SHARED SPLENDOR An early study for the plaza at Riverside Main Library conceived this space as a major public asset, amenity and attribute of elevated community and social cohesion. The generously scaled length, breadth and height of the outdoor room, its richly rendered materials and dramatic shapes are our tools.
SOMEDAY, maybe thirty years from now, we will run into to some young person to whom stories were read in this room at the West Hollywood Library who will say to us that ever since, he or she has felt the wonder and the possibilities of architecture.
Last fall a homeless shelter opened in a 19th century building called Palazzo Migliori that happened to be owned by the Vatican steps from Bernini’s piazza in front of Saint Peter’s. The building was occupied by an order of nuns who moved to another location. Vatican lifers and probably not a few cardinals wanted to renovate the building into a high-end hotel (or sell it for that purpose), but Pope Francis had other ideas. The shelter is already a success. Many of the formerly destitute occupants have recovered their dignity and regained control of their lives. Some have returned to society ready to work.
POPE FRANCIS transformed a beautiful 19th century palace owned by the Vatican into a homeless shelter on the theory that as he stated at the opening “beauty heals.”
In America everyone knows that 70% of our economy—the economy that economists describe anyway—runs on consumption, all the stuff we buy for ourselves. (And everyone knows that for the last half century we Americans mostly don’t make the stuff ourselves, just the money we use to buy it.) It wasn’t always this way as the economists will tell us and have famously illustrated with the hockey stick diagram that shows the rise in global material prosperity of (some of) humanity sky-rocketing not long after the founding of this nation.
MATERIAL PROSPERITY The economists’ famous diagram, the so-called “hockey stick” shows the rapid rise of global gross domestic product (GDP) that came with the industrial and post- industrial eras in the western world, Economists have traditionally equated the increase in GDP, or “growth” with our standard of living and quality of life.
Industrial and post-industrial economies have increased material production so much that controlling production is no longer our major challenge. Rather it is controlling consumption. We see this play out mostly in political movements associated with climate change and social equity. To be sure, not everyone has shared in the prosperity (yet anyway) and yet all of us will experience the consequences of what has become the super charged competitive consumption of those of us who have. One degree at a time the earth has and will provide the constructive criticism we need to reform our ways.
GOOD STUFF No question the things that we made (and now mostly other nations make for us) improved the quality of our life. Has this been their only value to us?
WE LOVE OUR CARS AND CLOTHES But do we really have them just to get around and keep warm?
The inevitable well-intentioned response has been: we need to live more simply, consume less and share the wealth — life’s got to be less about having more than the next guy and more about living well. And, as it turns out, there are a cadre of economists who are re-thinking what “economic progress” means, meaning they have adopted a more holistic perspective that would frame a healthy economy as one associated with a healthy and meaningful life. All good stuff, and politics aside I doubt there is anyone who would disagree or at least not agree to some degree.
A COMMON REFRAIN that we often hear at town halls and workshops when planning and designing buildings for communities: “No Taj Mahal!” How much poorer would the world be without the Taj Mahal?
SAINT PETER’S BASILICA was not built to “show power” or indulge the popes’ vanities, but was instead built as an expression of and connection to the awesome power of the cosmos and its life giving force (what some would call “God”).
No or slow growth economists believe we have (or should) come to the end of the hockey stick era. The metaphor put forth has been something like “time for us rich folks to retire”. (Interestingly and perhaps not coincidentally the “retire early” movement is big among young people.) But the metaphor is inadequate and misleading. We want to retire from what? The grind of work in pursuit of lots of personal material benefit? Does rich only mean owning stuff? In what ways are we rich?
SPLENDID BUILDINGS have been built in every corner of the world. Were they built to keep the rain out?
SPLENDID SPACES Sometimes for spiritual purposes, sometimes as a show of strength and sometimes just for fun magnificent architecture enriches our lives without ever having to own it.
As just about anyone who has retired will tell you, short of physical limitations, it’s hard to retire. Most people don’t like it. You will often hear retirees say they have returned to work or they are busier than ever working on other things, volunteering or whatever. We like to work. It’s just what kind? We are humanity who, unlike any other creatures having survived spectacularly, are blessed with the ability to channel our work toward things other than survival or accumulation. Among those things are that we like to make things and we like to make buildings (although it’s been a while since we’ve been very good at it).
PRE- HOCKEY STICK CITIES in the west are of a quality that in the 20th and 21st century cities we have yet to match (no mimicry necessary, just skills and commitment).
POST HOCKEY STICK PROSPERITY Washing machines, air conditioning, restaurants and coffee shops made pre-hockey stick cities that much more humane, comfortable to live in and beautiful. (Life in the 16th century was no walk in the park no matter how beautiful the architecture). Clockwise from upper left: Rome, Paris, Madrid and London.
Archaeologists tell us that the first buildings of any significance (Stonehenge, Easter Island, the Tabernacle) were not at all practical, not about shelter—they were a built expression of awe in contemplation of the splendor of the world and the universe around us — an attempt to communicate with it if not at least to reflect it. And isn’t this among other things what we mostly like about buildings that move us? Isn’t this what the rich among us seek when we fling ourselves into the air aboard giant fossil fueled flying steel buses to go see for ourselves? Do we do this because we can, we compete or we care?
POST HOCKEY STICK CITIES At the peripheries of pre-hockey cities are what we accomplished in the 20th century. Seems like there is a lot of work still to be done. Clockwise from upper left: Rome, Paris, Madrid and London.
MOST PEOPLE in the world live in cities that are little more than the accumulation of shelters, shanties and shacks. This is not just material deprivation — it is spiritual deprivation.
THE DIFFERENCE between a home in a poor area of Los Angeles (left) and a prosperous one (right) is less the quality of the architecture than the kinds of amenities and embellishments that come with affluence.
Good buildings move us, they are good stuff that we don’t have to own. They give us something meaningful to do, they are our most ancient way of work and I believe the future of work. There is plenty of work to be done in every city in the world. When we all live with splendor, we won’t need to travel to experience it. Through the shared accumulation of great buildings and places to be, we won’t feel the need to own so much stuff. Whether it is in regard to ourselves or the societies in which we live, we agree with what Francis in Rome was clearly thinking and what last fall he succinctly said: beauty heals.
ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO the powers that were believed that with the founding of a new university (University of California, Los Angeles) came the obligation of an architecture of grandeur and dignity. (Right: Dickson Court, UCLA, Royce Hall on the right, Powell Library on the left; Left: A community meeting room at our UCLA UNEX Administrative Headquarters off campus rendered in evocation of Dickson Court.
ROYCE HALL, UCLA’s premier building, was the inspiration for the design of this elevator lobby for the off-campus administration headquarters of UCLA Extension.
POWELL LIBRARY, UCLA’s iconic library, was the inspiration for the design of this elevator lobby for the off-campus administration headquarters of UCLA Extension.