On Beauty, This Time Architectural
We've recently had a flurry of really engaging and wonderful conversations here on Ricochet about art and beauty, so I thought I'd draw everyone's attention to a great review of the book, "Triumvirate: McKim, Mead, and White," that appears in today's Wall Street Journal. Though reviewer James Gardner gives the book--which is about the three men behind one of the greatest architectural firms in history--poor marks, his review itself is worth a read, as it delivers a brief, but comprehensive, education on three towering turn of the century American architects, Charles Follen McKim, William Rutherford Mead, and Stanford White. These men made it their lives' mission to create beauty in our nation's major cities.
McKim, Mead, and White were behind some stunning and famous buildings. Here are some of their masterpieces:
Washington Arch at Washington Square Park in NYC
The Boston Public Library
Part of the facade of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC
The Manhattan Municipal Building (where they combined their high classical style with modern elements)
McKim, Mead, and White--and leading architect Daniel Burnham--were also behind what's known as the "City Beautiful Movement." Here's Gardner on that movement:
Out of the firm's improvisational riffs beauty was born, in the form of a gleaming classical vision that reached its apogee with the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago. It was there, in collaboration with the architect Daniel Burnham, that McKim, Mead & White launched what became known as the City Beautiful movement. The movement's radiant classicism and grand planning enjoyed a long and influential life. Its finest flowering in New York was the McKim, Mead & White-designed Columbia University campus built at the turn of the century, but a close second—although in a different style—was Lincoln Center, conceived and completed more than a half- century later.
The City Beautiful Movement was about dignifying human beings through aesthetic beauty. By surrounding the inhabitants of a city with beautiful buildings, these architects reasoned, they were contributing to the common good, ennobling people, and promoting virtuous living.
Can you think of a major artist or architect today who takes such a divine and transcendent approach to their craft?
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Aug '10
Re: On Beauty, This Time Architectural
Emily, the link to the review is dead. Nevertheless, I have thoroughly enjoyed these art related discussions because what is coming out is an adherence to objective beauty, whether in music, visual art, and now, architecture.
I think the argument can be made that architecture may be the most important because it is in these buildings that we live. It is depressing to live and work and play in a space that is not humane-ly designed. Too many contemporary buildings are not. Just a quick walk from the Metropolitan Museum of Art to the Guggenheim and from the Whitney to the Frick proves the point.
Our post-modern flight from objective truth has been accompanied by a flight from objective beauty.
It is also interesting to note that it seems like most modern architectural abominations are government buildings or paid for by foundations run by committee. In other words, most people aren't about to spend their own money on ugliness.
The omnipresent non-denominational "worship centers" should be lumped in with the architectural atrocities as well.
Oct '10
Re: On Beauty, This Time Architectural
I was blessed to grow up in the most extraordinary town in the United States: Columbus, Indiana.
I love to read. I have since I was a child. This might be a major reason why.
Edited on December 10, 2010 at 7:21pmRe: On Beauty, This Time Architectural
I love this stuff. Burnham's offices churned out City Beautiful plans for other towns, including my Minneapolis. Lovely through the master plan was, there was something not quite American about it. They looked to Paris for their models, and the results - grand diagonal boulevards, uniform building heights - look manicured and sedate. Great American cities profit from the jostling competition of buildings, either by height or style. City Beautiful worked for the 1893 exposition or college campuses, but as a model for actual cities, it was just too inert.
The individual elements, though, are just what Emily praised - humane, noble, uplifting, full of Civic Virtue and Confidence. Gaze ye upon that Municipal Building, and exult, as Ozymandias might have said: that hulk was built entirely by hand, one piece at a time, designed by men who had no computers, only pen and paper. Lately architecture has become enamored of bizarre shapes, engineering tricks, and po-mo theories, and the most famous designers seem to have a pathological dread of symmetry and beauty. They make even the dullest 60s office blocks look like wise elders.
