A mid-20th century architectural rendering for urban renewal

“E xcept man, nobody lies. A rosebush cannot lie. It has to produce roses; it cannot produce marigolds — it cannot deceive. It is not possible for it to be otherwise than it is. Except man the whole existence lives in truth. Truth is the religion of the whole existence — except man. And the moment a man also decides to become part of existence, truth becomes his religion.”   -Indian Mystic, Osho

Architectural Forensics is a term to describe how it is that the ‘built environment’ perfectly expresses the intrinsic quality of any society’s sociological, economic, and political nature. In the search for truth, the parsing of concepts, deliberation of ideas, or the use rhetorical analysis to glean the essence of our reality pales in comparison to the truth at it is revealed by the world which we have wrought; and with this fact, there can be no mistake or equivocation. fine arts magazine

Boston City Hall (KM&K Arch.,1962-67). Blocks of Boston's West End neighborhoods were torn down to make way for sprawling plazas and Brutalist-style I.M. Pei-inspired architecture

Architects and urban designers are renowned for their ability to define concepts by employing formal constructs and then to argue the merits of their design as is expedient to gain favor for their proposal. The completed projects however are rarely given the proper scrutiny to gauge the product against the initial arguments upon which the physical expressions are based; and when they are, it is clear that the idea rarely matches reality. Western Civilization’s fundamental philosophical postulation to reason can readily facilitate the contamination of the truth by infusing ulterior motives into its meaning; whether or not consciously intended in order to advocate a pre-conceived objective; the resulting built-landscape purveyed as a litany of conjecture in which we continually bear the consequences of real structures and places.

Once clear about our intent, there can be no equivocation about our perception. If the discovery of truth is our objective, then it exists all around us; ready to reveal the unassailable reality that will guide our course of action and indicate the direction of our pursuit. For example, one may argue the merits of permitting a modern glass and steel tower to occupy an infill site within the context of early 20th century, pre-war masonry apartment buildings on Park Avenue in New York City. The architect or developer may cite the benefits of infusing a contemporary architectural expressions to an otherwise tired streetscape; the visual benefits of contrasting transparent forms to masonry facades; the wonderful addition of a brutally honest structure to the dated historical formalism so prevalent in the neighborhood; and even argue the merits of including modern and ‘relevant’ forms of expression within an historic context… all which sound like cogent arguments at the front end of the process when the project strives to gain approval. Yet the simple reality of such an experiment has indicated quite a different legacy; one that has only served to erode a wholesome identity often caused by economic initiatives that are conveyed by architectural seductions. We know this to be true not as a consequence of clarity derived from the initial conceptual debate, but we know this truth to be evident because we can walk the streets and see and feel the physical evidence of our actions as one misguided seduction leads to others until integrity of the place has been thoroughly compromised.

Rendering of Le Corbusier's 'Ville Radieuse', his concept of 'machines for living' (1923).

When the initial arguments were made for the ‘Urban Renewal’ of the lower east side in Manhattan as the dereliction of these neighborhoods was considered to be unsustainable, theory usurped observation and the consequences were swift and dramatic. A wave of gentrification prompted the previous generation of immigrants to move further uptown and to occupy larger homes and more spacious neighborhoods. As soon as the migration had gained momentum degradation was swift even though the urban fabric remained in-tact and might have been resurrected. Concepts abounded for what to do with the tenement structures that lined the lower east side of downtown Manhattan. The prevailing notion that won favor conveniently employed Le Corbusier’s concepts of urbanism as described in his diatribe Toward an Architecture (1923). The concept that large, densely-populated towers, these ‘machines for living’, would be set within rectangular park-like green spaces and permit its residents a gasp of nature if they so dared to venture onto that barren land seemed like quite a good idea. Unfortunately for idealism; reality presented a far different picture; stark in its contrast where crime followed the anonymity of these faceless towers, while the utter segregation of an impoverished socio-economic class of the population was clearly defined by these piles of masonry blight. Traditional neighborhoods where migrants flowed into this nation and then graduated to another existence gave way to these new, urbanly-renewed ghettoes that held its inhabitants largely captive to the now very familiar architectural stereotype that defines public housing. We know this to be true because we see and witness the effects of this reality. There can be no argument to the expression of the world that we’ve built as is indicated by the construction as it exists, and the effects that are consequential to our built environment.

