Not a Whodunit. More a Whydoit

An architectural mystery, from C.W. Farrier, "Home, Sweet Home of Tomorrow?" Popular Mechanics (Sep., 1932), p.353.

What is this image?  What, exactly, are we looking at?  Who made it?  When was it made?  Keeping with the language of the mystery genre, I look to Martin Amis' London Fields as inspiration here.  Samson, the main narrator of that novel describes the tale he about to unfurl as "Not a whodunit.  More a whydoit."  The same applies to the mystery surrounding the above image.  In other words, it is not the "what is it?" that is important, but the "why did it happen?"  That is not to say, however, that the "what is it?" is not worth our efforts.

At first glance, we can be fairly comfortable with identifying the above house as modern.  Its flat roofs, white (plaster?) surfaces, and large, intersecting volumes suggest a large single-family residence — we could even argue that the house evokes projects by Irving Gill or even anticipate those by Gregory Ain.  For example, the house's size and volumetric arrangements suggest something in the order of Gill's Walter L. Dodge House (1914-16). And except for a ground-level protrusion including a garage, bedrooms, and a pool, and despite an intentional lack of detailing or overhangs, Gill's most famous project could bear a striking resemblance to the above house.  Again, the interplay of volumes and horizontal glazing on the second floor seems like a distant echo of Ain's Dunsmuir Flats (1937).  Notice the large, window glazing with its distinct checkerboard panes.  We've seen this before.  In fact, Richard Neutra used a similar kind of window in the entrance of his Lovell (Health) House (1927-29). 

Irving Gill (1870-1936), Dodge House, West Hollywood, CA, 1914-1916 (demolished)

Richard Neutra (1892-1970), Lovell (Health) House, Los Angeles, CA, 1927-1929

Architectural sleuths with a predilection for historical materials will recall quickly that a model and photographs of Neutra's house appeared in Modern Architecture — International Exhibition,  the iconic 1932 show at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York that introduced what would be known as the "International Style in Architecture."  One could even say that the above mystery house is an example of this style.  Hold on to that thought.

Viewing the image in its proper context reveals additional layers of complexity.  Should we zoom out from the above image, we will notice that it is a photograph from the front page of the September 1932 issue of Popular Mechanics.  Started in 1902 by Chicago publisher Henry Haven Windsor, Popular Mechanics was a publication aimed at bringing the latest advancements in science and technology to a mass audience.  The slugline under the title — "Written So You Can Understand It" — is perhaps the best testament to this point.  And so is the title of the lead article.  Is this truly the "Home, Sweet Home of Tomorrow?"  The question mark is an invitation for Popular Science readers to judge whether this is the case.

Front page to the September 1932 issue of Popular Mechanics

We could also ask the couple who is looking at the model of the house.  They are the very image of a marital division of labor.  The wife looks happy.  The husband appears consumed in thought.  The wife smiles while imaging her life inside the house.  The husband is figuring out whether the car (a dead ringer for a Walter Dorwin Teague design that would be featured in the October 1932 Popular Mechanics) fits inside the garage.  Housekeeper and breadwinner are caught in the act of contemplating architecture.  This is all hyperbole, of course.  But so is the caption to the image.  It reads, "Model in Exhibit of Museum of Modern Art, New York."

Those with a careful eye will note the exact wording of the caption.  After all, we are looking at a "Model in Exhibit of Museum of Modern Art," not a "Model in Exhibit at Museum of Modern Art."  Considering the year in which this article was published, and judging by the kind of architecture that is being presented here, this would be a reference to MoMA's 1932 Modern Architecture exhibition.  Identifying the model as something that was "of" as opposed to "at" MoMA amounts to some hair-splitting, sure.  But there is a reason for emphasizing this distinction: this house never appeared at the 1932 MoMA show.

Model of Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye displayed in Hitchcock and Johnson's Modern Architecture - International Exhibition show at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1932.

Curators Philip Johnson and Henry-Russell Hitchcock originally intended to write a book detailing the contemporary landscape of architectural modernism.  This changed during the summer of 1930, when at the behest of Alfred H. Barr, Jr., the two took a trip to Europe to survey architects and projects to be included in an exhibit about modern architecture.  It was during this trip that Johnson and Hitchcock met many of the architects who would eventually end up in their show.  And after two years of clashing over content, of hammering out different versions of the show (including earlier iterations which were to include work by Norman Bel Geddes), the result was an exhibition of photographs and architectural models that was as polemical as it was popular.

As demonstrated by the floor plan of the resulting Modern Architecture-International Exhibition at MoMA from 10 February to 23 March 1932, the Popular Mechanics model is nowhere to be seen.   It bears mentioning that Johnson and Hitchcock organized their models and photographs according to three general areas.  The first, entitled "Modern Architects," featured the work of modernist luminaries such as Le Corbusier and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe as well as a coda-like addition focusing on the work of Raymond Hood and Neutra.  The second part, "The Extent of Modern Architecture," showed how aspects of architectural modernism were present in the work of European, American, and Asian architects.   The third, and most contested part was simply labeled "Housing" and contained photographs and site plans of works selected by Catherine Bauer, Lewis Mumford, and Henry Wright.  All of these sections featured models, including: J.J.P. Oud's House at Pinehurst, Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye, Mies' Tugendhat House, Frank Lloyd Wright's House on Mesa, Otto Haesler's Rothenburg Siedlungen, Walter Gropius' Bauhaus, the Bowman Brothers' Lux Apartments, George Howe's and William Lescaze's Chrystie-Forsyth housing, Hood's Tower in the Country, and Neutra's Lovell (Health) House.  Again, in addition to a passing, superficial similarity to Neutra's house, different aspects of the Popular Mechanics house echo some of the models in the exhibit.  We see, for example, the same kind of overhangs and windows as in Oud's Pinehurst House, as well as the volumetric play defining Oak Lane Country Day School.  These, again, are very knee-jerk similarities, but it is important to note these — Popular Mechanics readers could make these very same associations.

And they did.  The September 1932 issue of Popular Mechanics was heavily annotated by a very informed reader.  (In fact, all issues available on Google Books were annotated by the very same reader.)  Note, for example, the extensive penciled marginalia surrounding the image of the "Home, Sweet Home of Tomorrow."  Along the gutter, on the left-hand side of the page, a handwritten scribble reads, "Probably designed by A. Lawrence Kocher and Albert Frey ..." (an address label covers the rest).

Reader's caption identifying the "Home, Sweet Home of Tomorrow" as Lawrence Kocher's and Albert Frey's Aluminaire House.

A. Lawrence Kocher and Albert Frey, Harrison (Aluminaire) House, 1930-31: (top) southwest corner; (middle) northwest corner; (bottom) drawing of west elevation (Source: Joseph Rosa, "A. Lawrence Kocher and Albert Frey, The Aluminaire House, 1930-31" Assemblage, No. 11 (Apr., 1990), pp. 58-69.

The reference here is to the very same Kocher and Frey whose Harrison (or Aluminaire) House appeared in the both the Architectural League's 1931 Allied Arts Show and MoMA's 1932 Modern Architecture exhibition.  The house, assembled out of found and prefabricated light steel and aluminum elements, was one of the earliest examples of modern architecture to be found on the East Coast.  The Aluminaire House also had some serious architectural pedigree.  Not only was it considered an exemplar of the "International Style" by Hitchcock and Johnson, but it was designed by Frey, a former employee of Le Corbusier's who from 1928 to 1929, worked on signature projects such as the Villa Savoye at Poissy, the Cité de Refuge, in Paris, and the Centrosoyus in Moscow.

