Love Letters to Dead Architects: The Lost Letters

I thought I had lost these letters when my hard-drive crashed last year, but while going through the wreckage that was "my documents". You know, as a hobby this is pretty high up the dork scale, but if you're counting we're up to 68 LLTDA. I'm thinking I'll stop at 200. Just because I can't think of any more than that.

well, enjoy, and feel free to take breaks.

Dear Benjamin Henry LaTrobe,

I saw your portrait by Charles Wilson Peale on Facebook, and I hope this doesn’t weird you out but ME-OW. I mean, I knew you were a great architect, but I never knew how good-looking you really were. Where you been hiding? (And don’t say a Moravian Colony nobody really knows what that is)

I know you’re English, but when our young nation needed someone to pretend we were ancient Greece, you were ex-patriotically there for us. When people said “You can’t put a dome and turrets with a hexastyle portico” you were ready to push the envelope. You were there, to design banks in Philadelphia, to build cathedrals in Baltimore, to revive the hell out of the Gothic Style in houses and to fight in the Prussian army for some reason.

Listen Ben, I have to tell you, there is no-one who does Federalist Neo-classicism better. I’m so glad you came to our shores, even though you may have set our own indigenous architectural style back 150 years…not important. We can move past it. Anyway. I still love you.

With all my heart,

Retly Corm


Dear Giovanni Battista Piranesi,

I have tolerated your special kind of crazy long enough to know that we are meant to be. I think for me, at least, it was love at first sketch. But I have some beef with you too, I mean you just lope around Rome with your paper and pencils and think you can do whatever you want. Sketching the classic remains and using them as a metaphor for human endeavors and I know that next time you leave (for Venice), you’re going to take my heart with you.

You can be dark. I’ve seen the Carceri designs. Seriously, you’re like the Bat-man of the Baroque. It makes you dangerous and I’ve always had a thing for bad-boys. Well, bad-boys who design prisons, like that one tv-show from 2006… except I don’t know if you have a bunch of tattoos. Though you probably do, you just seem like the type.

Maybe, if we work together, we can finally get something of yours built. I may not have the answers now, but if you and I connect the pencils to our brains we can draw our way out of the hypothetical world and into the building world.

Stay safe you nutbar.

with Love,

Retly Corm


Dear Buckminster Fuller,

You, out of all of the men I write letters to, break my heart the most. We were so close Bucky. I mean you only died two years before I was born. I know quotes in love letters are cheesy, but hey, “I’m never going to know you now, but I’m going to love you anyhow.”

I remember the first time I saw your Dymaxion house. I was like, “Hey, it looks like the Jetsons.” But no. It was the Jetsons who looked like you. That’s what I love about you, sure some of your ideas are overly-idealistic, hopelessly technical and blatantly impractical. But for every inch there is of flaw there are miles and miles of benefit.

You were the first to realize that we didn’t live up to our “modern” claims. You were the first to try and re-invent the tri-beam truss as a self-sustaining orb. You were the first to arrange a house with a garage designed to hold a small one-to-two-man airplane. Granted that last one was a little weird.

You once said, “I Seem to be a Verb.” Well, I think you’re wrong there, You seem to be nothing but adjectives. Here are just a few: fascinating, cunning, charming. However, I will agree with you, you are not a noun. You’re too cool to be a noun.

Keep the faith Tribtab

All my love,

Retly Corm


Dear Walter Gropius,

Walter, Walter, Walter. The pedigreed monster of modernist perfection, the sharply shaven prophet of doom for your fastidious forbearers I love you. I want you to be clear about that. Unlike Edward Abby, I will never refute you, (or Bucky or Soleri) I will always be with you.

For you, it’s not enough that a product can be readily made and reproduced. Terrible products do that all the time. You demanded more, not only must they be reproduced but those reproductions have to have soul, determination and clarity of vision. You did that the Fagus Factory with such precision that you gave that factory a song (and not that creepy oompa-loompa number they usually sing).

That same vision is what the Bauhaus was all about. I remember our summer in Dessau, don’t you? What a glorious time that was. Do you remember? Me, in my yellow sun-dress as the light flickered off of my chestnut brown hair streaked with blonde and You, telling me to go away because you had work to do and couldn’t be bothered by incessant chattering…ahh memories. Also, whatever Mies told you about that night we walked down by the lake is a BIG FAT LIE. I only have eyes for you darling.

