John Silber's Architecture of the Absurd
How Genius Disfigured A Practical Art
By: Mark Favermann - Oct 26, 2008
Architecture of the Absurd
How "Genius" Disfigured A Practical Art
By John Silber
Published by The Quantuck Lane Press, New York
91 Pages
Published in November 2007
For many years, the most conservative, outspoken high profile person on all things architecture has been Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales. Charles' comments are often laughable. To many people, his life is not taken seriously, so his comments on contemporary architecture are not given much gravitas. With the writing of this short but rambling book, former Boston University President and former philosophy professor, John Silber, has attempted to take the undistinguished mantle of contemporary architectural curmudgeon from Prince Charles.
Though Dr. Silber has always taken himself very seriously, his comments here on architecture are so confused that they often seem almost amusing or even a bit whacky. As a philosopher, he of all people should realize that pomposity and and a little bit of knowledge do not make a thoughtful critical argument.
Dr. Silber has a Phd in philosophy. Somehow, because his less than notable father was a 19th Century European-trained architect (1881-1957) who settled in San Antonio, Texas, Silber, reckons through his DNA, limited youthful assistance of his old man, his role as president of Boston University and extensive travels, that he is an expert on all things architectural--spacial relationships, scale, material usage, conceptual design schemes, imagination and functionality. In other words, the logic of architectural truth and beauty is somehow the purview of this Kantian philosopher.
To Silber, most modern or contemporary star architects consider themselves sculptors who don't give a damn about their clients, budget constraints, the physical needs of the building occupants, architectural context or even know basic architectural principals. This is blatant hogwash. Some of the "genius" architects he trashes include Josep Luis Sert, Le Corbusier, Frank Gehry, Daniel Libeskind and Steven Holl. He holds them all in contempt.
Somehow, Antonio Gaudi makes complete logic to Silber, even though Gaudi was one of the most eccentric and ego-driven of architects of the early 20th Century. Somehow, he likes Santiago Calatrava as well, perhaps the most sculptural of contemporary star architects. And he thinks that the architects that he hired to do mostly uninspired, disjointed mediocre work during his tenure at Boston University are all masters of their craft. No one, I repeat no one, visits BU to see its lovely campus or view its great architecture.
By almost any standard, the gifted Gaudi was an eccentric architect. His Modernista style was a radical Spanish Art Nouveau design expression. Even his death was probably hastened by his personal eccentricity--he dressed like a bum. When he was hit by a trolly, his appearance delayed him being rushed to hospital, and he died. A century later, Gaudi's fantastic forms are still not clearly understood. Perhaps due to his uniqueness, Gaudi had no architectural school or followers of his style.
It is baffling that a less than imaginative Dr. Silber could appreciate Gaudi's work, even see a logic in it. Oddly, Silber justifies Gaudi's output by his deep Catholic faith. To Silber, this gave a structure to Gaudi's designs--strangely his deep faith justified all. But other major architectural figures he dismisses out of hand for being figures on the margins designing absurd architecture.
Silber dismisses the Swiss/French architectural theorist and 20th Century icon Le Corbusier as a total megalomaniac. This could be true. He really does not like Le Corbusier. Apparently, minimalism is not Silber's thing. Nor is Cubism. Neither is imagination, abstraction or asymmetry. Feeling his architectural descriptions are nonsense, Silber hates Corbu's design philosophy, his structures and probably his signature eyeglasses.
He deals harshly with Le Corbusier's friend and colleague, Jose Luis Sert, the former Dean of Harvard's Graduate School of Design. He takes to task Sert's Peabody Terrace, Harvard's married graduate student apartments on the Charles River in Cambridge, MA., and his buildings done at Boston University before Silber was appointed president. John Silber feels that Sert was professionally incompetent and insensitive to clients and environmental context. Sert's buildings have not held up well either aesthetically or structurally.
Dr. Silber considers I. M. Pei to be a complete dunderhead as well because his John Hancock Building did not use smaller windows and more mullions to reduce the expanse of glass. An engineer that Silber respected actually suggested it. Pei, to Silber's consternation, did not listen. Of course, the building would not have looked the same. How dare Pei place the glass pyramids in the Louvre's courtyard instead of 200 feet away where it would not interrupt the view of the extended overly large facade and gargantuan courtyard. Silber is incredulous over that. Along the way, Silber explains the transparent "walls" of Saint Mark's Square in Venice and makes a case for the very strange concept of the transparency of medieval cathedrals. The what?
A stronger example of Silber's outrage is directed at Frank Gehry. He literally abhors his work. Silber relishes in the issue of Gehry's Walt Disney Concert Hall in LA, before it was modified at additional expense, made rooms of nearby condominiums unbearably warm causing their air-conditioning costs to skyrocket and created hot spots on adjacent sidewalks hotter than normal. This is LA. Sidewalks there can probably be 120 degrees on a normaly hot day. He hates Gehry's Fisher Center arts building at Bard College too. Silber also hates Gehry's Stata Center at MIT as well. An article on this building appeared in Berkshirefinearts, Link to MIT Gehry article..
Silber says a lot of outragous things like Picasso was a fringe artist, and Cubism is a scientifically irrational viewpoint. Irrationally scientific? He goes on and on. This book is evocative of another polemic against modern architecture, From Our House to the Bauhaus by Tom Wolfe, an admirer of Silber. The author used him as a model for a character in his 1998 novel A Man in Full. Wolfe is another know-it-all with retro inclinations. This writer gives more chuckle in his criticism and is softer in his cynicism. Unlike Silber, he at least can laugh at himself occasionally.
It should be remembered that John Silber came within 77,000 votes of becoming governor of Massachusetts in 1990. Many voters who were fed up with Massachusetts lawmakers liked Silber's take-no-prisoners style. But he made so many impolitic remarks that they actually became known as "Silber Shockers." This Architecture of the Absurd treatise aptly reflects his overall and overbearing personal manner and style.
However, even a stopped clock is right twice a day. So, Dr. Silber does make a few, but very few, good points. Frank Gehry is big on image and not always as good on details and finish. A case in point is the Stata Center at MIT. It really has flaws and drawbacks for such an expensive building. Stephen Holl's prize-winning perforated MIT undergraduate dorm seems extremely uncomfortable. And the One Western Avenue Harvard graduate dorm by Machado and Silvetti Associates, two long time Harvard Graduate School of Design professors, may be one of the worst looking edifices built in the last decade.
Sort of like the fat guy who, because he eats so much, is an expert on nutrition, John Silber considers himself an architectural critic because he oversaw one of the worst, major college campus master plans of the last half century. It is incoherent, full of towers that suggest rejected mid 20th Century housing projects and very little green space in a hard, concrete urban setting. According to Silber, his Boston University building program developed almost 14,000,000 square feet of space and underscores him as an architecture critic. This statistic suggests that the vast mostly gaudy and glitzy development projects of Donald Trump make him an expert on architecture as well. Not close.
Dr. Silber has so many disconnected and just wrong ideas about architecture that their refutation could go on and on. But, his quality of architectural criticism here does not deserve such extended attention. Actually a hyperventilating essay, Architecture of the Absurd is a puffy polemic, pompously written, yet well illustrated and passionately wrong.