Pilgrimage to Fallingwater

Our summer vacation this year included a trip across Pennsylvania to Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater. While much ink has been spilled on this particular house, what I thought was interesting is why it remains such a pilgrimage site in the 21st century, not only for anyone interested in modern architecture and design but also for regular tourists. I haven't read enough about Wright or even the house to add anything much to the volumes already written, but a recent book, Franklin Toker’s Fallingwater Rising: Frank Lloyd Wright, E.J. Kaufmann, and American’s Most Extraordinary House (New York: Knopf, 2003), sparked some ideas towards a contemporary reading of Fallingwater. Buoyed by documents and letters recently come to light, Toker debunks many Fallingwater myths. But most interestingly, he considers the relationship between the architect and his client, or rather, patron, E.J. Kaufmann, as central to the house’s creation and subsequent fame. He also looks in detail at the role Kaufmann’s son, the imaginatively named E.J. Kaufmann Jr, curator at MoMA, played in ensuring the house’s lasting reputation and transfer into a tourist site.

the classic photo: "stand here and shoot"

The Patron

Wright’s patron Edgar Kaufmann owned a department store, specifically the department store in Pittsburg during the 1920s and 30s, and, while he was very wealthy, Toker argues Kaufmann was always an outsider in Pittsburg society. Jewish businessman were generally excluded from the elite society of Gilded Age America. In Pittsburg, elite society meant the steel and coke barons – the Mellons, Fricks and Carnegies. Furthermore, as a department store owner (a mere merchant), Kaufmann was positioned on a lower rung of both social and financial ladders.

However, Kaufmann was known for his innovative business practices and as a patron of the arts. He showed art and design regularly in the store and Toker argues that he was also particularly interested in modernist art and design – he knew the Viennese designers Paul Frankl and Joseph Urban and also some German modernists personally from time spent abroad. The famous 1913 New York Armory exhibition toured on to Pittsburg and was shown in Kaufmann’s store. There was a close connection between the promotion of modernism and consumer culture here – the modernist art blockbuster went not to a gallery or museum in Pittsburg, but to Kaufmann’s department store.

In his shift from modernist art, design and fashion to architecture, Kaufmann would make his mark through becoming one of American modernism’s greatest patrons. Ten years after Fallingwater, he commissioned Richard Neutra to design him a winter escape house in California, the Kaufmann Desert House. Kaufmann clearly understood design’s value as a means of advertising his store as well as elevating his social status. Fallingwater could function as symbolic capital to use against the society of Pittsburg from which Kaufmann was excluded. However, the continued public relations coup of Fallingwater would take Kaufmann beyond Pittsburg to national and international fame.

Franklin Toker raises a convincing argument that Kaufmann’s changing architectural styles was calculated for maximum effect. Frank Lloyd Wright referred to him as “the Shopper” and in a sense Kaufmann consumed architectural styles – first a suburban home by the Beaux Arts-trained Benno Janssenn in the 1920s, then Wright’s Fallingwater in 1937, and finally Neutra’s Kaufmann Desert House in 1949. Toker argues: “The cost and care that Kaufmann lavished on his three houses … shows that, like his Medici predecessors, he knew that a merchant could rely on no more effective advertising than a glamorous lifestyle. In the 1930s the patrician John Nicholas Brown refused Life magazine’s request to publish his modern house, but Kaufmann accommodated everyone who wanted to write on Fallingwater. His homes were not merely opulent: each was a perfect definition of high style at the moment. Kaufmann’s suburban Pittsburgh estate perfectly expressed the lavishness of the nineteen-twenties, Fallingwater the search for American roots in the Depression thirties, and his California house the technological beguilement of the postwar forties and fifties.” (Toker, p.53).

MoMA held an exhibition on Fallingwater in 1937, not long after the house was finished, and soon after the Time-Life publication machine got onboard via its owner, Henry R. Luce, a promoter of modernism and MoMA board member. Ten years later, Luce promoted Neutra and the Kaufmann Neutra House through his magazines in much the same way as he had Wright and Fallingwater. With both houses, the circulation of photographs was crucial – neither were in accessible cultural centers so very few people saw them first hand (with the exception of well-known architects who made the pilgrimage – Gropius, Breuer and Aalto, for example, all made it to Fallingwater within a few years of its completion). Luce was also famous for his advocacy of “the American century”, an expression of mid-century manifest destiny whereby American culture should rightly be spread around the world with religious zeal. In this context, both Wright’s and Neutra’s homes could be seen as quintessentially American, expressive of indigenous modernism in the thirties and technological supremacy in the postwar era.

