Dog Bites Man! Architecture Professor Attacks New Urbanism!

AN ARCHITECTURE PROFESSOR at Hampton University writes:

What I could not accept is the DPZ charette response which is represented by the portable cottage. Excuse me here but "what the hell is that!" It is a decorated shed on wheels. IT IS A TRAILER WITH CURTAINS. Why not make the trailer better, as many architects have done for decades by including sustainable options for long term use. Don't these Subnerdinists feel any responsibility to truth and technology or better yet the promotion of architects as professionals, trained to truly solve life threatening problems and not color schemes and rafter tails. Now that this nerdinist cottage is available I want to buy one, put it on a great piece of property then burn it and see if a phoenix rises naturally out of an albatross. This proliferation of the scenographic hides all the beauty of ingenuity our disasters present.This is absolutely unacceptable for the profession to advance. It is a non solution. It is a solution for yesterday and that has already past.

The professor can't get over that the house  — which is not a trailer but a manufactured house designed to fit on a trailer or flatbed truck  — doesn't' do what HE wants it to do: express the exploration of technology. Never mind that hundreds of thousands of disaster victims need better emergency housing, and that he has no alternative. Or that no good Modernist architect has gotten one built. Or that even if he did design the trailer he wants, the market would choose THE TRAILER WITH CURTAINS over his technology-expressive alternative by a margin of 3 or 4 to 1.

On top of that, it was not a a product of a "DPZ charette." New Urbanism is not about the heroic individual and his creations of genius. New Urbanism is collegial and team oriented: 15 teams worked almost independently of Duany, because they were working from a body of ideas and principles rather than someone's personal vision. It is why the New Urbanists can go into a disaster situation like the Marines, and produce more than words.

The Katrina Cottage still under construction in the parking lot at the National Association of Home Builders.

(continued)

Stop the New Urbanist spew!!!

I don't understand why the response to the latest disasters in the U.S. have not caused the same innovations to building science and housing that the San Francisco earthquake and the Chicago Fire had. Have my architectural brothers and sisters in charge truly given up or have they been ravished while not looking. As Monty Python says "Nobody expects the Spanish inquisition." This is design torture.

I read this article and it gives a good balance of thought on disaster rebuilding. What I could not accept is the DPZ charette response which is represented by the portable cottage. Excuse me here but "what the hell is that!" It is a decorated shed on wheels. IT IS A TRAILER WITH CURTAINS. Why not make the trailer better, as many architects have done for decades by including sustainable options for long term use. Don't these Subnerdinists feel any responsibility to truth and technology or better yet the promotion of architects as professionals, trained to truly solve life threatening problems and not color schemes and rafter tails. Now that this nerdinist cottage is available I want to buy one, put it on a great piece of property then burn it and see if a phoenix rises naturally out of an albatross. This proliferation of the scenographic hides all the beauty of ingenuity our disasters present. This is absolutely unacceptable for the profession to advance. It is a non solution. It is a solution for yesterday and that has already past.

David J Peronnet, RA, NCARB
Director
Shaper Studio

Assistant Professor
Department of Architecture
Hampton University