2 We know about the financial hardships that Frank Lloyd Wright, Richard Neutra, Louis H Sullivan, Paolo Soleri, Adolf Loos and Arthur Erickson experienced at countless points of their careers, as they travelled to promote their ideas and writings with the international community. For them it was both a need to shape their ideas about the complexities of the environment and the forces that encompass design, and to gain acceptance in scholarly circles. With their passing, the days of the visionary architectural office also ended for the precise reason that this model is considered economically unviable, discouraged and ignored by professional associations of architects that by mandate focus only on architectural practice and its business. In 2012 the Internship In Architecture Program published by the Canadian Architectural Licensing Authorities deleted requirements for discretionary experience in ‘Related Disciplines and Post Graduate Study/Teaching/ Research’ – 1880 hours of ancillary activities including visits to exhibitions, writing or attending lectures. Frank Lloyd Wright wrote ‘Architecture as a profession is all wrong’, ‘The commercially degenerated architect’ (both published in 1930) and ‘Away with the realtor’ of 1958. In each he claimed that there was an intellectual crisis in the standard business model that requires a ‘safe-man’ and disregards ‘how much of an architect this fellow is if he can make a popular picture of his building’. Wright was saying to his compromised colleagues that for them ideas are anathema that clogs their machinery.
Wright reminded us that often customers are to blame for their lack of architectural culture when buying property, but he also extends this to the realtor and his financier who are accountable for having packaged up a faulty product that limits the freedom of man. In an arrangement that actually involves more actors, from the architect’s staff to the City’s building officials, we all contribute to perpetrate an architectural sin. Today it is impossible to act as conscientious objector and expect to stay on the office payroll, or to stick to our beliefs (acting like Howard Roark or Louis H. Sullivan) risking destitution over compromise.
3 Henry-Russell Hitchcock. Le Corbusier. An exhibition arranged by the Department of Architecture of the MoMA. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1935
La Arquitectura de Hoy (April 1947) presented the Master Plan for Buenos Aires prepared by Le Corbusier, despise not being commissioned, with the help of Jose Ferrari Hardoy and Juan Kurchan (of the Butterfly chair fame). The Spanish edition of L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui was briefly published in Buenos Aires. Today the magazine is under the ownership of Jean Nouvel. Collection of the Getty Research Institute Planificar para Sobrevivir. Mexican edition of Survival through Design, collection of essays by prolific writer and designer Richard Neutra. Collection of the Getty Research Institute Metron 2 (September 1945). Started publishing in Rome a couple of months after the end of the Second World War in Europe. Over the time Bruno Zevi was involved at an early start and took control on 1948 until its closure in 1954. Collection of the Getty Research institute
41
Hector Abarca
Made with FlippingBook interactive PDF creator