A 21st century pilgrimage

Whatever the house meant in the prewar era, today, it is a major tourist site and pilgrimage for architecture and design enthusiasts from all over the world. Our tour guide said the house sees upwards of 135 000 visitors every year (and it closes for a few months in winter) and has an annual budget of around $3 million. But I’m jumping ahead a little. Like all great pilgrimages, a long journey is an important part of the process and for most, a trip to Fallingwater is a major commitment. The house is not near any other notable cultural sites, and the closest city, Pittsburg, is not usually noted for its tourist appeal. Typically, I suppose, most tourists get there by sitting many hours in an automobile across Pennsylvania from East Coast cities such as Washington, Philadelphia or New York (we came across from the latter). While the trip to Fallingwater is unlike a traditional pilgrimage which involves some kind of physical effort, it does involve singular commitment and importantly, a sacrifice of time.

Upon arrival, the sacred site of American architecture is a well managed tourist experience. After parking the car, you begin at the Kaufmann Jr-designed visitor’s center (complete with café, bathrooms, kid’s playroom and the obligatory gift store). The amenities branch from a central ticket booth, all constructed from raw wood, open to the forests all around and raised above the ground. It all feels like a 1970s environmental center (which, in a sense, it is) and thankfully makes no attempt to copy Fallingwater. From here, pilgrims are shuffled through in small groups to the house in tightly organized 55 minute tours (no photography, no kids). I opted for the 2 hour in-depth tour, which, at $55, wasn’t cheap, but at least I got to take some photographs (enjoy them, please).

The house is situated in the Laurel Highlands, an area formerly used for trapping, logging and mining before becoming a vacation area for prosperous Pittsburg families after the turn of the century. Gilded Age steel barons built mansions in the area to escape the city’s pollution (ironic, given the industries they had made their money in were the major polluters). With the phenomenon of the automobile in the 1920s, the concept of the weekender arose amongst America’s wealthy and for the Pittsburg families, the completion of the Pennsylvania Turnpike in the 1930s made travel to the area quicker and importantly, more privatized (previously it was accessible by train). Interestingly, Fallingwater now it stands one of the poorest counties in Pennsylvania whose main industry seems to be tourism (hiking, canoeing, skiing, etc).

While Modernism is generally associated with the city, many of its classic domestic dwellings were designed specifically as escapes from the urban environment – Fallingwater, Mies’ Farnsworth House, Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye and Philip Johnson’s Glass House all fit the bill. Which seems somewhat ironic given modernism’s emphasis on new technologies, mass production and standardization (though this quartet were specifically not standardized but unique and lovingly hand-crafted). I wrote in a previous post about Modernism’s relationship to the “back to nature” ideal of the 1920s and 30s, exemplified in this example by Kaufmann’s first forays into the area, a summer camp for Kaufmann Department Store employees to enjoy outdoor life – hiking, swimming, etc – again to escape from the pollution and crowds of industrial Pittsburg. Fresh air, exercise, healthy eating and natural light all were all also seen as a corrective to 19th century Victorian lifestyles. And these modern ideals are built into Fallingwater – the classic photos don’t give you the phenomenological experience – the waterfall’s constant sound provides a background noise over which you hear occasional bird calls, the heavy forest air is everywhere, flashes of birds appear through the trees. The house itself is surrounded by the forest, and once inside Wright is constantly pulling you outside with horizontal lines, low ceilings and the folds in the bedrooms (see photo below).

And this may well be the intriguing key to Fallingwater, that juxtaposition of the mechanical modern world with the sublime power of nature. At least that’s the appeal – though Wright did little landscaping, the site itself was hardly primeval forest, having been mined, timbered, farmed and hunted for over a century before Kaufmann began regenerating it. Wright’s modernism, in turn, is hardly the harsh geometry of European modernists – the molded concrete, the warm tones and natural materials speak of a humanist version of modernism, tempered to interact with the surrounding forest (unlike, say, the insulated glass boxes of Mies and PJ).

The specifically American references are also intriguing – the “Pueblo steps” (see above) and the concrete molded to look like adobe provide an indigenous reference for the house (and for American modernism) – here is concrete as symbolic as much as functional. However, Pueblos are specific to the Southwest Native Americans, not the indigenous peoples of the Laurel Highlands. Whatever happened to them or what type of dwellings they lived in I’m not sure (but they certainly weren’t made of adobe). My inquiries while in the area resulted in replies such as William Penn always had a good relationship with the Indians, or, there were no Indian Wars in Pennsylvania (I guess they all just packed up and left then?). So are we then left with a vague indigenous veneer of adobe concrete that suggests “native roots” while simultaneously obscuring the particularities of local history?

