Practice Management Member Conversations

Starting from it's lame chestnut of a title, The Architect Has No Clothes, this article is a thoroughgoing demonstration of rhetorical failure.  Besides the author's use of dummy citations, of scare quotes, of dubious self-serving terminology, and of cherry-picking (as if the whole of modernism was a conceit of one Peter Behrens,) I object to the authors' malattributions to Jane Jacobs.  The ellipsis of the first quote redacts her regard for Corbusier's city planning, omitting her noting of it as having made practical (superficially, at least) Ebenezer Howard's Garden City principles and her acknowledgement that Corbusier's attempt to integrate the automobile in city planning was viewed in its day as "new and exciting."  Mehaffy's and Salingaros' having Jacobs call Corbusier's city "nothing but lies," is a misrepresentation of Romneyian proportion.  What she called nothing but lies was the "imitation of Le Corbusier." (Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of American Cities, Vintage Books, NY, 1962, p. 23. That's how you do a citation, boys.)

To those architects who would see through the Mehaffy's and Salingaros' lens, I say turn the telescope around.  It can be used to enlarge, rather than diminish, the spirit of architecture.

Craig Hunt AIA, LEED AP

"A great epoch has begun. There exists a new spirit. Our eyes, unhappily, are unable to discern it."
Le Corbusier

I agree with Craig. These starchitects are the vast minority of the profession. I'll assume it was an opionion piece allowing for the lack of true attribution. In response I'll say that I was trained to respond to the clients needs and to elevate his aesthetic and functional requirements and hopefully to exceed his expectations, not my own neccessarily. Most buildings are not designed by the singular Architect but as a committee with the architect functioning as the moderator, arbitor, translator and documenter of the competing requirements and stakeholders. But that's not fun to write about. 
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Brion Sargent AIA
Dallas TX
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Thanks, Craig, for bringing some three-dimensional perspective to that old two-dimensional melodrama, in which the mad white-coated Germanic scientists (us) continue to terrorize the good-hearted and authentic, although occasionally torch-bearing, villagers (the public. See Tom Wolfe for a more entertaining version.) Corbu's "eyes that do not see" is indeed the key quote. Rather than self-flagellate, let's employ the academic and creative tools and smarts we've got to see what's out there now. Corbu's steamships and flivvers and factories and grain elevators were mainstream culture then, now not so much.  It has been over 40 years since Venturi, Scott Brown and students learned from Las Vegas and Levittown. What inspires us, today, about the reality of really modern culture? Yes, let's listen to the public...  these days. most of us are the public. But let's also look at and interpret and improve what we all see and inhabit.  We were trained to do this, and-call me an elitist-but some of us are actually better at it than the average villager.

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Robert Miller FAIA
Robert Miller Associates
Washington DC
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Original Message:
Sent: 12-01-2011 10:19
From: Brion Sargent
Subject: Coke Bottle Lenses

I agree with Craig. These starchitects are the vast minority of the profession. I'll assume it was an opionion piece allowing for the lack of true attribution. In response I'll say that I was trained to respond to the clients needs and to elevate his aesthetic and functional requirements and hopefully to exceed his expectations, not my own neccessarily. Most buildings are not designed by the singular Architect but as a committee with the architect functioning as the moderator, arbitor, translator and documenter of the competing requirements and stakeholders. But that's not fun to write about. 
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Brion Sargent AIA
Dallas TX
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"Starchitects" are the minority, that is the fact, and that should be the point too!

Movie stars are the minority of actors as well, but it is only natural for the media to focus on the ones who are stars.  As a matter of fact, that is how they get to be stars.......so it is true with "starchitects" as well.  Those who use the media, or who the media becomes fascinated with on their own, become the stars of the profession.

The public seems to understand however, that there are many starving actors, but they are less aware of the prevalence of starving architects.

The article is a fair response to the representation of architecture in the media.  It is a media piece, responding to the perceptions of the same audience who form their impression of the profession by other main stream media representation.

I for one applaud their actions, just as I applaud any media outlet that promotes intelligent theater and exposes the intellectually shrunken nature of Hollywood motion picture mainstream and television.  Most viewers of theater, like most users of architecture, believe quality to be beyond their ability to judge, so they accept what the media presents them, even if they don't understand it.  In the meantime, the media presents what will get attention and sells advertising, not what represents quality!

This is the nature of our society, and there is no easy answer, but personally I believe that the AIA, at least, should not reinforce the false perception through policy nor support for others who do, particularly media aimed primarily at the profession and industry itself.  At the very least, we, as a profession, should have a unified front, and an accurate understanding of what the profession truly is.  But, I guess many of us are dreamers who might rather hold on to our romantic visions than face uncomfortable truth.  And those individuals make up the audience of the AIA, which is in itself another media outlet trying to appeal to it's audience.

We have seen the enemy and the enemy is us.

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Alan Burcope AIA, MBA, LEED AP
Saint Louis MO
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Original Message:
Sent: 12-01-2011 10:19
From: Brion Sargent
Subject: Coke Bottle Lenses

I agree with Craig. These starchitects are the vast minority of the profession. I'll assume it was an opionion piece allowing for the lack of true attribution. In response I'll say that I was trained to respond to the clients needs and to elevate his aesthetic and functional requirements and hopefully to exceed his expectations, not my own neccessarily. Most buildings are not designed by the singular Architect but as a committee with the architect functioning as the moderator, arbitor, translator and documenter of the competing requirements and stakeholders. But that's not fun to write about. 
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Brion Sargent AIA
Dallas TX
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