Modernism and the city

Architectural Science Review, March, 2008 by Julia Nevarez

From Cause to Style: Modernist Architecture's Encounter with the American City by Nathan Glazer. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, USA, 2007 300 pp, index. Price US$24.95.

Nathan Glazer traces the trajectory of a modernism that began with a commitment to the poor against the architectural forms representative of an elitist taste, to a radical modernism seen as elitist but evasive to the ordinary person, to the postmodern celebration of chaos, disorder, and the combination of past and present forms. Glazer thoroughly explores the contributions as well as the polemical aspects of modernism in US architecture and urban planning. Modernist dilemmas such as new versus old, order versus chaos, nature versus the city, the utilitarian and the social (among others) anchors his analysis of urban space in this collection of essays from 1997 to 2006. Mostly focusing on New York City (where he grew up) and Washington, D.C.--monuments and memorials in Manhattan and Washington, corporate plazas in Midtown Manhattan, housing projects in East Harlem, and NYC subways become the objects of prolific arguments. He also addresses the legacy of Daniel Moynihan and Robert Moses.

Unfortunately, Glazer does not discuss the "legacy-on-the-works" of Major Bloomberg's comprehensive GreeNY Plan for New York City to decrease carbon emissions by reducing traffic congestion, adding bike lanes, planting trees, developing parks, and changing building code, among other significant components. His examination of the controversial piece of Richard Serra, "Tilted Arc" brings to the fore a seminal discussion for art history, urban planning and architecture where audience, users, context, official representatives, art and artists produced a situation that upset many taken-for-granted assumptions about urban public space. His critical stance is exemplified in notions such as "shock architecture" (nondurableconstruction), contemporary architectural theories as well as advanced and experimental architecture that are--according to Glazer--most commonly built for the cultural institutions of a sophisticated elite. He is also cautionary about the "onslaught of the new" and "architectural determinism" (fixing the physical environment eliminates social ills).

Glazer does not consider high-tech, virtuality, and information technologies as offering a significant alternative to the relationship between physical forms and social life. This could be inferred to mean a technological determinism that has profound roots in modernism. Alternatives are found in a reconsideration of values and worldviews, not are they intrinsic to urban form or technology. From Glazer's approach, one can perceive an underlying nostalgia for a reformist and hopeful urban planning with a vision for cities that includes the surprising, the unexpected and the accidental. A confusing, chaotic and tumultuous city which modernism tried to control and direct, today remains the subject of multiple interventions and reflections. The beginnings of modernism were filled with hope, a terra incognita for the unraveling of its promises. Nowadays, modernism might have proven its potential leaving us with what it is and less engaged with what it could be. In this regard, Glazer's idols Lewis Mumford and Jane Jacobs remain compelling.

Written in an appealing and clear style, this book is a most necessary reading for anyone interested in both a deep and broad understanding of modernism, and the controversial forms it takes in the city.

Nathan Glazer is Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Education at Harvard University, editor of The Public Interest and his books include Beyond the Melting Pot, We are All Multiculturalists Now, and The Public Face of Architecture.

Julia Nevarez, Kean University, USA