"Cut-Away" drawing of Kocher and Frey's Aluminaire House from the August 1931 issue of Popular Mechanics.  Note the reader's annotation at the very top identifying the image as the Aluminaire House.

And how, exactly, did this reader know about Kocher and Frey or the Aluminaire House?  It is very likely that this reader once looked at an article the August 1931 issue of Popular Mechanics called "The Home of The Future."  And indeed, looking at the Google Books version of the article not only reveals a  very detailed (and labeled) drawing of the Aluminaire House, but also shows the very same handwriting as in the September 1932 issue.  Here, the reader writes in the same script as before, "designed by A. Lawrence Kocher and Albert Frey, 4 Park End Place, Forest Hills, Long Island, NY" (with an accompanying note referencing the September 1932 issue).  The question is, when did the reader look at the August 1931 issue?  Judging by the fact that the reader strikes through his or her scribble in the September 1932 issue, we can guess that the author, though familiar with the MoMA exhibition, thought that the "Home, Sweet Home of Tomorrow" was the Aluminaire House.  Once he or she looked at the October 1931 issue, he or she realized the mistake and struck through the reference.

This graphological detour still leaves an important question unanswered.  What inspired this reader to recall the Aluminaire House?  What made him or her say, "Ahh, that looks like Kocher and Frey's Aluminaire House"?  Perhaps a visit to the MoMA show informed this opinion.  There are, however, two plausible explanations.  On the one hand, there is a bit of a formal similarity between the "Home, Sweet Home of Tomorrow" and the Aluminaire  House.  Here, I am of course talking about the gridded window glazing: it appears both the cutaway drawing from the August 1931 issue and the model in the October 1932 issue.  The glazing also appears in roughly the same area of the image (on the left-hand corner of the model).  When comparing the two images, it it possible to see how this kind of glazing becomes a dominant feature for both projects, even if both are proportioned differently, and even if the windows are located in different areas relative to the rear façades of each building.

On the other hand, our unidentified reader may have seen the MoMA show in Chicago.  In 1932, the Chicago-based Association of Arts and Industries (the precursor the the New Bauhaus as well as the Art Institute of Chicago), an organization whose object was to "stimulate the application of art to the industrial and aesthetic development of the country"[1], sponsored a traveling version of the show.  Held at the exhibition gallery of the new Sears, Roebuck store from June 9 to July 9, the traveling version of the Modern Architecture exhibition featured many of the same models and photographs as in the New York version.  And indeed, our reader noted near the bottom of the "Home, Sweet Home of Tomorrow" article that the Popular Mechanics mystery model was "shown at Sears Roebuck."  This leads to the conclusion that a photograph of the Aluminaire House was shown at Sears, Roebuck during the summer of 1932.  But assuming that indeed this building was part of the exhibit, there is always the question of why the reader would think that Kocher's and Frey's house was important. In other words, the Aluminaire House was significant for our reader — so much so that he or she went to a lot of trouble to document its origins and pedigrees in the margins of a popular magazine.

There is always the possibility that we are overstating the importance of Kocher's and Frey's house.  It is true that the Aluminaire House was a significant example of modernist architecture.  But to impart this interpretation on our reader may be asking too much.  Was he or she really aware of current developments in architecture culture?  Perhaps.  But then again, there is something about the degree to which this reader was informed about specifics that leads us to think that this was no average reader.  Why is this so?

It has everything to do with the Popular Mechanics.  As it turns out, the August 1931 and October 1932 issues were involved in their own kind of architectural polemic —one that competed with, if not contravened, ideas about architectural modernism present in the MoMA show.   "Home, Sweet Home of Tomorrow?" was written by C.W. Farrier, one of the organizers of the 1933-1934 World's Fair in Chicago.  Called the "Century of Progress Exposition," the Fair was a showcase for cultural, scientific, technological, and even architectural innovations.

Night views of the Hall of Science, Century of Progress Exposition, Chicago, IL, 1933-34 (Source: Images of Progress: Views from A Century of Progress International Exposition, 1933-1934,  A Century of Progress Records, 1927-1952, Special Collections and University Archives Department, University of Illinois at Chicago Library) 

In 1928, its Architectural Commission, chaired by Harvey Wiley Corbett, enlisted a group of high-profile designers, including Paul Philippe Cret,  John Holabird, Raymond Hood, Daniel Burnham, and Joseph Urban to supervise the planning and architecture for the exhibit.  During a meeting with the Board of Trustees, the Commission identified two general strategies regarding the design of the Century of Progress Exposition:

The architecture of the buildings and grounds in 1933 will illustrate in definite form the development of the art of architecture since the great Fair of 1893, not only in America but in the world at large [...] New elements of construction, products of modern invention and science will be the factors of architectural composition.  Artificial light, the tremendous progress of which has astonished all designers in recent years, will become an inherent component of the architectural composition.  The extraordinary opportunities of the site for the use of the water as an intrinsic element of the composition will be developed to the maximum.[2]

As these statements suggest, the Architectural Commission gravitated towards a more contemporary look for its architecture.  Yet the result was more idiosyncratic: a collection of vernacular, evocative, fantastic, and in some instances, modernist and Art Deco buildings arranged according to an asymmetrical master plan.  The latter two styles were more prevalent than not, and often anticipated many of the streamlined designs that would be subsequently favored by the likes of Bel Geddes, Teague, and Henry Dreyfuss.  The Century of Progress Exposition also featured some of Joseph Urban's last works.  As Lenox Lohr stated in his account of the Exposition, Urban was brought in to remedy the architectural consistencies by creating a unified color scheme for the buildings.  Lohr recalls,

Mr. Urban's color palette consisted of twenty-three colors, all of the brightest intensity.  They were: white; sulphur yellow; chrome yellow; bright orange; dull Persian orange; dull vermillion (almost terra cotta); bright vermillion; blue carmine; tomato bisque pink; brown red; greenish blue; peacock blue; true blue; ultramarine blue; dull dark blue; emerald green; peacock green; turquoise blue; blue gray; black, aluminum, gold and grey.  Seldom were more than five of these colors used on any one building, and usually only three or four.  Approximately twenty percent of all surface was in white, twenty percent in the blues, twenty percent in the oranges, fifteen percent in the black, and the remaining twenty-five divided among the yellows, reds, grays and greens.  Solid colors were designed to emphasize the building block system, for the style of the architecture required firmness of treatment in harmony with the definiteness of its unornamented form.[3]  

Resolving architectural inconsistencies by applying a twenty-three color palette may have seemed a little misguided, and certainly Urban thought so.  When used to illuminate the many water displays and building surfaces at night, many of the colors failed to achieve the desired effect.  And once the Exposition reconvened in the Summer of 1934, Urban introduced a smaller, more consistent and calculated color palette.  As visitors walked from the North Entrance to the various exits, they would experience a spectrum of greens, reds, blues, and oranges all accentuated through the use various lenses, flourescences, gels, as well as the occasional projection of shadows on white surfaces to accentuate architectural form.  In all, it was a spectacular strategy that relied on light effects and atmospherics in order highlight the Exposition's many corporate sponsors.

Century of Progress organizers also opted for a more "tangible" display of architecture, one that channeled the same kind of energy on atmospherics and effects towards an exhibition of building techniques.  This would be the responsibility of the Home Planning Group, a branch of the Home and Industrial Arts Committee dedicated to the design and construction of single-family residences, all using prefabricated components and featuring the latest dishwashers and air conditioners.

