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 When they unite form and function, they both take you where you want to go. President & CEO October 2001 I have always enjoyed looking at objects and places. I like to think of buildings as something in between the two. As a boy my passion was boats. In the summertime, I was surrounded by these beautiful objects. In fact, it was by observing boats carefully that I began to develop my ideas about beauty. Function was always part of the equation. And sailboats became a lifelong interest, evaluated for speed, smooth entry through the water, and the elegance of the sheer lines. A good boat had to have all of these characteristics. In my teens I became interested in cars. I always looked for the new models released by the Big Three manufacturers during the 1950s. They made news then. My classmates and I followed the new introductions closely--and probably would have to this day, but when yearly changes in style became almost nonexistent, our interest in cars evaporated. About the same time, my interest in buildings began to increase. In fact, it eventually led to my founding Metropolis. For me, buildings also need to be functional in order to be beautiful. In those early years I believed that architecture was a historic progression of ideas about living, and looked forward to new buildings by Modernist architects to improve our built environment. What I saw led me to believe in architecture's grand possibilities. These became part of our everyday conversation. A friend's father worked at Lever House, designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. Eric Saarinen was a classmate, and we followed his father's work--the Hockey rink at Yale; the TWA terminal at JFK Airport; and the CBS Building on Sixth Avenue in Manhattan. I even liked Marcel Breuer's Pan Am Building--probably to spite my grandmother, who felt it ruined the view from her 16th-floor apartment building on Park Avenue. So just as I had learned intuitively that a good boat was fast and looked good, I expected a good building to function well and look beautiful. Then, as I learned about the failures of Modern and, later, Postmodern architecture, I searched for an understanding of these failures. To my mind, it had to do with the misunderstood functions of buildings and architects pushing their favorite forms while sidestepping functionality when it conflicted with their forms. To this day, however, I believe that if an architect really addresses the needs of future users of a building in his or her design, form really can follow function--and that great buildings, just like really fast sailboats, are both beautiful and work as they're intended to. This past summer I saw the two New York exhibits on the work of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, held at the Museum of Modern Art (the Berlin years) and the Whitney Museum (the American years). I was struck by Mies's wish to incorporate details into his buildings that can only be characterized as "decorative." His forms seem to derive from elements that symbolized his style rather than those that stress function. In fact, did he seriously concern himself with function? Or was he just trying to abstract forms? Was his use of I-beams on the exterior of the Seagram Building meant to express function? Or did it simply express a new artistic style that was consistent with the Abstract Expressionism of the early 1950s? I was also interested to see the curators' selections for the two shows, which reflected two very different theories about this iconic Modernist architect. Mies in Berlin revealed some unfamiliar and very traditional early work, as well as how he reinvented himself and was strongly influenced by his artistic circles. Mies in America stressed the conventional interpretation of Mies as a form-giver. It worries me that what we're seeing in these shows is subjective, relativistic, rather than thoughtful, humanistic assessments of the legacy of an influential architect. How will Mies be reinterpreted in 20 years? How will architectural history be rewritten? Perhaps more people will start looking at buildings like they do sailboats, and evaluate them accordingly. They are, after all, both successful if they look good, keep you alive, keep you moving, and get you where you want to go. |