A typical New England 18th c. era village center- church, commerce and homes facing the town green

The truth as revealed by architectural forensics. We are the detectives who observe, investigate, and reveal unassailable realities as expressed by the physical world. The aim: to provide clarity as to the purpose and understanding of the consequences for that which we’ve created. What does the ‘village green’ tell us about 18th Century New England colonial society? That the church dominates the essential position of power, authority, and honor is no accident. Other homes that surround the ‘green’ are generally of similar if not identical shape, size, materials, and coloring to each other and they surround a very regular and ordered pastoral setting around which the townsfolk gather, share, provide, and protect one another from the threats of savages and secularism. The yearning for freedom, for equality amongst one’s brethren; to conform, to live humbly and yet with determination; to control their environment and yet with a clear respect that society persists or perishes at the whim of what nature issues forth, as conveyed by God’s will… All of these attributes are qualities gleaned from observation with just a modicum of written history that serves to temper the inclination one might have to go too far astray. The truth about this society, as immortalized by the wood frames and clapboards of their construction—what remains in our time and that which has long since disappeared due to our delinquency, obstinacy, ignorance, and willful intent—are quite simply more evidence that provides clarity of the society as conveyed by its architecture.

Andrea Palladio’s Villa Rotonda (1591)

Andrea Palladio’s Villa Rotonda (1591), serene, powerful, perfectly symmetrical in plan, the rotunda and cupola elements that terminate the center of the Greek cross plan; the point of focus to the entire composition, the universe where man is at its center, controlling of his destiny as expressed by this creation… the art which adorns the walls, ceiling, each and every nook and crevasse of this palatial home; the saturation of form and attention to each surface whether it be adorned or left spare as an intended repose; the owner’s clarity of purpose, no hesitation, willful, wonton, desirous, thoroughly committed in its expression of erudition; that art is the consummate expression of beauty; that beauty is both the point of departure and realization to what mankind can aspire in this life, perhaps the only life; as if that remains the sole vestige of his paradise and salvation. To observe any subject building; allowing it to speak through its form is a certitude upon which we can rely, because it is unassailable. We are witness to these realities; and only that awareness can provide clarity and meaning.

If Charles Darwin spent months on the Beagle floating up the Hudson River instead of off the coast of the Galapagos Islands, having sequestered his observations in an investigation entitled Conclusions of our Civilization instead of The Origin of Species, would we be any less impressed with the veracity of what he’d witnessed and assessments drawn accordingly? Society is, in fact, the expression of the environment that it has inherited coupled with the built environment that it has created. Our society has become overly seduced with the “what-ifs”, and no longer cares to acknowledge the “has-beens”; and yet we live in a world that we’ve made; there can be no dispute about that.

I’ve often thought that it is a fool’s errand that architectural publications and journals evaluate built projects shortly after their completion. There is hardly a message to be conveyed about a newly minted project that couldn’t be have already been reviewed when it was merely a conception on either the drawing board or in the fancy of one’s mind. A building or urban landscape can only be truly evaluated after it has existed for some substantial period of time; after when it has been burnished by the elements; trodden upon; been used and abused; becomes part of a fabric or recognized as a carcinogen that has assaulted the world already extant.

My position is quite simply to observe that which we’ve created in order to know the truth. The built environment is the perfect mirror in that it tells us everything about ourselves and perfectly expresses who we are; with utter disregard for propaganda or innuendo.

Architectural forensics is the tool to gain this understanding. They are clear and ingenuous; forensics discover the reality that gives birth to form and makes eminently clear the choices that may not have been initially understood because they were not yet expressed physically and could have been subject to willful or even unintended deception. We as employers of this powerful tool need know nothing about architecture or urban planning in order to draw our conclusions. In fact, we will no longer be seduced by the critical experts of architectural proposals as we become more confident that words cannot be used as a substitution for the reality of what buildings tells us through their forms and physical presence. We now possess the tools to have a clear understanding to the meaning of that which was destroyed in order to make way for the existence of a new structure; or even how a street, city, or forest may have benefited or suffered as a consequence of the new physical landscape . Truth gained in this manner of observation and description is unassailable.