The other specifically American reference is Wright’s emphasis on the primal scene of American architecture, the New England hearth. The heart of the house, the hearth is at the center of Fallingwater’s social life, provider of warmth (though the house also had heating) and also where Wright’s unwieldy and impractical kettle stood unused for many years (see above photo). This main socializing space also functions as a commercial showcase for a modern department store king. Ample shelving displays a cornucopia of objects from around the world, decontextualized and stripped of their original meanings or religious significance to become collectable exotica – Christian icons illuminated by Tiffany lamps under Chinese gravestones. Finally, adding to its Depression appeal, Fallingwater was also a futuristic “house of tomorrow” with a modern efficient kitchen with table and counters made using (recently invented) Formica that certainly looks post-war rather than pre-war (see below). Cork-paneled bathrooms and use of fluorescent lighting were also innovative and modern.

Finally, what still appeals to the 21st century pilgrim? Certainly the link between nature and authenticity remain – after sixty years, the yearning to escape from urban life to a calm, undisturbed space for self-reflection and contemplation of “nature” remains strong. Despite Wright’s attempts at integration with the site, Nature remains separated from everyday (urban) life, mythologized as it becomes increasingly scarce. Though, even in the 1930s, this was hardly “wild” nature, driving up a former logging road in an automobile to the front door of a luxury modern home. And of course, there’s the ever-enduring American fantasy of wealth – Kaufmann’s Fallingwater is a lifestyle to aspire to. Note, lastly, the adjacent servants quarters (which, to be fair, were designed by Wright with equal care as the rest of the house). And don’t forget the giftshop on your way out.

All photos by D.J. Huppatz

Nada Gordon: Folly

In a 21st American culture where simple dichotomies rule – good vs. evil, us vs. them, “as if it were a choice between OUD and BANJO” – Nada Gordon’s recent book of poetry, Folly (New York: Roof Books, 2007), is a self-conscious play and mix, an affected performance, a dandy language parade in sequins, wigs and false eyelashes where everyone is (good&evil) and they are us in the crumbling shortcake (eat me) world. A burlesque romp through language, Folly is corrosive precisely by virtue of its complexities and its ambiguities – there are no absolutes here, seriousness is constantly undercut by humor and frivolity interrupted by profundity.

Gordon’s omnivorous text includes material appropriated from wildly eclectic sources in what feels like a surreal carnival. In it, we encounter an odd cast of characters, from Bollywood’s “Asha Bhosle, in a mirrored choli” (“Vagabond Imperialism”, p.21) to Emma Lazarus, author of the poem on the Statue of Liberty, who says, “Why America Sucks. Corporate Pigs, it’s not going to work anymore.” The Chorus, comprising Loquacious the Snail, Melissa, a Chameleon and Mr Fucko, a Hamster, replies: “America sucks dick! America sucks dick!” (“Why America Sucks”, p. 65). Some pieces, such as “Abnormal Discharge” seem to be culled from listserves or internet chatrooms: “chlamydia thru blood transfusion? … VERY SCARED should i be worried about this? Jeni” (p.22) But the most surreal dialogue must be God’s exchange with a Star-Shaped Pillow, Fat Thing, Rusty Helmet, Earthquake, The Skull on the President and Google. When God says “I feel so impotent”, Google says, “Did you mean to search for “I feel so important.” God finishes: “I feel so important” (“Viagric Importunings” p.59). Viagric indeed.

But Folly is more than simply a loose collection of poems. The book is structured like a play – three acts and an intermission – or, more accurately perhaps, an opera or a musical (think cabaret or pantomime rather than Wagner). From the carnivalesque cover to the decorative flourish beside each poem’s title, the book itself is a complete performance, including passages of dialogue from a cast of thousands (well, a couple of hundred anyway), epigraphs and asides that continually disturb the integrity of individual poems. With its baroque language, the voluptuous words of Folly strain to express themselves, dance on the rim where words whirl towards the point of inadequacy, the overload expressed in the poem “Porpo-Thang”: “There isn’t a place in this world that doesn’t sooner or later drown in the porridge of upload.” (p.25)

