Citeations Cite Spring 1992 33

9 "The Ten Hcsr .ui j the Ten Worst legislators." Texas Monthly, July 1975, p. 65, July 1977, p. 92. The presidential primary bill is discussed in "Winning and Luring W i t h LBJn," Texas Observer, \A March I97S, pp. 1.3.

II) Arlington is certainly uoi immune Inim such big-city problems, considering thai i( is now the seventh-largest city in the state. Sec Rogers Caldenhead. "Bright Lights. BigSuhurh," Dallas Observer. 1 August 1991, pp. 14-18. Bush indicated that access was a key issue - Arlington^ was good, lie believed, and would he excellent once iniprovcmcnts were made. Many of the other sites had the disadvantage of land acquisition costs and lacked infrastructure, which would have IH-CII costly ID add and would have delayed stadium construction. One ot the major advantages of the Arlington site wa.s thai (he Rangers alteadv owned some nl die land on which rhev have now planned future development. The Rangers have reserved 65 acres north ol die stadium for what Schicffcr envisions as a high-end-use " I J S Colinas type" office complex - "a corporate rcloc.uor's dream" - ten minutes from the airport, midway between die coasts, in die central time /one. and with the restaurants of the stadium complex nearby.

11 |oel Warren Barna, "Ballpark Wi th Civic Amenities for Arlington." !irogressive An-lntrctiirr. November 1991, p. 27.

12 I'ost-World War 11 stadiums have generally been funded with public monies. Philip Bess, in fMY Baseball Magic, cites (ioode's study, which indicates that the economic windfall generated by baseball Irancluses is often overestimated. Opponents ol the sales tax proposition in Arlington also cited studies (hat (he projected economic bcncfiis for Arlington were exaggerated.

13 J'feilfer interviewed by Cheryl Phillips. "The Pitch." Forth Worth Star- Telegram. 10 August 1991. sec. 1. p. 18.

\\ Barbaralee Dianionstein. interview with Michael Pittas in American Architecture Now II (New York: Riizoli, 1985), p. 195.

15 Interviewed by David Dillon, "Hit or Miss?," Dallas Morning News, 7 Scp(embcr 1991. p. 10.

16 Schicffcr, interview by author. 25 September 1991.

17 Robert Vcniuri to J. Thomas Schiefier, September 1991.

18 Sec Andrea Dean. "Con text ualistn Ctiminucs Strong in the (iapkal, Architecture, November 1986. pp. 56 -59 . in which she describes the work of several of Washington's prominent .ircliucLiiu.il l imiv Schwar/s among (hem. and points to their shared "Vicrorian-like tendency to combine traditional elements into new combinations. SchwaiZ, interviewed by Benjamin I'orgcy, calls this a "school": "One of the things I intend to trumpet while I have this temporary podium, is that we are a (own (bar b i l lii,r class contemporary architecture. Washington produces a radically different kind ol ueo-eclcc(ic architecture ihan any other city. There is a current school of Washington archhccturc of which we are representative," Washington I'ost, 7 Seprembcr 1991, pp. C 1 , G 5 .

Romancing the Park City Baseball Magic fry Philip Bess. Minneapolis Review of Baseball, 1989. 48 pp., 50illus., $595

Green Cathedrals by Philip j . Lowry Reading, Mass.: Addisoti-Wesley. 1992. 275pp., illus. $24.95

Lost Ballparks by Lawrence S. Ritter. New York: Viking, 1992. 210pp., illus.. $25

Reviewed hy Bruce C. Webb

Baseball is the Rube Goldberg invention of sports, a scries ol semi-autonomous skill-motions held together by a complex set of rules; a mythic national pastime hut a comparatively austere sport riddled with inbetween time, pauses, and endless waiting for something to happen. For the believers, baseball parks are not simply athletic venues but cultic shrines. Hence the mystical tone of Philip J. Lowry s Green Cathedrals, an atlas to the sacred geography of the diamond-studded paradise: "The more I have studied ballparks, the more they have begun to resemble mosques, or synagogues, or churches or such similar places of reverent worship. There is a scene of beauty at 21st Street and Lehigh in Phil-adelphia. Where once there was the Shibc cathedral, also called Connie Mack Stadi-um, there is now the Deliverance Evange-listic Church. There is a message in this."

