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Where’s the Humanity?
I fail to see the
excitement over the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles
as written in "City of Angels’ Music Heaven"
(ENR 8/11 p. 30). It looks like a chunk of metal that was
destroyed while machining. It might have great acoustics,
but great acoustics can be achieved in buildings that say
something about humanity. Mr. Gehry’s building says a
lot about the inhumanity of post-modernism and deconstructionism.
I could easily say the same for the buildings at M.I.T. that
were highlighted in ENR a few months ago. Bombed out shells
of buildings in Lebanon are more attractive, and quite possibly
more functional. The same goes for the World Trade Center
and it potential replacements. Too much money and absolutely
no taste.
The desire to shock in art and
architecture has grown tiresome. I submit that every artist
and architect ought to study Philosophical Anthropology, "The
Study of Man." Twentieth and 21st Century architecture
cries out that the designers know very little about humanity,
having given up their souls to some mechanized and hyper-technological
paradigm of faux-life. Try as they may, these artists and
architects will never change what humans truly find pleasing.
In 1,000 years the Walt Disney Concert Hall will have long
been disassembled for scrap and the Parthenon will still draw
throngs of us "unwashed" masses who are so ignorant
as to recognize true beauty without a hint of irony.
Key Player
My concern and disappointment
is that ENR would publish "At Olivenhain, 318-ft-tall
RCC Impoundment Is Ready to Fill," and not even mention
Washington Group International as the construction manager
(ENR 08/04 p. 15). I have been the project manager for the
construction management of Olivenhain Dam for the past three
years. WGI is construction manager for the San Diego County
Water Authority during this first phase of their Emergency
Storage Project. I specifically moved to San Diego County
to help SDCWA build Olivenhain Dam since they had no in-house
dam construction experience.
Washington was the catalyst that
kept the project on track by settling design and construction
issues, insisting on maintaining the schedule, working with
the California Division on Safety of Dams and ensuring the
day-to-day sequencing and progress to keep the project on
schedule and budget.
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