On Outsider Architecture

Steiner's GoetheanumRudolf Steiner’s First Goetheanum
I thought I would share my comment on Lebbeus Woods blog, Outsider Architecture:

Regarding Steiner: I agree that in the larger profession his works are slighted or relegated to a minor role vastly disproportionate to his influence. While we studied him at school (Cincinnati) I think Steiner presents a difficult square peg for historians to fit in their round holes; his expressionist work is hard to place – is he like Corbusier or like Saarinen (???) – and he had the disadvantage of building between two major wars and then, as you point out, the Modern movement shifted into the International Style.
As for other outsider architects Christopher Alexander comes to mind, only because his work is met with almost universal disdain when I bridge his name and work. His debate with Peter Eisenman while legendary certainly cemented his status as an outsider.

Original NY Times Book Review of The Death and Life of Great American Cities

In preparation for the inaugural smogr book club’s reading of The Death and Life of Great American Cities, I found the original November 5, 1961 New York Times book review entitled: Neighbors Are Needed .
A passage:

Reading this volume, one almost gets the impression of a golden age before the Garden City and the High Rise enthusiasts appeared on the scene. For Mrs. Jacobs mainly blames their ideas, or bastardized versions of them for what is wrong with our cities. The irony is that most of the things she objects to are the effects of rising income and economies on parents hungry for more space for themselves and the kids. The reformers shared, perhaps even anticipated, this hunger: so that in effect, what the author really resents is their failure to buck the trend or to provide more sophisticated living styles.
…
Jane Jacobs’ book should help to swing reformist zeal in favor of urbanity and the big city. If so, it might well become the most influential work on cities since Lewis Mumford’s classic, “The Culture of Cities.” It has somewhat comparable virtues and defects. Not quite as long or comprehensive, it is wittier, more optimistic, less scholarly and even more pontifical. The style is crisp, pungent and engaging; and like its illustrious predecessor, the book is crammed with arresting insights as well as with loose, sprightly generalizations.
A great book, like a great man, “is a strategic point in the campaign of history, and part of its greatness consists in being there.” For all its weaknesses, Jane Jacobs has written such a book. Readers will vehemently agree and disagree with the views; but few of them will go through the volume without looking at their streets and neighborhoods a little differently, a little more sensitively. After all, it is the widespread lack of such sensitivity, especially among those who matter, which is perhaps what is most wrong with our cities today.

Very true.
It isn’t too late to start reading and participating in the Great American Cities smogr book club. See the book club explanation and start reading!

Jane Jacobs – The Death and Life of Great American Cities

janejacobs-TDaLoGAC.jpg
In celebration of The Municipal Arts Society’s exhibition, Jane Jacobs and the Future of New York, I’ve decided to reread Jane Jacobs’ seminal work The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Much of what will be showcased on smogr will be for my personal notes and to use this process to work through my thoughts on Jacobs, the greater question of urbanity and the effects of Mid Century Modernism on the city and Polis. I’m going to do something new, and turn on comments for each book club entry, and we can see what sorts of conversations we can have. Please tune your browsers to the main page, smogr book club – The Death and Life of Great American Cities to follow along, or just periodically return to the main page for updates. A housekeeping note: I am working off the 1993 Modern Library New York version, your versions may differ. Use the following link and you can kick back some money my way: The Death and Life of Great American Cities.
With that taken care of, I am sure you are asking why should we even review Great American Cities anyway? Why should we discuss a book that is over 46 years old, based on a reaction to an orthodoxy which has long been deemed invalid, and potentially harmful? Hasn’t Jane Jacobs won? Hasn’t monolithic, centrally planned construction been eradicated from today’s cities?
In the end, the forces which Jacobs spent her entire life fighting are still at work, and while urban cores are regenerating throughout the US, her thesis and notes on successful cities are still valid today. I am still initially doubtful that Jacobs is the touchstone which all good wisdom falls from, but I am a receptive mind on many matters.
What is extraordinary is that while the New York City Jane Jacobs lived in is so radically different from my New York City, her thoughts on urbanism and New York City were such a radical departure from the norm at the time, and frankly still is a departure from ideologies currently en vogue (New Urbanism – but more on that later). What is interesting about this book is that you can read it on two levels: a history of the fight of a neighborhood against colossal power or an antiquated tome regarding outdated ideas or a blueprint of how to approach and live in the polis.
OK, so you sold me; how is this going to work?
I don’t really know – time permitting, we should be able to get through a chapter every two weeks. I plan on posting my notes on the chapter and then a summary. As the inaugural book club progresses, I am sure that the format will morph into a form distinctly different from what I imagined. But thus is the power of the Internet – please comment on ways I can make this a better experience for my one reader.
Please begin reading the Introduction, which consists of two parts:

  • Thesis statement, and
  • History of orthodox planning circa 1960

I will post my notes near the end of the week and next week post my summary and questions. With that said, welcome to the Inaugural Smogr Book Club!