Homes shown as part of the Century of Progress Exposition.  Clockwise from top right: Brick House, House of Tomorrow, Armco-Ferro-Mayflower House, Stransteel House, Southern Cypress House,  Masonite House, Florida Home, Wieboldt-Rostone House,  Lumber House (Source: Official Guide Book of the World's Fair of 1934 [Chicago: Cuneo Press, 1934], p. 126)

Robert Smith, Jr. (ARMCO), Frameless Steel House, Cleveland, OH, 1932 (Source: Farrier, "Home, Sweet Home of Tomorrow", p. 354).  Note the various annotations indicating the parties involved in the construction of the house.

In his Popular Mechanics piece, however, Farrier emphasized the role that metal would play in the future.  The "Home, Sweet  Home of Tomorrow would, in his estimation, "be constructed entirely out of metal or of materials new to the building industry ... Its parts will be prefabricated and cut to size at the factory and it will be assembled merely by 'buttoning' together the numbered sections with clips and bolts."  He continued,

In the past two years groups have been experimenting with steel homes in one form or another [...] Without a doubt, the frame of the house will be of metal, though not necessarily of steel.  It will be rustproof and light in weight, whether it is stainless steel, aluminum or some other metal.  The walls will be about three inches thick instead of from twelve to eighteen inches.  The outer walls may be of colored enamel material made in sections that clip to the frame.  Inner walls will be attached to metal lath and may be of enameled metal, plasterboard, or precast plaster [...] Windows will be more to see out of than to admit light.  Illumination will be by neon tubing or ultraviolet tubing emitting therapeutic rays and these will be concealed in walls or ceilings.[4]

To illustrate this "future trend in building," Farrier included an image of a "Metal House" erected in Cleveland.  Set against a wooded glen, the house consists of two main cubic volumes, with a covered terrace set atop the larger one of these.  Faint vertical lines suggest the existence of metal paneling, as does the graphite color — indications that we are not looking at a house made from ordinary building materials.  To get a better sense of what this house is, as well as who made it and why it was constructed, we can again rely on the various annotations made by our reader.  And in looking at the top margin, we notice that our reader wrote down the citations for two issues of Popular Mechanics: the May 1932 and April 1933 issues.  Indeed, the same image of the same house appears in the May 1932 issue.

Image of Smith's Frameless Steel House from the May 1932 issue of Popular Mechanics.

Here, however, we see the fruits of our reader's endeavor.  He or she has not only marked the location of the house ("Built at Solon, Suburb of Cleveland"), but has also identified the house as a "co-op" project by the Insulated Steel Floor and Wall Company and the American Rolling Mill Company (both Ohio-based).  The reader also identifies Mills G. Clark as the designer.

Advertisement depicting Smith's and Clark's Armco-Ferro-Mayflower House (Source)

Known by the acronym ARMCO, American Rolling Mill Company sponsored the design and building of a frameless steel and enamel paneling house at the 1933 Century of Progress Exposition.  They enlisted the services of Clark and Cleveland architect Robert Smith, Jr. to design the "Armco-Ferro-Mayflower House."[5]  Like the house in the May 1932 issue of Popular Mechanics, the Armco-Ferro house evoked a non-metallic look.  Porcelain enamel (provided by the Ferro-Enamel Company) was applied to the metal surfaces to create a "softer" look that could also be painted.  In fact, the house depicted in the May 1932 Popular Mechanics was the first frameless steel and enamel paneling house.  It too was designed by Robert Smith, Jr.[6]

Robert Smith, Jr. (with Mills G. Clark), Armco-Ferro-Mayflower House, 1933 (Source: Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record)

At a first glance, the Armco-Ferro-Mayflower house also seems a modern.  Its flat roofs, volumetrics, and unornamented, white surfaces certainly recall several of the projects that introduced this piece.  However, it bears some similarities to the "Home, Sweet Home of Tomorrow" from the September 1932 Popular Mechanics that will draw us closer to the "whydoit"and help us understand more of the circumstances leading to this house.  The "Home, Sweet Home of Tomorrow" and the Armco-Ferro-Mayflower houses, for example, both rely on symmetrical forms and heavy bases which would place them squarely within a Art Deco tradition.  Both houses also have similar kinds of windows.  The Armco-Ferro house, however, used casement windows.  Judging by the arrangement and location of the windows (note the absence, for example, of strip-glazing), it is quite possible that the "Home, Sweet Home of Tomorrow" may have also used casement windows.  We may never know.

Norman Bel Geddes (1893-1958), House No. 3, 1930.  Image of project published in Bel Geddes' Horizons (1932)

Bel Geddes' House No. 3 as it appeared in an April 1931 issue of Ladies' Home Journal (Source)

J.J.P. Oud (1890-1963), Model of Johnson House, Pinehurst, NC, 1931 (Source: Canadian Center for Architecture)

Another aspect of the "Home, Sweet Home of Tomorrow" bears mentioning, and that is its title.  Popular magazines devoted to contemporary architecture trends almost always evoked the idea of a "home of tomorrow" in order to promote their ideas about domestic living.  In addition to the September 1932 issue, the August 1931 issue featuring the Aluminaire house was titled "The Home of The Future" (it too promoted the upcoming Century of Progress Exhibition).  And in the 1931 issue of Ladies Home Journal, Norman Bel Geddes introduced his "House of Tomorrow," which was an early rendering of his "House No. 3" (1930) which would appear later in Horizons (1932), his first book.  This house, with its asymmetrical plan, terracing, and circular port is certainly similar to J.J.P. Oud's Pinehurst house from the 1932 MoMA Modern Architecture show.

Bel Geddes, interior of House No. 3, from Horizons (1932)

But it is Bel Geddes rendering of the interior that should really capture our attention.  Here, we see a sparsely-outfitted studio complete with grand piano foregrounding a set large floor-to-wall windows – a gridded glazing that we have seen before, from Neutra's Lovell (Health) House, to Kocher and Frey's Aluminaire House, to William Lescaze's Roy Spreter Studio (1934), and even the "Home, Sweet Home of Tomorrow."  In other words, such use of windows and forms was not just an evocation of the future potential for domestic architecture.  It was also a demonstration of how new construction techniques, whether through steel framing or frameless steel, could allow for such embellishments.

View of Modern Architecture - International Exhibition as displayed at Bullocks-Wilshire Department Store, Los Angeles, CA, July 23 - August 30, 1932 (Source: Terence Riley, The International Style: Exhibition 15 and the Museum of Modern Art [New York: Rizzoli, 1992], p. 42)

More importantly, it is an instance of how ideas about architectural modernism were being commercialized and presented to the general public via popular magazines like Popular Mechanics and Ladies Home Journal.  Our enterprising Popular Mechanics reader, for example, may have seen Kocher and Frey's Aluminaire House at Sears, Roebuck in 1932.  It is worth mentioning that when planning the traveling version of the Modern Architecture show, Hitchcock and Johnson included department stores and showrooms as venues.  One of the most well-known photographs of the exhibit, for example, is not from the version shown at MoMA, but rather of the condensed version shown at Bullocks-Wilshire Department Store in Los Angeles from July 23 to August 30, 1932 (the previous installation was at Sears, Roebuck in Chicago).  A complicating landscape emerges, one where museums, department stores, international expositions, and non-professional publications like Popular Mechanics and Ladies Home Journal were enlisted in the promotion of architectural modernism.

