The 10 Buildings That Changed America - And Architecture
May 12, 2013 1:23 PM   Subscribe

 
Twin Cities public TV is promoting this as SOUTHDALE! Oh, and, uh, nine other buildings.
posted by gimonca at 1:25 PM on May 12, 2013 [4 favorites]


If the weird one-eyed-pyramid didn't change America enough to make the list, why is it on the dollar bills?
posted by oulipian at 1:26 PM on May 12, 2013 [2 favorites]


I am excited to see this. Some surprises on the list so I would like to hear the entire rationale.

Also, I am pleased that they avoided buildings that are more known for their feats of Engineering instead of Architecture.
posted by Hicksu at 2:07 PM on May 12, 2013


Yeah, that's an interesting list. Some I expected. I'm gonna need to hear the justification for the Disney Hall, though, other than "We are obligated to kiss Gehry's butt."
posted by Thorzdad at 2:11 PM on May 12, 2013 [5 favorites]


What are some other nominations, if they went beyond 10 buildings? If the idea here is "single building design that influenced designs to follow and/or was influential on how we live in America," my votes would go with the Irwin Union Bank in Columbus, Indiana (Eero Saarinen); also, less enthusiastically, to the Levittown houses, generically as a class (William and Alfred Levitt).
posted by JimInLoganSquare at 2:14 PM on May 12, 2013


#10 Walt Disney Concert Hall

Huh? That's like the sixth wobbly shiny clump Frank Gehry did in the states. What makes that one more influential than the others?
posted by Sys Rq at 2:14 PM on May 12, 2013 [4 favorites]


#10 Walt Disney Concert Hall

Huh? That's like the sixth wobbly shiny clump Frank Gehry did in the states. What makes that one more influential than the others?


Looking at Wikidpedia as my only source, I'd say the first "wobbly shiny clump" building Gehry designed in the U.S. is the Frederick Weisman Museum of Art at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis (1993). That design clearly is an antecedent to Gehry's own later designs, including the Disney wobbly shiny clump, which appeared in 2003, with several other designs by Gehry (not all wobbly, shiny, or clumpy) in between. I guess the question is, to what extent have other architects imitated or been influenced by Gehry; and to what extent did that trend (assuming there is one) really start to take off subsequent to the completion of the Disney theater rather than before that? Architects, please weigh in!
posted by JimInLoganSquare at 2:27 PM on May 12, 2013


I like Disney Hall but it didn't "change America". Ambassador College's auditorium has much better acoustics and it's been ignored for decades. But this is a perfect PBS doc--nothing too controversial, nice to look at, authoritative talking heads, etc..
posted by Ideefixe at 2:34 PM on May 12, 2013 [1 favorite]


That's like the sixth wobbly shiny clump Frank Gehry did in the states. What makes that one more influential than the others?

I think it's the first shiny clump that had to be surface-treated after the fact to stop reflected sunlight from incinerating the neighbors. So, there's that.
posted by Thorzdad at 2:48 PM on May 12, 2013 [3 favorites]


I just can't understand the hardon the US has for Frank Lloyd Wright. He's really not that good.
posted by Jehan at 2:58 PM on May 12, 2013 [3 favorites]


I just can't understand the hardon the US has for Frank Lloyd Wright. He's really not that good.

Thank you for sharing.
posted by JimInLoganSquare at 3:02 PM on May 12, 2013 [1 favorite]


(The PBS show highlights the Robie House; it doesn't attempt to lionize (or show a "hardon" for) Frank Lloyd Wright's entire ouvre. Have you ever walked inside the Robie House? I have, multiple times, and it is a beautiful home with some truly innovative and - more important for the thesis of the PBS show - influential design elements, such as the open architecture and the presence of the "hearth" in the center. It also incorporated a "sustainable" element, recycling grey water from the bathrooms to the external planters, so that was at least prescient, if not necessarily "influential," given the gap of decades.)
posted by JimInLoganSquare at 3:06 PM on May 12, 2013 [7 favorites]


I wish that works like Robie House were more influential with current residential architecture which (at least in the US) seems to be stuck making pale copies of 18th and 19th century houses and ignoring most of the 20th.
posted by octothorpe at 3:11 PM on May 12, 2013


I just can't understand the hardon the US has for Frank Lloyd Wright. He's really not that good.

