Washington Monument Grounds Competition, Why Bother?

The vision for Monument Gardens from the McMillan plan by Daniel Burnham, Charles McKim, and Augustus Saint-Gaudens Commision of Fine Arts

Last week a coalition of Washington DC planners announced the National Ideas Competition for the Washington Monument Grounds. The announcement of this open design competition to redesign the grounds surrounding the Washington Monument, has prompted a lot of response from commenters on Greater Greater Washington and elsewhere, but I simply ask, will it be worth the bother? I am apathetic about this competition for two reasons, one based on my knowledge of the current state of architecture, and second because there already is a great plan for the site.

I’m afraid this competition, like the recent Eisenhower competition, and African American Museum competition, will be an exercise in playing with a stacked deck, stacked only for the modernist. The Competition states that a jury of “respected Americans who are leaders and creative thinkers in the fields of history, design, civics education, art, and science” will be judging the multitude of entries to whittle the competition down to twenty-five semi-finalists and then five finalists that the public will be allowed to vote on.

Will this be the vision for the Washington Monument as well?
Eisenhower Memorial proposal by Frank Gehry

While having the appearance of public input, the jury will have complete discretion to choose which entries will make it to the finals. The steering committee appears to have not a single prominent classical architect involved, leaving me with the distinct feeling that the result will be another confused and ridiculous modernist accretion to our beautiful, classical, city. The shame is that the professionals and academics running this competition will claim to have chosen what the people want, but will undoubtedly chose what they want, ignoring how poll after poll have proven the public’s love of the classical.

The biggest reason however is that the grounds of the Washington Monument already have a tremendous, beautiful and amazing plan, just one that has not been realized. In the 1901 McMillan Plan’s re-envisioning of the original L’Enfant layout of Washington DC, the Monument was to be centerpiece of the Mall, terraced fountains and railings and a large triumphal stairway descending towards gardens and parterres beautifying the center of the city. Not only is it part of the original plan that so many architects and planners profess to have a reverence for, but moreover it’s simply the best solution to the problem.

In 1900, the Monument Grounds were not so different from what we see today, described by many then as now as a wasteland of open space. The plan developed by Daniel Burnham, Charles McKim and Augustus Saint-Gaudens well researched and planned to be the symbolic heart of a great nation and everything from the width of the Mall, the spacing of the trees and the heights of the buildings along it was considered so to create a unifying, beautiful and magnificent effect.

One of the pavilions of the Monument Gardens from the McMillan Plan, which would have provided shade and visual interest for those strolling the grounds. - from the Commission of Fine Arts

This part of the mall is the keystone to the entire plan, one that not finishing leaves the entire work much the poorer, like not painting the nose of the Mona Lisa. To instead propose an alternative plan of modernist architecture hatched in the halls of architectural academia would be to deface this magnificent work of art with a monstrous carbuncle.

Finish the Plan, don’t destroy it.

Speaking this Friday on Beauty and Harmony

A good part of the reason I've not been blogging lately is that I've been preparing a lecture and presentation for a conference this weekend. The architecture schools of Catholic University of America and the University of Notre Dame are co-sponsors of A Living Presence - Extending and Transforming the Tradition of Catholic Sacred Architecture.

I will be speaking on the topic of Harmony and Beauty, a difficult philosophical concept for a very long book, but one that has proven to be even more difficult to shoehorn into a 15 minute presentation.

My slot will be in the 1:30 -3:15pm session on April 30, titled: Beauty and Abstraction.

DC's Sacred Buildings

Just a link to a collection of pictures of the great churches and other sacred architecture of Washington DC, taken by our friends over at BeyondDC

Alternative way to get the Blue Line to Georgetown

Since the earliest days of Metro, planners and engineers have struggled with the idea of running the Blue Line between Rosslyn and Georgetown, but I believe that a solution to this problem could be found with looking at the problem in a roundabout way.

The problem of how to get the Blue line to have a stop in the heart of Georgetown has been the topic of discussion for a while now, and biggest obstacle has been how to navigate the extreme grades between Rosslyn and Georgetown.


Each area is perched atop significant bluffs above the Potomac below, making direct a tunnel between the two sides a nightmare, one that Metro abandoned in the earliest stages of planning as impracticable. The direct tunnel would have to descend and ascend such a steep grade over such a short distance so that a station at a practical depth would be impossible.



