After last week's rant against DWR, I've had to explain myself to many people. And I've been doing some occasional kicking of the shins beneath the table, like when I get this in my email:
To a designer, getting a picture of Saarinen's Tulip line is the junkmail equivalent of hearing Abbey Road on the train because someone's ipod is cranked too loud. What am I supposed to do? Tell them to stop? I love it! But then again, why am I being forced to fetishize this? Saarinen is one of my heros; as a child, I made my first wages in nickels cleaning my father's white Tulip chair with Fantastic. Still, I cannot praise Saarinen tonight. I must resist temptation and vanity. But it's so beautiful, my precious....
Seriously though, let's talk about waste and wasted opportunities. Today, Saarinen's TWA terminal at JFK lies abandoned except to wilding hippies who manage to throw elite parties there. (At least that's the most recent activity of which I've heard. I wasn't invited.)
We can blame the tragedy of this wasted gem of modern architecture on the failed business practices of TWA, OR we can blame its vacancy of the inability of its design to remain a viable transit hub for a new airline in today's traffic of air travel. Yes, yes, it's my favorite building in New York, second only to... but its flaws must be reckoned with, and Eero's shortsightedness along with them. I suggest we take a look at some triumphs of long term vision in New York design.
We begin in 1832. A Cholera epidemic has erupted in London, the result of contaminated drinking water from the Broad Street Pump. Similar outbreaks occur in New York City. In 1835, the Great Fire of New York wipes out large parts of the city, burning to the ground the newly framed wooden homes of the city's immigrant poor. Insufficient water supply was blamed for the failure to extinguish the inferno. In 1837, in response to mounting concerns about disease and fire, Municipal Engineers in NYC damn the Croton River to create the Croton Resevoir, and dig an elaborate water distribution system to supply water to the growing population of the city. These were thinkers of enormous imagination. They pushed for a scale of construction and innovation unthinkable at the time. (Look at the little dude in the huge tunnel!)
These are the very tunnels that continue to drip and quench us today— 8 million strong! That's forward thinking.
Let's flash-forward to 1930 when a New York urban planner, without a driver's license mind you, envisioned our city consumed by automobiles— the mass transportation means of the future. Robert Moses gave us inner-city transit ways like the BQE, Henry Hudson Parkway, Belt Parkway, and the Triborough Bridge among others.
Thank god he was stopped before unleashing his dream of a freeway across Canal St. (I reveal my elitist attitudes.... He left us Soho. Errr. I have second thoughts...) Moses is often hated for ripping through working class neighborhoods to provide leisurely paths of driving for those with cars. Of course he saw it as leisurely— he never drove himself. His roads remain with us, but alongside are countless poor neighborhoods, often attributed to his developments, which are slowly returning from generations of urban blight. So here's my Colbert "Tip of the Hat" to Moses for creating roadways that continue to be used and wanted, and "Wag of the Finger" for roadways that continue to bypass, alienate, and waste working people needed for our city's growth. To boot, his visions encouraged decades of oil and auto lobby interests, resulting in our current air quality and climate dilemma.
But then there's Mies. Pretty, utopian, fascist Mies and his Seagram Building, all too overlooked for its role in Stanley Kubrick's 2001.
Long story short, in 1958 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe convinced a rich and greedy tycoon to forfeit almost one half of his Park Avenue lot to public space. Unconscionable! From my measly perspective, the only blindspot in his foresight is that he would be less thoughtfully imitated. Park Avenue is now lined with ugly step-back boxes of glass pushed up against the sidewalk. There is no public space except for that left by Mies in '56.
How wonderful was his foresight though, that our crowded mid-town has an oasis of flowing Croton water for the pleasure of those who drive upon and sleep beneath the roads of Moses. For the cost of height, Mies gave open space. The Seagram Building is an enduring success of municipal design. It houses the man and hosts the working stiff. No municipal or technological revolution, nor increase in corporate trading has rendered its generous space out of date.
We return to DWR and poor Eero, whose airline terminal was lyrical, but insufficient over time. Perhaps he was too concerned with his own gestures— his planes and curves, his organic twistings within. Perhaps he was not yet related to air travel and its customers. So to DWR, learn from Saarinen and Moses; some designs of the future are fated to fail and others to succeed while they fail others. Let's look to Croton and Mies for the foresight to provide infrastructure and design to all who need it. And when we take a little here for one party, lets give a little back to the other.
Dear DWR,
Please tell me in your next junkmail how you are working to support public education of design history while disseminating consumer suggestions for sustainable living.
Sincerely,
Ringleader
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