Dear
Wassili Luckhardt,
It’s not fair is it? Luckhardt always falling on hard-luck. I know all you ever wanted was to be good, loved, respectable. Your early modernism proved that, it’s daring, almost shrine-like in its elegance. You know there is always a push between compromise and stubborn idealism, between the past and the future, between right and wrong. You gave up too much of yourself to the Socialists, but I cannot punish you for that – you have paid your debt. You could have been a God, if you had left that night, with us, with me.
One day I will look for you, outside the Interbau. Maybe I will see you,
maybe you will see me and maybe we will both pretend.
Ever,
Retly Corm
Colin Rowe,
Here’s what I think might have happened if we had met.
You were stalking the beach, preoccupied with death and effervescent with existence. I had lived my whole life keeping the idea of you, like old valentines, in a cigar box beneath my bed. Then we suddenly happened upon the same thought on the shores of oblivion. “Together, we could burn it to the ground.”
Is there any evidence to support this theory? No. Does it make the interpretation much more interesting? Yes.
Because for you, and for me, it’s not about the Program, but the Paradigm, not the Concept
but the Context, which is where I find myself, loving you so. This love is too strong for it to be considered a respectable amount of affection, so we’ll just pretend it never happened. I can imagine that we never met on that beach, which was coincidentally a café, and that I never knew how happy you could make me.
With love,
Retly Corm
My Dear
Francesco Colonna,
Looks like a dead-horse needs another beating.
Man, the Early-Renaissance is just silly with enduring Epics. Can you and Alberti just decide who wrote the Hypnertomachia Poliphili? It’s getting confusing. Oh and tell Lorenzo de Medici just to back-off, nobody wants him at this party.
That being said, if you did write it, thank you for thinking outside the constraints of structure. The buildings you describe may not be able to be built (yet) but your metaphor of the “good architect” vs. “the bad architect” helps to remind all that there is no more important profession. EVER.
I would say “with love”, but you maybe being a monk, it weirds me out.
So,
With completely platonic affection,
Retly Corm
Oh,
Francesco Bartolomeo Rasterelli,
We could have had it all. Then you decided that your Russian Glint was too important to be questioned. The ice-cold gilded precision of the Winter Palace was worth more than my warm imperfections. So you flirt with Empresses to get your tall towers commissioned and you dismiss me because the only thing I can give you is love. Fine. I don’t pretend to have their kind of power or pretension. Now I must away to the vast nothingness between here and the East. Enjoy
your power while it lasts, like all the men of the Russian Court, one day we will meet on a staircase. I will be coming up and you will be going down. It will be sooner than you think.
Ever,
Retly Corm
My Dear Sirs, Thomas Henry Wyatt & Matthew Digby Wyatt,
This rivalry has got to stop. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m extremely flattered that two such skilled and respected architects are fighting over me, but for God’s sake, you’re supposed to be brothers. Act like it.
You asked me to choose one of you. Before I give you my answer let me breakdown the logic of my choice.
Thomas, you’re mature, reserved and serious. The kind of man you can settle down with. You can organize a practical plan and explain it with all the rational romanticism of a classically educated master. A portfolio like yours is not to be sneezed at, and your side-burns? Epic.
Matthew, you’re alive, edgy and real. Where Thomas is safe, you’re dangerous. Rather than replay the same stories, you investigate the future: sharp, mechanical solutions rather than the hand-made and rough-hewn. You have vision and the drive to get there.
So who do I choose? Neither. I’m running off with Isambard Kingdom Brunnel. Have you seen his bridge? It’s mind-blowing.
Don’t follow me.
Retly Corm
So,
Gerrit Rietveld, you too have submitted to their will.
I see, the CIAM has claimed another ally. How did they get to you: was it the power, the money, the sex? Because I can tell you from personal experience that, in this organization, you will have to pick two to have and one to not. It’s the Vitruvian triangle all over again, but you know, shittier. I know Le Corbusier said at the last meeting that the war was over. That the modernist rivals have been eliminated. You need to know he’s a liar. When there is no one left to fight, surely they will turn on each-other. You are entering the beginning of the end my friend. I’m telling you this not to frighten you, but to warn you. I respect you too much to see you go to waste.
There was a time when the De Stijl was enough. That revolutionizing the ideas and understanding of floor plans and walls (oh yeah, I'm talkin' Rietveld-Shroeder House)
would keep you safe. The indefinable spaces so like you, so free. There was a time when the red-blue chair’s aesthetic revolution would shield you from criticism for the rest of your life. I’m not sure that dogma holds true now.
Run. Run Gerrit. Stay your own man. Get out while you still can.
Yours, Always,
Retly Corm
My Dear
Albert Pretzinger,
Never underestimate the things I will do for love. I have left, stayed, ran and comeback. So when you say that you’re going westward, to Ohio, don’t think that will stop me. You claim you will design this new “Americana” in warm, vanilla colors against the cold winter and strong autumns. You tell me that you’re a home-grown, corn-fed Aeneas and I’m therefore Dido.
The sturdy streetcar pulls past the shiny new cinemas the way you try to pull away from me. But unlike the stoic and virginal RKO Theater, I will not be ignored, discarded and pined for when it is too late. If this is over, I mean really over, you say it to my face.
Sincerely,
Retly Corm
Minoru Yamasaki, my life, my love,
Don’t listen to them when they say those things like “man, what a boring looking building” and “what, I’m supposed to be impressed because this box is super-tall?” They. Are. Just. Jealous. True, there is not a lot of decoration or variance in floor-plan in many of your works, but does that mean they are unsophisticated? No. Yours is the elegant and sharp look of
the romanticized pragmatists. A combination of the seizing power of steel and what we are capable of doing, but like a classical Dutch master, you show power with the understated yet refined decoration and the light, always the light.
I know that you despise the “design by committee” councils of the elite organizations you subscribe to, but admit it, you’re a cunning creature. You like the power. You like the profile. I guess what I’m trying to say is; don’t let the post-modernists get you down. You will always have a fan in me.
With Love,
Retly Corm