Lowry catalogues "271 major league and Negro League ballparks, past and present." What he reveres is not the newer multipur-pose stadiums that appeared during the 1960s and 1970s as anonymous concrete expressions of some precise, prototypical programmatic order, but their classic predecessors, each a uniquely romantic personification of the local ingredients of team character, fan loyalty, and city spirit. Lowry's book pays homage to their praiseworthy diversity in an encyclopedic compilation of testimonials, pictures, occupants, neutral uses, capacities, largest and smallest crowds, surfaces, dimensions, fences, former uses, current uses, and anecdotes. Lawrence S. Ritter's more detailed, better-illustrated scrapbook. Lost Ballparks, focuses on 22 mostly vintage urban fields, major and minor, that have since made way for shopping centers, university campuses, a senior citizens' center, a hospital, public housing, junior high schools, and parking lots.

' •

Wrigley Field, Los Angeles, California, late 1940s.

Forbes Field, Pittsburgh, 1 9 0 9 - 1 9 7 1 . Main entrance, ca. 1910.

Some idiosyncrasies of the old ballparks can be explained by the curious latitude accorded by the book of rules as to specifications for the playing field. Whi le precisely prescribing the layout for the infield, the rules left the spatial definition ol the outfield open to local interpretation. Phis allowed unusual field configurations to fit the odd scraps of urban land. It wasn't unti l rule 1.04 was passed in 1958 that a minimum dimension for new Stadiums was fixed at 325 feet from home plate to the nearest fence and 400 feet to center field. But even with rule 1.04, nothing said a field had to be symmetrical - o r thai ii could not be configured, for example, to favor a home team with a surplus ofleft-handed power hitters.

Symmetry and uniformity would seem sportsmanlike precepts for stadium design. But the lookalikc character of the super stadiums derived less charitably from the application ot principles of systems design and diagrammatic analysis to the require-ments of a multipurpose stadium. In Green Cathedrals, architect Dale Swearington cogently discusses engineering innovations in reinforced and lightweight concrete that allowed concrete to compare favorably with steel as a building material, enabling a monumental unity o f form and structure within a modernist plastic expression. Moving stadiums out into the suburbs neutralized the localizing influences o f the city context, freeing form to follow function in diagrammatic buildings thai were symmetrical and usually round, with broad cantilevers and no interfering support columns.

What was really being optimized was engineering: the circular shape of most multipurpose super stadiums fits no sport precisely but can be finagled to accommo-

date them all. For baseball this configura-tion puts spectators at an increased distance from the infield and leaves many fans under the deep cover o f overslung upper decks, screened from the trajectory of a well-hit fly ball. There's much to dislike about these super stadiums. Philip Bess's little hook. City Baseball Magic, offers an incisive and comprehensive critique in laying out his argument for the design of Armour Field, a hypothetical new ballpark for the Chicago White Sox that sought to restore some of the ambience and character of the older generation of urban parks.

But unless I miss the point, what baseball romantics yearn for is the true idiosyncra-sies that made the ballparks of the past so imperfect and so lopsidedly designed to favor the strengths of the home team. Nearly every book on baseball begins with fond remembrances of being taken to the ballpark by an adult and how the experi-ence lingered. 1 recall going with my father to old Forbes Field in Pittsburgh - a grimy post-Victorian structure that to me resembled nothing so much as a steel mill or railroad station - and having the over-whelming feeling that the whole rickety, riveted steel structure was going to collapse. I made deals with the gods that i f I let the other team win, maybe we could get out of there alive. At Forbes Field, 1 was a boy being initiated into a man's world that smelled o f cigars, beer, and the sweat o f hunky stcelworkers who cussed everything.

