Mad About Mid-Century Modern

Parent Cafe
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<p>I did a co-op at IBM in Boca Raton and sometimes needed to go over to an unusual building with long curved hallways. Interesting from the outside, but inside I found that layout unsettling. It looks like the architect was Marcel Breuer.</p>

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<p>The IBM building I worked in, if it’s still standing, resembles what I’m seeing is the UNESCO headquarters building. I’m not completely sure what to make of that.</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.unesco.org/new/en/unesco/about-us/where-we-are/visit-us/”>http://www.unesco.org/new/en/unesco/about-us/where-we-are/visit-us/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>Perhaps that arts education matters…</p>

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<p>The A&A building at Yale by Paul Rudolph - who once led the school - is often considered a masterwork but it’s pretty horrible and wasn’t efficient inside and has required significant expense to renovate and keep up. His buildings in Boston are similarly hard to maintain. I have to say that unless they are pristine, they look like crap and no one can maintain public buildings to that standard. In other words, there are iconic structures and these are not necessarily good buildings for use.</p>

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<p>Paul Rudolph designed the Jewett Arts building at Wellesley and it hasn’t aged well either.</p>

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<p>I spent some time more or less living in the VDL Neutra Research house (I was dating the caretaker/professor who lived there). It was a nightmare to maintain. The whole roof fell in when it rained. Everything leaked. I suppose weatherproofing isn’t a huge priority for a building in L.A., and the rain that year (2005) was very unusual, but it’s not the Sahara desert.</p>

<p>On the other hand, I grew up in one of these I.M. Pei/Weese townhouses, and my parents still live there. <a href=“I.M. Pei Townhouse, Once Moldy & Mangled, Lists for $519K - Curbed Chicago”>http://chicago.curbed.com/archives/2013/07/08/im-pei-townhouse-once-moldy-mangled-lists-for-519k.php&lt;/a&gt;
They are surprisingly bright and comfy on the inside, and have stayed very popular with the young families they were designed to attract. I think they’ve held up very well, though I sure don’t think they’re pretty on the outside.</p>

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<p>Lots of eye candy here, for the devotee, though they’re a bit like pit bulls: the attraction is an odd mixture of pity, alarm and genuine admiration. @Hanna‌, what were some of the drawbacks to living in Erdman?</p>

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<p>You can see the floor plans here: <a href=“http://www.brynmawr.edu/residentiallife/floorplans/erdman.shtml”>http://www.brynmawr.edu/residentiallife/floorplans/erdman.shtml&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>It’s profoundly isolating. It’s all singles, which is nice for privacy, and the rooms themselves are nice except for the grim, dark-gray concrete ceilings. It’s also convenient living in the the building with the dining hall. BUT, the hallways are designed to be riot-proof or something, and it’s set up so that you have minimal interaction with your neighbors. The hallways are narrow and they bend, there are rooms on only one side of the hallway, and there aren’t many common spaces (the “living room” on the first floor is a windowless space we called the “pit”). There are small bathrooms for every 6 rooms or so, so again, privacy, but no </p>

<p>Those cold, dark gray concrete walls with the holes in them, and people stick paper and gum in the holes…you can see the holes in this picture: <a href=“http://www.greatbuildings.com/gbc/images/cid_1247576130_2805905148_2824cbf1c3_o.jpg”>http://www.greatbuildings.com/gbc/images/cid_1247576130_2805905148_2824cbf1c3_o.jpg&lt;/a&gt; </p>

<p>That’s the second floor living room, by far the warmest and most welcoming public space in the building. Imagine that room in the winter when the skylights are dark at 4 pm.</p>

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<p>How could anyone, anywhere, EVER think that was attractive?</p>

<p>Or the Neo-Brutalism of Chicago’s Regenstein Library (linked above) and Northwestern’s main university library, which looks strikingly similar (I believe they were designed by the same firm). Are these just big in-jokes by architects? They’re just not aesthetically pleasing. Some things <em>do</em> stand the test of time, and Neo-Brutalist buildings aren’t among them.</p>

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<p>I actually didn’t think the Regenstein library was so bad inside except some of the floors had ceilings that were uncomfortably low for inside. I hate to say bad things about Louis Kahn, but agree that the living room at Erdman is pretty dreadful. There’s a dorm at Tufts with a similar aesthetic, you have to wonder what they were thinking. I hate the pie shaped dorm rooms at Yale - I think that’s the Saarinen building that looks Italian hilltown-ish on the outside. </p>

<p>Compare that living room with the ones in the original Vassar dorms: <a href=“Office of Residential Life – Vassar College”>Office of Residential Life – Vassar College;

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<p>Well, I’m just an amateur and don’t have mathmom’s architect credentials, but both the libraries I mentioned above were designed by Walter Netsch at Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (thank you wikipedia), they look very similar to one another, and from a layman’s standpoint, they are just butt-ugly. </p>

