DOCO_Template_2008 rev - DoCoMoMo : New York | Tri

2010 no. 1
Contents
3
Saarinen At Mid-Century
4
Bauhaus: Back to Modernism
6
NYS Pavilion Conservation
8
Breuer in the Bronx
8
New Haven Surveyed
9
Saarinen Tour Highlights
10
FLW’s Beth Sholom Synagogue 12
The Modern Library
13
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When considering the key sites of mid-20th-century
residential architecture in the environs of New York City,
most would think of New Canaan, CT or perhaps
Westchester. Few would mention Long Island. However,
as a current exhibition, “Arcadia/Suburbia: Architecture
on Long Island” makes clear, the region was an important setting for the growth of Modern architecture.
Perhaps this should not be a surprise given the rich
architectural history of the region going back to the 17th
century. Certainly the mighty estates of the Gilded Age
along the northern shore aka the Gold Coast made their
impression on F. Scott Fitzgerald when he placed Jay
Gatsby’s mansion among them. Many are also familiar
with the weekend houses of the Hamptons and the barrier islands. However, as Long Island transformed from
its rural and agrarian past to a new suburbia, numerous
architects and clients looked to Modern movement principles to guide the transition. During the two decades
after World War II, the optimistic view that the suburbs
offered a better way of living matched the convictions
of a generation of architects trained under the precepts
of Modernism. The exceptional results of this pairing
can be found across Nassau and western Suffolk counties.
And yet this history is little known or appreciated.
The critical first step is knowing who’s who and
where they built.
The first examples were designed in the late 1920s
and the 1930s, including works by Albert Frey and A.
Lawrence Kocher, Wallace Harrison, Edward Durell Stone
and Frank Lloyd Wright. A surge came after 1945 with
rare and important buildings by Marcel Breuer, Philip
Johnson, José Lluis Sert, Peter Blake and Paul Rudolph.
These architects, plus a handful of talented architects
who adhered to modernist principles and established
practices on Long Island, were very much a part of the
region’s transition from a farming community with a
sideline as a leisure destination to a complex suburban
culture. A short overview of several noteworthy locals
follows.
Among the first was William Landsberg (1915– )
a product of the Graduate School of Design at Harvard,
where he studied with Gropius and Breuer. After time at
SOM, Landsberg joined Breuer’s office in 1948, where he
was a chief of staff and worked on numerous projects
including the Hanson House in Huntington. In 1951
Landsberg moved to Long Island and established his
own practice. The home he built for himself in 1952—
a clean and simple rectangular box hugging a hillside—
reflects the ideas of Gropius and Breuer as well as Mies
FROM VITRUM/WILLIAM LANDSBERG
Jean Tschumi Book Event
EZRA STOLLER ©ESTO
WHO’S WHO: MOD LONG ISLAND
George Nemeny, Frost House, Long Beach, NY, 1946
William Landsberg House, Port Washington, NY, 1952
van der Rohe who sketched a “house on a hillside” in
1934. The Landsberg house appeared in Architecture
d’aujourd’hui and Architectural Record and other international publications. He also designed several other private residences such as the Joseph House in Freeport,
the Randall MacIntyre House and the Angus MacIntyre
House, both in Deer Park, and the Keevil House in Old
Westbury. In the 1960s he left solo practice to work with
Eli Kahn and later Edward Durell Stone. He retired in
1982 and lives in the home he designed 60 years ago.
George Nemeny (1911–1997) emigrated from
Hungary in 1920 and attended Cornell University where
he advocated Modernism against the prevailing BeauxArts curriculum. Graduating in 1934, he worked for
William Van Allen and then on prefabricated housing for
the WPA. After World War II Nemeny established a loose
partnership with former classmate Abraham Geller. By
continued next page
LONG ISLAND MODERN CONTINUED
NICK WHEELER/COURTESY LOEB LIBRARY
EZRA STOLLER ©ESTO
2010 has launched with tempting
tours and events—many are coming
up soon: a “Long Island Moderns”
tour (3/13), a panel on the United
Nations renovation (3/18) and
an event at the Franzen House in
Rye, NY (5/8). The best way to keep
tabs on what’s happening with
DOCOMOMO New York/Tri-State is
to subscribe to our monthly email
newsletter (details p. 11).
Advocacy is another good reason
to sign up. There are almost always
Modern buildings in our region at risk
of demolition, dreadful alteration or
gross neglect. Timeliness is key in
advocacy. We use the “e-news” to
tell you what’s up and what actions
you can take to help turn the tide
toward preservation and reuse. For
example, this month you can visit
the exhibition “Modernism at Risk”
at the AIA Center for Architecture
and participate in a postcard campaign for Eero Saarinen’s Bell Labs
or visit www.paulrudolph.org and
sign a petition condemning the
pending demolition of Paul Rudolph’s
Chorley Elementary in Middletown,
NY, for a parking lot. When you
learn of a Modern building that is
endangered share it with us and
we’ll share it with the crowd.
([email protected])
2010 is an even year, which
means DOCOMOMO working parties
from around the world will gather for
the 11th DOCOMOMO International
Conference. This year’s event, “Living
in the Urban Modernity,” will be
held in Mexico City August 24–29.
For all the conference details visit:
www.docomomo2010.unam.mx
There is a big year ahead. Use it
to explore the breadth and depth of
Modern architecture and participate
in its preservation, here and
everywhere.
—Kathleen Randall, editor
Nina Rappaport, chair
four houses built to the hilly contours of an old orchard.
The use of wood and brick and the horizontal overhangs
suggest a combination of Wright’s Usonian designs and
the modernism of Breuer and Gropius. Blum continued
his career on Long Island until his retirement in 1995
with a mix of residential, religious and commercial
projects. He designed many interiors for the Bally Shoe
Company of Switzerland as well as dozens of beauty
parlors. Later residential projects reflect the ideas of
Paul Rudolph.
Fred Bentel (1928– ) and Maria Bentel (1929–2000)
distinguished themselves early with two houses in
Locust Valley, the Azzarone House and their own house,
both dating to 1957–1959. The Azzarone House made
innovative and sensitive use of concrete, and the Bentels
maintained a consciously international outlook. Both
graduated from MIT, where Maria was one of just two
women in the architecture program. Afterwards, Maria
spent a year as a Fulbright scholar at the Istituto
Universitario d’Architettura in Venice, while Fred studied
at the Technische Hochschule in Graz. Extensive travel
to monuments of the Modern movement from
Scandinavia to Marseille was part of their continuing
education. Unsurprisingly, they articulated a programmatic sophistication beyond what is typically found in
the work of other practitioners on Long Island.
In describing their own residence in an office publica-
BENTEL & BENTEL
Welcome
1946 he was receiving attention for his prototype for
affordable single-family homes, the Frost House in Long
Beach. With few exceptions Nemeny designed private
residences until retirement in 1974. His mercurial personality sometimes antagonized peers, but clients were
pleased and his reputation grew. He designed a residence for Ezra Stoller, who afterward photographed all
his projects. He received positive reviews in major architectural journals for the Rosen House (New Rochelle,
1949), his own house (Great Neck, 1951), the Diamond
House (Hewlett Neck, 1952), the Blair House (King’s
Point, 1957), the Johnston House (Locust Valley, 1958)
and the Safir House (King’s Point, 1962). The Safir House
was named a Record House in 1963 and was one of the
George Nemeny, Johnston House, Locust Valley, NY, 1968
Bentel and Bentel, Azzarone House, Locust Valley, NY,
1957–1959
AIA’s Ten Best Buildings of the Year, rare for a private
home. Later projects included Lombard House (Rye,
1967), Prussack House (Woodmere, 1967), Bell House
(Sands Point, 1968) and Selig Burrows House (Mill Neck,
1971). While critics have noted affinities with Breuer and
Niemeyer, Nemeny’s houses are distinctively his own.
As Dean at Pratt and then the New York Institute of
Technology, Olindo Grossi (1909–2002) became an
important proponent of Modernism although not all of
his work fits the strict definition. He was a winner of the
Rome Prize in 1933. Among his more distinguished
projects were his own home (Manhasset, 1950) and a
residence for Alfred Day Hershey, scientist and Nobel
Laureate, near Cold Spring Harbor Labs (1963).
After a brief stint in the office of William
Muschenheim, Walter Blum (1925– ) spent the years
1947–1950 working for Wright’s student, Edgar Tafel. In
1952, Blum developed a two-acre site in Great Neck, with
Herbert Beckhard, Beckhard House, Glen Cove, NY, 1964
tion, the architects noted: “Inspired by visits to ancient
Roman sites, they came away with the notion that buildings should be designed with their potential decayed
form in mind. For their own house, they designed a
structure that could one day become a magnificent ruin.”