The Wisdom of Gerrit Gerritszoon

The first obvious reference point of Folly is Desiderius Erasmus’ Praise of Folly and it is worth returning there in order to unravel some binding threads (aside: while researching this section, I discovered Erasmus’ real name was actually Gerrit Gerritszoon – now why would you want to change that?). Erasmus was an interesting character: a Renaissance Greek and Latin scholar but simultaneously a Christian scholar who spent much time and effort trying to reconcile Classical learning and Christian doctrine. Written in 1509, his Praise of Folly engages humor, satire and parody in its depiction of corrupt and hypocritical clergy, written at a time when the hegemony of the Catholic Church was under threat (and less than a decade later, the fragmentation began). Erasmus’ main character is Folly, a Classical “goddess” born of Plutus and Youth (suckled by Drunkenness and Ignorance) who exposes the inherent folly in everyone. Rather than Wisdom decrying foolishness from the pulpit (as we might expect in a Classical/Christian text), in Erasmus’ text, it is Folly who is praising herself, producing a dilemma of uncertainty for the reader. Designed to shock, provoke and question the state of medieval values, Erasmus’ rhetorical paradox also posits the coexistence of irreconcilable truths – how can we believe Folly praising folly?

Erasmus’ narrator, Folly, is a complex character, at times reflecting intellectual pomposity, at others child-like innocence. There are, for Erasmus, a variety of follies – from harmless triviality to dangerous lunacy (and everything in between). Uncomfortably for men of reason, Erasmus’ Folly also has moments of profound insight, making it impossible to distinguish folly from wisdom. Folly is above all human – ignorance, error and foolishness are all characteristically human qualities. Indeed, from a purely rationalist perspective, love is man’s (sic) greatest folly. Or folly is man’s greatest love? Erasmus not only makes clear our dependence upon folly for human happiness but also shows us that even the (reputedly) wisest man in Christendom wasn’t above having a good laugh, particularly at his own expense (he includes sly and comical references to himself). Finally, and perhaps most importantly for Gordon, Erasmus’ most beloved deity is female.

A discharge which forms an encrustation

While Erasmus’ Folly begins by “spouting a hotchpotch of words”, Gordon’s Folly opens with: “Who isn’t envaginated in rhetoric?” (“Vagabond Imperialism”, p.21). And the book certainly utilizes the tactic of “envagination” to critique Erasmus’ patriarchal assumptions about women. Gordon quotes Erasmus in the preface: “That an ape will be an ape, though clad in purple; so a woman will be a woman, ie., a fool, whatever disguise she takes up.” So Gordon took this cue literally in ACT ONE, entitling it, “An Ape in Purple Clothing” and continually evoking the most extravagant ornament and costume so beloved by Erasmus’ woman: “they garnish themselves with paint, washes, perfumes, and all other mysteries of ornament” (aside at the bottom of p.21). Like Erasmus, Gordon also includes herself in the text, most memorably in a comical narrative about the book itself between Nada (the author), James (the editor/publisher) and Folly. While Folly interrupts with “Have I got a proposition for you!”, Nada explains the book’s structure to her editor (and, of course, to her readers):

“An Ape in Purple Clothing” affectionately addresses the follies of sex, gender, and decoration; “A Very Boring Society” the folly of the social – of church’n’state™; and “A Dissonant Gaiety” the folly (PBUH) of poetry. In my third section and in Erasmus’, the irony doubles back on itself to negate itself – transforming into genuine (if cynical) praise.” (“A Conversation”, p. 68)

While Gordon’s aesthetic might contain echoes of Luce Irigaray or Hélène Cixous’ “feminine” language, in an American context, Kathy Acker’s deconstructions of patriarchal narratives might be a more direct precursor for Gordon’s envaginated performance. Certainly Acker’s appropriation and reworking of classic texts, her juxtaposition of “literary” language with “vulgar” language and even her sense of humor all find parallels in Gordon’s Folly. A line like Folly’s query to “redolent Ahnold” serves to illustrate all three parallels: “would you, could you, learn to felch / deceitful Beauty’s steely meany?” (“Decency in the Arts, p. 61)

Gordon’s writing might also been seen in the context of post-Language aesthetics, particularly the subversive strategies of Flarf. Much Flarf poetry is characterized by the appropriation of a wide variety of linguistic material – “The world is just one great big beautiful verbal quarry, after all” said Gordon in a 2003 interview – and its messy poly-vocal quality is a logical extension of Language writing’s challenge to the notion of authorship. But for Gordon particularly, the impact of Bernadette Mayer’s process-generated aesthetics is evident (Gordon wrote a thesis on Mayer’s work). In this way, Gordon’s work may be read as a poetic performance text created through various experimental processes, in which the process of sifting through the verbal quarry may well be as important than the creation of discrete, stable “poems”.

