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The Modern Impulse

The artistic inspiration and resolution of the modern impulse rests on four analytic attributes: use, structure, context, and social effect. Simpler to state than to realize, these criteria constitute the core of responsive and successfully realized design.

I begin with use, because above all a building has to work. The program — or function — has both a logic and a psychology to it, which is not so much a given as a challenge to the architect to interpret, together with the client, the possibilities that neither might have imagined based on the bare facts of the project (number of bedrooms, administrative offices, etc.).

These imaginative horizons include the experiential sequencing of space, conceptual aspects such as separation between public and private functions, long-term considerations like maintenance, evolving needs, flexible use, and the rest. While it is no longer true that "form follows function" to the exclusion of other attributes, a building's use guides the form and is expressed by it, the more symbiotically the better.

Structure, the second attribute, includes materials, sculptural form, light, spatial organization, systems of construction — all the aspects that constitute the materiality of a building. The guiding words here are coherence and integrity, for even as form expresses function and the logic of construction, its inner imperative is to be true to itself. It is not an ad hoc solution to a series of design problems, but a resolution of the analytic attributes in a way that makes aesthetic and experiential sense of their often conflicting demands.

Context is the third attribute, which does not mean that it comes after use and structure in order of importance or in the process of design. On the contrary, the challenge is to consider the attributes together like interlocking pieces in an artistic puzzle whose solution will not seem to favor any one part over another. Context refers to the site, the landscape or cityscape around it — not in terms of literal replication or mimicry, but of sensitivity to scale, materials, and appropriateness.

Context also includes more abstract considerations like the conceptual link to the larger fabric of American cities or even the context of modern architecture itself, which while dedicated to newness, now has a traditions of its own to which buildings may refer or defer but will in some way relate. No building stands alone; to pretend so is to let one attribute — often the sculptural form or the structure — run away with the design and violate the principle of appropriateness.

The fourth attribute, social effect or effectiveness, encompasses everything from cost and economy of means to the potential impact, not only on the people who use the buildings, but on the wider society as well.

In earlier 20th-century modernism, architecture frequently sought to solve social problems, often based on visionary and utopian notions about urban planning, workers' housing, "machines for living," and other sometimes aggressively ideological schemes for improving (or "rationalizing") the way people lived and worked.

More recently, architects have sought less to manipulate than to enable or facilitate socially positive effects of their buildings. Well-designed space, I think, can do something for people without narrowing their choices to a single approved use or prescribed organization for a particular room or space.

The architect's social responsibility is to manage this challenge with acute attention to budget and to an economy of means that extends from inner-city schools, which can provide spatial generosity at low cost, to expensive houses, whose opulence is no license for a gigantism that takes over the landscape. In urban designs the architect ought to respect the social uses and organization of city life so that the building both responds to and also improves the social fabric of which it is a part.   >>>

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Peter L. Gluck is the principal of Peter Gluck and Partners, located in New York City since 1972.

Oscar Riera Ojeda is a publisher and designer based in Philadelphia and New York.

This article is excerpted from The Modern Impulse: Peter L. Gluck and Partners, edited by Oscar Riera Ojeda, copyright © 2008, with permission of the publisher, ORO Editions.

SUBSCRIPTION SAMPLE The 6,750-square-foot (627-square-meter) Bar House was designed for a rural alpine valley, with views of the mountains in the distance. Photo: © Paul Warchol/ Courtesy ORO Editions Extra Large Image The Bar House is oriented with its long axis running east-west, maximizing solar gain during the cold winters. Photo: © Paul Warchol/ Courtesy ORO Editions Extra Large Image The interior of the Bar House sports muted hues and crisp details. Photo: © Paul Warchol/ Courtesy ORO Editions Bar House ground-floor plan drawing. Image: Peter Gluck and Partners Extra Large Image Bar House east-west section drawings looking south (top) and north (bottom). Image: Peter Gluck and Partners Extra Large Image A long exterior stair provides access to the rooftop deck of the Bar House. Photo: © Paul Warchol/ Courtesy ORO Editions Extra Large Image Above a largely transparent ground floor, the more opaque wood-clad second story of the Bar House seems to float. Photo: © Paul Warchol/ Courtesy ORO Editions Extra Large Image The Modern Impulse: Peter L. Gluck and Partners, edited by Oscar Riera Ojeda. Image: ORO Editions Extra Large Image   Click on thumbnail images to view full-size pictures.