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

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