(continued)

Buffalo, with its gargantuan steel mills, grain elevators, Louis Sullivan's Guaranty Building, and Frank Lloyd Wright's Darwin Martin House, remained the Dattner family home, where the architect lived until he enrolled at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1955.

The public high schools he attended in Buffalo (one, an imposing Victorian edifice and the other, a modest-but-stately Georgian block) are inscribed on his memory, and served as benchmarks for the schools and modular prototypes he later designed for the New York City School Construction Authority.

At MIT, Dattner was impressed both by the monumentality and surprising internal flexibility of Welles Bosworth's self-assured stone classicism, and by the humane, modern brick dormitory by Alvar Aalto.

Echoes of the undulating facade of Aalto's Baker House are found in the sweeping curves that reappear in his work. Lewis Mumford, who "illuminated the link between architecture and the culture in which it is created," and Joseph Hudnut, whose "illustrated lectures on architectural history taught, as a subtext, the primacy of substance over style," were significant figures for Dattner at MIT.

Dattner attended London's Architectural Association in 1957-58. It was, he says, "a pivotal moment, when the British New Brutalists — James Stirling, James Gowan, and Peter and Alison Smithson — were looking for a direction for modern architecture that would express the striving for social justice, the limited resources available, and the growing complexity of post-war urban life."

After college Dattner moved to New York, because it seemed to be a meritocracy filled with opportunity. And so it was; he has embraced those opportunities, and continues to pursue them with steadfast optimism.

Against the Tide

Richard Dattner has spent most of his career swimming upstream, against the tide of architectural fashion. When he opened his practice in New York City in the 1960s, he designed playgrounds, housing projects, and some light industrial buildings.

When federal funding began to dry up and most architects abandoned the public sector, his firm remained committed to public work. Few of those who continued to specialize in building public facilities pursued them with the same ambition; hardly any have tackled projects on such a wide variety of scales, of so many building types.

And though many architects repeated the modernist mantra throughout the postmodern era, few really allowed function to define form, or remained primarily committed to social programs.

The Asphalt Green AquaCenter

A unique partnership between a group of dedicated philanthropists and New York City resulted in the development of the city's leading aquatic facility, on a difficult triangular site wedged between a city playground, sanitation ramp, and the F.D.R. Drive.

Asphalt Green (named for the parabolic, former asphalt plant) operates the facility at no cost to the city by charging 70 percent of its users and providing free public access to 30 percent of its programs.

The core of the 80,000-square-foot (7500-square-meter) AquaCenter, completed in 1994, is a 50-meter, 8-lane, Olympic-standard pool with state-of-the-art competition gutters and re-circulation systems. The pool can be divided into three zones by floating movable bulkheads, creating a 50-meter-long-course venue or two 25-yard pools.

A hydraulic, movable floor can vary the depth of one end of the pool from two meters to floor-deck level for handicapped access and swimming instruction, and a large underwater window is available for observation and instruction.

Seven hundred spectators can be accommodated at swimming meets and diving competitions at one- and three-meter levels. Upper levels of the AquaCenter house fitness floors and administrative offices for the five-acre Asphalt Green campus.

Architecture Out of the Ordinary

Dattner's ability to make the most of scarce resources in a high-spirited way has enabled him to build schools, libraries, housing, subway stations, and parks that exceed expectations.

His firm pursued the pragmatic and the here-and-now throughout the 1980s, when many in the profession valued the past more than the present, and sought meaning in symbols instead of spaces. While most other architects either joined large firms or practiced independently, Dattner put together a medium-size firm.

Unlike firms identified with a single design approach that becomes a recognizable style, Dattner has relegated imagery to a secondary position. His work has elements which appear on several projects — curved planes, wavy canopies, patterned brick bands — but these are simple, economical means by which to humanize a building and give a place identity.

The aesthetics and syntax of building forms derive from the program, site, and context. Like the architect he most respects, Renzo Piano, the process of "inventing a design language appropriate to the project" is Dattner's first step toward a design solution.

At the beginning of this new century, he was joined in partnership by four of his long-time associates, and the firm was renamed Richard Dattner & Partners Architects P.C. Together, they continue the firm's goal — the production of architecture "which aims at the realization of our clients' highest aspirations, respecting our shared social responsibility, and built within available resources."

Jayne Merkel edits Oculus, the magazine of the AIA New York Chapter, and serves on the editorial board of Architectural Design in London. She has written for Art in America, Artforum, Architecture, Progressive Architecture, and numerous other publications.

This article is an extract from Richard Dattner: Selected and Current Works from the Master Architect Series IV, copyright © 2000 by The Images Publishing Group Pty. Ltd. The book is available from Amazon.com.

 

Richard Dattner's AquaCenter wedged between highway, ramp and playground. Photo: Jeff Goldberg/ESTO South wall, facing the playing field. Photo: Jeff Goldberg/ESTO Section through pool and activity floors. Image: Richard Dattner Curved steel trusses enclose pool. Photo: Jeff Goldberg/ESTO Asphalt Plant and AquaCenter along F.D.R. Drive, New York. Photo: Jeff Goldberg/ESTO The Master Architect Series IV: RIchard Dattner. Image: Images Publishing Group   Click on thumbnail images to view full-size pictures.