Customer Reviews

Architecture of the Absurd: How "Genius" Disfigured a Practical Art

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

John Silber is a former president of Boston University, a philosopher and a self-taught architect. "Architecture of the absurd" attacks certain trends in contemporary architecture. Some architects, the author argues, consider their buildings to be sculptures or artworks. These frequently weird buildings are defended by nebulous quasi-philosophical arguments, while the architect elevates himself to the status of Genius. In other words, these architects see themselves less as real architects and more as modern artists. Unsurprisingly, their creations are beset by the same problems as other modernist or postmodernist works of art.

Silber believes that buildings of this sort are non-functional, aesthetically disastrous and frequently too expensive. The architects no longer serve their clients or the public at large, preferring to build absurd houses to inflate their "genial" egos. Silber's main examples include the MIT Stata Center, the Peabody Terrace, the Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Simmons Hall. A surprisingly large amount of bad buildings seem to be concentrated in Cambridge, Massachusetts! My personal "favourite" is the Stata Center (pictured on the book cover), where scientists are carrying out sensitive research for the US military...inside offices with transparent walls made of glass! The building leaks constantly, and several strange details of the interior design has been covered by large wall papers, since nobody could stand them. Indeed, the Stata Center looks like a cross between a chaotic building site and a modern art gallery. The Peabody Terrace looks like something that could have worked in the Soviet Union during the Cold War. And Simmons Hall? Silber has a point that it looks like one of Saddam Hussein's prisons!

Silber isn't against innovative and bold designs in architecture. Far from it. He likes the Sydney Opera House, IAC Headquarters and the Watts towers. His definition of "absurd" architecture is that form doesn't follow function, and that the buildings don't fit in their surroundings, making them aesthetically unappealing. The Sydney Opera House, by contrast, has perfect acoustics, and its strange design resembles that of sails, which is logical since the Opera House stands close to a harbour.

Occasionally, however, Silber strays from this objective criterion of absurdity to a more subjective one. Thus, he attacks the AT&T building in New York (now the Sony building), which resembles a Chippendale cabinet, without explaining whether the building is non-functional, if so how, and why an enormous Chippendale cabinet would disfigure Midtown Manhattan in the first place? (I visited Manhattan. Is there anything that even *could* disfigure that place of high architectural strangeness? I mean, you could probably build a pyramid there without anyone even noticing the difference!) Here, it seems that Silber is simply saying "boo to Chippendale".

Overall, however, I think he makes an excellent case. The book is relatively short, easy to read and has a lot of colour photographs of bad and absurd buildings. And yes, it's funny too!

I found the "philosophy" behind the Stata Center particularly interesting, since I attended a senior high school in Sweden built according to some kind of "progressive" philosophy. For instance, the large room where the teachers spend their breaks had glass walls, so the students could see them at all times. The space where the students spent their breaks was surrounded by class rooms, and some of the class rooms also had transparent walls. The whole school was surrounded by a balcony, where students could smoke during the breaks. The centre of the school was a library surrounded by an indoor park! I suppose the idea behind all this was to make the school more "open", "democratic" and "transparent". Naturally, it didn't work out - the teachers soon bought large draperies to keep the students from looking at them in their "glass cage", the library became uninhabitable due to the greenhouse atmosphere needed for the gardens, and students having breaks constantly annoyed those having classes by looking at them through the transparent walls or balcony windows.

And yet, this school (which otherwise looks pretty good - almost like a Japanese temple) is a far cry from the monstrous absurdities documented by John Silber in his book...

I bought this book because I storngly dislike the work of architects like Frank Gehry and Daniel Liebeskind, and I thought it would be refreshing to hear an intelligent person handily dissect and dismiss these absurd blights on the profession. I haven't even gotten to the fun part yet and I'm already disappointed.

A quote:
"The drive toward absurdism in art has accompanied a decline in standards of taste in popular music and movies and the prevalence of tattoos and body-piercing ornamentation..."

He also goes on to attack numerous works of conceptual art such as Smithson's "Floating Island" and Doug Michel's "Cadillac Ranch."

The argument against these conceptual works as well as body art in general has almost nothing to do with the merits of good architecture and does very little to support his general argument. Rather, they expose this man to be what he almost certainly is: a somewhat dull, crotchety old person with a narrow vision of what art can and should be. I can see already that his arguments against these architects are not going to be at all interesting, as he has already bored me half to death.

