in 80 in order to make the identity to its AD, the huge ellipse of the Colosseum object unmistakable. was captured in a dual representation Perhaps the most direct link that matches its elevation with a view between the key features of a build- into the crowded arena. The chal- ing and the intrinsic qualities of a lenge of imaging an entire harbor, as relief emerges in a comparison of it appears on the Neronian sesterce the Temple of Janus, in the Roman John Evans and Chad Richardson: Medal with of 64 AD, is approached by means of Forum, and Le Corbusier’s Unité Le Corbusier’s Unité d’habitation, Marseilles. ELISABETTA TERRAGNIELISABETTA WHAT’S A COIN? OF THE ON FACE building whose external shape gardens and palaces to affirm their betrays little about its nature and claim to a God-given rule over the purpose. Roman coin depictions of land. The vast views extending to the the second and third century AD horizon are transformed into a geom- combine the cylindrical shape of etry of power in which cardinal points the arena with a steep view to the enter into visual correspondence and interior, where corrida-like fights of override any other concern.10 The fact horsemen and animals took place.8 that spatial connections among build- Starting from such a composite ings prompted urban interventions image, other students sought to that ascertain dominion goes to show adapt the concept to an equally that the city fell into a kind of ano- intriguing contemporary structure, nymity while landmark buildings and Rem Koolhaas’s Seattle Public fortifications assumed a paramount Library.9 Its volumes are displaced role.