from the ground up
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From the Ground Up
Modernism Away from the Center
DAN HOFFMAN
Arizona State University
Over the coming year, readers of the JAE will see a significant expansion of the Reviews section
to include critical commentary on exhibits, symposia, competitions, buildings, practices, films,
and, of course, books. In enlarging the scope of this section, the editors wish to open a dialogue
and critique around research, modes of inquiry, and new forms of practice as they influence both
architectural production and education. In this first article, Dan Hoffman was invited to provide
a context for understanding the work of architectural firms such as Duvall Decker whose practices
promote new forms of extramural research and inquiry.The Editors
The past two decades have witnessed the emergence
of a number of significant, regionally based architec-
tural practices. Often located in small cities, far from
the traditional centers of influence (Los Angeles,
Chicago, and New York), these practices seek inspira-
tion from what is left of the historical building and
material cultures that once characterized their
respective regions.
Architects such as Brian MacCay-Lyons in Nova
Scotia, Lake/Flato in San Antonio, Marlon Blackwell in
Northwest Arkansas, Rick Joy in Tucson, and Duvall
Decker in Jackson, Mississippi, demonstrate that local
conditions can provide a fertile ground for architec-
tural inventionthat careful attention to climate,
culture, and circumstance can produce work that
reflects back upon the nature of a place in significant
ways.
This work has fresh, even startling quality and is
notable for the absence of facile references to received
historic imagery such as the pitched roofs and notional
crossed braced framing used on rural and suburban
malls throughout the country. It is also free of the
rhetoric of speed typical of the jet-stream culture that
connects the centers of influence. Today, work that
emerges from the ground up must engage both local
and international influences. It is the presence of both
conditions that makes these architects worthy of further
consideration.
It is difficult to generalize about such a wide
range of work and places, but some common threads
can be detected. The first involves the modernist
notion of construction as the making of ideas and
things out of basic material independent of context.
This interpretation of modernism is the practical side
of the theory-centered style of philosophy and science
where ideas are developed out of empirical analysis
and study.
1. Government Canyon Visitor Center. (Photography by Chris Cooper.
Courtesy of Lake/Flato Architects.)
2. Danielson Cottage. (Courtesy of Brian MacKay-Lyons.)
101 HOFFMAN Journal of Architectural Education,
pp. 101102 2007 ACSA
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This might appear contradictory to the strong
local or contextual influences in the work, such as the
use of local materials and responsiveness to climate,
etc. However, all the architects noted above have
adopted the reduced geometry of elemental forms as
a primary formal vehicle against which the particular-
ities of the locale are registered. Modernist motifs such
as flat or mono pitched roofs, the preferencing of
thinness over mass, and the visible layering of building
components are all present and achieve a renewed
vitality and energy through these designs. It is as if the
work succeeds despite its distance from long-estab-
lished international cultural centers, demonstrating the
skill and resourcefulness of the architect working as
a creative agent in remote locales. The deliberate
and self-conscious modernism of the work enables the
architect to maintain connections to the profession at
the national and international levels and is a way in
which an architect can achieve notice and commissions
in other areas.
This display of local materials and phenomena as
such addresses the second resonance of the word,
construction as the art of building, the deliberate
foregrounding of the means of assembly through the
elaboration of detail. Interestingly enough, this fasci-
nation with detail often occurs in the absence of
a local craft tradition, with local economies unable to
support high levels of skill in the building trades. This
requires the architect to become a repository of
knowledge about the building arts, actively preserving
and/or reviving lost skills. In this way, architecture
becomes a didactic tool, a self-conscious artifact of
material culture. It is not a coincidence that many of
these architects teach in local universities, using their
practice as a way of extending and deepening local
knowledge while maintaining a connection to inter-
national culture and trends.
Continuing the didactic thread, a teaching
position is often the reason why the architect went
to the remote location in the first place, in search of
space, time, resources, and clients that would not be
readily available to a young architect in the major
cultural centers. Modernism remains the lingua
franca of architectural expression, providing creative
opportunities for localized invention while main-
taining contact with the discipline at large.
The work of Duvall Decker falls clearly within this
recent tendency. Their acute awareness of
their Mississippi locale is a source of inspiration
and invention. Rather than viewing the particular
conditions of the place as limitations (extreme
humidity, lack of skilled labor, etc.), they embrace
these issues as problems to be solved in a creative
manner, a form of resistance that raises the grain on
the work. The focus on detail is of particular interest.
By directing our gaze to a part (or detail) rather than
the whole, they seek a space for interpretation and
phenomenological interaction, slowing down the
interaction between the building and the occupant. In
this way, the architecture of the building presents itself
as resistance to imagery and the facile consumption of
the building as a cultural signifier. Their work has an
inherent modesty, seeping into the background as
a way of engaging the surrounding locale. In this way,
they project both modesty and character, revealing
a particular sensitivity to the social conditions of doing
work in a small community.The social dimension of the
work also extends to the issue of craft-based knowl-
edge (or the lack thereof) in the local building com-
munity. As with other architects practicing from the
ground up, the firm has had to work closely with the
local building trades to introduce new skills (or recover
old ones) needed to complete the work. Small details
such as the assembly of a wood lattice or curved
ceiling panel become significant achievements from an
architectural and a cultural perspective.
It is this deliberate and slow process of formal
invention and the recovery of building knowledge
that gives the work of Duvall Decker and other
architects working away from the center its partic-
ular quality. Modernist architecture remains as
framework, providing the opportunity to absorb
local circumstances through inventive details while
maintaining a connection to a broader discourse.
Working from the ground up, they have established
a point of contact between their local community
and the world at large. Here, architecture serves
both as an opportunity for individual invention and
a repository of local knowledge.
3. Razorback Country Club, Fayetville, Arkansas. (Courtesy of Marlon
Blackwell Architect.)
4. Desert Nomad House. (Photography by Bill Timmerman. Courtesy
of Rick Joy Architects.)
From the Ground Up: Modernism Away from the Center 102
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