Ever yours,

Retly Corm


Dear Ebenezer Howard,

I have two truths for you, Beezie. Firstly, you are great. Secondly, you look like a disapproving rabbit sometimes.

Let’s focus on the first part. You’re great because you always surprise people; I mean a Londoner shop-keeper’s son goes to Nebraska to find himself? If that’s not out of left field I don’t know what is. For you, Mr. Howard, Paris is old hat, Rome is passé, and Nebraska is the cutting edge of civilization.

What’s that you say? You want another surprise? Here’s one. While most architects selfishly claim all the glory for the rich or themselves, you hand it out for everyone to have. (Maybe this is because you’re technically not an architect.) Your humanist ideas INVENTED an entire movement aimed towards making sure people lived better, cleaner lives. And unlike the Modernists, who wanted the same things, your ideas actually worked.

Because I care for you so deeply, I won’t go into depths about the failures of the Garden cities. But you can sleep at night knowing that through your work, every kid who ever grew up bored in the suburbs can thank you for their adolescent memories.

I thank you for my adolescent memories Ebenezer Howard.

Love,

Retly Corm


Dear Frank Furness,

Oh Frank, why does everything good and evil begin with you? It’s like you have two sides, and I can’t tell you which one I like more. The Jekyll-Hyde-ness of it all...sometimes it’s almost too much.

You’re a real bad-ass. I mean, winning the Medal of Honor during the civil war as a union solider, by crossing nemy lines to retrieve ammunition…oh FRANK.

But I know you, I know you’ll never care for me the way I care for you. You’re the kind of man who will never speak unless it is to insult.

Your buildings are heavy and difficult, brooding and complicated. Unlike those overly cheerful glass boxes that persist in their need for attention, you’re buildings frown at those smiling villains with a clear contempt of their lies. You’re not afraid to mix styles, your Fisher Fine Arts library was the bastard child from a one night stand with Violette-Le-Duc and Ruskin, you don’t know who the father is, but it’s all you baby.

I guess what I’m trying to tell you is: you and your buildings don’t care if anybody likes them and that willful independence is too sexy. I hate you Frank. I hate that you don’t care what I think.

Let’s run away together. We can be in Mexico by nightfall.

Love, Hate, MARRY ME,

Sincerely,

Retly Corm



Dear Standford White,

I think you’re pretty great. Do you want to go to formal with me? I have a car so you wouldn’t need a ride. On the way there, you can tell me about the principles of the American Renaissance. Oh and fill me in on what Henry Hobson Richardson is like in person. Is he fat? I bet he’s fat.

Hopefully yours,

Retly Corm

Dear William Rutherford Mead,

Thanks for everything last night! I know I can always count on you as a shoulder to cry on. After Stan left with the tramp, I cried in the bathroom for, like, twenty minuets. But there you were, ready to hear about what a jerk he was. I couldn’t have asked for a better bench in the cafet-orium. You’re such a good friend. I’m glad we’ll always be great just friends. See you in engineering class next week!

Love (J.K.! :P)

Retly Corm

P.S. Can I borrow your notes?

Dear Charles Follen McKim,

DO YOU LIKE ME?

YES NO

P.S. Did you REALLY go to the Ecole de Beaux arts? I hear it’s awesome.

<3>Ludwig Mies van de Rohe,

I do not oppose us, but I oppose the of “us” as a goal
I’m only saying this because my heart has been broken many times before. By you.

When we focus on being a couple we forget to actually “be a couple”.
We try too hard on making sure we act the part, communicating, talking about our days,
Then in all that chit-chat we forget to talk about our lives. There is a difference and you know it.

Only intensity of passion can breed passion.
Every When is carried by a Now
The un-informed is not worse than the over-informed.
The former in nothing, the latter is cliché
Real passion drives real love
And something that lacks real love will never inspire real passion.

Here lies the criterion.

I need you to be real. I need you to feel free. Don’t be in this relationship for its own sake.

I left Walter for you because you had a mystery that he never had. Maybe that’s why we have to try so hard now, because now the mystery is gone and when I look over the table at you I see a slightly heavy-set German yearning to breathe free that just plain refuses to.

That’s why I think the letter is so essential.
You, for me, have become the decisive factor.
You know why you need to just be yourself.

