Colin Rowe: Address to the 1985 ACSA Annual Meeting in Vancouver

Author(s): Jerry Wells and Colin Rowe

Source: Journal of Architectural Education (1984-) , Autumn, 1985, Vol. 39, No. 1
(Autumn, 1985), pp. 2-6
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of the Association of Collegiate Schools
of Architecture, Inc.

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1424822

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 Colin Rowe:
Address to the 1985 ACSA
Annual Meeting in Vancouver
With an Introduction by Jerry Wells
l/

Colin Rowe is truly an intemationally-known

theoretician and educator. His recent work in
Berlin gives substance to this fact. He has had
a remarkable and distinguished teaching career
which began in 1948 at Liverpool University
in England where he was both classmate and
teacher of Jim Stirling. Colin came to the
United States in 1951 and worked for an
architectural firm in California. In 1953 he
went to teach at the University of Texas
where I met him when I was a student there
thirty-two years ago. Colin quickly became the
ring leader of a group called the "Texas Rang-
ers." That group set about revolutionizing the
way modem architecture was taught at most
institutions. From there he went to Cambridge
University in England. He returned to this
country in 1962 to become Professor at Cor-
nell University where he has taught ever since.
He has headed the graduate program in Urban
Design since 1964 and has taught in the His-
tory of Architecture program all those years.

His students are spread all over the world and

have had strategic and important influences on
architecture, teaching and the built environ- Terragni's Casa Del Fascio.

ment. Testimony to this is that at the 1985

ACSA Annual Meeting there were over 20
people insome way on its agenda who were
Colin's students. But, Professor Rowe's influ-
ence extends far beyond his teaching. His writ-
ings have influenced architects and architec-
tural thinking for the past 35 years. His many
publications since the 1950's have been pro-
found, innovative and have always challenged
accepted theory.
The person who is most responsible for creat-
ing these two traditions is Colin Rowe. Colin
also is an educator who really understands
architects. Time and time again I have seen
Colin totally surprise students on a jury by
talking only of how they have not addressed
the pragmatics of building, and yet at the same
time Colin can write the following; I quote
from his introduction to Five Architects:
was thus that there emerged the spectacle of
an architecture which claimed to be scientific
but which, as we all know, was in reality pro-
foundly sentimental. For very far from being as
deeply involved as he supposed with the pre-
cise resolution of exacting facts, the architect
was (as he always is) far more intimately con-
cemed with the physical embodiment of even
more exacting fantasies."

There are two very simple traditions where
Colin teaches which have made an education
in architecture there unique and special. The
first is that the individual building is part of a
greater whole. It exists in a context and is
designed in a manner which simultaneously is
affected by and responds to its physical con-
text. It is never conceived as a decorated
object standing alone, but always as part of the
city. The second tradition is that the history of
architecture is a strategic part of the curriculum
and is taught at the graduate level in the
Department of Architecture. The student is
placed in a philosophical and historical context
that is thousands of years old (as opposed to
one which is only as old as the latest maga-
zines) and therefore has an understanding that
is more profound than some others.
"When, in the late 1940s modem architecture
became established and institutionalized, nec-
essarily, it lost something of its original mean-
ing. Meaning, of course, it had never been
supposed to possess. Theory and official exe-
gesis had insisted that modem building was
absolutely without iconographic content, that
it was no more than the illustration of a pro-
gram, a direct expression of social purpose.
Modem architecture, it was pronounced, was
simply a rational approach to building; it was a
logical derivative from functional and techno-
logical facts; and at the last analysis it should
be regarded in these terms as no more than the
inevitable result of 20th-century circumstances.
There was very little recognition of meaning in
all this. Indeed the need for symbolic content
seemed finally to have been superseded; and it
Those few sentences for me really say it all.
I once heard Colin introduce Henry-Russell
Hitchcock. He said that there are two kinds of
lions: One kind is made of stone and symmet-
rically disposed around the entrances of public
buildings such as the New York City Public
Library. This kind symbolically guards the pub-
lic tradition and, I suppose, in this case knowl-
edge. The second kind of lion roams the jun-
gle and dares to roar. (Hitchcock was of the
latter kind).
Having certainly dared to roar in the jungle
and having also dared to roar on the steps of
the New York City Public Library Colin Rowe
is without question a "Lion."
Jerry Wells

Fall 1985, JAE 39/1

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 l

On an occasion like this I suppose

surely that the
be directly linked, for both of them pres- Now, this is not to argue a dependency of the
ent a frame
recipient of the award is expected to saystructure as the residue of a vertical
some- Equitable Building upon Terragni. Far from it;
thing about his or her principles.
plane But,
(or, as I then, if that Kenneth
am persuaded and, so far as I can perceive these two issue
this recipient is not aware that Frampton
he possesses
might say,anyboth present tectonics in from completely different worlds of values. No,
principles which he can rapidly theenunciate,
guise of stereotomics).
if I am talking largely about my own taste (I
he is only dimly aware of a bundle of preju-
dices which he certainly possesses, just how
can this recipient discourse about issues of
which he is largely unconscious? And what,
anyway, are the differences between prejudice
and principle?

