My favorite Craftsman: by Andy R

I like how Kunstler traces the history and evolution of popular architectural styles in chapter 9 of The Geography of Nowhere entitled “A Place Called Home.” He seems to have quite a handle on the progression of styles, and I was particularly drawn to the section on the Craftsman style of architecture, an early 1900 response “to the lingering distaste for Victorian frippery; to the formality of the Beaux Arts movement that followed the Victorian orgy of styles; to the industrial system and its mass-produced junk; to household improvements brought about by electricity; and to a growing young, mobile managerial class who wished to live in smaller houses (164). Growing up in central Los Angeles, not far from Hancock Park, I was pleasantly surrounded by these charming Craftsman bungalows that Kunstler specifies as common and popular on the West Coast. Although I grew up in a very L.A. Mediterranean-esque (Stucco, Spanish roof, etc.) home, I have always had a special place in my heart for these cozy homes. Many of my friends grew up in Craftsmans that possessed, regardless of individual interior decoration, the handcrafted style Kunstler addresses. I have spent countless hours at my friend Zan’s family home in Hancock Park, which is pictured above. I know it is hard to really see the house from the given photograph, taken by Zan’s dad Andy, but from what I understand, it is a pretty typical Craftsman. It is all dark woods and exposed beams with a special essence that exudes HOME. My personal experience of Craftsmans is their strong sense of home, no matter who actually lives there. Certainly, Zan’s family is a very inviting one, which goes with the neighborhood. Hancock Park, filled with Craftsman design, is the closest experience I have had to the days when doors were left open, kids played in the street, and neighbors were so much more than just people living next door. There is just a lovely sense community in the area that is welcoming and comfortable without sacrificing taste. I think the Craftsmans, and the mentality behind them, must have a lot to do with it. In the 1999 Drew Barrymore film “Never Been Kissed,” you can see the exterior of Zan’s house and some others on the block. I used to just get that funny feeling of familiarity when a place I know very well appears on screen (not such an infrequent phenomenon when the cities I know best are Los Angeles, Manhattan, Paris, San Francisco, and New Orleans). What now intrigues me is that most viewers would not even associate the shots with Los Angeles – I suppose we have on our hands some successful location scouts since I believe the characters are meant to be in a Chicago suburb. When people think of the West Coast, I presume they more often think of the cubical floor-to-ceiling window look along the beach. However, the film unobtrusively portrays one of my favorite visions of home in California. I do feel inclined to note that a Zen, minimalist house—all right angles and windows—has been on the corner of Zan’s street now for a few years. It is a cool architectural specimen, although I remember my shock to see it go up on such a cozy block of mostly Craftsmans. I think it’s fine, but I hope they don’t make a habit of it. Kunstler does note that although the California bungalows were in part designed in an effort to move away from generic mass-production, they ended up as “the most popular mass-produced kit houses sold by Sears and Roebuck” (164). Gotta love irony.

Eeriness of the PlannedIt all seemed very clear to me that this was a great idea. A planned community that was intended to function similarly to a small town sounded like a revolution in the way we think. As I was merrily waving the flag of my approval, brandishing it in the parade in my head to welcome this revolution, I realized that many of my peers disagreed. In fact, they were disturbed merely by the concept, let alone the eeriness of its existing counterparts.
People were having a hard time expressing what exactly was wrong with the place, but it was for them definitely bad. I think their reactions share some similarities with Kunstler’s repulsion to Corbusier’s Radiant City. Corbusier planned on creating a space where people wouldn’t be able to make real choices. Different forms of transportation, activity, and beauty were to be separated, with almost no links or grey areas. This city would be a stagnant entity while people shifted within it. In the planned community, like Seaside, many of these elements are similar. The streets and zoning codes would enforce a strict buildup of certain things in certain places that would create a certain effect. Of course the zoning codes would allow for some growth, and for organic planning to take shape beyond the reach of predetermined streets. But on the other hand, I’m sure Le Corbusier would have been happy to extend his Radiant city over more of the helpless Parisian landscape.
What they have in common is that there seems to be some master planner that espouses to know all. He wants to make “something from nothing”, a concept Kunstler loathes. But he seems to love it when it comes to creating communities that will actually function. So what is the difference between the two? Le Corbusier is obviously more obsessed with the car, and traffic flow, but he really did think he was going to help people. He imagined his raised Paris as a Utopia. He was a visionary of his time and now we tear him apart. Though I do disagree vehemently with what Corbusier planned to construct, I wonder if these perfect planned communities are just the contemporary version of his Modernist approach. Will my children think this idea is as laughable, and frightening, as my classmates do? I hope not. I really hope that this is moving in the right direction. While it of course isn’t as charming as the organic buildup of a medieval town, it creates a space where many of the things people require, but have lost, are taken care of for them. Hopefully, this will function as a learning tool. People will experience these places and take with that an appreciation for its benefits, without simply discounting it for the eerie feeling some of its inhabitants may foster (armies of families all trying to be far too perky can really do that). Maybe then we will finally get something from something.

