2005-11-05 - 7:15 p.m.
Architect Robert Venturi is going to speak about Mies van der Rohe at the Illinois Institute of Technology and it�s sold out. Venturi is a veritable rock star to me and to anyone who�s interested in urban design and the way buildings look. He�s one of the most famous living American architects. He and his wife and partner, architect Denise Scott Brown, wrote the seminal book Learning from Las Vegas, in which buildings of �the people� traditionally seen as tacky and �insincere� are explored as a truly American model of organic design.
Perhaps the most famous idea to come out of this work is that every building is either a decorated shed or a duck. That is everything built is either designed to be heroic and self-aggrandizing with added architectural elements or is expressing some internal vision of itself as a fully-imagined concept that may not necessarily be the grand statement most architects imagine themselves making, but is nonetheless more �true�. (There is an actual building that looks like a duck on Long Island, from which Venturi drew inspiration for this idea.)
To make myself feel better about missing Venturi�s appearance, I thought I�d recount the time I met (and accidentally dissed) Denise Scott Brown. It was maybe in fall 2003 at Brown. Venturi, Scott Brown Associates had been chosen to design a campus student center, among other buildings. She had been invited to speak to student representatives about her firm�s plans. I came to represent the Resumed Undergraduate community.
I noted that some RUEs and grad students commuted to Brown from far away (I myself was living in Boston with Alithea at this point). Their need to have a home base at school away from home should be kept in mind when designing space for student use. RUEs received a group office space in the main student building and there was almost always someone napping on the couch, working on the computer, or otherwise using the room as a respite from the campus life outside the door. Perhaps something similar could be built into the new student center, as not everyone could take advantage of the RUE room.
A Brown administrator there, no doubt sensing additional expense or something, tried to play down the number of commuter students. People that far off campus were exceptional aberrations. I asked if he had any actual numbers to support this, but he did not (I suspect no central records of where students live while in school are kept). Denise Scott Brown though seemed to hear my concern. She said the firm hadn�t really considered that and would incorporate it into the next design. Well, I guess we�ll see.
I said how happy I was that she�d come herself to solicit user input into the design process. I recalled how a student center was constructed at the end of my time at Harvard. Little, if any, student input was asked for while it was being planned out. The resulting space, Loker Commons, had all the charm of a Wendy�s and was rarely used by students while I was there.
�Oh yes,� Denise Scott Brown said in her British accent. �I remember that one. That wasn�t one of our better designs.�
Oof. I had no idea her firm had done the student space at Harvard. Sure, it really wasn�t a very impressive design. But I hadn�t meant to put her down. She nonetheless shook my hand when I thanked her at the end. Touched by a rock star! I didn�t want to ever wash but eventually hygiene considerations got the better of me.
� 2005 Geoff Gladstone
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