Eisenhower Memorial, Washington, D.C.
Early Design Image from designboom
The Eisenhower Memorial competition and project have stirred a remarkable polemic, the center of which is not President Eisenhower or Washington, D.C. but Frank Gehry and the values he promulgates.
Current Design, image from inhabitat
I am writing not as an enemy of Mr. Gehry but as a lover of what the nation’s capital for two centuries promised to be, could have been and may still become. We both teach at Yale School of Architecture, Dean Robert A.M. Stern’s academic spaceship allowing contrary positions to be taught and debated in polite conditions. Against expectations I was charmed by Gehry’s Edgemar development, which housed the Santa Monica Museum of Art, and positively awed by the Bilbao Guggenheim. That Gehry is a great artist I have no doubt, but talent and determination are no warrant against confusion, nor are they a guaranty to produce great art. Looking at his work and reading his justifications I conclude that Mr. Gehry is a great but greatly confused artist, who was appointed by a commission who shares his intellectual confusion and distaste of a classical Washington, D.C.
They form a powerful fraternity, believing in the exclusive legitimacy of Modernism, a theory that has been brain-dead for half a century but keeps dominating positions in academia and its dependent culture industry.
Early design image from designboom
Current Design, image from inhabitat
This theory, at first fired by fossil fuel energies combined to an atavistic belief in infinite progress, is now held alive by fear of regression. The fear of backwardness is what blinds the believers to the technological treasure house of traditional architecture and urbanism. The ensuing technological and artistic amnesia is responsible for the cataclysmic degradation of the built environment, of which the Southwest quadrant of Washington, D.C., where the Eisenhower Memorial is to be located, is a notorious demonstration.
Mr. Gehry is well-known for buildings whose forms suggest not the “frozen music” of Classicism, but frozen melt-down and explosion, paralyzed tremor and arrested collapse. Indeed the remnants of the World Trade Center were eerily reminiscent of Gehry’s style. He justifies his designs as being uniquely expressive of the “creative chaos and energy” that, according to him, democracy stands for and engenders. If his proposition were true, that “creative chaos and energy” would indeed not only affect all building design but equally that of tools, vehicles, machinery, engineering works, agriculture, cooking, language. Why would architecture and art have to be the lone bearers of epochal stigmata? As a militant modernist and post-modernist he strongly believes that Classicism, Traditional Architecture and Urbanism are and should be passé. He frivolously overlooks the fact that American democracy and institutions are to this day uniquely associated with and symbolized by Classical and Traditional Architecture, and that 99% of private residential architecture is of traditional orientation, if not conception.
Early design image from designboom
Surprisingly the Eisenhower Memorial design contains almost none of the known Gehry-box of tricks. His giant etched chain-link curtain, first applied in 1979 to hide an ungracious parking garage at Santa Monica Place, is resurrected for Eisenhower to screen the equally graceless facade of the Department of Education. The chain-link aesthetic, far from being original, is a widespread formula used since the early 1950s in Germany by Egon Eiermann to dress up superstores. The American Edward Durell Stone did the same to new U.S. Embassies around the world. The screening of banal buildings with a variety of metallic and synthetic “textiles” is currently a worldwide fashion. Mr. Gehry claims to be a contextualist, however he ignores and condemns the operative technology of traditional urban and architectural settings, his signature language is self-limited to an architectural “newspeak” hemmed-in between German Rationalism (Mies, Gropius) and German Expressionism (Finsterlin, Schwitters, Murnau). The Gehry style is a century old; it seems “innovative” only to the ignorant.
Early design image from designboom
Current Design, image from inhabitat
PROVOCATION ENGENDERING PROTEST
That Eisenhower, a great general and president, should be remembered on that location, in that scale and style of architecture is a provocation. The foreseeable and justified answer to willful provocation is protest. There has not only been growing criticism but the National Civic Art Society (NCAS) and the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art (ICAA) held a Counterproposal Competition that showed serious alternatives contributing to a completion rather than a disfiguration of Pierre L’Enfant’s plan for the capital. Classicism is an art form and craft that, contrary to Mr. Gehry’s opinions, is capably practiced by many contemporary architects and craftsmen, taught by universities and championed by democratic professional and civic institutions. Mr. Gehry’s wholesale condemnation contradicts his professed democratic spirit of toleration and his advocacy of heterogeneity.
