Flooding the Farnsworth

From the Landmarks Preservation Council of Illinois, via Edward Lifson a.k.a. The New Modernist, some photos of Mies van der Rohe's Farnsworth House under threat by floodwaters from the Fox River, this after visits from Brad Pitt and one other nominal celebrity.

Preservationists and Modernists certainly must be agonizing over these photos.



Iconoclasts, on the other hand, must be praying for yet more torrential downpours.

One regular Pruned reader, an avowed anti-Modernist, sarcastically asked us if this is what “they” meant by “architecture engaging with the landscape”? He was wondering, or so we assume, whether architectural historians, critics and students--in overpraising the house (and Philip Johnson's Glass House and Frank Lloyd Wright's Falling Water) for harmoniously intertwining with nature--are simply full of shit, as what they think of as a harmonious engagement (or the idea of those high priests of Modernism “designing with nature”, or at the very least acknowledging context beyond formal and material concerns) is an illusion.

“Nature has been subjugated. There, it is expected to be static, as structured as the building. That or it must act within a prescribed set of parameters. Abnormal hydrology is frowned upon, for instance. So harmonyschmarmony. But thankfully, when things like this happen, architecture is laughingly displayed as impotent.” Too harsh.

In its defense, however, the house does look beautiful and quite striking in its state of quasi-failure.



Meanwhile, we are eagerly waiting to hear, hopefully accompanying other reports of Brad Pitt's generous donation to architecture, that proposals are underway for a levee system to protect the Farnsworth, millions of dollars worth of flood protection that most assuredly will fail in order to further sustain the illusion. We're waiting, because it will be hilarious to hear them.


POSTSCRIPT #1: The Farnsworth Flood of 2008: Blair Kamin, architecture critic of the Chicago Tribune, reports here, here and here — the comments are worth a read. Meanwhile, we wonder how many postscripts bearing this sort of news will we add in the future. (17 September 2008)


(All photos courtesy of the Landmarks Preservation Council of Illinois. See also Single Hauz.)

In the Archives:
Chicken Wing

Erasing Mountains, Defining Wetlands, Geoengineering the Planet & Other Infographics from The New York Times

(Is this the lone graphic accompanying a Times article or the first of several presentation boards detailing the remediation strategy for a devastated terrain by a landscape architecture student? Full image.)

We love the illustrations The New York Times creates to accompany some of their articles. Oftentimes they are infographically dense without being cluttered, readily comprehensible without being too compromisingly simplistic, visually gorgeous without being unnecessarily flashy. For someone commonly tasked to distill fantastically complex information for laymen clients who might consider interpreting plans and schematic diagrams akin to deciphering ancient, dead languages, these illustrations always provide important lessons for creating a successful graphic presentation. There is much to learn (or emulate).

We're huge fans, in other words, collecting them ravenously as though we were lunatic orchidophiles or fanatic philatelists, and hoping all the while that they will be collated and published in a volume, which will be ten times better than anything Edward Tufte puts out, of course, though perhaps similarly overpriced, in which case, if you have your own collection, you should now create a Flickr set for it, such as the one we have recently created.

You'll find there, among others, the following graphic summarizing the U.S. Supreme Court decision on Rapanos v. United States, a dizzyingly complex case (to us, at least) rendered penetrable.


(Previously here and here. Full image.)

And also this more recent graphic listing five proposals to combat global warming on a gargantuan scale, all neatly and beautifully presented in 800x1155 pixels. It makes you feel as though you no longer need to read New Scientist for further research, although we wouldn't recommend you stop reading the venerable periodical.


(Full image.)

One more? How about this on the migrating barrier islands of North Carolina?


(Full image.)

Quite clinical and somber in its presentation of the data, and yet it's always a source of endless hilarity here on Pruned. Can you spot the hilarity?

In the Archives:
Leidenfrost Fountain