In recent decades, architecture has departed from this path in exciting ways. While originally drawing from European and vernacular precedents, the American Modern architecture tradition produced innumerable regional schools of thought throughout the country linked by adherence to common principles. The American “Modern Movement” has a long tradition of explosive results when ideas either combine or diverge. There are those iconic buildings that change the course of an architect’s work, and those that are strong enough to change the course of architecture in general. It often takes time, and with time historical perspective, to recognize which of the buildings that spring up in a particular era are game changing. When we study their physical characteristics – the way their architects composed their materials, forms, and volumes drew from or reacted against regional vernaculars explored new, emerging technologies and adapted their buildings’ programs in new and innovative ways – we may grapple with changes in the architectural trajectory that we either love or revile, or settle into a conflicted state of both.
There are those buildings that help us understand the path of architecture and its relationship to a particular place, people, and time. “Every era needs its landmarks.” A colleague at the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission once told me this, while in conversation about Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo and Associates’ UN Plaza Hotel (constructed 1976-83 and designated a New York interior landmark in 2017).
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