HEY, CUT THE BULL

Calvin Coolidge, the thirtieth president of the United States, was a man of few words. His terse responses to the press have become legendary. It’s said that a reporter once breathlessly approached him, calling out:  “Mr. President, I bet my friend here I could get you to say three words.”  

Coolidge’s reply:  “You lose.”

Silent Cal’s presidential record may have been less than stellar, but his aversion to bombast remains a lesson to us all. And while politicians might be the first to learn from Coolidge’s reticence, designers could take a few hints too.  

That’s because architecture is a visual language, and just like a spoken one, it can get cluttered by a lot of extraneous blather. 

It’s no accident that grammatical terms such as idiom, context and articulation also appear in the language of architecture. Moreover, many of the bromides of good communication—be clear, be concise, make your point and get out—apply to design as well.  

As a great believer in both simple writing and simple design, I humbly offer a few guidelines to help slash architectural bombast:  

•  Use a strong central theme rather than a number of weak ones. Just as the title of an essay informs all of the statements to follow, an architectural composition should have a single dominant idea that suffuses the whole. The theme might lie in the way rooms are organized—in a courtyard, perhaps, or in a cluster—or it might have to do with using a favorite combination of materials, or even a certain style of roof. Other elements can support or echo the central theme, but they shouldn’t compete with it, since this only dilutes your overall statement.

•  Remember that, more often than not, simplicity is a virtue. The mind tires when it’s forced to wade through a lot of excess information, whether it’s verbal or visual.  A clear, concise, immediately comprehensible design is far better than a conglomeration of elements drawn from hither and yon.  Leave out anything that doesn’t relate to the “argument”. If you’re feeling tempted to include, say, a whole plethora of moldings in your design, first ask yourself whether they’ll strengthen your statement, or just obfuscate it.

•  Know when to shut up. In 1863, a then-famous orator named Edward Everett gave a florid two-hour dedication speech at a Pennsylvania cemetery. At the same event, the nation’s president spoke for just a few minutes.  Which speech do we remember? Right—the one we call the Gettysburg Address.

And just as a speech loses effectiveness if it goes on and on, a strong design motif can become cloying if it’s endlessly repeated.  If you love round-arched windows, for example, you might use them in one prominent focal area and, if it’s appropriate, repeat them in a few other subsidiary locations--but don’t go wild and make every window in the house round-topped.

•  Finally, don’t forget to include a bit of humor. There’s enough bad news in the world as it is, so both language and architecture can benefit from the occasional spark of wit. Recall that even the most pious of architectural monuments, the Gothic cathedrals, were rampant with highly personalized carvings of gargoyles that no doubt gave their creators a few good laughs, and still do the same for us all these centuries later.  

TRASHIN' FASHION

If I’ve ranted and raved about any architectural subject over the years, it has to be the idea of fashion-driven “modernization”.  With today’s renewed appreciation of historic residential designs such as the California Bungalow, you’d think that designers would finally get the message that every architectural period has its finer points.  We’ve seen the pattern umpteen times:  After five or so decades of neglect and abuse, older styles are suddenly rediscovered and cooed over by designer types, while other, more recent styles are patronizingly judged to be in need of “improvement” by superimposing today’s fashion biases upon them.  I still routinely hear interior designers advising homeowners on “getting an updated look” and “contemporizing”--words that instantly set my teeth on edge.

Architectural styles have always followed a cycle of initial popularity, decline, disgrace, and rediscovery.  Victorian homes, you’ll recall, were held in contempt for the first half of the 20th century, during which time countless examples were either demolished or just as irrevocably destroyed in the process of being “modernized”.  Today one wouldn’t dream of stripping the ornament from a Victorian house and slathering it in stucco, but during the Forties, that’s precisely what many architects and designers urged their clients to do in order to get an “updated look”.  