Urban Planning: NYC zoning mapUrban Design: sketch of a streetscape“Does the modern profession called urban planning have anything to do with making good places anymore?” Kunstler asks. “Planners are now chiefly preoccupied with administrative procedure: issuing permits, filling out forms and shuffling papers—in short, bureaucracy… All the true design questions such as how wide should Elm Street be? and what sort of buildings should be on it? were long ago solved by civil engineers and their brethren and written into the municipal zoning codes” (113).

Kunstler’s attack on the planning field at the beginning of chapter 7 is muddled because he does not differentiate between the related but not identical fields of urban planning and urban design. He blames urban planners for issues that, frankly, are urban design and, possibly, landscape design and architecture problems.

Photo courtesy of Sevendipity

On a steamy morning last August, I turned my bike right off of 72nd street onto Park Avenue and headed downtown. The weather was clear, and stately apartment buildings formed a canyon on either side. Far in the distance, the Met Life building loomed, providing a sense of enclosure that made the street feel like an outdoor room. It was a typical day on Park Avenue, except for one thing: there were no cars. All around me, fellow cyclists, runners, walkers and roller-bladers cruised. Across the treed-median that Park Avenue is named for, the ambulating hordes moved in the other direction. It was Summer Streets, the event that took place on three Saturdays in August, when Park Avenue from 72nd street down to the Brooklyn Bridge was closed to cars. For anyone ambivalent about the impact of automobiles on city life, the event was a tantalizing taste of what NYC would be like without them.

Throughout The Geography of Nowhere, Kunstler is clear about his view that cars are at the root of the fact that many American towns are unpleasant places to be. These towns, he argues, have been designed around the automobile, a device that is far faster, louder, and more polluting than other forms of transportation that exist at the human scale, like walking or riding a bike. As he puts it, “Everywhere in America, cars had destroyed the physical relationships between things and thereby destroyed the places themselves, and yet Americans could not conceive of life without cars” (240).

From Disneyworld to Greenfield Village, Michigan and Woodstock, Vermont, Kunstler looks in vain for evidence that Americans are cognizant of the difference that the absence of cars makes to the livability of their communities. Time and again, though, he is disappointed. After asking a woman in Greenfield Village why she liked the place, he writes, “I tried and tried, but I could not drag out of her the admission that, perhaps, the place was beautiful because there were no cars around” (200).

As Kuntsler points out, it is virtually impossible to function in most American towns without a car. This is not the case in New York, which is why I have long felt that the city should do more to encourage alternate forms of transportation, and force drivers to bear the true social costs of their vehicles. I live on Central Park West, and would be perfectly happy with it but for the moat of noisy vehicular traffic (8th avenue) that lies between me and the trees beyond. Each morning I awake to the sound of trucks downshifting, and the perpetual honking of cars detracts hugely from the bucolic atmosphere that the park creates.

Mayor Bloomberg’s congestion pricing plan, which would have imposed a fee on drivers who entered a zone below 60th street between 6 am and 6 pm, had tremendous potential to address one of New York’s principal public problems: its traffic. Unfortunately, the State Assembly refused to vote on it because of concerns about its impact on drivers from the outer boroughs, and we can only hope that Bloomberg will attempt to revive the plan if he is re-elected.

