molly wright steenson: March 2008 Archives

Ralph Rapson passed away this weekend at the age of 93. He left a 70 year legacy as an architect. Rapson studied at Michigan and Cranbrook (under Eliel Saarinen), went on to teach at the New Bauhaus at the Institute of Design in Chicago, and enjoyed a 30 tenure as dean of the University of Minnesota school of architecture. His buildings included embassies in Scandinavia and a variety of iconic buildings in Minneapolis. His work shares a similar legacy to that of Paul Rudolph and Kevin Roche--monolithic, 1950s-70s era buildings that have fallen out of favor but were still important. In Minneapolis, he designed the Cedar-Riverside housing complex (1973), the solid Rarig fine arts center on the University of Minnesota campus, and the newly demolished Guthrie Theater.

I have a long, personal relationship to the Guthrie. I worked there as an usher between 1988 and 1993, around the time the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden opened (it's now celebrating its 20th birthday). In a renovation for its 25th anniversary in 1988, the Guthrie had already lost many of Rapson's original touches, particularly to the facade-- the original facade is above. Still, the theater interior felt much like what the sketch above belies. I can still tell you that it seated 1441 people, that the colored seats made the house look full when it wasn't, and that nobody was more than 50-odd feet from the stage.

At Christmas a year ago, I went to the Walker Art Center, and both gasped and cried when I saw a backhoe through Rapson's original Guthrie. I still wonder why it had to be knocked down, why it couldn't be preserved. It was a special place and while I love the Jean Nouvel-designed building as well, it's sad to see Rapson's major work disappear.

He was active up until the end of his life -- in an Archinect discussion, someone pointed out that he was in the office on Friday, the very day he died. As Rapson said in an interview with the Minneapolis Star Tribune two years ago, "My attitude is well, why not just go on living doing the things I enjoy and live as fully as I can? Who knows what's going to happen? I hope I'm working right up to the last day, It ain't work - it's fun!" he said.

It struck me I've not posted the talk I gave at IxDA's Interaction 08 conference, titled Strategic Boredom. Some of what I had to say I'd published in an earlier blog post. Here, you can see the video.

Today's delight is musical. This is my muxtape...

1. Archers of Loaf, "Web in Front." Circa late 1994, Spiro and I drove around listening to this, and I've always loved the lines "There's a chance that things could get weird/Yeah it's a possibility."
2. Love of Diagrams, "The Pyramid." Thanks to the fabulous Princeton station, WPRB, I am not a total musical outcast. This Australian band knocked my socks off this fall.
3. Polara, "Letter Bomb." Another 1994ish era album from a Minneapolis band. I used to buy cappuccino from one of the members.
4. Radiohead, "Headmaster Ritual." In November, Radiohead covered two songs as a part of their webcast. Though I'm not a huge Radiohead fan, this cover blew me away because of its tightness and fidelity to the original, down to detail.
5. Radiohead, "Ceremony." One of my dearest, most favorite Joy Division/New Order songs -- I love covers of it (the one by Galaxie 500 comes to mind). This is from the aforementioned webcast.
   
6. Look Blue Go Purple, "In Your Favour." Look Blue Go Purple is a nearly-forgotten New Zealand all-girl band that played around 1987 or so. A friend who worked at Flying Nun sent this to me a few years ago and I still listen to it several times a week.
   
7. Confetti, "Corduroy." This is a cover of the Wedding Present's song on their album Dalliance (which incidentally was produced by Steve Albini and recorded in Minnesota in 1991). This cover haunts, the original stings.
8. Peter Murphy, "Cuts You Up." This just seemed to fit.
9. Of Montreal, "Forecast Fascist Future (IQU remix)." Last year, I became aware of this song when Mark Gage used it in his entry for the PS 1 competition.
   
10. Baby Flamehead, "Amy." One of the very first bands I interviewed, Baby Flamehead hailed from Philadelphia. My friendship with my best friend, Jenn, was clinched in Montpellier, France, thanks to this song. We stood in the Place de la Comédie and sang and danced to it -- Jenn is from Philly and thus knew who they were.
    

Right. So: enjoy.

Greetings from Austin! I've just arrived for South by Southwest Interactive. This marks #11 for me and the 10th year I've attended (as well as my 10th on the advisory board). It is my favorite time of year -- I'm delighted to be here and to be a part of it again

On Saturday March 9 at 11:30, I am moderating a panel called "Meet the Architects" -- one of the few panels that I can think of that's ever happened at the festival that deals with architecture not as a metaphor but as the actual practice. It's an idea that emerged out of a conversation Bryan Boyer started with Hugh Forrest, the conference director, a year ago, and that continued between me, Bryan, and Enrique Ramirez. The official description goes:

A new kind of digital practice has emerged. We see it in our buildings and our cities: new architectural interfaces, new communities, new ways of thinking about the physical world around us. In "Meet the Architects," we'll take on these ripples in physical architecture and urbanism. This panel tracks new directions in architecture culture at the intersection of digital, film and urban environments; architecture zines, blogs and communities; and architectural and urban research.