Today baseball is a thoroughly sanitized "family entertainment." Maybe it all changed when the Brooklyn Dodgers moved to Los Angeles and the chimerical world of Hollywood, bypassing the cozy Mission-style ambience of LA's own Wrigley Field for the immense, mult i-valent Coliseum until Chavez Ravine could

34 Cite Spring 19lJ2

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be rushed to completion. IVrhaps it was when the Astrodome turned the baseball stadium into a kind ot post-Barnum theme park out ol diversionary necessity. Today baseball players live in a universal non-place realm, the same world inhabited by movie stars who live on the surfaces ot electronic screens. I hev don't belong to Houston or Pittsburgh or anyplace; they go where the money is. Everything about the game seems far off, miniaturized, squeaky clean.

Like many of our institutions, baseball today really is defined by marketing, consumerism, and television. In the third generation of ballparks, the ones Lowry calls regenerated classical parks, the postmodern "look" seems more like a piece ot thin, "themed" wrapping paper applied to the outside surfaces of'still-too-perfect stadiums. They embody the essence o f capitalist architecture in the declining years of the 2f)th century - designed to look good on television and to hold life inside a high-priced controlled environment of ersatz nostalgia and lots of fringe buying. To restore baseball to its former look would mean resurrecting old spectator styles in p l .ko much less w holesome and slightly more illicit. It would also mean deconstructing the surface illusions of these places, creating instead stadiums of considerable irrationality - a kind of John Cage architecture held together by the narrative content of the game itself. •

Painted Ground Roberto Burle Marx: The Unnatural Art of the Garden by William Howard Adams. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1991. HO pp., 50 color plates. $22.50 paper

The Gardens of Roberto Burle Marx by Sima T.liovson: foreword fry Roberto Burle Marx. New York; Harry N. Abrams, Saga-press, 1991. 237pp., 163 color plates, $45

Reviewed by Eduardo Robles

Roberto Burle Marx, born in Sao Paulo, Brazil, on 4 August I 909, emerged fore-most among the creators of a modern landscape aesthetic in the late 1930s, His work is an example of landscape design as artistic endeavor. A painter, muralist, sculptor, architect, and set designer, he brought to it sources of inspiration based on art, literature, garden history, and music.

Working almost entirely in his native Brazil, Burle Marx's career extended over half a century. From a few projects o f traditional design to the refinement of a philosophy based on artistic and ecological concerns, he expressed a personal cosmol-ogy that was expanded and refined in each project. Burle Marx's designs could not have existed without Brazil and its natural richness, something he realized during his first visit to Europe when he saw the Dahlan Botanical Garden in Berlin. In this setting, the Brazilian transplants, exuberant even in the far-from-tropicaJ light of a German winter, must have had an enormous impact on him - the beginnings of a vision. In his work, Burle Marx

reminds us of a time when the garden was still an important aspect of civilization. He reaches for a clear and strong harmony between nature and man and wants to contain and preserve nature as it is inter-preted, not imitated, by the eye and hand of the designer.

Wil l iam Howard Adams, landscape historian, lawyer, museum director, and curator of the Burle Marx exhibition held at the Museum of Modern Art between 12 April and 23 May 1991, describes Brazil-ian conditions and the forces that shaped the mind ot the master in Roberto Burle Marx: The Unnatural Art of the Garden. His brief, beautifully illustrated treatment surveys the historical background of ggrrUnc m Brazil and Europe and details Burle Marx's collaborations with architects and their architecture, his teachings, his work as director of parks in the city o f Recife, and his sympathy for avant-garde art. Lucid photographs of drawings, paintings, and projects give the reader a glimpse of his ability to incorporate in gardens what he believes is the assertive-ness of humanity over and in harmony with the landscape, since lor Marx it was in a garden that man first defined and modified the universe. Adams shows us Burle Marx's work - full o f emotion and understanding of nature and science, of aggression and reconciliation, of discovery and creation, addressing both the eye and the mind.