Jun '10
Re: On Beauty, This Time Architectural
What you must factor into your criticism of buildings as art is their efficiency. An average building's efficiency runs about 85% give or take a point or two. A super efficient building may get you to 91 or 92%. Efficiency in buildings is the ratio or usable/rent-able area versus gross area built. For example the bigger the building's lobby the less efficient the building is. With construction costs for high rise buildings running well in excess of $200 per square foot (prices vary with geographic location) a 5% decrease in efficiency can have a devastating impact on both cost and projected returns to the developer, because the building developer can only recoup cost on the usable and not on the gross area. In addition, spectacular features, such as atrium lobbies that rise twenty stories, should, in maintenance terms, be viewed as giant chimneys that allow warm air to rise and cold air to fall to floor level, meaning the lobby floor is almost always cold despite the heat input. HVAC (heating, ventilation, air conditioning) are very expensive, especially in very cold or very warm climates. Now for the killer, rents are subject to market forces.
Edited on December 10, 2010 at 8:28pmJun '10
Re: On Beauty, This Time Architectural
Let's move on to land prices. When it comes to the 'beautiful" buildings we are discussing, they are almost always situated in high traffic areas or CBDs (Central Business Districts). In a CBD land is generally sold on an FSR (Floor Space Ratio) basis. Think of land in any CBD and look at the building in the area. If the land sells for 1000 per square foot, a steep price but not unusually in some CBDs, the more stories/height the developer is allowed the more total area he can defray the cost of the land over. An example: pay $1,000 per square foot for land that allows 20 stories and your land price is $50 per buildable square foot. If the developer negotiates a spectacular deal with the building authorities he may get a boost to 25 stories and his land price drops to $40 per square foot buildable. The reason these calculations are important is because most really impressive buildings offer ground floor green space where people can congregate. Any increase in such plaza space acts to squeeze the building footprint, which forces the developer to increase the height of the building.
Jun '10
Re: On Beauty, This Time Architectural
So far we have spent $200 to $250 for the hard building costs and when we add in the land cost, which for the sake of argument we set at $50 per buildable square foot (a very light price by the way) we're up to $300. Let's now move on to budget items such as soft costs. Soft costs are items such as interest on construction financing, leasing fees, legal fees, title transfer, and taxes--not an exhaustive list but it will serve. Soft costs easily add another $150 to 200 per square foot of buildable to the price, which, sports fans, puts us somewhere between $450 and $500 per square foot buildable or per gross square foot. Let's now go back to that nasty efficiency problem: A building with an efficiency of 85% means that the cost per usable square foot, the area over which the developer can recover his costs, means that he must achieve the present value equivalent of about $590 per square foot in rent or outright sale price. So here''s the KILLER line, any fancy design features either raise the cost of construction or decrease building efficiency and often both.
Aug '10
Re: On Beauty, This Time Architectural
I suspect the Manhattan Municipal Building was what Ayn Rand had in mind when she wrote The Fountainhead.
Jun '10
Re: On Beauty, This Time Architectural
With apologies to all who did not want to know this much about making the sausage, but, trust me, this is only scratching the surface. When you get into rates of return in the highly;competitive commercial real estate market, you find out very quickly that historic profit margins reaped by developers have been falling. Granted, no one is going to hold a tag day for Donald Trump, but if historic profit margins are not being met the developer is not being adequately compensated for his risk. What this means is that the developer will eventually fail, which failure translates into fewer buildings of any kind, never mind beautiful buildings.
Edited on December 10, 2010 at 8:36pmRe: On Beauty, This Time Architectural
Cas - the popularity of the plaza is an interesting subject that has as much to do with zoning laws as economics. No one ever wasted space on a plaza before the International Style, except perhaps Rockefeller Center. Buildings filled out the maximum envelope according to the zoning laws - which, in the case of New York, originally arose from civic horror over the enormous sun-blotting bulk of an early skyscraper, the Equitable.
This produced the step-back style that characterized the best of New York skyscrapers; it also led to the wonderfully abstract concept of "air rights," and the commodification of empty space. No one would build something like Seagram unless they could buy up enough rights to make it tall enough to pay.
This lead to some beautiful buildings - well, a few - but just as the zoning law's impact on skyscraper styles influenced cities that had no such restrictions, the tall-monolith-in-an-empty-plaza style spread to towns that didn't have air-rights considerations. So everyone got a Seagrams, complete with empty space in front and a clump of modern art, known in some circles as the "turd in the plaza."
