S K Y L I N E | 17 | The Pompidou is a Failure, in Praise of Kenneth Frampton, a Case for Ornament
…and the Week Ahead for May 3
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“The Pompidou Centre is a failure. It’s a building that’s barely keeping it together.” So said critic Kate Wagner at last week’s New York Reviews Architecture panel, moderated by NYRA editor Alex Klimoski. Wagner was responding to the event prompt, which asked her to choose buildings that matched her energy. (For the record, she “loves” the Pompidou.) Co-panelist Marianela D’Aprile invoked Aalto’s experimental villa at Muuratsalo, as well as the improvisatory dwellings that make up the Ciudad Abierta outside of Valparaíso, Chile. (Sense a theme? People, too, are works in progress.) In the end, the panel underscored the need for humor and personality in today’s architectural criticism. The discussion was not recorded; however, Wagner and D’Aprile both have pieces in Issue #19, which you can pick up here if you haven’t already.
In this week’s newsletter, Anna Talley contemplates paratexts, Edward Palka considers the utility of ornament, Matthew Allen pays tribute to Kenneth Frampton, and Brad Isnard ponders why we can’t have nice things.
Keep scrolling for news and full event listings. Here are a few we recommend:
Monday 5/3, Narrative Architecture: A Kynical Manifesto Book Presentation with Cruz Garcia and Nathalie Frankowski at 5:00pm; Tuesday 5/4, New Deals: Keynes and the Welfare State with Eleni Axioti, Ricardo Ruivo and Will Orr at 8:00am; Wednesday 5/5, A Dialogue with The Voices Underground Project at 6:00pm; Friday 5/7, After Concrete: Redefining Materials and Energy in the Anthropocene with Lucia Allais and Forrest Meggers at 9:00am; Saturday 5/8, a public paint session with Amanda Williams at 2:00pm.
—Samuel Medina
“Good news for you!”
In the garden of the Williams Plaza housing complex near my Williamsburg apartment there is a mosaic that, for me, exemplifies what public art can do. This eye-catching work, both playful and visceral, operates on a number of levels, though mostly as an enduring symbol of community pride.
The piece dates to 1962, the year the surrounding residential buildings opened, and was carried out by children in a process overseen by the artists Lilli Ann Killen Rosenberg and Louise Hoodenpyl. Large glazed ceramic tiles give the mosaic an architectural scale from far away, while up close, colorful, whimsical drawings offer insight into 1960s New York from a child’s perspective: There are animals of all kinds, as well as scenes of skyscrapers on fire, churches being demolished, elevated trains, warplanes, tenements, cargo ships, and playgrounds.
All in all, the message is one of resounding love for the cacophony of city life. But changes in city life have endangered the mosaic, as I recently discovered on a walk around the neighborhood. Last week, the cherished local landmark was roughed up by a team of careless contractors tasked with making cosmetic upgrades by the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA).
As part of its five-year capital plan, NYCHA has been installing new cladding on the facades of many public housing projects across the city. The result is that the telltale red brick exteriors of NYCHA’s properties have grown noticeably blander. In this system gray composite panels are mounted onto aluminum furring strips before being bolted onto the brick. There is little in the way of insulation or waterproofing. What advantages that arise are mostly aesthetic, a way of making housing projects blend in with new condo buildings and thus obscuring the real problem: structural disinvestment.
I was immediately alarmed when I noticed a team of workers drilling metal framing directly into the artwork. On closer inspection, I could see that the tiles had been cut by a stone saw and punctured dozens of times to anchor the framing. I found the foreman and asked if they planned to cover the mosaic with new cladding. When he said yes, I tried to bribe the crew to take some of the tiles off for me, fearing that this powerful work would be destroyed altogether. He said they’d see about it after their lunch. This is why we can’t have nice things, I thought.
But when I returned a few hours later, I saw that the team had instead removed the metal framing. “Good news for you!” the foreman said to me. “We weren’t supposed to put the framing up here. The building owner wants to keep your mosaic.” Brad Isnard
Photo courtesy the author
DISPATCHES
4/19—Bait and Switch
Can a book act as a “paratext” to architecture? In other words, how might literary influences obtain in the design and construction of buildings within a given historical period? ZEYNEP ÇELIK ALEXANDER and CAROLYN YERKES entertained these questions in a pair of lectures for “Art Books, Book Art, Art,” a series of talks that aims to reframe art history from the perspective of philology. Invoking Gérard Genette’s theoretical concept, Yerkes’s paper focused on two obscure architectural publications from the mid-1770s, explaining how the paratexts of both books (one bore a dedication to the Continental Congress) served to establish a collective political identity and common revolutionary purpose for a commission of carpenters in pre-independent Philadelphia. In her complementary talk, Çelik Alexander discussed the economic preoccupations of architectural publications such as Banister Fletcher’s 1896 A History of Architecture. Although best known for its frontispiece (an infamous “family tree” of historical architectural styles), the volume, Çelik Alexander argued, was conceived as a sourcebook of tabulations that imbricated measures of value, efficiency, and labor. It’s an illustrative bait-and-switch that points to the overlooked, textual dimensions of materiality and practice. Anna Talley
4/26—Long Live Ornament?
