Veritas et Venustas

University of Notre Dame School of Architecture

I just spent a semester teaching at the School of Architecture at Notre Dame. For those considering applying to the school, here's a report: Notre Dame is the only school of architecture in North America or Europe with Classical architecture and traditional urban design at the core of its curriculum. The school offers a professional undergraduate degree, graduate degrees in architecture or urbanism for those who studied architecture as undergraduates, and graduate degrees for students with no undergraduate training.

It's an excellent school. The university has risen to number eighteen in U.S. News & World Reports' ranking of national universities, and the students are good. They're thoroughly grounded in principles of Classical architecture and traditional urbanism, starting with drawing and watercolor in the first year, and moving on to principles like composition and the orders in the second year. After studying Italian in the second year, the entire undergraduate class lives in Rome during their third year. Graduate students live in Rome for a semester during their second year.

This is unique in modern education. As a result, when students take part in a job fair near the end of their time at Notre Dame, there are twice as many offices at the Fair looking for employees as there are students looking for jobs.

All of the architects considered Modern Masters were trained not as Modernists, but as Classicists and traditionalists. Whether one practices traditional design or not, the principles of Classical architecture and traditional urbanism are an excellent grounding for architectural design.

Architecture School Buildings

Have you noticed how many architecture schools are in one of the worst buildings on campus?

I had the misfortune of studying in U.C. Berkeley's Wurster Hall (a Brutalist concrete building that that was unpleasant to be in but that we were supposed to think was wonderful), Harvard's Carpenter Center (a Brutalist concrete sculpture that was unpleasant to be in but that was Le Corbusier's only building in America), and the Meyerson building at the University of Pennsylvania (a Brutalist concrete structure with brick panels that was just as unpleasant to work in as the other two). The fact that architects were designing for themselves but still put theory (concrete and Brutalism) over experience, comfort and beauty shows how blinded by ideology architects can be.

Notre Dame's Bond Hall is a notable exception to the rule. The former university library, it was renovated by department chairman Thomas Gordon Smith in the 1990s, and it's a gracious presence on campus and a good place to work or study. Columbia University's Avery Hall (McKim, Mead & White, 1911) is not great MM&W, but it's still a good building, with an elegant library that has the best architecture collection in America. The University of Illinois, a large school with 700 students, has an old building by Charles Platt and a new building by Ralph Johnson, both among America's better architects.

Movies and DVDs: Better and Worse

In South Bend, I had 12 channels of HBO, 199 others including movie channels like Sundance and IFC, Comcast's version of Tivo, and not a lot to do at night, with my wife in New York. So I've seen a lot of movies this year, and I have to say that Anchorman, which I just watched on DVD, is the worst movie I've seen so far. 'Nuff said.

Star Wars III, which I saw in a theater, is better, but not a lot better. George Lucas seems to have lost most of his understanding of how to tell a story or work with actors — most of the performances were embarrassingly bad. A lot of sound and fury ...

It looks like the same thing can be said for the Brad Pitt / Angelina Jolie movie that's out in trailers right now. When did it become hip to beat up your wife? Shades of Charlie's Angels Full Throttle.

A pleasant surprise, on the other hand, was Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events on DVD. The story is odd, but entertaining. Jim Carrey finds another part which can use his over-the-top acting. And the movie looks terrific.

Travel Tips: Driving I-80 from New York to Chicago

Driving from New York to Chicago isn't very exciting. Of course you can wander off the route and see places like Fallingwater if you're not in a hurry, and you can stay in Cleveland and Pittsburgh (where the William Penn usually has good last minute deals — and they take pets), but those cities tend to slow down the trip.

If you do visit Fallingwater, be sure to make a reservation with the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy -- they control access, and they're bureaucratic and even unpleasant about appointments.

If you get an appointment, you'll need a place to stay, and most of them are not convenient to the house. I've stayed two times at the Inn at Georgian Place, a bed and breakfast I found at Pets On The Go (take a look at the patch of sunlight in the second photograph). This turned out to be a coal baron's mansion, designed by Horace Trumbauer. Trumbauer was one of the most successful of Philadelphia's Beaux Arts educated architects.

The colonial revival mansion formerly sat on the top of a high hill outside of Somerset, Pennsylvania, the local county seat. At the base of the hill is now the strip center of Somerset, with many motels, Burger Kings, car washes and the like. The mansion was bought by an outlet mall developer from Indiana, who apparently only knows how to build malls on flat sites: he spent a good deal of money making the site surrounding the house as flat as possible.

Around the back half of the mansion he drew a line approximately twenty feet out and then cut the hill down as rapidly as possible. At the top, the hill's edge is marked by a cheap concrete walk and an inappropriate split-rail fence (see here). Cheap retaining walls then enable a drop which sometimes amounts to as much as 45+ feet in less than 20 feet. At the bottom sits a low-rent outlet mall which can not be considered Georgian in style, arrangement or materials. The tops of the roofs are considerably lower than the floor of the mansion: I can now tell you from experience that's not a good design concept.

At the front of the mansion, is a 100 foot wide, cheaply poured asphalt road which runs steeply down the hill to a 24 hour Sheetz gas station. Amazingly enough, the inside of the inn and the people who run it are very nice. The restaurant is the best for miles around. The prices aren't bad, and the bottom of the hill is only a few hundred yards from the entrance to the Pennsylvania Turnpike.

