Gothicism is Subtler

Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company
The New York Times

April 18, 1999 Sunday
Late Edition - Final

Best Building; Opposites Attract

By Herbert Muschamp.

Chief architecture critic for The New York Times


For much of the past thousand years, the pendulum of Western architectural taste has swung between two esthetic poles: Gothic and classical, they eventually came to be called. Because it fuses elements of both positions in a supremely elegant whole, the Seagram Building is my choice as the millennium's most important building.

The 38-story Manhattan office tower was designed in 1958 by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in association with Philip Johnson and is the most refined version of the modern glass skyscraper. It faces Park Avenue across a broad plaza of pink Vermont granite, bordered on either side by reflecting pools and ledges of verd antique marble. The tower itself is a steel-framed structure wrapped in a curtain wall of pink-gray glass. Spandrels, mullions and I-beams, used to modulate the surface of the glass skin, are made of bronze. The walls and elevator banks are lined with travertine.

Mies began to experiment with designs for glass towers in the early 1920's. An admirer of the philosopher Oswald Spengler, Mies shared Spengler's pessimistic view that the 20th century would be a time of Western cultural breakdown. The architect's response was to cultivate an esthetic of refined austerity; the phrase ''less is more'' originated with Mies. He often realized his plain forms in sumptuous materials, however -- Italian marbles, bronze, chromium-plated steel, thick, tinted glass -- and he rendered them with an exquisite sense of proportion and detail.

Mies once defined architecture as the will of an epoch translated into space. For architects of his generation, this meant reckoning with the reality of the industrial age and the transforming power of machine technology. But it also meant overcoming the war of the styles, which had fragmented architecture into battling ideological camps.

In the Seagram Building, the classical elements are more obvious: the symmetry of its massing on the raised plaza; the tripartite division of the tower into base, shaft and capital; the rhythmic regularity of its columns and bays; the antique associations borne by bronze.

The building's Gothicism is subtler. It is evident in the tower's soaring 516 feet, the lightness and transparency of the curtain wall, the vertical emphasis conveyed by the I-beams attached to the glass skin and the cruciform plan of the tall shaft and the lower rear extension. Indeed, the Gothic cathedral was the prelude to the whole of modern glass architecture, a link that's especially clear in Mies's rendering of the (unbuilt) Friedrichstrasse office project of 1921. In this drawing, a precursor of the Seagram Building, Mies used exaggerated perspective to turn one corner of the tower into a sharply pointed triangle, creating the impression of a spire.

Today we recognize that Gothic and classical represent more than two architectural styles. They stand for two views of the world, neurologists have determined, that correspond to functions located in the left and right sides of the brain. The classical is rational, logical, analytic. The Gothic is intuitive, exploratory, synthetic. In hindsight, we recognize, too, that there's little to be gained by embracing one side at the other's expense. The business of civilization is to hold opposites together. That goal, often reached through conflict, has been rendered here by Mies with a serenity unsurpassed in modern times.



URL: http://www.nytimes.com

GRAPHIC: Photo: The building that does it all: Not only did Ludwig Mies van der Rohe create a supremely elegant structure
he also resolved a longstanding architectural debate.

LOAD-DATE: July 9, 2004

patton monologue

Now, I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country. Men, all this stuff you’ve heard about America not wanting to fight, wanting to stay out of the war, is a lot of horse dung. Americans traditionally love to fight. All real Americans love the sting of battle. When you were kids, you all admired the champion marble shooter, the fastest runner, the big league ball player, the toughest boxer. Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser. Americans play to win all the time. I wouldn’t give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed. That’s why Americans have never lost and will never lose a war. Because the very thought of losing is hateful to Americans.

Now, an Army is a team. It lives, eats, sleeps, fights as a team. This individuality stuff is a bunch of crap. The bilious bastards who wrote that stuff about individuality for the Saturday Evening Post don’t know anything more about real battle than they do about fornicating.

We have the finest food and equipment, the best spirit and the best men in the world. You know, by God I actually pity those poor bastards we’re going up against. By God, I do. We’re not just going to shoot the bastards, we’re going to cut out their living guts and use them to grease the treads of our tanks. We’re going to murder those lousy Hun bastards by the bushel.

Now, some of you boys, I know, are wondering whether or not you'll chicken out under fire. Don't worry about it. I can assure you that you will all do your duty. The Nazis are the enemy. Wade into them. Spill their blood. Shoot them in the belly. When you put your hand into a bunch of goo that a moment before was your best friend's face, you'll know what to do.

Now there’s another thing I want you to remember. I don’t want to get any messages saying that we are holding our position. We’re not holding anything. Let the Hun do that. We are advancing constantly and we’re not interested in holding onto anything except the enemy. We're going to hold onto him by the nose and we're going to kick him in the ass. We're going to kick the hell out of him all the time and we're gonna go through him like crap through a goose.