There may be more than a touch of Dada in all this absurdity, as noted by Rick Synder’s recent overview of Flarf (in Jacket #31, October 2006). If so, I’d place Folly in the provocative tradition of Zurich’s Cabaret Voltaire – the masks, costumes, bizarre dance and puppet performances, wailing chants and even, yes, poetry recitals – rather than, say, last year’s MoMA survey of dead Dada masterpieces. Gordon’s poem, “Fountain”, confirms a Dada connection, via an homage (?) to Duchamp, critically noting Dada’s sanitation:

The world smells
like a urinal
mint today – I guess
from all the “cleansing.”

(“Fountain”, p.53)

The poetry of Folly is less characterized by (self-conscious) “poetic” language than verbal discharge, more or less codified. At times the writing is clear and rational (as in the lines above from “Fountain”), at others, tortured and confusing. This latter state is best illustrated when Gordon patches in non-native speaker’s English with its warped grammar and poetic associations. In “Human Are Always Growing”, for example, Folly (wino-mumbling) quotes a string of “bad” English sentences:

Everybody is exactly watching the irrational TV companies programs.
If every people except irrational to real, people are going to nihilistic or machine.
Saddam has weapons of mess distraction. (“Human Are Always Growing”, p.55)

The final line is more suggestive than the official media line and suggests instead the tactics of distraction utilized by the US government and official media in the “irrational” Iraq war. Finally, it is worth mentioning again that the serious subject matter is challenged by the humorous tone that runs through much of the dialogue in the book. While some may have trouble finding a clear ethical stance amongst all this folly, as literature, Folly can also be placed in a long tradition of tragi-comic dialogue and characters in English language poetry from Chaucer to Shakespeare to Joyce.


“The folly of a carousel is the folly of life: lugubrious, sporadically hyperactive, ultimately terminal.” (p.12)

Nature Got Loose Identity and Changed Shape

As Stan Apps noted in his recent review of Folly, Gordon’s “poems reject existing standards of taste as too exclusive to be applicable to democratic society” (Jacket, No.33, July 2007). The reference to taste made me think of Folly as camp. In "Notes on 'Camp'", Susan Sontag linked camp to an excessively decorative sensibility that might apply here, a sensibility she describes as a “disengaged, unserious, ‘aesthete’s vision’ characterized by the spirit of extravagance.” Further, Sontag writes of the paradoxical nature of camp in terms that may help illuminate Gordon’s project:

“Camp taste turns its back on the good-bad axis of ordinary aesthetic judgment. Camp doesn't reverse things. It doesn't argue that the good is bad, or the bad is good. What it does is to offer for art (and life) a different – a supplementary – set of standards.” (Section 34)

And further:

“The traditional means for going beyond straight seriousness – irony, satire – seem feeble today, inadequate to the culturally oversaturated medium in which contemporary sensibility is schooled. Camp introduces a new standard: artifice as an ideal, theatricality.” (Section 43)

While Sontag’s camp is usually linked to a specific gay 1960s sensibility, the aesthetic might be understood in a much broader sense. In a contemporary context, how might we response to the “oversaturated” image-world of 21st century American culture? For Gordon, it seems the response involves utilizing similar means of artificiality, hyper-reality or virtuality, but always with a complexity and ambiguity that contemporary mass media lack (“good & evil”, “BANJO or OUD”). In this way, Gordon’s critical theatricality presents no clear ethical stance, but instead forces the reader to actually participate by thinking (which can be a distressingly uncomfortable at times).

Following this in another direction, I wonder if Gordon’s hyper-intensity and excessively baroque language might also create a passage through to a heightened awareness of bodily sensations, as in this quote by Juliet in “Soapy Erection” (p.28):

His lips that licking my folded claspings send up
through the nerves puffs of melody from my painted
mouth.

Oily nipple, thrill of entry. Contracting tongues to
Activate the hearts, dual doumbeks in the craving
Room.

Carnival Elsewhere

“It’s not that the personal is the political. It’s that the interpersonal is the political.” (Nada Gordon, A Conversation with Tom Beckett, Jacket, No. 23, August 2003)

Finally, Gordon’s performative text creates an elsewhere space that might coincide with Bakhtin’s ideas about the carnival. Mikhail Bakhtin’s Rabelais and His World (published in 1965) presents a vision of collectivity in just such an elsewhere space that is also, for him, a space of liberation or emancipation. Bakhtin’s book on the 16th century French novelist François Rabelais celebrates the lust, bingeing and excess of the medieval carnival, a space marked by the suspension of hierarchies and prohibitions. Rather than simply anarchy or a safety valve for releasing societal tensions, the elsewhere space of the carnival creates the potential for negotiating new relationships. In his analysis, Bakhtin focused on the festive culture of the marketplace and the street, rather than the high intellectual culture of the Renaissance (Rabelais is presented as a kind of last gasp of the medieval before the abstract universal theories of Descartes et al. Might Erasmus also be included alongside Rabelais, with his ambiguity, sensuality and emphasis on heterogeneity?). Carnivalesque literature, argues Bakhtin, could function as a challenge to the highly privatised world of mid-20th century capitalism.