They took full advantage of an existing apple orchard
and the brick enclosure wall. Like many architects and
clients of the period, they were especially careful about
the preservation of legacy trees and landscape elements
when siting their projects. The curving concrete roof
recalls the work of Louis Kahn. Today, the firm continues
under the leadership of sons Peter and Paul Bentel and
their spouses Susan Nagle Bentel and Carol Rusche
Bentel and has received critical acclaim for various
restaurants and interiors, most notably the “Modern,”
a restaurant that opened in MoMA in 2005.
Herbert Beckhard (1926–2003) began working for
Marcel Breuer in 1951, initially for free. Their association
lasted until Breuer’s retirement in 1979. After continuing
with several other Breuer partners and associates for
continued next page
DOCOMOMO / Winter 2010 / 2
JEAN TSCHUMI BOOK EVENT AT VITRA
get the
book
SUPPORT DOCOMOMO,
WE’LL SEND THE BOOK
While our stock lasts, DOCOMOMO
NY/Tri-State is offering Jean
Tschumi: Architecture at Full Scale
as a thank-you gift to those making
a contribution of $150 or more. (See
the book note on page 13.) And we’ll
include a 2010 membership.
Visit NYCharities.com to make your
online contribution or send a check
to the address on the front page.
K. RANDALL
On November 28, the Swiss Consulate General in New
York, Bernard Tschumi Architects, Vitra, Inc. and DOCOMOMO New York/Tri-State co-sponsored a book launch
for Jean Tschumi: Architecture at Full Scale (Rizzoli,
2009) by architectural historian Jacques Gubler.
The event, which attracted a crowd of 100 or more,
was held at the Vitra Store in Chelsea. Welcome and
opening remarks by DOCOMOMO NY/Tri-State chair Nina
Rappaport were followed by Bernard Tschumi’s thoughtful
highlights of his father’s career, including a fascination
with the United States, and the influence his father’s
work had on his own approach to design. The main event
was an energetic synopsis of Jean Tschumi’s work by
author Jacques Gubler, who afterwards fielded questions
and signed books. As guests mingled they were treated
to large-scale photographic reproductions of Tschumi’s
signature work and posters describing DOCOMOMO
NY/Tri-State’s activities as well as Vitra’s captivating
product line with its distinctly Modern roots.
The Swiss modernist Jean Tschumi (1904–1962) is
known for his involvement in corporate architecture and
its attendant early “image making,” including his headquarters building for Nestlé in Vevey, Switzerland and
multiple buildings for the pharmaceutical company
Sandoz, as well as his years leading the architecture and
urban planning program at the University of Lausanne.
Gubler noted Tschumi’s sensitive use of color, his ability
to work at many scales in his design process and his
subsequent influence on Modern architects throughout
Europe.
Bernard Tschumi has donated 43 of his father’s drawings to the Architecture and Design Department of The
Museum of Modern Art. With this gift, MoMA becomes
the only institution outside of Europe to house a collec-
www.nycharities.org/donate/
c_donate.asp?CharityCode=2557
Jacques Gubler and Bernard Tschumi at Vitra.
tion of drawings by Jean Tschumi. Other drawings remain
in Switzerland in the family’s collection, at the Archives of
Modern Construction at the Lausanne Polytechnique and
with the pharmaceutical company Novartis.
DOCOMOMO NY/Tri-State wishes to thank the Swiss
Consulate General in New York, Bernard Tschumi
Architects and Vitra, Inc. for making this event possible
and a success.
LONG ISLAND MODERN CONTINUED
look like fueled architectural rethinking and Modern
architects were doing most of it. Houses of the Long
Island Modernists show explicitly the parallel development of Modernism and suburbia and their influence
went beyond the big, long island.
—Erik Neil
The exhibition “Arcadia/Suburbia: Architecture on Long
Island 1930–2010” opened at the Heckscher Museum in
Huntington, NY, January 16 and continues through April
11. The exhibition charts 80 years of residential architecture underscoring the role that Long Island played in the
broader development of Modernism and Post-Modernism
in the U.S. Curated by Erik Neil, PhD, the show presents
28 buildings by 23 architects and includes original drawings, models, vintage and contemporary photographs,
architectural journals and publications, as well as furniture by Aalto, Eames, and others. A fully illustrated exhibition catalog Long Island Moderns is also available.
www.heckscher.org
COURTESY RIZZOLI
three years, he established a firm with Frank Richlan in
1982. Beckhard’s work with Breuer was international in
scope, and he played a leading role in major commissions. His most noteworthy Long Island project is the
house he built for his family in Glen Cove (1964) which
expresses the high Modern esthetic of Breuer and his
contemporaries. Like many of the residences designed by
Modernists on Long Island, the typical suburban fascination with big lawns is largely absent; emphasis was on
perfectly siting the house in the wooded landscape. The
Beckhard House utilizes expanses of glass and a variety
of stone walls to accentuate the interpenetration of interior and exterior. The house also carefully segregates
public and personal spaces, allowing for graduated experiences of privacy.
Plenty was happening on Long Island in the 1950s
and 1960s. A population explosion and economic boom
created new suburban communities along an expanding
infrastructure of commuter rail lines and parkways.
Farms and mansions were disappearing. A national concern about housing and what the postwar house should
DOCOMOMO / Winter 2010 / 3
Gregory Dietrich is the sole
•proprietor
of Gregory Dietrich
Preservation Consulting and recently contributed the article, “Merging
the Bucolic Superhighway of the
Garden State with the Virtual
Superhighway of the World Wide
Web” to Columbia University’s PA
Memo. John Morris Dixon, FAIA,
is the former chief editor of
Progressive Architecture and now
writes for magazines such as
Architect, Architectural Record,
Competitions, and Oculus. He is the
Connecticut resident on the
DOCOMOMO NY/Tri-State Board.
Hänsel Hernández-Navarro is a
DOCOMOMO NY/Tri-State board
member who works as an architectural conservator specializing in the
preservation and rehabilitation of
historic buildings and monuments.
Sean Khorsandi practices at
Samuel Anderson Architects and is
the co-director of the Paul Rudolph
Foundation. At Yale he worked as a
research assistant on “Eero Saarinen:
Shaping the Future” and at the SML
Manuscripts and Archives. Erik
Neil is an architectural historian
and curator living in New York City.
Kathleen Randall is an architectural historian and DOCOMOMO
NY/Tri-State board member who
works at the Guttmacher Institute
and in the off hours, on DOCOMOMO
stuff—since 1996. Nina Rappaport
is an architectural historian, critic,
curator and educator. She is the
publications director at Yale School
of Architecture, and author of
Support and Resist, Structural
Engineers and Design Innovation.
Richard Ray is keenly aware of
the evanescence of beautiful things
and the all-too-human urge to
erase and rewrite but cultivates an
unfashionable optimism in the
decency and wisdom of ordinary
people.
continued next page
•
•
•
•
•
•
Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future
Museum of the City of New York
November 10, 2009–January 31, 2010
Editor’s note: “Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future” has
closed at the Museum of the City of New York, however
the final installation can be viewed at Yale University
through May 2.
The brief, brilliant career of Eero Saarinen is the subject
of an overdue and eagerly anticipated retrospective of his
life and work in “Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future” at
the Museum of the City of New York. The exhibition
chronicles the evolution and creativity of a designer who
won his first competition (for a design in matchsticks) at
age eleven and would see his sketches realized in bronze
gates and stone reliefs on the Cranbrook Academy of Art
campus during adolescence.
Born in 1910 to an artistic and creative family,
Saarinen’s talents manifested rapidly. A continuum of
success—graphic designer for his high school newspaper,
design prizes in the Beaux Arts system at Yale, frequent
competition awards and one groundbreaking architectural
project after another—illuminates the life and career of
an architect finding his esthetic voice. Early projects like
the winning entry for the Smithsonian Museum of Art in
Washington, DC (unbuilt, 1939) and the Wermuth House
in Ft. Wayne, IN (1941–1942) reflect the visibly rigid
influence of his father Eliel during their architectural
partnership. Independent work after forming Eero
Saarinen and Associates in 1950 shows real liberation.
Eero maintained the sensibility of his father’s training,
but moved quickly beyond it, collaborating with the leading engineers, landscape architects, sculptors and artisans of his time.
