Witold Rybczynski's Blog, page 3

A WRITING LIFE: PART TWO

In 1989, three books later, I wrote The Most Beautiful House in the World, about how my wife Shirley and I built our own house in rural Quebec. The book was reviewed on the front page of the New York Times Book Review, and made it to the bestseller list. Later that year I got a call from a Times editor who invited me to write something on architecture for the Arts & Leisure section of the Sunday paper. I was taken aback because although I was an architect, I had written articles and book reviews on other subjects, but ... Read more

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A WRITING LIFE: PART ONE

In the 1970s I belonged to the Minimum Cost Housing Group at McGill University in Montreal. Our research included third world slums, alternative technology, composting toilets, well, that was the seventies. We published and sold booklets—Stop the Five Gallon Flush was the most successful. Around 1978 I thought it would be a good idea to combine all the publications in a book—after all, this was the era of the Whole Earth Catalog and the Domebook. I didn’t have much success finding a trade publisher. I did get one positive response from Bill Strachan, a Doubleday editor. He was not keen ... Read more

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OPEN BUILDING

My friend Steve Kendall gave me a copy of his latest book, written with the late John Habraken, Open Building for Architects. Wiki defines Open Building as “an approach to the design of buildings that takes account of the possible need to change or adapt the building during its lifetime.” Reflecting on this ambitious goal—buildings can last for centuries—led me to a conclusion: There’s no such thing as Open Building. Or, to put it another way, buildings have always been open to change. I am put in mind of the Uffizi Museum (originally magistrates’ offices), the Louvre, the Hermitage, the ... Read more

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GOD-KNOWS-WHAT-KIND-OF-CLASSIC

I read Catesby Leigh’s interesting article, “Uncle Sam’s Buildings,” in The American Conservative. He argues in favor of the federal buildings that were built in the prewar era, and which more or less followed the classical style, and is critical of the modernist era, perhaps best characterized by the awful FBI headquarters building in DC. His essay brought up a question for me. The examples of classical federal buildings that he admires are all from a particular era, and his essay implies that this architectural style should continue ad infinitum. Whatever the merits of this suggestion, it does fly in ... Read more

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PHILADELPHIA ON THE ROCKS

A happy four days spent on Mount Desert Island. Gave a lecture on Planting Fields to the Beatrix Farrand Society; visited the spectacular Abby Rockefeller Garden; had a memorable lunch at Martha Stewart’s great house, Skylands; saw a beautiful wooden body 1913 Peugeot in the Seal Cove Auto Museum; went sailing on a Herreshoff canoe yawl; ate Scott Koniecko’s perfect oysters in his as-yet unfinished perfect house. I stayed in Northeast Harbor, once known as Philadelphia on the Rocks because so many Philadelphians summered there, and because they were a tipsy crowd. Cheers!

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WRITING

In a spirited talk at Purdue University, the noted biographer Stacy Schiff was asked what advice she might give to aspiring writers. “Your only job is to make the reader turn the page,” was one of her answers. Pithy, and true. Years and years ago, before she became a famous biographer, Stacy was an assistant editor at Viking, my editor when I was writing Home. Later, when I was setting out to write a biography of Frederick Law Olmsted I too asked her for advice. “You need to learn everything about your subject,” she counseled, “but the reader doesn’t need ... Read more

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ARCHITECTURE AND BUILDING

“It is very necessary, in the outset of all inquiry, to distinguish carefully between Architecture and Building,” wrote John Ruskin in the opening chapter of The Seven Lamps of Architecture. The modern democratic spirit tends to resist this distinction. Surely all buildings can be architecture, the humble as well as the grand, the cottage as well as the cathedral? The problem with this well-meaning leveling out is not that it elevates the former but that it tends to lower the latter. When a utilitarian apartment block or office building is treated as architecture, that establishes a sort of benchmark in ... Read more

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PARK BENCHES

When I wrote Now I Sit Me Down, a history of chairs and sitting, I included folding chairs, office chairs, and chairs on wheels, but I neglected park benches. I suppose I took them for granted. Whenever I go for a walk I often sit down on a park bench. They’re usually not very comfortable. Some are made out of heavy slabs of wood, to reduce maintenance, I suppose; more modern benches seem to be designed mainly to discourage loafing. As with much sitting furniture, you have to go back in time to find an exemplary design, in the case ... Read more

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SKETCHING

Architects have always travelled with sketchbook in hand. Partly it’s a way of recording interesting places, but more importantly, it’s a way of seeing. The opposite of point-and-shoot, sitting and drawing is a leisurely way to absorb one’s surroundings. My friend Laurie Olin, a lifelong travel sketcher, has been publishing collections of his sketches, grouped by country; four years ago France Sketchbooks and recently In Italy, both from ORO Editions. Olin’s sketches are more than attractive impressions—although they are that—they also reflect a landscape architect’s practiced eye, being full of detailed notes and observations. What also struck me is how ... Read more

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THE END OF ARCHITECTURE?

I got an email request the other day. The sender had asked ChatGPT “What are the best articles about architecture written since 1990?” and the third recommendation, after two essays by Koolhaas, was “The End of Architecture?” by Witold Rybczynski. According to the bot, “In this provocative article published in 1996, Rybczynski reflects on the state of architecture at the end of the 20th century and questions whether the discipline has reached its limits or if new directions are emerging.” Stirring stuff. Could I send a link to the article, my correspondent asked? He had been unable to find it ... Read more

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