Wright, like all influential artists, have to be evaluated in relation to the time they created their work. It's honestly very hard to correlate the Robie house and 1910. It's pretty damned groundbreaking when viewed in that sense.
posted by Thorzdad at 3:12 PM on May 12, 2013


I'll jump right in as a general admirer of Wright and the Robie House just to point out that, from a sort of Marxist/Socialist reading, the house is clearly not going to fly in today's world, because it is designed inside out on the assumption that the owner/occupant family has a team of servants working for them and living in the servants' quarters at the back end of the house (with a door directly connecting them to the kitchen and pantry). So, that's something modern architects might not want to imitate, unless their clients are enormously wealthy. (I actually have an anecdote or two about the Crown family home/monstrosity in Wilmette, Illinois, because my sister-in-law taught piano to their children and "mansion sat" for them on occasion, allowing me to visit this horrific Toad Hall on Lake Michigan ... that house had servants' quarters, too. Made me sick to think about it, but there were 99 other problems with that horrible place.)
posted by JimInLoganSquare at 3:20 PM on May 12, 2013


I'm gonna need to hear the justification for the Disney Hall, though, other than "We are obligated to kiss Gehry's butt."

Yes. Every work of art you personally dislike is actually and objectively meretricious junk that people only pretend to like because they are required to do so by some secret cabal who decide these things behind the scenes. Of course, all the things that you do, personally, like that are widely admired by experts in the field earned their place solely on the basis of their own self-evident merits.
posted by yoink at 3:25 PM on May 12, 2013 [3 favorites]


I actually LIKE Gehry's lumpy, shiny buildings. I especially like the one he built here in Chicago. I love how much better it is than the Petrillo band shell that it (sorta) replaced, and I love how great it looks when you see it pop up, brilliant and huge, when you look down the Randolph Street corridor from the Loop ... and how it then lives up to the expectations it sets when you arrive at it, and experience a musical event at it. It's maybe one of Gehry's minor works (just a bandshell), but it works for me (and, as far as I can see, the rest of Chicago) not just as an aesthetic experience but also as a social meeting place and a geographical marker/landmark.
posted by JimInLoganSquare at 3:31 PM on May 12, 2013 [2 favorites]


Oh, assuming anyone still might want to play the game of "other American buildings that ought to have been included in PBS's Ten," I'll add my favorite building of all time, the Inland Steel building. I don't know that it was influential, but I can say that I wish it had been. That's the simplest, purest, most perfect expression of an architectural idea I've ever seen in modern building in America.

Here's a link to some Google porn: Inland Steel Building Pics
posted by JimInLoganSquare at 3:40 PM on May 12, 2013 [1 favorite]


10 buildings that influenced architecture, maybe. I'm sure generic big box retail stores, mega factories, industrial complexes, infrastructure projects, server farms etc. have changed America far more than any of these dress up icons.
posted by dirtyid at 3:43 PM on May 12, 2013 [3 favorites]


10 buildings that influenced architecture, maybe. I'm sure generic big box retail stores, mega factories, industrial complexes, infrastructure projects, server farms etc. have changed America far more than any of these dress up icons.

Yeah, that's sort of what I was getting at with my reference to Levittown, above. The PBS show seems to be more about wishful thinking than about real influence. Still, I'm excited to watch the show.
posted by JimInLoganSquare at 3:48 PM on May 12, 2013 [1 favorite]


They include Gehry, but completely skip brutalism?
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:03 PM on May 12, 2013


10 buildings that influenced architecture, maybe. I'm sure generic big box retail stores, mega factories, industrial complexes, infrastructure projects, server farms etc. have changed America far more than any of these dress up icons.

Did you miss #6 or something?
posted by Sys Rq at 5:04 PM on May 12, 2013 [1 favorite]


That's like the sixth wobbly shiny clump Frank Gehry did in the states. What makes that one more influential than the others?

I think it's the first shiny clump that had to be surface-treated after the fact to stop reflected sunlight from incinerating the neighbors. So, there's that.


No, it's the first shiny clump that GOT surface treated. The others have the same problem, but the neighbors have been told "tough shit." That includes the biologists in MIT's buildings 16 and 56, whose storage refrigerators have drawn far more juice dealing with the reflected light, since they have to have a tighter thermostat setting.

Fuck Frank Gehry, The man has absolutely no regard for how difficult and unpleasant it is to be in his buildings and to get work done in them.
posted by ocschwar at 5:40 PM on May 12, 2013


The Disney Concert Hall may have appeared in 2003, but was being designed for a long time prior to that, and just had a bunch of financing holdups.

Yes. Every work of art you personally dislike is actually and objectively meretricious junk that people only pretend to like because they are required to do so by some secret cabal who decide these things behind the scenes. Of course, all the things that you do, personally, like that are widely admired by experts in the field earned their place solely on the basis of their own self-evident merits.