COST of COMPETITION
The Eisenhower Memorial Competition cost $19 million while the Counterproposal Competition organized by the NCAS and ICAA spent a mere $2,000.
COST of MONUMENT
The WWII memorial, two of which could fit on the Eisenhower Square site, cost $182 million. It was realized in natural stone and traditional techniques. It is foreseeable that the XXL size and experimental nature of the Gehry scheme will cost more than the announced $112.5 million. Monuments are expensive and that is why in D.C. they traditionally are kept at a fraction of the proposed expanse. Mr. Gehry cannot be blamed for the choice of site but he alone is responsible for sprawling his memorial over an entire city block.
For $112.5 million a fine classical building can be built with grand proportions and the finest materials. Instead, an oversized forecourt without a building is proposed here, a Bernini Colonnade without a St. Peter’s, so to speak.
MEANING OF THE MONUMENTS
What can possibly be the meaning of a monument without a center or focus? A ruined temple, a roofless structure with 10 pilotis standing? Why 10 raw tubes, recently reduced from the original 13? Was that slimming down due to a budget cutting measure or to the ill-fated reputation of number 13? Who is to explain?
The scale and character of the blotted tagged fence relates more to highway billboards and graffiti than to the historic tapestry it declaredly refers to. The giant illustrated screens intend to create a sacred memorial area, but the devotional imagery is perceived like a mere backdrop through a thicket of trees, best read from the outside. The centerless monument effectively amounts to an open-air cinema overtaken by a wild-growth of sycamore. An anti-monument if there can be such a thing.
SIZE OF THE MONUMENT
My guess is that there is no intended meaning in the extravagant size. Why should the Eisenhower memorial be over twice the size of WWII Memorial? Why should it be so vast as to comfortably house two Lincoln Memorials, two Washington Monuments, and two Jefferson Memorials all six at once?
The fact that these three memorials can be fitted on site, leaving an ample piazza between them, demonstrates that, to put it mildly, the organizers are unconscious of the sheer size of the undertaking they are embarked on. [See illustration below].
CHARACTER OF CONTEXT and STYLE OF ARCHITECTURE
President Eisenhower is known to have been highly critical of modernist art. The American Battle Monuments Commission, on which he served as an officer, became famous in the U.S., and after WWII around the world, for a supremely serene, restrained, elegant and modern form of architectural and landscaping Classicism, largely indebted to the spirit that guided the 1901-2 McMillan Commission Plan that created the National Mall as we know it. The post-war redevelopment of the Southwest D.C. neighborhood, beyond the human tragedy of wholesale clearing an entire urban community, replaced L’Enfant’s urban armature and network of streets and squares with a soulless nowhere. The gruesome operation was a crucible for imposing on Washington, D.C. the modernist vision so detested by Eisenhower, abhorred by the users and occasional visitors and avoided and ignored by those who have no obligatory business there.
Washington, DC urban Renaissance?
Vocally critical, even disgusted by modernist art and architecture, if Eisenhower was apparently upset about the Air Force Academy Chapel by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, how distraught must he have been with the brave new world taking command over the Southwest quadrant. Yet that is precisely the architectural context the Memorial Commission elects as location and Mr. Gehry respects and emulates in scale, style, proportion and character: a straight, undiluted old fashioned modernism. In my opinion his expressionist design formulae would yet effect a welcome respite from the debilitating boredom of the area.
As demonstrated by the Counterproposal Competition, the New Eisenhower Square can also become the occasion for a critically needed Washington, D.C. urban Renaissance, resurrecting the human scale, the measure, color, variety and soul of the original L’Enfant vision, as brilliantly demonstrated by Francisco Ruiz’s proposal (3rd prize in the Counterproposal Competition) symbolically much better attuned with Eisenhower and his legacy.
CONCLUSION
I am not of those who believe that this memorial will violate the integrity of Washington, D.C. in some new way. That herculean task has already been superbly accomplished. Deplorably, if this project goes ahead, we will miss yet another great occasion to finally stop the self-destructive rollercoaster which has been disfiguring the Nation’s capital and soul for three-score years.
