Federal Courthouse Designs - Nashville v Austin

[downtown cliff]

Am I the only one here who likes Austin's courthouse?

I actually prefer the Austin design, though I like the landscaping of the Nashville design. The Austin design is bolder. I like classical as well as contemporary architecture (for example, I did the Schemerhorn), but the Nashivlle CC doesn't say classical to me. It says hotel chain, or worse, Cool Springs office park.

[rocky top buzz]

I like the design proposed for Nashville. It looks like a COURTHOUSE!

Is it ever going to be built?

[NewTowner]

The Austin design is bolder. I like classical as well as contemporary architecture (for example, I did the Schemerhorn), but the Nashivlle CC doesn't say classical to me. It says hotel chain, or worse, Cool Springs office park.

I totally eat what you're saying about Graves' design looking like the same sort of cartoon classicism we get out of cheap hotels and office parks--but I cannot make neither heads nor tails of your implication that the Austin building contains some sort of vague merit merely due to the fact that is "bolder." It is a common enough claim, and has saturated architectural thinking since the Bauhaus first rose off Dr. Frankenstein's operating table, but I have not yet heard a convincing case that "bold" is inherently good. I understand the theory that humanity is on the Technology Progress Train to a Brave New World, and that "bold" moves are needed into order to eventually produce the magic formula of social alchemy (and keep the bourgouis heads spinning), but I don't think grown-ups believe that anymore. So what do you have in mind when you laud the Austin creature as "bold"? I can think of some "bold" people, many of them celebrities, whom we find all the more despicable thanks to their inability to restrain themselves in public.

I'm going to have to stick with Vitruvius and Alberti, and ask buildings to be Firm, Useful, and Beautiful...and to behave in accordance with the rules of decorum our society maintains. The Austin courthouse fails in all those respects save firmness (presumably and tragically). The Nashville Courthouse, cheezy South Beach Clinic that it is, at least acknowledges the possibility and desirability of these mandatory architectural objectives...even while it fails to achieve them. Sadly, Graves' design shows up to the right party wearing the wrong pajamas.

[downtown cliff]

...So what do you have in mind when you laud the Austin creature as "bold"? I can think of some "bold" people, many of them celebrities, whom we find all the more despicable thanks to their inability to restrain themselves in public.

To clarify, I think both buildings fail. Both fail at the pedestrian level. I know this is largely due to security setback requirements. If I have to choose between two failures, I am going to go with the one that at least looks interesting. I do think some landscaping at the Austin site would help its appeal.

I do not see anything more useful in the Nashville design than the Austin design. As far as beauty, I prefer the clean lines of the Austin CC, though I dislike its limited use of windows at the lower levels, but I suspect this may also be a security issue. A building can be a great public building without aping classical design. I prefer a building that draws inspiration from what made good classical buildings work, even if the building is itself not of a classical design, to some toy box festooned with columns, arches, and an ornamental frieze.

Again, before I offend any of the classicists on the forum, I like good classical design. I like the Schermerhorn. I like the State Capitol Building. I really like the Main Library and the Caster-Knot building across the street from it. I think these are both excellent, classically inspired buildings that show some restraint.

[smeagolsfree]

If I had to choose it would be the Nashville design. The Austin design looks as if a 4 year old with blocks playing and someone happened to take a picture of the masterpiece. The Nashville design at least would in a small way complement the rest of the building styles already on Church. The Austin design does not have a place in downtown. Maybe someone else's downtown but not Nashville.

Maybe they could build it in Barcelona

[memphian]

The reason the Austin design doesn't have a place in Downtown Nashville is because no one has had big enough balls to make a modern statement. Please don't get me wrong - I like Nashville's buildings but we're pretty quickly coming to a point where we need that jolt of energy and flash minimalism that makes an area interesting. A great downtown area should present a surprise around every corner. JMO

[NewTowner]

The reason the Austin design doesn't have a place in Downtown Nashville is because no one has had big enough balls to make a modern statement. Please don't get me wrong - I like Nashville's buildings but we're pretty quickly coming to a point where we need that jolt of energy and flash minimalism that makes an area interesting. A great downtown area should present a surprise around every corner. JMO

Who says the purpose of architecture is to "surprise" people? Should Nashville be designed along the lines of an Ice Cube ditty, and "keep our heads ringin'"? I can understand why someone would want the "surprise" of delight--but does the surprise of shock and/or fear really amount to a high purpose?

