We have successfully turned over all construction documents to the Haitian construction manager. Haitian contractors are currently bidding on the project. We are investigating stabilized earth as building materials.
By Andrew Wright
Thanks to a Siren call at a flea market, I recently found myself with several dozen issues of ‘Pencil Points, A Journal of the Drafting Room’ dating from the nineteen thirties and forties. ‘Pencil Points’, as its subtitle indicates, focused on the toilers of the architectural firms. Its readers had aspirations no higher than the drafting room. They wore green eye visors, celluloid cuffs and cotton jackets. Along with Microtomic Van Dyke drawing pencils, this group – for whom drafting was their true job description – has largely disappeared, to be replaced by graduates of architectural school who hope to quickly work their way out of the title. ‘Pencil Points’ also has disappeared. It merged with ‘Progressive Architecture’ in the mid forties, and with the merge, the magazine gradually lost its drafting room orientation. ‘Progressive Architecture’ became the most influential of the “glossy” main stream architectural magazines but ceased publication in December 1995.
Both the articles and the advertisements of these early issues are interesting as paleographic markers defining the state of the profession in the 1930s and illustrating the evolution of our field in the intervening seven decades.
The articles in the issues from the early 1930’s do not directly acknowledge the economic maelstrom that the profession was facing. The lead-off article of the October 1932 issue was entitled “Architecture, Art or Science?” The author, Louis La Baume, grappled with the role of art and science in architecture and wisely decided that this role could not be defined in words. This article was followed by an illustrated monograph on “Early Interior Doorways of New England” and another illustrating the comparative details of dormers in traditional residences.
Though not stated, the profession’s turmoil can be inferred. The exquisitely drafted dormer drawings were prepared by the “New York Architects’ Emergency Unemployment Committee”, whose descendent seems to be the “Not Business as Usual” committee of the New York City Chapter of the AIA formed in December 2008. The NBAU web site makes clear the challenges the profession faces: “The economic downturn has had a significant effect on the design community in New York City. The NBAU program focuses on what design professionals need to know and do for themselves and their firms to thrive”.
Another example of the hard times in the 1930s is the employment listings at the back of the October 1932 issue. There are no listings for help wanted. The ads for the positions wanted include such plaintive supplications as “Willing to take any position and salary offered” and “will work for $35.00 per week anywhere”. These sound agonizingly familiar to anyone looking for work today.
The difference between the magazine’s buildings featured in the advertisements and those in the articles illustrates clearly a profession that was reluctantly posed at a threshold. A modernist design for a “filling station” appears in the advertisement of the Vitrolite Company, a manufacturer of steel enameled panels, promoting their product as “modern, cheerful, distinctive – as well as dignified”. Republic Steel claimed a multitude of applications for their ENDURO stainless steel including a curtain wall on the Yonkers Statesman Building. But this luminal moment is not reflected in the articles; the writers were rooted in a comfortable upper middle class profession looking backward to historic European examples, using exquisite draftsmanship to create designs for a world that was fast disappearing.
The advertisements also reflect a technical and practical aspect of the profession that has disappeared at least from current architectural journals. Along with advertisements for the tools of the trade – such as Higgins drafting inks, Esterbrook pens and the Sketch Book Atelier – there were ads for rigid conduit from General Electric, wire fabric for concrete floor reinforcing and cast iron pipe from Youngstown Steel. The architects of the 1930’s had not relinquished as much of the control of building systems to the engineers as the professionals do today.
Being ‘A Journal for the Drafting Room’, the October 1932 issue also has a detailed and lengthy article on the “Whys and Wherefores of the Specification – Plastering” part of a monthly series of technical specifications. Unlike the “Continuing Education” articles in today’s ‘Architectural Record’, this article was a serious effort to educate. It presupposes a considerable level of professional technical knowledge.
So what are we left with? Where are we when compared with our predecessors of seventy years ago? We have a profession deeply damaged by a severe economic downturn. We have a segment of the community deeply distracted by buildings which have ignored at least some of the Vitruvian rules of fermatas, utilities, venustas. Many critics ignore discussions of process, function, aesthetics and the placement of a building within a context. We have a profession less in control of the construction process and in danger of being relegated to the role of designer rather than master builder.
However, it seems we freely recognize these short comings. During these bad times architects have the opportunity to rethink their roles and redefine where their greatest opportunities and strengths lie. ‘Pencil Points’ of the 1930’s and indeed the ‘Architectural Record’ of 2011 do not reflect the fact that the construction industry, and in fact all of civil society, has a great need for people who care deeply about the shape and form of our built and natural surroundings.
