Problems of the Arts in a Mass Society/Four

There is the same disparity in architecture between the elite and popular levels of discourse – between, say, the contents of the big professional magazines – Architectural Forum, Progressive Architecture, Architectural Record – and the real estate sections of the local newspapers.

Time, Inc. deserves special commendation in this respect for its brilliant coverage of architecture in Fortune, Time, and Life. One hopes the readership for some of their features is high, but that happy possibility is doubtful – given the narrow range of the cultural objects the company issues on filmstrips for school use. Life has school materials on any number of landmarks in Western art and culture, but their first-rate America’s Arts and Skills appeared only in a prestige volume (Dutton, 1956) and Life’s monthly architecture and design features lie fallow in its photo-morgue.

John Peter of Look produces equally good photoessays on design and architecture. Ironically these low readership magazine items are in color; yet an excellent book like Peter’s Master of Modern Architecture (George Braziller, 1958) is condemned to black and white even at the prohibitive price of $15. There is a cruel and unnecessary paradox in the fact that these extraordinary materials for an adequate criticism of architecture fall on blind eyes in mass magazines at the same time that our schools painfully and with little apparent success try to develop a generation’s sensibility by forced reading of second-rate Victorian poets like Longfellow and Lowell.

(In fact, if one had to choose between the humanities textbooks used in many schools and colleges and the best in American journalism, there would be no doubt in my mind that our best journalism would be more effective in developing mature patrons. For the most part the journalism is written by better writers who have the advantage of an audience of uneducated readers rather than an audience of overcritical peers in mind.)

It is worth noting here that the successful communication to a general audience of critical standards from one’s own profession takes more than good intentions. The American Institute of Architects has failed signally to achieve rapport with intended lay audiences in at least two major film efforts, “Architecture, U.S.A.,” and “The New Age of Architecture.”

The color in the first film is amateurish, but more crucially, it discusses domestic architecture in terms of houses very few in any conceivable mass audience could afford. “The New Age of Architecture,” on the other hand, tries to influence the quality of design in the next $500 billion worth of American building with a film that even proved boring to a local A.I.A. chapter – largely because the broken accents of Mies van der Rohe, Gropius, and Saarinen were not adequate vehicles of meaning but also because the film was a paste-pot job – not a whit worthy of the glorious architecture it damned with its fumbling feint at praise. It is significant, too, that the film is advertised as free for use on television – and yet it is 42 minutes long!

On the other hand, in celebration of its centennial, the A.I.A. sponsored Frederick Gutheim’s handsome book of pictures on “One Hundred years of American Architecture.” An important and effective series of critical articles or films could be made on its color folio “Ten Buildings in American’s Future,” e.g., the Lambert Airport by Yamasaki in St. Louis; the Hollin Hills development by Charles Goodman in Fairfax County, Virginia; the planned shopping center by Victor Gruen at Northland in Detroit; and several others.

It is particularly important when discussing excellence in the arts of a mass society to discuss the archetypes of our future landscape, such as airports, shopping centers, factories, and development housing. They will become paradigms for generations of architects.

Further, the quality of most private housing is perhaps crucial to the total shape of our visual landscape; and the future of well-designed prefabricated homes is signally important, given the fact that 85% of our homes are not designed by architects. Charles Goodman’s designs for National Homes of Lafayette, Indiana, are particularly heartening in this regard; and that firm’s free movie explaining the compatibility of prefabrication and good design is a model of effective communication. The work of George Nelson and Carl Koch in striving for the industrialization of good architectural design deserves wider attention, too.

In fact, the kind of criticism of the public arts of a mass society we are calling for here would always focus attention on instances which seemed to suggest the possible coexistence of high ideals and mass marketing. Alcoa’s “Forecast Collection” – commissions to individual designers for plastic speculation about the future shapes of everyday objects – is a good example of how marketing economics can encourage good design in theory.

The same firm’s book, Schoolhouse (Simon and Schuster, 1959), edited by Walter McQuade to guide local boards of education in their construction of contemporary school buildings, is a brilliant example of how competition between basic materials suppliers can lead to design progress in practice as well.