As in the medieval carnival, for Gordon and her cast, disguise, mask and costume are key aesthetic devices. Gordon’s fundamentally unstable characters, emphasis on sensual language, uncodified verbal discharge and the combination of sacred and profane suggest a carnivalesque literature for the 21st century. Furthermore, her emphasis on the vernacular, or more precisely, mix of the vernacular with “high cultural” references, also link Folly to Rabelais’ carnival world.

For Bakhtin, the carnivalesque is a refusal to submit to the hegemony of the cultural status quo, with the suspension of heirarchies allowing multiple voices to be heard (particularly those that are usually suppressed or ignored). This polyvocal ideal of the carnival could be seen as a corrective within a highly uni-vocal dominant culture (in his case, of Stalin, in Gordon’s, the mass media culture of 21st century USA). Importantly, the carnival clears space for voices of those usually silenced and allows us to enter into new dialogues with them. Gordon’s inclusion of the voice of Sunny Pain, a New York subway beggar, in “Nothing is Untitled” (p.92), is a key example. Pain’s voice appears in this context:

“hit me! dance dance (pulsing) dance dance

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.
My name is Sunny Pain.
I’m homeless and I’m hungry.
If you don’t have it
I can understand it
because I don’t have it.
But if you have a sandwich,
a piece of fruit, a little change,
I’d really appreciate it.
Have a good evening”

While the “dance dance” introduction accurately suggests the rhythm of Pain’s voice and the singsong quality that comes from endless repetition, I imagine it in Folly’s carnival sung over an upbeat (pulsing) dance track. Is the inclusion of Pain’s generic song trivializing poverty, celebrating it or condemning it? Well, perhaps none of the above. While Gordon’s elsewhere carnival is inclusive, it may also be a disturbing intrusion of the contemporary “street” into the world of “literature”: “Mother of heaven, habibi, don’t you feel intensely uncomfortable?” (“Vacuously Impermanent”, p.43)

In the context of New York, Gordon’s elsewhere carnival seems particularly challenging. This is a city certainly not noted for its joie de vivre – New Yorkers take themselves very seriously. While the city is characterized by hierarchical and exclusive culture(s), Gordon’s inclusive carnival flattens the hierarchies and allows for all kinds of odd imaginary interactions. Provocative and engaging, Folly constitutes a complex critique of the contemporary American image-world of reductive consumer “choice” (BANJO or OUD, Coke or Pepsi, good or evil) with no clear winners. "Minty swirl of mutant life / in jerk and lunge /of futile strife." ("Extreme Smile Makeover") American poetry for the 21st century?

Further links:

Desiderius Erasmus, Praise of Folly, e-text: here
Susan Sontag, Notes on Camp (1964): here
Nada Gordon, “Form's Life: An Exploration of the Works of Bernadette Mayer”: here
Nada Gordon, interview in Readme: here
Two poems by Nada Gordon in EOAGH, A Journal of the Arts, #3: here
Previous post on Elsewhere, #2, by Gary Sullivan and Nada Gordon: here

Design for the Other 90%

“A clientele of artists, intellectuals and connoisseurs of modest means is very congenial, but they are not in a position to pay for all the research, the experimentation, the testing that is needed to develop a new design. Only the very rich can pay for what is new and they alone can make it fashionable. Fashions don't start among the common people. Along with satisfying a desire for change, fashion's real purpose is to display wealth.” - Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann, Art Deco designer

The most thought-provoking design exhibition in New York at the moment is Design for the Other 90% at Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. While Design Life Now: The National Design Triennial takes up the former Carnegie mansion's interiors, curator Cynthia Smith's Design for the Other 90% is, fittingly perhaps, situated outside in the garden. Coming out onto the lawn from the Triennial, the first thing that struck me about Design for the Other 90% is that it isn't a particularly aesthetically-pleasing exhibition (though this may be more of a reflection on the Triennial than on this exhibition). It also seems rather small, tucked away in a corner of the garden. But it's a start. The exhibition's premise is simple but confronting – most of what we think of as design is produced for a small fraction of the world's population with large disposable incomes. Indeed, much of the work in the vast Design Life Now falls into this category of design that serves the world's wealthiest 10%, design that Cooper-Hewitt director Barbara Bloemink describes as "design for desires rather than genuine needs." (Design for the Other 90%, exhibition catalogue, Introduction, p.6) – hence both the great volume and the aesthetic overload of Design Life Now.

