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WILLIAM -M -RICE- INST
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CRAM-GOODHVE-AND-FERGV SON -ARCH iTLCT3
BOSTON AND NEW YORK

CHITECTVRE

AT RICE UNIVERSITY

DESIGNATES A SERIES OF REPORTS
ON THOUGHTS AND INVESTIGA-
TIONS FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF
ARCHITECTURE. IT IS PUBLISHED IN
THE BELIEF THAT THE EDUCATION
OF ARCHITECTS CAN BEST BE
ADVANCED IF TEACHERS, STUDENTS,
PRACTITIONERS, AND INTERESTED
LAYMEN SHARE IN WHAT THEY ARE
THINKING AND DOING.

HOUSTON, TEXAS MARCH, 1963

Digitized by the Internet Archive

in 2011 with funding from

LYRASIS IVIembers and Sloan Foundation

http://www.archive.org/details/peoplesarchitect07caud

THE PEOPLE'S ARCHITECTS

is a program sponsored by the Department
of Architecture, Rice University, to com-
memorate its semicentennial, 1912-62.

Thistext by Chairman William W„ Caudill
explains the concepts of the program and
the approach to architecture of the eight
architects who participated in this program.

when Rice University was founded in 1912, the Department of Architecture
was one of the four original departments. Thus this semicentennial year has spe-
cial significance for the architectural students, their professors, and the alumni.
In addition to participating in the University's academic festival, the Department
of Architecture held its own celebration under the direction of Professor Harry S.
Ransom, who executed the graphics and designed the medallions for the honorees.
He is alsoauthoring the forthcoming book to be published by the University of
Chicago Press which explains the concept of the program and portrays the think-
ing and works of the architectural honorees. The concept is to substantiate the
fact that Architecture, among other things, is a social art.

Rice honored eight great American architects: John Lyon Reid, 0' Neil Ford,
Victor Gruen, L M. Pei, Vernon DeMars, Pietro Belluschi, Charles M. Goodman.
Marshall Shaffer was posthumously selected for honors. The great contributions
of these men have not been fully recognized by either the public or the profession.
Although they are highly respected by their colleagues, they are not categorized
solely as "form-makers", or "architects' architects." Their uniqueness lies in
alsobeing architects for people, or as Rice calls them, the people's architects.

Rice University has focused attention on a new breed of architect: the hard-
nosed pros who have innate and highly developed design talent, who possess deep
sensitivity to people's needs, who have a profound feeling of social responsibility,

and who have successfully incorporated iuiman values intotheirbuildings. These
Twentieth Century architects are not only aware of the fast-moving social changes,
but are causing them. Their goal is to give people houses, schools, churches,
hospitals, factories, and shopping centers that are beautiful as well as efficiait
and economical. They desire to make this world a place in which many people,
as contrasted to the privileged few, have a pleasant, inspiring environment for
living, learning, praying, working, traveling and shopping. Their real clients
are the people who use their buildings. They help people — great numbers of
people — through their architecture.

Rice embarked upon this program because of what is happening in our country
and the world and for what probably will happen. Perhaps the concept is being
honored as much as the eight men.

Recent population predictions indicate that there will be twice the number of
people on tliis earth within the next forty years. This means twice the problems,
or more. Dying, decaying cities now exist. What will happen a few years from
now? Who is really trying to do something about it? Developers? Obviously not.
Money lenders? Not many. But a few socially conscious architects — the
people's architects — are trying to carry the burden. There is a need for moie
of them. Within the next few years a maximum effort must be made using a fresh
approach to solving the great problems caused by the trend toward urbanization.
Architects and planners who are sensitive to the needs of a centralized population
are the only hope.

Inevitably a large percentage of the world's population must dwell in cities.
In this country on the salt water rim of the U. S. there will be three giant cities:
one extending from Boston to Washington, D.C., one extending from New Orleans
to Houston, and another from Los Angelos to San Diego. A fourth will develop as
a giant fresh water city from Detroit to Chicago. Other great centers of population
will develop in the plains; for example, a few years of expansion will merge Dallas
and Fort Worth into one tremendous city. Expansion of this magnitude brings trouble.

Look what expansion in the last few years has done to areas of the U. S.!
The colorful forests around Boston, New York, Washington, and Chicago have
been scraped clean. Life has been drained out of the rich, green, life-producing
swamps around New Orleans. The spacious beauty of the rolling plains around
Tulsa and Omaha is permanently marred. The beautiful hills around San Francisco
have been scarred. Nature has been replaced with mad-made uglies under the
guise of progress. This is progress? This is devastation.