I bought the book on Amazon and I will most likely be selling it back. Don't buy it unless you would like to have your own boring sensibilities buttressed by a fairly un-influential, pseudo-designer's rants...

I am a young architect and was quite excited when someone at my firm alerted me to this book. The thesis that the field of architecture has become absurd is one definitely worth exploring but this book fails to make the compelling argument I know it could. The text is fairly unfocused and rant-like and the background information he gives for the examples he cites is one-sided and incomplete. Even the line he drew between the absurd and good architecture was inconsistent even measured by his own criteria. I would expect a philosopher to be able to form a much more complete and persuasive argument than this.

This was an intriguing book for me. After reading the book I realized that the author's opinions about Gehry and Libeskind were parallel with my views of these architects, but I just couldn't get over how the book comes across like the rant of a third-year architecture student.

There was a part in the book where he criticizes how the new Denver Art Museum by Libeskind was inappropriately designed for displaying art. After a page or two of this criticism I was expecting an interview with or at least a comment or two from the curator of the Denver Art Museum backing up the author's claim, but there was no confirmation from a legitimate source.

The book is a hundred pages of why the author dislikes a handful of contemporary architects. I just wish that he had spent another hundred pages confirming his claims and proving why I should dislike these same contemporary architects.

Neither my love of architecture or architectural criticism were indulged by reading this book. Fortunately, I didn't lose $[...] on it as it found me courtesy of a friend regifting it. This selectively researched and speciously reasoned volume would never have passed President Silber's muster had it been submitted by one of his faculty seeking tenure at Boston University during his reign there. It's more fitting of a blog with its confusion of opinion for knowledge, and seems like little more than a vehicle to register his seemingly obsessive hatred of Frank Gehry.

The tragedy here is that there is a point to be made about some architects, and the people that give them free reign, whose work shows more concern for a page in their portfolio than respect for the function of a building, the people who will use it, and others affected by its aesthetic. But how much "absurd" design results from such a disdain for public utility versus simply different perspectives on form and function? Maybe Silber could have researched that. Instead, this opinionated polemic erects a monument to Silber's ego as egregious as the Stata Center.

For a pointed criticism of Silber's architectural acumen, see Mark Lamster's review in the Los Angeles Times online ([...]) Schadenfreude, indeed.

John Silber has written a wonderfully concise book about anti-architecture and its starchitect exponents. In this volume, he calls these absurd buildings what they are: absurd, non-adaptive, and ultimately dysfunctional. For example, Silber details the lack of applying any human factor design in creating the Stata Center. But Christopher Alexander long ago published a step-by-step method for how to extract socio-geometrical user patterns, then combine then into a well-functioning design. None of that here! The image of an alien form is paramount! As this book went to press, the famous lawsuit was filed by MIT...

I am glad that Silber digs a little deeper into the Modernist roots of absurdity, so as to provide a logical evolution of the present-day architectural madness. This way, people will not mistake this for a fleeting contemporary phenomenon. It is much more deeply rooted than that. Therefore, a genuine effort at global education is necessary to overcome the absurdity of such forms. He gives a great characterization of the creepy cult propagandist Sigfried Giedion: "Nothing reaches greater heights of pretension and bogus historic and philosophical explanation than his 'Space, Time and Architecture', a work that attributes to Picasso and other Cubists a knowledge of Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity that none possessed."

In my own book "Anti-Architecture and Deconstruction" I had a similar thing to say: "Sigfried Giedion produced a voluminous but nonsensical explanation for why this new architecture was based on the new science of the day, namely relativity and space-time. This propaganda worked brilliantly. In the current rerun, deconstructivist architects expect the same method to work again."

Silber delves into the cruel, totalitarian frame of mind that gives someone permission for erecting architectural monstrosities. He recalls how Le Corbusier -- the angel of urban death -- was obsessed with destroying the complex, living urban fabric of Algiers. I also discuss this obsession in my other book "A Theory of Architecture": "Architects lost the distinction between an abstract idea and physical structure. They believed that the idea IS the thing, and the thing IS the idea. This is the essence of what might best be described as modernist conceit -- the ignorance of organized complexity, coming from the dangerous idolatry of abstractions."