All photos below were taken on our recent 2-day visit to Port-au-Prince/Haiti. TAA is currently designing a Family Health and Nutrition Center for GHESKIO Clinic in the slums of Port-au-Prince. GHESKIO offers HIV, tuberculosis and cholera treatment free of charge to the poorest of Port-au-Prince’s population.
While we are still finding it hard to adequately describe post-earthquake Port-au-Prince/Haiti as we have experienced it during our last visits, we hope that the images below will provide at least a small glimpse into the city’s current reality. Most pictures -except for the ones taken in GHESKIO Clinic- were taken through dusty car windows while speeding through the streets of Port-au-Prince.
All images ©Nora Mertens, 2011
Tonetti Associates Architects designed the recent reconstruction of Fort Ticonderoga’s Le Magasin du Roi as the Mars Education Center, marking the largest capital project undertaken in the museum’s 95-year history.
The original fort was built by the French between 1754 and 1757 during the Seven Years’ War, often referred to as the French and Indian War, to control the south end of Lake Champlain and prevent the British from gaining military access to the lake. Thus it was of strategic importance during the 18th-century colonial conflicts between Great Britain and France, and again played a role during the American Revolutionary War.
During the 1758 Battle of Carillon, 4,000 French defenders were able to repel an attack by 16,000 British troops near the fort. In 1759, the British returned and, under the leadership of General Jeffery Amherst, laid siege to the Fort. The French were ill equipped to withstand the superior numbers of the British, and after a four-day siege, they abandoned the Fort after blowing up the powder magazine (the building which Tonetti Associates recently rebuilt). During the American Revolutionary War, the fort again saw action in May 1775 when the Green Mountain Boys and other state militia under the command of Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold captured it in a surprise attack. Cannons captured were transported to Boston where their deployment forced the British to abandon the city in March 1776. The Americans held it until June 1777, when British forces under General John Burgoyne again occupied high ground above the fort and threatened the Continental Army troops, leading them to withdraw from the fort and its surrounding defenses. The only direct attack on the fort took place in September 1777, when John Brown led 500 Americans in an unsuccessful attempt to capture the fort from about 100 British defenders.
The British abandoned the fort following the failure of the Saratoga campaign, and it ceased to be of military value after 1781. It fell into ruin, leading people to strip it of some of its usable stone, metal, and woodwork. It became a stop on tourist routes of the area in the 19th century. Its private owners restored the fort early in the 20th century. A foundation now operates the fort as a tourist attraction, museum, and research center.
We are proud to share some more information about our involvement in this both challenging and rewarding project and GHESKIO Center.
After the devastating earthquake in Haiti (January 2010) and due to increased needs, GHESKIO Clinic, a pioneer in the research and treatment of HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis in Haiti, has enlisted Tonetti Architects (TAA) to design a new facility in an effort of expanding their services; not only treating and consulting the poorest of Port-au-Prince’s slums, but also the inhabitants of the tent cities (refugee camps).
The Center, to be built by Haitians, will provide nutritional guidance to new mothers, and integrate obstetrics, gynecology, pediatrics, adolescent, family planning and research within a single complex.
We have visited Haiti twice during the past months to discuss the project with the GHESKIO staff. In the process we gained an understanding of local climatic, environmental and social conditions.
Organized around an open air pedestrian street, our design makes use of natural ventilation and the latest technology on earthquakes and hurricanes.
About GHESKIO
Cornell’s GHESKIO (The Haitian Group for the Study of Kaposi’s Sarcoma and Opportunis tic Infections), a nongovernmental research and treatment center, was established in 1982 in Haiti, the WesternHemisphere’s poorest nation and the one with the highest HIV burden. It was the first institution worldwide fighting HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis and counseling families of those infected.
The clinic has continued its free medical aid, never closing its door to patients in nearly 30 years, and has quickly expanded its treatment and research to other sexually transmitted infections, tuberculosis, diarrheal diseases, blood safety and the prevention of congenital syphilis.
Since the earthquake in January 2010, GHESKIO has expanded its services and its outreach to the local communities (inhabitants of slums and tent cities). GHESKIO has been dedicated to the treatment of cholera (250,000 people affected since the outbreak in October 2010), offered humanitarian relief to 7000 refugees, and provided clean drinking water and sanitation to more than 1000,000 people of Port-au-Prince’s slums.
