10. It will come to be known “The Gehry” instead of “The Eisenhower.”
9. It pales in comparison to all the other Generals’ Memorials in Washington.
8. It pales in comparison to all the other Presidents’ Memorials in Washington.
7. It is not a memorial. It is an experience place.
6. People don’t “get it.”
5. It is not presidential.
4. It is not handsome.
3. It is not inspiring.
2. It does not serve the memory of Dwight D. Eisenhower.
1. President Eisenhower would hate it.
HRH PRINCE CHARLES SPEAKS AT RIBA
PRINCE CHARLES addressed the Royal Institute of British Architects in softer words on its 175th anniversary last week than the carbuncles he hurled at RIBA and modern architecture at its 150th a quarter of a century ago. Speculation was rampant for weeks whether he’d be sweet, purring over the need for a sustainable way of building, or tough yet again, as suggested by his recent attempt to kill a big project in London by one of RIBA’s favorites, the modernist Sir Richard Rogers.
So it was hardly surprising that after the speech last Tuesday evening, the passage considered most newsworthy by the architectural press was this: “I am sorry if I somehow left the faintest impression that I wished to kick-start some kind of ‘style war’ between classicists and modernists. . . .”
POUNDBURY, DORCHESTER DEVELOPED UNDER THE PRINCE’S AUSPICES
Then he deconstructed this “apology” by describing the modernists’ calculatedly false twist on what the style war is all about: “. . . that I somehow wanted to drag the world back to the 18th century. All I asked for was room to be given to traditional approaches to architecture and urbanism.”
Perhaps Charles began with an apology because he really wanted his audience to listen. Fiery rhetoric certainly had not brought about “all [he] asked for.” Since 1984, the modernists have given “traditional approaches” no room and no quarter. So he hurled no carbuncles this time, merely thunderbolts in the style of philosophy. Charles is said to write his own speeches. If so, he is one of modernity’s most misunderestimated thinkers. The stiletto subtlety of this speech left modern architects with no place to hide. No prince or potentate ever used a more civil tone to cry, “Off with their heads!”
Here he begins killing them softly with his song:
“Modernism largely rejected the influence of nature on design. It preferred abstract thinking to contact with the patterns and organic ordering of nature. Indeed, the exploiting of abstract concepts soon became the hallmark of modernist architecture. The problem for us today is that this approach now lies at the heart of our perception of the world.
“In so many areas,” he continued, “the only serious goals seem to be greater efficiency, inducing ever more economic growth, and increasing profits. Not to achieve these goals is to be marked down as a failure. The trouble is, these goals were only ever going to be possible if the apparent clutter and inefficiency of traditional thinking was swept away. It was only ever going to be possible if . . . the inner world of humanity — our intuition, our instinct — was ignored, or over-ridden.”
The Prince of Wales goes on for a while in this philosophical vein, and not until he’s well along does he deliver the coup de grâce. It cuts to the bone in a way that everyone in the world will understand:
“The crisis in the banking and financial sector — devastating though its consequences will be for some — has at least brought to light something of the short-termist, unsustainable, and experimental nature of the way many professionals now operate in the world; a kind of surpassing cleverness in the devising of products and systems that no one really understands. At a time when, believe it or not, we are hearing calls for a return to old-fashioned, traditional banking virtues, might these calls not apply equally to . . . our built environment?”
In short, modern architecture is the visible manifestation of all that is wrong with the world.
He refuses to compromise. He will not agree to agree, not even where he and the modernists come closest to agreement. He did address what they now claim to be their overriding concern. But the gap between his and their approach to sustainability is as vast as the gap between nature and gadgetry:
“We see this way of thinking only too clearly in those flashy new buildings where just by adding a windmill, some solar panels, or other such ‘bling’ to a high-rise glass tower it is considered to make everything ‘green.’” He proposes instead the Natural House, designed by his Prince’s Foundation for the Built Environment. It offers sustainability via such familiar modes as “the movement of air, obviating the need for air-conditioning, and the clever placing of verandas or porticos. [I]t remains, however, recognizably a house. It doesn’t wear its ‘green-ness’ as if it was the latest piece of haute couture.”
Prince Charles, bless him, could not in the end resist poking his audience with a very embarrassing question: “How many Pritzker Prize winners are not living in beautiful classical homes? . . . Surely architects flock in such numbers to live in these lovely old houses — many from the 18th century, often in the last remaining conservation areas of our towns and cities that haven’t yet been destroyed, because, deep down, they do respond to the natural patterns and rhythms I have been talking about, and feel more comfortable in such harmonious surroundings — even though, presumably, they don’t all feel the need to wear togas to do so!”
For the full text of the Prince’s RIBA speech please click here.
Filed under Architecture, David Brussat