This is, of course, is well known.  But it is the degree of integration between all of these forums and formats that is worth noting.  When the MoMA show came to Chicago in 1932, it was not devoted solely to the material that Hitchcock and Johnson curated earlier.  Co-sponsored by the Association of Arts and Industries, the show also featured buildings designed for the 1933 Century of Progress Exposition.[7]  And for many Chicagoans, the harbinger of architectural modernism was not MoMA, but the various houses at the Century of Progress Exposition.  Critic Emily Genauer noted as much in her study of the Paris and New York World's Fairs:

Up to the time of the Chicago exhibit, the consciousness of America's millions had not been appreciably dented by modern decoration.  It had been little more than a phrase suggesting possibly the arty ateliers of Paris and New York ... beyond application to one's own normal scheme of living

Then the Fair on the shores of Lake Michigan was opened, and countless Americans visited the row of model houses ... They found modern decoration good.  For the country-wide popularity of the new style dates from the time they came upon it accidentally in Chicago, admired its simplicity, its directness, its straight simple lines and chunky forms, and most of all, its patent liveableness.[8]

Here was a different version of architectural modernism.  Or, rather, a kind of modernity that did not rely on the universality and general applicability of modern architecture as much as it did depend on architecture's ability to (as Frederic Thompson would put it), "amuse the millions."  The very idea that would make architecture the handmaiden of popular culture was architectural modernism itself.

This, however, does not help us at all in identifying the "Home, Sweet Home of Tomorrow" portrayed in the September 1932 issue of Popular Mechanics.  What it does do, however, is help explain why the magazine's editors would identify the house as one being shown at MoMA in 1932.  The "Home, Sweet of Tomorrow" did bear a striking resemblance to examples of modern and Art Deco architecture, but it was only a resemblance.  What was at stake was whether architectural modernism could be deployed to sell more magazines, more houses, and more tickets.  That was the case in 1932 as much as it is now.

____________________

Notes


[1] Charles R. Richards, Art in Industry: Being a Report of an Industrial Art Survey Conducted Under the Auspices of the National Society for Vocational Education and the Department of Education of the State of New York (New York, 1922), p. 471.
[2] Architectural Commission of the 1933-1934 World's Fair to the Board of Trustees, 23 May 1928, quoted in Lenox H. Lohr, Fair Management: The Story of a Century of Progress (Chicago: Cuneo Publishing, 1952), p. 62.
[3] Lohr, Fair Management, pp. 75-76.
[4] C.W. Farrier, "Home, Sweet Home of Tomorrow?" Popular Mechanics (Sep., 1932), pp. 354, 128A.
[5] Historic American Building Survey, "ARMCO-FERRO-MAYFLOWER HOUSE: Photographs, Xerographic Copies of Color Transparencies, Written Historical and Descriptive Data, Reduced Copies of Drawings" HABS No. IN-244" (1994), p. 3.
[6] Ibid.  As our Popular Mechanics reader noted in the margin, the house from the May 1932 Popular Mechanics may have been built in Euclid, Ohio (not Solon), which would verify that it is indeed Robert Smith's frameless steel enamel house.
[7] Lloyd C. Engelbrecht, "The Association of Arts and Industries: Backgrounds and Origins of the Bauhaus Movement in Chicago", Unpublished Ph.D Dissertation, University of Chicago (1973), p. 122.
[8] Emily Genauer, Modern Interiors Today and Tomorrow: A Critical Analysis of Trends in Contemporary Decoration as Seen at the Paris Exposition of Arts and Techniques and Reflected at the New York World's Fair (New York: Illustrated Editions Company, Inc., 1939), pp. 11-12, quoted in ibid., pp. 166-67.  For more on the role of Century of Progress Exhibition vis-a-vis the International Style, see Engelbrecht, "Modernism and Design in Chicago", in Sue Ann Prince, ed. The Old Guard and the Avant Guard: Modernism in Chicago, 1910-1940 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), pp. 119-138

Larger Scales of Norman Bel Geddes

Model of Tokyo Bay (Source: Michael S. Sherry, The Rise of American Air Power (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1989)

The desire to represent real-time data seems quite contemporary, but in fact this practice was borne out of World War II-era architecture and design culture.  One characteristic of this practice was the impulse to dramatize physical and environmental data.  An image from Michael Sherry’s The Rise of American Air Power (1989) is a useful starting point to demonstrate how this is the case.  Here, we see a model of a waterfront and cityscape bordering a flat expanse of water.  This flat, "watery" surface extends outward and ends abruptly, revealing a tangle of plywood scaffolding supporting the model.  Booms and stage lights overhead suggest that we are looking at a soundstage.  It is, in a sense, for this image shows a film crew taking overhead footage of a scale model of Tokyo Bay.  But this is done for an entirely different purpose.  As Sherry indicates in the image caption, “The Army Air Forces adopted the techniques of Hollywood to simulate reality for crews – one of many wartime efforts to simulate conditions in Japan.”  The Tokyo Bay model was “used in the production of training films designed to brief aircrews slated to attack Japanese targets.”[1]

Such combinations of design, theatricality, and war calls immediately to mind the work of the American design polymath Norman Bel Geddes (1893-1958).  The 30s were particularly fruitful for Bel Geddes.  1932 saw the publication of Horizons, his well-regarded treatise on the role of industrial design and architecture in the future that featured images and drawings of Bel Geddes's streamlined designs.  And later, he designed and directed the "City of the Future" advertisement campaign for Shell Oil from 1936-37, which would eventually become the massively popular Futurama exhibit at the 1939 New York World's Fair.  Though Bel Geddes would not have as many high profile projects during the 1940s, his offices were still busy producing a lot of work for the both private and government clients.  Starting in 1942, the editors at Life magazine hired Bel Geddes to produce objects at a different scale than he was accustomed to.  Most of his wartime design effort consisted of various models and dioramas depicting everything from cloud patterns to the construction of Egyptian pyramids.  Yet his models of American combat operations brought Bel Geddes a different kind of recognition.  Published frequently in the pages of Life from 1942 to 1945, Bel Geddes' models were essentially highly-detailed terrain dioramas that brought a antiseptic, highly-stylized and design-conscious version of the war to American readers.

"Coral Sea: Norman Bel Geddes' re-enact naval battle" Life (May 25, 1942) (Source)

Unlike other images and instances of war reportage — such as Margaret Bourke-White's photographs, Ernie Pyle's installments for Scripps Howard, and Bill Mauldin's cartoons — Bel Geddes' models for Life were essentially didactic in nature.  The very first installment, with the descriptive title "Coral Sea: Norman Bel Geddes' models re-enact naval battle," was published on May 25, 1942, only weeks after the actual battle took place.  It is, in essence, a spread devoted to six photographs of what must have been a massive model.  In each of these, tiny ships maneuver in and out of gunfire, leaving plasticine wakes in the sculpted waters.  Pieces of cotton fabric are rendered into flak bursts or into exhaust fumes of aircraft falling into the Pacific Ocean.  All of the images — taken by Bel Geddes' employees — are supposed to depict the surprise attack on the Japanese fleet in the Coral Sea.  The vantage point is therefore almost always that of a bombardier's sitting in the glazed nose of an Army Air Force or Navy aircraft.  And in some instances, great care is taken to construct the aircraft windows and framing.  With this technique. Bel Geddes provided the reader with an approximated, yet simulated depiction of battle in real-time.  The caption to the leading image thus reads, "Jap convoy flees (top) when Jap task force of warships (bottom) is attacked by bombers on Monday, May 4.  Scene a few minutes later is on the next page."

