Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. "Is Modern Architecture Disastrous?"

Yes, as a teenager I watched Firing Line. You can still bite me - and watch this and you'll see why.

Still true today what Tom Wolfe says about modern architecture.



Hat tip Josh Greenman.

When you answer is, "pour more concrete" - you've lost me

The last week seemed to be a, “I’m going to complain about why we can’t seem to build anything right anymore” to Sal week.

I’ve had the pleasure of exchanging notes to something that has been a stable since the start of this blog last decade; the unending and seemingly avoidable dysfunction that is our procurement system – one where we have not been able to produce a well designed warship since the end of the Cold War era DDG-51, and haven’t had an aircraft program blow up in our face since we adopted the 2nd place finisher in the 1970 light fighter program. (and no, the P-8 does not count – it is a converted airliner and our version does not have a MAD. The FA-18E/F does not count as “new aircraft” either).

Why? The problem is both personality based and the system we have designed to control the personality problem. Both are made worse by something else; narcissism.

The timid, the weak, and the insecure enable the narcissist. Combine narcissism in one strong will person with a gaggle of handpicked obsequious lickspittles in tow, toss in a contempt for history and the hard learned lessons of previous generations, leaven with a embittered resentment for the very real talent of those who came before – and you get that modernist and post-modernist mindset. In the Navy, those people are transformationalist, and their mantra is Transformation!TM

Can you find any other reason that explains the failure of the A-12, LCS, DDG-1000, ACS, and the long slow birth of V-22 and F-35 – or the Tiffany show pony that still is LPD-17?

It is there that I find a tie-back to another passion of mine that I don’t cover as much as I used to on this blog – architecture and the nightmare that has been modernism and post-modernism.

In a blindingly honest takedown of Zaha Hadid and her "Tomorrowland meets Logan's Run" style, Harry Mont shows how it is done;

In my 16 years as a journalist, she was the rudest interviewee I’ve ever met. She kept me waiting for an hour at her Clerkenwell office, before rearranging the interview for another day. And then she rearranged it twice more. Not that she did any of the rearranging – her extremely polite assistant did all that sort of thing.

When I finally got to see her, she never apologised for summoning me to her office and then putting me off. She was like a spoilt, medieval queen: grumpy, humourless, entitled, used to her orders being obeyed instantly, careless of the disruption those orders created.

Narcissistic, too. Her flat was empty, except for objects she’d designed herself: a curved sofa, a swooping table and a futuristic tea set. There was little sign of pleasurable human occupation: no books, no CDs. A lone iPad on a table displayed revolving pictures of her own works. The walls, floor and ceiling were monochrome white, with black metal-framed windows. A rectangular cavity housed a fireplace, filled with identical beige pebbles.
...
her first real building, a small fire station in Germany, never really worked for its intended purpose: ‘Its shrieking concrete angles and disruptive interiors photographed very well and were dutifully recorded in the magazines, but were not much liked by the firemen. It was decommissioned and is now an exhibition centre.’

Yes, some of her buildings made for dramatic, swirling sights on the outside. But the inside of buildings is just as – if not more – important.
...
Her Evelyn Grace Academy in Brixton was praised for its bold, zig-zag shape, with a running track piercing its heart. I thought it was certainly original enough when I went round it, with the usual Hadid trademarks: curves, skewed angles and asymmetrical shapes. Inside, though, the classrooms, gym and dining area were a dreary mass of concrete, steel and glass planes, with a few zig zag motifs and primary colours slapped on. I’d have much preferred to be taught in one of the elegant Victorian terraced houses flanking the academy – with their brick, plaster and stone, full of history and detail. The Evelyn Grace Academy wasn’t much different from the 1970s Grange Hill School of Education Architecture – which also did nothing to please the poor children inside.

I shouldn’t have been surprised. In our interview, Hadid professed to admiring Alison and Peter Smithson’s Robin Hood Gardens tower block in Poplar, built in 1972. Robin Hood Gardens is the perfect example of a concrete and glass horror, loathed by the public at large, but adored by modern architects.
...
‘Most artists, or people who think of themselves as such, have to get the public to watch or listen before they can sod it,’ wrote Amis, ‘Architects are different. They have the unique power of sodding the consumer at a distance, not just if he lives or works in the building concerned, or just when he passes it a couple of times a day, but also when he happens to catch sight of it miles away on the skyline.’

Architects are also, Amis added, deeply subject to the principle of how it will go down at the club – ‘i.e. in the circle of his colleagues, his friends in the profession, certain critics and a more or less specialised and expert section of the public. The effect of this is to drive him towards the technically stimulating, the obscure and the ‘sophisticated’ and away from the older goals and values of whatever can be called pleasing, straightforward, entertaining, popular.’

