THE CIVIC TASTE BRIGADE: Part Three of Three Parts

Suppose you wanted to go out and buy yourself a new suit of clothes, or perhaps a new car.  Now suppose that, after you’d chosen the one you liked, you had to appear before a board who would rule on whether they found your choice acceptible.  If they didn’t, you had to change your ideas until they were satisfied.  Sound Orwellian?  It isn’t.  This is essentially what a civic design review board is empowered to do.  The only difference is that the taste being dictated is that of your own home.

As we saw in the last two columns, design review is an increasingly common civic institution under which building plans are evaluated, not just for adherence to health and safety codes as in the past, but also for aesthetic merit.  Alas, in far too many jurisdictions, this arguably well-intentioned idea has mushroomed into a disgracefully intrusive process that throws roadblock after roadblock before anyone wishing to build a home or addition, never mind how simple or invisible.  In at least one metropolitan city, for instance, hapless homeowners are now required to submit photographs of the homes of their twenty nearest neighbors before their plans can even be evaluated.

The pity is that, in return for such draconian burdens on citizens, the design review process has brought no quantifiable improvement to the built environment.  In fact, by allowing momentary aesthetic vogues to masquerade as building regulations, it has probably done just the opposite.

However dissatisfied we may be with the state of our cities and suburbs--and we ought to be--civic design review is a cure that’s far worse than the disease.  If the history of architecture has taught us anything, it’s that aesthetic ideals are fluid and cannot be distilled into commandments. Nor does judging building plans against a slew of totally subjective aesthetic regulations--essentially, legislating taste--lead to more sensitive or more appropriate design. On the contrary, cities with stringent design review guidelines are often among the worst transgressors in the cultivation of gross and overblown pastiche architecture.

Across the nation, design review boards are busy micromanaging design details, materials, and even color choices for architects and homeowners. Applicants are typically compelled toward approvable outcomes by so-called guidelines, such as one town’s none-too-subtle suggestion to use “natural materials (i.e., wood siding and fieldstone).”  Hint, hint.

Meanwhile, in contrast to this kind of tyrannical aesthetic control, obsolete zoning practices continue to encourage McMansionization, suburban sprawl, and pedestrian-hostile design.

If we’re serious about improving our built environment, the proper avenue is not through the arrogant dictation of aesthetics, but rather through the objective, specific, and above all unbiased mechanism of more intelligent zoning regulations.

Municipal governments have long held the power to enforce matters of health and safety, and rightly so.  Over time, these powers have evolved to rein in unreasonable density, bulk, energy consumption, and other quantifiable aspects of construction--again, rightly so. Yet presuming to dictate the ethereal, subjective, and ever-changing entity of architectural taste, especially on a citizen’s private property, crosses a dangerous line. Simply put, your taste is none of the government’s business.

I will be traveling for the next five weeks and will be unable to post until late August. 

THE CIVIC TASTE BRIGADE: Part Two of Three Parts

“The fallacy of contextualism,” wrote Former New York Times architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable, “the masquerade of matched materials, the cosmetic coverup of architectural maquillage meant to make a building “fit” surroundings that frequently change, are a trap into which many architects jump or fall.”  

Or, I might add, are pushed. Last time we talked about how the design review process has entrenched itself in the bureacracy, so that it’s now all but accepted that your city government has the right to define “correct” architectural taste for you.  Today we’ll examine how contextualism, the sacred cow of design review boards everywhere, has come to be used to throttle architects and homeowners alike.

In architecture, “context” refers to the greater physical and social surroundings in which a building will exist.  Architect and gadfly Robert Venturi was among the first to plant this notion in the minds of architects and planners.  In his 1950 master’s thesis, Venturi argued that architectural meaning derived not by designing from the inside out, as the modernists fervently believed, but rather that it sprang from the context in which a building was placed.  This was a revolutionary idea in a time when modernist architects routinely designed buildings as precious, self-contained objects existing in a contextual vacuum.  