Should our architecture subject us to "shock and awe"? A "surprise around every corner" would likely amount to a jolting disappointment around every corner if we do not consistently and relentlessly place beauty above "difference." I totally get Downtown Cliff's harsh critique of Graves' design, but the Austin "avant-garde" episode in 1990s cultural masturbation will have to do better than "different" if it wants to satisfy higher desires than those we indulge for spectacle and curiosity. It's all TV-movie CGI effects, and no plot. It looks like another doomed Star Trek spinoff, and I am not referring to its "contemporary" design--I am referring to its lack of relevance and deaf/mute selfishness.

[memphian]

Who says the purpose of architecture is to "surprise" people?

I did - that's my opinion. You can have yours and I'll have mine that's what is so great about this forum. We learn from each other and eventually/hopefully we start to see things from a different angle. Then we all get a coke, hold hands and start singing together... "I'd like to teach the world to sing.... in perfect harmony...."

Now in all seriousness there is nothing wrong with walking around, turning a corner and being inspired by something unexpected.

[jdavidf]

Am I the only one here who likes Austin's courthouse?

not at all -- I like it a lot.. There, I said it Maybe I just don't have the discerning eye everybody else has. Or maybe there's really just no accounting for taste!

[downtown cliff]

I can understand why someone would want the "surprise" of delight--but does the surprise of shock and/or fear really amount to a high purpose?

I'm guessing that memphian was suggesting the surprise of delight, not shock or fear. If anyone wants the latter, I still don't have window treatments up at my loft.

[fieldmarshaldj]

I totally get Downtown Cliff's harsh critique of Graves' design, but the Austin "avant-garde" episode in 1990s cultural masturbation...

These college kids and their high falutin' language.

[NewTowner]

I'm guessing that memphian was suggesting the surprise of delight, not shock or fear. If anyone wants the latter, I still don't have window treatments up at my loft.

Well, that's kind of my point...we were all "guessing" what Memphian meant because his/her list of desirable architectural effects did not include anything other than "surprise." This itself isn't very surprising--almost any architectural school you visit today will demand their students to produce "challenging," "different," "revolutionary," "bold," and otherwise "surprising" architecture, but the word "beauty" was lost in the theoretical techno-orgy of the Bauhaus futurists and has not been yet been recovered--at least, it has not yet been reintroduced to the rotten bowels of acadamic architecture.

It is funnily ironic, because the Beaux Arts "elites" were dethroned by the Modernists for being "out of touch" with the realities of the industrial city and the inevitability of a Godless future. Now the Moderns themselves have become the elites, and they brainwash our young Sensitives into thinking that every building has to be a bloody experiment (again I ask you, an experiment to what purpose? Are we furthering the eventual coming of a Techno-Utopia?), and that the highest calling of architecture is to surprise and challenge. Problem is, a thousand re-invented wheels--a thousand isolated objects of made-up gibberish--make for a barfight of urban fabric which is above all else incredibly selfish.

I like a good surprise as much as any other kid (Rome has hundreds of them), but I want to be surprised by an enormous amount of Beauty, not surprised by something which is surprising for its own sake. I don't want my city to function like a Haunted House. The Austin Courthouse might hypothetically surprise me a little bit...but it would only do so for half a second, and then it would inspire nervous laughter. In twenty years, the only surprise it would offer is that it has not yet been torn down.

That building does not represent anything new--and even if it did, newness for its own sake is neither worth my time, nor actually new. All of this is humbly submitted as my opinion, of course. Now that's new.