Meanwhile, out on the manicured lawn, Design for the Other 90% comprises 30 projects arranged in thematic sections – food, water, shelter, health and transport – projects designed to improve the basic needs of the world's poor. And by whichever statistical means you chose, the number of people on the planet with basic needs is massive. The exhibition publicity states: "Of the world’s total population of 6.5 billion, 5.8 billion people, or 90%, have little or no access to most of the products and services many of us take for granted; in fact, nearly half do not have regular access to food, clean water, or shelter." While such statistics are always confronting, what is also confronting is reflecting upon the absence of these issues from design journals, museums and educational institutions (at least within an American context).

The exhibition’s focus is on affordable technologies and systems that can be easily mass-produced and distributed to the poor of the under-developed world (which includes parts of the United States – post-Katrina New Orleans featured several times). Projects include distinctly low-tech and simple solutions to particular problems such as the Big Boad Load-Carrying Bicycle (below), a modified bicycle with an extended carrying platform at the back for use in East Africa; and the Bamboo Treadle Pump, comprising two metal cylinders with pistons, attached to a bamboo framework which allows a single person to simply walk up and down to extract groundwater during the dry season in Bangladesh. Other projects were distinctly high-tech, such as the Lifestraw, a large plastic "straw" for drinking (potentially contaminated) water through, essentially a water purification device made from "High impact polystyrene (exterior), halogen-based resin, anion exchange resin, and patented activated carbon (interior)", or the Solar-Powered Hearing Aid Battery Recharger which was developed in Botswana to allow people with hearing difficulties to indefinitely recharge their hearing aid's batteries (the most expensive component) using solar energy. What was also striking about these objects was the fact that some of them looked used, unusual for a museum context in which design objects are usually pristine objects on pedestals below "please do not touch" signs (OK so you weren't allowed to touch these objects either, but it was refreshing to imagine that someone had once used them).

Clients Without Cash

Importantly, Paul Polak, founder of International Development Enterprises (IED, a non-profit organization dedicated to improving the lives of the rural poor), argues in the catalogue that designers should consider the poor as clients rather than as welfare recipients. His clients, rural farmers in developing countries, are clients with very little cash, but clients who are nonetheless willing to pay for innovative design if it is affordable and if it can improve their quality of life. He also points out the many difficulties involved in designing products or systems for a rural farmer who earns less than US$2 a day – it sounds almost impossible. But some of the projects presented in the exhibition and its catalogue prove that it isn't.

One of the most interesting solutions suggested by Polak is the creation of systems that can be replicated and expanded, such as IED's $3 drip irrigation system, developed to increase crop yield in countries with long dry seasons. Other solutions from the exhibition included "open source" designs, whereby designers provide “blueprints” that can be used by local woodworkers or craftsworkers to create, modify and even improve upon the original design. An essential part of all of these projects was collaboration with the clients – client empowerment, rather than simply the "designer knows best" approach, was also essential. However, the exhibition's catalogue raised the twin problems for designers in the developed world working with these clients - how to generate income and how to maintain intellectual property (IP) rights. As for the former problem, Polak points out that the statistics actually work in your favor when designing for the world's poor - if you can come up with a genuine solution that will improve the lot of a poor rural farmer, there are hundreds of millions of potential clients out there.

Architecture for Humanity's latest book, Design Like You Give a Damn: Architectural Responses to Humanitarian Crises, (New York: Metropolis Books, 2006) also details the challenges of this type of design while offering some reflections on the IP problem. Their experience with the Southeast Asian Tsunami relief effort in 2004-05 revealed the complexities of negotiating with various government bureaucracies, NGOs and donors, before you even get to the clients. However, the Architecture for Humanity team seems to be both learning and growing fast, with an expanding network of “chapters” worldwide. Their aim is to establish "an open-source network of innovative solutions while still protecting the rights of the designer." How this is to be achieved is yet to be determined, but at least someone is working on it. The "open-source" issue seems to be a key sticking point, after all, intellectual property is at the heart of cultural production in the developed world.