Thus is the power and potential of Architectural Forensics- a force for truth and meaning.

By William Green, Contributing Writer

William Green holds a fine arts degree from Tufts University.  He continued his studies with a year at the University of Copenhagen, Royal Academy of Architecture; proceeding to the University of Colorado in pursuit of his Master of Architecture degree. This was followed by an internship at the prestigious Studio Coppola in Milan, Italy. After several years of practice and a number of awards, the opportunity to design offices for Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Inc., in New York City, provided the impetus to establish his own firm in 1986.

William has served on the faculty of the New York School of Interior Design and has lectured at various universities and numerous design symposiums.

His firm can be reached at: www.wgaarchitects.net

Detail, The Green House, Santa Barbara, CA (1983)

  What’s going on?   

The dismaying dearth of intellectual rigor in our popular culture has been parried with an overly- zealous esotericism among the architectural elite. This clique of influential architects has been given a much louder voice by their precocious benefactors than befits their numbers and yet their stamp upon the contemporary architectural landscape has been profound.Fine Arts Magazine   

The last McDonald’s restaurant in classic 1950s style, San Jose, CA. A Stanley Meston design

 Just as our built environment is littered with construction that is bane and banal, the contemporary detritus is a plethora of factious forms that have been generated by sophisticated software and technological zeitgeist. These visually enticing, yet vacuous assemblies, have appeared in great numbers on the choicest of urban and rural site, as if they’ve come to existence in a vacuum, with wanton neglect of their context and past architectural achievements. The brazen new work seems to have rendered the architectural old-guard meek and humiliated by the new, brash neighbor who’s just made its grand entrance to the scene. After the initial fanfare, these awkward juxtapositions serve only to disrupt the architectural continuity and further diminish the cultural fabric.   

Has the architectural universe been distilled to a choice between another fractured Frank Gehry, or a Kentucky Fried drive-through? Probably, the answer is yes, but if there is a way to be modern, smart, sincere, and beautiful, and to offer the promise of contemporary architecture deemed worthy by future generations, it’s worth some observation and introspection to understand how we can improve the current state of affairs.   

Justification for the current paradigm:

With sheer determination that mistakes wealth for truth, and truth for beauty, the collective sense of being modern purveyed by certain acolytes coupled with the desire to being ‘different’ has ambushed our ability to distinguish between good and that which is simply unique. When Modernism embraced the machine and its physical manifestation, represented by the Bauhaus School of design, how neatly did the philosophy fit with the need to re-build Europe after the destruction wreaked upon the continent during the First World War? The economic advantage of being modern begs the question as to what is serving whom? Did the style follow economic necessity or was it just a happy coincidence that a financially friendly form just so happened to fall upon the architectural scene when society could no longer afford to build the way it used to before the Great Wars? Form follows finance?   

(above) Jackson Heights: Queens, NY- a laboratory for new ideas in 20^th C. housing. This planned community introduced several modern planning ideas in 1920’s. ‘Towers’ designed by A. J. Thomas (1925), illustrate ‘Garden Apartment ‘ planning- open space and suburban amenities – within confines of city’s grid.   

What was left behind and lost was not only the tradition of a tightly-woven architectural fabric but, almost entirely rendered to the waste heap of knowledge was the language of western architecture, developed and refined over the past 2,500 years. Perhaps the formal architectural predilection that we understand to be modernism evolved to suit manufacturing methodology and then continued to develop to the present day where even more sophisticated machines not only build the physical components and assemble the project, but then these machines are again employed to actually create the design itself.   

Even if there were a place for the language of architecture as we once knew it, how would we know it if we saw it anymore? Willful negligence and inexcusable ignorance regarding reference, context and a lack of reverence for appropriate precedent has resulted in the jettisoning of architectural and cultural context—so essential to the success of any architectural response. Have we lost for an eternity the architectural landscape that embodies those cohesive qualities of a built environment that were once taken for granted but are today only packaged and preserved in precious “historic districts”? Or is it possible to be both modern and reverential at the same time?   