When the population of the world doubles in forty years, will the number of
cars double? More than likely triple. What about the need for land? Because now
the space for cars nearly equals the space for homes? But the problem is not a
matter of where to put these things. There is enough space. The problem is how.

Will the number of billboards double? Unless the trend is stopped, no one
will be able to see any of the landscape, assuming some is left. On some roads
today the only availableview isthat contrived by hucksters. These beauty-butchers
now must have billboards in pairs to carry their message from Madison Avenue.

If the awful signs don't cover the view, giant car racks will. Americans seem
to want to stack people and cars as high as possible, and they really don't seem
to care where they put these crates — over a famous landmark such as Grand
Central Station or in the middle of a beautiful university campus. The precious
sky is not only being filled with carbonmonoxide and evil smelling gases, but is
pockmarked with enormous crates. One talks of air rights: rights to build a col-
lege over a railroad yard (might not be a bad idea at that); rights to straddle a
church with an office building. To developers there is pie in the sky. In the fu-
ture there may be no view of the sky,just as now there is little view of the land.

All the problems will not be inthe great metropolitan centers. The perfecting
of the communications sate! ites and the developing of cheap receiving transistors
put the remotest areas into cultural closeness. Before too long anyone, any place,
will be able to afford a small transistor TV set. The Punjabs in northern India
will be as close to Lincoln Center as South Houstonians, When this happens,
the world will be in for a big change ~ sociologically and architecturally.

In the past the progress of a country depended largely on its natural resources.
In the future the chief products for import will be services instead of goods. This
means the so-called impoverished countries, without material things to sell or
trade, may some day prosper by selling their services. Since travel now is not a
matter of distance but of time, there seems to be no reason why communities whose
chief commodities are services can not thrive, whether they be located in the
barren plains of west Texas or the lush jungles of Cambodia.

Faster transportation, expanding cities, perfected communications and
saleable services are the forces which will shape things to come. It will be a
builder's world. It could be a beautiful one. Or, if the trend continues, it could
be one big junk heap. A nuclear war is not needed; just let the current merciless
landscrapers continue their destruction. The hope for a beautiful future lies in
more people's architects assuming their rightful leadership in making this world
a pleasant, inspiring place.

The planned parenthood group obviously might do some good about the over-
crowded situation, but the problem is more than more people occupying more space.
There will be plenty of land for private dwellings and a parcel of land for each
family ifthe world's population quadruples in 40 years. Although water and food
mostcertainly will be a problem, there is agood chance technology can solvethat
before the time arrives. There is a good chance, too, that the problem of shelter
will be solved satisfactorily by then, but shelter is not architecture. It is a part
of architecture, but not all. "Architecture," as Percival Goodman would say, "is
shelter engineering plus." It is this "plus factor" that makes it architecture, it
is the "plus factor" that concerns human values and aesthetic sensibility.

Who is to save the world from being aesthetically butchered? To answer,
one must ascertain who the builders are, because they are so often the wreckers
— some wreck the old to build the new, some do their wrecking in building the
new. Wreckers or builders, they are the developers, loan agencies, insurance
companies, contractors, material manufacturers, architects, engineers, and city

planners. Take a close look at each one.

Most developers (thank God for the exceptions) are out for the "quick buck."
"Bulldose the trees in the interest of expediency," they say. Loan companies
operate for profit. There is nothing wrong with that provided it is not at the ex-
pense of good design. But just try to get a loan for a home that represents the
mostadvanced design and technology! Money still speaks louder than aesthetics
with insurance companies, too. The business of a good contractor is to build and
build well, regardless of looks. The materials people have great influence on the
appearance of buildings. Today these manufacturers seem to have a greater in-
fluence than most architects, and for the most part, are a bad influence. Super-
salesmanship sold acres of schoolhouse walls of glassblock, millions of tons of
enameled metal for skyscrapers, but the result was not better architecture. There
are hundreds of glassblock schools -- ugly inside and out -- and nearly as
many "tin can" office buildings to prove it. As for the engineers, bless their
souls, they have technology to make these big uglieslast forever! Distinguishing
the city planner from the architect is difficult. Both are concerned with the total
environment. One looks at the situation with field glasses, the other with a micro-
scope. So for the purpose of this point, consider the two as one. The architect,
therefore, wrecker or builder, is about the only one of the group who sponsors
beauty. Admittedly he is not much of a warrior, but he is supposed to have been
trained to fight. To have a betterworld -- beautiful as well as efficient — the
architect-planner must be the champion of the people.

Although the architect has done a very poor job till now in building good
environment, he represents hope. The people's architects, whom Rice honors,
give this hope. They represent the exceptions, but itislioped that some day they
will be the rule. Some day there should be enough good architects to make the
market place a stimulating place, to plan dwellings inwhich the majority receive
aesthetic pleasure from their every day environment, to produce low cost, beautiful
churches that help each worshipper reach his God, to plan factories with the work-
ers in mind as well as those on the board of directors, and to plan schools that
help the millions of youngsters grow and develop in pleasant surroundings.