The exhibition played down the contemporary obsession with the designer as celebrity – the projects were defined primarily by what they do rather than who designed them. Indeed, many projects were designed collaboratively, either by teams or in collaboration with the communities who will use them (again, who controls the IP may become an issue here). Some of the projects were not even designed by professional or trained designers. In this context, appropriation, recycling and remixing are not subversive strategies used for creating aesthetic pleasure, evoking intellectual stimulation or even for environmental reasons, but are techniques driven by practical necessity.

Humanitarian Design

Of course, this approach to design is not new. There is a tradition of humanitarian design going back at least as far as the social activism of the 1960s in the US, culminating in Victor Papanek's classic book, Design for the Real World: Human Ecology and Social Change (first published in 1971, reprinted several times). Or we could trace these ideas further back to the prewar projects and 1960s writings of Richard Buckminster Fuller (usually absent from the Modernist canon), or even further back to William Morris, John Ruskin and A.W.N. Pugin questioning the ethics of much mass produced 19th century design.

It may be worth pausing briefly to consider the terms used in the exhibition and its accompanying literature: "humanitarian design", "socially-responsible design", "socially-engaged architecture". Designers and architects, from at least the Modernist generation onwards, have sought to distance themselves from the mere pragmatics of shelter (the realm of engineers and builders) and simultaneously from excessive aestheticisation that might be construed as fashion. Most of the projects presented in the exhibition are certainly at the pragmatic end of this dichotomy. Does "socially-engaged architecture" imply a separate practice to "architecture", and "humanitarian design" a separate practice to simply "design"?

Furthermore, do these categories suggest these projects are pragmatic solutions rather than "culture"? Are the results "tools" and "shelter" rather than future design "icons"? Do they not belong in museums but outside them (on the lawn perhaps)? While it's difficult to make a Domed Pit Latrine Slab Kit look glamorous, with 90 000 of them currently in operation in refugee camps in East Africa, it's obviously a functional and successful design that deserves some attention. But somehow I can't imagine MoMA will be rushing to grab one for their permanent collection. Following this, I couldn't help wondering, after the recent Prouvé affair, whether collectors would be getting in early on the latest in prefabricated housing, the Global Village Shelter (above) – why wait fifty years and undergo the difficulty of rescuing one from the jungles of Grenada when you could order one now for only $550 (less if you buy in bulk!)?

A final issue about "humanitarian design" is how it is judged. It seems we judge humanitarian design using very different terms than we judge most other design. The criteria of taste, for example, seems to be completely absent when talking about humanitarian design. The criteria for success, often imposed by the designers themselves, usually focuses on practical application, mass-producability, potential for mass distribution, but above all, affordability. An example is the photogenic Q Drum, designed by South Africans PJ and JPS Hendriske (below). The product involves a simple but effective method of transporting water by pulling it along in a large, donut-shaped plastic container rather than carrying it in bulky containers (typically carried on the heads of African women). But designer Pieter Hendrikse writes in the catalogue: "Although every effort has been made to keep the price of the Q Drum as low as possible, it is still unaffordable to most people - those who need it cannot afford it, and those who can don't need it." (exhibition catalogue, p.51). Does that mean the design should be considered a "failure"? And, turning back to design for the 10% for a moment: if we were to apply the same criteria to the hundreds of projects presented in Design Life Now, how many of them would be "failures"?

Thinking back to the history of Modernism in design (see my last blog entry), I wonder to the extent that Modernism really "transformed our world" – whose world? Design for the Other 90% takes design out of its contemporary safety zone of aesthetic and technological fetishism and into the broader global context, at the same time reiterating the idea of design as a type of problem solving. Global poverty is a big problem, and of course design's contribution to any kind of solutions will be small. Beyond the overwhelming statistics, we need to understand the history of colonialism that created the underdeveloped world of the 21st century, as well as the impact of more recent globalization that keeps it underdeveloped. What role does design play in this? And finally, I think Design for the Other 90% prompts us to rethink design for the 10%. When a celebrity designer such as Karim Rashid, for example, states that he "wants to change the world", the question we should be asking is whose world? (see Karim Rashid, I Want to Change the World, New York: Universe, 2001) Or, in response to his more recent challenge, Design Your Self: Rethinking the Way You Live, Love, Work, and Play (New York: Regan Books, 2006), isn’t it time we got beyond simply thinking about ourselves?

All photos by D.J. Huppatz

Links:

Architecture for Humanity

Design Corps

Design That Matters

Buckminster Fuller Institute

International Development Enterprises

Cleaning up Modernism

Postscript on Modernism and cleanliness:

Jeff Wall, Morning Cleaning, Mies Van Der Rohe Foundation, Barcelona, 1999