There’s one thing that you men will be able to say when you get back home. And you may thank God for it. Thirty years from now when you’re sitting around your fireside with your grandson on your knee and he asks you what did you do in the great World War II, you won’t have to say, "Well, I shoveled shit in Louisiana."

Alright now, you sons-of-bitches, you know how I feel. Oh, and I will be
proud to lead you wonderful guys into battle – anytime, anywhere.

That’s all.

new york times co v. united states

a nice line from justice black's opinion: the word "security" is a broad, vague generality whose contours should not be invoked to abrogate the fundamental law embodied in the First Amendment.

wsj editorial

Hurricane Bush
September 15, 2005; Page A20
President Bush addresses the nation on Hurricane Katrina tonight, and after keeping too quiet for too long there's a lot for him to say. We hope he tells Americans that such a demonstrable failure at all levels of government is a rare opportunity to change that government, not another excuse to expand it willy-nilly.

Two weeks after the hurricane, we have a clearer picture of both the storm damage and the bureaucratic mistakes. The former is happily lower in human terms than the 10,000 deaths predicted by New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, as of Tuesday much lower at 423 (659 throughout the region). The Gulf Coast has begun to rebuild, and even many residents of the Big Easy are returning to clean up the mess.

The political trauma that has followed Katrina is almost entirely a result of the slow, haphazard government response in the first days after the storm hit. Mayor Nagin had an evacuation plan sitting in a drawer but never got the buses in place to implement it. He then blamed everyone else. Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco froze amid the crisis and failed to deploy the National Guard properly to protect those stranded at the Convention Center and Superdome. She is still blaming everyone else.

FEMA was overwhelmed by the magnitude of the storm, and former director Michael Brown showed he was clueless about events that he could see merely by turning on his TV set. Notably, he is the only public official so far to lose his job, just as Mr. Bush is the only elected official who has so far accepted any public "responsibility." Alas, tonight the President isn't likely to assail the Department of Homeland Security that he helped to create, but he at least ought to admit that federal and state disaster duties and communication need to be better sorted out. He could also praise the Pentagon's relief success.

Only in Washington, however, could so much government failure be used to justify expanding the size and scope of government. Some emergency money is essential. But Congress has already appropriated some $62 billion, with essentially zero accountability, to be spent by such models of compassion as the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Another $100 billion may soon follow. Ted Kennedy has proposed that Congress create another Tennessee Valley Authority for the Gulf region. Give them one more week to panic, and Republicans on Capitol Hill will be demanding another Great Society.

Mr. Bush has a chance tonight to turn all of this around. Instead of channeling more cash through the same failed bureaucracies, he should declare the entire Gulf Coast region an enterprise zone, with low tax rates for new investments and waivers for any regulatory obstacles to rebuilding. He can also learn from California's 1994 earthquake experience -- which former Governor Pete Wilson described on this page on Tuesday -- and demand emergency powers to waive rules and allow bonus payments for contractors that finish projects ahead of time.

Above all, he can reframe the entire debate on how to help the poor of New Orleans. The people who couldn't flee the storm were not ignored by "small government conservatism," as if that actually still exists outside of Hong Kong. The city's poor have been smothered by decades of corrupt, paternal government -- local, state and federal.

While Chicago and other cities leveled their public housing projects, the Big Easy has continued to run nasty places like the Lafitte homes. The city's crime rate is 10 times the national average, even as New York and other big cities have seen their rates fall. Its public schools are as bad as any, and its city government more corrupt than most. The last thing the poor need is to be returned to such tender, loving care.

This would include killing the idea, floated by the White House, of buying 300,000 mobile homes for the displaced. Governor Blanco wants to build communities of thousands of trailers for a year or more near Baton Rouge and Shreveport. Such shelter makes sense in some parts of the Gulf Coast where there literally is no housing stock left. But it is an act of insanity -- defined as repeating the same mistake over and over -- to recreate trailer-park versions of Lafitte on military bases, isolating the poor once again and returning them to dependence on the government. Far better to give them vouchers to find housing of their own, especially where there is unused rental space.

The same goes for the city's 77,000 displaced public school students. Their parents should be given vouchers for the equivalent of their tuition, with the option of using it at any school where they can find an opening, public or private. Charter schools should be allowed to expand immediately, and the Bush Administration could seek an emergency federal waiver of state charter laws to let them accept New Orleans kids now swamping other public schools.

There are other good ideas, but the key point is for Mr. Bush and Republicans to get back on the political and intellectual offensive. With media help, Democrats and the left have used Katrina to portray a systemic collapse of "conservative" government. It was certainly a collapse of government, but more accurately of bureaucracy and the welfare state. If Mr. Bush uses his bully pulpit to explain this, Americans will understand and follow.

nyt op-ed

September 14, 2005
Singapore and Katrina
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Singapore

There is something troublingly self-indulgent and slothful about America today - something that Katrina highlighted and that people who live in countries where the laws of gravity still apply really noticed. It has rattled them - like watching a parent melt down.

