Observations and Images on Architecture, Culture and More, in Chicago and the World. See it all here. |
||||
Listomania |
||||
|
-by Lynn Becker
|
|
||
|
That's pretty much the story behind the American Institute of Architects just published list of America's Favorite Architecture, drawn from a survey created by Harris Interactive. As a PR ploy, it's been a wild success, churning up great pools of ink, including stories from critics from the Tribune's Blair Kamin to the San Francisco Chronicle's John King. Kamin at one point alludes to the survey's flaws, but basically the critics have drunk the kool-aid, somberly discussing why the Bellagio in Las Vegas comes in at 22 but Adler and Sullivan's Auditorium at 147, pondering whether the list represents a repudiation of modernism, etc. etc. Not since the Lingerie Bowl has so much been written about so little. King quotes AIA President R K Stewart saying it was all about setting "up a dialogue with the public . . . This isn't necessarily the design professional's view of the best buildings, but the emotional connection to where people live and work and play." Emotions? Yeeeeuch. America's Favorite Architecture is the kind of lazy, publicity seeking gambit you usually associate with People Magazine's 50 Sexiest Bachelors or the American Film Institutes increasingly desperate excuses for a TV show that have gone steadily downhill since the initial "100 Greatest American Movies" - this year's edition: "The 50 Greatest Movie Belches." If this was a real dialogue, the list would inevitably include Chicago's slant-roofed Smurfit-Stone Building, hated by the critics but beloved by the public. Instead, two of the 150 favorite buildings in America are Apple stores in Manhattan. Who knew? If this was truly a popular dialogue, why, other than Radio City, are there no movie palaces on the list - not even as failed nominations? No Chicago or Tivoli theaters, no Fox in San Francisco, St Louis or Detroit. The demolished Penn Station and Larkin Buildings make the list, but no Chicago Stock Exchange or Schiller Building. No Riverview. No Coney Island. If this is a real survey of America's best loved buildings, where's Disneyland's Sleeping Beauty Castle? When Stanley Tigerman rails against architectural firms marketing themselves as if they were potato chips, he appears more than a bit out of touch, but something like the AIA survey makes him sound right on the money. AIA's "survey methodology" document reads like a satire of pollsters run amuck:
AIA's stewardship of this misguided survey oscillates between schoolmarm and carnival pitchman, and it doesn't bring out the best in either. And so we get this mush of measuring "likeability". You know who scores way up there on my likeability index? The guy who brings me my pizza, but I don't confuse him with the great loves of my life. To the AIA, however - same, same. If ever there was a need for un-aided recall, this was it. If you have to be led through a photo book to remember who you love, you really don't love anybody.
Join a discussion on this story.
© Copyright 2007 images and text Lynn Becker All rights reserved.
|
|
||