With so many distinct, often complex projects, it is
difficult to generalize and categorize Saarinen’s work. This
welter of diverse programs, clients with household namerecognition, projects with unusually dissimilar forms and
often unique circumstances, plus an impressive list of
technical firsts required curator Donald Albrecht to make
many difficult decisions: Celebrate the world’s (then)
thinnest curtain wall (IBM Rochester, MN, 1956–1958)
EERO SAARINEN COLLECTION; MANUSCRIPTS AND ARCHIVES, YALE UNIVERSITY
Contributors
ARCHITECTURE’S FUTURE PAST:
EERO SAARINEN AT MID-CENTURY
Trans World Flight Center, working model in cardboard
with a full-size mock-up, or the first use of neoprene gaskets in exterior glazing (GM Technical Center, Warren, MI,
1948–1956)—the former. Provide ample space to the
firm’s most massive building and the first use of mirrored
glass (Bell Laboratories, Holmdel, NJ, 1957–1962) represented by three photographs, or the unbuilt design for
Time Inc.’s headquarters shown in four pencil drawings—
the latter.
The vintage photos, crisp drawings and handsome
models of featured projects, are visually arresting and
lead the viewer to ponder the title. When did Saarinen
stop shaping the future? At his death in 1961? In 1966,
with the completion of his last designed work by the successor firm Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo and Associates?
CRANBROOK ARCHIVES
•
Claude DeForest, an architect at the Saarinen firm, captured the culture of the office in witty, often blunt cartoons.
DOCOMOMO / Winter 2010 / 4
the arch hastily spray painted even on its base. These two
vintage models graphically express the speed and
fervor of creation within the office. They are complimented by a selection of Claude DeForest’s amusing caricatures
of his office mates as architects on the verge—including
Eero attempting to carve a pumpkin into a building, all
suggesting there was a sense of humor and tolerable
chaos amidst the intensity of production. Despite the
seamlessness of the presentation, these gems from the
archive suggest that maybe things weren’t so perfect back
then either.
Contributors
(continued from page 4)
Roy recently completed an
•M.A.Susan
degree in architectural history
PHOTO BERNICE CLARK. MANUSCRIPTS AND ARCHIVES, YALE UNIVERSITY
Many of the firm’s buildings would seem relatively current
if built today. For practicing architects, Saarinen’s sense of
the future could just as well resemble the business model,
design sensibility and variety of methods of production
that are now part of the everyday culture of the discipline,
but that Saarinen attained decades ago.
The future can be examined more literally with the
question “will his structures survive?” The U.S. Department
of State recently announced plans to vacate its iconic
Saarinen-designed Chancellery Building in London’s
Grosvenor Square (1955–1960), and the British government, with heavy influence from Catherine Croft of the
C20 Society, have given the much maligned building protection under a Grade II historic building listing paving
the way for it to become a luxury hotel. One would not
know this from the exhibit however.
CBS Headquarters (1960–1965), Trans World Flight
Center, aka TWA Terminal (1956–1962) and the Vivian
Beaumont Theatre at Lincoln Center (1958–1965),
Saarinen’s three New York City achievements are featured,
but not grouped. While the exhibition presentation mentions recent renovation work at the TWA Terminal by
Beyer Blinder Belle, it glosses over the loss of the terminal’s dramatic “flight wings” (landmark rulings do not
apply to Port Authority land). Also unmentioned are years
of plaza closures at CBS’s “Blackrock” and the pending
addition to the Vivian Beaumont Theater. The theater’s
forecourt plaza—among the best Saarinen + Dan Kiley
collaborations ever executed—has already been altered
out of existence. As such, the show celebrates the
moment of architectural realization, leaving the audience
free to contextualize the present and seek the future story
on its own.
One of the show’s many great moments is a clip of
John Chancellor interviewing Aline Bernstein Saarinen
on the TODAY SHOW. Although already established as
a writer and New York Times art critic, Aline seemed
pleased to be the second wife of the man who was perhaps our nation’s first self-aware “celebri-tect.” When the
Trans World “Flight Center” opened in 1962, NBC broadcast the entire show from the terminal! When has there
been such pomp or circumstance surrounding the opening of a building in recent memory? Indeed, where in the
world is Matt Lauer? Domestic architects: please provide
the man a set.
With doodled love letters and other artifacts of their
relationship, Albrecht brings Aline’s influential role to the
forefront and shows her impact on Saarinen as a partner.
He couples them with footage and 1950’s papparaziesque glamour shots, and a reminder of the couple’s invitation to JFK’s presidential inauguration. These carefully
chosen pieces capture her public persona, one in fierce
defense of Eero’s legacy—a one-woman public relations
powerhouse.
As with many architectural exhibitions, gorgeous
prints and photos, dreamy gouache and watercolor renderings and diazo reproductions belie the hours of struggle behind them. Examine two of the firm’s more exuberant projects, the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial,
aka “the arch” and the TWA Terminal. The show includes a
beautiful epoxy, polymer and stainless steel model of the
terminal in excruciating detail. A nearby wall shows an
image of the firm’s own version riddled with rough edges
and scotch tape. Opposite that wall is a plywood model of
at Columbia University and is developing her thesis, “The Cultural,
Social and Architectural History of
the Family Fallout Shelter during
the Cold War (1950–1965),” into a
book. Virginia Smith is a professor emerita of art at Baruch College
of CUNY and the author of two
books on graphic design: The Funny
Little Man (1995) and Forms in
Modernsim: A Visual Set (2004). She
is a member of the International
Association of Art Critics.
•
Aline and Eero Saarinen in the limelight, c. 1960.
As a key molder of the American self-image in the
postwar years, Eero Saarinen designed heroic and monumental icons that were practical and human in scale, yet
powerful. He helped make the American brand. Saarinen’s
40 major projects as Eero Saarinen & Associates opened
pathways for pluralism of style within the parameters of
Modernism. Measured against architects of comparable
stature today, each famous for a more closely matched set
of buildings, Saarinen’s work shows an acceptance of the
extreme variety possible in design and within one career.
Saarinen explored these variations with an ambidexterity
that allowed structurally divergent designs to be created
in unison on different drafting boards in the same studio.
The curved façade and textured fieldstone of the IBM
Research Center in Yorktown Heights, NY (1957–1961)
was designed alongside Bell Laboratories, a simple, sleek,
reflective geometric box. His fluid pedestal furniture
designs of 1954–1955 evoke a lightness and plasticity
quite the opposite of the heavy, boxy concrete façade of
the U.S. Chancellery Building of the same year. Saarinen,
a Beaux-Arts educated modernist, was quite possibly the
first pluralist. He built beyond what we needed. Deeply
imaginative and highly expressive, his buildings reflect a
time giddy with what could in hindsight be deemed an
embarrassment of optimism. If we allow him to rekindle
some of these dreams, Eero Saarinen can continue to
shape our future.
—Sean Khorsandi
About the Exhibition: “Eero
Saarinen: Shaping the Future” was
organized by the Finnish Cultural
Institute in New York, The Museum of
Finnish Architecture, Helsinki, and
the National Building Museum,
Washington, DC, with the support of
the Yale University School of
Architecture. It originated in Helsinki
in October 2006, with a focus on
Saarinen’s background, continued to
several U.S. venues and will close in
New Haven, CT at the Yale University
Art Gallery and Paul Rudolph Hall
commemorating, the 100th anniversary year of Saarinen’s birth. The
MCNY show was curated by Donald
Albrecht. A companion book, Eero
Saarinen: Shaping the Future, edited
by Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen and Donald
Albrecht is available from Yale
University Press. (See book note in
Winter 2008 newsletter.)
DOCOMOMO / Winter 2010 / 5
BAUHAUS: BACK TO MODERNISM
Bauhaus 1919–1933: Workshops for Modernity
Museum of Modern Art
November 8, 2009–January 25, 2010
At the 1938 opening of the Bauhaus
exhibition, held for members of The
Museum of Modern Art, interest was
intense and attendance recordbreaking. The show, held at the
Museum’s temporary quarters in
Rockefeller Center, met with strong
reviews in the New York press.
They ranged from praise to scorn:
With the new Bauhaus exhibition the Museum of Modern
Art reprises its landmark exhibition of 1938, which introduced the German design school as the center and courier
of Modernism. Now MoMA shines a new light on the
school from the perspective of a new generation.
