Quote:
Originally Posted by DigitalUrbanity
I'm a student of traditional architecture, but damnit it you can't even be bothered to look through any of the rich heritage of american pattern books and architecture treatises to get the basics right, don't bother. Classical architecture can be devoid of most ornament (see many institutional greek revival structures from the 1840's) and retain an austere beauty if the proportions are maintained, but if the building requirements mean using fibreglass columns lacking entasis, I'd much rather see a second rate modern or even entirely pomo building.
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well said. A lot of the Beaux Arts-trained architects like Paul Cret and Raymond Hood were able to take what they learned about scale, massing, and proportion from classical architecture, and strip it of most of its ornament and pretensions, producing masterpieces like Rockafeller Center or the Folger Library in DC. Personally I think this is why so many people are drawn to Art Deco- it took the best lessons from the past and married them to modern building technology, and didn't sacrifice visual delight and color in the name of functionalism. Even Adolf Loos, who gave us the phrase "ornament is crime" and compared gingerbread details to prison tattoos, made up for it by filling the interiors of his buildings with sumptuous materials like leather, exotic wood and stone.
Greek and Roman buildings are not about gingerbread, they're about a sytem of mathematics and proportions derived from nature. The final facade of Grand Central wasn't settled on until years into construction, but the whole buiding was designed functionally around pedestrian flow so that someone walking to their train 2 levels under 42nd street never encounters a single stair. 30th Street Station separates commuter rail, intercity rail, and originally had a bus terminal, and has them all arranged in a coherent, functional layout that's apparent as soon as you walk into the magnificent main concourse. A lot of the "new" ideas claimed by modernism are just old ideas, decontextualized and repackaged with jargon. You were the first ones to think of big windows that bring in a lot of light? Really? That's the exact reason I would never move into a postwar building- prewar buildings gave much more focus to sunlight and venhilation, since they didn't have modern climate control and artificial light. How is that not funtional? Bris-soleil over the curtain wall to regulate temperature? We call them awnings.
When architecture schools moved their focus away from working with well-established strictures of proportion, form, and scale, and started stressing innovation uber alles and telling students that the past had nothing to offer them, all architecture suffered. Architects aren't capable of designing a good neoclassical building because their teachers probably wouldn't know how either. The best architects working today, like Calatrava, design buildings whose form grows out of their structural system- just like a Greek temple or a Gothic Cathedral- not something that just slaps the most trendy pastiche over a conventional structural frame.
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