Historically great architects have worked for great andwealthy clients. Ar-
chitect Sen Mut in 1500 B.C. worked with Queen Hatshepsut to build her temple.
Architect Ictinus had Pericles for a client when he designed the Parthenon. Dur-
ing the Sixth Century A.D., Hagia Sophia was developed through the efforts of
architects Anthemius ofTralles and Isidorus of Miletus who worked with thegreat
Justinian. The Thirteenth Century architect, Pierre de Montereau, had no less
an important client than SaintLouis DC, for whom he built SanteChapelle in Paris.
Architect Michaelangelo had several Popes for clients. Even the later-day ar-
chitectural saints, Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies van der Rohe had their rich, in-
fluential patrons. But the rich patrons of the arts are becoming extinct. The last
of these are a few art-conscious corporation boards. The church building com-
mittee, developer, city council, hospital board, county commissioners, school board,
and the board of directors of the not-so-rich corporation are the rule.

It is no small task to produce good architecture underthese circumstances. It
takes great talent and patience to raise the aspirations of the multi-headed client
— the building committee. Persuasion and perfection plus great design skill are
required to turn public funds into good architecture because taxpayers rarely act
as art patrons. It also takes great skill to produce a beautiful, money-making
building for adeveloper. But inspite of all these obstacles, some architects have
been able to make our influential citizens more architecture-conscious. They have
been able to create beauty with democratic action, and their buildings show it --
through dignity, humility and human values.

Last year, when the architectural faculty of Rice University began planning its
semicentennial program, it considered the usual safe procedure: invite one of the
architectural gods to preach in return for adequate pay and praise; but even the
highly renowned living architects are tired of drum-beating. Therefore the faculty
resolved to honor the new breed, the people's architects.

Contrary to what many think, architects are not heretoplease other architects.
Unquestionably most architects receive extreme satisfaction from having other ai^
chitects recognize their work, give them medals, certificates of excellence, and
publish pretty pictures of their buildings. In the case of the latter, so many ar-
chitects prefer pictures sans people. They don't want too many "scale figures"
to distract from the architecture. They want architect-friends to see the work in
its pure form -- free of people. This same attitude prevails in the planning of
their buildings. They seem to have greater interest in form than in people.

8

Form-makers are important. The luster that the profession has bestowed
upon the great should not in any way be tarnished, dut this other group , the
people's architects, should be recognized, too. These deserving architects have
contributed to the achievement of humanistic architecture for the many. These
architects, who do the most good in finding architectural answers to people's
problems, deserve the recognition which Rice gave them.

Today, the opportunities for helping people through architecture are tremen-
dous; they occur in every community. An example proving one building can help
a lot of people is the case of a slum area near a great city. The neighborhood
was sick. A form of sociological epilepsy existed. Without warning or obvious
reason, school children became involved in sieges of violence. Parents advised
their children to carry knives for self-protection. A new school was needed. One
was built — a good one. It had a potent therapeutic effect. The community's
disturbances began to disappear. The people's confidence began to reappear.
Neighbor began to trust neighbor. The kids put away their knives. The surround-
ing houses began to take on a cleaner look. The school became a symbol of bet-
ter life. Here is architecture for the people, even by the people, because the
architect encouraged teachers and parents to participate in the planning of their
new school. Function takes on more significance when the planners are also the
users. Architecture, too, becomes more meaningful when it has social implications.

It takes a special architect to lead and direct community participation. Acer-
tain receptiveness on the part of the architectwas one reason for the sociological

9

progress. He could never have convinced the users of the building that it was their
building had he displayed the extreme egotism thatseems to characterize some of
the self-proclaimed prima donnas. He was willing to give credit to the teachers
and parents who participated in the planning of this school, and wisely he was
deliberate in convincing the users that the building belonged to them. This is a
difficult procedure, but if the design-talented architect has the leadership ability
to stimulate and guide group action, and if he is able to place the welfare of his
client at the level of his own tastes and prejudices, he can achieve great archi-
tecture. Moreover, he can derive great satisfaction from this achievement. In
this way he is a people's architect. His architecture is a social art.

To this caliber of architect architecture is not so much the expression of his
personal tastes and favorite forms as it is a service to people. It is a human in-
terest and altruistic sense that makes the difference between this practitioner and
others. The architect is a conscientious leader and a designer. He is people-
conscious -- so is liis architecture.