Alas, Venturi’s premise--among the early critical salvos that would eventually topple modernism--has now come to be tyrannically misapplied by design review boards across the country. The idea of design deriving from context has been bawdlerized to imply that new buildings should defer to and even mimic their surroundings, while the enforcement of this dogma has become a bureaucratic end in itself.  

As even the most cursory grasp of architectural history will make plain, however, there has hardly been an important work of American architecture--let alone a revolutionary one--that has kowtowed to its surroundings in the way design review boards now widely insist upon.  On the contrary, breakthrough works from Sullivan to Wright to Venturi to Gehry have invariably drawn criticism, ridicule, and public disdain for their “otherness” before ultimately advancing the cause of architecture.  

But so-called serious architecture isn’t all that suffers under this make-it-match brand of contextualism.  Few of the quirky roadside icons Americans treasure--whether dairies housed in giant milk bottles, water towers shaped like pineapples or ketchup bottles, or motel rooms in stucco teepees--could withstand the crushing conformism of today’s design review process, which invokes contextualism to throttle such unruly ideas to a uniform level of inoffensiveness. Had America’s architectural past been subjugated under this kind of leaden rule, we would now find ourselves in an infinitely more boring nation.  

As for Venturi, in his recent book with Denise Scott Brown, “Architecture as Signs and Systems,” he writes:

“My approach (to context) has been much acknowledged, but also much misunderstood and simplistically exploited, especially by bureacratic design review boards who don’t understand that contextural harmony can derive from contrast as well as from analogy.”  

Venturi further brands the reflexive insistence of design review boards to “make the new look like the old” as “perverse” and, in terms one wishes might resonate through City Halls across the country, cites the misuse of contextualism “at a time when hundreds of bureaucratic design review boards and committees pervade our Kafka-esque era, persecuting architects and stultifying architecture...”

Next time:  If not design review, then what?

THE CIVIC TASTE BRIGADE: Part One of Three Parts

For a century or so, zoning and building regulations have existed to ensure public health and safety.  Now and then, they’ve affected architectural aesthetics--for example, New York’s light-and-air zoning laws indirectly created that city’s characteristic stepped-back skyscrapers--but dictating how buildings should look was never their intent.

This is no longer the case. Over the last few decades, more and more city governments have adopted a process called design review, in which building plans are judged, not just for adherence to health and safety codes, but also for aesthetic merit.  In many jurisdictions, conformance with a design review board’s recommendations has become a de facto requirement for obtaining a building permit, so that in effect our civic building departments now decide what constititutes “tasteful” architecture for the rest of us.  

Is this such a bad thing?  Doesn’t design review prevent people from building too bulky, too tall, or too close to their neighbors?  In a word, no.  Those aspects have long been simply and effectively controlled by zoning regulations, and design review adds nothing to this enforcement power.  Instead, it presumes to make subjective judgments about whether a given design--perhaps yours--is “good” or “bad” according to temporal standards that are far from unassailable.  

For consumers, there’s also an important difference between the longstanding use of zoning regulations and the so-called guidelines of design review.  Zoning regulations are specific, quantifiable, and can be easily verified: a project either complies with them or it doesn’t.  

Design review guidelines, on the other hand, provide no such clarity.  They are necessarily vague, physically unquantifiable, and impossible to verify, simply because architectural taste is highly personal and totally subjective.  Applicants are thus saddled with the maddening task of meeting amorphous design goals based on unquantifiable standards, which are then supposed to be fairly judged by a design review board. rife with varied and often conflicting personal biases. 

All this is done in the name of discouraging “bad” design--with the powers-that-be naturally supplying the definition of good and bad.  Or, as the website of one California city smugly puts it:  “(Design review) provides a framework by which elements of poor layout and design of a project may be prevented.”

The trouble with such do-gooder “prevention” is that all judgments of taste are invariably tainted by the aesthetic bias of their own time.  I shudder to think how the above city’s design review board, had it existed in 1900, might have treated the work of a young Frank Lloyd Wright.