The Gardens of Roberto Burle Marx offers a more personal approach to the man cited as "the real creator ot the modern garden" by the American Institute ot Architects. It is the work of the late Sima Eliovson, a native of South Africa who was a writer, photographer, and lecturer on gardens and garden subjects. She traces Burle Marx's long and prolific career from small garden commissions to the large and spectacular urban landscapes in Rio de Janeiro and Brasilia.

The first part of her book, dedicated to the man and his background, contains

Roberto Burle Marx, garden plan, Burton Tremaine residence, Santa Barbara, California, 1948 .

C i t e Spr ing 1992 35

Richmond Hall ins ta l la t ion des igned by Tadao A n d o .

extensive descr ipt ions laced w i t h an endless list o f plants. A l t h o u g h at t imes a cr i t ical v iew is i n tended , Eliovson's w o r k is p r imar i l y descr ipt ive. The re are exhaustive explanat ions o f the m a n , the phi losopher, and the p lan tsman, as wel l as a lengthy descr ip t ion o f Burle Marx's plant houses, i n c l u d i n g a list o f the favorite plants used in his o w n garden. Unfor tunate ly , Eliovson's account more of ten than no t lapses in to mono tony .

I'.liovson also provides .1 useful catalogue o f Bur le Marx's w o r k in approx imate ly chronologica l order, w i t h elaborate descr ipt ions o f the plants invo lved . These projects show the variety and versati l i ty o f Burle Marx's design: large and smal l , w ide and narrow, flat and perched o n steep hil ls, angled and stepped, h igh ly geomet-ric and h igh ly natural is t ic . El iovson evokes the dia logue between co l lec t ing and us ing plants in serious, sol id design. Co lo r photographs and plans carry the bu lk o f the i n f o r m a t i o n ; the plans are too lew, and the photographs fail to convey the exuberant richness of the gardens. Bur le Marx's abi l i ty to explo i t the i m m e -diate w i t h visually power fu l and exotic-plants and to contrast the single focal po in t and the landscape beyond are lost in the flatness and m o n o c h r o m y o f the photographs. El iovson does inc lude a he lp fu l glossary o f plants men t ioned in the text - a l t hough it is by no means a complete render ing o f Bur le Marx's palette - a n d a comple te checkl ist o f his projects.

Rober to Bur le M a r x is a painter o f gardens, a master o f bo l d statements, and a singular in f luence i n garden design i n the 20 th century. 1 le is .1 designer w h o knows and loves plants, w h o understands their f o r m , color, f l ower ing habi ts, and ind iv idua l qual i t ies as wel l as their needs, w h o can orchestrate revelat ion, surprise, and quiet presence. I t is he lp fu l to have available in Engl ish t w o books about Burle Ma r x and his projects that reveal bo th the private and the pub l ic aspects of his exotic and painter ly oeuvre. •

The Drawing on the Wall Tadao Ando The Menil Collection, Richmond Hall 20 March - 24 May 1992

Reviewed by Car los Jinufnez

En te r ing the Tadao A n d o exh ib i t i on at the M e n i l Col lect ion's R i c h m o n d 1 k i l l , one immedia te ly conf ron ts t w o angled walls opposi te one another. O n the wa l l to the r ight , the architect has sketched a l o n g i t u d i -nal secrion o f one o f his projects, t rans fo rm-ing the wal l i n t o an actual d r a w i n g surface. I n a single gesture, the con t inuous b lue-crayon sketch integrates an archi tectural f o r m and its sett ing, paral le l ing Ando's preoccupat ion w i t h bu i ld ings and nature as inseparable elements. The wal l ro the left displays eight sequential photographs of the altar o f one o f Ando's bes t -known works, the C h u r c h o f L igh t , Ibarak i . Japan ( 1 9 8 7 - 8 9 ) . W i t h i n this series, each f rame reveals the passage o f l i gh t as i t enters and transits the sacred space. L ike a r i tual sundia l , the cross-shaped open ing animates the concrete walls and casts a sp i r i tua l presence. O n e need look no fur ther than these rwo walls to grasp the essence o f the architect's wo rk .