The original show was designed and directed by
Walter and Ise Gropius and Bauhaus student Herbert
Bayer, with the imprimatur of Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Director
of the Museum, and that of influential Modern advocate,
Philip Johnson. That show, “Bauhaus 1919–1928,” covered Gropius’ own founding and directorship, 1919–1928,
“An epitaph to the Bauhaus”
— Art News
“A living idea” —New York Times
“A forlorn gesture” —New York Sun
“Clarity, emphasis, drama in the
arrangement” — World Telegram
“Clumsily installed” — New York Sun
“Excellent character of the
presentation” — Retailing
“The survey is chaotic…disorganized…
cheap” —New York Times
“Magnificent textiles” —Art News
“Unfortunate textiles” —New York Sun
—excerpted from Forms in Modernism:
A Visual Set by Virginia Smith
MoMA’s current show has drawn
reviews from some of these same
sources. The New York Times appreciated the quality of the exhibit,
veering off to stress the differences
among Bauhaus faculty with the
headline “Finding a bit of Animal
House in the Bauhaus.” Art News
chose to forego reviewing the exhibit,
printing instead an excerpt from a
current book on Josef and Anni
Albers, this in contrast to MoMA’s aim
of concentrating on the school and its
students during its actual existence.
Artforum anticipated the event in
November with a thoughtful article
by architectural historian K. Michael
Hays. The January 1 issue of the
Times Literary Supplement includes a
review of the exhibit and its catalog
by Patrick McCaughey, former head of
the British Art Center at Yale, and is
the most accurate and intelligent
treatment of the whole Bauhaus
episode and MoMA’s treatment of it.
—VS
DOCOMOMO / Winter 2010 / 6
Kathedrale, catalog cover, Lyonel Feininger, 1919
with only brief allusions to the years under directors
Hannes Meyer (1928–1930) and Mies van der Rohe
(1930–1933). Its contents and small black and white
catalog have remained the official story of the Bauhaus.
Now co-curators Barry Bergdoll and Leah Dickerman
have acquired rare works by Bauhaus masters and, crucially, Bauhaus students. In addition, they limited their
selections to works made at the school during its actual
existence, 1919–1933, not later in America or
Switzerland, when several masters and acolytes became
celebrities. Now, with the collaboration of the BauhausArchiv Berlin, the Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau, and the
ALL IMAGES COURTESY MUSEUM OF MODERN ART
Reception of the Bauhaus
in America—then and now
Editor’s note: This article is appearing after the close of the
exhibition. It stands on its own and complements the excellent exhibition catalog. Apologies to our author and readers.
Klassik Stiftung Weimar, and others, MoMA displays
150 loaned works together with 80 of its own, turning
its sixth floor galleries into an immersion in 14 years of
Bauhaus art.
The first gallery provides enough material to make
you rethink your entire impression of the Bauhaus.
Immediately, you see Altärchen (Small altar), a triptych
by Gerhard Marcks, loaned from the Gerhard-MarcksHaus in Bremen. Here are crosses, a lamb, haloes, around
a tomb containing a hollowed out gold figural shape, surmounted by angels with trumpets. Painted in light blue,
green, gold and crimson—colors of a Renaissance fresco—
it has the specific religiosity of a personal worship icon.
In the same gallery, Johannes Itten’s Aufstieg und
Ruhepunkt (Ascent and resting point), a luminous 7-foot
oil painting, shows globes and triangles rising along a
central axis in overlapping, transparent color, moving
from the dark below to the light above. Dark and light
symbolism is evident and was studied as part of the
school’s Foundation course. Nearby stands a carved and
painted wood sculpture of pointed spires and stars in a
totem-like form, called ‘Pillar with Cosmic Visions’ from
the Weimar Museum, by student Theobald Emil MüllerHummel.
Lyonel Feininger’s familiar catalog cover, Kathedrale
(Cathedral, 1919), with its insistence on the trinity of
spires and stars, gains more meaning from this juxtaposition. As Gothic craftsmen worked together for a glorious place of worship, so students and masters would
work together at the Bauhaus. While we are used to
terming this early period of Itten, Marcks and Feininger
as Expressionist, its preoccupation with spiritual yearning and religious imagery cannot be denied. The arrival
in 1922 of Wassily Kandinsky, to teach Itten’s Vorkurs
would have strengthened this early tendency. Kandinsky
claimed art as one of spirituality’s ‘mightiest elements’ in
“African or Romantic Chair,” Marcel Breuer and Gunta Stolzl,
1921
his 1911 celebrated book Concerning the Spiritual in Art.
In the second gallery, there are more surprises.
Immediately to the right of the entrance there is a raised
platform approximating the area of a small room. On the
floor is a carpet from Weimar, woven by student Benita
Koch-Otte, in brilliant strips of red and blue, repeating
hues in the 9-foot-wide wall hanging, also from Weimar,
by student Else Mögelin, this with a central, shimmering,
bird-like red shape flying amid blue and rose rectangles.
Against the opposite gallery wall there is an “African or
Romantic Chair,” a collaborative 1921 work of Marcel
Breuer and Gunta Stolzl, made of painted oak and cherry
with intertwining arms at top the like a ceremonial
throne; its back and seat are covered with brocade of
brilliant gold and silk threads. This sensational work by
the constructor of the tubular steel furniture we know so
well and Stolzl, the student who became a power in the
weaving workshop, exemplifies the early period’s exuberant use of color. The small black and white photo of the
chair in the 1938 catalog gave no sense of the power
and presence we feel standing before it here—austere,
tall and brilliant.
Walking through the galleries astonishes and pleases.
The installation uses colors based on the interiors of the
original Masters Houses at Dessau, so we see sculptures,
paintings and textiles against red or rose walls, some
near violet backgrounds, some in a sunshine yellow
atmosphere—a glowing surround which enhances and
does not overpower such strong art.
After its sensational public exhibition of 1923 and
the move to Dessau in 1925, there was increasing
abstraction. Kandinsky’s paintings appear more geometric and Breuer proposed the distinctly unpleasant experience of sitting on wooden disks; his complete dining
room set of 1926 for the Kandinsky Master House seen
here is a wonder in painted black and white wood and
metal. There is also his 1925–1926 prototype for the
Wassily chair in tubular steel and metallized yarn
(Eisengarn). An interesting ceiling-mounted film shows
life in the efficient and flexible house of Modernism,
filmed in Gropius’s own Master’s House at Dessau.
The colorful pictorialism and symbolism or geometric
abstraction gave way to social and practical projects in
the second phase, shown in the following galleries. Under
the directorship of the talented Communist architect
Hannes Meyer (1928–1930), students designed interior
furnishings for small units in mass housing projects.
There are oddities such as Joseph Pohl’s “Wardrobe for
Bachelors,” intended for a single guy in a single room. The
students used simple materials—plywood, veneers, sometimes stained and shellacked, and plain to the point of
homeliness—shown here in folding chairs and tables by
Gustav Hassenpflug and Wera Meyer-Waldeck. Specifically
designed for ‘Die Volkswohnung’ (The People’s Apartment)
1929, the pieces are a sobering counterbalance to early
projects of silver-lined samovars and tea services, brass
and opal lamps and stained glass windows seen in
previous galleries.
The final galleries contain work during the third and
final Bauhaus phase under Mies van der Rohe
(1932–1933). Both Josef and Anni Albers stayed on, as
did Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, whose complex 1930 electric
sculpture is reproduced. Lux Feininger’s many photos and
Oskar Schlemmer’s stagecraft and painting, continued.
Mies invited Lilly Reich to join the school and her drawings for minimal chairs are here, as well as Otti Berger’s
last textiles. Mies’s influence was strong. There are three
perspective drawings from his architectural class of
1932–1933, by student Pius Pahl, for a “court house” imitating Mies’s Barcelona Pavilion of 1929. Eduard Ludwig’s
small drawing for a “House on the River Havel” includes
Mies’s Barcelona chair and his tubular steel side chair.
Anticipated contracts with industry became reality in
Poster, Erich Comeriner, 1928
later years, with manufactured products from Bauhaus
prototypes producing income for the school. Tubular
steel chairs and tables, as well as lamps designed in the
metal workshop (Marianne Brandt, Wilhelm Wagenfeld)
appeared, and wallpapers and fabrics from the weaving
workshop (Otto Berger, ‘Hajo’—student Hans-Joachim
Rose). In addition to familiar Herbert Bayer graphic
design and other small, early publicity pieces for the
school, the exhibit showcases late printed pieces for
clients by students Erich Mrozek (1931) and Friedrich
Reimann (1931), and poster designs for the stock
exchange by Erich Comeriner (1928), which demonstrate
that the early ad hoc typography shop moved closer to
employment in the ‘real’ world.