This same aesthetic myopia also explains why design review guidelines often include absurdly voguish standards, such as requiring buildings to have “traditional” detailing or limiting them to a prescribed range of colors. One ultra-posh suburb goes so far as to righteously forbid the use of aluminum windows, as if this were performing some kind of cultural service. Given modern architecture’s debt to aluminum, it’s an idea that makes about as much sense as banning hats for being out of fashion.   

Such wrong-headed and historically ignorant decrees in no way promote timeless design.  In fact, mired as they are in the aesthetic biases of the day, they do just the opposite.  Had any of our greatest architects--or, for that matter, any of our tawdriest merchants--had the misfortune to encounter the design review process as it stands today, our national landscape would only be the poorer for it.

Next time:  Design review and the sacred cow of contextualism.

THREE THREE THREE

People love things that come in threes, from musketeers to little pigs to stooges. Compelling arrangements of three also show up in more hifalutin’ places: A symphony has three movements, a play has three acts, and a novel has its proverbial beginning, middle, and end.  

The peculiar power of three-part compositions appears in architecture as well.  Take, for instance, the division of the classical column into base, shaft, and capital--a sort of beginning, middle, and end in three dimensions.  In one form or another, this same vertical composition appears in everything from classical temples to skyscrapers.  It also appears in the individual parts of buildings, such as the way interior walls are divided into base, wall, and crown, and even in the design of moldings, whose profiles are often built up with three elements of different hierarchies, more or less like miniature buildings.

What makes three-part compositions so effective?  One answer may lie in the way we think.  Our brains strive to find rational patterns in everything we experience, yet paradoxically, they also seem to get bored when things fall into place too easily.  What the human mind really seems to crave--and what may even constitute the very essence of beauty--is a comprehensible pattern that contains unexpected variations.  Three-part arrangements seem to furnish the ideal venue for this delicate balance.

Visually, groups of three also provide just the right degree of complexity without losing clarity of composition.  Consider an arrangement of windows:  A group of two can’t quite get a rhythm going, while four or more can start to look redundant.  Not so a group of three, however:  Like Goldilocks’s porridge, they’re not too little, not too much, but always just right.  

Three-part arrangements can also be easily tweaked to create visual movement without destroying their symmetry.  For instance, the Palladian window, named for the sixteenth-century architect Andrea Palladio, is a classic three-part design featuring two side elements flanking a larger central portion with an arched top.  The simple addition of this dominant central arch creates movement while still retaining the inherent calm of bilateral symmetry.  

Three hundred years after Palladio came the Chicago window, first used in early skyscrapers, but better known for brightening the living rooms of countless bungalows of the Twenties.  It featured a pair of double-hung sash flanking a large central picture window--another unbeatable dot-dash-dot arrangement that creates more visual tension than would three equal-sized openings. 

Beyond such aesthetic subtleties, though, there’s a practical reason why tripled windows, doors, or archways work better than ones with two or four elements:  They have an opening in the center instead of a mullion.  This seemingly obvious advantage is routinely overlooked by architects, which is why so many people at kitchen sinks end up staring at a mullion instead of a beautiful view.

There you have it, both the mystical and the mundane.  If you’re looking for a timeless basis for design, maybe all you need to do is count to three.

CLOSING THE MAGIC PORTAL

Suppose a developer wanted to advertise the name of his subdivision by building a sign five hundred feet long on a prominent hillside that was visible for miles.  Suppose each letter was going to be fifty feet high and built out of telephone poles, pipes, and sheet metal.  And suppose the whole thing was going to be lit up by ten thousand or so unshaded forty-watt bulbs, so it couldn’t be overlooked even at night.

A design review board’s nightmare?  Not really.  In 1923, a pair of developers named S.H. Woodruff and Tracy Shoults proposed--and built--just such a sign in a sleepy hamlet near Los Angeles.  It advertised their 500-acre housing development, which was called Hollywoodland.  In 1949, the sign’s last four letters were removed by the local chamber of commerce, leaving a landmark now famed the world over: the giant hillside sign reading HOLLYWOOD. 

