Cover photo by Ken Hayden
Three weeks ago, Design Within Reach and Books & Books on Lincoln Road in South Beach threw a launch party for my book Four Florida Moderns: The Architecture of Alberto Alfonso, René González, Chad Oppenheim & Guy W. Peterson, which is being released by W. W. Norton & Company in January 2010. It was a terrific event, well attended considering it was Art Basel Miami Beach-week. I wanted to share with you my original preface to the book, which was cut significantly for publication, as it illustrates how European modernism made its way into Florida’s architectural vernacular. I hope you enjoy it and would love it if you’d leave your comments!
Profound Echoes
The gestation of ideas that took place in Peter Behrens’ Berlin studio between 1907 and 1911 was vital to the birth of modern architecture. Walter Gropius, who would found the Staatliches Bauhaus in 1919 in Weimar, Germany, apprenticed there, as did Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier. Though they created a stir in Europe during the early twentieth century, these men weren’t formally introduced to the architectural community in the United States until 1932 when the curators at the Museum of Modern Art in New York staged The International Style: Architecture Since 1922, making them and other European moderns the focus of the exhibition.
In hindsight, some believe that Frank Lloyd Wright’s work was not given equal prominence within the movement at that time. Robert McCarter, who has written so eloquently and prolifically about Wright and his architecture, states, “Wright’s place in the evolution of ‘modern’ architecture was a problem for Henry Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson…who chose to present Wright’s work as the preamble to, rather than the exemplary model of ‘modern’ architecture.” (1)
Wright had been managing a practice for fourteen years by the time Behrens opened his studio. A survey of the resultant body of work was exhibited in Berlin and published in two folios, Executed Buildings and Projects by Frank Lloyd Wright, produced by Ernst Wasmuth in 1910 and 1911. This gave the emerging European modernists their first glimpse at the American architect’s talent and ingenuity.
While Wright continued to produce what would become an impressive body of work throughout the 1920s and early 1930s, Gropius, Mies and Le Corbusier were constructing significant early modern buildings in Europe. By 1937, both Gropius and Mies had migrated to the United States where they would become practicing architects and educators—Gropius at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and Mies at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago (then known as the School of Architecture at the Armour Institute). Through their built work and their academic positions, Gropius and Mies would prove to have great influence over succeeding generations of architects.
Likewise, through his work and his writings, Le Corbusier inspired American moderns. His groundbreaking book Vers une architecture, which was first published in 1923, was translated into English in 1927. In it Le Corbusier states, “Passion can create drama out of inert stone.” (2) More than three quarters of a century later, his words continue to serve as a voice for the early movement, which he so fervently hoped would ignite passion in future generations that he included a discussion about the education of young architects in a program he devised for the initial meeting of CIAM (Congrès International d’Architecture Moderne) in 1928.
The first new wave of architects to be inspired by these early moderns included Paul Rudolph, Johnson, Eero Saarinen and Louis Kahn, as they were the first generation to declare themselves modernists. Though Johnson to a lesser extent than the others, these forward-thinking men created their own take on the European concepts, which resulted in a regionally inspired American Modernism. “Most cities of the prewar era recognized that the International Style design was not very popular in general and even less so within the private residential market,” writes Jean-François Lejeune as an explanation for their departure from European purity; “modernity’s survival was predicated upon the designer’s ability to propose less threatening options for the middle-income family.” (3)
Lejeune describes the architecture that resulted as a “humanized Modernism,” and it would make as enduring an impression upon future architects as the work of the early moderns had made on its creators. One of these creators, Rudolph, joins Wright in shaping Florida’s modern architectural heritage in built form—Wright’s buildings on Florida Southern College’s Lakeland campus and Rudolph’s contribution to the Sarasota School are among the state’s modern treasures. But it was perhaps through his position at the Yale School of Architecture that Rudolph made even stronger impressions upon those who would carry Modernism forward as it broadened his influence beyond Sarasota School devotees.
During his graduate studies at Yale, the late Charles Gwathmey regarded Rudolph as an important mentor. Gwathmey’s renovation and expansion of Rudolph’s Art and Architecture Building on Yale’s New Haven campus is a perfect example of the generational progression that has ensured Modernism’s evolution. “I worked on the original drawings for Rudolph when I was at Yale,” Gwathmey explains. “These situations, which prove that things do come full circle, make me glad that I stood by my convictions.”
Gwathmey’s convictions to revive a classic Modernism served as a beacon for Alberto Alfonso, who participated in several visiting studio classes led by Gwathmey when he was an undergraduate student at the University of Florida School of Architecture. “I feel fortunate to have met Charlie at an early point in my training as an architect,” says Alfonso. “My architecture would not be what it is if I had not studied under him. The explorations of the New York Five, a group of architects that included Charlie, were a primary reference for us as students, and to be able to hear him articulate his positions in such an uncompromising way forever affected my core beliefs.”
These positions, which represented a shift away from the American Modernism that his mentors had been creating, came about early in Gwathmey’s career when he and four other architects participated in CASE (Conference of Architects for the Study of the Environment). The meeting, which was held at the Museum of Modern Art in 1969, was intended as a simple forum for the young men to discuss their ideas and to present their latest designs. The meeting might have remained just that if Five Architects, a book outlining their explorations, had not been published in 1972, making CASE a polemical treatise that sparked great debates.
The other members of the New York Five included Richard Meier, John Hejduk, Peter Eisenman and Michael Graves. “I think the designation of the New York Five was a way of establishing a talented group of architects who had the European modernist ethic as their reference rather than the precursor to Postmodernism, which was really a sort of traditional vernacular,” says Gwathmey. “I think the book was incredibly provocative, more for architects than for the public at large, because so many architects still tell me that it was their Bible in school.”