This show is a model of curatorial integrity. There is
no didacticism, except the implicit revisionism of the
1938 exhibit. The presentation supports an understanding of the range of the Bauhaus through chronological
sequencing and sensitive placement. Seeing this range
of Bauhaus work, one senses the complicated interaction
of profound beliefs, abundant creativity and urgent
necessity that generated the powerful energy the
Bauhaus unleashed. Its legendary hold on the concept
of Modernism has overshadowed all other Modernisms.
—Virginia Smith
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DOCOMOMO /Winter 2010 / 7
VOLUNTEERS HELP SAVE THE “MAP” AT THE
1964 NEW YORK STATE PAVILION
Fall tour
BREUER IN THE BRONX
With MetroCards in hand 25 people
hit the 4/5 line for our Fall tour,
“Breuer in the Bronx,” on September
26. The impetus for planning this
tour was the fact that there are
pockets of outstanding Modern
architecture in all the boroughs,
and we don’t know the half of it.
This tour featured the seven buildings designed by Marcel Breuer that
were built in the Bronx, all located
on what are now the campuses of
Bronx Community College and
Lehman College.
At CUNY Bronx Community
College our guide was Andre Hurni,
AIA, Director of Campus Planning.
Hurni took the group through five
Breuer buildings explaining their
evolution in terms of use and also
covering the preservation and renovation work that CUNY has been
Starting in late October 2009, on
consecutive weekends through
November, current and former
students from the graduate programs
in historic preservation at Columbia
University and University of
Pennsylvania, along with city parks
department staff and concerned New
Yorkers got together to help rescue
an old friend.
The New York City Department
of Parks & Recreation has owned
and overseen the Philip Johnson
designed New York State Pavilion
from the 1964 World’s Fair since the
fair closed. The complex, located in
Flushing Meadows Corona Park, in
Queens, featured Johnson’s
state of deterioration due to exposure, vandalism and inappropriate
recreational use.
It was the Parks Department that
decided to assemble this group of
volunteers. With garden tools, plastic
bags and markers, the participants
spent hours weeding out decades of
invasive roots and wild plants that
have damaged the terrazzo. Work
included the careful and systematic
collection and bagging of terrazzo
fragments and plastic road map
markers and letters that have been
dislodged from the floor of the pavilion. All the salvaged material has
been documented and stored for
future reference.
The Parks Department has plans
to further conserve the terrazzo floor
“map” and add extra protection. The
current plan is to bury the terrazzo:
A layer of fine clean glacial sand
followed by a geo-textile and a layer
of sandy soil sloped to ensure
drainage, all topped by clean gravel
will protect the fragile historic fabric
Tent of Tomorrow as it stands today, with
observation towers in the background.
from exposure to the elements and
biological intrusions while the Parks
Department develops a conservation
master plan for the site.
—Hänsel Hernandez Navarro
Entry, Polowczyk Hall, originally
Gould Tech I, 1960
doing under his direction. After this
dose of high Modern we switched
gears for a bonus stop, the Stanford
White designed Gould Library and
Hall of Fame for Great Americans.
On to CUNY Lehman College
where Tom Stoelker, a 2009 graduate who has researched and written
on Breuer's work in the Bronx, was
our guide to the two Breuer buildings on this campus: the original
continued next page
DOCOMOMO / Winter 2010 / 8
Theaterama building, three observation towers and the futuristic steel
and concrete “Tent of Tomorrow,” an
open air pavilion with a giant, multicolored terrazzo floor depicting a
Texaco highway map of the entire
state. Today the pavilion is used for
storage and the floor—21,000 square
feet of terrazzo—is in an advanced
ALL POHTOS: SABINE VAN RIEL
Detail of terrazzo floor with embedded
plastic city markers and lettering.
Conservation gardening: volunteers remove grass and weeds growing between the
cracked pieces of terrazzo. Loose material was bagged and labeled.
The Pavilion embodies a key period in the career of
Philip Johnson, "bringing together classical temple, Roman
Coliseum and circus tent."
— Draft National Register Nomination Narrative
To learn more visit the exhibition “Back
on the Map” on view at the AIA Center
for Architecture through March 31. See
www.conlab.org for details about previous work at the site by the University of
Pennsylvania and the related exhibition
at the Queens Museum. Good background history and photos are at
www.conlab.org/acl/thereallybigmap
NEW HAVEN’S MODERN ARCHITECTURE
GETS SURVEYED
Services Officer John Herzan and
Operations Officer Anita Buckmaster
provide invaluable assistance and
advice. Chris Wigren, Deputy Director
of the Connecticut Trust for Historic
Preservation, proposed the study and
serves as a project advisor.
The project is funded by a grant
from the Connecticut Commission on
Culture & Tourism. The first phase of
the project, a narrative history placing the city’s Modern architecture in
ALL PHOTOS: NEW HAVEN PRESERVATION TRUST
The New Haven Preservation Trust
launched the second phase of its
study of local Modern architecture
in mid-June. Charlotte Hitchcock,
who worked on the Trust’s Historic
Resources Inventory (HRI) in the
1980s, convened the first meeting of
surveyors who have set out to inventory 125 buildings designed and
constructed in New Haven during
its Modern period, roughly 1930 to
1980. This period includes perhaps
the most important building boom
in the city’s history—the urban
renewal of the 1950s through the
1970s. A full generation has intervened since the reign of Modernism,
obliterating much of its history and
full appreciation of its varied styles.
As the time approaches for owners of these buildings to consider
restoration, renovation or replacement, the updated HRI will help
them in making decisions and serve
as a resource for the Trust in its mission of honoring and preserving the
city’s built environment. Listing on
the HRI also offers some protection
for historic properties by triggering a
90-day demolition delay under the
City’s Delay of Demolition ordinance.
The HRI will feature photographs of
each building, details of its design,
construction and use, and an explanation of its contribution to the
streetscape and neighborhood.
Charlotte Hitchcock is leading
the survey team, which includes two
board members, Alek Juskevice and
Arnold Chadderdon; three interns,
Lucas Karmazinas, Amy Gagnon, and
Julie Rosen; and volunteer Sara
Jamison. The Trust’s Preservation
Crown Court Parking Garage, Chloethiel Woodward Smith and Associates, 1960
(continued from page 8)
library (now Fine Arts Building) and
the administration building.
Finishing the campus tours, the
adventurous continued on a couple
of subway stops for a rare visit
inside Paul Rudolph’s Tracey Towers
(1974). At 41 and 38 stories, the
twin beton brut towers were the
tallest buildings in the Bronx when
completed.
Both campuses are open to the
public for walk throughs during the
day Monday–Friday (although not
interior access). So grab your map,
your MetroCard and the list below
and explore some Modern in your
own back yard.
Many thanks to our wonderful
guides on campus, building management at Tracey Towers and to board
members John Arbuckle and Kyle
Johnson for organizing this tour.
Chimney tile facade screen on Shuster
Hall administration building
English Shelter in East Rock Park, Robert T. and Jean Coolidge, 1953
historical and sociological context,
was written by Rachael D. Carley and
appeared last year as Tomorrow Is
Here: New Haven and the Modern
Movement. Results of the second
phase inventory, which is scheduled
for completion in Spring 2010, will
be available in the New Haven
Preservation Trust office, in research
libraries and eventually as part of an
online database.
—New Haven Preservation Trust
www.nhpt.org
BREUER BUILDINGS:
CUNY Bronx Community College
Begrisch Hall (1956–1961)
designated NYC landmark
Polowczyk Hall (1960)
formerly Gould Tech I
Meister Hall (1966)
formerly Gould Tech II
Community Hall (1961)
Colston Hall Dormitory (1966)
CUNY Lehman College
Fine Arts Building (1955–1959)
formerly library; Eduardo
Catalano consulting architect
Shuster Hall (1955–1959)
New Haven Fire Headquarters (Central Station), Earl P. Carlin, 1961
DOCOMOMO /Winter 2010 / 9
SAARINEN TOUR:
TWA TERMINAL AND IBM WATSON CENTER
STEPHEN MILNE
DOCOMOMO New York/Tri-State’s
first official involvement with Open
House New York weekend was a
great success. On October 10 over
80 people experienced the main
floors and 3-acre private garden of
I.M. Pei and Associate’s elegant
residential complex: Kips Bay Plaza
(1957–1963). The Open House was a
joint effort of our chapter and the
board and homeowners association
of Kips Bay Plaza (now Kips Bay
Towers). Leading small groups, a
team of guides explained Pei’s innovative use of sculptural reinforced
concrete, the unique site plan,
recent renovations and more. Even
some residents joined a tour. Many
thanks to Susan Musho, board president, and everyone from the Kips
Bay management team and staff for
seeing to all the on site details so
expertly.
IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, 1957–1961
K. RANDALL
OPEN HOUSE NEW YORK:
KIPS BAY PLAZA
Rarely does someone go to JFK Airport with no intention
of catching a plane. Yet 54 Modern architecture enthusiasts eagerly made this trip Saturday January 16, to visit
an architectural icon: Eero Saarinen’s TWA Terminal.
This was the first of two Saarinen masterworks
normally closed to the public, but visited during the daylong “An Inside Look: Saarinen Building Tour.” The second
was the Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown
Heights, NY. The sold-out tour (with a waiting list of 60!)
was co-sponsored by DOCOMOMO New York/Tri-State
and the Museum of the City of New York in conjunction
with its exhibit “Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future.”
To get things started Donald Albrecht, curator of the
exhibit, provided background on the TWA commission
and its significance and Nina Rappaport, of DOCOMOMO
New York/Tri-State, sketched out the fraught recent
history of Saarinen’s terminal from a preservation standpoint. Commissioned in 1956 by TWA to design a distinctive building, Saarinen created an expressionist
paean to flight that opened in 1962. It received New
York City Landmarks Preservation Commission designation in 1993.
After TWA went bankrupt in 2000, the terminal was
turned over to the Port Authority of New York. It was pronounced “functionally obsolescent”; planes had grown
too large to park at its gates. With its fate uncertain,
DOCOMOMO New York/Tri-State, DOCOMOMO US, the
Municipal Art Society and others began pressuring the
Port Authority to find a way to save the terminal through
adaptive reuse. The Port issued a “Solicitation of
Interest” in 2002. Unfortunately, no developer wanted to
take it on. As a result, the Port Authority hired Beyer
Blinder Belle Architects (BBB) to restore the central
area of the terminal leaving the mezzanine and the
“wings” of the symmetrical structure to the eventual tenant. Suggested uses have included an aviation museum,
restaurants, lounges, a conference center, or a hotel.
At the site, James Steven, the Port Authority’s Program
Director for JFK Plant, Structures and Airport Redevelopment, welcomed the group and BBB’s Charles Kramer, AIA,
explained the work in progress and the rationale for the
restoration and conservation choices made.
Plans are to use the restored area of the building,
now known as Terminal 5, as a gateway to the Jet Blue
terminal. Saarinen’s original “flight tube” walkways will
connect the two buildings.
Saarinen’s seating and floor tiles play with trapezoidal shapes.
K. RANDALL
Fall event
K. RANDALL
A few of the Open House tour guides,
L to R: Kathleen Randall, Leslie Monsky,
Virginia Smith and John Arbuckle.
Missing from the photo op: Kyle
Johnson, Susan Musho and Abby Suckle.
Double-height entrance lobby mixes stone walls with a glossy
black slate floor.
The concept of infinity brought to the circulation corridor.
DOCOMOMO / Winter 2010 / 10
At the Thomas J. Watson Research Center, Craig
Paeprer, Worldwide Director of Operations, Research for
IBM described the challenges of operating and maintaining the 1961 building and its 240-acre site. The building’s curved facade is 1,768 feet of glass curtain wall.
“We’re spending five million dollars a year for electricity
and oil because of these windows,” he said.
IBM’s Jennifer Hall guided the group down the long
corridor running between the exterior wall of glass and
the interior wall of local fieldstone. Occasionally a stone
was painted with a tiny white number; she said Saarinen
added them to identify each variety of local stone utilized and provided a key.
A moment of total Saarinen immersion came in the
library, when tour members could sit in a Saarinen chair
(tulip or womb), alongside a Saarinen table, inside a
Saarinen masterwork.
K. RANDALL
join us!
STEPHEN MILNE
Aerodynamic trash bin in women’s restroom, TWA Terminal.
Apparently so unusual that it required instructional signage.
A fresh new ceiling finish has replaced the grimy, asbestosladen original. Mosaic tile surfaces are up next.
DOCOMOMO New York/Tri-State has
a growing base of members and a
dedicated core group of volunteers
who make everything happen. We
need the resources to do more and
do it more effectively—and that
means more paying members.
Our chapter is one of eleven
local chapters across the country
that are a part of DOCOMOMO US,
which in turn is one of the 54
national working parties of DOCOMOMO INTERNATIONAL. (Yes, we
know it’s rather confusing.)
By joining DOCOMOMO US and
living in New York, New Jersey or
Connecticut you effectively join the
New York/Tri-State chapter. (There
is no separate local membership.)
Membership is managed by the
DOCOMOMO US office, which sends
your contact information and a portion of your membership fee back to
our chapter.
JOIN DOCOMOMO and you become
part of the growing worldwide
effort to identify, record and
preserve architecture and urban
design of the Modern Movement.
STEPHEN MILNE
HOW TO JOIN:
Visit the DOCOMOMO US website
where you can download a membership form to pay by check or take
care of it all online with a credit
card through PayPal services.
www.docomomo-us.org
STEPHEN MILNE
Flight side view showing the two connecting tubes.
Note: memberships are on a calendar year
basis, January–December. Memberships
received in November or December will
count toward the following year.
STEPHEN MILNE
The main schedule board will be retrofitted with a digital
display showing flight activity at JFK.
Restored flight tube. Soon you too can take the tube to JetBlue.
Sated, the architecture fans piled into the bus for the
ride back to the museum for refreshments and a visit to
the Saarinen exhibit.
Earlier in the day, Albrecht had observed that “almost
all Saarinen buildings are different in their form.” There’s
no better expression of that statement than the TWA
Terminal and the Watson Center.
—Susan Roy
DOCOMOMO / Winter 2010 / 11
DOCOMOMO / Winter 2010 / 12
GREGORY DIETRICH
Roof line detail
GREGORY DIETRICH
The new visitor center illuminates Wright’s concepts for a broad audience.
Sanctuary
BETH SHOLOM CONGREGATION
On an unseasonably warm November
afternoon in Elkins Park, PA, the Beth
Sholom Synagogue Preservation
Foundation dedicated its new visitor
center. Designed and constructed
between 1953 and 1959, Beth Sholom
was the only synagogue that Frank
Lloyd Wright designed. It was completed six months after his death. The
synagogue’s design, which has been
described as a “Mt. Sinai wrought in
modern materials,” originated from
an unrealized steel cathedral that the
architect designed in 1926.
In his keynote address for the
visitor center’s opening, New Yorker
architectural critic Paul Goldberger
described two paradoxes of sacred
architecture: the architect’s need to
rely on materiality to convey what is
immaterial, and the fact that architecture is guided by rationality and
logic which are the antitheses of
great sacred spaces that aspire to
defy such boundaries. Goldberger
praised “the sheer power of presence”
of Wright’s design, while also comparing it to the “ineffable” aspects of
Le Corbusier’s unorthodox design
for Ronchamp.
Yet, despite Wright’s success in
achieving the ineffable, Beth
Sholom Synagogue, like many of the
architect’s buildings, has had its
share of material issues. Confronted
with rising maintenance costs and
a contracting congregation, Beth
Sholom President Mark Manstein,
and foundation President Herbert
Sachs have taken a proactive
approach to leveraging public interest in all things Wright. In 2006,
they commissioned architectural historian Emily Cooperman to prepare a
National Historic Landmark nomination for the synagogue and the site
was successfully listed in Spring
2007. The substance of the visitor
center’s exhibitions is a product of
Cooperman’s exhaustive research.
Housed within a Wright-designed
multi-purpose room underneath the
main sanctuary and adjacent to the
synagogue’s Sister Sanctuary, the
visitor center was a collaborative
effort between Cooperman (scholarly
content), Picture Projects (exhibit
design planning/new media) and
BETH SHOLOM CONGREGATION
BETH SHOLOM SYNAGOGUE OPENS
ITS DOORS TO A NEW VISITOR CENTER
Beth Sholom Synagogue, Elkins Park, PA, Frank Lloyd Wright, 1953–1959
Andrea Mason (exhibit design
architect). In addition, Venturi, Scott
Brown and Associates Architects and
Planners provided project management and store design services.