Meh. I work in architecture, I like Frank Gehry, and I don't really give a shit about the Disney Concert Hall. How influential is it that it gets to be included in a list titled "10 Buildings that Changed America" when by the time it was built he'd already done very similar buildings elsewhere? I can guarantee that architects already knew about Gehry's fish-flowers well before Disney was completed, and not too many people are in a rush to mimic him. I think the only reason it's there is because it's new and different and they needed something recent where people would recognize the name or the building. They're basically picking a famous building for every era, not going strictly by quality or influence.

They include Gehry, but completely skip brutalism?

The Dulles TWA terminal is in there, and it's close enough. Probably could have used the Salk Institute instead.
posted by LionIndex at 5:43 PM on May 12, 2013 [1 favorite]


Fuck Frank Gehry, The man has absolutely no regard for how difficult and unpleasant it is to be in his buildings and to get work done in them.

No, it's also that the people who hire Frank Gehry want a crazy building as an icon for their institution and don't care how or whether the building actually works. They just saw all the buzz about the Bilbao Guggenheim and want that for themselves but are too afraid to actually do something different.
posted by LionIndex at 5:45 PM on May 12, 2013


Probably could have used the Salk Institute instead

it's in the "10 more buildings" link at the bottom of the first link.
posted by sineater at 5:51 PM on May 12, 2013


Yes. Every work of art you personally dislike is actually and objectively meretricious junk that people only pretend to like because they are required to do so by some secret cabal who decide these things behind the scenes.

Reminds me of this take on art vs. architecture:
Art must be inherently radical, but buildings are inherently conservative. Art must experiment to do its job. Most experiments fail. Art costs extra. How much extra are you willing to pay to live in a failed experiment?
via
posted by swift at 7:11 PM on May 12, 2013 [2 favorites]


No, it's also that the people who hire Frank Gehry want a crazy building as an icon for their institution and don't care how or whether the building actually works.

Marcel Duchamp was put in the same position by the same absurd societal forces.
His urinal is fit for purpose.
Gehry's buildings are not.
posted by ocschwar at 7:13 PM on May 12, 2013


The "web-exclusive" video for Southdale Center actually shows the first iconic Gehry (the Weisman Art Museum) and includes some brutalism (Riverside Plaza) and whatever you'd call the new Guthrie Theater.
posted by afiler at 7:29 PM on May 12, 2013


Marcel Duchamp was put in the same position by the same absurd societal forces.
His urinal is fit for purpose.
Gehry's buildings are not.


Someone hired Duchamp to complete the work after interviewing him or holding a competition to see who could get closest to what they wanted, had multiple reviews of the work where they could have changed it before anybody started fabricating it, had reviews of the work while it was being completed where they could have made changes and could sue Duchamp if it didn't turn out the way they wanted? Assuming architecture works anything like art is a common misconception.
posted by LionIndex at 7:37 PM on May 12, 2013


I was just at Southdale Center on Saturday! I... I don't really recommend it.
posted by cthuljew at 12:09 AM on May 13, 2013


This is linked to WTTW out of Chicago. I wonder if they avoided obvious Chicago buildings for fear of appearing biased.
posted by professor plum with a rope at 12:46 AM on May 13, 2013


I'm looking forward to the Vanna Venturi House one, because to me... let's just say, lacking an education in architecture I think I'm not equipped to appreciate it. To my untrained eye it looks like something you might buy for the land value.
posted by Pruitt-Igoe at 12:49 AM on May 13, 2013


I just can't understand the hardon the US has for Frank Lloyd Wright. He's really not that good.

Boy, what an imitator he was, taking design cues from the ranch house. I mean, there are millions of them, they've been done to death.

"It is interesting that I, an architect supposed to be concerned with the aesthetic sense of the building, should have invented the hung wall for the w.c. (easier to clean under), and adopted many other innovations like the glass door, steel furniture, air-conditioning and radiant or 'gravity heat.' Nearly every technological innovation used today was suggested in the Larkin Building in 1904." — Frank Lloyd Wright as quoted by Kaufmann, Edgar, ed. An American Architecture, pp. 137-138.

So, that's something modern architects might not want to imitate, unless their clients are enormously wealthy

Well, of course, that was what a household who could afford an architect was like in 1910. I don't think it was inherent to his thinking about architecture, though -- this is the man who championed the Usonian House, after all, and very much rejected notions of grand architecture for grand people.