Zaha Hadid went down extremely well at the club; not so well with the people who have to live and work in – and pay for – her buildings.

Sometimes it is OK to speak ill of the dead - especially when they are subject to a bunch of virtue-signaling praise by those who are as obsequious as she was narcissistic.

Art and architecture is critically important to the culture at large and deserves to be openly and aggressively debated.

And yes, this applies to more than architecture.

We'll have more maritime directly-related discussion tomorrow.

You don't get a chance to name a building at USNA often

Words mean things. When you name things that will last decades, they mean even more. When names have the opportunity to inspire, teach, and otherwise give those who visit, work, or live - or go to war - in named things; the importance of the right name reaches a new level. That is why I get so twitchy when we do goofy things for iffy reasons when we name ships.

Not totally unrelated to ships; as unique of an opportunity it is to pick a name for a ship, it is even more rare to have an opportunity to name a building at a institution of higher learning.

Especially places that do not add buildings often, are space limited, and whose students can rise to important positions - not only are these opportunities rare, they also require careful thought.

All that bubbled to the surface when I read this from The Capital;

Legislation with $120 million for a planned Center for Cyber Security Studies at the Naval Academy could reach the U.S. Senate floor for a vote within the next month, U.S. Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., told the Naval Academy Board of Visitors on Monday.
Mikulski, who sits on the Board of Visitors and has been an avid supporter for the funding, said she expects the fiscal 2015 Military Construction, Veterans Affairs and Related Agencies Appropriations Bill, or HR 4486 to come to the Senate floor in three weeks.
...
Construction is scheduled to begin in late 2016 and be finished by late 2018. The building would be between Nimitz Library and Rickover Hall, overlooking the Severn River.

The academy also plans to break ground on a multilevel parking garage near the center in early 2015, to make up for parking spaces that will be lost when the new building goes up.

The Center for Cyber Security Studies would include labs, offices, classrooms, lecture halls, an observatory and a rooftop multipurpose space.

Nimitz on one side, Rickover on the other.

Well, there are some large shoes to fill.

OK alumni from the Severn School for Wayward Boys and Girls. A cyber security building ... whose name should be on the front, and why?

NATO Builds Starfleet Headquarters

I've been in a grumpy, snarky mood all week - why stop now?

I always thought that San Francisco was a bad place for Starfleet Headquarters - so Brussels is not bad by comparison. Look.


NATO Headquarters Brussels.

When Anders Fogh Rasmussen drives to his office in the Schaerbeek neighborhood of Brussels in the morning, he gazes longingly at a large construction site across the street. The site, where construction cranes jut into the sky, will eventually be the home of the new, 250,000-square-meter (2.7-million-square-foot) NATO headquarters. Price tag: more than a billion euros.

In 28FEB13 Dollars - that comes to over $1.31 billion. That is a lot for an organization that really doesn't need something that big. Really. It doesn't. It should have something that is both more reasonable, to scale - and artistically ... well ... more something else than a modernist masturbatoreum found in a dusty B-roll from Tomorrowland.

Our friends over at NATOSource ask nicely;

The revelation comes as NATO is pushing to slash its costs and streamline its bureaucracy against a backdrop of savage defence cuts in practically all member states.

... I'll be a bit more blogg'y. OK serfs ... errrr ... I mean taxpayers. As European economies sag under austerity plans, the USA pretends it is Greece spending wise as it stumbles through a 4th year without a budget - the NATO militarizes are fading in to gendarmerie level of capability; here is the NATO staff's response;

Nations recognised that the current facilities were inflexible and had reached saturation point. (The current HQ was constructed on a temporary basis in 1967 and has now been in service for 41 years). Put simply, the need for a new Headquarters is overwhelming. The revision of NATO's working methods, launched under NATO +, must be underpinned by modern, flexible, user-friendly facilities which provide a pleasant and effective working environment for all staff.

The new Headquarters will be designed around staff needs. A state-of-the-art building will ensure maximum flexibility so that working space can be configured in different ways to suit individual and collective needs. New restaurant, leisure and support facilities (shops, banks) will bring working and living conditions closer together and provide staff with better overall services on site.

In consequence, nations agreed that NATO needed and deserved a new building for the new millennium to reflect its success as an organisation and its new missions and activities.

A comfortable Staff building in NATO is about as important as the Flags-to-Post outcome. Actual expenditures in to capability too by our European friends? Child please.

According to an internal breakdown by Rasmussen, the American share of the NATO budget has increased from 63 to 72 percent in the last decade, a development the Americans have long deplored.

