A BUILDING WITH AN EYE TOWARD its environs is never only a discrete object but a means with which to enhance both our relationship with and appreciation of our environs. (Riverside Main Library, Riverside, CA 2021)
Tools that we use to create buildings and groups of buildings are limited to those we look at. But while the drawings and models we look at (on the table or on the computer screen) help us to understand and predict the experiences of buildings, they are inadequate ways to experience them. They are the means, not the end. Still, even as we know we should not, we are habitually seduced by our drawings and models. We like the look of them. We treat them as works of art and hence the odd 20th-century phenomenon of the museum-sponsored “architecture exhibit”. What, though, is an architecture exhibit if not a city? When we distract ourselves with exhibits, we let ourselves off the hook. We put on shows and our cities suck.
THE MASSIVE RECTINLIEAR VOLUME of this building breaks down on two of its four sides to open out and assertively relate to its surroundings. (Riverside Main Library, Riverside, CA 2021)
THIS OPEN SIDED ELEVATED OUTDOOR ROOM completes itself with the help of the nearby range of hills to the west (Mount Rubidoux). (Riverside Main Library, Riverside, CA 2021)
A building can be thought of as a show or certainly a display, like a stage or a film set. Like a stage set, a building is an arrangement of surfaces in various configurations, orientations, separations, transparencies, and lighting conditions. But unlike a set, a building is never perceived from a stationary position nor in the absence of a larger environment of built and/or natural surfaces through which we complete and inhabit the display. Thoughtfully conceived, a building can and should be a means with which to embed ourselves within and better apprehend our surroundings. In so doing, we are afforded new perspectives of and relationships with our environment. The more what is inside relates to and is completed by what is outside, the more expansive (even transcendent) the experience of the building. We are both the audience and the actors.
DRAWINGS OF THE ECOLE DES BEAUX ARTS in Paris where many American architects studied in the 19th century (and many American schools emulated) emphasized the quality of drawings as works of art—especially plans and sections-- as much as the buildings they represented.
SECTION PERSPECTIVE drawings that were popularized in the mid-20th century are dramatic and misleading and often more engaging than the buildings they describe. (Paul Rudolph, Boston Government Center, 1966, above; Yale School of Architecture, 1963, below)
THE PECULIARLY REDUNDANT 20th CENTURY PHENOMENON of the architecture exhibit begs the question “what for?” when our cities are our best exhibits. (MOCA “New Sculpturalism” show, Los Angeles, 2013 above; MOMA “Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America”, New York, 2021)
THE ALIGNMENT OF THE DESIGN TOOL and the outcome of the design is perhaps most perfectly illustrated in the work of Frank Gehry whose buildings are designed mostly to be looked at and as a result, the physical model and the building are equally mesmerizing to behold—the latter’s just bigger than the former. (Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, Spain, 1997, left; Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, France, 2006; right)
THE FIRST SKYSCRAPERS IN THE WORLD initiated a 20th-century genre in which buildings, like tombs and temples of ancient times, are designed primarily as (simple albeit huge) objects to look at. What, though, is the purpose of seeing miniaturized versions of such buildings in an exhibit? (Wrigley Building and Tribune Tower, Chicago IL, 1920s, above; Chicago Architecture Center, Chicago, IL, 1918, below)
CHILDISH AMBITIONS drive striving cities to build ever more ridiculous and tall buildings. It is a simple game of simple shapes which if well done are engaging to look at for about a minute. (Perfume bottles above, Dubai, United Arab Emirates, 2021)
Is this the same as saying a room should have a view? Views are good but as soon as we frame a view, we have already created separation from it. It is a favorite trick of architects to orient a window in a room, so that from certain positions the opening “paints” the scene outside as if it were a picture on the wall. The net effect, though, is the flattening of the scene into a two-dimensional picture isolated by the frame. Conversely, if all we have is a view --no intervening interruption or frame of reference that establishes where we are in relationship to it-- we are more limited in our awareness and perception of the extent of the larger environment and our relationship to it. Distances get murky, measurements vitiate, ambiguity swells, we feel “lost in space.” This can feel exciting for a moment but with habituation and without context, the initial impact of (and our interest in) an astounding and thrillingly disorienting view fades.