The clinic has rebuilt most of its buildings that were destroyed by the earthquake, hiring unemployed Haitians staying in the organization’s refugee camp to complete reconstruction. Vocational education classes have been started to help prepare adults in the community for employment; recently GHESKIO has opened an elementary school to make free education available to the refugee camp local community.
Numerous organizations, ranging from the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund to MAC Aids Foundation and Cornell Community, donate money to GHESKIO.
By Paul Goss
Photographs by Nora Mertens
On a recent trip to New York City, I finally made it to see a long time fascination of mine: Coney Island. My interest in Coney Island stems Rem Koolhaas’s analysis of the island in Delirious New York. In his essay, Coney Island: Technology of the Fantastic, he outlines the role Coney Island played in generating the 24-hour metropolis and consumer culture that transformed New York City at the turn of the 20th Century.
According to Koolhaas, Coney Island always existed in binary opposition to Manhattan. At the beginning, Coney Island was a natural landscape with quiet beaches; a relief from the congestion of Manhattan. As the island became more popular and more crowded, it could no longer exist in its current state and had to swing to the opposite binary, one of extreme artificiality and urban intensification. Mutating the island into a city of lights and artificiality, a place where pleasure was created and consumed, required technology. To borrow from Koolhaas, technology of the fantastic was used to create a synthetic reality. Technology of the fantastic was used to create an urbanism and social environment that the public demanded and consumed, one that became a laboratory for Manhattan.
A bizarre landscape of theme parks evolved on the Island, each trying to outdo the last. Dreamland was home to over 1,300,000 electric lights, creating a second city of lights that was the advent of the 24-hour metropolis. Attractions like Fighting the Flames, The Fall of Pompeii, Barrels of Love and Lilliputia developed in line with the public’s demand for the fantastic and bizarre. Each relied on technology to create and sell a synthetic reality to be consumed by the public. Further, cardboard was a predominant building material, resulting in many impossible spires and useless space. However, the architecture was convincing enough to support “the formula: carboard + technology (or any other flimsy material) = reality.” Coney Island’s extreme artificiality and wonderland of lights and attractions prompted some critics to call the place “The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium.”
These factors of technology, synthetic reality, urbanism and the bizarre served as a laboratory for Manhattan, creating a new urbanism and consumer culture to go with it.
That was Coney Island then, but what about now? What is it and how does it function in the metropolis?
To me, it seems like it is caught between lives, between what was then and what it is now. It was interesting to see how my preconceptions of the place both aligned and strayed from what it actually is. It is still a weird outpost at the end of the line, but it is not the abandoned landscape devoid of life that I imagined. In fact, it still seems to be quite popular among the public, offering a unique blend of attractions amid the fading glory. Some of the old attractions, or remnants of them, still exist. You can eat a hot dog at Nathan’s hot dogs, home to the world’s first, ride the old Ferris wheel and other carnival rides. Coney Island retains some its old former weirdness, with fading signs and structures from the previous century, as well as attractions like Shoot the Freak. “Come on up, ladies and gentlemen, shoot the freak and the rest of your day will be gravy.”
http://www.paulgoss.com
http://www.architectureanthropology.com
Mark Twain wrote:
“I have no special regard for Satan; but I can at least claim I have no prejudice against him. It may even be that I lean a little his way, on account of his not having a fair show. All religions issue bibles against him, and say the most injurious things about him, but we never hear his side. We have none of the evidence for the prosecution, and yet we render the verdict. To my mind, this is irregular. It is un-English: it is un-American; it is French…of course Satan has some kind of a case, it goes without saying. It may be a poor one, but that is nothing; that can be said about any of us.”
I am not going to come to the defense of Satan, or comment on Mark Twain’s opinions of the French, but I want you to suspend your preconceptions for a moment and consider with me that stepchild of the preservation movement, architectural reconstruction. It is my destiny to make this argument, since for the last six years I have been deeply involved in the reconstruction of a French Military Building, the Mars Education Center ( le Magazin du Roi) at Fort Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain in New York State. I want to engage you in a making a case for architectural reconstruction within a historic site.
Allow me to set the stage: The Ticonderoga peninsula on Lake Champlain, NY, has many stories to tell, but for North Americans, the role it played in the Seven Years War and Revolutionary War dominates. In 1755, the French, realizing the site’s importance for their control of Lake Champlain, began constructing Fort Carillion on the peninsula’s high ground. After four years of labor by thousands of soldiers and artisans, the French were forced to abandon the fort by the attacking British, but not before exploding its gunpowder magazine. The British took the fort, renamed it Ticonderoga, made some basic repairs, and lightly garrisoned it. However, the fort lost its military significance even before the end of the Revolutionary War, and the harsh Adirondack winters proved the ephemeral nature of European building techniques in a freeze thaw climate. The fort was fast becoming a picturesque ruin.