There are not very many people's architects, but certainly more than the eight
recognized by Rice University. Rice's selection will be questioned by historians
and practitioners alike, but all great architects and architecture are controversial.
Many thoughtful professionals were involved in the selection. These eight are
representatives of the new type of architect. Each is especially sensitive to the
needs of people, and, with a willingness tohelp people solvetheirproblems within
the means of their own pocketbooks, each helps public-spirited men and women

10

of building committees build handsome buildings, and successfully communicates
with civic clubs, school boards and corporation building committees, and persuades
public officials to build better towns and cities. To this breed of architect,
architecture is a way of life.

The Rice honorees' architecture has diversity. They belong to no one
"school" of the profession. They live in different regions. They have varying
clientele. The scope and character of their projects most certainly are different;
yet they have one thing in common, their primary interest in people. Herein lies
their greatness.

11

THE RICE UNIVERSITY HONOREES

JOHN LYON REID, F.AJ.A., of San Francisco, Califor-
nia, is especially known for his school designs. He was
the architectural keynoter for the Rice academic festival in
October, 1962. His talk on the climate for design center-
ed on the translation of human values into architecture. He
believes the architecture of a community is a symbol of its
people. It is the architect who shapes this environment;
he must deal in more than facts and figures.

O'NEIL FORD, F.A.I. A., of San Antonio, Texas, is
noted for his innovations in building methodology, and his
designs for industry. In his November, 1962, presenta-
tion, he insisted that architects need to solve environmen-
tal problems, not just borrow solutions from other problems.
He believes that an architect must have professional in-
tegrity to serve those for whom he works.

VICTOR GRUEN, F.AJ.A., of New York, is a designer
of community shopping centers in the U.S. and abroad. In
his presentation, January, 1963, he questioned the "why"
and the "how" an architect is a person dedicated to im-
provement and service. His conclusion: to be an architect
is to build, to create surroundings for human advancement
and satisfaction; otherwise, he becomes a businessman
selling products instead of professional services.

, I. M. PEI, A. I. A., of New York, has done most of his

design work in urban renewal through his exemplary plan-
I ning and design of high density housing and office build-

I ings. In his talk in February, 1963, he pleaded that

i architects must be educated to evaluate the entire scheme

■j rather than dissect environment into small pieces, thus

' creating chaos.

I

12

VERNON DeMARS, A. I. A., of Los Angeles, California,
made his presentation in March, 1963. He is a designer
and planner for private and public housing and believes the
architect must consider groups of people as collections of
individuals, not as nonentities in an overall landscape.
Each housing unit must be designed with the needs of the
individual and his personality in mind, and provide him
with a diversity of view and contact.

PIETRO BELLUSCHI, F.AJ.A., is a noted architect of
churches and Deat> School of Architecture , Massachusetts
Institute of Technology. In his visit, April, 1963, he
expounded the need for self-discipline forthe architectand
the need to learn from nature the simple order which also
applies to human values. He believes art form has its place
equal to that of service. Architects who serve people must
supply them with an aesthetically pleasing environment.

CHARLES M. GOODMAN, F.AJ.A., of Washington, D.C„,
has accomplished much in residential design. His designs
for personal architecture are dictated by his basic compul-
sion to always do his best. To him this is a professional
challenge for architects. Architecture is for people. When
it reaches the grandiose, it becomes sterile and abstract,
thus alienating ihe user and the designer from society o His
presentation was in late April, 19 63.

MARSHALL SHAFFER, A. I. A., was posthumously se-
lected for honors because his professional life was dedi-
cated to the errection of hospitals to enhance and prolong
life„ He served as an architect with the Department of
Health, Education and Welfare, and his genius for organi-
zation and research and inspiration are still a dominant
force in hospital design.

13

ARCHITECTURE AT RICE SERIES

No.
1

6

Title & Date

ON PEOPLE AND THINGS
September 1961

THE UNITED NATION'S CONFERENCE
ON THE NEW SOURCES OF ENERGY
(CONFERENCE DES NATIONS UNIES SUR
LES SOURCES NOUVELLES D'ENERGIE)
October 1961

RICE PRECEPTORSHIP PROGRAM
December 1961

ALVAR AALTO AND THE ARCHITECTURE
OF FINLAND
March 1962

THE ALUMNUS CRITIC PROGRAM
May 1962

ARCHITECTURE FOR OUR TIMES
June 1962

THE PEOPLE'S ARCHITECTS
March 1963

Author

William W. Caudil

Paul Jacques Grille

William W. Caudill

Scott D. Hamilton, Jr.

Morton Lo Levy, Jr.

Howard E, Eilenberger
sketches by L. James McCullar

William W. Caudill

CORYL LaRUE JONES, Editor of the Series