Scale study showing National Air and Space Museum (A), Jefferson Memorial (B), Washington Monument (C), Lincoln Memorial (D), and U.S. Department of Education (E). (Study by Léon Krier adapted from The Monumental and Commercial Center of the National Capital by Joseph Passonneau & Partners, 1996.)
Leon Krier is an architect, architecture theorist, and urban planner. He is known for his many manifestoes that include topics such as zoning and megacities.
Note: Updated design images have been added to this piece following the original posting.
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BACK TO TOP
Leon Krier’s article is concise, brilliant and incisive. He proposes a sophisticated argumentation in subtle layers of elegant but devastating deconstruction of both the form, character, style and scale of Gehry’s Eisenhower Monument proposal. If the Gehry proposal survives this fatal criticism it can only mean that Washington is hopelessly detached from any common sense and any reasonable bond of intelligence and confidence to the greatest culture of democracy, the most refined artistic architectural traditions of Washington and the highest aspirations of citizenship. As Adolf Loos said :”Every city has the architects it deserves”…Happy Valentine!
Comment by Lucien Steil — February 14, 2012, @ 3:52 pm
What a well-deserved, staggering critique of a design that should go no farther than the next review meeting. Any memorial in Washington, D.C. should ennoble the city and add to L’Enfant’s plan, rather than further devastating an already broken part of the city. The Eisenhower Memorial Commission had no charge to “reinvent” what it means to design a memorial. They overstepped their mandate. The NCPC must meet their mission to protect and enhance the historic, cultural, and natural resources of the national capital. Reject the Gehry design and open a competition to ideas worthy of our best selves.
Comment by Christine Franck — February 14, 2012, @ 4:23 pm
Krier’s scale study brilliantly exposes the fatal gigantism of the Gehry scheme, while simultaneously suggesting one solution to Washington’s perennial search for monument sites. The key is to scale monuments to both the deeds memorialized and the means at hand—and to design them in such a way that they peacefully cohabit to create an ensemble that is greater than the sum of its parts. Leon’s assemblage suggests the character of the corral of ancient temples exposed in the Largo di Torre Argentina in Rome. This comparison is also telling, as the Largo measures a mere 175’ x 300’ for the excavation site (325’ x 525’ for the urban void) compared to the 275’ x 600’ (400’ x 775 face to face of buildings) expanse allotted the Eisenhower Memorial. The Largo Argentina is a very large space—large enough to contain not just the quartet of ancient Roman temples, but a major bus transfer connection as well. We have a tendency to site monuments in a void, subject to long site lines, both of which diminish the impact of all but the most gargantuan. Ancient Roman practice set large monuments in tightly confined spaces, forcing close views which magnified the impact and apparent size. It is fascinating to see through Leon’s eyes the familiar monuments of Washington set not in a vastly overscaled romantic landscape, but an urban context, and then to imagine how much more impressive each would seem.
Roy
Comment by Roy Lewis — February 14, 2012, @ 5:22 pm
Leon Krier is among the first to realize that indiscriminate toleration, posing as the guarantor of democratic freedom, has thrown architecture into disarray. His view of the city as a document of intelligence - comprising the form and policy of an ethical vision, or constitution, of a Nation - is the antithesis of the concept of the disposable, commodified, nihilistic, plug-in city of industrialized & unintellectual kitsch.
Comment by Duncan McRoberts — February 14, 2012, @ 6:48 pm
Krier effectively puts on the appearance of a windbag in love with the sound of his own (internal) voice, but he’s not wrong here.
Comment by j.b. diGriz — February 15, 2012, @ 2:54 am
Please update the images in your article- the design boom photos above are nearly 2 years out of date. Perhaps this is an intentional irony as Mr. Krier certainly poses many challenges to the time space continuum in his claims of Mr. Gehry’s work being a century old, and seeming “innovative” only to the ignorant.
For another POV I recommend this excellent Frank Endicott piece (courtesy @blairkamin):
http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/review-frank-gehrys-eisenhower-memorial-reinvigorates-the-genre/2011/12/13/gIQAAT4RwO_story.html
I’m a little surprised that these tea-partyish jibes could neglect the significance of the number 13, though happy to see the placement of the screens (and therefore number of pylons) seems to have been further distilled, and, contrary to the protests of memorial gigantism, it appears they’re proposing a larger more “useful” park.