[memphian]

It really doesn't matter what you or I want as an individual be it the beauty of Beaux Arts, the genteelness of Georgian or the mostly cold facade of modernism.

I don't completely hate the Nashville design. if you look at it close enough you see some elements typical of a Graves design. On the flip side I do like the Austin design buit that certainly doesn't make me any less of a fan of Romanesque.

As for the element of surprise.... who knows what the list of "desireable architechural effects" are. I just hope that someday someone actually does surprise me. I don't care if I love it or hate it - just give me some reason to be on either side of the argument.

[Nashvillain]

I don't see anything shocking or hyper avant-guarde about the Austin courthouse. It's made out of familiar materials, glass and stone of some sort. It's comprised of ninety degree anlges. It presumably has doors and rooms that serve a purpose. It conveys a sense of massive solidity (firmitas?), order and rationale; traits most likely arrived at purposefully to reinforce its function in the civic realm. It may even be beautiful to some for its simplicity and clarity in line, form and materials.

The confused, jumbled architectural grab-bag of the Nashville courthouse, however...

[barakat]

I have an older rendering of the new courthouse. It's missing the large geodome and has less exterior glass. I think this could be the design ATLBrain refers to? It does look more like Graves' style, but has similar shape and massing to what will be built. If anyone cares to post it, I can email. I believe I pulled it from a link posted here a while back.

[bzorch]

Reading this, I could not help to think it was written by NewTowner, especially the last couple of paragraphs. It is an interesting assessment of the history and motives of modernism. It seemed appropriate in this thread.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/st...1748821,00.html

[NewTowner]

Reading this, I could not help to think it was written by NewTowner, especially the last couple of paragraphs. It is an interesting assessment of the history and motives of modernism. It seemed appropriate in this thread.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/st...1748821,00.html

I wish I had written it. It's brilliant.

[Nashvillain]

Damn, are you sure you're not Simon Jenkins, NT? I've got an art background, and in my experience modernism is not stained with this anit-humanist baggage. I've got a greater understanding for NT's position after reading this however.

[NewTowner]

Damn, are you sure you're not Simon Jenkins, NT? I've got an art background, and in my experience modernism is not stained with this anit-humanist baggage. I've got a greater understanding for NT's position after reading this however.

Modernist artists bear a smaller stigma upon their brow than do their architect and urbanist kindred, due to the fact that thousands of people were not forced to live in Modernist paintings. Also, Modernist artists did not destroy the entire legacy of the Renaissance in order to create their macho gibberish...while modernist architects usually felt like a new "efficient" building wasn't all it efficiently could be unless it was erected over the smoldering corpse of an old beautiful one, murdered for the machine. In with the new...

I did not arrive here at graduate school as a classicist, but I am leaving as one. I don't want to go into the wild wide world of contemporary architectural theory here--I fear I will tire out the entire Urban Planet community if I self-indulge to this extent--but the fight between "Ancients" and "Moderns" is still raging. Only, now instead of Fascists or Communists, the classicists are fighting Narcissistic Relativist Nihilists. These come in all shapes, sizes, and political stripes. They tear down Jacksonians, they erect Museum "Plazas," and they accuse each other of disingenuousness and cultural irrelevance. But they are the same, and they are great in number! In the end, Truth and Beauty will always need more defenders than will ever have. That's a heavy blanket statement if there ever was one, but I think it bears enough weight to stand on its own legs.

[downtown cliff]

I did not arrive here at graduate school as a classicist, but I am leaving as one. I don't want to go into the wild wide world of contemporary architectural theory here--I fear I will tire out the entire Urban Planet community if I self-indulge to this extent--but the fight between "Ancients" and "Moderns" is still raging. Only, now instead of Fascists or Communists, the classicists are fighting Narcissistic Relativist Nihilists. These come in all shapes, sizes, and political stripes. They tear down Jacksonians, they erect Museum "Plazas," and they accuse each other of disingenuousness and cultural irrelevance. But they are the same, and they are great in number! In the end, Truth and Beauty will always need more defenders than will ever have. That's a heavy blanket statement if there ever was one, but I think it bears enough weight to stand on its own legs.