Joseph A. Harriss over at TheAmericanSpectator isn't all that impressed either;

... the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has just begun construction of a splendiferous new $1.38 billion headquarters on a 100-acre site in Brussels. Designed by Chicago architects Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, renowned for luxurious commercial buildings including the tallest in the world, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the futuristic new NATO offices will feature eight sweeping wings covering 2.7 million square feet. Glass-walled elevators overlooking cavernous atriums showering natural light. Ecologically correct grass growing on the roof. Seventeen conference rooms. A range of amenities from cafeterias, restaurants, and banks, to shopping, sport, and leisure facilities.
...
Today about 4,500 staff are at the Brussels headquarters. Along with thousands of others in its multifarious agencies and strategic and regional commands, they engage in a giddy flurry of activities. Many have only an imaginary relation to security. For example:

• The Academic Affairs Unit runs a fellowships program and organizes conferences, seminars, and visits for academics and think tank researchers to “project the Alliance’s point of view and strengthen information on its goals.” In other words, a glorified PR operation with academic pretensions.

• The Science for Peace and Security Committee “contributes to NATO’s mission by linking science to society,” whatever that means. Concretely, it funds grants for research on soft, fashionable subjects like civil science and environment.

• The NATO Undersea Research Center in La Spezia, Italy, has a vast program including Marine Mammal Risk Mitigation that studies the effects of sonar on marine animals, “to counter the threat from quiet submarines.”

• Then there’s the NATO Multimedia Library with its more than 18,000 books and subscriptions to 155 newspapers and magazines. And its annual Manfred Wörner Junior Essay competition with a $6,800 prize. And the NATO photo competition for young shutterbugs who learn that, for example, “Taking photographs of random strangers can be risky.”

To keep the snark going strong; those who have done NATO tours know that the 4th billet is the most important for the new HQ.

The facilities will comprise :

• up-to-date conference facilities;
• office accommodation for Delegations, Military Representations, International Staff (IS) and International Military Staff (IMS), Agencies and Partner Missions;
• modern, up-to date communications and IT facilities.
• a variety of support services such as: restaurants, banking, shopping, leisure and sports facilities;

Look at it closer and then think of all the metal and glass structures that has blighted the landscape since WWII. They don't age all that well, do they?  This will be different, yes? If we are spending over $1.31 billion on a building, then we plan to have it last a long time, right? Responsible with other people's money, correct?

... the requirement for an austere, sober and functional building with the need for a reasonable level of comfort and the provision of modular, flexible space, which can be systematically reconfigured and/or extended. The facilities must also guarantee value for money (a sensible level of cost over a 30 year life cycle) as well as long term soundness.

Also, putting on my red hat; give me an Airbus and three guys who want to die; unlike the Pentagon, this doesn't have a stone anywhere nor all that much concrete to get in the way. Easy target.

I know, I'm just being a cynic - but honestly; I'm not all that impressed. Mostly, it is because I prefer neo-Classical, Romanesque, and neo-Gothic architecture - with stone. But, that is just me.

Here, let these guys explain themselves.



As per the DD1390, in the 2013 DoD budget, we are spending $26.969 million, representing DoD's 60% of the USA contribution. DoS is covering the other 40%.
- 2012 it was $24.118 million.
- 2011 $31.863 million.
- 2010 $41.4 million.

That gives you a running average. Construction started in 2009, and the land came gratis from The Kingdom of Belgium.

So, there you go.  Here is a shot of the old building. Just another clapped-out modernist 1960s building ... which is what this will be in 30-years. 

One would think that a modern organization such as NATO would go for a much smoother, smaller, more nimble HQ - especially when you consider that SHAPE is just down the road in Mons ... but this is a largely European run bureaucracy - hence it must grow, and we have Starfleet Headquarters. 

Other people's money and all. Good positive things here in one way; NATO orders are simple outstanding both professionally and for the family ... so a chance to live in Europe for Americans.

Got to get you money's worth.

---

UPDATE: Yea ... as Pat points out in comments; perhaps not the best design. Look at the pick above ... and .... ummmmm ....

Why modern buildings blow ..

ninme alerts us to a nice write up in the Evening Standard (UK) about the latest narcissistic attack on our eyes by modern architecture.  Referencing The Prince of Wales (this is one of the few areas I agree with him about), I think this sums up the problem quite well.

Faced by greedy developers and an arrogant architectural establishment that despises classical design, it requires the occasional influential voice to stand up to them. Let us hope that on this occasion his voice prevails and London ends up with a development to rival that of Wren.

Bingo. The modern architectural establishment is infested with people who don't care about the context of the city they build in, it is all about them and their desire to snub their nose - with material that is both cheap and non-resilent - at everyone else.

