Neighborhood Level
Who was involved in the making of this neighborhood? If inhabitants were consulted, how thoroughly?
As we’ve seen in our readings, many players are involved in the formation of neighborhoods. These can be architects, builders, capitalists, politicians, and hopefully the neighborhood’s inhabitants. The inhabitants are particularly important to engage, because no one else knows their needs as well as they do (based on “Radically Public Architecture”).
A good example of this process working well is in the Congo Street Initiative in Jubilee Park. This project engaged a nonprofit, architects, architecture students, and community members to design a neighborhood that served the communities most pressing needs, including temporary places to stay in the neighborhood while homes were being rehabbed.
In what ways have surplus capital been invested in this neighborhood? What impact has that investment had on inhabitants?
Cities, and the neighborhoods within them, are arguably formed by an investment of surplus capital. Those investments can come from many different places (individual capitalists, the government, philanthropic organizations) and can benefit many different entities (corporations, ideologies, inhabitants). In assessing a neighborhood, one can look for how these varied influences interact, if any of them dominate, and what the overall outcome is like (based on “The Right to the City”)
The obvious negative example here is the redevelopment of New York City in the 20th century by Robert Moses. Moses oversaw the dispossession of entire neighborhoods in order to remake New York’s infrastructure and allow massive suburbanization. An opportunity for a positive example was Michael Sorkin’ proposal for the 9/11 project. He proposed leaving the actual site mostly empty and reinvesting the capital elsewhere in Lower Manhattan where it would be more helpful. This didn’t happen, but it’s an example of the kind of thinking that can help.
Who is excluded from this neighborhood? What apparatuses are enacting that exclusion?
It’s easy to see who is present in a neighborhood. It takes a little more thought to notice who is absent. Even though the most explicit examples of segregation are thankfully behind us, their structural legacies are still with us in many cases (based on “Radically Public Architecture”).
The Robert Moses highway bridges apply equally well to this frame, but another example can be found right here in our own state. Oregon began as an explicitly whites-only state, with laws literally prohibiting blacks from moving here. While those laws were repealed over a century ago, it wasn’t until 2002 that Oregon removed words like “negroes” and “mulattoes” from its Constitution. Portland is still known as the nation’s whitest big city, and our state’s black population sits at a paltry 2 percent.
Building Level
How is the tension between place-specific considerations and broader precedent present in this building?
Architectural forms can be derived from many sources. Two sources that frequently collide are formal precedent (as in the case of functionalist universalism) and place-based considerations (as in the case of critical regionalism). One can examine whether or not either of these dominates, or more likely, what components of the building were derived from each (based on “Toward a Critical Regionalism”).
A good example is the UC Innovation Center in Santiago, Chile. This building draws much of its formal language from modern and postmodern precedent (celebration of exposed concrete, expressive massing), but it is also very sensitive to Chile’s harsh climate (incredibly massive walls and deep window walls to deal with the sun).
In what ways is the building’s political moment physically embedded into it?
We’ve discussed the many players involved the development of architecture, including architects, governments, and end users, and these players have their own political agendas. Many buildings, therefore, are embodiments of their political moments, albeit to varying degrees (based on Lidia Klein, 2023, “Between Propaganda and Dissent”).
Klein provides excellent examples in the article cited above. The most notable is the National Congress of Chile, which was built under Pinochet regime. It utilized historically inspired, postmodern architecture to act as propaganda in support of a “well-established” neoliberal government.
How has this building transformed over time, both physically and symbolically?
As Tom Hahn always says, we can’t dictate a building’s program. Many buildings are designed to do one thing, and then repurposed for another. These shifts are frequently accompanied by physical remodels and symbolic remaking (based on Daniel Talesnik, 2012, “Monumentality and Resignification”)
The UNCTAD III building (now known as GAM) in Santiago, Chile is a great example of this. It started as a beacon of economic development for the Allende government, became both symbol and headquarters of the Pinochet junta, served as a corporate conference center during the 1990s, and has been remade into an art museum after significant damage.
How is this building responding critically to its architectural context?
Buildings are inherently critical, either positively or negatively, of the built environment. This is because the inclusion or exclusion of elements necessarily comments on the need for those elements in the first place. This commentary can be very local, as when a building either blends in or stands out on the streetscape, or global, as when competing architectural movements engage in built dialogue across continents (based on “Crafting Architecture Criticism”).
The Vanna Venturi house is a good example of the latter, poking fun at tradition and rejecting modernism in one fell swoop. This can be contrasted with something like Le Corbusier’s Carpenter Center, which intentionally stands in stark contrast to the red brick facades of the surrounding Harvard campus.
If ornament is used, what purpose does it serve? Would the building’s meaning be fundamentally changed without it?
