Possumblog

Paint them white and plant ivy.

Doctors bury their mistakes; architects--[see above]

Via Dr. Weevil's (who's playing with his templates again) brother Steevil, an interesting post by Phi Beta Con Anthony Dick over at NRO discussing the campus buildings at Tommy Jefferson's old digs at the University of Virginia. It's a quick and succinct read, especially the concluding paragraphs:

[...] A friend and fellow alumnus recently pointed out the tragic peculiarity at work in the case of the architecture faculty: Like all professors, they operate in an insular environment whose norms and ideals are quite different from the rest of society. The unfortunate distinction is that, whereas the batty scribblings of the super-deconstructionistic-racial-gender theorist of the week can always be safely locked away in some library basement vault, the twisted images that spring from the wayward minds of the architecture professoriate cannot so readily be hidden.

Some of these wayward minds contend that any present-day efforts by UVA to imitate Jefferson’s red-brick-and-white-column neoclassicism can only result in “mediocre buildings decked out in pseudo-Jeffersonian cladding”—“the form without the soul,” as one says. But Jefferson himself imitated and adapted the Classical architectural style of the ancient Greeks and Romans. He proved that, through brilliant design and careful execution, it is indeed possible to embrace an artistic heritage, without being slavishly devoted to it.

It helps things if you consider architecture as a language, with all the various trappings thereof.

Just as it is possible to learn Latin (which has lost some of its reach, to put it mildly), it is also possible to take that very old language and write an everyday blog using it. And it's equally possible that someone well-versed in the language of Classical architecture could take it and design a perfectly acceptable modern-day building using it.

The only difference is that those who might come across one or the other would be much more conversant with the building than the blog. Architecture is a more durable language than spoken or written words, and one of the most durable of its dialects has been that of Classicism. Now, we might not understand all of it--all the metopes and triglyphs and astragals and entasis, or why one thing means something different from another, but in the end we tend to see something familiar enough to the common human experience that we can still use and enjoy it.

Sorta like good opera, we can tell what's going on even if we can't figure out the words, because we have other things to help guide us--the tempo, the expression of the actor's faces, and their interaction with each other.

On the other hand Modernism (in all of its various dialects) really doesn't play well with others. It's at its best when given a blank slate, or, as at UVA or most other places, when it's given other architecture as a counterpoint, either to mock or to genuflect toward. For many of its heartiest proponents, it is the language of reaction rather than action; redefinition rather than definition. As a language, it says less about who or what we are or want to be, and much more about what we simply dislike about other stuff. Not so much listening to a three hour Italian opera, but much more like a three hour Castro speech.

Obviously, in the case of any language, there are exceptions--some Classical work is boring and overly slavish--writing down a copy of Homer is not the same thing as being Homer, after all. And likewise, there is some work by Modernist architects that is genuinely fresh and inviting.

Unfortunately, being that so much of academia has grown crusty with people who'd rather sit through a three hour Castro speech than sit on a hill and fly a kite, you are much more likely to find the harder-edged dystopian Modernist sorts clamoring for overthrow of the old social order and all of its associated evils. The long view--either forward toward building a better future, or backward garnering inspiration from past genius--just isn't very much appreciated anymore. Too many of our professors in the building arts and sciences have reduced themselves to a never-ending present of self-aggrandizing self-loathing, sprinkled with dissatisfaction and dissolution.

In the end, the university will have to figure out who it's trying to talk to and what it's trying to say, whether it's the shop jargon of the professional pedagogue intended to be understood by them alone, or something that speaks the language of those in the world outside the classroom.

Thank goodness ivy grows quickly.

Posted by Terry Oglesby at May 23, 2006 11:44 AM