Exhibits include reproductions
of original drawings and correspondence between Wright and his client,
Rabbi Mortimer J. Cohen; mounted
and touch-screen timelines exploring
the historical evolution and construction of Beth Sholom, the development of synagogue architecture in
the United States, and Wright’s
career; an oral history project featuring interviews with various members
of the congregation; and a documentary on the design and construction
of Beth Sholom entitled “An
American Synagogue: Frank Lloyd
Wright, Mortimer Cohen and The
Making of Beth Sholom,” narrated by
Leonard Nimoy.
One of the most striking elements
of Wright’s design was his incorporation of natural light, which filters into
the main sanctuary through the lens
of faceted glass and fiberglass panels. As a means of highlighting this
distinctive feature, Picture Projects
created an interactive exhibit called
“360 Degrees of Light,” which enables
the viewer to see this magnificent
sanctuary from a variety of angles
during a variety of seasons. In commissioning this permanent exhibition
to tell the story of Beth Sholom and
its master architect, the preservation
foundation has enriched the experience of the synagogue, while
enabling it to thrive as an intact
masterwork that will flourish well
beyond the early 21st century.
—Gregory Dietrich
For information on visiting and
a virtual tour:
www.bethsholompreservation.org/
The Modern Library
Jean Tschumi:
Architecture at Full Scale
Jacques Gubler
Skira and Rizzoli, 2009
223 pages; color and b/w illus.
$85 hardcover
Swiss architect Jean Tschumi
(1904–1962), while renowned in
Europe is less-known in the U.S.
and thus the new book Jean
Tschumi: Architecture at Full Scale
by architectural historian and critic
Jacques Gubler is eye opening.
Gubler places Tschumi in the evolution of Modern architecture, demonstrating the significance of his form
and technical prowess and his
impact on architectural education.
The book accompanied a 2008
exhibition in Switzerland of the
same name and includes a preface
by the architect’s son—more familiar
to us—New York- and Paris-based
architect, Bernard Tschumi.
Gubler begins with Jean
Tschumi’s early career as a BeauxArts trained architect, his masterplans for Stockholm and designs for
the Swiss Pavilion (unbuilt) and the
Nestlé Pavilion at the 1937 Paris
Expo, the latter of which he notes
was a response to the Nestlé
Pavilion Le Corbusier designed for
the 1928 Paris Expo. The book continues with chapters on Tschumi’s
innovative commissions for the
headquarters buildings and laboratories of leading Swiss corporations,
a career turn that parallels the large
scale corporate commissions of Eero
Saarinen in the U.S.
Illustrated with lush reproductions of exquisite watercolors of
Tschumi’s early Beaux-Arts work and
later Modernist experiments that
explore form and color, Gubler
focuses on Tschumi’s use of multiple
scales in his design process.
Tschumi often sketched at a variety
of scales—from postage stamp-size
vignettes to full-scale drawings of
furnishings and building details—on
one sheet of paper. He designed
each project as a Gesamtkunstwerk
(synthesis of the arts) coordinating
details of furniture through to a
holistic structural expression.
The book looks closely at Tschumi’s
most significant projects—the MVA
Insurance building in Lausanne
(1951–1956), the Nestlé Headquarters in Vevey (1956–1960), and
the Sandoz Headquarters in Paris
and Laboratories in Orléans
(1947–1953)—from commission
through technical investigations
and final execution. These buildings
expanded a genre of corporate
Modern architecture in Europe.
Tschumi did not live to see the
completion of his headquarters for
the World Health Organization in
Geneva, one of his most visible and
public projects, as he died unexpectedly at the age of 57 in 1962.
Of particular interest is
Tschumi’s little known urban design
project exhibited at the Paris
Museum of Modern Art in 1937 for a
parallel underground Paris. The
multi-media display used new plastics, metal trellises and fluorescent
tubing in dramatically illuminated
3-D models to depict new infrastructure networks demonstrating the
futuristic city as machine, in the
style of Constant’s 1957 New
Babylon, while also suggesting the
necessity of systems for sheltering
the citizens of Paris in the event of
air raids.
While Gubler focuses primarily
on architectural projects, he also
delves into Jean Tschumi’s commitment to architectural education as a
founder of a new school of architecture—the Polytechnic School of the
University of Lausanne—where he
taught modern urban design concepts and architecture, encouraging
students’ freedom of expression,
until a change in curriculum influenced his departure in 1961. The
book includes illustrations of rarely
shown student projects from the
school’s exhibitions.
Tschumi’s work has relevance for
DOCOMOMO, not only because of its
modern forms and influence, but
From Autos to Architecture:
Fordism and Architectural
Aesthetics in the 20th
Century
David Gartman
Princeton Architectural Press
November 2009
400 pages; b/w illus.
$60 hardcover
Sociologist David Gartman has
given us a strong and unusual treatment of questions formerly of interest only to architectural historians:
why did the Modern movement
arrive here so late, betray its ideals
so quickly and fall out of favor so
swiftly? The easy, obvious answer
rests on an uncomplimentary
assessment of popular taste in the
United States. This book places
responsibility squarely on the market
system.
The “Fordism” in Gartman’s title,
sometimes called “Taylorism,” is
shorthand for the political economy
of large-scale assembly-line based
also because exceptional restorations of several of his buildings by
Swiss architects Richter & Dahl
Roche and Devanthéry & Lamuniere
show the preservation of Modern
architecture as an art in its own
right.
—Nina Rappaport
systems of mass production which
revolutionized industrial methods
and management at the beginning
of the last century.
Armed with Antonio Gramsci’s
prescient grasp of Fordist production,
Gartman wades deeply into the
often confusing realm of architectural history and theory. Specifically,
he addresses “the contradictions…
between economic production and
cultural aesthetics.” From Ford’s
Highland Park and River Rouge
plants Gartman transits the century,
ending with the Disneyfication of
everything.
Citing Corbusier, Gartman shows
how the spare, simple lines and
open spaces of early mass-production
assembly plants in the U.S. inspired
young European architects who
experienced them only as tourists,
while their architectural peers in
the U.S. clung to a timid historicism
and Beaux-Arts clichés, despite such
energetic sallies as the Chicago
School and Art Deco.
Beyond the familiar intersection
of industrial design and functionalist aesthetics, Gartman situates
the work of architects and designers
From Ford’s Highland Park
and River Rouge plants
Gartman transits the century,
ending with the Disneyfication
of everything.
within the widest possible
social/historical context. In so
doing, he seeks to demonstrate that
the European pioneers of modernism
used the monuments and artifacts
of early mass production as
continued next page
DOCOMOMO / Winter 2010 / 13
The Modern Library
continued from page 13
weapons in a struggle with established architectural professionals,
and by extension, the relatively
static class structures prevailing
in Europe as late as World War I.
Contrasting Europe and the U.S.,
he shows how the rapid spread of
Fordism and its products, exemplified by the homely and ubiquitous
Model T, inspired a reaction that
drove U.S. popular culture toward
historicizing sentimentality and
fantasizing obscurantism. In every
area of material production, from
autos to architecture, the reaction
triumphed through the glacial
power of the mass market.
Throughout his book, over
subject matter as vast and varied as
Levittown, Disneyland, the Seagram
Building, the General Motors
Technical Center, la Defense, Parc de
la Villette, Phenomenology, Postmodernism and Deconstructionism,
Gartman repeatedly cross-examines
the premises and conclusions of
20th-century architecture, citing
familiar critics and sources. True to
his purpose, in almost every case he
attempts to illuminate the social
class implications of these phenomena. It is a gargantuan task and the
results not always entirely persuasive. Hardly surprising in an undertaking so boldly ambitious, but as
with any fruitful academic work,
Gartman’s dangling questions pose
challenges for further research.
This book should be helpful to
any student of architecture interested
in the oldest of intellectual puzzles:
How did we get here? and Where
should we go from here?
—Rich Ray
DOCOMOMO / Winter 2010 / 14
Oscar Niemeyer:
Curves of Irreverence
Styliane Philippou
Yale University Press, 2008
414 pages, color and b/w illus.
$65 hardcover
Oscar Niemeyer turned 102 on the
very day (12/15/09) I started this
book note. He is reported to have
said, “Turning 102 is crap; there is
nothing to commemorate.” And, as
usual, he kept right on working.
The three books reviewed here
are just the most recent—and most
lavish—of a series of monographs
devoted to one of the longest architectural careers ever. The first building for which he received published
credit was completed in 1936, and
there are more to come.