Therefore, to side-step principle and immedi-

ately to indulge in prejudice, it seems to me
that, probably, the ideas which architects
entertain about architecture are rather more
healthy than they were-let's say-thirty to
fifty years ago. Which, of course, is no reason
to anticipate a proliferation of masterpieces.
For, quite simply, the prevalence of master-
pieces need not concur with the salubrity of
thought.

So, nowadays, the pretensions of modem

architecture have become cut down; and,
while I believe that we are all the gainers for
this, I retain the impression that in some
regards we are also the losers. And, to illustrate
this supposition, let me make reference to
three buildings and one project.

Down the road from Vancouver, in Portland,

are Pietro Belluschi's Equitable Building and
Michael Graves' Portlandia; and more
remotely, in Italy, there are Giuseppe Terrag-
ni's Casa del Fascio at Como and the more
recent project of Aldo Rossi for the Palazzo
della Provincia in Trieste. In other words, four
important statements; and, if these four speci-
mens were to be juggled around, then interest-
ing critical conclusions might ensue.

In any case, as regards my own judgment, I

would rank these four in the order of:
A. Terragni
B. Belluschi
C. Graves
D. Rossi
To which judgment I must add that, as yet, I
have not seen Michael Graves' building in
Portland; but, all the same, I am pretty sure
that when I have seen it I will still be inclined
to give the edge to Belluschi.

But Equitable and Portlandia are a great talk-

ing point, as are, Equitable and Terragni's little
palazzo at Como. These latter two should Belluschi's Equitable Building in Portland.
Fall 1985, JAE 39/1

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Graves' Portlandia.
enjoy stereotomic renditions of structure); but,
then, I also hope that I am addressing myself
to the criteria of common sense. Unquestion-
ably, the Equitable Building is affiliated to such
great Chicago exemplars as the First and Sec-
ond Leiter Buildings; and, therefore, so long as
floors remain flat and multi-storied, non-hierar-
chical structures remain a norm, I can only
think that it will continue to make an admira-
ble-though not a complete-argument. For a
more developed argument, I look towards the
Casa del Fascio; though a miniature it is like-
wise a frame structure but, this time, seen
through the abstracting lenses of both Giorgio
de Chirico and De Stijl sensibilities. And these
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added components did help, because it is
always extremely rough to enter into a non-
hierarchical structure. Louis Sullivan found it
rough; and, hence, what one might call the
structural distortions of the Wainwright Build-
ing in St. Louis and the Guaranty Building in
Buffalo. Le Corbusier found it rough in his
1929 building for the Salvation Army; and,
hence (?) the pilotis of the Pavilion Suisse (if it
is so very, very hard to penetrate the vertical
surface, then let's get in from undemeath). I
suspect that Michael Graves also found it
rough at Portlandia; and, hence, his reversion
to Sullivanian prototypes. However, at Como,
Terragni had no such trouble. The frame was
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abstracted; and, as a consequence, entrance
was permitted. At Como, no doubt for Fascist
purposes, (parade and march), the building
facilitates the ceremonies of entrance and exit;
but at Portland, and with Belluschi, no doubt
for obvious reasons, this particular dimension
does not exist.
After these, the Rossi project for Trieste (even
though it may be an 'artwork' dissimulating
'art') is relatively unknown. But, just as Por-
tlandia evades commentary upon Equitable, so
Rossi's project will have nothing to do with
Terragni's great Como paradigm; and, by this,
I think we are all the losers.
However, now to illustrate why we must also
be the gainers; and to introduce a little quote
from Igor Stravinsky and Robert Craft, Memo-
ries and Commentaries, published in 1960. Craft
propounds the question: "And 'roder'?". To
which Stravinsky replied:
"The only sense in which I think 'modem' can
now be used must derive from, or so I imagine,
a meaning similar to that of the devotio mod-
ema of Thomas A. Kempis. It implies a new
fervour, a new emotion, a new feeling. It is
'romantic' of course, and it suffers. ... for it
cannot accept the world as it is. 'Modem' in
this sense does not so much mean or empha-
size the appearance of a new style though, of
course, a new style is part of it. Nor is it
brought about merely by its innovations,
though innovations are part of it too."
And Stravinsky continues:
"This is very far from the popular association of
the word with all that is newest and most
shocking in the world of sophisticated unmor-
ality. I was once introduced to someone at a
party with the recommendation, 'Son Sacre du
Printemps est terriblement modere.' And
Schoenberg's bon mot 'my music is not mod-
em, it's just badly played,' depends upon the
same popular association of the word."
All the same, it is not my immediate purpose
to talk about the business of "modemity" and
shabby execution; and, instead, I wish to iter-
ate the essential core of Stravinsky's statement:
'modemity' ... is 'romantic' of course, and it
suffers for it cannot accept the world as it is."
Now, despite all protestations to the contrary,
I suggest that there is or was a stratum of truth
here. For, intrinsically, modem architecture
 m