Made me sick to think about it

OK, I'm not sure what makes you sick about the very concept of servants. In those days a household operated on a certain level of human labor, and there were very few appliances to create convenience. Indeed, an inverse reading of the 20th century's advances, by Galbraith, is that things like the modern washing machine reinforced sexism by creating a secondary labor class of women not just within the household, but within the nuclear family. The idea of servants itself is not abhorrent to me, as long as they are paid well and are not controlled like peasants (e.g. days off, no worrying about their "reputation" destroying the social position of the house, etc.). In any case, I don't think that the house by itself is responsible for any of this; Wright's homes, especially, were pretty much bespoke creations for individual circumstances. The evidence that his Prairie Style influenced the Ranch Home obviously includes the fact that most of these homes did not, themselves, include servant quarters.
posted by dhartung at 3:24 AM on May 13, 2013


I just can't understand the hardon the US has for Frank Lloyd Wright. He's really not that good.

Thank you for sharing.


I agree. I find myself driving past Robie House occasionally, and I personally think it is a monstrosity. Where is the front door?!?

What FLW did was interesting, but I'd never want to live in a house like that. They make me claustrophobic. Can you imagine hosting a party in something like that? Nothing but constant tripping over weird thresholds and bumping elbows in narrow hallways. What people love about FLW, I think, is that his is the first truly American school of architecture, that he took crazy risks for the time, and he made not just houses and buildings, but the whole system of the house. He designed furniture and stuff to go in the house that matched that specific house.

But I'm some kind of nut: I love me some Mies Van Der Rohe. It amazes me how such stark and possibly even ugly buildings can feel so nice when you are in them. I was recently in the Federal Center Post Office in Chicago, and just loved it. His concept and execution of public and private space really resonates with my personal brain.

I > 3 you, Geoffrey Baer!

I agree completely! I loved all his programs.
posted by gjc at 5:52 AM on May 13, 2013


OK, I'm not sure what makes you sick about the very concept of servants. In those days a household operated on a certain level of human labor ...

I was referring to live-in servants in the mega-home in Wilmette in the mid-1990s where my sister-in-law house-sat while the family was on vacations; to observe that bothered me a little at the time. But your other points are all well taken; thanks.
posted by JimInLoganSquare at 5:53 AM on May 13, 2013


The idea of servants itself is not abhorrent to me, as long as they are paid well and are not controlled like peasants (e.g. days off, no worrying about their "reputation" destroying the social position of the house, etc.).

I consider the idea to be deeply abhorrent because I think there should be a certain level of self-sufficiency reflected in residential architecture. If your home is so grand that you can't keep it clean or tend to basic maintenance without having a paid, live-in staff, then you're doing it wrong.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 6:03 AM on May 13, 2013


I'd have to put Levvittown before any Bauhaus inspired design.

Where is the love for the Dorchester triple decker? Stacking 3 or 6 units under one roof allowed middle class immigrant families to become homeowners, reduced tenement building, reduced slums, created urban neighborhoods. My street alone was only 8 three-family triple deckers, but consisted of Italian, Polish, Greek, Portuguese, Chinese, and Irish homeowners with an equal mix of those who rented the other two apartments..
posted by Gungho at 6:36 AM on May 13, 2013


Seems like the Gehry building is just a token "current" design. Not sure how any building from 2003 can have already changed America though.
posted by smackfu at 8:21 AM on May 13, 2013


If your home is so grand that you can't keep it clean or tend to basic maintenance without having a paid, live-in staff, then you're doing it wrong.

Aren't you inverting causality a bit here? The house doesn't cause the owners to be rich enough to afford to build a house large enough to need paid, live-in staff.

And anyway, plenty of Americans today practice a sort of inverted model -- they get their food at McDonald's, their coffee at Starbucks, their landscaping and pool are maintained by contractors, their child goes to a day care. If you mental exercise this you can see that there's no particular virtue in doing it yourself under this model. Similarly, for all its faults, the Edwardian great house with servants model provided an intermediate class of employment for many, many people, and families that week-ended from London were something akin to a tourist market. This gets away from architecture, but I think it demonstrates the point just as well that the architecture was not a cause of the system, only an expression.

Much of what we have today in terms of housing designed around a self-sufficient middle class has only come about because of decades of adaptations and "mod cons". The vacuum replaces the maid, the electric skillet the cook, the riding mower etc. To then turn around and say that the average middle-class American of 1910 should have been just as self-sufficient without those tools is disingenuous.
posted by dhartung at 2:14 AM on May 14, 2013 [3 favorites]


Watched this the other night and came away with a "meh" type of experience. It was worthwhile to waste away an hour, but I didn't walk away as if I had watched the best show on American architecture ever. The time and depth given to the different buildings varied from building to building, with a definite love for any building which had still living people around to talk with.

I think the show probably would have been awesome as a mini-series, perhaps a five episode format with a half hour devoted to each building.
posted by Atreides at 11:16 AM on May 15, 2013


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