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<p>Mark Mills
Copper Spine House
<a href=“Coastal Modern: Architect Mark Mills | Artbound | Arts & Culture | KCET”>http://www.kcet.org/arts/artbound/counties/san-luis-obispo/coastal-modern-mark-mills-architect.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>Copper Spine house is not a campus building but still might be of interest. </p>

<p><a href=“http://lib.calpoly.edu/about/publications/2012/mark_mills.html”>http://lib.calpoly.edu/about/publications/2012/mark_mills.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>@Pizzagirl‌ I think mid-century modern has at least two aspects to it. One would be the whimsical end of the pole, perhaps exemplified by the “Googi” style which has its roots in the California resort hotels and even beach houses. And, then there’s the more formalist, academic end which Kahn seemed to exemplify. I think the Wesleyan dorms from the fifties were an attempt to straddle the two (particularly, before the circular dining hall was demolished in 2010.) </p>

<p>But, not all Brutalism (derived from the French, <em>beton brut</em> meaning, raw cement), has to be brutal. Kevin Roche, a Saarinen protege, designed this eleven building arts center for Wesleyan in 1973. It shows what you can do when you break it into smaller pieces:
<a href=“http://files.archinect.com/uploads/ai/aiu_Roche.03.jpg”>http://files.archinect.com/uploads/ai/aiu_Roche.03.jpg&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>Here’s a nice shot of the hideous Humanities building at UW. I liked the comments attached to the photo, particularly “Kill it before it breeds.” (Because then we’d have a bunch of little baby brutalists, like the Wesleyan arts buildings…which I still think are forbidding and uninviting.)</p>

<p><a href=“If It Isn't Soon Demolished, It May Have to Be Preserved I… | Flickr”>https://www.■■■■■■■■■■/photos/madison_guy/4553304067/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>At NU, the Brutalist university library was attached to another library, Deering Library, which has more the classic, traditional collegiate Gothic look. A year or so ago, they re-opened the entrance to the library through Deering, which a lot of alums (including myself) applauded – it’s just a beautiful, inspiring entrance to a lovely building.</p>

<p>There’s a reason certain architecture stands the test of time and there’s a reason other architecture doesn’t. There’s a reason classic Gothic or other classic architecture captures the imagination and Brutalist stuff doesn’t. Sometimes you wonder if architects just really don’t care what most people find pleasing, that it’s all some little in-joke that we’ll be “daring” and avant-garde and self-referential and who cares if it’s ugly – just like you sometimes wonder that certain fashion designers are playing in-jokes by bringing up deliberately ugly looks. </p>

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<p>"But, not all Brutalism (derived from the French, <em>beton brut</em> meaning, raw cement), has to be brutal. Kevin Roche, a Saarinen protege, designed this eleven building arts center for Wesleyan in 1973. It shows what you can do when you break it into smaller pieces:
<a href="http://files.archinect.com/uploads/ai/aiu_Roche.03.jpg"&gt;http://files.archinect.com/uploads/ai/aiu_Roche.03.jpg&lt;/a&gt;"&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Was that supposed to be something visually appealing to the senses? That’s just a different shade of ugly and foreboding. Where is the possible beauty in that?</p>

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<p>Simple lines. Not complicated. Low and less imposing.</p>

<p>The photograph itself is appealing with gentle, welcoming tones.</p>

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<p>@Pizzagirl‌

Well, first things first: you have to disenthrall yourself of the notion that the only collegiate architecture worth preserving is Gothic. That’s just silly. Next, let’s take another look at that jpg. of the Wesleyan arts center: What’s not to like about a sheer wall of stone, shimmering in the sunlight? Maybe, it’s from spending so much time in New England, where you find plenty of walls and plenty of stone, but, I like it. Note, the lack of monumentality; there are no grand stairways, no plazas. Just grass meeting wall. It doesn’t get more basic than that.</p>

<p>For me, there’s something romantic about a stout New England wall. Every one of them pictured here is load bearing, meaning, they are not suspended from steel beams. In that sense they are more classic than many of the Gothic wannabes built with imitation flying buttresses that probably look “prettier”, but really are just fakes:</p>

<p><a href=“http://files.archinect.com/uploads/ai/aiu_Roche.03.jpg”>http://files.archinect.com/uploads/ai/aiu_Roche.03.jpg&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>My D never lived in Erdman but that was her dining hall. She thought it was ugly. She did have one friend who lived there all four years by choice. Apparently there are many Louis Kahn fans who came to the BMC campus just to see Erdman. At Parents weekend a few years ago, I went on a tour of campus buildings and attended a lecture by a BMC prof who taught in the Cities program.</p>