Comment by Padraic Cassidy — February 15, 2012, @ 3:13 pm
Thank you for the comment, we’ve added additional images and delineated which are the current and earlier design photos.
Comment by Ryan Cunningham — February 15, 2012, @ 4:50 pm
We all love Frank Gehry, he is a genius, a titan of modern architecture/ but does Frank Gehry love us?
Comment by Lucien Steil — February 16, 2012, @ 5:53 am
Gehry’s design for the Eisenhower Memorial is terrible, but a “traditional” alternative would be far worse. This is the 21st century — we do not build buildings the way we did before World War II, nor should we, since to do so would be irresponsible environmentally, socially, and culturally. The irony of the Gehry design is that it is, in fact, too classical in spirit — pompous, rigid, and overscaled. I am sure I speak for many of my fellow Washingtonians when I say that we are tired of having outsiders dictate the form of our city — we envision a modern, innovative, and sustainable city that respects its past while looking toward the future.
Comment by Nathaniel Martin — February 16, 2012, @ 2:10 pm
This argument about building “for our time” was thoroughly debunked by Mr. Kreir. The inconvenient truth for modernism’s acolytes is that today’s modernism is firmly rooted in the early part of the last century. All present is reliant on the past, a truth in architecture, mathematics, biology and any other human endeavor. If one were to follow that logic for even a minute, you would have to disqualify just about every cultural milestone of our history. Like the political absolutism of 20th century Communist regimes, ignorance of history is essential to indoctrination and acquiescence.
I guess it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the previous commentator said, “we are tired of having outsiders dictate the form of our city” despite the fact that Mr. L’Enfant, a Frenchman, designed Washington. History has never been a strong suite of modernists. Perhaps a bigger irony is that we should still be subject to this mideaval thinking that says we can’t pick the best solutions from empirical evidence, rather we must obey the dictates from the discredited priesthood of modernism. Another argument elegantly dispatched by Mr. Kreir.
Comment by Daniel Morales — February 17, 2012, @ 7:38 am
Let the nation say that the monumental core of Washington, at least, belongs to us and that a memorial to one of the nation’s generals speaks for and about us all. The outsiders, in my view, are those dedicated to abstract style and a history of twentieth-century architecture revised to equate this one style to democracy; these outsiders should not force on us yet another artistic signature in this style. We, the People, and the Eisenhower family should have the choice of a monument to which rational judgments of beauty agree: honorable and beautiful. And yes, a monument attuned to long-held standards of beauty and bearing a meaning and message for us all can be innovative, sustainable, and importantly authentic to the present (just as democracy is both ancient and worth fighting for its authenticity in the present).
Comment by Christopher C. Miller, Ph.D. — February 17, 2012, @ 1:04 pm
the above comments (including krier’s piece) are all very wordy but empty ways of saying that ‘fit’ should always trump design. mr krier hasn’t debunked anything for anyone but the choir to whom he’s preaching. mr miller’s citation of ‘long-held standards of beauty’ is simply a way of saying that some people’s standards are of more value than others’. work that continues classical traditions are certainly suitable for many projects, but they can’t be seen as the only valid choice for development of our the city in the 21st century.
Comment by Steven Ward — February 18, 2012, @ 8:53 am
The word Classical or Traditional for a long time has triggered in people’s mind - old, monumental and outdated. I think this is due to the fact that we learn from a very young age that everything in the 21st century is technological advance, innovative and has surpassed all achievements of the past. To try and design buildings based on tradition, means you are being out-of-date and non-fashionable. But let us for once believe that our ancestors knew something and learn from it. We don’t have to design always as they did, nor do we have to live our life as they did. But why can’t we take all the experience they gathered and learn from it.
Taking things forward from here, can we incorporate - technology with tradition? Do we truly believe that by dismissing everything that stands for logic and by designing based on our whims and wishes, we are being good architects? Aren’t we subjecting others (people who actually use the building) to our half baked experiments?? Imagine ten whimsical buildings all around each other, maybe we are leaning towards a Disneyland more than anything else.