Financier William Ferris Pell eventually rescued the fort from further destruction and, early in the 20th century, in one of our nation’s earliest preservation efforts, Pell family members initiated the fort’s restoration, opening it in 1909 as the country’s first open-air museum. Since that time, through its buildings, collections and programs, the fort has instilled in its visitors a sense of the history and culture of this mythic place. The site was always interpreted physically as a British/American fort, and the east side – the French gunpowder magazine – was never restored.
Reconstruction & Honesty
The tension between reconstruction and honesty was evident early on. In 1846 at the inception of the awareness of the issues inherent in reconstruction and restoration, John Ruskin wrote in the Seven Lamps of Architecture: “It is impossible, as impossible as to raise the dead, to restore anything that has ever been great or beautiful in architecture.” The difficulties of “raising the dead” have been well documented in the ensuing 150 years. The goal of historic accuracy has become enmeshed with present concerns on countless projects.
This was codified in the Athens Charter of 1931. There the preservation and architectural communities set out to proscribe the popular restoration/reconstruction epitomized by the work of Viollet-le-Duc, and these popular American open-air museums. The professional approach became one of respecting all previous intervention, and encouraging a view of old buildings as historical documents. Viewed as such, ‘historic’ buildings could be studied and admired but never copied. The honesty of structure that le-Duc saw in Medieval structures had been transformed into an honesty of visual intention and a concern of falsifying history.
A Means of Education
In the spring of 2000, the Fort Ticonderoga Association brought my firm on board to develop the program and schematic designs for the reconstruction of the East Barracks. We were aware that the re-creation of this 18th century building from the available sources presented an ethical and technical dilemma; We have little direct physical evidence about the building’s configuration or tectonics and no existing immediate prototypes.
The decision to attempt a French, rather than an English reconstruction, came to members of the team, professional consultants and Fort staff alike. We realized that we should be designing a French building portraying as accurately as we know the exterior appearance of its progenitor, while simultaneously accommodating a 21st century building program and the systems that support it. The exterior of the building is as authentic a reconstruction as we know how to do in the early 21st century, based on our research while the interior is an unabashedly modern building.
Responsible historic reconstruction is, in part, defining the past – within admittedly artificial time constructs – and accepting our role as stewards. If historic places represent our ancestors – and they do – treatments shouldn’t be undertaken at their expense. It is appropriate to reconstruct when it deepens our understanding of the past; when in the process one does not destroy resources or artifacts that are currently telling their own story. Reconstruction should always be as honest and respectful as possible toward people from the past, the built environment, and time. We construct artifacts to give meaning to our lives. An architectural reconstruction is such an artifact, and it empowers the interpretation of history to create deep and abiding meanings.
Mine is not an argument for revisiting architectural classicism, new urbanism, and certainly not the silliness of post modernism. I am talking about reconstruction within the context of an historic site with the intention to educate. I acknowledge that reconstruction will open the door to human error in decision-making. The concepts of the current designer, the proposed program, and the contemporary technology create an illusion that illustrates the reconstructor’s vision of history. But if we don’t attempt to reconstruct we have lost an opportunity to expand our understanding of the past. In this context effort of reconstruction matters because it lasts and it is a tangible means of explaining the historical record.
By Michael Vanreusel
A column in the New York Times (“Don’t LEED us astray” May 19th 2010), by Alec Applebaum, suggested that the USGBC, parent of the LEED rating system, was placing green badges on buildings that may in fact “leak excessive carbon once in operation”. The columnist argues that for the rating system to be effective the energy use of certified buildings needs to be monitored after completion.
The LEED system is not perfect, but the columnist fails to provide background on LEED criteria, which in fact does require building commissioning. Also, it’s important to weight the likelihood of the suggested scenario, against the realities of the vetting process and the considerable vested interest in achieving energy efficiency. The vetting process is protected by the commitment of professionals to decrease the impact of their buildings on the environment, the separation of interests by a bureaucracy in which parties are invisible to each other and, not least, the owners stake in an investment that will be expected to be justified by energy savings.
The LEED system establishes guidelines and performance criteria for the plethora of issues that are inherent to the construction, use and maintenance of buildings. Beyond the possible award of a badge, the system provides practitioners with a valuable tool. The system recognizes a broad array of practices that will improve the sustainability of buildings without letting builders circumvent stringent basic requirements.
