Building Art at Rockefeller Center

[ablarc]

...but...isn't ornament "crime" ???

Only if you have a screw Loos.

[ZippyTheChimp]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ornament_and_Crime

[lofter1]

Dang if I don't learn more interesting stuff from wirednewyork each and every day.

[pacz]

Those are great pictures!! I am going to have to spend more time "looking up" and relaxing when I am there.

[ablarc]

Adolf liked things stripped.


Adolf Loos, 1870-1933.

That was because --like his contemporary, Irving Gill, and his successors, Le Corbusier and Richard Meier-- he knew how to make stripped things look good by basing their overall form on a sculptural idea. This way, ornament per se became superfluous, for the whole building was the ornament:





He would have hotly denied it, but he was part of the Vienna Secession branch of Art Nouveau architecture (“nouveau” = new, modern), here represented by his colleague, Joseph Olbrich:


Loos with a little ornament.

Loos himself indulged in a little light hypocrisy that showed his roots and yielded his best work:


American Bar, Vienna.


American Bar, Vienna.

Loos of the Vienna Secession:




What they were seceding from was orthodox classicism. Only Loos got all the way to Gropius-style modernism, but it was an incomplete conversion; he was just too much of a stylist to pay more than lip-service to “form follows function.”


Comfy, bourgeois Vienna.

[ablarc]

Loos loved to have things look interesting. So --denied ornament by his own theory-- he made the building’s entire form ornamental. He thus invented what Venturi later called the Duck:


Chicago Tribune Competition entry.

Loos’s Germanic colleague, Walter Gropius, dove far deeper into Modernism with his entry:



Eliel Saarinen weighed in with orthodox Deco:



And Raymond Hood carried off the prize with Gothic Revival (not too long after Woolworth):


Hood’s entry was built.

In 1927, Loos designed this jazz-age beauty…


Not built.

… for this jazz-age beauty:


Built.

.

[Bob]

You'd be surprised who also did other things, such as Donald Deskey -- creator of the cobra head street lamp. Yep.

[Luca]

Looking at Ablarc's post (^^^):

1. I hope he realizes my reference to ornament beign crime was facetious: I like ornament me -- still the "best" way to relieve mass

2. The Loos tower looks silly/post-modern

3. Gropius' tower looks quite good, in a modernsit way. Built in the right materials/colors it would be stunning. Goes to show how debased even compared to early bauhaus most modern starchitecture is

4. I still like Hood's tower better (Saarineen's would be as good)

[Merry]

Not exactly building art, I know, but on Dan Cruickshank's Adventures in Architecture, a series being shown here on TV at the moment, there was a segment about Rockefeller Center including the marvelous art deco grating around the trees close by.

I had no idea they were there, so it was a very pleasant learning experience.







http://www.thecityreview.com/rock.html

[ZippyTheChimp]

As long as we're going to reply to 2 1/2 year old posts...

Only if you have a screw Loos.

LOL

[NYatKNIGHT]

^The hell? Bob, seriously.

Great find, Merry. Those tree grates are so classy, no detail is spared in Rock Center.

Reminds me of some old ones in the blocks surrounding the old Yankee Stadium shaped like Home Plate with the Yankee insignia nicely scrolled in, but they are filthy, garbage strewn, and cracked in places. I hope they don't disappear due to neglect.

[ablarc]

Looking at Ablarc's post (^^^):

1. I hope he realizes my reference to ornament being crime was facetious: I like ornament me -- still the "best" way to relieve mass.

How could you have thought I missed it?