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Someone from Denmark (who read last night's blog on energy conservation) wrote me overnight and asked why I hadn't designed any innovative, energy-conserving houses since the 1980s. Ironically, she had visited the pedestrian village, I designed right after college, for an island in the Oresund Channel in Scandinavia - but didn't know I was the architect, when she wrote the first email. You will be surprised at the answer, I think. Architecture has become a metaphor for our society.
Most of my clients in Asheville (1980s) had been teenagers during the period when we had gasoline rationing after the Yom Kippur War (1973-1974) and had been in college or young marrieds during the Carter Administration, when the engineer-president really pushed energy conservation. Also, Mother Earth News Magazine was published near Asheville. SO - having inovative, energy conserving houses were the "in thing." No matter, what their income was, virtually all of my friends and clients in the North Carolina mountains used wood-burning heaters or furnaces as much as possible. Families prided themselves on growing their own food and getting back to nature. Women learned to cook from scratch in old fashion ways.
When I moved to the Shenandoah Valley, I lived in a community where most of the houses dated from before 1810. My house was built in 1770. Katie Couric's house was from 1790. Several houses dated from the 1750s. SO - most people came to the county's architect to restore very old houses. Solar panels and passive solar walls were out of the question. Most everyone DID use wood stoves and install as much insulation and insulating windows/doors, etc. as possible, but everyone wanted their old or new house to look old. This was probably appropriate. The houses I did on mountainsides in North Carolina would have seemed like alien spacecraft on the rolling Shenandoah countryside.
During the past ten years in Georgia, I have only had two commissions for the design of new houses. Repeatedly, I heard stories of affluent clients paying residential designers with two years of drafting from a technical school just as much as they would an architect (6-7 years of rigorous education + passing a 48 hour long exam), because "they wanted to MAINTAIN CONTROL of the house's appearance." In the case of my residential commissions, the clients wanted the outside of the houses to look like a 150 year old house in Virginia and the inside to look like several different photos they had seen in Southern Living Magazine. Typically, they want different walls of the same room to look like different architectural styles. LOL Any visible use of energy conservation techniques were out of the question, because they didn't want people to think that they were "libruls." Wood stoves would indicate that they were once hippies or libruls, so they were out of the question, too.
Exactly, the same assessment could be applied to all of my commercial commissions. Every commerical client dictated the exterior appearance of the structure and demanded that it look conservative - kind of like an old fashion building, but not too much, because that would reflect latent "librul" tendencies in their company. In other words, they demanded mediocrity and conformity to a watered down concept of esthetics. If I tried to apply features that would improve the energy efficiency or appearance of the structure, the typical response was, "I have more money than you therefore, you do what I tell you to do." In other words, wealth had become the primary measure of intelligence and knowledge in any subject.
Even though, Atlanta was one of the fastest growing metro regions in the country during the 1990s up until 2006, you will see very, very few examples of excellent architecture from this period. Our best buildings mostly date from the 1970s and 1980s. Also, inovations by American structural engineers have come to a screeching halt in the past 20 years. Fear of litigation has made engineers avoid any efforts to advance the skills of their profession, other than doing their work quicker and with greater profit.
I can see the current economic collapse as also a sign that the social-economic & political attitudes that propelled the preceding boom (that a made a few people very rich) were like a paper bag filled with hot air from a candle. The bag can rise so far before it runs out of hot air. Then it crashes back to the ground and burns.
Who knows what the coming years will bring? I am not a prophet, just an observer.
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| How Social and Political Attitudes Affect Architecture |
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kywonder
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Jan 3 @ 11:04AM
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The bag can rise so far before it runs out of hot air. Then it crashes back to the ground and burns.
Sounds like the scripture that says" Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall." ....................Holy Bible
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Etowah
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Jan 3 @ 11:14AM
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Hey Sherry!
I have a feeling that bags of hot air have been around a long time. Yes, folks, everybody is making friends on Match Doctor. It is becoming a small town.
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eastham
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Jan 3 @ 11:51AM
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I compare Atlanta to Chicago. Following the great fire, architects came in from all over the country to rebuild the city and their work has stood the test of time. It is a city that interests the eye.
Many European cities do so as well, mixing old and new. Sometimes they are right on the money (the Louvre), sometimes it takes getting used to (Georges Pompidou Centre), and sometimes (I would put the new building at 30 St. Mary Axe in this category) are awful. The Gherkin or the Condom are two of the many the nicknames for the Swiss Re tower. Actually, I do prefer the Towering Innuendo.
The new Finnish and Swedish embassies in Washington are excellent designs. The Finnish embassy is not "as new", but was built to design specifications for light use, energy efficiency, etc that are required for buildings in Helsinki. When I worked in DC, I attended several receptions there and it was always a regular participant in the Embassy Row house tour. Click here for tour.
The Swedish Embassy is far newer. While I attended a reception in its former home, nearby at the Watergate, I've not had the pleasure of visiting the embassy in its new home on the Potomac. Swedish Embassy Maybe I'll try to visit in time for their Christmas Bazaar.
But what is intriguing about Scandanavian architecture and design, and Swedish in particular, is that they meld elements from the old and the new. The Local, the online English language Swedish newspaper, has a house for sale posted every week. In variably, there will be a traditionally constructed house, usually painted a vibrant color. But the interiors will bear no resemblance to the homespun exteriors -- white and light, but never stark. It's intriguing how they find the balance between old and new.
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