Clients "should not forfeit their dignity as
persons and allow themselves, through vanity, gullibility or timidity,
to be seduced....Theoryspeak, celebrity and self-proclaimed Genius
cannot cover the naked absurdity of much contemporary architecture."
Thus John Silber, the former president of Boston University, empowers the client and speaks out against the excesses of "designer" architects and urban-planning utopians in his book, Architecture of the Absurd.
I ran across this article on Mr. Silber and his book on the Wall Street Journal's website. It's an interesting assessment on why the state of modern architecture has come to the present point where a client like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is suing Frank Gehry for a truly absurd building, the Strata Center.
While Frank Lloyd Wright is mentioned (or implicated) as part of the rogue's gallery of "starchitects" who Silber feels railroaded common sense in architecture; there's still a soft spot for Wright in the author's heart (for Fallingwater, of course.)
Read the article, check out the book and let us know what you think about the state of modern architecture: inspired or absurd?
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