We can only hope that we’re seeing The The End of 1960′s Architecture:
In a society otherwise enamored of the styles of the 1960′s, the architecture of that decade is rarely loved and frequently reviled. All over the country, 60′s buildings are being torn down while much older buildings survive.Functional problems, like leaky roofs and inadequate heating systems, are often to blame. But just as often, the buildings are simply disliked by institutions that have enough money to replace them.
Modern architecture just isn’t popular:
At the top of most lists of important 60′s architects is Paul Rudolph, the dean of Yale’s architecture school from 1958 to 1965. But one of his largest public buildings, the Orange County Government Center in Goshen, N.Y., could be demolished soon, depending on the results of a study commissioned by the county executive, Edward A. Diana.Mr. Diana said he was focusing on the functional problems of the 1963 building. “We have 87 roofs, and every one of them leaks,” he said. “Should the taxpayers be forced to sink money into an inefficient building that doesn’t meet their needs?”
He admits that if he took a vote on Main Street, “the building would be demolished tomorrow,” but not because of leaky roofs. The building is an anomaly, a hulking maze of “corduroy concrete” in a town so quaint “you have to get permission to change the color of your house,” Mr. Diana said.
Mr. Rudolph’s style is often called Brutalist, a term first applied by Le Corbusier to buildings that shaped concrete into bold, sculptural forms. (“B?ton brut” is French for raw concrete.) But to some in Orange County, the name suggests brutality, as if 1960′s buildings are antihuman.
“Just look for the ugliest building in town,” a policewoman said, when asked for directions to the government center.
Baby boomers, in Goshen and elsewhere, have made their preference for traditional architectural styles clear. Houses with faux Colonial, Georgian and Mediterranean details are far more common than contemporary homes, even in left-leaning suburbs.
“My clients include some of the most liberal people in the country, and they want traditional houses,” Mr. Stern said.
Unfortunately, we’re stuck with big, expensive buildings that weren’t built to last:
The problem is that buildings, unlike wide ties and Jefferson Airplane albums, can’t be put in storage for decades while their owners hope they become fashionable again. The 60′s buildings may be back in style among New York’s elite; organizers of a benefit to save the lollipop building included the painter Chuck Close and the writer Tom Wolfe. But most of the country has yet to see the beauty in the inverted ziggurat or serrated concrete, which appears to suggest fortification.Some 60′s buildings were never too practical in the first place. The 1965 Chatham Towers, just north of the Brooklyn Bridge, are among New York’s most significant modernist buildings. But 7 1/2-foot ceilings and Swedish-made windows with internal Venetian blinds, which cannot be replaced or repaired, make the buildings, designed by Kelly & Gruzen with the Cuban modernist Mario J. Romanach, difficult to live in. New residents, failing to appreciate the building’s Corbusian details, have tried to redo the elevators in brass and mahogany, said Helen Rachlin, a longtime resident.
In the 60′s, energy was cheap, so buildings were blithely inefficient. Air-conditioning and fluorescent light were considered good substitutes for breezes and natural sunshine. In the West Palm Beach courthouse, 90 percent of the offices didn’t have windows, Mr. Edge, the architect, said.
Experimentation with new materials was rampant. And though a building made of stone is likely to last hundreds of years, experts say, a building made of concrete and aluminum is not. “New materials don’t always work out as advertised,” said Harry Hunderman, a principal of the Illinois engineering firm Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates, which has helped restore many postwar buildings.