However, I propose a simple solution, simply make the distance between the stations longer and give the tunnel a little more room to make the descent. How can you do that when obviously you can't move the whole of Georgetown? Simply putting a big bend in the tunnel.


Railroad builders have used the technique of bending the tracks around bends, horseshoes and even loops to make the ascent of steep grades possible, such as at the famous Tehachipi Loop. The idea would be to give the train enough track to descend below the Potomac by bending the tracks to the west, making a turn under the Potomac and the C&O canal and making a gentle ascent under M Street NW. Certainly it would be more tunneling, but it would make the sorely needed station a possibility.

Could this work? Has anyone proposed something like this before?

East Building of National Gallery Crumbling After Only 30 Years

NOTE: After writing this article I received the following message from the author of the WSJ article:

"I have read your blog about my WSJ article on Pei's E Bldg wall system but it contains what I believe is a major error--the notion that Pope used expansion joints on his W Bldg marble veneer. This is untrue. The W Bldg marble veneer is mortared as well as anchored to its concrete back-up on the lower level and bonded to a brick substrate on the upper/piano nobile level. The resulting mass obviates the need for expansion joints. The only movement joints on the building are for structural movement and they fall between the wings and the center/rotunda block. I checked this out with the Gallery in reporting the story."

In this week's Wall Street Journal, Catesby Leigh writes about the ongoing problems popping up at the I.M. Pei-designed National Gallery East Building. The WSJ article explains that the facade of the building, constructed using an experimental curtain wall system that the architect described as "a technological breakthrough for the construction of masonry walls," has become unstable. While the article delves into the technological reasons for the failures, it begs the question of why. Why would the architect make a conscious decision to ignore established precedents for the construction in favor of a new, unsustainable system. The answer has more to do with ideological constraints as much as a technological ones.

East Wing of the National Gallery (photo by Iainr, via Flickr)

The facade of the East Wing is constructed of a series of 2'-by-5', 438-pound marble panels that are held in place on a structure of steel hangers attached to a concrete frame. With the use of new rubberized gaskets to seal the joints between the stones and allow for movement to occur, the walls were supposed to last for a half-century or more before needing even minor maintenance. Pei described them as "a technological breakthrough for the construction of masonry walls." It is this system that the WSJ piece describes as the very reason why the facade failed.

But the bigger question is why the building employed such technology in the first place. The following line explains the why:

The [use of the new experimental] gaskets also would spare the East Building the need for wide, visually disruptive expansion joints—a standard feature of curtain wall veneer, running horizontally and vertically at regular intervals to accommodate thermal movement.

The clean lines and solid geometrical forms of the building's design simply could not be interrupted with unsightly expansion joints. I.M. Pei quite simply was shackled to his own modern design, constrained to have large uninterrupted geometries of stone, a technological solution was an absolute necessity. The earlier Main Building, designed by John Russell Pope, had no such constraints.

Expansion joints are hidden behind the pilasters. (photo by Boots)

What most people, even architects don't realize is that the Pope building, like the East Wing, is similarly constructed using a marble veneer over a structural core. What is different, however, is the extensive use of a well established conventions construction and the use of expansion joints. These expansion joints on the facade of the Main Building are cleverly hidden behind clusters of classical pilasters on corners of the facade. Pope, not being constrained by the ideology of modern architecture, was able to find a solution that was at once attractive and still working marvelously almost 60 years after completion.

The essential difference between these buildings is clearly the technology used, but that technology is a direct reflection of the architectural philosophies of each architect. In the former case the architect believed that new materials would provide a "technological breakthrough" to allow him to create the clean lines of modern architecture. Ignoring traditional solutions and the nature of the materials he was working with, it ultimately resulted in structural failure. The latter architect however worked using established precedents of construction that took into consideration natural forces such as expansion and contraction and gravity, and combined this with a sleight of hand possible through classical architecture, created a building that has stood over twice as long with no major failures.

