bldgs: Love Letters to Dead Architects: You Might Remember Me From Such Buildings As...

Dear Bruce Goff,

I guess the obvious thing to say is “just keep trying”, but I’ve always felt that was terrible advice.

Maybe you’ve just got too much going on in your head. Eastern References, Western, Northern, Southern, elements of your personal past, your hopes for the future and everything in between. People are going tell you you’re getting to old for this kind of idealism, that it ruined Frank and Louis, that it will ruin you. It will, but don’t stop. I’m not strong enough to stay ridged against the pressure, but you are.

Architecture just keeps getting uglier, and I’m going with it. I’m tired and I need something to

rely on, so I need you to stay inconveniently noble, inconveniently true, inconveniently yourself.

One day, organic and client-specific buildings will be popular again, when they are, remember me. I and my ilk will be without a friend.

Always your reluctant International Style loving former friend,

Retly Corm

Dear Eero Saarinen,

I retrieved your name from the Eames, they said if anyone could get me out of a jam, it’s you. I’m afraid to write of the situation, we will have to meet in person. Just know that if I falter, I will be eaten alive. Of course, you would know all about that wouldn’t you?

Office of Secret Service, designing layouts for the Presidential situation room, creating the gateway to the great western wilds with a daring and deliberate arch, danger just comes naturally to you.

The thin-shell structures you make, the expressionist angles, you like to live on the edge, but I can’t. I just have

too much to lose. I am leaving from Dulles International tomorrow at noon. Be there at 11:00, I will explain everything. My very life may be in your hands.

Sincerely,

Retly Corm

My Dear Paul Rudolph,

I’m so sorry. Sorry for dismissing you as unimportant. Sorry for not realizing soon enough that you were the best thing that ever happened to me. Sorry for everything. I was so wrapped up in it all, the glamour, the glitz, the shining perfection of modernism that I missed you completely. The realization now is brutal. Or should I say Brutalist.

Instead of clinging to an idea where you fight nature to reach some sort of apollonian perfection (which, by the way, is a butt and a half to keep clean), you use nature as an ally. Green before there was green. I also heard about them tearing down Riverview High-School. Maybe they, like me, just never noticed how wonderful it and you are.

Now you’ve gone east, old-man, I fear we may never meet again. But every time I

see a concave roof, I shall think of you and what we could have had, if I had not been so blind.

May the sun shine bright on your old Kentucky heart,

Retly Corm

Dear Gottfried Semper,

You almost had me fooled, really you did. In my modern closed mindedness, in my postmodern cynicism, in my sustainability self-righteousness I almost overlooked you.
You, who was at the heart of an architectural scandal- and of course you were right. The Greek and Roman buildings were painted garishly, the clean, white color that for so long symbolized the ancient structures was no more imagined than the irrational reverence of them. You, who designed at all different scales, boats, opera-houses, redesigning Vienna, you name it, you were there. Don’t think I’ve forgotten your book either. The four elements for architecture may be the heath, roof, enclosure

and mound, but my for elements for love are Gott, Fried, Sem and Per. I’m just sorry it took me so long to realize.

Semper,

Retly Corm.

Dear John Lautner,

What happened to you? To us? It seems over the past few months, you’ve gone from home-grown Michigan boy to go-go LA man of nights and nightmares. I mean the space-age references are one thing John, but it seems like everything you’ve designed seems sleek and beautiful and perfect, and, well, too good for me. You’ve outgrown me haven’t you?

I knew this would happen.

When we met at Taliesen, I remember you being amazed by the conversations, but now, everything is “so last year” or “passé”. Even the materials, Frank Lloyd always was in love with wood, and now I barely see any in your buildings.

I’m not going to hold you back, but don’t forget when you’re surrounded by people like Leonard Malin, or James Bond, or any one of those lithe, beautiful women, over looking the skyline in your steel and glass perched palace, impervious to earthquakes, that I put you there. Yes, I put you there and I can just as easily take you back down here with me.

Until we meet again,

Retly Corm

A SIDE NOTE ON JOHN LAUTNER

Man, John Lautner is the most famous architect you have never heard of.