When I see a traffic jam snarling a city street, I often think of our descendants 100 years from now, marveling at the fact that we allowed our loud, polluting, dangerous automobiles in such numbers in the cities where we lived and worked. I’m confident that our affair with the automobile will be seen as one of the darkest chapters in urban planning that this country ever sees.

Kengo Kuma's "Water Block House Fragments" (2008)In the second half of “The Geography of Nowhere,” Kunstler transitions out of his embittered examination of gentrification and city planning. Adding elements of the psychoanalytical, he exposes the international notion of home, and the various materials we employ to help construct this ideal. Whether these materials function to our benefit or our detriment, though, is up for discussion.

The Prefabricated Dwelling, a style of architecture often simply referred to as “prefab,” has always been the ultimate in aiding denizens of the world in their reluctance to settle down. Those who value change in landscape over change in real estate or interior decoration are typically those who appreciate prefab homes, which are typically constructed of small, light, uniform pieces that can be stacked and packed into a small space and easily relocated and reassembled. The Lincoln Log cabin is one of the first examples of such a model, but one that uses materials typical of home construction.

In the Museum of Modern Art’s recent exhibit, “Home Delivery,” architects and masters of innovation from all over the world contributed their designs for prefab dwellings. Many of the featured designs were highly unconventional in their layout and use of materials. Perhaps the most organic and resourceful in his prefab home design was Kengo Kuma, a Japanese architect whose professional aim is to “recover the tradition of Japanese buildings and reinterpret it for the 21st century.”

Kuma’s “Water Block House Fragments” from 2008 are a stackable and interconnecting series of clear jugs that hold water. The jugs can be filled with dyed water to maximize the house’s outrageous aesthetic, or with clear to remain minimalist. During a move, the jugs are emptied of their water so that they are nearly weightless to transport. But when a plot of land is selected and the house is ready to be assembled, the jugs are individually refilled, immediately converting the house’s building blocks back to an industrial, stable material.

It’s not clear to me from Kunstler’s point of view how he would regard such an artistic and abstract foray into the notion of house-building, but it seems to me as though Kuma and his contemporaries have struck a happy balance. Their designs are, by nature, marketable to the restless human way, but they narrow that audience down to a niche that appreciates art and aesthetics in an unconventional manner.

Kunstler’s third “Capital of Unreality”—Woodstock, Vermont—is, as he describes it with reluctant joy (the same way we might imagine his reaction to the economic crisis), a “scene rich with paradoxes” (239). Well-off tourists love Woodstock for its quaint New England feel with all of the appropriate accommodations. With intense symbolism built into the physical environment, serving to reinforce the myth of the country town, the tourist comes to Woodstock to purchase community, to buy a sense of place. Kunstler spends a good amount of time throughout the second half of the book demonstrating the link between community and economy: community “is a living organism based on a web of interdependencies—which is to say, a local economy” (186). It is important to notice here the physical link between the two: community and economy must be located, embedded, and invested in the same place. The Woodstock example highlights the false sense of community inherent in this particular type of tourism, one based on an idea rather than anything real.

Though I have been to Woodstock before, passing through on a long motorcycle trip, my most vivid experience of the Woodstock phenomenon came in the town of Great Barrington, Massachusetts. I occupied a strange place in both the economy and community: I came to the town as a student at the small college up the hill from the main street (a temporary place in the community, if one at all), as well as cook in one of the local restaurants that catered to the large-scale tourism industry in the area. Neither a homegrown or permanent resident, nor a short-term tourist, it is difficult to characterize my experience in Kunstler’s strict binary of local/non-local, despite having many similar qualities.

Broadacre City: Frank Lloyd Wright's Broadacre City, a motherboard. "(...) the future city will be everywhere and nowhere, and it will be a city so greatly different from the ancient city or any of today that we will probably fail to recognize its coming as the city at all." Frank Lloyd Wright.

