In Search of a Modern Architecture That Protects the Individual

In his review of the Museum of Modern Art’s “The Un-Private House” (“At MOMA, Homes for a World in Flux,” July 2), Nicolai Ouroussoff correctly states

that “rather than search for universal meanings, these architects focus on the fundamental complexities of everyday existence.” But he is incorrect that this is a “glorious vision” for architecture.

The projects presented in this show express how architects have decided that either the breakdown of traditional boundaries defining domestic life is a good thing that should be supported with architectural forms, or that we architects are powerless to resist such a breakdown. What Ouroussoff calls the show’s “obsessive insistence on exposing the hidden tensions of contemporary life” is anything but glorious. Instead, the architect should propose a system of philosophy and ethics that helps us find the “elusive values” that can protect the individual against the tensions and anxieties of life.

The exhibition proposes that to be socially relevant, an architect can “challenge,” “investigate,” “explore,” “chart” and “evoke.” It may indeed be true that other art forms lend themselves to such social commentary, but architecture is at its most powerful and enduring when it uses its unique attributes to affirmatively express the relationship between architectural form and institutional pattern. As Frank Lloyd Wright stated, architecture is an expression of the “spirit of law and order.”

In most projects included in this exhibition, the structure-giving role of the institution of the family is made secondary or wholly eliminated in favor of a “focus on context and psychological nuance.”

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One does not find his place in the world by focusing on his individual circumstances, but rather by finding universal truths--finding a cause bigger than one’s self. Architecture can contribute to just such a search by expressing in its form, stability and permanence that certain ideas and institutions have a power to endure that greatly exceeds that of the ephemeral human being.

While the impermanence, instability and ambivalence expressed in most of this show’s architectural schemes provide a status report of how individuals relate to the broader culture, it is hard to see how these designs fulfill the structure-giving role of architecture. Designs of “reconfigured” relationships among family members, designs with parents and children segregated into separate buildings and those balancing “the particular psychological and emotional needs of unconventional families” may indeed make architecture more relevant to individual circumstances, but they do not lead to the construction of the city--the city as an established framework, a pattern of relatedness among men, a mode of voluntary grouping within which the individual experiences membership. It is just such a membership that allows us to express our individual character in a responsible way.

A house becomes a piece of architectural art when it serves as a visual and structural metaphor, declaring in its form something about the size, permanence, strength, protectiveness and organizational structure of the institution it stands for: the family. The family is now the principal institution with the power to help individuals find a place in the world. It can do so by defining a “stable” structure that gives individuals some basis for making decisions, passing judgments and determining goals. The purpose of the family is to tell its members how they should act--to prepare them to be citizens. When one knows what one ought to do, freedom is not so terrifying.

It is interesting that most of the show’s residences have flat roofs. There is no sense of the sloped, sheltering roof, with protective wide overhangs. The institution of the family has a much greater power to protect its members than projecting the scene of a calming ocean during rainy nights, as in the 1990 design of Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio.

Architecture is much less about overthrowing bad traditions than it is about defending good ones.

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Jeffrey Mills practices architecture with his wife in Los Angeles as Mills Studio. He can be reached at millstudio@aol.com.