Brad Pitt, New Orleans home visionary

As the Colombian singer Carlos Vives sings in one of his songs, "the city of Nueva Orleans is like Baranquilla."

As someone who has spent a lot of time in the Caribbean, and knows N.O. a bit, there are certainly similarities - in terms of physical layout and ambiance - between the Crescent City and Havana, San Juan, Baranquilla, Cartagena and Santo Domingo (there are also towns in Haiti, like Jacmel or Jeremie, which look like they are part of the French Quarter - the same is true of Puerto Plata and Sosua, in the Dominican Republic).

The similarities extend to other fields like music and food too.

Fred - They are even better for your continuing absence.
Cheers.

I was trying to explain to some of my poor Yankee friends who have yet to make it to the Big Easy what the city is like- Mediterranean was the word that popped into my head, and thinking about it a little more, it seems very appropriate. I've often thought that the Deep South- both the coastal regions and even the less cosmopolitan areas inland- lean closer to the 'Global South' than anything else. This is becoming even more true as Latino culture works its way into the cultural mix of the Gulf Coastal Plain, including the rural areas that have generally more insular.

I suppose some people- Mr Garvin included, apparently- suppose this to be a horrible thing. I find it a wonderful thing, myself, and a pretty natural thing, as the Deep South, even outside the coastal rim, is already pretty close to the rest of the Gulf Basin in many respects, and is of course linked geographically and culturally. Pus, it's not as if cultural change down here is being carried out by force, as was the last two really big moments of cultural change: European colonization and the rise of African slavery. There are certainly areas of conflict and even violence- the drug war continues to fragment and erode many communities in the entire region- and there is certainly still racism and hatred and dislike on all sides. But it's not as strong as it was even thirty years ago, and this makes a big difference. And it makes me hopeful that Deep South culture, instead of stagnating or collapsing into Big Box America, will become even more vibrant and resilient.

Our friend Rawlins said: “The only time Dallas architecture ever really looks silly is when it builds enormous iconic structures that reference yesteryear rather than today…the times in which we live…or for that matter anticipate the future. Witness the absurd ‘Infomart’ that replicates the Brighton Pavilion.

‘kay…’cept that’s what you call “Postmodern Kitsch”. Building traditional architecture is more about traditional, sustainable methods and vocabularies than it is about building frothy-birthday-cake-versions-of-historic-buildings with sprayed dryvit. We’re aiming for something in between the extremes you describe.

Dallas is after all a very young and quite modern city in that it's whole life in real terms began AFTER the car became king, etc. So 'modern' architecture is the only thing that ever made sense here. And it’s true significance came about after WW2.

And that makes Dallas such a nice city to live in how??? As a general rule, the nicest neighborhoods tend to be those that were built at a scale that at least allows for the inhabitants to walk to at least…someplace. Just because Dallas was born as a car town doesn’t mean that’s good…the more the city speaks to the human (instead of the car), the more sought-after it is…

That said, all architecture was once 'modern' and only becomes 'traditional' or ‘classic’ after time adds the patina of visual reference. As such, people still call Frank Lloyd Wright's buildings as 'modern, even when those buildings, like Matisse's paintings, are often well over 100 years old.

Does that failure-to-follow-the-pattern give you a sense that either your definition is skewed, or that what we tend to call “modern”, despite its age, remains “modern” because no amount of “patina” makes it more comfortable to our psyche? And that no matter how much more “modern” things get, they don’t seem to improve?

Our sense of aesthetics is subject to a constant state of ebb and flow, as anyone who has ever paid the slightest attention to the history of “the arts” can attest. But that ebb and flow presupposes some sort of aesthetic, and it attaches a vocabulary and a personality to that aesthetic that is appropriate. In the case of modern “art”, the sense of aesthetic is not merely skewed, it is, in many instances, either missing or replaced by something else—Frankenstein-style.

What do I mean by that? I mean, for starters, that pieces of crumpled Aluminum foil like anything that Frank Gehry builds do not contain anything that can truly be called an aesthetic. Now extrapolate that out to just about anything built by architects that consider themselves “modern”. It takes a modern artist to look at a plane crash and call it aesthetic. It takes a modern architect to look at a congested freeway and call it aesthetic.

The word aesthetic is understood nowadays to refer to an individual sense of taste in the visual, but the true meaning of the word refers to the common perception of the comfortable--and thus beautiful. The Greek understanding of beauty (and aesthetic) had to do especially with the comfortable (not in the sense of a pillowy chair, but in the sense of something that gives you a good feeling: it makes sense, it doesn’t force your eyes or your brain to want to somehow “fix” it). That is why, despite the fact that art that is over 100 years old is no longer truly “modern”, we continue to call it that, because only those who associate themselves with the “aesthetic of the modern” can stand to look at it without at least subconsciously wishing it weren’t the way it is.

Likewise, something can be defined as traditional not merely due to passage of time, but because it follows methods and understandings that carry through all examples of art or architecture or literature, etc., despite the specifics of style. This is why historic arts from architecture to literature to philosophy are as relevant today as they were thousands of years ago--because despite our belief that he can, man quite simply hasn't changed much in that long.

History is not equal to tradition, and vice versa.

ratiocination .....where did I state that Dallas is wonderful and fabulous and that the old is bad and new is thus good? My post regarding Dallas was that it is by definition a city that is young vs. those that have a very different history...i.e. Chicago which is a great city but how great and how modern when it was a very young city itself finding its own identity and expressing it with what was then ‘modern’ architecture like dart deco which many hated at the time as trite?