Justification for trying something else:

This image and those below: Details of the Green House (1983)

 Not only is historical and cultural reference a valid, honorable, and completely modern point of departure for the design of a new building, but only an edifice that is fundamentally relevant can be considered truly modern; because its very nature embraces qualities that pay attention to its context, heritage, materials, culture, and its essential nature to be a product of the current time.   

The understanding of purpose and place and the difference between here and there are primary factors that warrant a project to be deserving of construction relative to one that is better left on the computer monitor because it didn’t know any better. Is there any reason that “Stupid” should be substituted for being “Smart” just because it’s been purveyed and then consumed as being “cool”?   

What I did:

The Green House, a single-family, three-bedroom house in Santa Barbara, California, is a construction that was commissioned by my mother, Norma Green, in 1981 and completed in 1983. As a Promethean effort for a newly-minted architect, this project provided the post-thesis culmination of idea, idiom, and execution. This writing is an investigation of concepts that are timeless and a retrospective of a specific architectural response that intends to be modern even though the last brush stroke of paint was applied nearly twenty-seven years ago.   

The design inspiration point of departure for the Green House arose from the Southern Californian Mission Style of architecture and surrounding Mediterranean landscape. The goal was to deliver an innovative, yet historically-informed design, into the ongoing diatribe of current taste and classical virtue; thereby making it essentially ‘modern’.   

The dissection begins with its composition. Modern convention insists on the arrangement of pure geometric volumes, planar screens and linear exclamations, celebrated to the exclusion of ornamentation, which would otherwise distract from the purity of sheer form. The assembly of these elements is both additive and reductive, creating a variety of dynamic forms that are perceived by mass and void and by the changing play of light and shadow.   

One experiences this architectural object through time and space and an unfolding view that cannot be fully digested in one sighting, but only fully appreciated by collecting immediate visual perceptions and combining them with a collection of previously digested memories of the edifice, giving power and life to this form. Inspired by spatial ‘surprises when touring through an Italian hill town, sightlines are designed to be abbreviated, changing, and without repose. Vistas open up to the viewer as the culmination of a lengthy approach. The banal and anticipated are vanquished in favor of the unexpected and varied, enjoining the relationship between landscape and serendipity.   

The courtyard, with its galvanizing point-of-focus, provided by the single palm tree, finds its precedent with the atrium house of the Vettii in Pompei. While the steep hills of Sycamore Canyon have been employed as a substitute for the “fourth wall” of the atrium space, the quality of this private/public outdoor vestibule remains true to the function of its predecessor. Openings to the house and garage are screened or framed according to the desired visual access deemed appropriate for these specific functions.   

The interior of the house seeks to provide a seamless play of the same compressed and expansive volumes that are experienced outside, only with a ceiling involved. Saltillo tile, a commonly found mission-style paver, is used at the exterior and then carried into the house as finished flooring so as to further interfere with standard conceptions of outdoor and indoor spaces. White stucco walls… monolithic, common, and ordinary to the region further support the sense of place and yet are the binding surfaces that transform the geometry of the structure to a uniform and cohesive composition.   

Could this house exist anywhere other than in Southern California? Perhaps so, but I would like to think not nearly as successfully. Can its design be traced to a specific date in time? I would hope that it could because only the honesty of a detailed design response that is acutely aware of its specific time and place of creation warrants the brand of being modern. It is also true that only the qualities of the design that are steeped in the context and tradition of this specific project will spare the house from appearing as dated. That fate would be a failed miscarriage of conception that places a preconceived form ahead of its influences, instead of the design of an architecture that gathers its strength and integrity out of respect for discovering the truth, without fear of finding it and with confidence that the journey will end with a design that is beautiful and consummately modern.   

William Green, RA, Contributing Writer   

To see more images of this project and others by William Green & Associates, Architects, go to www.wgaarchitects.net