In the region of DOCOMOMO
NY/Tri-State, there are no buildings
attributed solely to Niemeyer, but he
originated the basic design concept
for the highly visible United Nations
Headquarters. After considering
numerous schemes, the international committee of architects charged
with designing the UN’s home
unanimously adopted Niemeyer’s
proposal in 1947. (It was subsequently
revised under pressure from Le
Corbusier, Niemeyer’s hero and the
most prestigious member of the
group, whose own scheme had
nevertheless been rejected.)
Actually, a work by Niemeyer,
with countryman Lucio Costa, had
been seen in New York years earlier,
when his Brazil Pavilion opened at
the Worlds Fair of 1939–1940. In
the fair’s largely Art Moderne context,
this pavilion was one of the few
serious essays in Modernism. And,
unlike Alvar Aalto’s celebrated U.S.
debut at the fair, Brazil’s exhibit was
freestanding, not hidden inside an
anonymous envelope. Soon after,
Niemeyer’s architecture figured
prominently in the Museum of
Modern Art’s 1943 exhibit and book,
Brazil Builds, and the 1945 MoMA
publication, Latin America since
1945, with text by Henry-Russell
Hitchcock. In the early 1950s, when
I studied architecture, pictures of
tice and works. Photographs and
drawings are ample, date from various periods, and cover some works
by others that bear on Niemeyer’s
own architecture and the world he
functioned in.
The two complementary Rizzoli
books deal separately with his houses
and all of his other works. The character of these books is clearly indicated by placing the photographer’s
name first on the cover. In each of
them Hess’s text, with pertinent
illustrations, is allocated a fraction
of the total pages, up front. But it is
authoritative and insightful, as are
the concise descriptive paragraphs
The first building for which [Niemeyer] received published
credit was completed in 1936, and there are more to come.
Niemeyer buildings were pinned up
over almost every student’s board.
In 1953 he was invited to head
Harvard’s Graduate School of Design,
but was banned from entering the
U.S. because of his Communist
Party membership.
Of the three books considered
here, Philippou’s covers the architect’s entire career and output, with
thorough-going text coverage of
broader cultural and political developments in Brazil, along with indepth discussion of Niemeyer’s prac-
distributed through the following
portfolios of lush photos. While
most of us are more familiar with
Niemeyer’s nonresidential work—
especially structures at Pampulha
and Brasilia—his many houses
deserve at least as much attention.
If you want to examine
Niemeyer’s accomplishments in
depth—and find out why they are
more than just seductive sculptural
exercises—a mini-library of all three
books would be well worth having.
—John Morris Dixon
Oscar Niemeyer Houses
Oscar Niemeyer Buildings
Photographs by Alan Weintraub
Text by Alan Hess
Rizzoli, 2006
232 pages; color and b/w illus.
$65 hardcover
Photographs by Alan Weintraub
Text by Alan Hess
Rizzoli, 2009
368 pages; color and b/w illus.
$75 hardcover
upcoming
program
Gunnar Birkerts:
Metaphoric Modernist
Introductory essay by Sven
Birkerts; architectural comments
by Martin Schwartz
Edition Axel Menges, 2009
320 pages; color and b/w illus.
$109 hardcover
• His IBM Corporate Computer Center
in Sterling Forest, NY (1970–1972),
a glassy cube dropped in the
woods, clad in subtly playful
variations on the curtain wall.
• His Dance Instruction Building at
the SUNY College at Purchase, NY
(1971–1976), one of the few buildings on that campus to break
through the monotone dreariness
imposed by Barnes’s straitjacket
campus concept.
• His Municipal Fire Station in
Corning, NY (1973–1974), a purely
triangular volume entirely clad in
bright red metal panels.
• His Museum of Glass, Corning, NY
(1976–1980), a bravura display of
Thursday March 18
6:30–8:00 pm
JOHN MORRIS DIXON
Know much about Gunnar Birkerts?
I bet not.
Birkerts is one of the most
creative of the architects whose
careers were launched in Eero
Saarinen’s studio. Among those
disciples were Kevin Roche and John
Dinkeloo (who headed Eero’s successor firm), Cesar Pelli, Robert Venturi
(who blazed a divergent trail), and
Birkerts, who most faithfully embodied the Saarinen DNA: His buildings
differ widely, but tend to be formally
bold and technically adventurous.
Birkerts’ work never showed the
slightest hint of Post-Modernism.
And starting in the 1960s, he was
among the first architects to address
the issues of daylighting, energy conservation, and handicapped access.
Unlike those other Saarinen
office colleagues, Birkerts remained
based in suburban Detroit (although
he recently transferred his reduced
practice to Wellesley, MA). While
most of his major works are in the
Midwest, five significant ones are in
DOCOMOMO NY/Tri-State territory.
RE: MODERN ICONS
THE UNITED NATIONS
CAPITAL MASTER PLAN
Spread showing Dance Building, SUNY College at Purchase, NY, 1971–1976.
glazing, wrapped around curves
that marry the geometric with the
biomorphic.
• His Uris Library Addition, Cornell
University, Ithaca, NY (1980–
1983), one of four undergroundbut-daylit university library expansions he completed across the U.S.
The book’s introductory text by
his son Sven (a well-known essayist
and literary critic) delineates
Birkerts’ arduous and improbable
odyssey. Leaving his native Latvia at
age 16 during the turmoil of World
War II, he was able to study architecture in Stuttgart under a U.S. pro-
Birkerts…most faithfully embodied the Saarinen DNA:
His buildings differ widely, but tend to be formally bold and
technically adventurous.
Birkerts’ most prominent built
work is no doubt the Federal Reserve
Bank in Minneapolis (1967–1973),
its office slab supported by a suspension system spanning a public plaza
that covers secure underground
spaces. Subject of a significant
preservation struggle, the building
has been severely compromised by
a mundane addition.
Other notable Birkerts works
scattered across the U.S. include an
elementary school in Columbus, IN
(1965–1967), a library and a dormitory at Tougaloo College in
Mississippi (1965–1972), the Duluth,
MN, public library (1969–1979), the
Contemporary Art Museum in
Houston (1970–1972), the Domino’s
Pizza corporate headquarters in Ann
Arbor, MI (1984–1998), and the
Kemper Museum of Contemporary
Art in Kansas City (1991–1994).
gram for displaced persons. There
he aspired to work for Saarinen and
managed against great odds to do it.
Unable to return to his native Riga—
or his own mother—for almost 30
years, Birkerts is now, at the age of
84, anticipating construction of two
of his projects there: the Museum of
the Occupation of Latvia and the
Latvian National Library.
—John Morris Dixon
A long-awaited presentation of the
United Nations Capital Master Plan
will take place on March 18 at the
Ford Foundation auditorium. A panel
comprised of the project’s leadership
and key consulting architects and
engineers working on this internationally significant Modern complex
will address issues of the renovation
master plan including preservation
priorities, sustainable renovation,
curtain wall design, building systems
and landscaping. The speakers
include:
Michael Adlerstein, Assistant
Secretary General of the United
Nations, Executive Director of the
United Nations Capital Master Plan
Robert Heintges, R.A. Heintges &
Associates, Curtain wall consultants
and architects for façade restoration/
reconstruction
John Gering, Managing Partner In
Charge, HLW International, Architect
and Structural Engineer
Keith Fitzpatrick, Syska Hennessy
Group, Inc., MEP Engineer
This program is organized by The
Skyscraper Museum in partnership
with The Architectural League of
New York and DOCOMOMO New
York/Tri-State.
RSVP required:
[email protected]
Members of the above groups free;
General $10; Students/Seniors $5
The programs of The Skyscraper Museum
are supported, in part, by public funds from
the New York State Council on the Arts, a
state agency and The New York City
Department of Cultural Affairs.
DOCOMOMO / Winter 2010 / 15
Box 250532
New York, NY 10025
NEWSLETTER 2010/No.1
The New York/Tri-State newsletter is made possible by
generous financial support from Brent Harris and the
volunteers below who contributed content for this issue.
John Arbuckle
John Morris Dixon
Gregory Dietrich
Hänsel Hernández
Kyle Johnson
Sean Khorsandi
Erik Neil
Nina Rappaport
Richard Ray
Susan Roy
Virginia Smith
Kathleen Randall, Editor
Comments, articles and news items are welcome
email: [email protected]
UN PHOTOGRAPH, 1954
SAVE THE DATE
Franzen House Event • May 8
Re: Modern Icons - The UN Capital Master Plan • March 18
Sunset cocktails and more. Join us for a rare opportunity to
see the Ulrich Franzen House (1955) in Rye, NY.
Presented by the Skyscraper Museum in partnership with The Architectural
League and DOCOMOMO New York/Tri-State. Details page 15