The point is that our ideas of what’s aesthetically right or wrong can change drastically over time.  During the 1920s, no one gave a second thought to outlandish structures like the Hollywood sign--they were considered a natural expression of an exuberant era.  Today, however, conventional planning wisdom frowns mightily upon any structure that dares call attention to itself and thus potentially upsets the equilibrium of the mundane.  Today, a developer proposing a 500-foot long advertising sign would either be run out of town or politely referred to a psychiatrist.   

The Hollywood sign and other ebullient structures like it--including some of America’s most beloved landmarks and icons--could never come to pass under today’s withering regulatory scrutiny.  Imagine the hurdles faced by someone today proposing to build a 305-foot high statue on an island in the middle of New York Harbor.  It’s almost too easy to predict the ensuing litany of objections:  Construction on the island could adversely affect nesting seabirds; rain could cause the statue’s copper skin to shed toxic sulfates; the statue could obstruct Bayonne’s view of Manhattan; a statue promoting Liberty might offend those favoring alternate forms of government.  

In today’s ultra-deferential planning climate, simply mitigating or refuting such objections might take decades, if it ever happened at all.  A modern-day Statue of Liberty would no doubt look quite different--not because the risks have changed, but because we have.

Just about every state in the Union has manmade structures that are the product of eccentricity, obsession, megalomania, or just plain shameless commerce.  They range from Mount Rushmore to the Watts Towers, from Sam Hill’s Stonehenge replica in southern Washington right on down to the Big Duck of Flanders, New York.  Such icons are a part of any vibrant culture, yet practically none of them could have arisen under the crushing heel of today’s regulatory bureacracy.  

The Chinese have no such qualms about building with exuberance. Just across the river from Shanghai’s famous Bund, they’ve built a 1,536-foot-tall broadcast tower that looks like something straight out of Buck Rogers.  Called the Oriental Pearl Tower, it’s the tallest such structure in Asia.  Every evening, this amazing colossus is lit up by animated cascades of colored lamps, making it impossible to overlook by anyone within a ten mile radius.  In the span of a decade, the Oriental Pearl has become the instantly recognizable symbol of Shanghai, and in a sense, of China’s renaissance itself.

As for the United States, the nation that turned exuberance into an art form, we have for the most part turned off the lights.  What our aesthetic tiptoeing and whispering has gained us is a way to ensure the least offense to the most people.  What it has cost us is our magic portal to the offbeat, the extraordinary, the insanely great.

SPOTTING THE SIGNATURES

It’s human nature to crave the fresh, the new, and the fashionable, and that goes for remodeling as much as anything else.  The quest for the mythical “updated look” of magazine lore has long tempted both owners and architects to graft trendy additions onto older homes just to make them ever-so-briefly fashionable again.  Alas, you need only leaf through a twenty-year-old copy of Better Homes and Gardens to see how such “updates” have stood the test of time.  Most would elicit groans,if not laughter.  

The lesson is simple:  Given the ever-shifting sands of architectural taste, the only kind of addition that’ll be permanently in fashion is one that respects the original architecture. 

But how to do this?  It goes without saying that the overall proportions of any new addition--wall heights, window styles and sizes, and the roof style and finish--should be in keeping with the original building.  Beyond these basics, though, the real trick to making an addition “lock” into the original house is to identify and repeat the designer’s signature details. By sussing out these characteristic traits--and incidentally, every house, new or old, has a whole raft of them--you can pretty much make any addition look spot-on original.  Typical candidates include: 

•  Porch railings and columns.  Repeating these often charismatic details will go a long way toward knitting an addition into the original building. If the original railings don’t meet the current building code, find a workaround--don’t just use an entirely different design.  For example, if the old railing has openings larger than the current 4” maximum, install a heavy wire mesh on the inside face of the new railing.to make it comply.  

•  Window muntins (the narrow divisions between the glass) and window trim.  Every home style has its own characteristic trim and muntin patterns; look for them and repeat them in the addition where possible.  Muntins are less common in postwar homes, but if they’re present, it’s doubly important to echo them in the new work.  Avoid using the two-dimensional “sandwich” muntins found in most modern windows unless that’s what you find in the original building.  You’ll pay a premium for true muntins, but they’ll make a huge difference.