In his postscript to the book, Philip Johnson wrote that Meier, who lists Le Corbusier, Wright, Alvar Aalto and Mies as influences, “knows his history best of the five, studies it most, learns from it most.” (4) Meier’s rigorous ordering system made a strong impression on René González when he was a student at UCLA. “I attended graduate school there, and participated in studios led by Frank Israel and Richard Meier,” explains González. “It was as a result of my studio with Richard that I worked with him while he was designing the Getty Center.”
Along with Gwathmey and Meier, who have preserved and expanded classic Modernism’s influence, Terence Riley is a vocal proponent of a return to purity. He counts Johnson as a strong influence during his early years as a curator at the Museum of Modern Art, and lists Kenneth Frampton, his professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, as a mentor.
“I went to school and began my architectural career during the height of Postmodernism, which I hated,” Riley remarks. “Virtually everything I did curatorially was intended to make people rethink Modernism and its unrealized potential. There were a lot of factors involved, of course, but I like to think I was able to contribute to the current climate, which has been described as having a ‘renewed adherence to the spirit of the age.’”
In his examination of Chad Oppenheim’s work, Riley speaks of its duality—a duality that stems from the influence of the early moderns and those who preceded them, such as Andrea Palladio. This is no coincidence, as Oppenheim studied architecture at Cornell University where he encountered Colin Rowe and John Shaw. They were members of the “Texas Rangers,” labeled such after the teaching program they organized at the University of Texas School of Architecture in Austin during the 1950s.
Their philosophies, which endeavored to synthesize the classical and the modern, made an impression on young architects like Oppenheim. “These guys had taught brilliant architects, and they were among my most influential professors,” Oppenheim explains. “When Shaw retired and decided to build a house in New Mexico, I went out and helped to assemble this cool Cornell version of an earth-ship house in the desert made of recycled tires and found objects. We were there all summer and it was incredibly inspiring.”
Also a Cornell alumnus, Warren Schwartz studied under several Texas Rangers, one of which was Lee Hodgden, who had worked for Buckminster Fuller as a young man. Rowe was Schwartz’s thesis advisor. The pivotal moment concerning Modernism came for Schwartz, who grew up in Florida, when he was in the tenth grade. “I was working for a Florida architectural firm during the summer and I saw a magazine with photos of Le Corbusier’s La Tourette on the cover,” he remembers. “It blew my mind! I went to the head of the firm and asked, ‘Why did they publish an unfinished building?’ He chuckled and answered, ‘It is finished—it’s brute concrete.’ That was my first realization that architecture could be something other than the accepted vernacular of any place or time.”
Schwartz deems Guy Peterson’s work “a rich architectural vision based on the legacy of the Sarasota School.” This group of architects had indeed laid the foundation for Peterson’s continuance of modern architecture in Sarasota. “I consider myself a third-generation Sarasota School architect,” he explains. “I wasn’t part of it, but it is part of me.” La Tourette was also profoundly important for Peterson. “We had to design a monastery in graduate school and I studied La Tourette,” he explains. “Suddenly, I just got it: that project turned my life around and my thesis came together. Since that time, Corb’s thinking has been a catalyst for me.”
As these examples illustrate, the architects presented here further Modernism’s march into the future. Alfonso, González, Oppenheim and Peterson speak of the intuitive, the unfolding of spatial experience, the sensory aspects of architecture and the enhancement of the human condition, preoccupations that inspire them to plumb the depths of their collective calling.
In Towards a New Architecture, Le Corbusier proclaims, “The Architect, by his arrangements of forms, realizes an order which is the pure creation of his spirit…by the relationships which he creates he wakes profound echoes in us.” (5) Though the demands of the tropics temper the modern milieu in Florida, the profound echo of the early moderns and all of those who came after them—inspired enough by their ideas to carry them forward, bind these four practicing architects to a rich heritage that they have chosen to express appropriately within their time and their chosen contexts.
“Corb, Mies and, later, the New York Five were grappling with huge ideas in their time in order to further develop this ethic that we now call Modernism,” says Alfonso. “We are the benefactors of these previous investigations, which have played a significant role in creating a new construct that we can call our own and develop, even as we are grounded in our particular time and place.”
There is a group of Florida architects and academicians working to save some of the state’s historical architecture, including Bauhaus-inspired buildings. I’ve posted an article about the organization’s efforts on my Miami Interior Decorating Examiner page. I hope you’ll take a look at DoCoMoMo Florida’s important efforts. To keep up with booksingings and events, go to my Amazon Author's page or my page on BookTour.com.
Citations:
(1) McCarter, Robert. Frank Lloyd Wright: Architect. (New York: Phaidon Press, 1997), 203. (2) Le Corbusier. Towards a New Architecture. (New York: Dover, 1986), 5. (3) Jean-François Lejeune. “Lawrence Murray Dixon and his Colleagues: Competing for the Modern, 1933-1942,” in Jean-François Lejeune & Allan Shulman (eds.), The Making of Miami Beach, 1933:1942: The Architecture of Lawrence Murray Dixon (New York: Rizzoli, 2000), p. 195. (4) Eisenman, Peter; Graves, Michael; Gwathmey, Charles; Hejduk, Peter; Meier, Richard. Five Architects. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975), 138. (5) Le Corbusier. Towards a New Architecture. (New York: Dover, 1986), 1.
Comments