Art Deco

• Unlike a lot of modern styles, that aimed for social change, art deco was meant to be merely decorative

• It had a variety of influences: what were then called “primitive” styles like Aztec, Native American, Moroccan, Ancient Egyptian, African; classical frescos of Greeks and Romans; Cubism; Streamline Moderne (ie sleek industrial design)

– But whatever the source, the technique was repetition of geometric shapes

• Art Deco is concentrated in places that grew rapidly between 1920-1950

– Detroit has some of the finest art deco skyscrapers; many depression era public buildings have art deco touches

– Two biggest concentrations: South Beach (which boomed in the 1920’s following the completion of the Venetian Causeway) and Napier, New Zealand (destroyed by an Earthquake in 1931, replaced with Art Deco structures)

International Style

• Most associated with Miles van der Rohe and his motto “Less is more”

– Thought Corbusier used too much sculpted concrete and Wright too Expressionistic

• He loved steel and glass

• The architecture firm that becomes synonymous with this in skyscraper form is Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, which gets the idea to set the building back from the street with a plaza so you can make a pure monolith

– However, unless careful, these buildings would be greenhouses until reflective glass emerges in the late 1960’s (when it also becomes possible to mount glass flush without a steel frame)

• This glass box becomes the corporate skyscraper style in the US

– But as you get closer to 1980’s, enter late modernism, where the structure becomes invisible (or the idea is taken to the extreme with no windows)

MiMo (Miami Modern)

• Style closely associated with Morris Lapidus, emerged as a local style post-1950

• Liked the curved, clean lines of modernism, but thought it had gone too far in terms of removing embellishment

– It is “neo-baroque” meets “modern”

• Some buildings were very referential in a way that will be considered post-modern (Casablanca Hotel; Seven Seas Motel); others typified by flourishes that Lapidus called “cheeseholes” and “woggles”

• It is often called a “resort” style, because it mostly went onto hotels

Critique of Modernism

• The turning point for modernism was likely the demolition of the Pruitt Igoe housing project in St. Louis (designed by the same architect as the World Trade Center) 20 years after it received lots of international attention

– There were lots of problems leading to its demise, not just the design

• Government underfunded the project, using cheap materials and never providing the landscaping or allowing buildings of various heights that would have made a more pleasant environment

• The units had tiny kitchens, which just pisses people off

• Elevators would only stop every three to four floors on “common floors” which were to have community rooms and facilities, but which became no-man’s lands (because too many people used the same floor)

– The towers (which never filled up) removed the socialiability many neighborhoods use to make life happy and maintain community mores

Critique of Modernism (cont.)

• In the 1960’s and 1970’s, two critics who became incredibly influential: Jane Jacobs (The Death and Life of Great American Cities) and Oscar Newman

– Both made arguments that modernist mega-projects meant to change society through towers and highways, instead bulldozed what people actually liked about cities (neighborhoods that were like urban villages with work, shopping and home all together, where people knew each other and could work together to make a better community) replacing it with pure density and (temporarily) faster commute times.

• To this day, Jane Jacobs remains the central figure in the movement for mixed use, walk-able cities and against urban highway projects

– Her work helped saved Greenwich Village and helped maintain the character of one of the world’s greatest cities: Toronto

– And while her original book was against city planners, most urban planners today are fans

• Modernism does not go away after this; and many of the most famous architects of the last few decades remain with one foot in the modernist door, in terms of clean lines and artistic aspiration, but without the social redemption

– Thus modernism came to be seen as elitist, and a new challenge emerges

Post-Modernism

• Robert Venturri and Denise Scott Brown opened the Post-Modern phase with their book Learning from Las Vegas: the Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural Form.

– His saying was “Less is a Bore”

• Like Las Vegas, the movement becomes about many different things at once: selective revival of vernacular style; mixing modern sleek with natural material; human-scale decorative detail (like arches, cornices); the building as billboard; occasionally playful tongue-in-cheek

– Besides Venturri and Scott Brown, other major figures include Michael Graves and Phillipe Starck

• But above all, it is a movement about middle-class taste (or what architects imagine that to be) and consumerism

– Where as Beaux Arts and Corbusier modernism was public capital + liberal elite, and international style was avant garde + private capital, post-modern is consumerism + flexible capital

Packaged Landscapes & Starchitects

• To post-modernism, these packaged landscapes (all geared towards easy and ever-present consumption) are what the green-space/tower block was to modernism