Details of models, from "Coral Sea: Norman Bel Geddes' re-enact naval battle" Life (May 25, 1942) (Source)

Although great care is taken in identifying the various ships and airplanes used in the battle, the scene remains geographically ambiguous.  A more traditional mercator projection of the area locates the exact "position" of each image.  And yet there is still some guesswork involved.  The caption to the image of a model of a B-17 Flying Fortress "surprising" a Japanese Navy convoy tells us that the enemy ships were "presumably heading for the Louisiade Islands off the southeastern tip of New Guinea."  The article explains that Bel Geddes produced these models because "There has never been a clear and complete photograph of a naval battle."  This is why the scale of the models is so small.  Great effort is taken to portray as much as possible, to fill each image with as much information as possible about the conflict.  This includes environmental details such as the exact position of a flak burst in relation to the surface of the water, and the water itself.  Indeed, all images show a maniacal fascination with how ocean waves ripple and break, an overdetermined effort to demonstrate that this battle is occurring in the high seas.

"Geddes Map Shows Where Rommel Hit U.S. Army's Flank," Life (March 1, 1943) (Source)

Other models place a premium on geographical information, oftentimes resorting to more standard cartographical techniques as part of the visual strategy.  For the March 1, 1943 issue of Life, Bel Geddes produced a detailed model of the North African coast showing how Field Marshall Erwin Rommel's forces were able to break through the Allied salient.  Here, dotted and dashed lines, as well as directional arrows show the relative locations of American, British, and German forces.  Islands and cities are labeled, and a north arrow, drawn as if on the surface of the Mediterranean Sea, figures prominently.  These are all clues that this is much more than a map.  Although the article is titled "Geddes Map Shows Where Rommel Hit U.S. Army's Flank," the text identifies the map as a "relief model of the North African battlefield."

"Allies Advance From East and South to Close a Pincer on Jap Base at Rabaul," Life (October 4, 1943) (Source)

From "How The Russians Took Orel: Models by Norman Bel Geddes Show Red Tactics in Winning Their First Big Summer Victories," Life (August 16, 1943) (Source)

The same kind of conventions apply to two other Bel Geddes models.  The first, published on October 4, 1943, is titled "Allies Advance From East and South to Close a Pincer on Jap Base at Rabaul," and displays many of the same techniques as the North Africa model, specifically the use of lines and north arrows.  The other, "How The Russians Took Orel: Models by Norman Bel Geddes Show Red Tactics in Winning Their First Big Summer Victories," was published in August 16, 1943 and combines techniques from the Coral Sea and North Africa models.  In lieu of ships and planes, tanks and artillery dominate the images of these models.  They are also presented sequentially, close-up details of the models reveal the various attacks and counterattacks, as if Bel Geddes were giving a real-time account of the Russian victory.  And unlike the North Africa model, here, cartographic information is presented separately — the maps are secondary to the visual spectacles of miniaturized war.  Perhaps there is an easy distinction to be made: the North Africa and Rabaul models emphasize strategy, whereas the Coral Sea and Orel models focus on tactics.

From "Sicily Invasion Goes Well," Life (July 26, 1943) (Source)

Bel Geddes' built his models at different scales in order to present varying degrees of combat veracity.  His model for "Sicily Invasion Goes Well" (July 26, 1943) is perhaps his most spectacular.  Here, Bel Geddes follows the same general presentation strategy as the Coral Sea model, the only difference being that most of the scenes and models are larger-scaled.  Battleships, amphibious assault vehicles, and even landing craft appear almost toy-like.  Yet trees, rocks, grass are all rendered meticulously, giving this "fake" scene an attenuated reality.  It is this overwhelming stasis, this heightened artifice are what give the model a dramatic sense of the island's terrain and environment.  The image of the very last model gives us the best sense of this.  Titled "Allied Tanks Take and Airfield and It Becomes an Important Air Supply Base," this is the most action-packed of all Bel Geddes' models.

From "Sicily Invasion Goes Well," Life (July 26, 1943) (Source)

A giant monastery dominates the foreground as models of C-47 transports land on the newly-taken airfield.  In the background, the chaos and devastation of war seems to have momentarily ended.  Except for a large bloom of cloudy smoke in the faraway mountains, there are no plumes to show where artillery bombs and shells have just exploded.  Instead, there are just trees and people moving about the various damaged houses and structures.  And far off, American ships continue towards the Sicilian coast unopposed.  This is much more than a model depicting business-as-usual.  This is a map that has come to life.

Top and bottom, models from "Amphibious War: Geddes Models Explain Land-&-Sea Attack," Life (November 16, 1942) (Source)

In some instances, there were no degrees of veracity, but only wholly fictionalized accounts of war.  For "Amphibious War: Geddes Models Explain Land-&-Sea Attack" (November 16, 1942), Bel Geddes created a series of scenes to illustrate how an coordinated air, land, and sea attack would commence on a fictional Pacific island.  The title image features a superimposed photograph of two Douglas TBD Devastator torpedo bombers "attacking" a model airfield sited high on a bluff overlooking the Pacific.   The rest of the images are very upfront in their didacticism: they are supposed to illustrate, via aerial views, the various stages of an amphibious assault.  All aspects, from naval bombardment to the very first landings via LST and LCPL; from tank warfare to trench digging — these become part of an orchestrated effort to teach the public the subtle art of tactics.  It is Clausewitz for the masses.  The image caption to the model of the first landing sums it up best: "The game of war is now played out on the beach."

Celestial navigation trainer, from Robert L. Scott, Jr., "Bombing Tokyo From a Silo" Popular Science, Vol. 144. No. 4 (Apr., 1944) (Source)

The statement is much more than just a tongue-in-cheek description of how the models only approximate war.  It also alludes to how the military used models like the Tokyo Bay device and Bel Geddes' "scenes" for more immediate ends.  In an article for the April 1944 issue of Popular Science,  Flying Tiger veteran (and author of God Is My Co-Pilot) Robert L. Scott wrote of his experiences using a Link Celestial Navigation Trainer.  Housed inside a silo-like building, celestial navigation trainers featured the nose-section of a bomber, complete with instrumentation for a pilot, co-pilot, radio operator, and most importantly, a bombardier/navigator.  Covered by a hemispheric canopy with constellations painted on the inside surface depicting constellations, these trainers were designed with the sole purpose of instructing aircrews in the intricacies of using sextants and other navigational aids aboard aircraft.  And like the Tokyo Bay model that helped introduce this post, celestial navigation trainers also relied on a more "cinematic" form of modeling.  Consider Scott's description of how crews use the nose-section inside the trainer.  Scott recounts, "the screen, or terrain plate, which received the projected images of any part of the earth's surface.  I heard that those scenes appeared as if actually viewed from an airplane at 10,000 ft, but others could be projected with any altitude desired.  Images of clouds in any given density could be thrown upon the same screen.  Drift from anticipated cross winds, or resultants of head winds or tail winds, could also be introduced."[2]  Could celestial navigation be anything more than a multimedia experience?

This is not entirely off the mark.  Celestial navigation trainers were a fixture at the Army Air Force School of Advanced Tactics, or AAFSAT, in Orlando, Florida.  They were part of a intensified effort to deploy new technologies to organize and train the Army Air Forces in strategy and tactics.  As stated in a 1944 report detailing the AAFSAT's achievements,

It is desirable that an army or air force be so organized that information necessary for tactical development be immediately available, that new tactics be rapidly and thoroughly worked out, and that the results be quickly disseminated.  However, tactics is such an integral part of every activity in the AAF that the problem cuts across all conventional organizational barriers and constantly defies efforts to isolate the function and assign it to a single authority or organization.  There are tactical aspects to training.  There are training aspects to every tactic.  There are nearly always some materiel problems presented by a newly conceived tactic.[3]

One kind of tactical problem that necessitated its own brand of information organization and presentation  was the coordinated air, land, and sea attack.  A new kind of trainer was needed, and in 1943, AAFSAT enlisted Norman Bel Geddes to assist in this endeavor.

