Sunday, August 29, 2010

If God is in the details….

One of the best things about Summer Vacation is being able to travel a bit to see some sites and sights. I had the opportunity to see two iconic temples of Modernism this summer, while on a trip to the Midwest. I visited Renzo Piano’s addition to the Art Institute of Chicago, dubbed the Modern Wing, and Mies van der Rohe’s Edith Farnsworth house in Plano, IL. Both of these projects are chock-full with unique and interesting details. As temples of Modernism, they are dramatically different in their scale and affect. And as architectural masterworks, they score quite differently.

While most visitors to the Modern Wing are inside, looking at the art and design represented within some of the daylight-rich galleries, I found myself on the outside. I was fascinated by the uniquely designed parts (probably thousands of them) of the building. There were purpose-built, and very elegant, polished stainless steel struts and anchors holding the huge variety of fins and louvers, portico covers and screens. I saw fascinating glazing frame details holding translucent and opaque panels; some only partially framed. There were capitals and plinth details holding the sharpened pencil-thin columns creating the rhythm of a classical order; indeed a temple arcade without decoration. There were frameworks and facades suspended on top of facades creating the second skin required to moderate the brutal Chicago weather; and to hold their own against the fabled Chicago winds.

We are taught in architectural theory classes and in history classes that architectural distinction lives in the details of a design. I look forward to an opportunity to express this in design studio where there appears to be less emphasis on detailing. I do believe this is a critical flaw in the NAAB curriculum standards followed rigorously at NewSchool of Architecture + Design. For in the real world, it is the detailing that consumes the lion’s share of the architectural design effort. It is also the place, typically in the construction documents phase, wherein lies the profit in architecture.

Learning to “design” a building, let alone an icon, is a multi-faceted problem. What will it look like? How will it stand? How does it relate to its site and surroundings? What are the materials? Further, figuring out how to lay out a building is the key to its function. Still, detailing the same building is the key to its ability to shed water, withstand wind, remain structurally stable, hold in heated or cooled air, enable seismic loads to be dissipated without significant damage, maintain occupant comfort, to utilize abundant day-lighting, natural convection driven ventilation, and to minimize the use of scarce and dear resources (among myriad other details).

At the Farnsworth house, I enjoyed seeing, in-person, an iconic mid-century house with a challenged and checkered past. While undisputedly THE residential icon of European Modernism (even with its location in Plano, IL, firmly ensconced in the heartland of the United States of America) this property exemplifies all of the pluses and minuses of architectural Modernism. Perhaps even more deeply flawed than the houses designed by Mies van der Rohe’s contemporary, Frank Lloyd Wright (known for their leaks, creaks and other challenges), this house didn’t really work for the owner. It is as if, in spite of its stated purpose, occasional use, and riverfront floodplain location, an iconic temple was designed and built to demonstrate a Modernist ideal; and the client be damned.

Still, despite the above assessment, the Edith Farnsworth house is a masterful collection of details; however ineffective they may be at keeping out the floods, keeping the interiors comfortable, and providing the respite requested by the owner. There are beautiful details in the structural steel work, including a punch-welded frame, with welds ground smooth, and painted white so as to make the juncture nearly invisible. The modular grid is evident in the lines of the travertine flooring which travel from inside to outdoor terraces. The specified polished plate glass is evident only because a single replacement panel is of the less-costly float glass used today. The perfect, mirror-like reflections of the polished glass panels are clearly discernable next to the distorted and rippled reflections seen in the float glass. The masterful and clever invention of the furniture-like “cabin-ette” for bathing and cooking, set squarely upon the temple-like floor, is visually stunning.

While these details are masterfully drawn (some documents are available at the site) and executed, they are in one sense flawed by their inability to meet the requirements of this site, the initial owner’s brief, and the admittedly brutal environment. Mies, an apparent advocate of style-less design, was inexplicably locked in a style paradigm that worked better in several other contexts; notably the Lakeshore Drive multi-family complex completed at about the same time, and the prosaic architecture school building at Illinois Institute of Technology. In the ensuing years, we have learned more about thermal comfort analysis with notions of internally-loaded and externally-loaded buildings. Perhaps the relatively diminutive scale of the house inverted the notion of the thermal loading as compared with the other, much larger, and more thermally massive structures.

While I love the ideal of the house as a “temple of Modernism,” the unfortunate reality demonstrates the error of ocular centrism in Modernist design. Far too many times, the sculptural ideal has been utilized to justify the shape, the location, the execution of a design that is inadequately reasoned, and in-elegantly justified, however masterfully executed and detailed. One need only review the recent starchitecure of Frank Gehry, Daniel Libeskind, Thom Maine’s Morphosis, and numerous others to find buildings (while detailed to the nth degree) that are inappropriate contextual partners, unfortunate expenditures of rare and precious materials, and leaky substitutes for shelter. But I digress…

So, if God is in the details, Renzo Piano is today flying much closer to God than was Mies at the time of the Farnsworth house. Time, only, will tell how the Modern Wing maintains its rank among its peers. Somewhat a temple in its design and layout, the Modern Wing of the Art Institute of Chicago clearly has a place in the iconography where it stands, in my opinion, head and shoulders above its peers in the recent spate of museum architecture.