Preservation: A Modernist View

My hometown Houston is a modernist city. By that I don't mean its shiny new suburbs and exurbs but the older public buildings that are all lines, angles and occasionally, futuristic domes. Unfortunately, local politicians and the builders who line their pockets, can't wait to tear something down that is more than three or four decades old. There is always a fight going on between them and residents who want to preserve historic mid-century buildings and neighborhoods. Now that the Astros, Houston's baseball team, have moved to the Minute Maid Park in downtown, the latest controversy is about what to do with the abandoned and forlorn Astrodome, the nation's first modernist indoor sports stadium.  Most Houstonians don't want it pulled down and would like to see it preserved as a sports and architectural legacy.  But there are others who would like it torn down to make room for yet another "modernist" parking lot for the Reliant Stadium next door where the Houston Texans play football.

Instead of a book or a single newspaper/ magazine article, this post highlights an entire issue of a journal. Rather than focus on older classical edifices, the latest edition of Preservation, a magazine published by the The National Trust for Historic Preservation, turns a contemplative eye on America's modernist architectural icons. The special issue devoted to the importance and difficulties of preserving modernist architecture, was brought to my attention by the magazine's senior editor, Sudip Bose.

What defines modernist architecture?  Bose explains.

Trying to define modernism can be a frustrating exercise. As a style, it is less coherent, its boundaries looser, than, say, classicism. Many critics would argue that modernism is not even a singular style, that it incorporates a great variety of aesthetics and sensibilities. And just who were the modernists? Frank Lloyd Wright vehemently opposed being grouped with them, but modernist architecture would not have been the same without him.

Modernism roughly spans the time between World War I and the early 1970s. What we generally think of as the modernist ethic evolved first in Europe, among such architects as Le Corbusier, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and Walter Gropius, the latter two of the German Bauhaus school. The European modernists imbued their work with an inherent morality and social consciousness and were often associated with left-wing politics. Intrigued by the emerging technologies of the day, they embraced concrete, glass, and steel in their revolutionary creations. They eschewed ornament, rejecting what they saw as the frivolous strokes of Victorian and art nouveau styles. Their work was both spare (think of Mies' famous dictum "Less is more") and lyrical. Perhaps above all, they believed in function dictating form, though many architects, such as Le Corbusier, would eventually distance themselves from that tenet.

In his thoughtful essay, The Modernist Manifesto, architecture critic Paul Goldberger of the New Yorker, presents his views on the crucial need to save modernist buildings.

Some of the issues involved in preserving modern buildings are unique to the period in which the structures were built, such as the technology of flat roofs or glass-window walls. When New York City's Lever House, the great glass skyscraper on Park Avenue, was restored, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, the architects, had to find a replacement for the original glass curtain wall that would look the same but perform completely differently, since the old wall from 1952 was thin, almost flimsy, and air leaked through it like a sieve. It didn't come remotely close to meeting the energy requirements of today. But if the new glass didn't look like that old, badly functioning glass, the appearance of the building would have changed dramatically.

Skidmore created an insulated, double-layer glass wall that looks pretty much like the original. And the restoration of the Kaufmann House has allowed it to look almost exactly as it did when Edgar and Liliane Kaufmann took possession of it in 1947. Though the technical issues of glass walls are a lot different from the technical issues of shingles or adobe or stone, the philosophical questions and dilemmas underpinning modernist preservation are familiar. Do you restore a building to the way it looked when it was new, or to a particular period that was most important in its history? Or do you seek to show the passage of time, and the layers of time, that a building reflects?

I suppose the biggest issue in modernist preservation now is the one that the entire preservation movement once faced. It can be summed up in a single word: "Why?" Why, people ask, would you bother saving this? Why should anyone care about it? Why is this going to make my town, my neighborhood—my life—any better? For one thing, most modernist buildings were created during our lifetimes, or very shortly before our lifetimes. They are not part of ancient history. They are our history. I think we are not particularly inclined to value things created in our own time—we remember the world without them, and we don't easily believe that these buildings can possibly possess the depth and resonance of "true" history.

Also check out the following interesting essays and links:

• Palm Springs Eternal, a story about Palm Springs in the desert and the modernist oasis that has evolved there.
• Air Age Gothic about the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs and its wealth of mid-century modern architecture.
• Icons at Risk: Individually linked pages showcasing modernist icons - yes, the Astrodome is included.

(a related story from the Washington Post - the possible closing down of the historic Tempelhof Airport in Berlin. Sentimental Berliners want it to stay in operation but city officials demur.  But I doubt that they will tear it down.)

Comments

[M]

My favorite style in architecture: Retro-similar Post-seemingism, where everything just sort of vaguely resembles stuff from a long time ago. It's very big right now.

[Dean C. Rowan]

Bose is on the money in his first paragraph. Modernism is not a style. It's the very fact of our orientation to and engagement with our world. To paraphrase Bruno Latour, we have always been modernist. We strive for the organic--always, even when we purport to buck systems or advance guards or push envelopes--yet we hope to express the fragmentation inherent in dependence on technology. Think Eliot's Waste Land or Pound's Cantos...or Monteverdi's L'Orfeo...or Peter Sellars' (really very silly) stagings of Mozart's operas...or Rem Koolhaas' Seattle Public Library...or Frank Gehry's coils of titanium turds at Bilbao or downtown Los Angeles...or the drawings in the caves at Lascaux...

All modern. All the time.

[Sujatha]

I'm not quite sure of whether the work of Laurie Baker might fit the term 'modernist' in a slightly different context.He was an architect who extensively designed buildings in Kerala, who died last year after a long and illustrious career.

[Ruchira]

Although I have not seen them in Houston proper, there are several new beach front homes in nearby Galveston which are geodesic structures. I couldn't locate an image of one but visualize the house in the linked photo sitting on 10 foot high stilts and you will get an idea of what the Galveston homes look like. Apparently, the dome on stilts make the homes resistant to both flooding and hurricane damage. Very modernist - almost extra-terrestrial.

Sujatha, the Laurie Baker series of photos is very, very beautiful. Although they look southwestern in the American context, the buildings are definitely "modernist" amidst the Indian landscape. Glass and steel modernism is not a good idea in the relentless Indian heat. Baker's cooler, shaded style is so much more suitable. Did you notice that Namboothiri's house is not exactly, but on the verge of being a geodesic dome?

[Ruchira]

I must add that although Laurie Baker's architectural style is definitely modernist for contemporary India, the lines, angles (lack of angles) and sweeps of arches are also reminiscent of the older Indian architectural styles of the Mughal and British era bungalows and mansions. That effect is re-inforced by Baker's wise decision to use classical materials like brick, tiles and stones which were the mainstay of "cooler" older Indian buildings. So, in a quaint way, his modernist style is really a revival of the classical. (No one builds these elegant structures any more in India - everything seems to have an abundance of concrete).

As Matt said, this kind of modernism is perhaps "Retro-similar Post-seemingism .. "

[Sujatha]

I think Baker's creations, while drawing on classical materials and a few ideas from the past (like the lattice-work of bricks mimicking the jali screens)have their own unique logic, based on the terrain and landscape around the building. Here is an example of true retro-similar post-seemingism, a concrete monstrosity that tries to mimick this!

[Sujatha]

Sorry, the first link in the last post should have been this one.