As I was doing a bit of research on my old drafting professor, and head of the Building Science program at USC, Pierre Koenig earlier today [1], I was reminded as to why I loved modernist architecture so much. It’s rare to see such buildings nowadays, especially in residential construction, but ever since my time as an undergraduate student I have been very fond of “the style that nearly” triumphed over the cookie cutter Levittown model of cheaply built and low-skilled residential construction work.

The promise of modernist residential structure, as exemplified by the case study houses of which Mr. Koenig’s work was so exemplary a model of, was for work that was architecturally stunning, quick to build, and also very inexpensive, but also work that was intended on being done one and largely for all. The point of “the style that nearly” was to bring high quality architecture as well as the cost benefits of industrial processes into the hands of ordinary people. The materials used for such buildings tended to be steel and glass, both of which I am immensely fond of, used elegantly and simply to create clean and sleek designs.

All of this is immensely appealing to me (and, I suppose, to people like me). But for a variety of reasons it was not appealing to the general public at large. For one, glass and metal strike many people as a bit cold compared to wood and stone. For another, heavy amounts of glass strike people as not very private, and residential buildings are generally designed with a great deal of privacy in mind. People, by and large, do not like living in glass houses. I happen to like modernist architecture in general for its focus in exposing the physical plant of buildings–ductwork and so on, making a building more spacious, a lot of people like to hide such matters, creating an illusion of privacy and solidity and not wanting to see the guts of their buildings and the lives of their inhabitants in the relative open. To each his own.

According to the Billboard Book of Number One Albums, Billy Joel intentionally wrote the songs of his #1 album “Glass Houses” with a fun and somewhat immature mood in mind. Dealing with such subjects as love and rock criticism, he intentionally downplayed the more serious aspects of his craft. Intriguingly enough, he showed a vastly more ecumenical attitude to the new wave bands than did artists such as Bob Seger and Bryan Adams, both of whom had popular hits making fun of the lack of “rock” in a lot of the new music of the early 1980’s (“I Like That Old Time Rock & Roll,” and “Kids Wanna Rock,” respectively).

In contrast to this attitude, in his song “It’s Still Rock & Roll To Me,” Billy Joel commented on the wide and far-flung influences into rock & roll, recognizing (correctly) that those who sought to draw boundary lines on what was and what was not properly rock & roll were missing the point, and that those who drew such arbitrary boundaries lived in glass houses, and would show themselves to be biased and unjust judges. He was, of course, quite right, and quite generous in his open hand of fellowship to often maligned new wave bands. But in so doing he reminded us all again that few people wanted to live in glass houses–that was the whole point of his exercise, after all.

But it is not only fans of modernist architecture or hypocritical rock music critics (who can’t even be bothered to make a proper Rock & Roll Hall of Fame) who live in glass houses. Increasingly, the people of the world and especially their governments live in glass houses. This is something that we generally tend to ignore or forget as quickly as possible, but to an amazing and often uncomfortable degree our lives are at least potentially public. Most governments in particular would rather their own actions be secret but this is also becoming increasingly difficult. Technology is a two-edged sword–what makes the lives of people less private to others who might want to snoop on them also makes the actions of those same people more public as well.

For example, I was searching this evening for any upcoming elections on secession (I kept on finding more information than I wanted to know about Hawaiian nationalism, which I found a bit bothersome). At any rate, without finding what I was looking for I managed to find a very good list of elections coming up in 2012 [2]. In particular, I was curious about those nations that seem to be facing backlashes against free and open trade (like France and South Korea) or whose ruling (?) coalitions appear fragile and incompetent, like Madagascar and Moldova, who can’t even be bothered to elect presidents (Moldova has been without a president in more than two years, even longer than Belgium’s debacle [3], making it impossible to deal with a solution to the problem of the Transdniestria Republic, which elected its own president last last year. Both Madagascar and Moldova have problems in that it is currently impossible for anyone to form a parliamentary majority, and hence there is no legitimacy in their political systems. Needless to say, I imagine it’s not a development that they wish to be trumpeted to the whole world, either.

Sadly, it is not only architects that have to deal with the problem that so few people enjoy living in glass houses. I don’t have an issue with it, so long as private rooms are kept private, but it seems to be something that bothers most people, it would seem. Otto von Bismarck one said, allegedly, that it is best that societies do not know how their laws or how their sausages are made. The second would be likely to make many vegetarians as they become cynical about how our food is made, as has happened in our generation, and the first would make them cynical about the corruption of political systems, as has happened in our generation as well. Since we desire to be ignorant about matters, we cannot bear to live in glass houses, and seem to be rather unhappy and upset right now that our lives our glass houses, much to our chagrin. Perhaps my old professor would enjoy the irony of our lives being glass houses, and perhaps he would work hard to make that an architectural reality as well as a communications reality. I’d like to think so at least, since he was a drily humorous fellow with a taste for irony. But since he cannot enjoy the irony any longer, I suppose I shall have the honor of doing so on his behalf.

[1] https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2012/03/02/through-a-glass-darkly/

[2] http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/12/30/2012_global_elections?page=full

[3] https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2011/02/21/who-needs-government-anyway-belgium-doesnt/