That is certainly the sense I got after observing the Katrina debacle from half a world away here in Singapore - a city-state that, if it believes in anything, believes in good governance. It may roll up the sidewalks pretty early here, and it may even fine you if you spit out your gum, but if you had to choose anywhere in Asia you would want to be caught in a typhoon, it would be Singapore. Trust me, the head of Civil Defense here is not simply someone's college roommate.

Indeed, Singapore believes so strongly that you have to get the best-qualified and least-corruptible people you can into senior positions in the government, judiciary and civil service that its pays its prime minister a salary of $1.1 million a year. It pays its cabinet ministers and Supreme Court justices just under $1 million a year, and pays judges and senior civil servants handsomely down the line.

From Singapore's early years, good governance mattered because the ruling party was in a struggle for the people's hearts and minds with the Communists, who were perceived to be both noncorrupt and caring - so the state had to be the same and more.

Even after the Communists faded, Singapore maintained a tradition of good governance because as a country of only four million people with no natural resources, it had to live by its wits. It needed to run its economy and schools in a way that would extract the maximum from each citizen, which is how four million people built reserves of $100 billion.

"In the areas that are critical to our survival, like Defense, Finance and the Ministry of Home Affairs, we look for the best talent," said Kishore Mahbubani, dean of the Lee Kwan Yew School of Public Policy. "You lose New Orleans, and you have 100 other cities just like it. But we're a city-state. We lose Singapore and there is nothing else. ... [So] the standards of discipline are very high. There is a very high degree of accountability in Singapore."

When a subway tunnel under construction collapsed here in April 2004 and four workers were killed, a government inquiry concluded that top executives of the contracting company should be either fined or jailed.

The discipline that the cold war imposed on America, by contrast, seems to have faded. Last year, we cut the National Science Foundation budget, while indulging absurd creationist theories in our schools and passing pork-laden energy and transportation bills in the middle of an energy crisis.

We let the families of the victims of 9/11 redesign our intelligence organizations, and our president and Congress held a midnight session about the health care of one woman, Terri Schiavo, while ignoring the health crisis of 40 million uninsured. Our economy seems to be fueled lately by either suing each other or selling each other houses. Our government launched a war in Iraq without any real plan for the morning after, and it cut taxes in the middle of that war, ensuring that future generations would get the bill.

Speaking of Katrina, Sumiko Tan, a columnist for the Sunday edition of The Straits Times in Singapore, wrote: "We were shocked at what we saw. Death and destruction from natural disaster is par for the course. But the pictures of dead people left uncollected on the streets, armed looters ransacking shops, survivors desperate to be rescued, racial divisions - these were truly out of sync with what we'd imagined the land of the free to be, even if we had encountered homelessness and violence on visits there. ... If America becomes so unglued when bad things happen in its own backyard, how can it fulfill its role as leader of the world?"

Janadas Devan, a Straits Times columnist, tried to explain to his Asian readers how the U.S. is changing. "Today's conservatives," he wrote, "differ in one crucial aspect from yesterday's conservatives: the latter believed in small government, but believed, too, that a country ought to pay for all the government that it needed.

"The former believe in no government, and therefore conclude that there is no need for a country to pay for even the government that it does have. ... [But] it is not only government that doesn't show up when government is starved of resources and leached of all its meaning. Community doesn't show up either, sacrifice doesn't show up, pulling together doesn't show up, 'we're all in this together' doesn't show up."

celebrity insists every story in the world must have a celebrity

i hate you, sean penn.

thanks a lot, god

it looks like not enough people got involved in my save-the-justice program and, well, rhenquist went and died on us. i would like to start a movement to get judge judy on the supreme court. are you with me?

proper ap style

not AP Style but AP Style.

last night i suckered an ap writer plus-one into taking me out to dinner. we went to a civilized irish pub (i know, sounds like an oxymoron, but trust me). lagger that i am, i was late. they greeted me with an almost-empty bottle of white wine and headlines they claimed to have been thinking about to explain my whereabouts like "date with death." i was almost lucky enough to get my name on the ap wire!

after polishing off the bottle, they began divulging some of the mysterious ways of this venerable institution. surprisingly accessible and open to discussing their experience and thoughts on journalism and being journalists, they were fun and funny and totally not jaded, unlike, say, screenwriters or copywriters. they generously offered up tricks of the trade and suggestions on how to get access to institutions like the nypd that could give a shit about talking to a student who will be lucky to get her stories published on her own blog (as editor of my blog, i would never subject anyone else to reading the shite i've written for school. you kidding me?!)

i had a lovely steak, medium rare, that came with veggies that were nicely sauteed in garlic and butter, crisp and fresh and not at all gay or overextended by having to compete with an organic miniature dean and deluca garden party. i was also lucky enough to coax an ashtray my way and got to SMOKE INDOORS. i think it's more impressive that i pulled that off then the fact that i go to some posh grad school.