I know you pretend to be aloof and uninterested because you’ve been hurt in the past too. But I will never hurt you, just stop smothering me. Why not just let love lead the way?
Must we not just leave everything to our own hearts?

To quote you, “not yesterday, not tomorrow, only today can be given form”,

Retly Corm

Dear Eugene Emannuel Viollet-LeDuc,

You are a thief sir, and I don’t mean when you steal Gothic themes and expropriate them for new technologies, I mean you have stolen my heart. “How”, you may ask, did you come to be the reluctant rouge of my affection? Dearest, it was through that strange murky crispness, like ironed silk, that you stole it. That same organic precision you used when you stripped away the pompous neo-classical shlock of Napoleon from “Our Lady”.

There is only one issue that troubles me, it is this “honesty in architecture” how can it be, my love, that you wish for honesty but only if that honesty holds within itself cartoon-ish historical depiction (you know like that castle you worked on). But on this fault you cannot be blamed, you are an architect, not a historian and after all it is in steel you truly find your voice. Unlike the archaic John Ruskin you do not cling to the past as a life preserver or parachute, claiming that irrelevance is the thing that will save our clearly decaying society. Instead you embrace the new with both arms going in for that French-two-cheek-kiss-thing that you do. Teach me Eugene, teach me with spindle-legs and strong convictions, what steel can do.

With love,

Retly Corm.

Dear Aldo Van Eyck,

By the time you read this I will have escaped out the window, don’t think you can follow me, I’ve made sure that YOUR escape is out of the question. Do you know how long I have been tracking down and systematically eliminating the members of Team X?

Are you surprised? You should have known the CIAM does not stand for dissent. To answer the question I’m sure is on your mind, I am not aligned with them per-se, I just do what needs to be done. Though I have to hand it to your comrades, Bakema, Candilis, De Carlo, Woods and the Smithsons, not a one of them betrayed your location. That accidental rendezvous in Amsterdam was more accident than my other jobs usually are.

I’m sorry Al. If it’s worth anything, I did mean all those things I said to you on the ship. You were right, the Modernists are blinded by their own self-importance; they have lost the soul of everything they sought to bring to fruition. In creating “machines for living” they invented just that, “architecture for machines.” Their beliefs are for the impossible ideal, people will never be perfect and the idea of returning architecture to the human scale is the way of the future. I hope you can forgive me, I know I don’t deserve it.

Always your love,

Retly Corm

Dear El Lissitzky,

It’s finished. Team X is no more. I could not stay to watch, I am ashamed to admit that I let my heart got to my head this time. You warned me that Aldo would be the most difficult; he was a charmer, yes.

At first I was ready to dismiss him, but once he began speaking about the Orphanage I could feel my heart melting. I wish only that I could have had the passionate and reserved strength of your graphic work. What is it all for? When will this schism end? Does it really matter if they disagree? Is not there room for architecture to be both epic in scale and personal in experience? Think of the old synagogues or churches. Now I know you European modernists try and avoid those kinds of associations on principle, but I feel like if anyone could understand, it would be you.

You are different from the rest of CIAM representatives; you’re not one of the Corbusier sheep. When I first saw the Proun Rooms, I saw what they really were, an allegorical landscape and a direct representation of the modern human experience. That duality gives me hope. I don’t mean to be blasphemous, but what if we simply made that interpretation less abstract? Give the understanding back to the common man? Wasn’t that how it all got started anyway, educating and improving the life of the man on the street? Look around you, Modernism: it’s just a bauble for the rich patron and badge for the morally-superior academic. I’m finally tired of the game. Join me. I will wait two hours, you know where.

Don’t try anything stupid, I would hate to see you go the same way as Aldo.

Ever yours,

Retly Corm

Dear Alvar Aalto,

I must say that your reputation precedes you and you did not disappoint. I’ll be honest; I wanted to call you an over-hyped illusion, a kitschy northern mistake. In good conscience though, I can’t.

You INVENTED an indigenous style. No one can argue with that, believe me I’ve tried. The people of Finland will always be in your debt, your curving plank roof not only is an acoustical dream, it captures the imagination and the soul. . I was also ready to call you a one-trick pony. How many different ways are there to do trees? I was certain that your obsession with wood would be your coffin…Then I saw your glass vase.