In February of that year, Bel Geddes contracted with the AAFSAT to develop the "Synthetic Training Device #1."  It was to be part of a multimedia environment using maps, sound recordings, and information displays featuring Translux rear-projection technologies and scale models of planes, tanks, and terrains.  The trainer was supposed to be the most advanced tactical simulation center ever devised for combat training.  It not only was supposed to provide and coordinate an extensive informational environment giving status updates on hundreds of combat operations, but it was also supposed to rely on the physicality of models as part of its information design.  Everything was supposed to be housed in a giant operations center.  As described in an issue of the Orlando Morning Sentinel,  the center was to include "facsimile models of every tank, airplane and naval vessel made in the world, or own, our Allies, and the enemy.  There are dozens of sand stables which present almost every type of terrain a plane will move over in every combat zone.  There are hundreds of fine scale maps with accurate battle lines."[4]  Bel Geddes was also in the process of developing an "animated tactical board" for the project.  As described in the Orlando paper,

The board will be 60 feet square and by comparison will cover about 150 square miles in scale.  On it will be two complete armies, with cities, local terrain, communication and transportation lines in actual scale.  Above it will be the operating air forces of the enemy and the Allies .... As 216 electric motors operate it, the armies and air forces will go into actual combat.  Bombs will drop, armies will clash, artillery will roar, planes will shoot down one another ... Inside rooms approximately 200 students of the air and ground forces will work out a simulated battle taken more than likely from a batttle that is in actual combat at the moment.  By intricate electrical boards, orders will be given.  It is these orders which will determine the outcome of the battle.[5]

And though the design and construction informational displays presented Bel Geddes with what was perhaps the most difficult aspect of the project, most of his discussions with Army Air Force officials concerned the large terrain model that would be at the center of the operations center.

These discussions not only discussed what the terrain model should depict, but how.  As for the what, Bel Geddes agreed to build a 1:1200 relief map of Northern Florida that could be altered to represent different geographical areas.  The inclusion of model roads, railroads, power transmission lines was also important, as these would be present in any kind of environment that would be "attacked" in the simulator.  The objective of each simulation would be to "take" Jacksonville, which could also altered to depict any urban area anywhere.  And at a March 31, 1943 meeting in New York, Bel Geddes, his designers, and AAFSAT agreed on the how of the terrain map.  The minutes from that meeting reveal how "The culture of the map, should, in the battle zone, represent as closely as possible the battle scenes and encampments in the photographs of terrain of Guadalcanal (Time and Life Pictures of the landing)."[6]  It is a comment that is as illuminating as it is revelatory — not only did AAFSAT faculty want Bel Geddes to duplicate some of the terrain models that he was already constructing for Life, but they are referring to a specific model of his: the model of Guadalcanal he produced for a series of articles called "U.S. Fights for the Solomons" (November 9, 1942).

Bel Geddes' model of Guadalcanal, from "U.S. Fights for the Solomons," Life (November 9, 1942) (Source)

Although Bel Geddes only created diagrams and a rough model of "Synthetic Training Device #1," the demand for his relief models found other avenues.  For MoMA's popular Airways to Peace exhibit from 1943, for example, he created a terrain model depicting a swath of land extending from the English Channel to Switzerland.[7]  MoMA also devoted a show to his "War Maneuver Models" in 1944.  Bel Geddes would continue to produce such models up until 1946, eventually using this technique in one of his most architectural projects.

Top and bottom, images from "Future Toledo: Scale Model Gives Citizens A Prophetic Look At The Wonderful City They Could Have in 50 Years," Life (September 17, 1945) (Source)

In February 1945, newspaper empresario Paul Block hired Bel Geddes to build a gigantic scale model of  Toledo, Ohio showing how the city would look in the future.  A feature in Life shows an aerial photograph of "Future Toledo" with gray shading depicting areas to be cleared and rebuilt.  It was, in a sense, Bel Geddes' own Ville Radieuse, a vision of future urbanism that required substantial interventions in order to be realized.  But the actual solutions that Bel Geddes presented rang familiar.  With multi-tiered expressways and roundabouts, elevated sidewalks, and extensive airport planning, "Future Toledo" was in many ways a rehashing of Bel Geddes' previous work for Shell and for the Futurama exhibition.  Then again, this project was something of a completely different order.  As the article points out,

One all-important thing the model does not show — how to bring it all about.  But with so many of its residents seeing and understanding the benefits of city revision, Toledo is getting a better-than-average start on all the myriad legal and financial troubles which must be cleared away to make the model a reality.[8]

It is a poignant statement, to be sure.  The different kinds of visualization and modeling techniques that were a vital part of the war effort are deployed here for a peacetime role.  "Future Toledo" is much more than a revisiting of Futurama.  It is a terrain model very much in the same vein as those created for Life.  And like the proposed "Synthetic Training Device #1," Bel Geddes' last urban vision attempts to duplicate a massive organizational and representational effort.  Here, however, the emphasis on tactical and combat simulation is replaced with an emphasis of civic engagement.  The reliance on terrain modeling remains.

_______________________

Notes


[1] Michael Sherry, The Rise of American Air Power: The Creation of Armageddon (New Haven, Yale, 1989), n.p.
[2] Robert L. Scott, Jr., "Bombing From a Silo," Popular Science, Vol. 144. No. 4 (Apr., 1944), p. 58.
[3] Assistant Chief of Air Staff, Intelligence Historical Division, The Development of Tactical Doctrines at AAFSAT and AAFTAC, Army Air Force Historical Studies: No. 13 (Jul., 1944) p. 3, USAF Historical Division, Archives Branch, Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama.
[4] John Forney Ruby, "Air Forces School Works Out Battle Tactics Here for Aerial Combat Zones" Orlando Morning Sentinel (12 May 1943), Norman Bel Geddes Theater and Industrial Design Papers 1873-1964, Job 487, Box 34, Job Diary — Meeting Minutes, Correspondence, Feb.-Dec. 1943, Harry Ransom Center for the Humanities, University of Texas at Austin.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Minutes of Meeting between Norman Bel Geddes, AAFSAT Faculty, 31 March 1943, Norman Bel Geddes Theater and Industrial Design Papers 1873-1964, Job 487, Box 34, Job Diary — Meeting Minutes, Correspondence, Feb.-Dec. 1943, Harry Ransom Center for the Humanities, University of Texas at Austin.

[7] MoMA to Norman Bel Geddes, 13 July 1943, REG, Exh. # 236. The Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York.

[8] "Future Toledo: Scale Model Gives Citizens A Prophetic Look At The Wonderful City They Could Have in 50 Years," Life (September 17, 1945), p. 87.

