(We’re writing this for our own benefit -- the several related posts about the Altadena Library, accessibility, and modernist architecture are all over the blog, so we decided to write one piece condensing our thinking and the reactions to it.)
Here’s our first lesson learned in running a blog: you have no idea what the hot topic is really going to be or how people will respond.
And the second lesson: most people won’t actually engage ideas -- it’s easier to lob rocks from the comfort of the computer screen, and say things in the privacy of the blue glow that they wouldn’t dare say in public.
So we learned some lessons in recent weeks. Hence, Altadenablog’s Modernist Controversy. More after the jump, but warning: some of the language is NSFW.
It all started with PSN's Larry Wilson offering a paean to the Altadena Main Library: constructed 1967, architect Boyd Georgi, in Modernist style. Wilson said:
With its built-ins, sunken reading area and big skylights, it's where the megamaniacal villain would have his headquarters if you were shooting a Bond movie on Christmas Tree Lane.
Restore it, absolutely. But don't mess with it.
We like Larry’s column, usually, but we strongly disagreed with his opinion here. The main reason the library’s up for redesign consideration is because it is almost inaccessible to handicapped patrons: it has steep staircases and other design flourishes that bar patrons in anything but the bloom of health. There is a handicapped entrance, but it’s only accessible by crossing a clashing, retrofitted wooden bridge that starts far away from parking areas. It may have been a cool building in 1967, but in 2008, we only see a building that didn’t keep handicapped users (or even parents with strollers) in mind.
Access is a personal crusade of Altadenablog’s, and has been since the early 1980’s, when we wrote for The Handicapped Coloradan. In recent years, there’s been a personal dimension: our two youngest children have special needs, and our son in particular will be having motor problems for his entire life. We think he should have total access to the public library his family’s taxes pay for, and be able to come through the front door like everyone else -- not through a special, retrofitted entrance. Separate entrances for particular people didn’t work in the Deep South through the 1960’s, and they don’t work now.
Thus, our objection to Larry’s “don’t mess with” the Altadena Library. It needs messing with. It’s a triumph of design theory over practicality. Even the regular entrance is hard to find, unpleasant, and only accessible up stairs and through several 90 degree turns. It needs work: the U.S. government says so -- our library doesn’t meet ADA requirements. Members of the library board, entrusted with the building, have told Altadenablog so, personally and through correspondence.
The library is not the only building in Altadena with these problems. Let’s look at another example: the old Noyes school would have been our neighborhood school, had it not closed down and become Aveson charter school. A couple of years ago, as we were looking into school for our son, we and PUSD agreed that he couldn’t go to Noyes because it wasn’t accessible to him, scattered as it was on multiple levels. Style: Modernist. Architect: Boyd Georgi.
Unfortunately, the examples don’t end here. Poor accessibility is all-too-typical of Modernist buildings. We used to live in a neighborhood in west Pasadena where there were many Modernist houses, including a Neutra or two. When we visited people in them, one thing stuck out -- with their narrow, open bridges and staircases and balconies, these houses are not friendly to children or people with wheelchairs or walkers.
We need a life that has children and people with wheelchairs and walkers. (And so we live in a shingle-style revival house with big rooms and wide doors.)
Even discounting accessibility issues, Altadenablog is not a big fan of Modernism. We find it cold, sterile, and inhuman, more appealing to fussbudgets who care more about how things look than how well one can live with them (I mean, can you REALLY be comfortable in a Barcelona chair?) That’s why such surroundings were suitable to the Bond villains -- the style just doesn’t lend itself to the warm and personable. Tom Wolfe has tackled the Modernist aesthetic with more panache than we could.
So our point is that Modernist buildings are creatures of their mid-century age -- and while inaccessibility is your own business if it’s your house, it’s inexcusable in a building that is supposed to serve the public in 2008. The Altadena Library may be Boyd Georgi’s masterpiece, but that means nothing to us if it isn’t serving its function. Serving the “public” -- including the not-cool kids -- is the function of a public library. If architecture doesn’t serve its function, it’s a failure. We need to fix the library -- usefulness and inclusion needs to win out over a postwar cult’s ideas of “design.”
That’s our story and we’re sticking to it. It garnered some interesting reactions:
One: because the visual pun was so irresistable, we put a picture of Boy George in a post mentioning Boyd Georgi. The headline -- “Larry Wilson asks: Do you really want to hurt me?” -- should have been a big enough wink.
Apparently not big enough. Carl commented:
BOY GEORGE....is NOT Boyd Georgi...
OK, some people really can’t get a joke. The next comment, from Fred, was more interesting:
The library's accessibility, or lack thereof, doesn't have anything to do with the fact that it's "modern". Talk about mixing apples and oranges. And what's up with the tone?! I had no idea what I was in for when I clicked on the link to read this blog.
Well, first, we’ve already made a good case disproving his first sentence. And second --- the tone! The tone! The horrid tone! “I had no idea what I was in for ...”
“I had no idea what I was IN for?” That’s something one usually says after a bad date, or after getting married, or having children. Usually not after reading a blog entry that takes 30 seconds of your life.
We have a vision of Fred, reading the offending blog entry and, overcome with the vapors, collapsing on his fainting couch. Or in his Barcelona chair. Oh, the horror.
And (after he hit the floor rolling out of his Barcelona chair, because they have no arms) this tableau must have been the talk of the office. Which office? Fred sent his message from katirubinyi.com. Katirubinyi.com is the site of Kati Rubinyi and Associates, a design consulting firm in Altadena.
Ms. Rubinyi’s website states:
Originally from Montreal, Canada, Kati received her architectural license in 1998 after working for both small and large firms. She then did an MFA at the Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, California. Kati taught a variety of classes as an adjunct lecturer for three years before becoming a strategic planning consultant. Her educational background is in philosophy, architecture and fine art.
She's listed as an adjunct professor at Woodbury University, and was born in 1964, which makes her pretty much an accomplished, mature adult.
It’s a very impressive site, and Ms. Rubinyi seems to have an impressive body of work. It would be interesting, in light of her education, experience, and talent, to hear her ideas on the clash between design and accessibility, preservation and utility. She would no doubt have something interesting and valuable to say.
On April 29, we received the following email at altadenablog's gmail address:
Message: you are a 23 yr old blowhard
FYI - Based on reading your public service blog , for such a religious guy, you come across as a complete asshole.
This message came from an account named Kati Rubinyi (kr-at-katirubinyi.com)
(We have sent a message to katirubinyi.com, asking them to confirm or deny that they are the true source of this email. They have not to date responded.)
Now (1) ignoring the fact that we have passed 23 years of age twice, and (2) the puzzling and totally gratuitous slam at religious faith, because it’s apparently much more enlightened to call someone an a-hole (do you learn this in philosophy class?) -- this isn't a very compelling counterargument, to say the least.
So if it makes us an a-hole to be a parent advocating for access -- it’s a label we can live with. The Altadena Library District Board apparently thought enough of our a-holeness to put us on the strategic planning advisory committee, where we intend to be a vigorous advocate for accessibility.
A closing thought: what IS it about these apologists for Modernism that makes them lose their cool so thoroughly (not to mention their manners)? To date, nobody has offered to disprove our point that the buildings we’ve cited are inaccessible. But some people really get their underwear in a twist if we count that as a strike against Modernism.
But it may not be surprising that those who rise to defend a cold, sterile, inhuman style would act in like manner. Better to remember Frank Lloyd Wright, who said, “All fine architectural values are human values, else not valuable.”
