So unfortunately the attention brought here by the linkage to the metro plan caused a flood of spam, all in the form of trackbacks. I don’t know how they get through, since I turned trackbacks off, but it is not good, and I had 500 spam messages this week before I restricted settings. I know! “Curse God and die already.”
I’m just writing this to explain the comment policy now. I’ve installed reCAPTCHA because books are awesome and also changed moderation, so that people who haven’t commented before have to get approved. If you have commented before and you use the same email, there should be no delay.
Ten Ten Massachusetts Avenue. From Home and Design Magazine.
DC architecture is known for being a little bland and generic. This reputation is not undeserved; there is something in the air since the early 20th century that has caused a stodgy vibe to persist like swamp gas over the city. Beaux-arts to glass-box, anywhere architecture has replaced the unique red city that was once gave DC a humble energy. In particular, the buildings of Adolph Cluss defined the aesthetic character of the city in a bright, practical way. Cluss’s South German heritage led him to design red brick buildings with vibrant decoration, like the Arts and Industries building, that differentiated DC from anywhere else in the country.
The firm of Esocoff & Associates has sort of picked up on his spirit, although they seem less interested in socialism than he. I remember in college returning home from Union Station, dreading the new, gray buildings or quasi-historicist schlock left over from the 90s, and driving down Mass Ave and being startled by the bright cobalt blue mullions of Post Massachusetts Avenue, surrounded by the warm umber brick. It took me a while to figure out who the firm was, and in that time they have built many more residential buildings that are post-modern in the best way, definitely reflecting contemporary values and modern construction, while being context-sensitive, humanistic, and unique. In particular, the Dumont’s sensual and explosive curves break the box with such bravado, it has stopped me on the street. Their handling of color and material is also fantastic.
They have repeated a distinctive style, sure, but haven’t exhausted its possibilities. I believe that their buildings will last as defining architecture of the period. I wish them the best of luck, because with time Esocoff could be come the new Cluss: an architect for the daily lives of the residents of the District of Columbia. God knows we need one.
Google has demapped the part of Klingle road that washed out and spawned an extended fight. Combined with the restoration of the Klingle Valley Bridge, this is great news, but it would be nice if they actually did something about the leftover park, like build the bike path that was promised.
A lot of people have gotten in the game of designing personal opinions on the expansion of Metrorail. Greater Greater Washington’sFantasy map is probably the best, so much so as to actually be used by WMATA, but I thought I’d try my hand at it too. The long-needed Blue Line split in particular merits attention, so here’s my suggestion for that bit.
For this month of December, when everyone is subjected to the ceaseless repetition of the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy, I offer this list of other un-famous classical pieces you probably already know.
Delibe: The Flower Duet, (Youtube) from Lakmé really demonstrates Léo Delibes’s ability to write gorgeous melodies. Also to sell chocolates on airplanes. A real renaissance man. (Youtube)
Of course you’ve heard this (supposedly) Bach organ piece in every horror comedy and weekday nights on MSNBC sometime between 9-10PM EST, bud did you know its status as BWV 565 is in doubt because it contains consecutive fifths and it is scientific fact that Bach can do no wrong…? (Youtube)
Not as famous as the Messiah “Halelujah,” but the Händel coronation anthem “Zadok The Priest” still makes its way into popular culture occasionally. (Youtube)
Most non-musicians also know the finale of the William Tell Overture, but also often heard but not well known is the “Ranz des Vaches” right before that, which is used regularly in, uh, Looney Tunes to set pastoral scenes. (Youtube – the more famous part at about 2:35)
Similarly, the Grieg piece “Morning Mood” is used in cartoons and pop culture to indicate a peaceful morning. Interestingly, Grieg wrote it to represent the glory of the sun rising in Egypt. (Youtube) The piece is part of the Peer Gynt suite, which also includes the very famous “In the Hall of the Mountain King.”
Also, if you’ve ever needed some latin flair, or dance music, you go for Libertango, by Astor Piazzolla. (Youtube). It is essentially the go-to song of modern tango.