You unbelievable jerk, I was wrong again. Well, like my mother always said “if you can’t beat them, join them.” I have officially decided we can be friends. I hope you will accept my love, admiration and respect. I have also decided we are going to the movies tomorrow. I’ll see you there at four. You bring the pop-corn money.

Your friend,

Retly Corm


Dear Le Corbusier,

OR SHOULD I SAY CHARLES-EDOUARD-JEANNERET-GRIS!!

Was it all a lie? Like “The Styles”? What about the weekends in Paris, the jetting off to India, the conveniently being Swiss whenever a World War breaks out, did it ever mean anything? But why should I be surprised, I mean whenever you decide that architecture is going to be the embodiment of technology that’s when you spit it all back and say “nope, never mind. Now everything is going to be rough and” …ugh, what is that stupid word you use? Oh. “Primitive”

You are a complete schmuck Corb.

Look at you, pumping out self-congratulating books, one right after the other. Then why do I still care about you? I guess it’s because you don’t settle for anything. Flying which ever way you want, and somehow everybody follows you, oh raven-like one. I guess you’re like a less handsome, bespectacled Ferris Buller. Oh I can’t stay mad at you. What with your bastardization of the Vitruvian man, I mean really? Isn’t it a little convenient that the perfect proportions of the Modular man are your measurements? Scrawny and a little on the short side? I know you cannot possibly belong to me forever, but we’ll always have Paris, well outside of Paris. Poissy-Sur-Seine. We’re always have there.

Love,

Retly Corm


My Dearest, Loveliest, Sweetest Jane Jacobs,

Where to start? Should I tell you how you came into my suburban life and swept me away into a world of non-compartmentalized urbanist bliss? Should I mention your connections between biospheres and the booms of cities? No, that will never be enough for me to express my love.

Oh Jane, Jane, Jane. After all that we’ve been through, why all of the sudden are you throwing this all away to be negative? I mean I know it’s trendy to predict doom, but seriously Jane, Dark Age Ahead. A little grim don’t you think? Listen, Random House Publishing is no place for you to grouch about those damn kids and their music. I know you hate that they get on your lawn and leave their Frisbees on your roof. That they have no respect and that they topple the five pillars of society upon which we stand. (The nuclear family, education, science, representational government and taxes, and corporate and professional accountability). But you’re being a real drama queen. Oh my love, can’t we go back to how things were? You and I going antiquing in the Village, blaming the “Ozzie and Harriet” lifestyle for all the problems in the world and just sitting for hours just gazing into each others eyes?

I miss you Jane, I miss us, please come back,
Retly Corm



Salve Publius Aelius Hadrianus,

As your beard, I’m very concerned about you. I mean your behavior has become increasingly erratic. Now, I love how experimental you are, what with stealing other culture’s ideas then infusing them with your own squash-oriented thoughts and all. I don’t even mind the “stoic” moping or the almost excessive traveling, but it’s the killing honey, the killing is getting ridiculous. Could you please stop murdering people? I’m tired of taking cartfuls of so-called incompetent staff to dump in the Tiber.

Everyone in Rome has to drink that water baby and I don’t think the lead in our pipes is going to get rid of all the diseases. I know you don’t really care because you can just pop over to the villa in Tivoli, which I will admit is totally sweet, but please try and be more considerate? I don’t say these things to nag, but I want us to work. I want us to keep restoring and enhancing important structures, to order northern walls be built and, Gods willing, be buried in a monolith castle together. None of these things will happen unless we happen.

I love being with you Hadrian. When I’m with you, things are thrilling and new, even though I’ve seen them all before. You have so much spirit, but I’m not going to be mowed down and be your servant, I mean, mostly because you haven’t ordered my death, but still. Let’s be partners. We can be powerful and evil. Together. Let me walk on the rope bridge to your heart.

Love,

Retly Corm


Professor Carlo Scarpa,


What was I supposed to do? How could I fight you? I tried, I tried so hard not to be where I am now. I’ve had my heart broken so many times and I’ve done terrible things, awful things to other hearts.

I just want what you do to concrete for you to do to me. You take something naturally formless, stubborn and hard and make it sing with elegance. I spend so much time running, trying to forget, dying to remember, but when I see your work, I know you are the kind of man I could grow old with.
More so than anyone else you think about the full life of your structures. I see you, never forgetting the past but beating relentlessly and determinately to the future. I want so badly to be part of that future. Your future

I love you and all your infinite possibilities.