Ornament is a contentious topic in architecture, and modernists suggested to varying degrees that it should be abandoned outright as a relic of the past. While sleek modernist influence is surely felt on everything from MacBooks to Teslas, ornament is nevertheless still with us. In the architectural context, we can learn a lot about the architect’s intentions based on the presence, absence, and application of ornament (based on “Ornament and Crime”).
The Beijing National Aquatics Center, AKA the “Water Cube,” is a contemporary building that relies on ornamentation for its character. The exterior is made to resemble irregular bubbles, symbolizing the building’s function, and it is also expressive of the building’s technologically innovative construction.
In what ways does available technology or technological limitations affect the building?
Architecture is in a constant leapfrog game with technology, where one pushes (or pulls) the other forward. Sometimes architectural concepts are ahead of technology and anticipate new advances to better execute an established design goal. In other instances, new technology emerges that enables previously unthinkable advances in architecture (based on “Deep Space, Thin Walls”).
An example given in our reading is the Equitable Building, built in Portland in 1948. This building solved many of the problems which had pushed architects toward windowless buildings. It was one of the first buildings to put together the new technologies of air conditioning, lighting, glass manufacturing, and Solex glass. This is a case of technology enabling a building that was not possible a few short years earlier.
Room Level
How is this room supposed to make me feel? Does it actually make me feel that way? How has the space been changed by inhabitation?
Similar to the transformation of whole buildings over time, individual rooms and spaces can be affected by inhabitation. The traces left by people, “the mess of life,” can create schisms between what the space is meant to evoke and what it actually evokes. I also think there may be instances in which a space evokes what it is meant to, but not in the way it was originally intended (based on “Leaving Traces”).
The example given in our reading is of the Schroder House by Gerrit Rietveld. It is meant to create a modern sense of home, with geometric abstractions existing alongside “shabby” coat hangers and shoe racks. Its inhabitants certainly experienced it as homey, though perhaps not in the well-ordered way the Rietveld imagined. It had a “lived-in” and even messy quality imparted by the clutter of its inhabitants’ things.
What is the experience of space like and how is it executed?
Space can take on different meanings in different rooms (or non-rooms), and the experience of these varies. Space can feel fluid or enclosed, it can suggest movement, it can relate to the human body or other figures within it, and it can be seen in relation to other spaces. It is important to note these differences and to account for what creates that experience (based on “Space”).
The obvious example is also the best example in this case: the German Pavilion by Mies van der Rohe. This space (or is it a building? Maybe neither?) is carefully articulated but never enclosed. Mies carefully uses geometric relationships, contrasting materials, and transparency to make space feel fluid and alive. This example shows us 1) what space can feel like and 2) exactly how to create that feeling.
Mixed Applications
What is the prevailing narrative of this neighborhood/building/space? Are there any voices that might be left out of that narrative?
History is written by the victors, and the same is true for architectural narratives. There is often and “accepted narrative” surrounding a work of architecture, particularly as it relates to its development and intentions. It is important to recognize ways in which these narratives may be imperfect and whose voices may be left out (based on “Global Modernism and the Postcolonial”).
I grew up visiting Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills of South Dakota. It is about as American as it gets, from the “pioneering spirit” touted by the park’s presenters to the copies of the Gettysburg address on sale in the gift shop. It is a symbol of strength, freedom, opportunity, inspiring leadership, and the American Dream. That is, until you consider that it a sculpture built by a bunch of white nationalists who used dynamite to blast chunks off of a mountain that was sacred to (and legally in the possession of) the Lakota Nation. Then the picture gets a bit more complicated.
In what ways does this neighborhood/building/room shape my movement? In what ways does it shape my behavior?
Buildings are inherently spatially coercive. This coercion can be benign, as in a sidewalk leading one the the front door, or sinister, as in the many built examples of Panopticon-like structures everywhere from daycares to prisons. Buildings have the power to shape both movement and broader behavior, so it is important to consider both how and why they do so (based on “I Mean to be Critical, But . . . “).
Daniel Libeskind’s Jewish Museum in Berlin shows a very physical way in which buildings can shape movement. The museum is designed to be disorienting and to bring visitors through physical manifestations of Jewish life before, during, and after the Holocaust. Its spaces use compression, off-angles, underground axes, and disorienting corridors to create a guided experience.
Revised guidelines for reading and critique
- Who was involved in the making of this neighborhood?
- Who is excluded from this neighborhood? What apparatuses are enacting that exclusion?
- In what ways does this building take place into consideration, in what ways does it take precedent into account, and how do these two impulses interact?
- In what ways is the building’s political moment embedded into it?
- How has this building transformed over time? Physically? Symbolically?
- How is this room supposed to make me feel? Does it make me feel that way? Has the message been impacted by inhabitation?
- What is the experience of space like and how is it executed?
- What is the prevailing narrative of this neighborhood/building/space? Are there any voices that might be left out of that narrative?
- In what ways does this neighborhood/building/room shape my movement and behavior?
- How is this building responding to its architectural context?
- In what ways do available technology or technological limitations affect the building?