The panelists are an excellent bunch. We've brought together Bryan Boyer, who will soon graduate with his master's in architecture from the Harvard Graduate School of Design, John Szot, technical director of Brooklyn Digital Foundry, Mimi Zeiger, publisher of Loud Paper and an established architecture critic, and Enrique Ramirez, my classmate, a senior editor at Archinect and the figure behind Aggregat456.

As the panel approaches, I'll be posting information related to the conversation we have (images, recommended books and websites). If you're in Austin, do come. We'd love to see you.

Appearing to have something one doesn't, or to not have something one does: this is the art of the bluff. The bluff is the bigness of an argument, backed up by a certain fear on the side of the adversary. It's the rhetoric of drawings circulated in the press to stake out territory that may or may not be occupied. Bluffing is a necessary component of war: it can save the need to produce or destroy, provide it is effected properly -- and this is always the gamble, because a bluff can be called. Two moments of interaction between Germany and the Allied forces in World War II bring aspects of the bluff to light: the National Redoubt and the West Wall. They existed in psychological space as well as physical space, but their nature as bluff allowed them to occupy less physical space than their opponents believed.

The area to which remaining forces will withdraw after losing the key battle is called a national redoubt. It has a particular distinction in World War II: National Redoubt is the idea that, in the final days of the war, Germany might withdraw to Bavaria and its surrounding alpine areas, where their forces would hold out for a final stand. Although criticized by Churchill, Eisenhower believed a March 1945 Allied intelligence report that supported the idea of the National Redoubt and directed troops toward the southwest. It was a credible idea, write Keith Mallory and Arvit Ottar in their 1973 Architecture of War, given the "German obsession with bomb-proof construction." [1: p. 265]

Yet it was a bluff. In reality, the National Redoubt conceived by the British was a "Propaganda Wall" of Goebbels' devising, not a real Alpine fortress. As a result of the bluff, the Russians beat the English and Americans to Berlin, the ramifications of which would eventually divide the city and the country for decades. But at the same time, the concept of this fortress wasn't imaginary, either. Just 160 km from Berlin in the Harz Mountains, the National Socialists planned a central facility of tunnels and underground factories to produce liquid oxygen, jet engines, synthetic oil, and missiles.

In the earlier days of World War II, the Westwall (or Siegfried Line) also served as a propaganda wall. Its dragon teeth--anti-tank barriers--extended along the Swiss, French, Dutch, Belgian and German borders, north of Aachen and toward the Ruhrgebiet, south along the Rhine to Basel. The Nazis published maps in the late 1930s, showing a thick line of army defense, supported by additional air reinforcement as far east as Düsseldorf and Koblenz.





Write Mallory and Ottar, "The actual West Wall as planned and built... though brilliant in its design, had nothing of the strength painted by Goebbels. The huge difference between the propaganda wall and the real West Wall is best described by the fact that General von Rundstedt simply 'laughed' when he saw it." [1: p. 115] Where Nazi propaganda suggested the Westwall extended 10 to 25 km, it was merely a skinny line.


The bluff performed by the West Wall staved off a French attack under Marshall Pétain in 1944. It dissuaded Eisenhower from attacking, instead causing him to first seek reinforcements. Both results may have extended the war into 1945 -- unnecessarily, say many, write Mallory and Ottmar.

In both cases, Germany's strategy was to make itself look fortified. In reality, it adopted a dynamic propaganda machine to maximize its resources. The Westwall as propaganda was a mobile machine, deployed through publication. The Allies believed in the appearance of the massive stasis, believed that what was on the surface penetrated much further beyond. The bluff allowed Germany to create the illusion of insurmountability out of a laughable--lächerliche--line. The bluff is the quintessential force of mobility.

[1] Mallory, Keith, and Arvid Ottar, The Architecture of War, New York: Pantheon Books, 1973, 108-123 and 238-265. These pieces have informed the content about the Westwall and the National Redoubt.
[2] Thanks to the Old Hickory 30th's pictures of the Siegfried Line and the Watch on the Rhine.
[3] A mildly embarrassing debt to Wikipedia for its national redoubt discussion and its Siegfried Line imagery.