•  Roof edges.  The strong lines of roof eaves are a central element of any home style, so it’s imperative to get them right.  It’s not enough just to match the width of the overhang--you also need to match the fascia (the board behind the gutter, if any) and the gutter itself.  If you can’t find the original gutter style, consider replacing all the gutters with a close match to ensure that the new work ties in flawlessly with the old.   

•  Attic vents.  Here, look for characteristic shapes: Did the designer use rectangular, pointed, arched, or circular louvers, or perhaps round or square clay pipe vents?  It’s small flourishes like these that visually lock the addition into the existing structure.  Again, if the original vent design won’t meet current codes, include it for appearance and provide additional venting elsewhere, out of sight.   

•  Lastly, if you have trouble coming up with a detail that has no direct precedent on the existing building, ask yourself:  What would the original designer have done?  Would he have used paired french doors, or a sleek aluminum slider?  Would he make the chimney skinny, stout, or asymmetrical?  In short, what would he have recommended?  With the original designer guiding you, your addition can’t help but fit. 

FREEWAY TO NOWHERE

Charles Kuralt, the longtime “On The Road” correspondent for CBS News, once observed:  “Thanks to the Interstate Highway System, it is now possible to travel from coast to coast without seeing anything.”

Since Kuralt made that comment a generation ago, things have only gotten worse.  Nowadays, instead of not seeing anything, we just see the same things over and over, no matter where we go.  Although the Interstate system crisscrosses some of the most splendidly varied landscape on earth, it has helped make traveling that landscape an experience of unparalleled monotony.  It matters little whether you’re on the left coast or the right, on the Canadian border or in the Deep South:  As long as you stay near the freeway, you could be anywhere or nowhere.  

Kuralt traveled the United States at a time when the only truly ubiquitous national chain was McDonald’s. Today, however, you can take any suburban offramp in the country, whether in Bangor or Barstow, Boise or Birmingham, and you’ll likely find an identical brace of corporate franchised minimarts, fast food joints, and chain motels.  A bit further on you’ll come to the inevitable strip mall with its Wal-Mart, Subway, and Starbucks, all duded up in a false-front interpretation of the local architectural style: A fringe of red tile in California, a pediment in New England, or a few fake shutters down South.

What’s so bad about this?  Nothing, if our aim is a totally homogenous nation in which every growing town, whether north, south, east, or west, looks exactly the same as its neighbor.  This outcome would suit the corporate megachains just fine, since it’s that much cheaper to parcel out the same stores, shops, and restaurants over and over, tossing in a few cliched regional details to please the local planning department.

The pity is, you wouldn’t know what was lost unless you’d seen what came before.  Motor down what’s left of Highway 97 in northern California, or Highway 1 along the New England coast, or the legendary Route 66 that once spanned from Chicago to Santa Monica, and you can still get a vivid sense of it:  In your own time, you traverse a landscape redolent of America’s kaleidoscopic variety, each town unique in its geography, lifestyles, industry, food, and pastimes.  

This linear pageant of Americana is what the Interstates and and their environs deny us.  In its place, we’re fed a bland cultural pablum for mile upon monotonous mile: a landscape strategized, formulated, and set in place by indifferent strangers in a far-off boardroom, instead of by the locals in their own front room.

Granted, we’ve willingly submitted to such expedients.  In a rapidly changing world, some of us probably find it reassuring that a Subway sandwich in Bangor tastes exactly like it does in Barstow.  And, let’s face it, many of us would rather go flashing down the interstate at eighty rather than toodling through some backwater that, heaven forbid, might be lacking a Starbucks.  

But in paring off those few minutes and miles, we’ve also doomed ourselves to miss that Hoagie, that Cheese Steak, that Spiedie, or that slab of Flint’s Barbecue; not to mention that clunky cup of MJB served by a waitress named Dot, whose greeting comes out of her own head instead of some corporate manual, and who reminds us that the real America is still out there, beyond the offramps and down the road apiece.