Jun '10
Re: On Beauty, This Time Architectural
James, you raise a very pertinent point, to wit: who ultimately controls building aesthetics and design. Yes, zoning authorities control the envelop and can, using that authority, force design. The most clever developers actually make a point of using these authorities to promote their interests. Your point about cities where air rights were not an issue getting ugly buildings is also valid. I would only add that in such circumstances building economics rule. Here's something to add to your thinking: cities where air rights are not an issue usually don't enjoy an overly robust commercial real estate market, which condition forces building economics.
In any discussion of building aesthetics, we cannot ignore the Sydney Opera House. regardless of what your personal feelings about that structure might be, there is no denying that it is a world icon. I raise it here only because when it was in the planning stages there was a great public outcry against it. The public and some municipal authorities thought it a outrage, an ugly building unworthy or their great city. This view did not prevail and we now enjoy one of the world's most beautiful buildings.
Re: On Beauty, This Time Architectural
Oh, I love the Opera House; for that matter, I even like the Seagrams knock-offs. It's stuff like Rem Koolhaus' work that irritates - this building looks like something the Jawas would drive across the deserts of Tatooine. Then there's the Rock 'em Sock 'em Robot Head they put here in Minneapolis. I could go on.
Jun '10
Re: On Beauty, This Time Architectural
One meeting I attended involved a developer an architect and me. The developer and I sat through a twenty minute presentation on special glass lobby accents that, according to the architect, were not only integral to the design of the building, but would lend both the building and the street scape on which the building fronted a unique and striking presence--not my word the architect's. The developer, or better still, the man with the check book, looked at the architect and observed that for a variety of reasons this design feature would add to building maintenance costs. The man didn't even ask about the construction cost, only the maintenance cost. In response the architect pulled out his Staedler pen and drew in a normal set of windows. The absolutely unique, must have feature that tied the whole design together was gone in four or five swift pen slashes. When the developer looked at me it was all we both could do to keep from falling off our boardroom chairs in peals of laughter. I have never seen a pen come out of the deep dip faster.
Edited on December 10, 2010 at 10:01pmJun '10
Re: On Beauty, This Time Architectural
I would only add that the architect's performance lent new meaning to the name Quick Draw Mcgraw.
May '10
Re: On Beauty, This Time Architectural
The Manhattan Municipal Building reminds me too much of the Stalinisht Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw, which was universally loathed by the Poles.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palace_of_Culture_and_Science,_Warsaw
This building by Zaha Hadid is a Cancer Centre called Maggie's Centre, in Kilkardy, Fife, Scotland, and is a beautiful example of architecture being used to raise the spirit of its occupants.
http://www.checkonsite.com/maggies-centre-fife/?pid=452
Edited on December 11, 2010 at 3:45pmMay '10
Re: On Beauty, This Time Architectural
Alas James, dubious property deals in Sydney (it's an ugly hobby up there for developers) bought adjacent land to the Opera House from the State Government. Then they put up this apartmetn block referred to as the Toaster.
There are now "The Toaster awards for crimes against amenity" for terrible architecture.
http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/record-sydney-sale-tops-8-million/2007/11/15/1194766823126.html
Edited on December 11, 2010 at 3:57pmJun '10
Re: On Beauty, This Time Architectural
Daniel Burnham was also commissioned to relayout San Francisco before the '06 quake and fire and probably should have after the cataclysm. Instead the city essentially kept the very narrow congested street plan that still poses a threat for future fires and earthquakes. He based his plans on some of the wide boulevards of Paris that may or may not have been practical but would have made San Francisco arguably even more beautiful than it is today.
Also - one of the sad transformations in San Francisco was the modern transformation of the Call Building which was at one time the tallest building on the West Coast. The Call Building was owned by Claus Spreckles of the sugar dynasty. The Call was the rival newspaper to the Chronicle and published by John Spreckles, Claus' son. The building was capped with a neo-classical dome and though the building survived the '06 quake and fire it was still decapitated decades later removing the dome. If you have a DVD of the Maltese Falcon there is a scene in Sam Spade's office where the Call Building is evident behind Bogart's shoulder...or you can go here: http://tinyurl.com/2ajmjq9
Edited on December 11, 2010 at 10:44pm