The question of modern versus traditional when it comes to building technology has become more than just a question of style, but that of sustainability. The cladding of the entire East Wing will now have to be removed and restored at the cost of $85 million to the taxpayer. This works out to about 17% of the inflation adjusted cost of the original building ($500 million). Add to the financial cost the immense amount of fuel, energy, and building material waste produced by such a project, the justification for such buildings is becoming more and more difficult. Structural and facade failure in an iconic Modernist building is not without a number of precedents, begging the question of why architects insist upon continuing to build such unsustainable architecture in our enlightened times, again the answer is ideology.

On one hand, architects wisely are beginning to embrace sustainability, but with the other hand cast aside traditional detailing and traditional architecture because of a ideological bias against such architecture. We need to use architecture, all of its lessons to create a better and more sustainable future, here at GGW it seems most everyone looks to tradition when it comes to urbanism, so too we should embrace it in architecture. For architecture to truly be sustainable it must not only welcome back into its repertoire the lessons that traditional and classical architecture have to offer when it comes to construction, but also must be willing to embrace them.

Streetcars: Made in the USA?

I don't normally post on transportation issues, our good friends over at GGW do such a good job on the issues. However once in a while something great comes up I have to share especially when it involves my home state of Oregon. There has been a lot of talk about streetcars and how American cities can emulate the good lessons of Europe's streetcar renaissance, one question has been who's going to build them. DC has some (long delayed) plans to install a single streetcar line, but the cars and technology come from the Czech republic. I was delighted to see however that Portland's new streetcars they have installed are home grown, built by Oregon Iron Works right there in the great Northwest.

An American, Oregonian made Streetcar rolls off the line.

The company was motivated by the good experience with Portland's streetcars, but a little irked that there were no US manufacturers, so they decided just to build their own. I have to say, the cars look just as attractive and convienient as any found in Europe, and doubtless delivering such trams across town has to be cheaper and faster than delivering them half a world away. Such ingenuity and entrepeneurship ought to be applauded and rewarded, perhaps the next streetcar DC buys could be "Made in Oregon?"

Trams are a key component in building a beautiful city in my opinion, they make for safe, clean and quiet transit, quite opposed to the armada's of SUVs and fleets of rumbling buses and trucks*. A city can have proper public spaces only when people, not cars, dominate the public realm, and having effective and attractive ways to get people there is key to that. I'm happy that an American, and specifically Oregonian, company is helping lead the way.


*Trucks need not be part of the city either. Dresden began using street cars to keep trucks from cluttering up their beautiful city, by creating special "freight streetcars" to deliver parts to their new VW plant.

One of Dresden's windowless freight hauling streetcars.

National Civic Arts Society Unviels "Building Our Nation's Capital"

Last night in Georgetown, the National Civic Art Society premiered its new documentary film "The Vision of the Nation's Capital," to great acclaim. The video, documenting the great classical vision of the Capital envisioned by L'Enfant and George Washington, was warmly received by the attendees. This vision, reborn in the McMillan Commission in 1901, subsequently sullied by tasteless and ill planned modernist buildings throughout city, is the focus of the NCAS' mission.

The event was just the beginning of a movement toward reinvigorating and restoring this vision, that all can appreciate. Of note was the attendance and support of Congressman Jim Cooper of Tennessee and the former head of the National Endowment for the Humanities, Bruce Cole.

Congressman Cooper expressed his gratitude for being invited to the event and had some short remarks after the video's premiere. He lamented the cold and heartless office buildings so many people work in throughout the city and expressed too his admiration for the classical buildings pointed out in the video as "places people like to work."

Certainly I hope that this is just the beginning of a larger movement to realizing that the classical vision of Washington can and should be built, and that Americans at large will find a city more beautiful than ever before.

Great Buildings of the Past Century: The National Gallery of Art

It seems to me that a great bulk of my critical writing here is often profoundly negative towards the practice of architecture. Frankly a lot of the blogosphere tends to be that way, and its human nature to complain and in architecture particularly there tends to be a lot less good news going on than bad. I've therefore decided to be a bit more positive and seet out buildings that are really great and give some good reasons why. I've decided to limit myself to building from the last century or so, roughly from 1900 on, I think it might be interesting to see how many great buildings I can find from this era.

