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part six
continued from
previous page.
The art of beholding. And that's where a good architectural guide can
show the way; it allows us to read the backdrop as every other detail of
humanity, of hip and not-so-hip vitality, spontaneously takes its place.
Thus, through the years, Norval White & Eliot Willensky and their like have
shown me the way, given me incentive to explore and discover and "read" the
nether regions of Manhattan...and Staten Island...and Queens
Boulevard...even that which it doesn't identify in detail...and in their
turn trained me to "read" other places, elsewhere, all over, Boston,
Brescia, Brantford, Bytom. But few (especially outside the design
profession) have likewise taken the cue, or even grasped the cue...and
that's a shame.
And maybe it takes representatives of the enlightened "ordinary" to show
the way. If White & Willensky themselves can be identified with any centre
of gravity in New York architectural practice over the past half century,
it may be with the lineage of Gruzen, Davis & Brody, et al --quality
workhorse architectural creators that represent the best in several decades
of New York modern vernacular, consistently decent and stylistically
astute, a clear level above speculative banality and overloaded kitsch,
even if seldom self-consciously spectacular or cutting-edge. It's the good
grout that holds the good city together. George Baird has made the claim,
which he's meant as praise, that Toronto has the best second-rate or
second-class architecture in North America; in New York (which, curiously
like Toronto, has lately been preoccupied with its past-generational
absence of boldly "world-class" architectural creation), the name Gruzen
would be the analogous epitome of the best of the second division. Of
course, one may think back to c16 Italy, where Vasari epitomized the
well-positioned "second-rate" creator as first-rate observer of and guide
to the artistic scene --but the magic of architecture is that while the
culture of artistic discussion has conveniently, effortlessly banished
Vasari's own painting and mural schemes to the realm of dull and banal
hackwork (hey, art-loving folks and armchair scholars, don't waste your
time, stick with Michelangelo), you can't do that so conveniently with
architecture, where the honest, decent (and sometimes not so decent) works
with no pretense toward the first division really do enrich the broad
tableau. (And those who do try to crudely apply prima-donna models of
judgment to architecture wind up looking either excessively snobbish or
even--like many who highmindedly argue against local historical
designations--middlebrow-yahooish.) It's certainly telling that Vasari the
architect has been treated far less derisively than Vasari the painter,
although the Uffizi may be argued as no less prepackaged
Michelangelo-by-the-yard.
Architectural tourism is really a phase apart from "regular" tourism; it's
where everything else is stripped away and the buildings do the
talking...and in its turn, the physical fabric allows the staffage of shops
and offices and people to unfold. It's neither overly earnest nor elitist
nor insipid; like architecture itself, it's a celebration of paradoxes.
Maybe it's the purest, yet most complicated, most all-enveloping tourism of
all--even nature tourism tends to collapse into its own uneasily reactive
vacuum in a way that architectural tourism avoids. The well-tempered
architectural tourist can exist at some kind of ease with anyplace, even
the most horrific or hostile anyplace. It's the ultimate anti-tourism --we
can even practice it at home, everyday, or else turn all the world into our
"home". It is the allseeing eye of tourisms.
Given this, it's odd that architectural guides haven't been more cherished
or celebrated or even properly understood, even by their own creators,
whether as things to be consumed or as things that teach us how to consume.
(Or maybe the fashionable architectural profession at large has spent the
last half century too wrapped up in its pomposity to notice.) Even with
the sometimes mixed results of its 2000-edition overhaul, AIA-NYC still
out-hips, out-cools all the Accesses and Lonely Planets out there, and why
not: it has a gravitas that goes beyond tour-guidedom, at ease in the
tourist's hand, but also in the enlightened local's bookshelf, and --this is
important-- as a footnoted source in articles, scholarship, municipal
heritage studies, etc. Buy this one as a ground zero; and everything else,
you can just fleetingly mooch a peek into at your big-box bookseller.
(Which raises an interesting observation, that may have unfortunate bearing
on where the architecture and design and scholarship--and, perhaps, the
book retailing--profession's gone in recent years: it seems that while the
1988 edition found a more common place in "design" sections, the 2000
edition's been more prone to retail banishment to the travel-section nether
world. An orphan through intellectual pretense and Mammon--and perhaps,
through the unfortunate, blinding, diminishing-in-spite-of-self filigree of
modern-day tour-guide genres.)
NEXT: see ya in TEN YEARS...
in PART 7.
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