Salk Institute

Speaking of Allan Temko, the late architecture critic for the SF Chronicle was a great fan of Louis Kahn, and he always spoke reverentially about Kahn's groundbreaking work on the Salk Institute in La Jolla. It's hard to get a real feel for the place from outside the gates, and I hate to be too critical without knowing what it's like to experience this building from within, or even inside the courtyard, but I can't say I really liked it. There's a lot to admire, of course, but the need for thermal stability within the labs and for security dictated a great deal of how this building looks, especially from without. And it's hard to look at it without seeing the prototype for so much bad institutional architecture that followed, and which copied its fortress-like poured-concrete exterior without achieving any of the grace that this building exhibits, or incorporating natural elements like wood so elegantly.

On architecture in (much of) America

My two posts from Florida reveal the banality of what passes for architecture in much of the U.S. As Allan Temko once remarked, "There's architecture, and there's building."
Architecture is thoughtful, deliberate, and ideally beautiful while serving a practical function. Building is merely purposeful, and any aesthetic or experiential concerns are peripheral to the task.
That most of America's buildings fall into the category of having been "built" rather than "designed" seems to me almost tragic, because I believe that beauty elevates the human condition while ugliness diminishes it, especially where the built environment is concerned. To care too little for the aesthetic quality of buildings - those which surround us, and with which we surround ourselves - seems to indicate an emptiness that goes far deeper than mere surface. This stuff is important. Beauty feeds the soul.

Midcentury Modern, San Francisco

One Bush Street, San Francisco. Another fine work by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, this 1959 steel and glass skyscraper was the first new building erected in San Francisco after the Great Depression, and it's a beauty. At twilight, its glass curtain walls reflect the fading blue of the sky and reveal the building's steel structure. If you look closely, however, you'll notice that the solid part of the structure isn't concrete as it appears from a distance but thousands of tiny, iridescent Italian tiles. At the street level, the building is a delightful composition that leads pedestrians up to and inside the building in a manner that's welcoming at the same time it impresses with style and grandeur. (The design for the garden was originally assigned to Isamu Noguchi, but that didn't work out and it was done by SO&M instead.) There's also another surprise in the beautifully polished wood railing that encloses the lobby from without, and which alludes to the building's original purpose as the headquarters for Crown-Zellerbach, the forest products company.

Repetition, San Francisco

Levi's Plaza, another wonderful public space by Lawrence Halprin.

San Francisco, the Financial District

The Alcoa Building on the right, the Embarcadero towers straight ahead.

SF: Rincon Annex

The wonderful Rincon Annex, built in 1939 by the Works Progress Administration—why the Federal government didn't create a similar program to deal with the recession of 2007 will vex me to my dying day. This was one of the most successful Federal programs ever instituted, and it put all manner of people to work creating useful, beautiful things for the benefit of all Americans.

SF: Rincon Annex interior

A few interior details from the Rincon Annex post office, built by the Works Progress Administration in 1939.

Fabulous bronze casting, NYC

I'm not sure who was responsible for the wonderful bronze doors at the Madison Belmont building, 181 Madison at 34th St., New York City, but the 17-story building itself is the product of Warren & Wetmore, 1925.

Century City, Los Angeles

Century City was the back lot for 20th-Century Fox until the studio had to sell it to make up for its losses on Cleopatra. Later, the buildings were used as part of the set for Conquest of the Planet of the Apes.

San Francisco: The Embarcadero

I've always loved the piers along the Embarcadero, especially their monumental scale and Industrial Romanesque arches.

Halle, Germany

Halle, Germany

The old Rathaus is a gorgeous piece of neo-Gothic architecture, and it's fairly typical of the buildings in Halle that survived the war and then the Communist period. In this city, the latter was more physically destructive -- most of the town escaped serious damage by Allied bombing, but a lot of it was cleared to make way for grim Stalinist apartment blocks. It's still got plenty of architectural gems like this, however, most in a sad state of repair and far too many unoccupied. Like most cities in the former DDR, not to mention the small towns, Halle is a pretty depressing place these days.

Halle, Germany

For real alienation, however, try living in a Stalinist apartment block. This one in Halle is actually vacant, and presumably awaiting demolition.

Halle, Germany

The Rasthof of Halle, in the former DDR. Nothing like some nice Stalinist architecture to reinforce the power of the state, even in the Socialist Worker's Paradise.

Cordes Building, San Francisco

The Cordes Building, built in 1909 and designed by Albert Pissis. Pissis, who was born in Mexico to French parents and grew up in San Francisco, was one of the first Americans to study at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. (Another noteworthy Bay Area architect, Julia Morgan, was its first female student.) He also designed the Flood Building below (see entries for March 2010), as well as a few other favorites that I'll photograph eventually. Apparently, his buildings were thought rather reactionary at the time of their construction, but they've aged better than most and have an undeniable grandeur that derives from more than mere scale.

An Art Deco drive down Wilshire Blvd.

That little black one is for sale: just $3,700,000 for an Art Deco gem designed by Morgan, Walls & Clements in 1929. Given its Miracle Mile location, that really is a bit of a bargain.
At the top is the former Desmond's Hancock Park department store, designed in 1928 by Gilbert S. Underwood.
The other two remain obscure, but still cool to zoom in on despite the window air conditioners that deface the tan building!

The Ben Franklin Institute

At the center of the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia (vintage 1938) is this enormous room modeled on the Pantheon in Rome, as best evidenced by the fragment of the roof visible in the photo. Unlike the Pantheon, however, the central oculus is covered in glass rather than left open to the elements...I guess architect John T. Windrim didn't like the open-air aspect of the Pantheon's design.

New York City: The Meatpacking District

The next Soho, soon to be coopted by corporate retailing, if it hasn't been already.

New York City: The Art Students League

Designed by an unknown architect in 1875, the Art Students League is as noteworthy for the artists it nurtured as for its architecture. The list includes Thomas Hart Benton, Alexander Calder, George Grosz, Hans Hofmann, Roy Lichtenstein, Reginald Marsh, Louise Nevelson, Georgia O'Keeffe, Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko. (Correction: As I've just been informed by an anonymous commenter, the building was designed by H.J. (Henry Janeway) Hardenbergh, not by an unknown architect.)

New York City: The Potter Building

Norris Starkweather's 1886 Beaux Arts marvel is not only impressively ornate, it's also the first building created with terracotta over a fire-protected steel frame.