With its eternal white suit, Tom Wolfe is like a caricature of a Southern gentleman in the very Upper East Side, a look perhaps more appropriate to sample a mint julep at the Kentucky Derby a Panama hat or fedora Borsalino, which to stroll through the gray and dirty New York.
A Wolfe ( From Bauhaus to Our House , 1981) does not appear that Grace did the arrival of the gurus of the Bauhaus to the U.S. after the Nazis closed the school that was based in Weimar, Dessau and Berlin: More fans monumentality of Albert Speer, architect of the Reich official, who for the aesthetic revolution the "less is more , the Nazis threw into the arms of the Americans with Walter Gropius, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Hannes Meyer, along with other architects and artists fudamentales to understand the art of the twentieth century, who landed in country (Meyer went to Mexico) and developed his aesthetic approach from Chicago or from the school of architecture at Harvard. According to the curious
criterion Wolfe, the glass-boxes that projected one after another, and whose influence has led to skyline of cities such as New York, Toronto or Chicago, disagreed with the traditional American architecture.
not know what that traditional American architecture, because I do not refer to the English style so fashionable at the time (and still is) in California or Florida and as the name suggests, is English. Nor should refer to French-style mansions of the Confederate States, whose name is so precisely because they are just that: French.
So if traditional American architecture Tom Wolfe understands the tipis of the Sioux, I understand that the building Seagram's (super gin, by the way) to Park Avenue and designed precisely by Mies van der Rohe, it is too similar to the tent in which Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull prepared the battle of Little Big Horn and ended with Custer's cavalry.
Wolfe is a bit given the social melodrama but not stupid, so I guess you are referring for instance to Frank Lloyd Wright or Richard Neutra as "traditional American architects, not realizing that both projects would have signed the Bauhaus and vice versa: if Taliesin, the school-residence of Lloyd Wright, integrated place, use and function in what he called "organic architecture" (nothing more organic architecture Fallingwater house ), on the other " how follows function" was the maximum recommended by Mies. Nothing new under the sun shine at the Bauhaus in Weimar or the Taliesin in Wisconsin.
While Tom Wolfe, the influence of Staatliches Bauhaus in architecture, interior design, and art in general to this day, it is essential and extremely important. Wolfe may have at his home in Park Avenue a chair designed by the Americans Charles and Ray Eames, who in the 50s developed concepts and advanced, for example, on chairs or Barcelona Brno Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (created the first for the German pavilion at the exhibition, 1929), or chair Vassily Marcel Breuer designed to Vassily Kandinsky while both were teachers in Bauhaus itself. Both pieces could be signed by the Eames smoothly thirty years later, and then be "traditionally American" would be to the liking of Wolfe.
In an article published there, I have defended the power of architecture to change the perception that the world has over a city. If it had not built Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Bilbao as it did (although it is very little or no Bauhaus) and was based on the traditional architecture of Vizcaya, now would be a huge farmhouse in the middle of Bilbao, a woefully inadequate building to house an exhibition of Alexander Calder, for example. And even less adequate to show the "Puppy" by Jeff Koons that guards the entrance. And above all, Bilbao not attract hundreds of thousands of tourists every year who go to see how they change color titanium plates of the building by time of day. Although a village museum can be as good as any other building (see Chillida Leku Hernani), does not transform the life of a city, what can we do. Bilbao
attracts tourists: Are we crazy or what? Is the world upside down? I do not know who fears the Bauhaus fierce, but The Bocho ears applaud the decision to commission the museum to Gehry, the bridge and the airport Calatrava (even with the controversy), the towers and underground Isozaki Foster .
When we go to see a city is mostly architecture that we admire, is a Gothic cathedral or the Eiffel Tower (although it was a chemical engineer Gustave Eiffel, not an architect). The transformation of cities like Barcelona, \u200b\u200bMadrid, Valencia and Zaragoza in recent years in the hands of Top-10 of world architecture (including almost all living Pritzker Prize), has made Spain a sort of outdoor museum of contemporary architecture, such as Chicago or New York as to the architecture of the post-Bauhaus. Talks of 'normal' people in any large city and truffled English names appear as Moneo, Jean Nouvel, Pelli, Hadid, Piano, Koolhaas ... besides those I have named.
architecture is probably the most influential of the arts, along with literature. If it can form and transform our thinking and therefore to act, the architecture affects our environment and how we interact with it. The quality of our environment determines our quality of life (Norman Foster). We move in cities constrained by the architecture, be brilliant or mediocre. We can not spend it as we go (although not find a reason) for painting, for example. Architects and planners are thus becoming the creators of us to enjoy or hate our immediate environment, but ultimately, and precisely because of the enormous importance of architecture are his real political control and therefore responsible for the enjoyment or hatred our urban environment. With the literature can not even attempt it every day. But that's another story.
Speaking of architecture, in many cases a city museum is a work of art in itself so that the continent needs to be part of exposure, even more important than the content. In addition to the Guggenheim, we can not forget the CARS in Madrid, Moneo and Nouvel in two different times, Thyssen de Madrid and remodeling of the Palace of the Dukes of Villahermosa was Moneo also work, or that a new Prado Rafael Moneo added more space to complement the Villanueva building. The architect Navarre seems to have the monopoly of the museums of Madrid, although he instruct Gallardón Alvaro Siza remodeling the Prado-Recoletos, which vary our perception of Moneo's work significantly.
Expo Zaragoza also had some impact in Spain, but what the rest of the world knows or is known -Bridge Pavilion by Zaha Hadid . This construction can take decades for the city an impact comparable to the Eiffel Tower was to Paris. Zaragoza is not saying that Paris, spoke of the importance for the city. And once I said "kill me Mañolandia , but sometimes things are done quite well.
I do not know if a version Wolfe dilettante rather sip a ginger cake or rhubarb in the porch of a French-style mansion in his native Virginia, while listening to the gentle cooing of the songs of the slaves on the plantation. Or maybe I just let him savor your mint julep on Tavern on the Green in Central Park, a very likely site of your choice. In any case, your millions of dollars he would not have to sleep in a tipi , traditional American architecture "authentic."
Meanwhile, with a rod or a cold and without clarita mint julep (I prefer a mojito, and posts), others enjoy the transformation of our cities, aware that the wonders we see (I recognize that not all cases, abuses committed in the name of "modern architecture") originated in a school of applied arts and architecture founded near Weimar. And yes, course also in Frank Lloyd Wright. And Antonio Gaudí. And others that probably do not like to Wolfe.
Bauhaus I do not fear the fierce ... Do you?.
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