In case of building energy consumption, LEED requires at the very least that the building meets the requirements ASHREA 90.1. The builders will have to consider various building components including the building envelope, HVAC, Water Heating, power distribution and lighting in order to meet stipulated criteria. While the team working on the project may be emphasizing water conservation or indoor air equality, none of the criteria exist in isolation so team members will continuously be assessing each decision’s broader impact. In this regard at least, LEED is remarkable.
Perhaps because the system has been so widely adopted it’s important to place it within the context in which we build. The U.S. Green Building Council is not a government agency; it was started and adopted by practitioners who were alarmed by the impact of buildings on our environment. State governments have previously made compliance with otherwise elective standards mandatory but few of the practices encouraged by LEED have been adopted as requirements. While we clearly need new energy codes and rules to restrict practices that are deleterious to the environment, letting builders aspire to improve the sustainability of their buildings clearly spurs creativity and self-accountability. LEED is doing just that, using a carrot not a stick.
Verification of the performance of the building beyond the scope already included in LEED’s requirements would be a useful gage of an important parameter of the building’s sustainability. Still, it would be a mistake to suppose that buildings that have otherwise gone through an exhaustive vetting process under the helm of professionals committed to sustainability will not perform as designed. The building’s owners provide final oversight and they expect that their LEED badge, will justify their investment into building assemblies, systems and commissioning by lower operating costs and lower energy use.
In October of 2010 I spent four days in Port au Prince, Haiti, working with a medical team on plans for a new medical facility. Since this hardly qualifies me as an expert on Haiti, the following are simply personal observations.
The current conditions in Haiti are so far beyond the norms of American life, it is difficult to discuss about them with someone who has not been there. It is too hard to find words to describe Port au Price’s dust, garbage, traffic, rubble in the streets and the collapsed building many of which may still contain human remains. It is also hard to capture the quiet politeness of the Haitian people and their dogged pursue of recovery: their ability to accept, to adapt and to move on.
I cannot speak to the violence, the crime and corruption. I did not see it. I stayed within a protected cocoon of walls, security and drivers. The refuge tent city, which we visited, seemed to be a model of care and organization. For example the medical team I was with had been told by the camp doctors that they had identified two children with TB. They took us to their parents’ tent; the children were there and the parents confirmed that the children were receiving treatment. With the potential level of chaos within the tent encampments this is a commendable level of organization.
Before arriving in Haiti I did my homework. I reviewed the proposals of American architects and engineers for the prototype for the minimal dwelling for Haitians. Concepts from shipping containers to fiber composite panels have been proposed.
My opinion is that many of these well intentioned efforts are misinterpretations of the real need. Haitians in their homeland are like Haitians in New York. They are self reliant and tough survivors. They do not need housing units plopped into their lap. They need help with construction skills so they can do for themselves. They need training to take advantage of the materials available to them. They need the skills to rebuild for themselves.
Teach a person to fish.
Refer to this article in the NY Times for additional thoughts.
La Belle au Bois dormant
By Andrew Wright
On a recent trip to Paris I had the opportunity to tour La Maison de Verre with its curator, Mary Johnson, and Raymund Ryan, the curator of the Heinz Architectural Collection of the Carnegie Museum of Art. As a visual experience alone the building far exceeded my expectations. My understanding was increased by my tour companions’ knowledge of the construction process in Paris in the 1930s, and of how its subsequent history has added layers of meaning to the building.
La Maison de Verre has a special niche in the galaxy of modernist architectural design. Despite, or perhaps because of, the building’s relative obscurity, the photographs of its glass block wall suspended above a cour intérieure and its inverse, the double height grand salon, have iconic status in of 20th century architectural history. Beyond these images, however, the building has not been scrutinized to the extent that other designs of this nascent period of modernism have been subjected. Its designers, Pierre Chareau, an “ensemblier”, Bernard Bijvoet, an architect and Louis Dalbert a metal fabricator, are not common place names in any architectural pantheon.
Paris in the thirties was of course a center of ferment for modernism development. La Maison de Verre’s designers were fully aware of aesthetic and polemic concerns for this new style. During its construction Le Corbusier is said to have stopped by to monitor its progress. Upon its completion in 1932 L’Architecture d’Aujound’Hui published a lengthy article.