The National Gallery of Art - 1941 - John Russell Pope

The National Gallery of Art was one of the last built works of the great classical architect John Russell Pope. Derided by his critics in during the rising tide of modernism as "the last of the Romans" Pope was a master of a sedate and serene classicism that one could adequately call modern.

This modern classicism is typified by Pope's use of the more robust classical orders such as the Doric, and greater ratio of wall to openings than other more Beaux-arts architects. His use of articulations tends to be more subtle, preferring slight changes in plane rather than deep bays and openings like one might find at Burnham's Union Station. Ornament, while not absent, is less used, but only at points of emphasis, and in proportionate manner, and like so much ornament of the interwar years, tends to be more planar and more spartan.

Corcoran gallery

Comparing his National Archives to Ernest Flagg's victorian 1897 Corcoran Gallery, the Archives appears lighter, with broader expanses of stone, widely spaced and small widely spaced acroteria and a shallow simple cornice. The Corcoran's use of deep recesses, heavily sculpted and staccato use of acroteria and festoons on the cornice and particularly the rusticated base give this smaller building a very heavy presence.The National Gallery continues Pope's style to its logical end. No figurative ornamentation is found on the exterior of the building, and only small wreaths in the frieze and small leaf patterns ornament the doors. This points to the idea that Pope saw this building not like another work of art on display, but rather as the frame.

Exterior ornament is limited to architectural detail.

The parti or plan of the building is remarkably clear and orderly. The central rotunda clearly modeled on the Pantheon flanked by block wings, each with long corridors ending at light courts is both pleasing and easily understandable. Comparing this to the often confusing layouts of so many museums its not hard to see why it's considered the best museum in the world. Other details make this building a remarkably wonderful place to view art. Diffuse light streams from above in the galleries, courtesy of the double layer of skylights brilliantly designed to bring in light but not cast shadows or cause glare.

The Pantheon-like central hall.

The building is despite it's appearance also extremely modern in a technological sense. The museum was one of the first buildings designed to be entirely air conditioned. The brilliance is found in that the air vents are placed above the cornices of the interior doorways, concealing this unattractive detail from the viewers standing on the floor below. The returns are tasteful grilles placed behind benches that sit in the halls.

The Pantheon oculus motif, giving beautiful diffuse light.

There is one final amazingly brilliant detail that no one sees, and probably only a very few people even know about is the use of expansion joints on the facade. Most buildings built today need expansion joints, this is due to the different materials that go into a modern building, usually a steel frame with stone as durable exterior material. The problem is when the building heats up the steel and the stone expand at different rates, necessitating some sort of joint to allow the expansion to be absorbed. Without this the stone would crack and fail.

Expansion joints are hid behind changes in plane.

Normally when a building has a long expanse of wall, like at the National Gallery, these expansion joints are simply run right down the front of the building. Pope however, just like he does with the skylights, and the AC vents, conceals this. Here it is concealed behind the places on the facade where the planes slip behind each other. The joint runs from top to bottom of the facade, but BEHIND the folds of the building. Simply brilliant. Without the flexibility of the classical language, this detail would be difficult, if not impossible to pull off, leaving the usual nasty looking line of plastic grout.

The National Gallery is a great example of how to build a truly modern building, with all of the conveniences necessary to its operation and construction, but yet maintain the dignity and beauty of the classical language.

Even Security Guards know its Ugly

Today my boss was out and about taking photographs for a presentation on the architecture of Washington DC, and like so many other photographers in DC and the country, was accosted by a security guard for his trouble.

Now for those of us in DC who have a fondness for architecture, this troubling intrusion on our civil liberties is no new news really. A while back some innocent tourists were confronted by private security guards about taking photos of Union Station, a DC landmark.

The Forrestal Building

My boss was taking photos of the monstrous Forrestal building in southwest DC, which you can see is a pretty ugly building. While taking his photos he was flagged down by a security officer and asked for usual sorts of questions and detained while the guard got his supervisor. My boss found the whole incident rather ridiculous, especially when the guard asked to see the photos, to which my anacronistic mentor explained he was taking slides photos, the guard was incredulous.

My good employer raised an interesting question telling his tale to me. Was he being accosted because he was taking photos of a modernist building? Now before you jump all over me for saying I'm accusing the Hegemony of some sort of plot, let me explain.