Not Serendipity City

Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), Project for Two Libraries at Campus Universitaire de Jussieu, Maquette (1992)

The desire for serendipitous urban encounters is a desire for moments, though fleeting, that lead to new discoveries, experiences, or feelings.  Such moments may be intensely personal, as in the case of a person meeting a life partner while en route to a particular destination.  But there is an element of calculation and foresight as well.  You have to work to make that serendipitous moment occur.  At least that's what author Nassim Nicolas Taleb tells us in his latest book, The Black Swan.  "Work hard," he tells us, "But not in grunt work, but in chasing ... opportunities and maximizing exposure to them.  This makes for living in big cities invaluable because you increase the odds of serendipitous encounters."  Urban serendipity—if that is truly the term to be used—is a fanciful concept to be sure.  But it is also unabashedly romantic.  When viewed in this way, serendipity becomes an antidote to the sense of alienation or ennui one may feel while walking in a large city.  Imagine some early twentieth century version of Taleb (or Adam Gopnik) encountering a Simmel or Benjamin on the street.  And after hearing plaintive or mournful tales of malaise from our resident urban sociologist and mystical Marxist, our Weimar or Second/Third Empire urban booster would probably say something like, "You know what your problem is?  You're not meeting enough people!  Go out there and be seen."

Not so fast.  This is all in jest, sure, but it prefaces a worthwhile observation.  It's not that serendipity is not possible.  We are all, to a certain extent, witnesses to and products of random everyday occurrences.  Trouble starts once serendipity becomes an objective or a desirable outcome.  And this is because at the very moment that such an objective and desire becomes manifest, serendipity falls by the wayside.  Serendipity becomes nugatory, wholly subservient to a kind of environmental conditioning.  Now, the term "environmental conditioning" is sure to set off some alarms in those who find concepts such as environmental determinism so anathema.   But it points to another observation, one that it as the heart of this post.  It is this: architects have been the worst offenders in creating misguided attempts at serendipity.  Architects have been known to adhere to a strange belief that serendipity can be guided and induced.  Even worse is their idea that serendipity necessitates a kind of formal and/or typological response.  This is because serendipity can be rationalized.

Blame the program.  In 1958, architecture historian John Summerson defined "program" as "a description of the spatial dimensions, spatial relationships, and other physical conditions required for the convenient performance of specific functions."[1]  And though Summerson's claim that program was a "source of unity" gives the term some kind of historical weight and suggests a plethora of earlier examples, program (along with its equally misaligned sidekicks, event and diagram) took on a new legitimizing function in the 1990s.  Like other terms from the era (cf. globalization, flow), program became more of a term of art than anything else, a strategy that sought to (literally) capture the contemporary condition via highly articulated and yet increasingly vague architectural gestures.  And in one specific instance, it was a strategy that had an tactical aspect as well.  The short-term solution was to elide any difference between the architectural and the urban scale.  Serendipity would become the very agent of this elision.

OMA, Campus Universitaire de Jussieu, Maquette (1992)

No project better encapsulates the aspirations of architectural program vis-à-vis the potential for serendipitous encounters like OMA's 1992 study for two libraries at the Campus Universitaire de Jussieu.  Originally designed in the early 1960s by Édouard Albert, the Jussieu Campus was an attempt to accommodate the incoming flux of college-aged, post-World War II baby boomers by creating a new, centralized campus in the Fifth Arrondissement.  It was a kind of extreme, neo-Hilberseimerian scheme, an ensemble of rectangular slabs, arranged perpendicularly, forming a gridded network on the banks of the Seine.  The project was eventually abandoned and left uncompleted and would not reach any kind of apotheosis until the appearance of OMA's winning entry.  The OMA scheme is, in one sense, a completion of Albert's plan.  But it also introduced a different kind of architectural gesture, one that sought to introduce to "architecturalize" urban elements.  

Those familiar with OMA's output will immediately recall the Jussieu project's signature contribution: a program expressed via a single floor plate weaving through the building's various levels and combining the two libraries into a single formal gesture—the humanities library spirals upward from the science library like a meandering ferroconcrete ribbon.  Although it certainly anticipates many of the folded surfaces that would be de rigeur during the late 1990s and early 2000s, OMA's library at Jussieu is extremely convincing in its execution.  One could very well imagine him or herself entering the library at grade, and slowly making their way up, via the gently sloping, sinewy trajectory, to the upper floors.  It is a marvel of sectional complexity rivaling even Yale's Paul Rudolph Hall Art and Architecture Building or Hans Scharoun's Berliner Philharmonie.  And when considering the latter alongside the Staatsbibliothek and the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, we begin to notice that the kind of urban ensemble envisioned by Scharoun and Mies must not have been far from Koolhaas' mind.  Yet as the maquettes and drawings make very clear, it is a radical break from that precedent.  This is because here, the urban ensemble has been consumed by architecture.  OMA's library becomes a kind of architectural vortex, sucking and gathering in urban strollers into its coriolis-inflected whirlwind of a plan. 

Koolhaas admits as much.  In the postscript to his widely-influential S, M, L, XL (1995), which is devoted solely to the Jussieu project, Koolhaas describes how the libraries take in their visitors, a reimagining of the Constructivist social condenser as purveyor of media and urbanity:

To reassert its credibility, we imagine its surface a pliable, a social magic carpet; we fold it to generate density, then from a "stacking" of platforms; minimal enclosure makes it a building—the culmination of the Jussieu network.

These surfaces—a vertical, intensified landscape—are then "urbanized": the specific elements of the libraries are reimplanted in the new public realm like buildings in a city ... The visitor becomes a Baudelairean flâneur, inspecting and being seduced by a world of books and information—by the urban scenario.[2]

The language is convincing and seductive, but more importantly, there is a sense that this is an architectural response in the most general sense.  This folding of programs via a ribboned surface is not only applicable to library competitions.  The only salient condition is the existence of a building within an urban context.  This sense of infinite (or limitless) applicability makes architecture as a kind of global commodity.  Koolhaas, again typically ahead of the argument (or at least clothing himself in the garb of a potential critic's jab), recognizes architecture's commodification as a kind of empowerment. Consider, for example, this exchange from 1997 between the late Masao Miyoshi and Koolhaas regarding the "flimsiness" of Jakarta and other Asian cities:

MM: What do you make of this trend toward buildings built not for permanence but just for a short time?

RK: I am very bad in trends. I understand almost nothing of the future, only of the present. I always resisted science fiction and found it deadly boring to read. But basically, I think that there will probably be a drastic separation between certain buildings that will become more permanent and others that are not going to be around for more than ten or fifteen or twenty years.

MM: Isn't that, again, part of the global economy business-that is, that buildings shouldn't last? Of course, the function of a building changes so fast ...

RK: Twenty years of involvement in architecture has made me very cynical about that: any program can exist in any building. So if churches are no longer necessary, you can also house offices in churches.

MM: Has it happened?

RK: Yes, in Europe it happens all the time. They divide churches and create lofts. It also happens in New York. So that is another kind of paradoxical undermining of the argument in architecture that one floor can only support one program. It's complete garbage.[3]

The statement seems like a post-hoc rationalization for projects like the Jussieu libraries.  The language of mixed programming is right there along with grandiloquent observations about the state of contemporary urbanism.  But more than anything, it is a lightly-veiled appraisal of architecture's importance in the global scene.  There is the sense that architecture can do anything.

Like the architecture that it is supposed to enable, the word "serendipity" has made countless global crossings.  The word has been uttered in various ports of call in faraway destinations, been inscribed in notes, letters, and manuscripts.  Paintings, engravings, sketches exist, all depicting serendipitous moments.  The word has been keyed, punched, and even typed into computers, and emailed into a kind of ætherized dataspace only to arrive in your inbox seconds later.  Like the architecture that it is supposed to enable, the word "serendipity" carries unbridled agency.  Any moment, as long as it is unplanned, and as long as it yields some kind of pleasurable result, is serendipitous.

