Executive Decision

...Ive met two French presidents Jacques Chirac and Francois Mitterrand... I met Kurt von Weis-zacker when he was president of Germany. Ive met Helmut Schmidt and Juan Carlos, the King of Spain. Ive just completed a building in Prague which I discussed in detail with Vaclav Havel. Ive discussed architecture over drinks with the Empe-ror of Japan. Ive never met an American president. Can you imagine Bill Clinton or Bob Dole, Ronald Reagan or Richard Nixon calling an architect? That says a lot about how unimportant public space is in Am-erica in these times. Frank Gehry

It says a lot about how unimportant the architect is in envisioning public spaces in America in these times. This was not always the case. After all, the architect of the nation practised architecture himself. Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence and Americas third President, designed and built his own mountaintop mansion Monticello.

 

Jefferson had an abiding faith in architectures power to influence its inhabitants. He wholeheartedly ascribed to associationalism: a building was good if its style belonged to a period in history that was regarded as enlightening. The movement began in the landscaped gardens of mid-18th Century Europe that featured pavilions as objects of conte-mplation. History was a shopping mall of architectural-styles.

Jefferson also designed the University of Virginia. He formulated its curriculum based on ten major divisions of learning. The scholar-architect then translated the divisions into two rows of five pavilions facing each other across a lawn and culminating in the Pantheon: the Library as a Temple of Learning. Seventy-five years later the quadrangle would resonate in the Columbian Expositions Court of Honour, with Hunts dome taking the place of the Library and a water-pool replacing the Lawn. The Exposition was, according to Henry Adam, the first expression of American thought as a unity. It rekindled interest in urban planning, leading to the final completion of LEnfants 1791 plan for the Mall in Washington DC.

The Mall is an urban icon. Americas prime public domain is a host to national gatherings. The last one was the Million Man March. Reporting the event as an expression of black solidarity, the Media missed a deeper significance that the blacks had sensed. They had come to assert their place in the Constitution of America, which is what the Mall is. It separates the executive (White House) from the legislative (Capitol) and is guarded by the Memorials of Jefferson and Lincoln on cross-axis. (Lincoln reaffirmed Jeffersons belief in symbolism when he continued to enlarge the Capitols dome even though the Civil War was in progress. The dome was a sign he said, that we intend the Union to go on.) The whole complex pivots around an obelisk (albeit off-centre) that is an abstract memorial to Washington, name-giver to the nations capital. From the president to the downtrodden black, all acknowledged the mythic power of public places.

Architect Gehrys father worked in a travelling carnival. Anything goes fat ladies or freaks to sell tickets and get people into the tent. Frank follows his father, getting people into a larger tent with his EuroDisney project. Among the foremost contemporary architects with projects in USA, he is not alone. The best minds are engaged in play: Rem Koolhaas at Universal Studios in Los Angeles; Arata Isozaki at Disneyworld Headquarters in Florida; Michael Graves with his Seven Dwarfs building for Disney executives in California. Private fantasies on a public scale: the architecture of seduction.

In these times, the most powerful man in America finds the most playful men in America irrelevant. The White House invitation is not forthcoming.