Crooked Houses and Cocktail Napkin Architecture

This one's specifically for Zach. Consider it your welcome to blogging.

The word "starchitect" is loaded with a lot of controversy these days. Often starchitect status is earned when an architect produces an influential body of work; just as often, it's the result of relentless self-promotion à la Frank Lloyd Wright. It's both a good and bad thing, in that it raises the profile of architectural designs, but it also gives egotistical architects the impression that they have a "free pass" to design whatever the hell they want, budget and clients be damned. The latest person to take on the modern starchitect system is John Silber, Boston University's anointed messiah. (Check out the shrine dedicated to him in Mugar Library if you think I'm kidding).

I don't quite know what to think about John Silber. Most of me wants to dismiss him as a curmudgeon who somehow gets paid to complain about modern culture, kind of like Andy Rooney but without the eyebrows. You know, that old guy who yells, "you kids get off my lawn!" while he shakes his cane at you. My general opinion of Silber is that he's a conservative homophobe who offers unresearched opinions (and often inaccurate information) in order to cause a ruckus. He's a demagogue who likes to hear himself talk. So you can imagine how much it pisses me off me when he actually has a point.

His new book, Architecture of the Absurd: How "Genius" Disfigured a Practical Art, takes on star architects like Frank Gehry, Daniel Libeskind, and Jose Lluis Sert. He claims their buildings are "absurd" because the legend of the architect's genius overshadows the fact that their designs aren't really appropriate for the clients who are paying the commission. Rightly so, he insists that clients of "absurd" architecture share the blame for allowing architects create buildings that don't fit their intended function, or that come in way over budget. I absolutely agree with Silber on these points. For example, Libeskind probably could have come up with something better for the Royal Ontario Museum than the quick-and-dirty design he sketched on a cocktail napkin, pictured above. And some of Gehry's creations, like the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, have caused some pretty weird problems, like reflecting unbearable heat onto neighboring apartments.

But should MIT sue Gehry for his leaky Stata Center? Given his track record, they surely ought to have have known what they were getting into when they hired him in the first place. Also, I think the building looks wicked cool on the outside, and ultimately MIT will benefit from commissioning such an inventive structure, as will the ROM with Libeskind. Could MIT have hired a different architect who would have offered a more practical design? Absolutely. But it's their prerogative. They wanted a Frank Gehry building, and they got what they paid for.

The problem I have with Silber's book (besides that it could use an editor to weed out all the inaccuracies) is how inconsistent he is in his definitions of what is "absurd" and what is not. From what I can tell, "absurdity" serves as code for anything that isn't derivative. He dislikes anything that looks too modern or arty and wants us to go back to nineteenth century practicality. Now, I have no problem with the nineteenth century. I just don't think it belongs in the twenty-first century. It's time to stop copying our ancestors. What he's really calling for is a return to "safe" architecture, Neoclassical boxes that are constructed from traditional materials like brick and don't look weird. He doesn't like buildings that challenge his standards of beauty. He likes Mies van der Rohe's buildings because of their clean simplicity. He neglects to mention that Dr. Edith Farnsworth, who commissioned the famous Farnsworth House in Plano, Illinois, sued Mies for going over budget and for building her a house that had structural problems and didn't fit her needs. She couldn't see out the glass windows of her country home because they were always steamed up. How is that different from MIT's problem with the leaky Stata Center? The Farnsworth House would seem to fit into the category of the absurd, would it not?

I would agree that buildings with structural problems, leaky roofs, and the like are not deserving of the label "genius," though often that's as much the contractor's fault as the architect's. But Silber's problem with the Stata Center is not just that its roof leaks. It's that it looks weird. (He has the same opinion of Boston's City Hall. It's an inverted pyramid! Oh, the horror!) The book's final insult places the Stata Center alongside the nursery rhyme, "There was a crooked man and he walked a crooked mile, He found a crooked sixpence upon a crooked stile. He bought a crooked cat, which caught a crooked mouse. And they all lived together in a little crooked house." Silber doesn't offer an intelligent critique of Gehry's design; he just wants to make fun of it.

So, why can't architecture be playful and funny? Why can't it look weird, or at least different from what we're used to? Does it all have to look like his own pride and joy, Boston University's School of Management? Now there's an absurd building if I've ever seen one. Absurd because it's a monument to opulence and greed. The bronze planet sculpture in the central atrium just screams, "Globalization! Yippee!" The west end on the first floor has gold-plated elevators, fabric-covered walls, and tapestries. Tapestries! This is an academic building, not a castle, folks. And it's all sheathed in a conservative, rectangular brick facade. Apparently, the top three floors are so richly decorated, they've been nicknamed the "Taj Mahal." Zach and I recently tried to infiltrate them, but they're sealed off tighter than a...I won't say what.

My conclusion is that John Silber was on the right track when he started thinking about the subject of "genius" architects, but he's just such a douche that he couldn't resist resorting to petty name-calling. Now watch as the BU secret police comes to take me away...oh no!