Matt Shaw on “American Framing”
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ONE OF MODERNISM’S most formidable objectives was to accommodate the lots via environment friendly, reasonably priced, and mass-produced structure. Whereas the success of this mission differs wildly from locale to locale, it’s nearly universally related within the West with metal, strengthened concrete, and plate glass. Mockingly, one of many methods that maybe greatest fulfilled these goals in the USA is a completely totally different materials, and one underpinning 90 p.c of single-family houses in the USA: softwood framed building. Regardless of its ubiquity, conventional architectural discourse has not often included softwood framing in any critical sense.
Peeling again the proverbial siding and exposing this constructing system is the core of the “American Framing” mission, initially conceived for the US Pavilion on the 2021 Venice Structure Biennale and most lately opened on the Wrightwood 659 exhibition area in Chicago. (One other model opened concurrently in Prague, at Galerie Jaroslava Fragnera). “American Framing” is an initiative of the College of Illinois Chicago, arguably essentially the most influential college of structure of the 2010’s. Beneath the directorship of Robert E. “Bob” Somol, the college promoted a whimsical perspective towards architectural follow and, to some extent, a corresponding model, the legacy of which might nonetheless be seen in practically each short-term set up and home mission by early- and mid-career architects working at this time. This vaguely “neo-postmodern” camp resurrected the work of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, Memphis, John Hejduk, Charles Moore, Arata Isozaki, and early Michael Graves. It flourished roughly between 2008 and 2016, a time when Pop references, cartoonish figuration, and different postmodern tropes percolated via structure faculties and particularly on Instagram. The 2017 Chicago Structure Biennial elegantly institutionalized this tendency whereas falling right into a lure much like that of the 1980 Venice Biennale, “La Strada Novissima,” (The New Road), and subsequent ’80s structure traits, which codified the on a regular basis references and relatable indicators and symbols of early postmodernism in an inward-facing repertoire of constructing precedents and formal typologies.
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Whereas postmodern architects within the ’60s and ’70s recuperated forgotten or vernacular constructing kinds, at this time’s ugly and abnormal is extra attuned to underappreciated processes of building. We take as a right conventional American wood-framed structure, but it surely underpins home structure from large mansions to the tiniest of homes. As curators Paul Preissner and Paul Anderson wish to level out, no amount of cash can purchase you a greater or worse 2×4. Mockingly, this hyper-standardized system is adaptable to the purpose of being plastic: It might assume nearly any type utilizing the identical base parts: 2x’s, nails or screws, plywood or OSB, and perhaps a number of mild metal straps produced by corporations like Simpson Robust-Tie or Eagle Steel Merchandise.
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Softwood building was developed by German and Scandinavian settlers within the early nineteenth century. Shifting West via the frontier, they modified European half-timbering methods via a reasonable, environment friendly, protoindustrial system. Dimensional lumber and mass-produced nails meant that unskilled laborers working in small groups couldn’t solely construct steady buildings, but in addition adapt and experiment in line with private interpretation. As a result of framing was low-cost and cell, it proliferated throughout the North American continent, leading to a quintessentially American know-how that, because the curators write of their assertion, was “uninterested in custom, keen to decide on economic system over technical ability, and accepting of a relaxed thought of craft within the pursuit of one thing helpful and new.”
In Venice, a five-story wall-less construction enclosed the entrance courtyard of the US Pavilion, its over-scaled, steeply pitched roof fenestrated with an overabundance of elongated dormers—an odd interpretation of the on a regular basis home, however constructed with the identical supplies and methods. On this sense, the set up functioned as a manifesto for the better mission of “American Framing”: peeling again the variations between stylistically eclectic American houses to reveal a ubiquitous but adaptable underlying system, right here pushed towards its architectural limits.
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The primary set up, maybe the perfect US pavilion displaying in Venice in at the least a decade, ought to have been a critical contender for the Golden Lion. In Chicago, a three-story atrium is crammed with a lumber set up framed within the typical technique, with a slight twist: The “roof” is inverted, creating an uncommon valley on the prime, somewhat than a ridge or hip. Offered alongside the one-to-one spatial intervention are scale fashions, wooden furnishings items by Norman Kelley and Ania Jaworska, and two pictures collection, one by Chris Robust, one other by Daniel Shea. Kelley’s furnishings is made from dimensional lumber and OSB, explicitly conjuring Enzo Mari’s Autoprogettazione (1974), an open-source chair design meant to be constructed by the tip person out of any materials, however normally wooden. Robust’s pictures present builders at work on building websites throughout the US in 2020 and 2021, exposing the handbook labor that goes unnoticed in last buildings. A counterpoint to those mild conceptual gestures are Jaworska’s easy benches and Shea’s images of foliage, each of which counsel a extra atmospheric presentation. The ensuing exhibition is a broad if considerably unsatisfying journey via the world of wooden framing, one during which neither idea nor have an effect on are realized in full.
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For an exhibition about populism, “American Framing” feels oddly aloof in its rhetoric and design. There’s a widespread and irritating perspective, pervasive in sure structure circles, which might be summed up as “too cool to be clear.” This have an effect on may be subtle and delicate when utilized to design, but it surely may also be an alibi for underwhelming or unresolved work.
How did early adopters of softwood building Americanize and industrialize European constructing methods? How was timber used to dominate the American West? How has popular culture used framing as a trope? What are the speculative limitations of this malleable system? How was it taken up within the so-called New World as a conquering power: each trendy and colonial? A forthcoming publication by Park Books is claimed to element these tales however was not obtainable to be learn alongside the exhibition. This will solely be referred to as a missed alternative.
Whereas so many exhibitions are inclined to overcode their objects with social and political which means, “American Framing” has the alternative drawback: It obscures and abstracts its content material to the detriment of the really wealthy historical past on show. Lack of which means is, after all, a typical upshot in structure, and one that’s symptomatic of the chilly, trendy world as we all know it.
— Matt Shaw