Consider this: my boss was out all afternoon taking pictures of other Federal buildings in DC, from the Capitol to the Federal Triangle. All of these buildings are "sensitive" to the same sort of degree that the Forrestall building is, they are all Federal office buildings. But one wonders why he, and every other tourist in town takes pictures (for the most part) unmolested till the cows come home. But the second that he begins taking pictures of a massively ugly Brutalist building he's questioned by security?

Maybe its that the security guards know that nobody takes pictures of such ugly buildings and they think that someone who does is a nut of some sort? I know that a lot of security is overzealous to a rediculous degree, but one has to wonder if even they understand how unpopular Modernism really is?

Gehry Memorial also to include nod to Eisenhower

Ok, so that's not the headline that the Post used to announce this morning the winner of the "competition" to design a national memorial to Dwight D. Eisenhower. But given Frank Gehry's "signature" style and propensity to attract attention to himself via his buildings, it might well have been. Today the Eisenhower Memorial commision solidified its previous decision to embrace fashionable names in architecture over beautiful architecture that would be properly deferential to it's subject and not to its builder.

Frank Gehry (Kathy Willens - AP)

The architecture of Frank Gehry is the singular and personal style of Gehry, and as his "signature" or "trademark" it exalts him the architect. Anywhere you go that there is a building by him, people exclaim "we have a Gehry," like it were any other work of art, like Picasso or a Michelangelo.

Many places, especially in Europe, are quite proud however of older buildings by famous architects like Michelangelo and others. These buildings might be fantastically beautiful and new, but even after seeing them as different and wonderful, they still fit in with the towns they are in. In fact many "signature" buildings by great architects in history have to be pointed out to you. This is because as part of a city, architecture has to be a "good neighbor" and not draw too much attention to itself.

Michelangelo and the "starchitects" of his day may be just as well known as the Frank Gehry's of our day, but today "starchitects" build with little deference to the city around them. Today's stars build objects such that their building is a solitary work of art, of genius incarnate. One could as Leon Krier said this week, put all the great Modernist architecture in a park somewhere, and in this park the buildings would make just as much sense as they do in their own environs. A Bernini or Michelangelo building put on a tabula raza would make no sense, as each of them is designed as part of a harmony in a city.

A memorial is however a little different as it's harmony is not just with the city, but also with the subject to be memorialized. The architect in some sense takes a back seat to the memorial. Lets put it this way, nobody comes to see "a Bacon" or "a Daniel Chester French" when we go to see the Lincoln Memorial, but we go to see and remember a great President. A proper memorial gives deference to its subject. Sadly, modernist architects cannot do this, neither by the means of their art nor by their own character. The modernist needs to express novelty and newness and personal artistic genius far too much to be able to defer to his subject.
An Eisenhower Memorial to Gehry will likely be so overbearingly Gehry, that history will likely forget the man memorialized before the man who built it.

A Modest Proposal
Now, I criticize a lot here on this blog, but now it is time for action. I propose a true competition for a counter proposal for this memorial. I am now working to raise money for a CASH prize for the best design for a counter proposal for this memorial. I propose that it be open to young artists and architects under 40 from anywhere in the country. The prize would be small, likely $400 - $500 but the subject is small and would take little time to produce.

I would propose that the design not necessarily be classical, but certainly I feel that classical would be best to express the necessary gravitas and reverence necessary for a memorial. All designs will be considered rationally from all designers.

What do you think? Would you be willing to contribute a design? I will be formulating a program for this competition so your feedback will be taken into account.

CFA Denies Inharmonious Addition to Library, Post Writer Denounces CFA

Proposed addition to Mt. Pleasant Public Library in DC by CORE Design

Last week the US Commission of Fine Arts denied a plan by DC Public Libraries to add the above addition to its historic 1920's Mt. Pleasant branch. Marc Fisher of the Washington Post called the move "stomping on innovation and the faint whispers of home rule." Fisher couldn't be further from the mark, both in terms of architecture, but moreover why the CFA is justified as a Federal Commission to do such a thing.

First of all let me say before I get accused of politics, I don't intend to use this article as a springboard for ANY discussion about Home Rule, Statehood, or DC Voting rights. I only intend to respond to Fisher's and others' attacks on the CFA's authority as arbiter of architecture within the Capital independent of whatever political definition it has. I believe my arguments would stand (or fall) equally well for any Capital, be it DC or Berlin or Tokyo.

