The Dead End of Modernism on Manhattan
PAN AM BUILDING
Promoted as the largest unified business skyscraper in the world, the former PAN AM and current MET LIFE Building was built back in 1963 at the intersection of 45th Street and Park Avenue above the Grand Central Station. In Manhattan, where else? The building, in the shape of an elongated octagon, crosses the famous Park Avenue and sits on tracks leading to the majestic Grand Central Terminal (one of Manhattan’s early 20th-century icons). It was designed by Gropius with collaborators Richard Roth and Pietro Belluschi.
The famous Walter Gropius, the creator of the Bauhaus school, after fleeing Nazi Germany and a brief stay in London, planted the initial seeds of Modernism in American architecture at Harvard in 1937, and doing so, he became, alongside Mies van der Rohe, one of its biggest names on the other side of the Atlantic. Americans tend to emphasize Right’s achievements due to Mies’s and Gropius’s background, but in terms of influence on defining a phenomenon in architecture that still leaves a significant mark today, that’s hardly a matter for consideration. In Europe, Corbusier would definitely be an indispensable member of the trio.
Gropius with his associates, in his later years, designed the building on commission from a large corporation. Apart from its unusual plan and being one of the first prefabricated concrete facades in New York, everything else about the building represents yet another utilitarian machine—not for living, but for increasing the value of private capital, with more or less valuable art displayed in the “generous” lobby.
Something else is interesting here. In a city where even on the first visit, it's hard for a building to squeeze or surprise you more, you encounter an irrational screen-wall object (and here, I don’t mean the term “curtain wall”) that turn off the light of the most beautiful and wealthiest avenue in urban terms on Manhattan, and becomes a bizarre backdrop of the famous Grand Central Station, weirdly cutting off the sense of connection and views of the famous “grid” of streets and avenues of downtown and midtown.
Such paradigm of the situation in which Modern architecture found itself in the 1960s. Slowly burning through its own fuel, which had been heavily reliant on the tank of leftist governments and welfare states after World War II, it began to turn more and more toward the new global “liberal” master of capital. Here it is additionally accentuated by one of the classic examples of art deco offshoots, we will quote Koolhaas, “Dellirious New York” (1) from way back in 1929 (just before the Great Depression), the Helmsley building, which is located in front of Gropius’ building looking towards downtown. From this new, greedier position of capital represented at the time by PAN AM, the Helmsley seems like an older poser trying, in a sophisticated (but still historically American in Anderson’s THERE WILL BE BLOOD style (2)) way, to occupy the already interrupted thread of Park Avenue.
Regarding the position of Gropius’s building, it might be more appropriate to say that it stomped on and erased space, disregarding any existing intersections. Except in an infrastructural sense. When critiques arose immediately after the building was constructed, Professor Gropius awkwardly responded that the famous 1916 regulation about zoning in Manhattan (3) justified the building’s size and that “every citizen has the right to use the law to the fullest” (4).
POMO
The resolution to the unbearable situation rolls around the corner, as always, just waiting for some form that can tie the energy of dissatisfaction. And then, there is no too much of analyzing, the only thing important is that the ideas are new. As they say, enough of yours.
This is when Postmodernism enters the stage. When energy began to be tied to Venturi’s Complexities and Contradictions in Architecture (5), the Language of Postmodernism by Charles Jencks (6) and others, it just needed to be systematically adapted.
Now, the first shifts came from the other side of the Atlantic, with the ever-loyal ally from the island. This is also due to the fact that the foundations of modernism were laid at the beginning of the century in continental Europe, with Germany and France being the first to carry progressive thoughts, and the global order in the cultural sense had already changed well by the 60s, which should not be ignored. Thus, in this regard, the U.S. was seeking a new leadership position.
It is very easy to follow the trail of the opening of architectural schools at prestigious American universities founded by European emigrants, which rightly align with the spirit of American entrepreneurial philosophy. Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer at Harvard, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in Chicago, Eliel Saarinen at Michigan, Paul Rudolph at Yale, Louis Kahn at Penn State… formed entire generations of students in line with the new tendencies. So when the situation demanded new answers, it was logical that these same students would try to rise to the occasion. And they did, with Postmodernism.
A new generation came to power in a time of increasingly liberal economies, globally more aggressive marketing, and again the globally incredible growth of Western pop culture’s influence on everyday life.
Roberto Venturi, as Khan’s student and successor first at Penn State, then at Yale, Charles Moore at Princeton, Berkeley, and later on at Yale, Sam Jacob with his English friends from FAT studio in Chicago, Michael Graves at Princeton, Robert Stern at Columbia and then Yale, and of course very quickly their colleagues from Europe: James Stirling at Cambridge and as a guest at Yale, Aldo Rossi in Milan, Zurich, and American Cornell, Mario Botta in Lausanne and a guest at Yale… attempted to give new answers through practice and theory, for themselves, the students and for the world.
Of course, when dealing with such topics, generalization is the most dangerous, and even Roberto Venturi, who was later declared the father of the new big movement, stated in 2002, we’ll quote him, “I’m not now, and never have been, a postmodernist, and I unequivocally disavow fatherhood of this architectural movement” (7). However, above the theoretical and practical legacies of this postmodernist generation stands a huge question mark. How and if did they, in fact, respond to the questions that were raised in relation to the shortcomings of early modernism, the Athens Charter (8), the project of the city of Brasilia (9) … and the alienation, deviance, and functional deficiencies brought with them by large complexes of industrialization and urbanization, with a socially emphasized component after all the horrors of World War II?
Or were they largely misused, as is often the case, for populist purposes by hard-to-see structures of power hiding behind civil democracy? Because clearly, they owed their success and visibility (which, in civilizational terms, became far more important element than quality) to popular culture, which the hidden hand of the market and capital eventually began to dominate. So its not strange that the term “POP Architecture” was coined in the golden age of popular POMO.
POST SCRIPTUM
It’s interesting why there haven’t been more further attempts to shape global issues in architecture in light of current socio-political and now alarmingly clear ecological-apocalyptic events. And where, at least theoretically, do today’s major architectural promoters stand—Zaha Hadid Studio, BIG, the indestructible SOM, MAD Architects, alongside veterans like Foster, Piana, Nouvel, Gehry, Koolhaas …? Perhaps the answer partially lies in the very names of these new authors, which increasingly resemble another form of corporate cooperation in creative industries. After all, even in socio-political terms, we’re not doing very well with new ideas.
MK 6.24.
- Rem Koolhaas-Delirious New York:A retroactive manifesto for Manhattan;1978 Oxford University press,The Monacelli Pres
- Paul Thomas Anderson-There will be blood, feature film; 2007 Miramax films
- George McAneny, Edward M. Basset – Zoning resolution; 1916 New York City
- Volter Gropius- Gropius and Garroway, article;1960 Architectural forum vol.104 ,Time and life building-Time inc NY
- Roberto Venturi-Complexity and contradiction in architecture; 1966 Museum of modern art
- Charles Jencks – The language of post-modern architecture ;1977 Rizzoli
- Roberto Venturi – A bas postmodernism of course, article ; 2001 Journal Architecture
- Le Corbisie and CIAM (Congres internationaux d’architecture moderne) – Athens charter; 1933 CIAM
- Lucio Costa, Oscar Niemeyer, Joaquim Cardozo – Design for new federal capital of Brasil ; 1956 Brasilian government