As part of MAKING ORNAMENT, a colloquium hosted by the Yale School of Architecture, MATT MCNICHOLAS did something that might be considered sacrilege at many an architecture school: he gave a tutorial on designing ornament. Starting with photographs of redbud flowers, he limned a repeating pattern that he proceeded to embellish, enlarge, and apply to various building elements. All the while, he touted the psychological benefits of ornament, which ostensibly helps stimulate the formation of cultural identity and independent thought (and much more). This how-to session posed an interesting contrast to GARY HUAFAN HE’s historical perspective, which sees 19th-century “style-books” as the key to ornament’s dissemination throughout the world. That this ornament often appeared in isolated fragments colored their reception, He noted; moreover, because little effort was made to relate a sculptural motif or molding to a greater whole, there subsequently developed “an aesthetics of incompleteness” that recalled an “absent whole.” However fascinating, He’s presentation felt like a detour, as the proceedings quickly returned to ornament’s contemporary resonance. KENT BLOOMER—whose writings and long-established courses at Yale on the subject had clearly galvanized the presenters—put it plainly: “People love ornament.” Why, then, do today’s architects and designers continue to spurn its use? Citing “blockages” occurring at different stages of architectural production, Bloomer called on his colleagues “to facilitate that [public] interest in all the institutions and instruments in charge of how things get built.” In response, MCNICHOLAS made a giant leap: “Why are we not legislating for the cognitive welfare of people?” Edward Palka
4/28—Sharp as Ever
Lecturing at Berkeley, KENNETH FRAMPTON showed once again that he is in a class of his own as an architectural historian. His erudition was astounding, his focus often on housing and “megaform” buildings (Frampton’s term for the staging of the architectonic at the scale of the territory). Obscure European modernist projects mixed freely with global precedents. Experimentation with progressive social forms combined with extraordinarily beautiful details. Architecture at its best. Now at 90 (and sharp as ever!), Frampton made observations that sometimes transported the audience to another era. And sometimes they were perennial. Asked if architectural modernism served to hinder social progress, he answered emphatically in the negative: “It is capitalism that has hindered progress.” Matthew Allen
IN THE NEWS
…in Conspiracies
CityLab published a deep dive into the r/Tartarianarchitecture sub by the real-life writer Zach Mortice. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
…in Testimonials
In the pages of Architect, critic Aaron Betsky recommends that up-and-coming design offices seek out the services of a few boutique PR firms.
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Have a hot take? Write a letter to the editor! Link here. Letters run weekly.
THE WEEK AHEAD
Monday, 5/3
Narrative Architecture: A Kynical Manifesto Book Presentation
5:00pm, Virginia Tech School of Architecture + DesignDecolonizing Design Research: Measuring Justice
6:00pm, AIA New York Center for Architecture
Tuesday, 5/4
New Deals: Keynes and the Welfare State
8:00am, Architectural Association
Wednesday, 5/5
Harry der Boghosian Fellowship Symposium - Cultivated Imaginaries: Superblock and the Idea of the City
1:00pm, Syracuse ArchitectureCenter for the Preservation of Civil Rights Sites presents: A Dialogue with The Voices Underground Project
6:00pm, The University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design
Thursday, 5/6
Afghanistan: Cultural Heritage and the Forever War
12:00pm, World Monuments FundFelecia Davis - Seams: Race, Architecture and Design Computing
6:00pm, MIT Architecture
Friday, 5/7
After Concrete: Redefining Materials and Energy in the Anthropocene
9:00am, Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and PreservationAmerican Roundtable: If We Can Save the Ship, We Can Save the Town, Africatown, Alabama
12:00pm, The Architectural League of New YorkDesigning a Just City: A Roundtable Discussion with Marquita Price and Gregory Jackson
5:00pm, California College of the Arts Architecture
Saturday, 5/8
Public paint session for What Black Is This, You Say?
2:00pm, Storefront for Art and Architecture
Email us if you would like to write up any of the above events for SKYLINE: editor@nyra.nyc.
Five desk editors run NYRA: Alex Klimoski, Phillip Denny, Carolyn Bailey, Samuel Medina & Nicolas Kemper (who also serves as the Publisher). They rotate duties each month—the current SKYLINE editor is Samuel Medina, and the Issue Editor is Alex Klimoski.
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