– In downtowns, this involves the creation of heritage/ cultural/waterfront /stadium districts to bring after 5 pm consumption back in from the suburbs

• Lots of using vernacular touches (especially in the conversion of warehouses and factories to lofts/shopping/restaurants) which gets overdone after it is in 50 different cities

– In the edge cities, the form is the techno-park campus, which, besides offices, includes day-to-day services like day-care, dry cleaning, food courts, fitness centers, and often small golf courses

– Also, regional malls are getting more diversified, often with performance spaces/cultural centers, plus the 15 screen plus theater and more sit-down dining

– Condo complexes have party rooms, pools and fitness centers

– In the developing world, gated communities have their own private infrastructure like sewer, water, electric, roads and telecommunications

• Though connected to the grid in the US, 47 million people in some 200,000 privately planned residential communities (7 million in gated communities around 2000, a number which has undoubtedly gone up)

• Since Gehry’s Guggenheim put Bilbao on the map, many cities are turning towards star architects to put them on the map.

New Urbanism

• A particular type of post-modernist packaging, these are new suburban developments meant to mimic small towns

– Florida has two of the most famous: Seaside (the first New Urbanist community) and Celebration (Disney’s attempt at it)

• Miami Lakes, while predating the actual movement, has most of the features: walk-able, with bike paths and narrow streets; a town center with shopping, restaurants and a main park; tot lots scattered throughout and lots of canopy

• These were developed based on studies of East Coast and San Francisco bay working class communities

– Thus they have much greater density than most suburbs, have a mix of housing types (from apartments to small mansions), mixed zoning (so that retail and office space intermixes with residential); and a “downtown” that can be walked/biked to

• Also have very strict zoning regulations about outward appearance of the buildings – thus criticized as a sort of fantasy land

– Also, for being “working class” based, they are not very diverse (and are often gated)

New Urbanism (cont.)

• As more developers pick up the idea, there is increased cost cutting on outward appearances, so most are not as attractive as Seaside (in fact, the developers love the idea, because they can squeeze more houses and call it “dense” as a feature, not a “drawback”

– However, they are still suburban developments – while you can walk to get some lower order services (although not as many as the designers hope, because other than grocers, it is hard to keep small businesses open there), you still have to drive to work or to get everything else

• And, as it turns out, people like the idea of being able to walk more than actually walking

– Certainly, its an upgrade on the standard subdivision, but still suffers many of its problems

Historic Preservation

• This has been the other major architectural story of the past several decades: the preservation of our pre-international style urban past

– Thus similar impulses to post-modernism

• In the US, the National Register of Historic Places went from 1000 in 1968 to 77,000 by 2004

– Between 1981-86, rehabbing a historic property gives tax advantages: that really spurred growth

• Where as it was initially a counter-culture movement against urban planners and developers, the preservationists now often work closely with planners (and sometimes developers)

– This is what saved South Beach from becoming mid-beach

– What has happened in a lot of cases is that the façade (and maybe lobby) of the building get saved, while the interiors get gutted (at best to improve wiring and heating/cooling, at worst to turn them into open floor plan), meaning it is not a complete preservation

• But unlike the authors, I know that most preservations abhor facadism and work to fight it

Design for Dystopia

• Security has become one more “positional good” within the housing market

– This occurs whether there are genuinely safety concerns or not

• Interestingly, especially in California, many gated communities are occupied by lower-middle class families

– This is achieved through a combination of electronic surveillance and “boundary policy” which can be done by people or by architecture

• No where on Earth is quite like Los Angeles when it comes to using architecture to surveil and police, the name “Fortress LA”

– Private communities are highly securitized there (with private roads); poorer communities have fences and barred windows (and street numbers painted on the roofs so the police choppers can navigate from the landscape)

– LA pioneered the use of “bum proof” benches that are convex, so they cannot be slept on (or divided with bars to make individual seat or equipped with randomly spraying water pistols)

– Downtown LA has a series of pedestrian walkways so that you never have to touch the street, with all the retail located on this internal pedestrian avenues

• Frank Gehry actually first rose to prominence through “stealth houses” that blend into warehouse neighborhoods with plain facades but lux interiors

– The Martin Luther King, Jr Center in Watts is policed like an Army post in Iraq with fences, security cameras, infrared beams