Money and Architecture make a most durable marriage, despite the crisis of such a venerable institution in the Western World. Like all long-term relationships, this union has gone through its highs and lows ever since the dawn of construction. In its noblest dimension, it is the perfect partnership for the making of the landmarks of humankind throughout history. In its lowest expression, it is the grimmest exploitation of land for speculative purposes at the expense of the living conditions of its users, with its added social cost. Typically, architects openly aspire to the former kind of operation, and yet for the most part contribute to the chaotic city Rem Koolhaas has been theorizing about for almost thirty years.
Patrons and signature architects each hold unique magnetism in the eyes of the design audience. While the signature architects are romantic donors in their self-referential idealism (whether as celebrators or denigrators of their projects’ sponsors and recipients), patrons remain the primary givers of life to schemes often too far off the grinding machine of real estate. To push this metaphor even further, if landmark designs are usually architects’ labors of love, the patron is the midwife enabling the coming into the world of these experiential wonderlands. The patrons of art and those of architecture are not necessarily the same people, but they share a common theme. For both worlds, patronage customarily entails the routing of a financial gift to the pocket of a character committed to the realization of a significant venture for the cultural and social life of the receiving community.
There are many versions of this stage set, but the players and the pieces necessary for those wire transfers to occur are essentially the same. An individual of abundant wealth who wants to share a portion of that plenty; a complementary party of recognized talent as a willing beneficiary of that endowment; an unrealized opportunity of sizeable public visibility to be built; and an environment where these members of a highly distinct class background can be linked in prestigious and moderately pressured settings, such as a museum, private university, foundation, or similar cultural institution. The chosen architects are required to project some snob appeal, charm, and notoriety. If they also navigate the art world, like Frank Gehry did at the onset of his career, their design stocks go up. Each person takes on a specific role—acting out behavioral stereotypes, rehearsing the rituals associated with that world, and reproducing its patois—for the reinforcement of an elite subculture.
Other connotations of patronage are symbolically relevant to architecture, since additional meanings fold into this term. In the list of possible interpretations available in any dictionary, a patron is also a saint, some kind of father (or mother) figure protecting the design vulnerability of the architect from the looming dangers of metaphorical annihilation. This is definitely a seductive presence for architecture, whose knowledge base is constantly questioned by public judgment and whose gripping fear of being ultra-dispensable in the development process is simply paralyzing. The patron as savior is a welcome figure, if not integral to the very existence of architecture as a built civic proposition.
Another meaning of patron is someone who believes in his or her personal superiority over the other party and makes a social form out of that perceived hierarchy. The patron donates money and dictates the conditions for its use to specific ends, at the same time blocking alternative avenues for the expenditure of that money for ends perhaps more noble, but inconsistent with the intent of the donation.
The culture of giving is a cornerstone of American architecture. Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, and Whitney are some of the large donors whose gifts have indelibly shaped New York City, as the Hearsts have shaped California. They still serve as a model for the contemporary roster of privileged individuals disposed to finance avant-garde design ideas. Architect Philip Johnson, head of the Architecture + Design department of the New York Museum of Modern Art in the ‘20s and ‘30s, made an art form of nurturing relationships with that financial aristocracy for the benefit of his own agenda, even though his political leanings were at times in utter opposition to those of his patrons.
Yet the design propensity of the patron has to resonate with those of the artist and architect. In a phone interview, Byron Meyer, an expert on the subject and a trustee of prestigious institutions on both coasts of the United States, commented: “For me, architecture is an extension of volume in space. And patronage in architecture does exist. However, architecture is usually not collectable, and when it is collected is a major commitment.” He adds: “Patrons are often also collectors. And they will occasionally want a particular building associated with their collection.”
The Hearst name marks many buildings in California, both gifts to the public, such as the Hearst Mining Building in Berkeley,(left, photograph courtesy of Wikipedia) and commercial buildings, like the original Hearst Building in San Francisco, right.The autonomy of architecture is something of great cachet among the most radical designers and a concept of great fascination to architects of renown. In a recent article, Thom Mayne, founder of Morphosis, confessed, ‘‘I fought violently for the autonomy of architecture. . . . It’s a very passive, weak profession, where people deliver a service. You want a blue door, you get a blue door. You want it to look neo-Spanish, you get neo-Spanish.” (NY Times, Dec 19, 2006). Calls for sovereignty are sprinkled in the history of architecture since the Industrial Revolution. This unarguably fascinating idea is unfortunately void of any function the very moment a design moves from paper to the world of construction. Unless the desired outcome is paper architecture—the only legacy a recent generation of architects has left us with—or the small-scale project insignificant to the life of the city, or a temporary design, it is in the very best interest of architecture to develop the greatest comfort level with the rollercoaster of commitments and negotiations the economy of building imposes on the profession.
It is no surprise that tax deductions are great motivators in activating and sustaining the practice of giving and keeping up that disposition at the nation-state level. Other motives to cut those checks are equally compelling to patrons. Museum curators give tons of advice to collectors who are also patrons. Insiders in the art and architecture worlds give advice to route investment toward people whose work will have an increase in market value. Los Angeles-based billionaire Eli Broad is a powerful force in shaping the design future of the city through his major contributions. Phyllis Wattis (1905-2002) was immensely generous to Northern California institutions and trained the current generation of patrons on how to make decisions and the criteria for what to give to the community. There is also the case of rich industrialist Peter B. Lewis, most definitely a different type of patron, who, as a form of personal entertainment, kept paying the design fees of Frank Gehry for ten years for a never-built, $82 million, 40,000 square foot house.
What makes it attractive for a donor to share wealth? A standard answer is that it is for the good of the community. Meyer adds: “It is the attachment of your name to some long-term design enterprise.” Due to the recent publication of his latest best seller, The Architecture of Happiness, author/philosopher Alain de Button has brought to renewed relevance Stendhal’s idea that to think of something as beautiful is to see in it a promise of happiness. As a parallel concept, to think of oneself as a patron is to see in it a promise of aggrandizement. That is the same promise that architects have made themselves. Patrons are simply making architects accountable for that pledge.
Author Pierluigi Serraino is a project designer at Anshen+Allen Architects in San Francisco. His recent projects and writings have been published in Architectural Record, Architectural Design, and arcCA. His latest book is NorCalMod: Icons of Northern California Modernism (Chronicle Books, 2006).
Originally published 1st quarter 2007 in arcCA 07.1, “Patronage.”
