What is this blog about?

"Hello, my name is John. I'm a recovering architect."

I like all sorts of towns, cities and buildings, but what I design are Classical buildings and Traditional cities. You can see some of them at architect.massengale.com.

With Robert A.M. Stern I wrote a history of architecture and urbanism in the Progressive Era, New York 1900, Metropolitan Architecture and Urbanism 1890–1915 (Rizzoli, 1983) as well as an introduction to the history of suburbia before sprawl, The Anglo–American Suburb (St. Martin's Press, 1981). I have a grant to write Do The Right Thing: Architecture, Urbanism, Democracy, the Zeitgeist & the Soul.

I'm a Director of the Institute of Classical Architecture & Classical America, the Chair of CNU New York a Founding Member of the Congress for the New Urbanism, and a co-founder of the New Urban and Traditional Architecture Councils.

I was also a co-founder of the pro-urb list, a forum on the internet for an advanced discussion of New Urbanism. And in this blog you will find some postings from that list, along with other writings and clippings on architecture, urbanism, Classicism, Tradition, metaphysics and culture.


.ORGs

Favorite Posts From the Archives

Photo Albums

Links

Blogs

Categories

Archives

Syndicate this site (XML)
Add me to your TypePad People list
About Me


Copyright © 2004 – 2006 John Massengale

Powered by TypePad
Member since 12/2003


John Massengale's Facebook profile


« NU REDUX: Good, Better, Best | Main |

Summer's coming
»

Friday, February 27, 2004

FRIDAY RANTS

A) Does anyone like those "blow in" cards that fall out of magazines every time you pick one up? Magazine publishers claim the cards bring in so many subscriptions that they have no choice but to use them.

At Staples today, I saw a sign promoting stamp pads with any message made in less than a day. I bought one that says

Stop Dropping
Your Trash
On My Floor

Cards that falls on my floor will be sent back to the publisher with that message in place of the address.

B) I have a plan for a National Architecture Review Board when one of my friends is elected President ("friends" eliminates Dubya). The Board would be a diverse, asolutely catholic group of first-rank architects: Pritzker Prize winners, Driehaus Prize winners, and other top designers like Frank Gehry, Steven Holl, David Childs, Allan Greenberg, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk et al. All Board members would be equipped with GPS PDA's with digital cameras and satellite mail service.

In the course of their normal travels, whenever one of the architects saw a truly bad building, they would take a photo of it, which would automatically relay to the Board's Washington Headquarters with the GPS location information. There the staff would enter the info in a database, including the name of the architect responsible for the building. Any architect who has 3 buildings in the database would have to come to Washington HQ to explain why they deserved to keep their architect's license. If they didn't have a good explanation, three strikes and they're out.

C) Could we please have a media post-mortem on photos of Paris Hilton in which she cocks her head down and to the side, and then from the corner of her eyes looks up and back at the camera while sticking her lower lip out?

February 27, 2004 in Architecture, Culture | Permalink

TrackBack

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/11457/499577

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference FRIDAY RANTS:

Comments

Well, as a co-worker put it: Would we really want to give some wacko deconstructionist-rational-post empiricist have the authority to "ticket" good traditional buildings that are not "cutting edge" enough? I mean, people like Koolhaas and Eisenman (sp?) would probably end up on the committee! :)

Posted by: Brian Miller at Feb 27, 2004 6:05:25 PM

Yes, and Lizz and Leon would get to comment on them.

Besides, I didn't actually say EISENMAN would be on the committee. There's a big difference between Gehry and Eisenman.

Posted by: John Massengale at Feb 27, 2004 7:34:30 PM

Better to have a foot in the door at least. Was there a single classical/traditional architect on the board for the WTC? Not sure about that, but I dont recall anyone.

Posted by: Boots at Feb 28, 2004 7:38:39 PM

The head of the New York Chapter of the AIA was instrumental in organizing a very influential group called "New York New Visions" which made certain that Traditionalists and New Urbanists like Krier, Duany Plater-Zberk and Stern were not allowed to take part. Herbert Muschamp publicly gloated about this in the Times the day after the winners were announced.

Since the link has now disappeared from sidebar, I should ask if you saw the post about my World Trade Center class at the ICA & CA.

I put a link in the text to the post, but I guess the comments section doesn't take all HTML instructions. The link is http://massengale.typepad.com/venustas/2004/02/edu_traditional.html .

Posted by: John Massengale at Feb 29, 2004 12:37:58 PM

I did get a chance to read that post, makes me wish I were still out in New York. I only wish that ICA&CA had a big office in LA too. Maybe they could establish one? Perhaps there's a small chapter here?

I think that classicists need to really start raising a stink when they are excluded from plans for a major commisions both public and private. When I was in undergrad out here in SoCal they built the LA Cathedral and it really seemed that the vast majority of the catholic community was concerned about the appropriateness of the architecture, but few could really do much about it. And those who could intellectually make an argument for something more traditional seemed to do little. I liked what I think you said about architects being content with their little kingdoms.

To be really controversial, in the sense that its a grand thing, perhaps we need to ruffle some feathers eh?

Posted by: Boots at Feb 29, 2004 1:50:10 PM

Post a comment