Only owing to the seduction of language (and the fundamental errors of reason petrified within it, which conceives all effects as conditioned by something that causes effects, by a “subject,” can it appear otherwise. For just as the popular mind separates the lighting from its flash and takes the latter for an action, for the operation of a subject called lightning, so popular morality also separates strength from expressions of strength, as if there were an neutral substratum behind the strong man, which was free to express strength or not to do so. But there is no such substratum, there is no being behind doing, effecting, becoming; “the doer” is merely the fiction added to the deed – the deed is everything.
I was watching some TV late night after coming in and I happened to see an episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent called Mad Hoops that no only starred scrawny John Krasinski as a star basketball player, the school he played for was named MosesCaro High School. There is only one Bob they could have added to make it better.
In my wanderings around Wikipedia late at night, I have found a number of apparently non-dubious articles you may find interesting.
Gropecunt Lane: Al Mustashriqa almost slapped me when I mentioned this place.
Hipgnosis: This cleverly-named artistic group designed a number of fantastic psychedelic album covers.
Centralia, PA : This mining town is an unfortunate victim of a large coal fire that makes the ground smoke and children fall into holes, leading to an exodus, eventually making the smallest town in Pennsylvania, beating out…
S.N.P.J.: A town that exists essentially so that a Slovenian cultural society can drink liquor on Sundays.
Strap-on dildo: This article is disconcertingly thorough.
Mac users: You can map some fantastic information relationships via this nifty wikipedia browser called Pathway. Try it out, you will waste at least an hour trying to do six degrees of Wasilla, Alaska. Which is stupid, because this webpage will do it for you: Six Degrees of Wikipedia.
I’ve been glancing over the National Capital Planning Commission’s National Capital Framework Plan. While it contains many fantastic ideas of how to preserve the character of the monumental core while allowing development of many more sites for Federal offices and mixed uses. Its use of commercial corridors punctuated by monuments creates a strong aesthetic of government in a living city. However, it tolerates some of the looming office buildings more than others in a predictably traditionalist way, forgetting the urban conditions along the way.
Most conspicuously, in talking about the Federal Triangle buildings, it recognizes that the large single-use buildings with only a few useful entrances and no storefronts deaden the area, even during the day. However, it calls for the demolition of The J. Edgar Hoover building to revitalize the city and not, say, the Herbert Hoover building. In the case of the former, the brutalist headquarters of the FBI, they mention that the use of “International Style” plainness makes it look like a fortress, but on the same page they heap praise on the traditional buildings as being dignified and vibrant.
The problem with the argument presented here is quite simple: two styles of architecture that address the street in virtually identical ways are seen as completely different. Both are set back from the street, both have distant, cold windows with hard walls and high gates keeping members of the public out. If you are still in a prison, does it matter if the bars are gold or not? In this case, the staid taste of the Washington architectural establishment is simply bashing a style it doesn’t like.
Maybe it just needs lipstick and stockings?
They’re all monumental structures which you can’t group together with good results. Yet the prettier ones get away with it, offering a a pleasant background that ultimately hides the major flaws in the building. I won’t claim this isn’t a problem in modern architecture, but I have picked up a trend where Beaux-arts buildings in particular are forgiven of their damage to the fabric of a city because they are beautiful superficially. Modernist buildings are rightly criticized for their blank façades and monolithic use, however, even as “Storefronts!” becomes the rallying cry of urban planning, many praise functionally blank buildings for looking like buildings that work. When they turn to attack buildings of identical typology, it is generally because of a modern look, not because of a city interface issue.
It takes a more nuanced understanding of the form of a city to realize that a city needs buildings that are part of a fabric, as well as ones that punctuate the fabric. Unfortunately, the judgement of that design is stuck behind shallow observations and a pathological hatred for modern architecture. The NCPC’s report aims to undo many of the sterilizing effects of the McMillan Plan, but it will never manage to mitigate some of the effects. I can only hope that they eschew monolithic districts and give all kinds of architecture a fair shake
.
Sometime later I’ll talk more about the symbolism of using imperial architecture for bureaucracies, but that’s a different deal.