Comment by Krupali Krusche — February 18, 2012, @ 10:33 pm
Rather than traditional versus modernist, this debate should be framed as humanist vs. technology based architectural design. Almost all buildings comply with the basic functional and engineering requirements, or they wouldn’t be built. The difference lies in the artistic realm.
Before the advent of modernism, it was assumed that regardless of style, architecture should persue sensual beauty as a form of artistic and cultural expression through the study of composition, rhythm, and pattern. Modernism upended this with its emphasis on technology as a substitute for sensual beauty. While there are many modernist buildings that a lay person would recognize as striving to be beautiful, they tend to be the exception. Many can be found in the early modernist buildings of America, before the European masters took over the main institutions of Academia. That’s to say they employed modernism as a style rather than the gospel.
If architectural schools today had the courage to move beyond modernist dogma and speak honestly about style and beauty, my guess is young architects would not only be happier, but more successful. As a practicing archtiect, when I get the odd request for a modernist styled building, I enjoy designing it as much as the next style, but it’s a lie to teach aspiring archtiects that people will be lining up to drink from their fountain head of sacred knowledge.
Comment by Daniel Morales — February 20, 2012, @ 9:04 am
Presdent Eisenhower was an ordinary guy, a man of Pennsylvania German heritage who managed to lead the West to victory in World War Two. His ancestors ,like some of mine, moved to Kansas at one point. Ike loved his farm at Gettysburg. Mamie loved to shop at the the country store which still exists in Biglervile Pa, the one with the quilts hanging all around the front porch. Isn’t there something in this simplicity that could be conveyed by architects?
Comment by Richard Schmoyer — February 20, 2012, @ 10:29 am
What? and you guys think the WWII memorial is a success? THAT is an example of this rampant nostalgic neo-neo-classicism. Bet you think the FDR memorial is just a bust too!
Comment by Greg Johnson — February 29, 2012, @ 1:30 pm
Yeah, everytime I see all those people crowding the WWII memorial, all I think is “what a bunch of nostalgic dopes”.
What is it with nostalgia that makes modernists freak out? As if looking at old photo albums of ones family was just an excersize in nostalgia. Reminds me of the architectural professor I once had who claimed my project was too beautiful, as if somehow I was relinquishing my duty to the public by not taking every opportunity to remind people of how harsh and creul the world can be. give me a break! Better yet, give yourself a break to smell the flowers and enjoy the carved stone decorations.
Comment by Daniel Morales — March 1, 2012, @ 8:20 am
I feel that Frank Gehry is just one more architect very much out of date in these terribly difficult times, and that the memorial park should be urbanistically usefull by solving the local problems by creating a huge underground multi level parking structure of 5000 cars or more below what ever is placed at ground level, be it movie screens. statues. or trees.
Comment by JERRY SHEERIN — March 18, 2012, @ 2:08 pm
Gehry is not a Modernist. His work has nothing to do with modernism because his buildings are derived for their impact of sculptural massing in which he inserts his program into. His stuff is Pre-Roman in its design methodology. The Greeks did this kind of stuff and the citizenry gawked at the facades from the temple plinth. The invention of space wasn’t until later. Gehry takes us backward. Modernism, when it is good is based on an Idea and that is why his design are vacuous and so is this one…..Where is the thought, where is the epiphany that hard though is supposed to bring forth and that we all see? Modernism when it is based on an idea is timeless and therefore, can be classic.
Americans should not ever do Greek or Roman orders. That junk is the stuff of Empires and slave masters. Remember, we have a Declaration of Independence and that means we are to be original and not dependent on any other culture.
Comment by Duncan Nicholson — May 21, 2012, @ 7:36 pm
This is not an article — this is a rant, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the first 5 comments were written by the author of this piece, because they’re the exact same voice.
Your group is the same people who tried to prevent the Washington Monument from being built, the group who thought Lincoln’s Memorial depicted Abe too large, or fought Maya Lin’s Memorial when they found out she was an Asian girl.
Your group is also guaranteeing the eventual success of this Eisenhower Memorial. Fight louder, fight harder, get your voice out there, because the People love a controversial project. If an artist makes an artwork in the forest, and nobody screams, then nobody will ever go to look at it.
Comment by Tex — July 7, 2012, @ 8:53 pm