Fisher tries to net the CFA with the claim that it "serves mainly to prevent the city from evolving over time as any living place must." He says because the Library had three community meetings and "responded to neighbors' complaints" the CFA overstepped its bounds by denying the approval of this addition. Now these may be a fine and justified reasons in any normal city would respond merely to its own citizens. However, Washington DC has a special standard of aesthetics to uphold, by virtue of it being not just any ordinary city but our nation's Capital.

To see DC as "Our Nation's Capital," is to see it as not just for those who live there, but indeed everyone's home. Indeed the "neighbors" who need to be consulted are not just those who live nearby, but also those who live from Maryland, Virginia and indeed from sea to shining sea.

To understand DC as a home for the whole nation is to know it as a work of art, and as such has a symbolic end first and foremost. DC as a Capital ought to tell something to us about us, and it can do this by being more than just a collection of parts, but as one great piece of art in the form of its architecture and its urbanism. That architecture can tell a story, and like any story told anywhere in all of human history, needs to be whole, unified and cohesive to tell its story to us.
This is how L'Enfant saw the city, built apart from any of the already existing cities, a new work of art, symbolizing the new Nation formed by the Constitution. Indeed the city is itself the bond between the states, a seal of confirmation pressed in stone, stating that we were then and are now One Nation.

DC symbolizes this best where the McMillan Commission - the predecessor to the current CFA - did its finest work creating the Mall as we know it today. The Mall as the scene of all of our greatest aspirations and dreams as Americans is the great stage that politicians use to arouse our passions, that leaders of all kinds call to our patriotism to think of the common good of our whole nation.

But it could not do this without a unity of form that the McMillan Commission created. A unity of form that resonates in a particular way with the idea that here no one man or woman's interests are to be placed over the interests of the nation. Monuments are erected only to those who, rather than placing themselves above the people, gavethemselves for the greater good of all. The McMillan Commissions genius shows clearly where, despite monumental buildings and memorials being built, the dome of the Capitol - the Hall of the People - still dominates over all other monuments and buildings of the city, reinforcing that it is to the people all deference is to be given.

The symbolism of our Constitutional City is what the CFA is charged with defending. In DC the symbolism of the city ought to apply to every neighborhood, not just the core of the Federal area. The architecture of our nation's Capital ought be harmonious and beautiful, mixing with its immediate neighbors but also with the city as a whole. From the monumental core to the smallest street, DC ought to be a symbol of harmony and a well ordered city like it ought to be, even if it falls well short of those aspirations.

The CFA is right in rejecting this and other buildings like it because rather than being harmonious with a work of art that the city, they point to themselves and say "look at me!" Folks like Marc Fisher know that when they say designs like this are "striking and inviting mix of old and new" and want architects to "push the decrepit system into a new era," they are pushing their own agenda, not the ordered harmony of L'Enfant and the McMillan Commission but disharmony and discord.

This addition proposed is not something that defers to the city and its order, but it rather pushes itself as "innovation" and "evolution." It is, frankly neither innovative or an evolution, but rather another bland glass box calling attention to itself like so many others. The architects of this building are like a mischevious trumpeter in the midst of a symphony who begins to play his own tune, trying to focus the the attention of on himself, rather than on creating together a work of true beauty.

Apple Store Tries to Wedge Modernism into Georgetown

A fair amount of debate has been raging lately about the proposed new Apple store in Georgetown and the Old Georgetown Board's refusal to approve any design that the company submits. Apple has submitted four separate proposals for the store, which sits on a site on Wisconsin Avenue directly at the end of Prospect Street.

Apple initially submitted a design back in 2007, only to be rejected by the Old Georgetown Board. Having been rejected, Apple came up with a few other designs, each a little more outlandish and inappropriate, seemingly to make their first design appear to be reasonable in comparison.

Throughout this whole process, from the initial design to the latest design shown here, Apple has shown an apparent disregard for the character of Georgetown and how its building should fit in with the street.

