A case against lower case - Letters: keep those cards, letters, and e-mails coming - Letter to the Editor

Residential Architect, May, 2003 by Tom Johnson

The noon hour here is usually our source of "continuing education" as we peruse and comment on the daily supply of publications that hit the office mailbox. The other day was no exception, as the January/February issue of residential architect joined the collection.

Someone always wonders why residential architect fails to honor the usual grammatical "rules" of capitalization, but we never come up with an answer to that one. The big topic was your Home Front story "Target Practice" (page 20), which continued Michael Graves' adventures. Comments were quick to come that he should pay homage to Robert Venturi, who seems to be the mentor that inspired the "signature peaked roof."

Now, it's not that we don't like Mr. Graves. We've grown to admire him for convincing the public to pay a lot for a teakettle that's pretty but doesn't work very well, and for the extensive marketing of other expensive monochrome trinkets. We also continue to enjoy the fun that his work in Disneyland complements, among other things. Today's discussion, however, centered on the comment from Gary Lapera that the firm's motivation was to reinforce Target's credo "Good design at affordable prices."

We agreed that there's probably "good design" hiding under the simple structure shown in the few pictures, but all we could really see was more typical Graves "interesting decoration." This lead to a lively discussion surrounding what is "design" and what is merely "decoration." Without more to refer to, we decided that Michael Graves is now just continuing to decorate the "box."

Nothing wrong with that, but we guess that it's something like why the magazine does not use capitals: It gets your attention, doesn't hurt anyone, and it really doesn't mean much in the long run.

Tom Johnson/Architect

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