RTP-area local music and culture

[Chris Calloway <ifoufo AT yahoo.com>]

--- grady <grady AT ibiblio.org> wrote:
> Another problem was that it
> wasn't engineered very 
> well.

my whole reason for asking about the catalano house
was responding to another thread elsewhere about a
modernist house that fell apart and was torn down.
folks were boo-hooing about it. but I knew of so many
of these things that had fallen apart, lived in or
not, it was pretty apparent modernist architects were
more glorified draftsmen than they were any kind of
structural engineers. if you are going to cantilever a
house over a cliff, you'd best know what you are
doing. if you are going to bow a two inch thick roof
and you don't know what you are doing, you can count
on it caving in within a few decades, yep.

these architects were heir to the arts and crafts
movement (william morris), but they inherited more art
than craft. you can even see this in wright-related
architectural monuments like the macintosh tea rooms
in glasgow and the hundertwasserhaus in vienna. i've
visited both (hundertwasserhaus just last month) and
they are fragile beyond belief.

anyway, i think this trend of questionable engineering
competence is being carried forward still in the
currently "popular" (well, talked about, anyway)
modular housing movement. these things are ugly, tiny,
have very unergonomic walkways, and creak like the
dickens. it's nothing more than a way to get us all to
live in gussied-up trailers which will fall apart
before they're paid for. when the new urbanists move
out to the burbs, they still talk affordability, and
still their idea of affordability is different from
mine. the modular idea is, charge as much or more as
well built housing costs, just produce it cheaper and
smaller.

housing isn't about the latest fastener technology out
of norway, no doubt accompanied by a website with some
really slick css. so much of modernist construction
seemed tied up in whatever was the latest material of
the time, often appropriated from some other industry
(the toy industry, apparently). i think the world is
still waiting for a truly modern architecture. that
is, one which serves *and pleases* the masses rather
than rich people and foolhardy yuppies.

and i really think pnc has better things to spend
their efforts on than matsumoto houses. the one in
chapel hill has been and is lived in. it's just built
out of crap and looks like it. on the other hand,
there's plenty of 18th century houses in bethania
which, without being lived in, are still standing and
represent a history of nc settlers who refused to own
slaves or participate in wars. that is where pnc needs
to spend their time.

i don't think pnc has to be ashamed of "letting" the
catalano house get demolished. if it was so damn
important, the ncsu design school could have picked it
up. but maybe they'd rather forget about it now that
their students are required to take materials and
structural engineering. these things can live on as
their architectural drawings anyway. they could be
cautionary tales for students even. "hey, lookit this
cool design. but it fell down within fifty years. what
can we learn from this?"

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