Edward Allen, a respected architect, prolific writer and award-winning teacher, had some stern words for the modern architecture community during a guest lecture on campus Friday.
“I’m very concerned about the state of architecture today,” he said. “The sole criteria of architectural quality seems to be novelty of form.”
He criticized what he called “the frantic break-dance of the star designers, who don’t design to make their clients happy than they do to impress each other.”
Allen said that such designers have lost touch with architecture’s basic, human and emotional characteristics.
“We operate on a slide system,” he added. “The forms created by a few architects are copied, usually badly, by the rest of the architects.
Allen, a former Yale professor, began his presentation with some rather unorthodox slides of birdhouses, refrigerator magnets and cookie tins he found in gift shops all over the world, amidst occasional laughter from the undergraduate and graduate architecture students that made up the audience.
But as the slides progressed, the miniature dwellings became more intricate and archaic, with Native American cliff dwellings and ancient-looking Chinese houses, and the laughter subsided.
He then switched gears and began showing slides of the winning “homes of the year” selected by Architect Magazine last month. As the audience reflected on the cold, angular and blocky houses, he read, with more than a hint of sarcasm, what apparently were the judges’ praising comments.
He then concluded the slideshow and looked up at the audience.
“Now you will have noticed that there is no sharing whatever of characteristics between the fantasy objects and the houses that these architects have designed, it’s like they came from two different planets” he said. “Now ask yourselves, and answer honestly, which buildings did I like better, those from the gift shops, or those from the architects?”
Student reaction to the lecture appeared to be generally positive.
Sarah Bair, a graduate student in the University’s architecture program, said she enjoyed the lecture overall, but felt that he oversimplified the problem.
“I think his point that in any architectural style you want to work in, there needs to be certain aspects so people can understand and relate to it,” she said.
But with regards to his use of gift shop items to prove his point, she was less convinced.
“These are kitsch objects that may have a lot to do with people’s emotions or their memory rather than what they are actually looking for in spaces they inhabit,” she said.
Kyle Caldwell, another student who attended the lecture, said it was the emotional appeal that he liked in Allen’s lecture.
“I appreciate his sentiment,” he said. “I don’t fully agree, but I do think that responding to emotion rather than fashion is a good way to go.”
He said the gift shop items brought him back to his childhood.
“They kind of helped remind me of why I liked architecture to begin with,” he said. “Before I grew up.”