promised the New Jerusalem, that impossible invention, variety, quality; and has therefore London, of a number of Roman outfits in the
city from the Book of Revelations, where acted to sponsor the almost universal mish- Via Veneto and of ever so many more. There
insufficiency and evil were all to vanish away; mash land, a specimen of which one witnesses were frequent demonstrations of the Grand
and, then, the architect was to be able to as one looks out from the upper stories of this Hotel in early-20th century fiction evoked by
reach this happy dispensation by forgetting hotel (The Hyatt in Vancouver-ed.). But, of writers such as Amold Bennett and Vicki
everything which he had ever known or had course, even more than the external world Baum. Though these buildings may have been
ever leamed. For his cognitive insights, he was around it, this building in which we find our- slightly meretricious, throughout their public
to depend upon the physical scientist and, for selves, like so many others of its kind, may rooms and guest accommodations the theme of
his modus operandi upon the engineer. Such serve as a perfect text to provide a sinister illu- palace was orchestrated with remarkable con-
was the message of the early polemic; but this mination of Schoenberg's bon mot. sistency and often with conspicuous refine-
absurdity was not all. For the architect was, ment. While very important in this respect the
There is a friend of mine in Texas who is
also, to be attuned to the voice of history. Not palatial envelope, again and again, also proved
only a scientist, he was firther to be a prone to say: "Sometimes I think that the Eng- itself abundantly capable of absorbing the mul-
lish have heard that shoes exist but have
prophet, a planchette, a ouija board, an titude of functional requirements.
obedient pencil. His duty was to transcribe never, ever, seen any;" and I would now like
to adapt this observation for my purposes. Far However, after 1945 all this came to be con-
the utterings and the mutterings of the spirit
too often: "We cannot do something" becomes sidered retrograde. For what purpose conceal
of the age.
an excuse for "We don't know how;" and the the reality of the functional dispositions? And
A logical incompatibility there was in all this; result becomes a building like that which, at why, why should democratic societies concem
but, apparently, it occurred to nobody to dis- present, we occupy-an ovemight stop for per- themselves with palatial institutions? And
course upon it. The true believers believed; sons who have heard that hotels indeed do should not our only ideal be that of elegant effi-
and those finny conservatives who didn't like exist but have never, ever, been in one. ciency? Albeit undoubtedly over-simplified,
modem architecture merely addressed their something like this was certainly the argument
horror to the aggressive visuals. But the two At the turn of the century it was generally of those years. Against wicked despotisms a
requirements-the architect as physical scien- accepted that the image or the icon for a hotel war had been won; therefore, it remained to
tist and the architect as interpreter of the will was a palace. Here one may think of the Plaza march on in the armor of shining truth. All
of the epoch-demonstrably were never to be and the St. Regis in New York, of the Ritz in
combined. On the one hand, approximately
verifiable facts and, on the other, little more
than a grand Hegelian abstraction: these items
could never enter into a useful dialectic; and, if
joined by symbiosis, they could only lead to
the most monstrous and miserable coercion.
And, needless to say, these two stories about
society were put together, long before the
emergence of modem architecture, by Karl
Marx; and then, with traces of Charles Darwin
(natural selection, survival of the fittest, etc.)
they were enthusiastically accepted by the naf,
of both left- and right-wing persuasions. Both
these bodies of ideas comprise a completely ter-
rifying denial of free choice and free will; and,
just as dangerously, they permit the very easy
evasion of responsibility: "But I didn't design
the building. It is the result of ineluctable fact,
no other way." And, no less powerfully: "But I
didn't design the building. Simply the Zeitge-
ist, the spirit of the age, has whispered to me
and I am merely its instrument."

And now I return to "my music isn't modem;

it's just badly played."