In Ohio, I've stayed a couple of times at the Oberlin Inn, usually for $69 a night. It's not a great hotel, but it's better than you'll find elsewhere on 80 for that price (and they take pets). Oberlin is a college town with a very small but pleasant downtown with 3 coffee shops, 2 bookstores and a movie theater, and it's just a couple of miles off 80.

From Oberlin, you have a choice: drive straight to Chicago; perhaps stop in South Bend (and some people say the best thing to do in South Bend is to drive to Chicago); or, if you have the time, make a 40-mile detour up to I-94, where you can stop in Ann Arbor, Marshall or St. Joe's before going on to Chicago.

Ann Arbor is my favorite university town in the Midwest. Marshall is a handsome small town just off I-94 in central Michigan. St. Joe's a small town on Lake Michigan, the nicest of the Chicago summer towns on the eastern shore of the lake.

Slow Food: Zingerman's Goes Down

At least in my book, Zingerman's isn't as good as it used to be. The famous Ann Arbor deli, food importer and mail order house has gotten expensive, and much of the food isn't that good. Some of the imported cheeses and olive oils are great, and Zingerman's also promotes local produce and production. But when you visit the deli, the sandwiches aren't the equal the best in New York, despite their price: the "small" sanwdwiches now cost $10. Admittedly, you get a lot of meat for that price, but who wants that much meat? Maybe it's a Midwestern thing.

Some of the breads are good, but considering the prices and the way Zingerman's tout its bakehouse, they're disappointing too. Nevertheless, the cafe is still a classic, with free wifi. The house blend coffee is very acidic, but there are other choices available.

(continued)

Two other complaints: Zingerman's owners offer courses on customer service, and they've written a book on the subject. But I find the service a little precious ("My soup today ...," the man at the deli counter says, over and over), and would prefer that they effused a little less and worked a little faster.

And I can't say I find the graphics beautiful.

BAD Game, Bad Beer, & the Best Beer in America

We went up to the Stadium, hoping the Red Sox game might not be sold out. It was, so we went across the street to Stan's, where bottled beer cost $6 (but the Sabrett's hot dogs on the street were only $2). The ticket takers sometimes leave early, and we thought we might go in late. Luckily we didn't hang around, so we missed the 17 to 1 ending.

Instead we went down to the East Village and dba, a downtown dive that has the best beer in America. When no one in America had real hand-pulled ale, they would sometimes get kegs. Now that there are 14 places in New York City alone that serve real ale, they always have 2 hand-pulled ales at all times, and they post the dates the kegs are tapped, so you know how fresh they are.

We were disappointed by an American hand-pulled ale they had today. The point of British ale is that the taste is subtle, but American beer frequently suffers from ABS (Anti-Budweiser Syndrome): acting from the premise that Bud is bad and tasteless and that the opposite must therefore be good, American brewers frequently go for an overwhelming malt or hops taste, with no subtlety. The brewer of this American ale made that mistake.

The same problem applies to lagers. Many beer drinkers will tell you that the best lagers are made in Munich, and many Münchners will tell you that the best beer is Augustiner Edelstoff, which has a subtle balance between hops and malt. But most American brewers go for very hoppy lagers, and sometimes make a few very malty versions.

No place in America has a better range of beers than dba. Hopheads and the more traditional can both be very happy.

The decor is minimal to bad, but there's a funky garden, free wifi, and you can bring in food from the deli next door or have it delivered from anyone in the neighborhood.

(continued)

I once went to a reception in Bruges at which Hoegaarden donated the beer. It was fresh and delicious and possibly the best lager I ever had. For me, that means balanced.

I'm disappointed that no one in America, including dba, has anything other than Hoegaarden's weisbier. Unless they are very fresh, weisbiers become hoppy, and Hoegaarden's weisbier is hoppier than their other beers to begin with.

I wish dba would bring in some of their other beers.

The Long Emergency

The Grist has a good interview with Jim Kunstler about The Long Emergency:

Elaborate on how sprawl is inextricably connected to oil concerns.

Ever since the end of World War II, we've embarked on this project to build ourselves a drive-in utopia -- an economy based on suburban land development, eight-lane freeways lined with fry pits and hamburger shacks and a national big-box chain retail system. It has flourished because of two things: extraordinarily cheap energy and reliable supplies of it, and relative world peace. That has enabled big-box stores to develop 12,000-mile manufacturing and supply chains with the cheap labor overseas. Wal-Mart can move 4,000 TV sets from China to Wilkinsburg, Penn., and keep this tremendous stream of products going around the country with truckers who operate their warehouses on wheels. The system works only because it's cheap to transport stuff.

You also point out that the mainstream American diet is essentially predicated on "eating oil."

Yeah, industrial agriculture is another extremely problematical thing. We've now consolidated all of our food production into a very small fraction of the population and our agribusinesses rely on pouring oil byproducts -- pesticides, fertilizers, herbicides -- on the soil. We've got this cheese-doodle and Pepsi-Cola form of agriculture where large companies like Archer Daniels Midland and ConAgra are producing huge amounts of corn and byproducts like corn syrup to create junk food. It's generally understood that most of the food we eat travels [about] 1,500 miles. So we've got all these 1,500-mile Caesar salads winging or wheeling around America to get to our dinner plates. That won't be able to continue when the cheap-oil era ends.

Read more here. Buy the book here.