Living (its hows and whys) is so important, too, isn’t it?<\/p>\n
Speaking of which…<\/p>\n
Speaking of living, here’s my “linky” contribution for today: I came across a description of Norman Foster + Partners’ proposal for The Walled City of Masdar (Masdar Development, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates)<\/a> in worldarchitecturenews.com. Looking at the pictures — and the fantastic (in the full range of that word) descriptions for this “walled city” — I was reminded of a few other recent articles, notably A New Curator Casts a Fresh Eye on Architecture\u2019s Past at MoMA<\/a> by Robin Pogrebin (New York Times<\/em>, May 14, 2007). In particular, this:<\/p>\n Marginalized or ignored were 1920s and \u201930s Expressionism and Organicism, whose swirling or biomorphic forms have influenced modern architecture up to the present day, Mr. Bergdoll [the “new curator” of the article’s title] contends. \u201cThere are things outside their field of vision in 1932 that are fundamental now \u2014 and fundamental to the collection,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m kind of critiquing the limits of their vision.\u201d<\/p>\n In response, his show\u2019s first thematic section, titled \u201cOther Modernisms,\u201d includes colorful drawings of Mies\u2019s Eliat House (1925, unbuilt), whose long horizontal ribbon windows and flat roofs would become trademarks of Modernism, and Hugo H\u00e4ring\u2019s Garkau Farm (1922-6), which rejected geometric forms in favor of asymmetrical spaces that would suit the grouping and feeding of livestock.<\/p>\n (…) \u201cUrbanism,\u201d another theme, highlights mid-20th-century solutions for traffic and overcrowding in modern cities. \u201cHitchcock and Johnson in 1932 were not interested in an urban philosophy,\u201d Mr. Bergdoll said. \u201cTheir opening show emphasized the individual building.\u201d<\/p>\n (…) \u201cThere\u2019s a kind of nostalgia for the optimism that\u2019s embodied in these,\u201d he said, citing things like Ron Herron\u2019s 1966 \u201cWalking City on the Ocean,\u201d a collage of a metropolis featuring tanklike vehicles with skylights. \u201cHitchcock and Johnson were wary of underscoring anything to do with utopian thinking,\u201d Mr. Bergdoll said. \u201cThey worried that the American public would think Modernism was wild or crazy and would be dismissed as fairy-tale thinking or leftist.\u201d (More<\/a>…)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Leave aside the references to thirties-era Expressionism and Organicism, which isn’t in evidence at Masdar, and focus instead on the “other modernism,” the one that thematises “urbanism” and turns away from the “privileged” form favoured by Hitchcock and Johnson, which was the individual “heroic” building. Looked at in those terms, “urbanism” (many things to many people) could be understood not just as “vibrancy,” but as an ism that works to make you fit in<\/em>, too… Urban form \/ con-form. Conform. Submit. The tall building, the skyscraper, the “heroic” structure: it stands out, calls attention to itself, and, in community with other “competitive” structures of its kind, embodies the vibrancy of competitive individualism or capitalism.<\/p>\n Is that too simplistic? But if there isn’t something to it, then why do so many people hate cities and tall buildings, which they “read” as pushy, competitive, not pastoral? Why do they perceive cities as akin to some primitive sort of hunter-gatherer jungle where everyone is presumably “on their own”? Why do other people (including me), however, get a visceral thrill from seeing a towering skyline? Are we primitives who thrill to vicariously carving out the nicest cave in the cliff-face<\/a>, the one that lets us survey “our” domain? (Penthouse, anyone?) But in that case, what of con-forming to urban formalisms — utopias that propose to make us content, to place your feet sweetly on the ground, to focus your vision on the near horizon, humbly, to guide you to paths familiar?<\/p>\n Back to Foster + Partners’ Masdar Development: I’m especially interested in the image of the “city” seen from above. I understand (vaguely, with plenty of mental resistances) why it has to be so flat, but to my eye it’s quite repellent. It reminds me of science fiction dystopias, where people are organised like insects, burrowing into the ground or clinging, drone-like, to its surface. (The aerial concept rendering is on the World Architecture News webpage on Masdar<\/a>, and also below.)<\/p>\n
\n\u201cThere are things that Hitchcock and Johnson essentially declared dead that went on,\u201d Mr. Bergdoll said. \u201cI picked buildings that would never have been buildings allowed into their show.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nIn the \u201c75 Years\u201d installation, Mr. Bergdoll also acknowledges another area that he says was largely skirted by the department\u2019s early curators: \u201cVisionary Architecture.\u201d Utopian designs in general have made a strong comeback among architecture students, he noted, inspired by projects from the \u201960s and \u201970s.<\/p>\n![\"1064_4_1000](\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/files\/2007\/05\/1064_4_1000%20Foster%20Mascar%204.jpg\")
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