This image (and the quote) comes from Portuguese architect Hugo Ferraz's "Urbanamentes" blog. In his post, Ferraz examines the similarities between Wright's plan for the future city and a computer's motherboard. The motherboard and the unbuilt plan both show a distribution of physical forms by function. Kunstler might add that the two are similar in that they are both unnatural, dehumanized, and alienating. The motherboard could just as easily be held up to the contemporary city, where the mechanization of movement has become an exact science - in the form of institutionalized city planning.

I found the quote from Wright, which Ferraz uses to close his post, particularly fitting as we find ourselves trying to recover from an economic meltdown by injecting public money into public works. As funding becomes restructured, so must our policies towards development and construction. The field of regional planning has been growing for the last several decades, but as we prepare to dive head first into this new wave of development, we can no longer think of our cities, suburbs, and towns as isolated from one another. (I am thinking specifically of the Northeast Corridor, which runs roughly from Boston to DC.) We must, as Wright proposes, recognize them as components of the future city.

For more on Regional Planning, visit the Regional Plan Association, a non-profit regional planning organization that operates in the Tri-State area in the spirit of improving "the quality of life and the economic competitiveness of the 31-county New York-New Jersey-Connecticut region through research, planning, and advocacy" as well as to "mobilize the region's civic, business, and government sectors to take action."

Just for fun, another image from Ferraz's blog: Broadacre City II

Atlantic CityKunstler, in his chapter called "Capitals of Unreality," looks at the examples of Disneyworld and Atlantic city as "unreal" places. Of course, both these places have been created as entertainment capitals and serve as difficult examples of what is real versus fake. I tend to believe that Kunstler goes a little overboard in his analysis of both locales (not because they are any better than he thinks) but because their function has dictated their form. They do not pretend to be real, and in fact, exist outside of our generally perceived set of normal laws of development, architecture, and laws themselves. It would be one thing if Kunstler two main examples were of normal American towns that slowly shifted towards something "unreal." Surely there are some towns that fit this mold. Perhaps a place like Key West that was once a sleep fishing town and is now a tourist haven closer fits what I would think as an unreal place. I have trouble viewing Disney World in any of the same ways I look at real towns. It is a theme park first and a fake town last. In this case, I allow Disney World several of it egregious decisions because the intention of the place is to be "unreal." It is an escape from reality and it makes no bones about it. In this way, Disney World is as real as anything else. It has a function, and created a form to fulfill that function. Atlantic City's story may be a little more complicated but again, there was an active decision to change the function of the town. Allowing gambling simply changed the nature of the city and allowed for a different function to take over. There was little reason to cater to permanent citizens. Most had since left and now the town's inhabitants were generally the weekend warriors looking for fun. Spaces there are meant for movement and entertainment to encourage more people to come. Again, to me, this does not make a place fake. Atlantic City does not pretend to be anything it isn't. It is a gambling town fraught with post-modern crap architecture (reminds me of somewhere else.) Because it has this identity, I cannot say I believe that Atlantic City is unreal.

Home Sweet HomeOn page 165 of Kunstler’s text he states that Americans in the twentieth century were becoming more and more preoccupied with “acquiring a product called home… Here was a neat little semantic trick introduced by realtors as they became professionalized: the prospective buyer was encouraged to think of his purchase as a home.”

This was undoubtedly due to the steady rise in marketing and advertising that occurred in post-World War II America. Large ad agencies were ready and able to sell the American dream to returning veterans and they, in turn, were ready to buy. Looking over the advertisements of the day, so many of them promise a sense of home: a perky housewife folding laundry next to her new General Electric washer/dryer set, Betty Crocker biscuits in the oven warm the heart and the home.

Unfortunately, dreams and reality are two very different things and the post-War family, at least in large part, never got their home. What they got was production. Kunstler tells us that the average American family moves every four years, and looking back on my life, I’d say that sounds about accurate. But it proves a point, that despite the general mobility of the American citizen, one wouldn’t be so quick to leave a house if it were indeed a home. A house is easy to leave, a home not so much.