The combination of what Denise Scott-Brown

once called "physics envy" and of what David
Watkin has designated "Zeitgeist worship," by Rossi's Palazzo della Provincia.
eroding personal responsibility, has also eroded
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 /I
the same, while professing to be unconcerned
with the "spurious" claims of iconography or
emblem, the modem movement could only
revere two highly specific images--the factory
and the warehouse-and it was in terms of
these that it formulated its disposition to
remake the world.
When I arrived in Vancouver on Sunday night
I took alarm. I was informed that I was to par-
ticipate in a series of "workshops." I felt terribly
unprepared. I hadn't brought a hammer, I had
no monkey wrench, no screwdriver, no saw.
How could I become involved in a "work-
shop?" But then, when I discovered that there
wasn't going to be any banging about with
nails and things, I came to realize that the
term "workshop" was really a linguistic subter-
fuge, intended to spread a cloak of proletarian
heroics over a sequence of, otherwise, bour-
geois intellectual confrontations. Which is to
intimate that I began to guess the term "work-
shop" had connotations equivalent to the
modernist preference for factory and ware-
house; and, like these items, it was a circumlo-
cution for dissimulating any traces of cultural
pretention.
So, praise God, these "workshops" turned out
to be only metaphorical. They were a blue-
jeansy disguise (so necessary) related to fanta-
sies of the Noble Savage; and, as such, one
may understand them. But, this noticed, one
can only suggest that it is to a curse of the
Devil we owe the fact that, by the literal-
minded, the equivalent metaphors of factory
and warehouse were interpreted as infallible
prescription for all architecture. Hence, we
have this so-called hotel. It is a factory or a
warehouse, an icon of practicality, a vulgar
icon of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happi-
ness," which operates as a more than Minoan
Labyrinth (Sir Arthur Evans is supposed to
have said about his reconstruction of Knossos:
"A poor thing but Minoan"), a labyrinth in
which you can't find your way, which is then,
ineffectually, decorated with a discontinuous
amalgam of bits of chinoiserie, bits of attempted
Louis-Louis, bits of Bavarian schloss, and you
name it.
It is all very far away from the Gesamtkunstwerk
of the early-20th century Grand Hotel. Some-
how the Gesamtkunstwerk, which the modem
movemnent proposed, at a popular level was not
to be realized; and, somehow, a drawing by Le
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Corbusier-a grid of dots with a few squig- But I have talked too long and I will now
gles-became our present environment. It is begin a conclusion by saying that I don't
an environment in which spatial and cultural believe this is a situation which can possibly be
confusion is total, in which kitsch reigns destined to continue. For, sooner or later,
universal. there comes the revolt of the mind and the
eye.
But it was a happy choice, almost a prompting
of genius, that arranged we should meet in this Led by the United States, the dimensions of
so-called hotel. Because surely, this building, 19th-century kitsch were astonishingly dimin-
among many of its category, must be among ished in that great period of architectural deco-
the greater exhibitions of our predicament. rum which extends from approximately 1890
For, unlike what the proponents of modem to approximately 1930. And may we now
architecture imagined, the palace, being a hope for a comparable dispensation? If we set
complex organism, will accommodate complex our minds to it, personally I think we may.
requirements (including the physical and intel-
lectual requirements of luxury); but the ware- However, to bring about this condition, one
house-factory, being a more elementary organ- must postulate, firstly, the retirement of the
ism, just doesn't possess the same elasticity or Zeitgeist and, secondly, the retirement of the
resilience. corresponding fantasy of the architect as con-
sulting only "facts" (as though "culture" were
So now to add to the text presented by this not a fact); and then, while continuing to
building (where the porte cochere leads to the think about the stringencies of the Casa del
parking dungeon) a literary text which I owe Fascio and Pietro Belluschi's Equitable Build-
to Barbara Littenberg: ing, we may-perhaps-hope to see the day
when hotels, yet again, become palaces and
"In the 1890's Edith Wharton writes to her
bourgeois intellectual colloquies will cease to
Cambridge friend Sara Norton: 'I think that I
be workshops. In other words, one may look
can now say what ails "our country." In the forward to the day when icon will be restored
landscape no foreground. In the mind no to its proper place as a vital component, at
background'." least the equal of firmness and commodity. /
Now, without careful preparation, this is some-
thing which you just don't say west of the
Hudson. It is too aboriginally New York, far
too vitriolic for general consumption; and
though you just might utter it in Boston, I am
not sure that even Boston would approve.
But, while I am far from certain that Mrs.
Wharton was accurate in her estimation of the
U.S. of A. in the 1890's, I shall still tran-
scribe her remark-for my purposes:
"I think that I can now say (as regards architec-
ture) what ails 'our world': In the landscape no
foreground. In the mind no background."
Fundamentally, by a conjunction of nonsense,
we have all been "done in." Modem architec-
ture professed to have no use for meaning and
representation (the images of factory and ware-
house were not seen as representative); while
Post-Modem architecture may be said to have
proliferated meaning, so called, at the expense
of anything profoundly interesting to commu-
nicate. For how can visual messages, important
or casual, be relegated to the status of those
which we find in this hotel?
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