Yet the word has its own history, and it begins with a fictionalized account of Serendip, the Arabic name for what is now known as Sri Lanka.  The word traveled into the West via a tale written in 1557 by the Venetian printer and bookmaker Michele Tramezzino, who based it on Armeno Cristoforo's Peregrinaggio di Tre Giovani, Figliuoli del re di Serendippo.  Tramezzino's text was a prose translation of Amir Khursro's Hasht-Bihisht ("Eight Paradises"), composed in 1302.  Centuries later, in 1754, the word "serendipity" came into the English language in a letter written by Horace Walpole.  Walpole writes, In the letter, he makes reference to the "silly fairy tale" called The Three Princes of Serendip.  He relates a specific episode in the story about the Princes' "discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of."  Walpole ends by imploring his reader, "Now do you understand serendipity?"

But before we stray too far afield from the point of this post, recall that Walpole was also an architect.  The author of The Castle of Otranto (1764)—otherwise known as the first Gothic novel—also designed the sprawling revivalist estate at Strawberry Hill.  But it seems that this story also has a serendipitous aftereffect of sorts.  In 1818, the English critic and printer reviewed a collection of Walpole's letters to Horace Mann.  And in discussing The Castle of Otranto, Croker observed:

He [Walpole] will probably be for ages remembered as the creator of a new style of domestic architecture …. Great discoveries are sometimes made from small circumstances, and the repair of a little citizen's box at the corner of two high roads revealed to Walpole the great secret of the combined beauty, convenience and grandeur which a revival of our old English architecture was capable of producing.[4]

Serendipity, as it turns out, had architectural origins.  Yet does not architecture, a discipline that thrives on methodical arrangement of spaces, the careful attention to details, and understanding of the laws of physics, deny the very idea of serendipity?  How can something that exerts as much requisite energy, planning and foresight as the design and construction of a building exemplify what Walpole would call "accidental sagacity"?

One wonders, then, if serendipity is one of those words that has been maligned or misunderstood when deployed in an architectural context?  Another example that comes to mind, of course, is ludic.  The term entered architecture discourse via Dutch cultural historian Johan Huizinga's well-known Homo Ludens (1938), a book that analyzes and conceptualizes how, when, and where play occurs.  The last part of the this equation is, of course, the one most relevant to architecture and urbanism, and it is no surprise that many historians dealing with Situationist International often call attention to Huizinga's influence on Guy Debord.  Through a curious twist of logic, one that eviscerates Situationism from its embrace of transcendent Marxism, situationist space is ludic space.  And yet such observations ignore an important aspect of Huizinga's Homo Ludens when considered in an urban context: that play is not the opposite of planning, but that it is a kind of planning.  Architecture historian Andrew Shanken makes this connection explicit:

More than a symbolic activity or form, planning has meaning unto itself ... [P]lanning is seen as an irreducible activity, something akin to what Huizinga called play.  Huizinga stripped play of the cultural layers that obfuscated what he considered its "primordial quality," something essential lying "in a deep layer of our mental being."  He saw play as an "inferior" reality, a "stepping out of 'real' life into a temporary sphere of activity with a disposition all of its own."  Below the layers of metaphor and quite separate from the practical considerations of technique, planning is an activity people engage for its own sake, because it brings a form of pleasure.  Planning fills the anxious void between present and future, the wonder of time's slow melt, with joy.  For instance, in as much as utopia has been seen as a critique of the present, it is not a form of play-planning, as well, lending a raw humor to the precariousness of human consciousness: knowing that there is a future and not knowing its nature.  Planning, like play, institutes an order.  The space and time of play and the rules of conduct—what Huizinga called the playground—are marked off ahead of time.[5]

Equally important is Shanken's own observation about play as a kind of subterfuge with spatial ramifications.  In his study of play and its relation to suburban sprawl (a study which looks to, of all things, the hit MTV show Jackass), Shanken observes how the term "inner suburb" calls attention to "a cultural geography of abandonment and savage play" that intends to "convey an activity in which social boundaries are tested and set."[6]  Here too Huizinga becomes the point of reference.  "Huizinga argued for an understanding of play as an amoral social function through which people negotiate ever-changing limits of behavior and culture."[7]  Here, then, are indications that play is kind of very highly-organized activity.  Play is as calculating as it is reactive.  It is a term that suggests an oppositie to serendipity.  Play is not accidental.  Play is structured, orchestrated, and rehearsed.  It is anything but improvisatory.

The careful, staged accidents and manipulations that Shanken sees in MTV's Jackass reminds us of one of the greatest, most sublime artistic statements regarding urban "serendipity."  For Flirt (1994), American director Hal Hartley created a cinematic exercise that played with and tested the very limits of serendipity.  The film has a seemingly simple tripartite structure: three episodes, each depicting a series of circumstances and encounters in a different city (New York, Berlin, and Tokyo).  Each episode features the exact same dialogue, and only slightly varied circumstances.  And in some circumstances, there are some truly serendipitous results.  A male character utters dialogue in New York; the same words could be coming from a female character in Berlin.  And as the film begins to end with its Tokyo set pieces, Flirt starts to become very aware of itself.  Film historian Tom Gunning describes the effect in his introduction to Hartley's screenplay:

By the time we get to Tokyo, the rules have changed.  The game is still going on, many of the pieces seem familiar, but new configurations take place.  What is seen and what is spoken get rearranged, and as the invisible becomes tangible, the word takes on flesh.  Hartley lets us in on this by staging a prologue of sorts, in which we see not only gestures but the director's hand as well the process of rehearsal and preparation within the world of professional performers.  They players are introduced from the start as part of a grand design as we see them positioned and instructed.  The incidents in Tokyo become more public, glimpsed by panicked passersby, even investigated by the police.  This is a story with little privacy and with a constant awareness of being witnessed, through a doorway or around a corner.[8]

Echoing Walter Ruttmann's idea of a city symphony, here, the medium of film transforms urban serendipity into a kind of scripted, structured event.  But more than anything else, serendipity presupposes a kind of self-consciousness.  Stay with Flirt towards the end and watch carefully.  Yes, that's Hal Hartley starring in his own film.  Yes, those are film cans.  And yes, in those cans are footage taken in New York and Berlin.

FADE OUT

(END REEL)

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Notes

[1] John Summerson, "The Case for a Modern Theory of Architecture," reprinted in Joan Ockman, ed.  Architecture Culture: 1943-1968, A Documentary Anthology (New York: Rizzoli, 1996), p. 223.

[2] Rem Koolhaas and Bruce Mau, S,M,L,XL (New York: Monacelli Press, 1995), pp. 1310-1312, 1316-1317, 1323-1325.

[3] Rem Koolhaas and Mayao Miyoshi, "XL in Asia: A Dialogue between Rem Koolhaas and Mayao Miyashi", boundary 2, Vol. 24, No. 2 (Summer, 1997), p.5
[4] J.W. Croker, The Quarterly Review (1843), pp. 516-522, quoted in Robert King Merton and Elinor G. Barber, The Travels and Adventures of Serendipity: A Study in Sociological Semantics and the Sociology of Science (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2004), p. 32.
[5] Andrew Shanken, "From Total War to Total Living: American Architecture and the Culture of Planning, 1939-194x", Unpublished Ph.D Dissertation, Princeton University (1999), p. 29.
[6] Shanken, "The Sublime 'Jackass': Transgression and Play in the Inner Suburbs," Places Vol. 19, No. 3 (2007), p. 54.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Tom Gunning,  "Thrice Upon a Time: Flirting With a Film by Hal Hartley" in Hal Hartley, Flirt (Screenplay) (London: Faber and Faber, 1996), p. ix.