Tombs and temples of ancient times were meant mostly to be looked at (occupied only by deities and dead people), even meeting places and markets, certainly cloisters and cathedrals, not to mention palaces and government buildings, were all about what was going on inside. Castles and forts obviously needed to look out but only for sporadic and militaristic reasons. Perhaps aristocratic villas of the 15th and 16th centuries in Italy were the first to self-consciously situate, orient, and shape themselves to look out onto and relate with a larger environment, even as their technology of construction (bearing walls) limited their ability to deliver.
A FRAME OF REFERENCE whether natural or man-made enhances our apprehension of the environment and our bodies’ relationship to it.
VILLA MALAPARTE a favorite of architects exemplifies two approaches toward its surroundings: the “picture window” whose frame objectifies the view and the dramatically unobstructed terrace whose lack of frame renders the view and our relationship to it ambiguous. (Villa Malaparte, Adalberto Libera, Capri, Italy, 1938)
CHARLES JEANNERETS’ TRAVEL SKETCHES betray a fledgling interest in the potential of building to frame relationships with the landscape. (Pierre Jeanneret, Greece and Italy, 1907-11)
JEANNERET’S EARLIEST BUILDINGS make good on that interest with novel approaches to building enclosures and openings (Villa Savoye, Poissey France, 1931 above; United: habitation, Marseilles, France 1952, below)
Modern construction technology and the architecture that emerged from it gave us something entirely new: our ability to create buildings as sets (or displays) embedded within and almost entirely opening out to their surroundings in ways that seamlessly connect the local (mostly built) with the extended (mostly natural) environment. And yet, while we witness the accumulation of seemingly endlessly repeated emulations of say Villa Savoye in France (Jeanneret) or the Barcelona Pavilion in Spain (van der Rohe) or the Case Study Houses of mid-century Los Angeles (Koenig and others), we cannot help but observe their inevitable failure to add up. They are never other than unique, one-off, and isolated. In their zeal to, at best, relate to their natural surroundings and, at worst, simply set themselves apart, they make no effort nor provide any means with which to or relate to each other—to create urban surroundings. They are in their accumulation incapable of aggregation into a city.
THE VILLA SAVOYE employed horizontal panoramic windows, and partially enclosed terraces to maximize relationships with the landscape. (Pierre Jeanneret, Poissy, France 1931)
20TH CENTURY PROTOTYPES that demonstrated how to open (mostly small) buildings almost entirely out to their immediate surroundings--which in turn however were necessarily enclosed and isolated from their surroundings—included the Barcelona Pavilion in Spain in the 1920s and the Case Study Houses in Los Angeles in the 1950s. (Mies van der Rohe, Barcelona, Spain, 1928, left; Case Study House, Pierre Koenig, Los Angeles, CA 1958, right)
ATTEMPTS TO PRIVATIZE OPEN SPACE in ostensibly more compact arrangements create conditions that are the worst of all worlds: old school porches and backyards in tight configurations and close quarters render unsightly both that which we look at and that upon which we look out. (“Hidden Gardens: A balance Between Inside and Outside, Omgivning. Studio MLA, from City of Los Angeles “Low-rise: Housing Ideas for Los Angeles” Competition, 2021)
OPENINGS IN A WALL are at the heart of whether or how a building creates a relationship with its surroundings and other buildings. More opening affords the potential for more outward relationships while less opening affords the potential to aggregate with other buildings. (Top to bottom: punched window, panoramic window, window wall)
The mindless repetition of these exercises is founded on the mistaken belief that we do not need (or want) humane cities or the hope that some heretofore never conceived new kind of city will emerge. After more than a century of trying, there is no evidence to suggest that this will ever work out and such exercises are, therefore, of little continuing interest (at least to us). We are instead on the lookout for an alchemy that combines skillfully shaped, solid volumes that are beautiful to look at and easy to aggregate with generously open-ended and outward-facing volumes that are completed by their immediate and extended environments and from which we can engage with the beautiful natural (and someday built) world around us.
A BUILDING CAN FRAME not just a view of its surroundings but establish our relationship to its foreground, middle ground, and far ground. (Ladera Linda Community Center, Rancho Palos Verdes, CA 2019)
THIS ROOM IS MADE COMPLETE on two of its sides by the Pacific Design Center to the east and the Hollywood Hills to the north. (West Hollywood Library, West Hollywood, CA 2011)
ANCHORED IN PLACE by the dome of the Pasadena City Hall, this building’s rooftop courtyard and terrace fully participate in the architecture of the city in its vicinity. (Pasadena Museum of California Art, Pasadena, CA 2001)