But subsequently the building seems to have fallen into a certain obscurity. The owners, Anne and Jean Dalsace, maintained the building as a private residence and Dr. Dalsaces’ medical offices. They shrouded the building in a veil of privacy that precluded the merely curious from penetrating the interior court. Many admirers would have to be satisfied with photographs.
Yet the building was not only a private residence; it was also a center of a lively intellectual community. For nearly the forty years the Dalsaces hosted a salon for progressive leftist thinkers. However, this community does not appear to have included the gatekeepers and champions of the new academic architectural style, Modernism. I believe that the designers of la Maison de Verre responded to issues outside of the central concerns of modernism, and in part for this reason the building was passed over.
It was in the late 1960’s, when the first cracks in the façade of modernism began to appear that interest in the building seems to have been rekindled. Kenneth Frampton’s article in Perspecta 12 (1969) reacquainted the English speaking cognoscenti with the building. Dominque Vellay’s La Maison de Verre (2007) is an insightful and personal recollection by the granddaughter of the original owners. She describes eloquently her family’s relationship to their house. François Halard’s photographs provide another hauntingly thoughtful dimension to this book. After Robert Rubin, an American architectural historian and theorist, purchased the building and opened it to historians and architects on a limited basis, it has received more attention, including an article by Nicholai Ourousoff in the New York Times in August 2007.
My observations and thoughts here are those of an architect trained in modernism’s orthodoxy at the end of its reign. I am not a theorist, nor a historian. To quote Woody Guthrie, “I write what I see”. My interpretation is based on a visual reading of the building. Having spent much of my career designing for existing buildings, I am intrigued by the process of understanding and interpreting original design intents and the understanding of the mechanics of construction. La Maison de Verre offers much to consider in these areas.
First the building incorporates elements infrequently found in modernist designs. First, this building reflects the contribution of three individuals trained in related, but distinct, fields. This is a collaborative effort, not a creation of an Ayn Rand styled genius. Who inspired and who developed the designs of the doors with their oval profile, their unique ergonomic hardware and their integrated relation to the movement with the space? With my limited knowledge of Chareau, Bijvoet and Dalbert I could not determine who was leading in the dance at any given moment.
This building is truly a dance. The relationship and movement between the spaces was carefully choreographed by the designers. Unlike the linear progression of the Beaux Art or the directionality of Modernism, there is an intriguing assemblage of materials and spaces. The two story salon is the airy cave that all the other spaces defer to. But beyond that the building is like a wooden toy composed of interlocking shapes fitting neatly into a cube. Each space is carefully considered as a distinct set element accommodating its user, and with an intriguing relation to the greater whole. This interplay between the spaces incorporates visual connections so that the spaces are only semi-permeable. Mr. Ourousoff writes of his realization that the spaces encourage the occupants to orbit around each other. Ms. Velley describes her childhood experience of spying on the adult events in the grand salon from the balcony through the perforated metal screens.
A third modernism edict, a rational structural system organizing the spaces within, is certainly more honored in the breach than the observance in many early modernist designs. In La Maison de Verre this is certainly true. The predicament of inserting the building underneath an occupied apartment may have precluded any attempts to develop such a structural device. I see, however, an overwhelming emphasis on non spacial materiality obscuring any concerns with structural integrity.
The materiality is expressed in stark expressive solutions to utilitarian items such as electrical power outlets, window operators and heating systems and elaborative crafted elements such as stairs and doors. As Ms. Johnson pointed out, this house, like many modernist masterpieces, is an example of hand crafted construction in a machined aesthetic. Some of the materials, such as the “Pirelli” tile flooring, are “out of the box” industrial age products. Other materials, such as the perforated metal screens and the elliptical profiled interior doors, have an industrial imprinteur, but are fabricated with details directly descended from an earlier hand crafted tradition. Others, like the glass block façade, stretch industrial materials to a new aesthetic. There are no “off the shelf” details, but completely thoughtful functional and aesthetic decisions requiring a crafted industrialism. As Mr. Ryan pointed out, the interior displayed the concerns of an interior designer as much as an architect’s.
So what does this building represent in the line of Modernist design? Is it an evolutionary line that did not survive the forces of modernist “rationalism? If it is a road not taken, what can we learn from it and apply to current thought? It is imbued with the many of the concerns of early modernists, for sanitation, for contemporary materials, for new interpretations of building elements. But for me more than any other building of its period it gives a new interpretation of the acts of family life. Chareau considered deeply how people and his building would interact and La Maison de Verre reflects a thoughtful, skilful, intentional design process that intrigued me as did Le Corbusier 60 year ago. This is a building that truly is something before it was about something.
