AIArchitect

whatever the cause, there is a strong tendency to look back and try to prevent such a thing from happening again. The built environment is often seen as both cause and cure of human suffering, so it is natural for AIA components at all levels to be involved in the long term. There is also strong influence from government agencies and private entities, such as insurance firms—as Kiplinger points out this week—pushing for improved infrastructure and building regulation. Are architects the ones who can facilitate the most rapid and well-thought-out solutions? And when should they get involved?

What do you think?

Take a look at the upcoming Skyscraper Museum exhibit that explores early-20th-century futurist visions of New York City and two things come to mind: they went a little overboard on scale, but most of the conceptual vision is spot on. With change as rapid as it is today, could we accurately look ahead a century now?

The massed high-rise construction and the heavy dependence on transportation are clearly evident and have a ring of familiarity as we look at the drawings imagining a brave new world. Dirigibles never moored on skyscraper masts, of course, because no one could have imagined the rapid development of fixed-wing aviation technology.

Now we know that communications technology is driving today’s culture and lifestyles in ways we couldn’t have imagined even 10 years ago. (Gene Roddenberry imagined wireless, flip-open communicators 40 years ago, for instance, but he totally missed the boat on how obnoxiously ubiquitous cell phones would become.) So, with all the amazing advancements and seemingly overwhelming unrest in the world today, is there even any point in guessing on the development—or dissolution—of the cities of 2100?

And if we could, what are the best clues and tools to use to do it?

What do you think?

The last time we had a rapid downturn in the U.S. economy that truly crushed the profession of architecture was in the late 1980s. What if it were to happen again?

The pundits during the recession that began around 1989 blamed a 1981 tax law that encouraged real-estate investment for the sake of investment rather than to meet demand for space. Soon enough, speculative construction—primarily of office buildings—became one of those too-good-to-be-true deals, sort of like the dot.com IPOs of the 1990s or the home-flipping investments of this decade. Of course, it turned out that, yes, the deals were too good to be true. And, as you may recall, commercial construction came to a screeching halt. Firms laid off thousands of architects or went out of business altogether.

The joke at the time: “How do you call an architect in New York City? Holler, ‘Taxi!’” Except, it wasn’t funny.

As a result, urged on by its Practice Management Committee, the AIA national component launched a program, “Managing Rapid Change,” and enlisted the help of many, including current AIA Chief Economist Kermit Baker, to map a holding pattern for firms to follow until the market turned around. Assess your core talents, attack existing markets, get lean, and do it now, they said.

It was tough, but those times passed, thankfully. And the profession has enjoyed 15 or so pretty good years, despite the dot.com crash. (But that’s another story.) The upshot of prosperity, though, is that there are many firm principals in this country who have never experienced such an abrupt crash and likely wouldn’t react well if one occurred.

The dollar is weak, there are tens of billions of dollars in complex investments out there based on mortgages that are questionable at best, the stock markets are schizophrenic, and energy prices are on a skyrocket to the moon. Are we ready for what might come next? (And could even talking about how bad it might get become a self-fulfilling prophesy?)

What do you think?

In his new book, Architecture of the Absurd, John Silber, PhD, Hon. AIA, argues that form meant to please one’s self (or one’s theoretician cronies) is architecturally irresponsible. Whimsy is okay, he opines (he lauds Gaudí), but, as he states in his subtitle, “‘genius’ disfigured a practical art.”

Silber, whose 25 years as president of Boston University included serving as client for more than 13 million square feet of campus facilities, asks specifically that buildings be “functional, harmonious, and offer no offense to their neighbors”; nor to the intended occupants.

He predicates his pragmatic opinions on architecture from watching his father struggle through the Great Depression making his living on what small-project and renovation work he could find. Later, as Silber was working his way through school, he recounts in the book, he worked as a drafter and renderer in his father’s office, thus gaining a deep appreciation of how buildings go together and why.

Starting with Pei’s Hancock “Plywood” Tower (unintentionally absurd) to his Louvre pyramid (intentionally so), Silber leaves few starchitects out of his litany of critical observation—Wright, Johnson, Kahn, Sert (particularly his work at Boston University), Libeskind, Holl, and Gehry included. There are the occasional laudatory pauses—for Fay Jones, Moshe Safdie, and Stubbins Associates, for instance—but, on the main (but not Mayne, who escapes unscathed), Silber is pointedly displeased with “the heights of pretension and bogus philosophic and historical exposition,” which he traces specifically to the publication of Sigfried Giedion’s Space, Time & Architecture: the growth of a new tradition in 1941.

What do you think?