Twenty years ago, I got a job teaching architecture at Rhode Island School of Design. The previous year, RISD’s architecture department had published a little book—a record of student work from four studios—titled Architecture in the Margins. Its premise was that the profession of architecture was so caught up in the tangled motives of the capitalist political economy that it had lost whatever capacity it might have had to shape society for the good. To effect significant change—if such was even possible—one must step out of the tangle to take a critical position “in the margins.”
It’s not an absurd thought, but it was a rather discouraging one. Fortunately, that sentiment has long since passed, and even what Architectural Record calls the “design vanguard” is clearly willing to mix it up in the mainstream economy. Or at least the mainstream commercial economy. What is less clear is what design currently brings to political economy—to the representation of the collective will of the town, the state, or the nation.
Over the last few years, I’ve been working with half a dozen colleagues on a study of the early design work of the Tennessee Valley Authority. As you may know, the TVA began as a New Deal program (it is still at work today), the first comprehensive regional planning effort to be defined by a geographic entity—the watershed of the Tennessee River. What has fascinated me is how thoroughly the design disciplines—architecture, landscape architecture, graphic design, industrial design—were mustered to build a representation of collective will. What the TVA designers—and the political appointees who hired them—recognized were the power of beauty to engage the public and the pride that beautiful places can inspire. Many of the design decisions of the TVA were subtle, but its declaration of intent, emblazoned in brushed aluminum Art Moderne lettering on every facility, was not: “Built for the People of the United States.”
Design was a respected and integral part of government in the middle of the century, as the more widely known work of the WPA demonstrates. As industrial design historian Barry Katz has revealed, the OSS (Office of Strategic Services), the World War II predecessor of the CIA, had a Design Branch that included among its staff Eero Saarinen, Benjamin Thompson (later the designer of Boston’s Fanueil Hall Marketplace), landscape architect Dan Kiley, and Walt Disney. Their work was largely in information design, enabling the president and joint chiefs to take in vast quantities of intelligence information from around the world, but among their architectural works was the rhetorically brilliant courtroom for the Nuremberg Trials.
Looking back at that era, in which design engaged the most significant geo-political issues of the day, I can’t but wonder how things might have gone in Baghdad if, instead of Halliburton and KBR, Apple and IDEO and had been in charge of reconstruction. Or some really fine architects. The coherence of public space and the beauty of civic representation might have made some difference. It might have made some difference to have been able to inscribe, proudly: “Built for the People of Iraq.” It still might.
One correction from 06.4, “The UCs”: for the UC Riverside Physical Sciences Building, shown on page 47, the architect is properly known as HGA/KMW. HGA was the executive architect and KMW was the design associate.
Originally published 1st quarter 2007 in arcCA 07.1, “Patronage.”