And some of us who like modern architecture also like classical architecture. An object, be it a painting, a sculpture, or a building, can be well designed regardless of the school of thought that has influenced its creation. I agree, a building should respect its environment, both natural and built, but that can be done without regurgitating what is already there. I do not have your formal training, so I am not nearly as well versed in the language of design. You may only be refering to most strict interpretation of modernism, so I may be reading more into your comment than you intend. However, despite my lack of training, I know what I like when I see it.

I find it funny that you talk about classicists of the past fighting the fascists (I assume you mean primarily a stylistic fight). Il duce drew heavily on the classicism of Ancient Rome to add a veneer of respectibility to his nightmarish reign.

[NewTowner]

And some of us who like modern architecture also like classical architecture. An object, be it a painting, a sculpture, or a building, can be well designed regardless of the school of thought that has influenced its creation. I agree, a building should respect its environment, both natural and built, but that can be done without regurgitating what is already there. I do not have your formal training, so I am not nearly as well versed in the language of design. You may only be refering to most strict interpretation of modernism, so I may be reading more into your comment than you intend. However, despite my lack of training, I know what I like when I see it.

I find it funny that you talk about classicists of the past fighting the fascists (I assume you mean primarily a stylistic fight). Il duce drew heavily on the classicism of Ancient Rome to add a veneer of respectibility to his nightmarish reign.

Mussolini, Hitler, Franco, and Stalin all bounced classical ingredients around as part of their schizophrenic architectural programs, but their cronies who understood the connection between utopian regimes and contemporary architectural theory all chose the cleanliness and hypothetical futurism of Modernism, whether it was airborne techno-worship for the Luftwaffe or Oscar Niemeyer's communist murder execution-style of a ravaged Dresden. What "classicism" was erected by Albert Speer and Stalin was no more classical than Jefferson's Virginia State House or the random assortment of classical "objects" found in Stourhead's picturesque garden. These are the true regurgitations, and their columns hold up nothing more than derivative and predictable lies. These "classical" and Modernist episodes are all examples of "historicist" architecture--which is to say, they are all examples of architecture which is designed solely to refer to another time, another place...either the past (Mussolini's avenue through the forum) or the future (Seagram's Building, NYC). The classical principles are Venustas, Firmitas, and Utilitas...Beauty, Firmness, and Utility. Historicist architecture is nothing more than political cartoonies and propaganda in 3D. It is not classical, because it does not hold up the classical program, regardless of its exterior costumes. No Renaissance building was designed to imitate a building from antiquity. Ever.

You are sure-fire right in saying that Modernist objects can be attractive (seductive, even) despite the God-hating, human-assembly-line life-destroying theories and ideologies which produced them. Nazi uniforms are mostly really cool-looking, but that doesn't mean I want to put one on. Most of the Moderns' most accoladed achievements are buildings which accidentally reflect classical principles much more than their designers would have been willing to confess, unless stone drunk. Take Corbu's flagship erection, the Villa Savoy. Compelling. Somehow well-proportioned. It flows. It moves. It was designed by a maniac who would bathe in his own humours, if he could, but it is not a building completely devoid of merit. The Unit d'Habitacion, however, is a much more honest and complete reflection of Le Corbusier's stated intentions--the disasterous and horrendous city of Chandigargh even more so. Thanks to the proliferation of that wacko's theory as evidenced in Chandigargh, made more attractive by dishonestly attractive things like the exclusive high-dollar Villa Savoy (and Hitler's assassination of the Bauhaus School, no doubt), Nashville got bombed by its own citizens.

So if I agree with you that some Modernist objects are attractive, I do it with a cocked-ass grin, and I declare that since they themselves screamed that beauty does not exist...it is all in the eyes of the beholder, apparently...I can safely say that what beauty you and I see in their objects is there IN SPITE of Modernism, and not because of it.