The first design, while not as insane as the second or third designs, still displayed an amateurish lack of understanding of classical detail and scaling. The building as a whole appears no better than the post-modern building it intends to replace. The facade stands half a story taller than its neighbors, disregarding a clear precedent of floor heights and scale, the windows are detailed incorrectly and the cornice is boxy, clunky and shows a lack of attention to detail.

If the first design was denied approval as being inappropriate, what in the world make Apple think that its second and third designs submitted would be approved? The second and third designs apparently came from the old huckster's trick of telling the biggest whopper possible to make your initial suggestion seem reasonable in comparison.

Some may like the glass box or the big Apple sign for a facade, but the Old Georgetown Board is right to dismiss such nonsense out of hand. Even the last design submitted is no more than a false facade that will only serve to be a store and nothing more. Sure it might make for a great billboard for Apple now, but what happens when the company goes out of business, or decides that having a storefront is no longer a viable business model? Could any of these designs be used for something else?

Georgetown as a community would then be stuck with a building that is either a curiosity, no longer of any use, or a new owner would have to spend significant money to build yet another building. In these days of environmental awareness, wouldn't the issue of convertibility in the future be considered?

The issue is one of permanence and a neighborhood as a larger work of art. The issue is not as one commenter called it "historic preservation gone mad" but that Georgetown as a neighborhood has a certain character that is defined by its buildings, that is larger than any of its parts, but also composed of them. Historic buildings are not valued in Georgetown simply because they are old, as some would falsely claim, but are valued because they are beautiful and display a humane scale. The combination of so many buildings with such characteristics is what gives Georgetown a harmony that few other places have, a harmony that is destroyed by buildings such as Apple's design.

Apple, not the Old Georgetown Board, are to blame for not getting a store built in Georgetown because of their lack of understanding this simple point. That buildings are not like a work of art to be displayed in a museum or in a vacuum, but that buildings are a part of a larger work of art, the art of a city.

7 Mod Architecture Firms Shortlisted for Eisenhower Memorial

According to BD Online:

"Frank Gehry and Moshe Safdie are among the seven architects who have made the shortlist for the competition to design the £60 million National Eisenhower Memorial in Washington DC.

The other five are Ralph Johnson of Perkins & Will; landscape architect Peter Walker; New York firm Rogers Marvel Architects; Ron Krueck of Krueck & Sexton Architects; and San Francisco-based Stanley Saitowitz."

This news is dissapointing on two levels. First the continuation of the dominant status quo in architecture of whizbang modernism, without any deference or respect for the depth of classical architecture. Doubtless some classical architect out there, and there are many that have the resume of Gehry et al (many in fact have more significant projects built than most of the finalists), submitted some sort of design for the project, but why only modernist firms? The complete disregard of ANY sort of classically minded firm is shameful. Americans love classical architecture, as a recent poll proved, but are sneered at by the press as being ignorant. Why shouldn't America get a chance to have a classical monument, like the ones so beloved by the country that exist in DC already?

The answer? The deck is stacked. Which leads to the second dissapointment, the process. The process to select the design was not as one might expect, an open competition of designs. The commision used the architectural establishment's little dirty secret, the RFQ, a "Request For Qualifications." This process does not weigh competing designs, weighing them on the merit of the proposal, the beauty or the genius of the design, but instead looks for "qualified" architects. This gives you one of two things, a "qualified" but banal designer, who has a lot to show, or apparently in this case, a lot of flashy names who's primary qualification is that they are famous.

The designs? Oh they'll come later. According to Archpaper.com: "None of the finalists have presented designs, and most likely won't before the winner is selected. 'I haven't really though of it', said Saitowitz. How can one get a great memorial for one of our most distinguished President's and General's if we don't even have a design? I believe that competitions, while not perfect, certainly bring out much better design than simply just naming someone and hoping that because he/she is "qualified we'll get a great place and memorial. I suppose that doesn't matter to whoever the jury were (they weren't revealed), I guess that they just want to have "A Gehry" or something whizbang to show that DC can be stylish like New York or Chicago.

The RFP system should be scrapped for all Federal projects, especially memorials and smaller buildings. Instead we should have open competitions, where common people get to decide. We would open the arts to architects and artists that appear to be now "unqualified" but would be able to adorn our Capital with great monuments again.