Instead, America (let me rephrase that, most of America) continues to live in “houses” rather than “homes.” Maybe it’s our own fault. We’ve let the mobility of the continuously moving “frontier” nation that always strives for something better get in our heads and stick there. We can trace capitalism through history, and call it bad names, but inevitably we’re still hoping for more space, more land, more stuff. Home may be somewhere out on that metaphorical “frontier,” the problem is we just can’t seem to get there.

1937 Flood IrontonRemove the name Schuylerville from “The Loss of Community” and replace it with Ironton, Ohio and you will have the epitome of my hometown along the Ohio River. While reading the physical description and history of the Hudson River town, I felt as if I was reading a description of my hometown on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironton,_Ohio. With a population now around 11,500, Ironton is located in the heart of the Appalachian Mountains along the Ohio River Valley. At the turn of the 20th century, it was the leading producer in the iron industry, hence the name ‘Iron-ton’. Ironton’s proximity to the Ohio River allowed for easy transportation of the commodity, which was being purchased in the United States, Europe, and Russia to build warships. The industry brought wealth into the region, as new industries opened in soap, nail, leather, cement, tile, and much more. For nearly 50 years, it was nicknamed “Little Chicago.” A downtown area quickly developed, and the town was booming.

However, the iron ore became less accessible. As the industry was forced to mine deeper and deeper, production costs were outweighing the profits. And the town’s proximity to the river also became its downfall. Two floods destroyed the majority of the town, leaving the town in ruins. By the time the Great Depression was over, most of the industries were forced to close its doors. A large portion of the population was left unemployed. Laborers struggled to find jobs and many were forced to relocate.

Not only had the economy plummeted, the physical landscape of the region was being transformed by a federal mandate. Levees were constructed along the whole length of the town, completely separating the town from the riverfront it used to embrace. When looking out from second-street, you no longer saw across the river into Kentucky. Instead you so I giant heap of mud still waiting to sprout grass. The town was brown all over.

Since the economic plummet, no new industries have emerged. Thankfully the community has prevailed. Perhaps it’s due to the large amount of churches. Or perhaps it’s due to the fact that many of the surrounding towns remain dry in terms of alcohol sales and Ironton is the only way to get their liquor. Most likely, it’s due to the community’s commitment to its local businesses and the businesses’ commitment to the community. It is still ‘interdependent’ and is still ‘loved and competently cared for by its people’ (186).

Last year, I a completed a research project on the redevelopment of the downtown area of the neighboring town across the river called Ashland, Kentucky: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashland,_Kentucky. Like Ironton, Ashland was devastated by the collapse of the labor industry and flooding. However, unlike Ironton, Ashland has developed a large portion of land into commercial enterprises throughout the 1980s onward. This was primarily done by outside corporations: Wal-Mart, JC Penny, Goody’s, Belk, Big Lots, Kroger, and a handful of food chain restaurants. The land developed was not in the already existent downtown area, but rather land on the out skirts of town. Like the majority of small town America, this left the downtown vacant for years—in this case the majority of my childhood. I can remember when the last department store relocated into the mall. For over a decade, the downtown area was vacated and looked like a ghost town falling to pieces. It was only recent that a motion was passed to redevelop a section of the downtown into an art district.

In my study, I analyzed the reactions different generations had to the redevelopment of the downtown into an art district. The generations were broken up into two groups: the generations that grew up through the 1980s experienced the downtown in its prosperity and then in its abandonment with the growth of the mall; and the generations that grew up from the 1990s onward that only knew the abandoned downtown. Those who grew up through the 1980s generally spoke fondly toward the redevelopment, appreciating that it was going to finally have another use. Those who grew up after the 1990s however usually spoke with resentment toward the redevelopment. They saw the project as a waste of time and money, and didn’t see it ever prospering.

I contributed the contrast in the different generations’ opinions to the different cultural identities they have developed. Generations up through 1980 understand Ashland as a culture of change, from prosperity to abandonment, and now into redevelopment. Generations from the 1990s onward understand Ashland as a culture abandoned and forgotten and know only the mall located on the outskirts of town that was there before they were born. These generations are unable to envision change because they have yet to experience it.