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Good books, old friends

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By Kara G. Kvasnicka

Tuesday, November 29, -0001

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Bizarre, imposing, functional or dull are words that spring immediately to mind when I consider the most famous buildings constructed in the last 100 years. Rarely can I bring myself to associate them with adjectives like graceful, charming or beautiful.

Perhaps my notions of what constitutes physical beauty are too conventional and old-fashioned. But give me a medieval castle or a cathedral over a skyscraper or a factory any day. Construction prior to the Industrial Revolution has a much better chance of finding favor with my eye than that resulting from it, no matter how innovative.

Nevertheless, when the library branch I manage received an impressive new book on the greatest structures designed and built in this century, I decided to give modern architecture a second look to see if I was missing something.

Icons of Architecture: the 20th Century (Prestel-Verlag, 1998, 192 pages $29.95) portrays contemporary world architecture in a scholarly but accessible format. Its text, written by several contributors and edited by Sabine Thiel-Siling, is impersonal and technical but its arrangement is easy to follow.

In chronological order, the book devotes double-page spreads to 87 buildings constructed since 1900 that have become landmarks by virtue of their size, shape, appearance or other characteristics. Each two-page review contains a brief essay on the featured building's historical and architectural significance, a timeline of the most important milestones in the life of the architect or architects who designed it as well as photographs and drawings of its most notable features.

The photographs, a mixture of black and white and color, are truly spectacular on the book's oversized pages. Depending on your tastes, you may admire the technique by which the photographs were taken much more than their actual content.

Although I recognize many of them, I obviously do not have the expertise to say whether all the "right" structures have been selected for this survey. However, I can see how all of them could produce much stronger reactions — positive and negative — than the buildings most of us use and take for granted in our daily lives.

My responses to these iconic structures are mixed. But whether or not I like what the illustrations reveal, the essays give me a better understanding of why they are architecturally and culturally important without necessarily being what everyone would think attractive.

For instance, some may find the Empire State Building beautiful. Some may not. But it is an almost essential stop on any sight-seeing tour of New York because of all it has come to represent for that city. According to the authors, planned and constructed at the outset of the Great Depression to be the tallest building in the world, it has become "a symbol that hard times could be overcome and that man could triumph in all situations."

Some are a tougher sell than others for those of us with a strong attachment to the past. I.M. Pei's glass pyramid entrance to the Louvre (Le Pyramide, Le Grand Louvre) is a lovely creation in and of itself, but it is too sharp a contrast for the ostentatious palace that surrounds it. When I was there I felt the view from inside the pyramid — sunlight filtered through the myriad triangular panes of glass — was much more natural than the view of it on a streetscape where every other building represented a much different architectural and cultural vision.

Likewise, I cannot agree that any architect or engineer responsible for the design of any airport I have used should be given recognition for the results.

The TWA terminal at JFK International Airport in New York City does sort of give the impression of a bird in flight (a bat maybe?) when photographed against an evening sky from the right angle. But you may not be so appreciative of its "seamlessness of form" if you have ever had to locate its ground transportation desk.

If I do not find many of the featured buildings appealing, this book at least makes me aware of more of them. I am not surprised to find the Empire State Building, the Sears Tower, the Chrysler Building, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum or the pyramid entrance at the Louvre included. But I did not know that the venerable old institution Lloyds of London received such a high-tech treatment in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Getting acquainted through this book with several churches, housing developments, skyscrapers. factories, museums and other buildings of which I have never heard gives me a much better sense of the range of architectural styles and trends to have emerged in this century.

I do like some of the results — the soft, rounded edges of the triangular Flat Iron Building in lower Manhattan, the ingenious incorporation of nature into the Frank Lloyd Wright house Falling Water in Bear River, Penn., the simplicity of the Church of Light in Osaka, Japan, the classical lines and series of arches that distinguish the Museum of Roman Art in Merida, Spain.

While I cannot bring myself to feel an affinity for most of the book's selections, I definitely have new information and images to process.

If you love 20th century architecture, you will not want to miss this eclectic collection. If you are more a kindred spirit to architects from centuries past than those of the present, you will find several glossy, oversized books featuring splendid illustrations of their masterpieces in your local library's nonfiction collection.

Go take a look.

Kvasnicka, a former East Village Magazine news editor, has been the magazine's contributing editor and research consultant since 1989. She has a master's degree in information and library studies from the University of Michigan and works for the Genesee District Library.

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