[downtown cliff]

So if I agree with you that some Modernist objects are attractive, I do it with a cocked-ass grin, and I declare that since they themselves screamed that beauty does not exist...it is all in the eyes of the beholder, apparently...I can safely say that what beauty you and I see in their objects is there IN SPITE of Modernism, and not because of it.

I thought I would get some type of response from you, New Towner. Very interesting comments. You have explained the evils of modernism and faux classicism. Please elaborate on the inherent goodness of classicism.

Also, what examples of good classicism do you find in Nashville?

[NewTowner]

I thought I would get some type of response from you, New Towner. Very interesting comments. You have explained the evils of modernism and faux classicism. Please elaborate on the inherent goodness of classicism.

Also, what examples of good classicism do you find in Nashville?

I am tempted to simply ask you if you can cook up a better formula for architectural success than Beauty, Utility, and Strength, but I suppose that wouldn't be especially helpful.

Therefore I will try to "break it down," so to speak--but this will be awkward outside of a pub or biergarten. My explanation will inevitably seem a little roundabout at first, but please bear with me. I will strive to prevent it from being boring or obnoxious on top of the unavoidable abstract.

Let us begin with a definition of beauty, that strange and elusive concept which 20th-Century kids have such an incredibly rough time with. "Cool" and "Cutting-Edge" are so much easier, and so much less valuable. Consider this 15th-Century go by Leon Battista Alberti:

"Beauty is that state of a thing, when something cannot be added to it, nor subtracted away from it, except to the detriment of it." It is perfection, or as near to perfection as our frail hands can achieve.

Now lay that aside for a moment, and I will strive to do your question justice.

I will not deny that personal preferences exist. Some people dig Thai food, some people prefer Basmati and Naan. Some people like blue, while others like green (or red). My wife is partial to summer--I am a Fall man, myself.

But none of this is alone a good reason to kill each other, right? Because even though people all over the world possess a myriad of different perspectives on things, and some of them may not be reconcilable without compromise or conflict, there are enough elements of commonality among us that violence should be avoided until the last peaceful measures have been taken, and vindictive hatred should be denied a place within our hearts at all costs. We may prefer different kinds of food, but we all need food. We may favor different authors, but we all love a good story. We all have legs and arms, or should. Human beings all need love, have hopes, are creatures of hunger and thirst, and possess the ability to create and to imagine. We can all use language. We all love our children. We all expect each other to do the same--and if one among us fails, it is assumed that he or she is broken somehow. These universal things which we hold together give us reason to believe that no matter how bad things get, we share enought common ground to live together peacefully on the same turf. Good attitudes go a long way, but most importantly we are all...human.

This commonality--if indeed there is any at all (many ideologies, such as those of the KKK and the National Socialists, do not believe that human beings are inherently equal)--lays down a basis for universality that is rooted in our Nature. Now, our Nature may be the product of an intelligent Creator. It may be the product of something else. For the time being, let us say that it does not matter, and go on, for the classical argument does not depend on any particular religious understandings in order to claim its more self-evident virtues. We all have something in common. We are of the same stuff, and that stuff is found elsewhere as well. It is all around us, in other bits of Nature--at least, we have discovered it there, a fact which is actually quite baffling.

Let us consider the following: the Greeks discovered mathematical relationships in the proportions of a Nautilus shell, in the sonic manufacturings which produce chords and harmonies, and in the human body itself. Leonardo Da Vinci's famous sketch of the Vitruvian Man, the human form which contains both a perfect circle and perfect square, is as old as the Romans and older. Not surprisingly, the Ancients applied these numerical relationships to architecture. Rooted in the structures of ancient Egypt, though even those buggers were not likely the first, classical architecture of the West (and indeed, to a greater or lesser extent, of the whole world) essentially and ideally contains the same mathematical proportions as those of a snowflake.

