Amusing and Clever I am apparently getting really good at randomly picking up books that few people have reviewed. I picked this one up randomly which seems appropriate.
I found this and put it up on top of my monitor. It's a small book and is about architecture and I glanced inside and decided it was worth the time to read it. I picked it up yesterday and started through the 126 pages.
Wolfe is a clever writer. In this book he talks a lot about the architecture schools of the first half of the twentieth century. He goes forward from there and discusses them with biting humor and satire.
Wolfe's writing is sarcastic but seeks to stick to modern given definitions. "Bauhaus" looks at the way modern architecture is a response to the bourgeois. The way the Bauhaus saw bourgeois, it was a dirty word. It is used as an epithet throughout the book.
Merriam Webster defines bourgeois as:
1 : of, relating to, or characteristic of the townsman or of the social middle class
2 : marked by a concern for material interests and respectability and a tendency toward mediocrity
3 : dominated by commercial and industrial interests : capitalistic
The Bauhaus sought to run away from the bourgeois, but with Wolfe's description of bourgeois, the architecture schools seem to embrace it on many levels.
The book is dominated by the evolution of architectural "compounds" such as that founded by Walter Gropius in Germany in the Bauhaus school. The concept of the "group" drove out the individual response to innovation which reminds me so strongly of my very favorite book The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. The similarities to Rand's text and the actualities promoted by the Bauhaus group as detailed by Wolfe are disconcerting. The comparison between the two is my own opinion, not that of Wolfe.
The Bauhaus group fled Germany because of the great war and came to American where they were established quickly as the shining light of modern design. Gropius himself is referred to as The Silver Prince. Wolfe's narrative talks about the self absorption of these architects and their ability to shove their concept of what was good down the throats of anyone who wanted to build something special. According to Wolfe, American architecture put itself inside the unornamented "box" of modernist thought.
Wolfe does not pull punches. He runs riot over the schools of architecture that want to pull meaning away from original and individual thought and give impetus to the group. Wolfe uses much sarcasm to show that the Modernists are as guilty of conforming as those they accuse.
This book laments the loss of beaux-arts crafting and ornamentation. They are casualties because they serve the individual rather than society as a whole.
The Bauhaus draws much of its early success from "public housing projects." These buildings seem to lean toward the lowest common denominator. Promoting clean lines, the buildings also seem to promote a monotony and cheapness. Anyone who disagreed with this "groupthink" would be accused of the heinous crime of being bourgeois.
If one looks at American architecture prior to the 1980's one will see the "boxes" so loved by the modernists. How many of us have looked at the tall glass boxes in modern cities and wondered "How hard was that to design?"
Wolfe details some of the conflict between Gropius and friends who were European imports and Frank Lloyd Wright who was a truly American invention. In this book there are quite a few photographs. One of them is of Frank Lloyd Wright's "Robie House." It looks so cutting edge modern, and when I checked the date I was astonished to find that it is a hundred years old. How cool is that?
The book evolves into a philosophical and semantic discussion that loses its edge toward the end. There is some celebration of the newer generation of architects that dared defy The Silver Prince and company. Philip Johnson and Richard Meier (architect of the Getty Museum) are discussed as the young rabble rousers who defy the Modernists but still ascribe to many of their virtues.
This text is challenging. It assumes that the reader has some knowledge of architecture and architectural history. I'm fortunate in that. I teach Art History so I didn't have to struggle to make a lot of connections.
Why you see so many ugly buildings As you drive through your city, certain blocks seem bleak, don't they? This book exposes why those ugly buildings got built. Wolfe explains the dynasty that coerced architects, company executives, and city planners into a drab simplicity with a political agenda. While the architecture under discussion has passed, I recommend this book for activists who fight ugly real estate development in their neighborhood nests.
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