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A federal official ensures that the United States is finally getting a civic
architecture all its own.
By Karen E. Steen
January 2002
Architect Alex Washburn remembers the day in early 1994 when, as a new legislative
aide to Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, he was pursuing a reform bill that
would have monitored the design quality of federal buildings: "I started
doing all the due diligence you do in getting legislation together. And
then I got a call from this very excitable person. He was calling from the
GSA, and his name was Ed Feiner."
Feiner, chief architect of the General Services Administration (GSA), the
real estate arm of the federal government, was against the legislation.
Washburn, curious to learn why, agreed to a meeting. "As soon as you
meet him you understand what an energetic and creative person he is,"
Washburn says. "He showed me that what was needed was not some piece
of legislation forming a commission but one incredibly dedicated person
who had figured out the system from the inside--and he had done that."
To hear how Feiner turned the huge ship of the GSA away from building what
he calls "K-Mart versions of midcentury Modern" to creating award-winning
courthouses by Richard Meier and Henry Cobb is to wonder how any one human
being could take on such a task. To meet him is to wonder no more. He talks
a mile a minute--with the New York accent of a soft-spoken Woody Allen--as
he gives a tour of the construction site that will soon be his department's
new offices: synchronized plasma screens will display the entire GSA
portfolio; copper coils filled with water will heat and cool rooms
in lieu of air-conditioning and radiators; and white-leather Barcelona chairs
will greet visitors in the reception area. Feiner's passion for the new
is as unexpected in a civil servant as the combination of his military brush
cut, snakeskin cowboy boots, and stylish three-button suit. And it's only
the beginning of what makes him a great client. His enthusiasm for design
is palpable (his blue eyes twinkle as he proclaims various projects "fantastic"
and "wonderful"), yet it never outshines his awareness
of the GSA's responsibility as a federal agency. "We want to raise
the mutual respect between the American people and their government,"
Feiner says. "If a building looks cheap and shoddy, without any respect
for that community, it is going to send a message."
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The narrowness of Thom Mayne's design (2005; above) allows natural light
to fill the interiors.
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Ralph Johnson's courthouse (2000; above), updates the four icons of
traditional American courthouse design: the portal, the column, the
rotunda, and the cupola.
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When he applied to work at the GSA in 1980, Feiner was the only applicant
to submit a portfolio. He got the job--and a mandate from his boss to change
the direction of federal architecture. The Design Excellence Program Feiner
has since created is well documented as a dramatic shift in both the way
the agency selects architects and the kind of buildings it gets in return.
The way it came about is a lesson in good clientship. When the agency's
design awards kept going only to historic-preservation projects, Feiner
and Design Excellence director Marilyn Farley asked architects what the
GSA could be doing to create new award-winning buildings. ("I
said, 'We can't keep giving awards to Cass Gilbert,'" Feiner recalls.
"'He's been dead for God knows how many years!'") The resulting
suggestions--from architects such as Hugh Hardy, Gene Kohn, and Margaret
McCurry--became the Design Excellence Program. With a streamlined process
that allows architects to submit portfolios rather than many-paged applications
for projects, the GSA attracted younger, smaller, more experimental firms.
Feiner likes to point out that he has just contracted the country's first
federal building by a woman (Carol Ross Barney's Oklahoma City federal complex)
and the first federal courthouse by an African American (the Matthew
J. Perry courthouse, in Columbia, South Carolina, by Ralph Jackson).
Ross Barney praises Feiner: "He's approachable--a very ordinary guy--but
he's also a savvy politician." Though GSA commissions can fall through
(her design for a courthouse in Cape Gerardo, Missouri, for example, was
killed by a conservative representative), Ross Barney says Feiner's fantastic
qualities keep her coming back. "He keeps trying to find the path
we can go down," she says. "Sometimes you have clients who support
you so far and then abandon you, and you become the target. He doesn't do
that."
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