Sounds ridiculous now, doesn’t it?  Yet apparently, we’ve learned nothing from such mistakes.  Regardless of the quality or thought that went into their design, examples of past styles that are currently out of favor--for instance, the spare and unadorned Modernist homes of the Sixties--are deemed unworthy of the same appreciation we’d give a Craftsmen Bungalow or some other style that’s currently chic.  Design elements that are integral to Modernist architecture--slender window frames; plain, ornament-free walls and ceilings, and flush doors--are blythely replaced because the don’t happen to fit in with the current mania for plasticky, frou-frou-laden design.

A basic truth of aesthetics is that the more fashionable something is now, the more unfashionable it will be later--and not very much later, mind you.  Yet, driven by the relentless juggernaut of advertising and fashion industry hype, both designers and homeowners continue to buy into the bogus idea that a thirty-year-old house needs modernizing, while a sixty-year-old house needs restoring.  

This is an exquisite bit of pretzel logic.  First, we’re encourouraged to remove everything that makes the original house belong to its era; then, a few decades later, we’re supposed to wring our hands in regret and try to put it all back.  Why not cut out the middleman, and simply keep your house in its original style?  

Improving a house by revamping it with momentarily trendy features is the architectural equivalent of dressing Ishi in a three-piece suit.   I could cite any number of vintage homes that have commanded higher sale prices for being in fine original condition, but I challenge any architect, designer, or decorator to cite a single example of a fashion-driven residential makeover done ten or fifteen years ago that can still be considered an improvement in light of changing tastes.  No kidding--I’d really like to hear about it.  

MISSION MANIA

When I was a kid, the height of furniture fashion was a style called “Danish Modern”.  It wasn’t very comfortable--nor, it turns out, was it even all that Danish.   The chairs were linear, with big slab-like cushions that did a lousy job of conforming to your gluteus maximus.  The tables had a lot of nasty, smack-your-knee-and-see-stars kinds of corners.  But we gladly put up with such discomforts because the stuff was, after all, called “modern”--and in the 1960s, modern was the only way to be.

Today, of course, we’re much more discriminating.  We admire furniture of the 60s as an appealingly naive emblem of the Jet Age, but by and large we’ve concluded that an older, more storied look is the way to go.  So what do we do?  We adopt yet another style of furniture that’s linear, uncomfortable, and not all that attractive, and which, even though it’s called Mission, has nothing whatever to do with missions.  But it’s got the stability of long history, and that’s the thing we pine for in these scary times.

Mission furniture has more to do with the late-19th century English Arts and Crafts movement and such proponents as Gustav Stickley and William Morris than it does with the California Missions or Mission Revival architecture.  Early mass marketers of the style, however, preferred to present it as a rough-and-tumble American phenomenon rather than a snooty British one.  

Regardless of Mission’s murky heritage, one thing is crystal clear:  With its sharp corners and church-pew surfaces, it’s certainly among the most uncomfortable furniture styles of the last ten centuries.  It gives Danish Modern and even Frank Lloyd Wright’s diabolical chairs a run for the money.  

I know that at this point a lot of designer types will start sputtering in their caramel lattes about what a pioneering concept the Mission style was, what geniuses the Arts and Crafts folks were, and how dare I, a lowly architect and even lowlier writer, criticize such brilliance?  Actually, I agree--the Arts and Crafts folks were indeed geniuses, and if you’ve ever seen the refined artistry of an original Morris or Stickley piece, you’re no doubt as certain as I am.  

Trouble is, the vast majority of Arts and Crafts, er, rather Mission furniture was not made by Morris, Stickley, or any of the other craft studios whose work is rightly coveted these days.  Adhering to the highest standards of craftsmanship naturally made for miniscule production, which in turn ensured that only the wealthy could afford their work.  

At any rate, by the time Mission furniture caught on with the masses, the craft studios had already moved on to other things, leaving the ordinary Joes and Josephines of the early century to settle for knockoffs from Sears and Roebuck.  Now, while using mass production to make products more affordable is a great American tradition, it also brings about an inevitable dilution of quality that eventually saps the artistry from any design.  That’s why a Model T is not a Rolls-Royce.  For the same reason, most of the Mission furniture that’s come down to us is clunky, pedestrian, and literally run-of-the-mill.  