I think it's silly when a modern young city builds things that are designed to make it look like it has tenure and classic roots. It can be pretentious by definition. Or even silly, like when a young person dresses like their grandmother. It is not an 'us' vs. 'them' thing or 'wrong vs. right'. It's about the individual identities of individual entities vs. one size fits all treasures and/or schlock. I hated ‘post-modern’ 80s. On the other hand, when Carnegie Hall was built, IT was 'modern' as this morning. Just think what it means to not see that in perspective.

I have slept in the Parthenon and seen the pyramids. It's not like I must compare them to one another....or to anything else built before or since. This explains why so many reviews of Dallas’ latest state-of-the-art modern buildings, when reviewed by New York critics, their vision sounds provincial, ironically enough. Like a movie reviewer who sneers that the actress is young and rich and speaks with an accent so she cannot have talent or a future. You get to where you can start to tell the critic’s age and location no less than counting rings on a dead tree………

To out-of-hand ignore state of the art modern architecture for no reason other than because one can and it’s ‘cold’ is more about showing one’s age rather than allowing oneself opportunity; homage to classicism while acknowledging (or even celebrating) the age in which one lives.

Artistic innovation is worth respecting enough to consider and appreciate if not revere for its contribution to the world's visual vocabulary. Otherwise why bother long ago nameless souls inventing the arch or the dome or the wheel when tradition suffices?

I think it's silly when a modern young city builds things that are designed to make it look like it has tenure and classic roots. It can be pretentious by definition.

But, you see, the reason for that is twofold: First, because one of the main tenets of Modernist thought (especially with regard to art) is that it must be innovative in some way, or it is trite. Thus, the greatest sin in Modernism is to ever stay the same.

This unnatural avoidance of the recognizable is not the same as the normal human urge to continually improve. We don’t avoid inventing the wheel because it is innovative; but feeling that one has to continually re-invent it, in order to keep using it, is patently ridiculous, and tends to lead to absurdities like square and elliptical wheels.

That doesn’t mean that wheels can’t be improved, or even replaced by something better. It just means that a wheel doesn’t have to be either a Rem Koolhaas nightmare OR an overdone 19th century Gothic Revival Confection. It’s a wheel, for cripe’s sake.

Which brings me to the second reason: because our means of building no longer embodies the traditional methods of building--meaning that, in order to look “traditional”, it’s often necessary to build a modern steel and concrete cage and smear on a fake façade. No wonder it feels fake and pretentious. It is.

But it actually doesn’t have to be. Believe it or not, it is actually possible to design buildings that look neither fake nor pretentious—they just look like they’ve been there forever. Of course, monster convention centers tend to pose a very difficult problem to traditional architecture, since giant open spaces don’t work well with anything but steel trusses or enormous masonry vaults…but does that tell us more about the limits of tradition, or the unrealistic expectations we place on modern buildings…just because we can…?

That question lies at the heart of traditional architecture. It’s not a matter of copying old buildings as if we can’t think of anything better. It’s a matter of not doing things just because we can. Tradition says that the ability to build a 110 story building is not necessarily a good thing. Did nobody see what a problem 110 story buildings pose on 9/11? Parthenons crumble, temples get taken apart to make churches, but what does one do with a 110 story building once it’s outlived its usefulness? How many cities in Italy used to have towers all over the place…until they started collapsing? Does anyone realize that building codes only require a building’s structure to be able to withstand 75 years of use? What happens as the steel and concrete age past that point? Nobody knows.

That is the benefit of tradition. It’s a seamless garment. It doesn’t try to be something that it is not. It forms part of the fabric of life. A few hundred years ago, the concept that a young city should avoid “counterfeiting” a sense of history was unthinkable. You built things according to tradition. Inventing arches and domes, changing Doric columns to Corinthian, even changing columns into tenuous gothic vaults or organic, plant-shaped tendrils a la Art Nouveau—these are all possible within the same umbrella of “tradition”, because they’re all just different expressions of the abilities of man to work with nature.

Incidentally, this is what made some of the early “Chicago School” Architecture really interesting. It was a time when wood and masonry were being replaced by steel and glass, and the architects of the time worked to make a new aesthetic that echoed the structure while not discarding traditional modes like so many old clothes. In other words, they understood both the importance of things like scale and ornament, which humanize a building, and of allowing the new capabilities of the structure to inform that scale and ornament. It was when the two became entirely divorced that all meaning began to be lost and replaced with the ever-more-titillating.

To be traditional is not to reject innovation (though some traditionalist architects seem to miss that one). It means to understand that innovation ad nauseam cannot take the place of the good, sensible, well-built, and, yes, beautiful.

Rod, I'm surprised at you. IIRC, there's a quote from Liebling at the beginning of A Confederacy of Dunces

New Orleans resembles Genoa or Marseilles, or Beirut or the Egyptian Alexandria more than it does New York, although all seaports resemble one another more than they can resemble any place in the interior. Like Havana and Port-au-Prince, New Orleans is within the orbit of a Hellenistic world that never touched the North Atlantic. The Mediterranean, Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico form a homogeneous, though interrupted, sea.

I believe several citizens have banded together to get Brad Pitt elected mayor of New Orleans since the actor’s Make It Right foundation has provided green and affordable housing for displaced residents in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.