The Germans have a point

I have seen the new US Embassy in person in the later stages of construction. It is an embarassment. We are better - but in one of the most visible places in the world, we are seen cowering. That being said, the British Embassy isn't much better.

The best one in the area is the Russian Embassy.

"The new US Embassy in Berlin fits together with trends towards nostalgia in architecture -- it is the knights' castle that you can knock together with items from the home-improvement store," continues the FAZ's critic. "On the other hand, there is hardly a modern building -- with the exception of bunkers and pesticide testing centers -- which is so hysterically closed off from public space as this embassy. There is not a single window on the upper part of the building's south side. Here America shows itself as living a completely impenetrable, erratic bunker existence. One doesn't need to be as bitchy as certain angry passers-by, who postulated that the top part of the building must be home to the 'wellness and waterboarding' area, to be disturbed by such a lack of windows."

"If a building could stand with its arms crossed, it would look like this one," the paper writes. "Perhaps it is also typical of the first decade of the 21st century that public space, which once looked like a promise, is now perceived as a threat. The stranger, who was once the projection surface for the most beautiful collective and private fantasies, could be a terrorist, have AIDS or be transporting the plagues of globalization like factory closures, migration flows or bird flu."

"The American Embassy does not reflect the image of a country that was once a melting pot for immigrants from around the world, a place for new beginnings and reinventing oneself. The embassy represents a country which has been traumatized by 9/11 and the consequences of globalization -- a nation which is now so protected by armor that it can no longer see the world."

We should have done better - but with Congress that is more interested in selfish pork-barrel than showing the greatness of our nation to our friends, and an architectural Nomenclatura that derides and discourages beautiful buildings - this isn't shocking. Shame, but no shock.

I want to see the White Eagle

I'm sorry if you don't, but this is the kind of thing I get excited about. Very excited about.

“This is one of the most important discoveries of all time,” said Andrea Carandini, a prominent Italian archaeologist. He has long held that the myths of ancient Rome could be true. He said he derived added satisfaction from the cave’s location.
...
Italian archaeologists have inched closer to unearthing the secrets behind one of Western civilization’s most enduring legends.

The Italian government on Tuesday released the first images of a deep cavern where some archaeologists believe that ancient Romans honored Romulus and Remus — the legendary founders of Rome.

The cavern, now buried 50 feet under the ruins of the palace of Emperor Augustus on the Palatine Hill, is about 23 feet high and 21 feet in diameter. Photographs taken by a camera probe show a domed cavern decorated with extremely well-preserved colored mosaics and seashells. At its center is a painted white eagle, a symbol of the Roman empire.

“This could reasonably be the place bearing witness to the myth of Rome,” Francesco Rutelli, Italy’s culture minister, said Tuesday at a news conference in Rome at which a half dozen photographs were displayed.

The legend concerns Lupercal, the mythical cave where Romulus and Remus — the sons of the god Mars who were abandoned by the banks of the Tiber — were discovered by a female wolf who suckled them until they were found and reared by a shepherd named Faustulus. The brothers are said to have founded Rome in 753 B.C. The legend culminates in fratricide, when Romulus kills his twin in a power struggle.

The cave later became a sacred location where the priests of Lupercus, a pastoral god, celebrated ceremonies until A.D. 494, when Pope Gelasius I ended the practice.

The cave was discovered in January by Irene Iacopi, the archaeologist in charge of Palatine Hill, which abuts the Roman Forum and the Coliseum. It was found during restoration work on the palace of Augustus, Rome’s first emperor, after workers took core samples that alerted them to the presence of a cave.

I am a big Roman Republic/Empire guy. Can't get enough of the stuff when it comes across the transom. I know this area of Rome well, and it is amazing that we are still finding things like this.

The shame of elite Canadian self-hate

In their own museum. In their own country. In front of their own children.

This is going to be nasty, brutish, and short.

The Canadian veteran and the Canadian people have been violently, viciously, mindlessly attacked by a group of self-hating, snarling, selfish, ungrateful, cowardly, spoiled, moral-relativist ingrates. The Canadian government allowed their martial history to be turned over to a PC group of self-important narcissists who are not ignorant; therefore they are evil.

In the face of the huge sacrifice Canadian people have made throughout history for others, what greets you when you come in. This paint-by-numbers (yes, I called it paint-by-numbers; like a lot of the crap they have for paintings in their collection. But you say, "But that's a value judgment!" Like Catherine Seipp said, "Yes, and since I have values, I'm making the judgment.").