Which brings me back to the current encore of Mission mania.  The style has already become ubiquitous in the media, appearing not only in print but in movies, commercials and sitcoms.  Spindly Mission knockoffs are now standard fare in those giant discount furniture stores.  

You may wonder how long this can last.  For me, the sure sign that a style is on its last legs is when it starts appearing in the lobbies of chain motels.  Well, guess what?

Have a seat in the lobby, folks.  Just mind those sharp corners. 

A GREEN GIANT

If you think today’s “green” architects are pioneers, take a look at the work of Carr Jones.  An obscure engineer-builder, Jones clung stubbornly to environmental priniciples we’ve only lately come to cherish--and he started doing it back in the Teens.    

Jones was born in Watsonville, California in 1885.  He attended the University of California at Berkeley and received a degree in mechanical engineering in 1911.  Around this time he designed and built a simple redwood cottage for his parents in Berkeley, kicking off a long and colorful career as what we’d nowadays call a “design-build contractor”. 

But Jones was ahead of his time in other ways.  He worked in large part with recycled materials--brick, slate, timber, scrap steel and bits of salvaged ornament--from which he managed to conjure lyrically beautiful homes that transcended their humble origins.  

Jones’s houses are almost invariably built of roughly-laid bricks left unfinished to show their natural range of colors; many have a gently curving floor plan embracing a central courtyard.  His unmistakable elevations are graced by an array of turrets, dormers, and chimneys.

Interior walls are of exposed brick as well, enlivened by a variety of arched openings.  Overhead, massive, exposed roof trusses of salvaged timber provide dignified drama.  The genius of these houses lies in their perfect balance of the familiar and the unexpected--on the sense of calm lent by an ancient palette of materials, played against the builder’s continual ability to surprise.  In a Jones house, every window frames a charming vista; every room is a spatial banquet; every corner holds architectural delight.

Though Jones’s houses share many traits with the Storybook Style homes of the 1920s--aged appearance, serpentine curves, and whimsical details--in his hands these features are organic rather than superficial.  It’s a happy result of building in a true medieval vernacular, without undue concern for perfection or popularity.  Jones chose his materials and designs not because they were fashionable, but because he believed in their absolute fitness for domesticity. 

Just where someone trained as a mechanical engineer acquired these refined sensibilities, we may never know.   There’s no doubt, however, that Jones would have been quite comfortable working in today’s dawning era of earth-friendly architecture.

Like many pioneers before him, building with an unwavering conscience brought Jones neither financial success nor even much recognition during his lifetime.  When Revival styles lost favor after World War II, the demand for his lovely and personal works became even more modest.  He completed a scattering of postwar commissions in the San Francisco Bay Area and designed his final residence in 1966, dying on the morning that its foundations were being chalked out on the site.  Jones’s stepson, Doug Allinger, completed the project following his death, and has admirably carried on Jones’s building philosophy in his own work.

Alas, Jones didn’t live to see the birth of the ecology movement in the late 60s, nor the subsequent rise of green architecture--events grounded in the very ideas he’d been practicing for half a century.

# # #

MISSION MANIA

Mission style table by Gustav Stickley, c 1910.
(Image copyright Metropolitan Museum of Art)

When I was a kid, the height of furniture fashion was a style called “Danish Modern”.  It wasn’t very comfortable--nor, it turns out, was it even all that Danish.  The chairs were linear, with big slab-like cushions that did a lousy job of conforming to your gluteus maximus. The tables had a lot of nasty, smack-your-knee-and-see-stars kinds of corners.  But we gladly put up with such discomforts because the stuff was “modern”, and in the 1960s, modern was the only way to be.

Today, of course, we’re much more discriminating. We admire furniture of the 60s as an appealingly naive emblem of the Jet Age, but by and large we’ve concluded that an older, more storied style is the way to go. So what do we do?  We adopt a style that’s linear, uncomfortable, and not all that good-looking, and which, even though it’s called Mission, has nothing whatever to do with missions. But it’s got  a hundred-odd years of history behind it, and that's no doubt comforting in these mad times. 