Retly Corm


Dear Pier Luigi Nervi,

I’m not as elegant with words as I would like to be and I’d rather just skip the part that’s going to be hard for me to say.

If you know what I would have written (if I had the skill to write accurately), you should leave Italy, which I know you don’t like to do and come see me. If you don’t know, we can pretend this never happened.

Why did you have to go and be you? Reinforcing what, structurally, is sand and make into anything you wanted it to be. Just like that you took my malleable heart and turning it hard and gritty and under your control. Reinforced concrete, what a novelty you bring.
Oh the stadiums we could build together! That pie crust you put together is just the beginning. With your engineering skills and my…whatever it is I bring to this deal, we could do great and beautiful things. No one knows sharps and curves better than you, Pier.

Just let me know if I have a chance, anyone at all,

Retly Corm


Dear Appolodorus of Damascas,

You need to stop this, you’re getting dangerously over-confident. Now, it is brilliant that you discovered the world’s first snapshot, recording people, their ages, their flaws, the tools they use, all in a relief on a monumental column and I don’t need to tell you it’s brilliant. But that’s no excuse; you can’t just insult a scrappy kid who may one day be your boss. Your work may be eternal, but your actions are short-sighted.

You think it will make him stronger, better. That he should forget about architecture and focus on something less difficult, like ruling an empire. Listen, I’ve been watching the young Hadrian and I think it’s a mistake to mock him. He doesn’t take shaming well
Right now, you think that Trajan won’t ever let anything happen to you, you are his favorite, why would he? But the sun will rise tomorrow and the day after and rain will fall, seasons will come and go and eventually Trajan will die. He may have brought peace, but it won’t last, not for the empire, and not for you.

I don’t want to see you suffer at the hands of Hubris.

Remember you can always hate someone secretly; it need not be the color of your hair. Stay safe,

Retly Corm


Dear Victor Horta,

Well I hope you’ve got good insurance because I’ve got whiplash from your whiplash style. I wasn’t prepared for it you know. When you invited me over, I expected you to live in a typical, insufferably clean modern home. I should have known that behind those boxy forms was something giddier and infinitely more interesting.

You’re never afraid to be yourself, even if you’re not in vogue. I think that’s why people like you so much, that cheerful indifference is one that is agonizingly appealing. It must also be why you like people, you’re not selfish about your style, it’s accessible to everyone, and physically so in your Maison de Peuple. If must drive your wife crazy. What you have is an aesthetic revolution done in color and angel hair.

My lawyer will be in touch,

Sincerely,

Retly Corm


Dear Shah Jahan,

Please accept my deepest, deepest sorrows for your loss. I know nothing I could ever say could ever capture the loneliness you must feel at the death of Mumtaz Muhal. Having briefly known her in life, I can tell you honestly that her devotion to you was utterly earnest. True loyalty like that is more precious than any jewel.

To get over your grief, I suggest you find a way to be as devoted to her in death as she was to you in life. Your gardens show that you know proportion, scale, detail all of those things, but you have not had a chance to interweave them.

Take the opportunity now to make permanent a love that was unparalleled.

Enjoy the casserole,

Retly Corm



Dear John Nash,

I’m sorry to do this to you this way, but I can’t see you anymore, not in London, not in Brighton, not now, not ever. It’s been fun, but you know that any serious design between the two of us must be put to a stop immediately.

It’s not that haven’t loved your designs, each one is completely unique, the shapes and forms are considered not only of their own sense as objects, but how those objects will interact with the people who will see them everyday. However I what I loved most about them was that they were appropriate to their time and place.

It is for the love of your other works that I cannot stand by your latest. The Royal Pavilion , yes the materiality is beautiful and the structure is interesting. But MY GOD MAN, I could tolerate your regency, but not your blatant stealing. It’s just a ridiculous cartoon of architecture and you know it.

I can’t bare a man who is too easily influenced and I see now that you’ve been overtaken by the Prince Regent. It’s been said before, and I will repeat, George IV is too big an idiot to be king. Sure he’s got the best booze and hot chicks around all the time, but so do highwaymen. Being able to throw great parties is not enough to be ruler of a nation, no wonder the colonies have made a mockery of him.

Goodbye John,

Retly Corm