Yep. One idiot on one day represents all of Canadian valor and sacrifice. Kate at SmallDeadAnimals is right. The Leftists in power in Canada have turned what should be a place of calm reflection into the "Canadian Shame Museum." Her quote is worth repeating here, and she is talking about the folks involved in the museum, not the Canadian military.

These people are pigs. Absolute pigs. I don't think I've ever been as ashamed of my country as I am today.

While we are on the subject of art. The people who pick their collection's "paintings" should be fired or at least ridiculed in proper company. Are you telling me that is the best they could do for WWII? And is an accident that 2 out of 31 were from the Andrew Sullivan "men in the military collection?" These 2?

While I am being a petulant child right now; let's talk about the building proper. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: It is ugly. Just ugly. I mean, look at that thing.

What happened? Get a foreclosure on Spacely Sprockets buildings?

Why is it so ugly? Check out the verbiage here, and here.

In order to ensure that we heard the voices of Canadians, Joe Geurts, Director and CEO of the Canadian War Museum and I traveled across the country to listen to and learn from Canadians. The thoughts and opinions that were voiced were surprisingly varied, and the greatest divergence was evident between the male and female perspectives. We realized that if the Canadian War Museum was to attract a larger audience, its architecture and its exhibitions would have to speak to women, youth, new Canadians from around the world, and Canada’s First Peoples.
...............
The new Canadian War Museum presents a thrilling yet complex challenge: the planning, design and construction of a new national museum dedicated to telling, interpreting, and presenting historical events that have shaped the very character of Canada.

The designers didn’t want to create a pale of bland experience, but an intense, emotional, memorable and , above all, honest presentation of the moments which have helped define Canada’s national identity.

What a load of self-important, post-modernist crap. There, value judgment again. Here is a war museum. The Imperial War Museum.

If you ever want to read what passes for enlightened thought, read The Ottawa Citizen. Here is how they get the patriotic blood boiling in respect for Canadian sacrifice.

War, unvarnished

There are few heroes in the new Canadian War Museum, just an honest portrayal of suffering, pain and sacrifice, writes Elizabeth Payne.

Well Elizabeth kiss my ass. Canada, you get what you vote for. Where did the problem start? Here's a hint.

"If you can find a more controversial subject than war and what it does to human beings, I don't know what it is," says senior historian Dean Oliver.

And yet military museums have long been criticized for sanitizing war -- portraying more guts and glory than brutal reality.

"They defined warfare as basically tales of derring-do and courage on the part of individuals, oftentimes for quite patriotic reasons -- to help recruit people to fight for the country."

Not quite propaganda, Mr. Oliver says, but almost.
...
The museum reflects a new take on heroes in several ways:

- Gen. Isaac Brock's death at the Battle of Queenston Heights during the War of 1812 is described in simple terms through the eyes of a teenage soldier: "The general was shot, fell down, and died." An ordinary death on the battlefield.

- Laura Secord, the iconic heroine of the War of 1812, comes to life through the eyewitness account of two Iroquois warriors who escorted her on her famous walk to warn the British of an American ambush, a reminder that there are many forms of courage, not all of them recognized.

- Louis Riel is presented as others saw him and visitors are challenged to reach their own conclusions about whether he was hero, traitor or something in between.

Yea, well Olie, you can kiss my ass too.

There are some reports that Canadian veterans tried to stop this rolling box of FOD, but failed.

Controversies tend to circle around museums and even before it opened, there were complaints about this one.

Some veterans complained that after all their lobbying and fundraising, they were ignored in the planning. Others said the stress on the horrors of war ignores the positive contributions made by soldiers who helped destroy Nazism.

Cliff Chadderton, former head of the War Amps and a strong voice in veterans' circles, complained that two paintings hanging in the new museum portray Kyle Brown and Clayton Matchee, Airborne soldiers who were implicated in the beating death of a teenager in Somalia in 1992.

Brown served a prison term for manslaughter. Matchee suffered brain damage in a suicide attempt and remains in hospital, judged unfit for trial.

Chadderton said the two, and the Somalia incident, don't deserve a place in the museum.

The museum and artist, Gertrude Kearns, said the military should be seen warts and all. They refused to take down the paintings.

The sad thing is, the rest of Canada and the ruling Mandarins in Ottawa didn't care. Gertrude and her friends won the day.

When a Southern boy like me has more respect for your veterans, things are in a sad state up north. I'm not about to loose my religion, but I am loosing my education over this. Being that I try to keep thing PG-13 and somewhat adult....Everyone to the left of Kate in Canada: KISS MY ASS.

OK, this wasn't short.


Hat tip to All AgitProp and Arrggghhh! for making me take this out of the draft folder from this weekend.