An original Mission style lamp by Tiffany?
No—it's a copy offered by Home Depot.

Mission furniture has more to do with the late-19th century English Arts and Crafts movement and such proponents as Gustav Stickley and William Morris than it does with the California Missions or Mission Revival architecture.  Early mass marketers of the style, however, preferred to present it as a rough-and-tumble American phenomenon rather than a snooty British one.  

Regardless of Mission’s murky heritage, one thing is crystal clear:  With its sharp corners and church-pew surfaces, it’s certainly among the most uncomfortable furniture styles of the last ten centuries.  It gives Danish Modern and even Frank Lloyd Wright’s chairs a run for the money.  

Arts & Crafts fans even have their very own font.
(Image courtesy myfonts.com) 

I know that at this point a lot of designer types will start sputtering in their lattes about what a pioneering concept the Mission style was, what geniuses the Arts and Crafts folks were, and how dare I, a lowly architect and even lowlier writer, criticize such brilliance? Actually, I agree—the Arts and Crafts folks were indeed geniuses, and if you’ve ever seen the refined artistry of an original Morris or Stickley piece, you’re no doubt as certain as I am.  

Trouble is, the vast majority of Arts and Crafts, er, rather, Mission furniture was not made by Morris, Stickley, or any of the other craft studios whose work is rightly coveted these days. Adhering to the highest standards of craftsmanship naturally made for miniscule production, which in turn ensured that only the wealthy could afford their work.  

Latter-day Mission style cabinet, also available at
Home Depot. You may well find one of these
in your next motel room.

At any rate, by the time Mission furniture caught on with the masses, the craft studios had already moved on to other things, leaving the ordinary Joes and Josephines of the early century to settle for knockoffs from Sears and Roebuck. Now, while using mass production to make products more affordable is a great American tradition, it also brings about an inevitable dilution of quality that eventually saps the artistry from any design. That’s why a Model T is not a Rolls-Royce. For the same reason, most of the Mission furniture that’s come down to us is clunky, pedestrian, and literally run-of-the-mill.  

Which brings me back to the current encore of Mission mania. The style has already become ubiquitous in the media, appearing not only in print but in movies, commercials and sitcoms.  Mission knockoffs are now standard fare in those giant discount furniture stores.  

You may wonder how long this can last. For me, the sure sign that a style is on its last legs is when it starts appearing in chain motels. Well, guess what? Have a seat in the lobby, folks. Just mind those sharp corners. 

AN OVERVIEW OF 20TH CENTURY ARCHITECTURE Part IV: From Fin-De-Sicle To The Future

America’s flirtation with traditional architecture grew more serious during the course of the 1980s, when crown moldings, panel doors, and divided-lite windows made their reappearance on the residential scene, encouraged by a revived ornament industry whose products were once again available by the cartonful. The 1990s brought the new traditionalism into full fruition—some might say into decadence—just as the 1890s had brought on the final flowering of Victorianism.  Custom and tract homes alike were almost reflexively designed in a full-on Revivalist mode, as if fresh interpretations of traditional architecture—not to mention Modernism—had never existed at all.  

The widespread appearance of civic design review boards in the 80s and 90s further stymied the evolution of residential architecture by adopting cyclical planning fads as fixed design objectives, and by anointing the reflection of  “context”—the existing look of the surroundings—as the holy grail of design.   Alas, such design by reflex, rote, and regulation remains widely entrenched even today, and that’s a pity, since it merely serves to confound innovation in a world that cries out for change.  

The history we’ve examined in this series can tell us much about what the current century might bring, and just as much about what it probably won’t.  The twentieth century brought a lot of stylistic vacillation, but little substantive progress in the way we build houses. So far this century, it's looking like we can expect more of the same.  My predictions: 

•  Styles will continue their cyclical changes, and the worst nightmare of Modernist architects will come true:  Rather than being a movement that could change the world, Modernism will simply be considered another historical style.  Moreoever, today’s spiky, ultra-chic designs will seem as quaint and naively futuristic as Depression-era Streamline Moderne does today.