Allow me to digress in order to address a previous concern of yours (it is oft repeated and should be nipped in the bud right now): does this sort of thing produce a boring and predictable set of regurgitations and repetitions? Well, allow me to answer this question with one or two more: is any snowflake alike to any other? Does any human face look identical to another--and in fact, do we not prefer natural harmony and proportion in the features of one another, in addition to the infinite variations we cherish? Variatas--variety--is another principle of classical architeture, and this is obvious to any one familiar with the Renaissance. The Villa Rotunda is not the Tempietto. Natalie Portman is not Scarlett Johansen. Neither one can compare to my beautiful wife. But why? They all have eyes, mouth, nose, ears, hair, neck, chin...

Many of those Modernists who actually thought about this stuff believed in commonality to a certain extent, and that is one of the reasons why their style was packaged for American consumption under the term "International Style." However, for the Modernists this commonality had its roots in a 19th century racial/pseudo-scientific construct of Nature called Primitivism, had been strained and compromised by religious sentiment and childish notions of beauty/truth, and could only find full flowering in the machine of industrial progress. Somehow, the car would take us full circle because it would scrap "the establishment."

It was a strange argument, and one that rejected any honest implications of true commonality. Look at the Snodgrass Tower, and you will see what the Modernists made of our common humanness: one color, endlessly repeated slots, moved and managed by giant machines, cooled and heated and lit by electricity. To Corbusier and the like, human beings were barely conscious cells in a great social organism and were most pure and peaceful when broken down to primitive objects in a futurist machinescape, full of fast driving and free love. The true and most difficult implications of commonality--namely, that truth and beauty actually exist and are not subject to external redefinition, were kicked aside by the Modernists for a commonality of cogs, pods, and breakfast pills. Theirs was a commonality of random shared coincidence and meaningless ones and zeros.

Classical architeture, is rooted--quite literally--in the human scale. Our common understandings of space (we all have two eyes, no?), our common size and shape (no fatty jokes, please), our common ability to percieve language and understand images, our common walking speed, our common preferences for sunshine and shade, our common need for sitting, or common need for meeting friends and strangers, our common need for a public realm in which we are citizens first and consumers second or third, and our common need to be interested and respected, to be dignified and treated like grown-ups, are all the focus of classical architecture and have been for millenia.

Snowflakes, musical chords, good window proportioning, walkable neighborhoods, porticoes, the permanence of stone...Strength, Utility, and Beauty.

That is the inherent goodness of classicism. I could go on, but I have a life to live, and this is neither a pub, nor a biergarten. Sorry for the super long post. I promise it could have been much longer.

[bzorch]

I agree that there are universal principles throughout history that are important to the success of a design and should only be broken for very good reasons ( I added that). But I wonder if we would disagree on the employment of the principles. Does everything have to look like classical architecture? Do you have to dogmatically follow the Vitruvius

[NewTowner]

Bzorch, you know I got stuff to say on all that...but I am going to Miami with the wife tomorrow and regret to say that I'll be off posting until next week. I'll respond to you then.

But just to kick a little something out there, allow me ask you a question. Which of the following three things would you confidently and hopefully expect your Best Man to wear at your wedding:

a) Umbros and a Hard Rock Cafe St. Patrick's Day Honolulu T-shirt

b) A brand new cutting-edge avant-garde "challenging" and unconventional nonconformist hiccup of his own fabrication (futuristically reflective material, holes strategically placed to confront the Bourgeoisie)

c) a plain boring old tuxedo, with the dude lookin' smooth and astonishingly like a grown-up man with real responsibilities and a sense of Gravitas...even though it is SO derivative and not at all ORIGINAL.

It is, in the end, the man that counts, and the suit serves the man--rather than the other way around. For this occasion, the tux is the only respectable answer, and the only one your bride would stomach.

After all...there have been millions and millions of strikingly similar pearl earrings. Would we remove a single pair, on a night meant to last a lifetime, for balled-up aluminum foil? Okay...would we do it every night for the rest of our lives, even when it wasn't funny anymore?

We have already, Mr. Gehry. We have already.