We have here a book for the ages... a book for a new beginning towards a humane, adaptive architecture... a book that pulls down idols which have obscured beauty and truth for far too long. Bravo to a fellow San Antonian! Buy the book immediately, and give all your friends copies as Christmas gifts.

Silber clearly demonstrates one of the internal discussions of the profession of architecture: is it a "practical science" or is it more akin to "fine art"? His experience clearly tilts him toward the "practical science" aspect but he has picked his examples with a closed eye to all the issues with each of the projects he portrays.
For example, the Sidney Opera House, which he loves -- took 12 years and was 800% over budget when finally built -- the delays caused by the inability of the engineers to build the thing. Bilbao (which he hates) was built on time and on budget and has been credited with revitalizing an economy of a previously dwindling seaport. In fact, magazine articles are written about "The Bilbao effect" of a stunning piece of architecture to revive an economy.
He speaks to the practical aspects of architecture -- and those are many. (he uses Sert as an example of an architect too closely identified with his Spanish origins to understand the Boston climate). He doesn't address the spiritual aspects of architecture, though, and in some cases, those are equally important as the practical aspects. Gehry, who he reviles, has been equally praised in the book "The Architecture of Happiness" for his joyful designs. (I agree that no one said that about Cobusier). Holl has been praised for his solemnity; Liebeskind for this thought-provoking designs. People travel to see the work of these architects. He also does not discuss the work of Holl, even though he is mentioned as one of the "absurd" triumvirate.

Note that Boston College (where Silber administered the building program) has never been praised for its campus or architecture.

There is work-a-day design, which is appropriate for a Costco store or Best Buy, but there is design that challenges and is thought provoking -- and Silber seems to want the best of each, when he decides it is appropriate.

This is a one-sided screed that never should have been made into a book. When someone makes a film of the "architecture of Boston College" perhaps I will alter my opinion.


I gave it two stars because the photos are rather nice.

At $28 US, this is overpriced for an extended essay. Pick it up at your free public library and spend an hour or so reading it.

It's worth an hour of time reading and another hour thinking about Dr. Silber's arguments. They're not new and they're conflated. By that I mean, leaking buildings aren't "absurd," they're simply poorly designed or constructed and buildings that are short on features we desire like sufficient wall space for notes (see the photos on page 87) are unresponsive to the brief or poorly programmed.

On the other hand, buildings that seek to seemingly defy gravity or induce nausea in their occupants are absurd. If I wanted that, I'd go to Knott's Berry Farm or watch The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Haven't we been here before? How long will Gehry, Libeskind, et. al. be permitted to recycle these 90-year old ideas in buildings? I was encouraged to see the IAC building and am hopeful that it represents a new direction in Mr. Gehry's work on the order of Mendelsohn's Einstein Tower. Anybody know how IAC works as a building?

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." George Santayana

I just received this book as a gift, and as an architecture student, I enjoy reading non-architects' writings on the subject. I agree somewhat with Silber, but he comes off as somewhat arrogant and I think that he tends to gloss things over. D. Locke has a good description of this in the discussion section. Two of the biggest problems that I have are his very short and negative take on Le Corbusier and his dismissal of Gunther von Hagens' work and admirers. Anyways, I got it as a gift, so the price wasn't important, but this is a short read.

"Architecture Of The Absurd: How 'Genius' Disfigured A Practical Art" by academician John Silber (who was named an honorary member of the American Institute of Architecture in 2002) is an expose of how some very well known architects disregarded or had disdain for their clients, their budgets, and the people who would have to live and/or work within their architectural creations. By 'absurd' as applied to architecture, Silber means buildings designed in a blatant disregard for the needs of the building and is to be found in structures ranging from student centers and music halls, to corporate headquarters and commercial buildings, to libraries and museums. Profusely illustrated with color photography, Silber's informed and informative text draws upon his personal experience and expertise gained as a builder, a client, and a candid critique of contemporary architecture. Thoughtful and thought-provoking, "Architecture Of The Absured" is a work of seminal and compelling scholarship that should be a part of every personal, professional, academic, and community library Architectural Studies reference collection and contemporary architecture supplemental reading list.