•  Building construction will continue its molasses-paced rate of innovation.  We’ll see more modularization of components such as stairs and windows, but total prefabrication will remain anathema for mid- and high-end homes.  However, the lowly mobile home industry—which already prefers its products to be known as manufactured homes—will become the leading innovator in prefabricated and affordable housing.

•  As resources inevitably become depleted, we’ll see less new construction and more adaptive reuse of the existing building stock.  Rather than simply recycling materials, we’ll recycle entire buildings—an even more efficient use of materials and manpower.   

•  Electronic technology will be quietly and invisibly integrated into homes (much as it already is in automobiles).  Computers will be unobtrusively tucked into controls for energy efficiency, entertainment, security, and lighting, rather than being the sort of in-your-face gadgets predicted by propellerheads.   

•  Unless they’re willing to deal with the pressing problems of the next century—diminishing land and natural resources, the need for affordable housing, and the social changes brought about by an emerging Third World—architects will consolidate their current position as lap dogs for the wealthy, and will remain irrelevant to most everyone else.

AN OVERVIEW OF 20TH CENTURY ARCHITECTURE PART III: The Rancher Rides Into Town

The housing shortage that followed the close of World War II brought a spate of mass-produced, sparsely-detailed but laudably affordable tract developments such as New York’s pioneering Levittown.  By the mid 1950s, however, such modest designs were already being displaced by the rambling, low-slung California Rancher, a home style that better reflected the vast wealth and national pride during of the postwarera.  With its precedent-setting double garage, the Rancher glorified conspicuous consumption, but at the same time was kept literally down-to-earth by a rough simplicity that bespoke traditional Yankee values.

Around this time, more populist brand of Modernism made an appearance with the astoundingly progressive designs of California developer Joseph Eichler.  With their flat roofs, bold facades, and broad sweeps of plate glass, Eichler homes drew heavily on Bauhaus tenets, and found tremendous appeal among architecturally sophisticated tract buyers.  Sadly, there weren’t a whole lot of the latter, and Eichler went broke in 1967. 

The 60s were a turbulent decade, and architectural trends proved no exception.  While most houses continued along the well-worn Rancher rut, architects of custom homes were happy to experiment with grid-paper Rationalism, icebox Minimalism, cast-concrete Brutalism—in fact just about any ism that came down the pike.  

Perhaps the most influential of these Modernist ideas also came from California, though from a far less probably source:  the tiny coastal village of Gualala, where architect Charles Moore was building a unique development known as the Sea Ranch.  Its houses featured artful arrangments of shed-roofed cubes clad in cedar siding, and this completely fresh approach had enormous influence on residential architecture well into the 70s.  Sea-Ranch inspired designs were especially popular in hilly wooded areas, where their craggy outlines looked wonderful peaking out of the treetops. 

The Sea Ranch’s inspiration came none too soon, because by the end of the 60s, the stalwart Rancher had just about run its course.  After two decades of popularity, people were finally tiring of its now-predictable floor plan, with rooms strung methodically along a seemingly endless central hall.  And in any case, the vast, flat-as-a-tabletop building sites that were required to show these sprawling homes to best advantage were growing few and far between.  

A version of the Rancher in which the floor levels were offset by a half-story offered an interim solution to these problems, and the so-called “split-level” became the very embodiment of modernity during 1960s.  Even the most diminutive hillock provided a fine excuse to build a split level, and throughout the decade such houses could be seen marching up sloping sites across America.  

In the suburbs, however, developers began to focus on two-story floor plans as a way to accommodate ever-bigger homes on ever-tighter lots.  This in turn led rather naturally to more traditional styles coming to the fore—Spanish Revival, Half-timber, even some rather scrawny-looking Colonials.  These timid early attempts at traditionalism were almost laughably two-dimensional, yet they were the first harbinger of the tidal wave of traditional architecture that would swamp Modernism by the end of the century.

The Baby Boom generation, having grown up in ornament-challenged Ranchers and been schooled in flat-topped boxes, now hungered for tradition with a vengeance.

Next time:  From fin-de-siecle to the future.