Th i s exh ib i t i on o f 12 self-selected works f r o m the last ten years was organized by the M u s e u m o f M o d e r n Ar t as part o f its Gera ld D . H ines Interests Arch i tec ture Program. Both the New York and Hous to n installa-t ions were designed by A n d o , a l though at R i c h m o n d Ha l l the exh ib i t i on has been relieved o f the freestanding faux-concrete wal l that marred i t at M O M A - a strained reference to the architect's favori te mater ia l , cast concrete. A catalogue accompanies the e x h i b i t i o n , i n c l u d i n g an essay by Kenne th Frampron that assesses Ando's "sel f -con-sciously cross-cultural pos i t i on . "

Born in Osaka, Japan, in 1 9 4 1 , A n d o has achieved an almost myth ica l p rominence as a self-taught architect w h o developed his craft t h rough a process o f observat ion and travel. A d d i n g to this myst ique is his p roc l i v i t y to in i t ia te projects himsel f and then f i n d c l ient-

patrons to enable their real izat ion. Ando's path of self-discovery has cu lm ina ted in a c lar i ty o f expression seldom seen in con tem -porary archi tecture; his spare geometry i n -fuses even an anony -mous detai l o r a b lank concrete wal l w i t h the v i ta l i ty o f poetry.

The exh ib i t i on lamentably excludes i m p o r t a n t works such as the Azuma Row House ( 1 9 7 5 - 7 6 ) and the T imes I and I I bu i ld ings ( 1 9 8 4 - 8 6 ) , in Osaka and Kyo to respectively. Located in c rowded urban contexts, these projects demonst ra te Ando's ingenu i ty in creat ing spaces for refuge and sustenance i n the midst o f everyday chaos. This ref ined serenity - at once medi tat ive

and sensual - is most evident in the three ecclesiastical projects represented in the exh ib i t i on : the Chape l on M o u n t Rokko , Kobe ( 1 9 8 5 - 8 6 ) , the C h u r c h o n the Water, T o m a n u (1985 88) and the C h u r c h o f L igh t . T h r o u g h mater ia l and texture, water and w i n d , shadow and l igh t , each of the senses finds its correspondence.

Mos t o f the projects are described by site models and by presentat ion drawings, some as large as 32 feet in length , rendered w i t h seductive v i r tuosi ty . Beyond then g raphu assurance, the drawings underscore Ando's desire to fuse elements o f nature w i t h the tectonics o f archi tecture. This is no better expressed than in the astonishing d r a w i n g of the C h u r c h o n the Water: here the ro ta t ion o f sect ion, p lan , and elevation converges in a seemingly unend ing l ine , bracketed by a heavily d rawn blue sky and a b lacken ing earth.

I he site models are revealing as extensions o f the topography on w h i c h A n d o sculpts his fo rms. O f t e n a plan's con f igu ra t i on echoes or contrasts to some near or d is tant c on tou r in the ter ra in . Each site mode l appea l ! as an abstract po r t i on of earth l i f ted f r o m its source. For some architects, the r igor o f geometry can impr i son the senses, bu t Ando's reductive geometry is l ibera t ing . It o f ten ampl i f ies subtleties o f site or serves ro extend its reach, as in the case o f the Forest of Tombs M u s e u m , K u m a m o t o ( 1 9 8 9 - 9 1 ) , and the Ch ika tsu-Asuka His tor -ical M u s e u m , M i n a m i - K a w a c h i ( 1 9 8 9 - 9 1 ) , where conceptual gr ids enter i n to and disappear under the water.

Placed at the exhibi t ion's m i d p o i n t , six television screens ask vis i tors to enter .1 s imulated archi tecture o f mu l t i p l e images. These in t roduce an e lement o f hype i n c o n -gruous w i t h the projects. V ideo instal lat ions can w o r k for o r against an architect's sensibil i ty. For instance, in Arata Izosaki's retrospective exh ib i t i on at the M u s e u m o f C o n t e m p o r a r y A r t , Los Angeles (1991) , the use o f " h i g h d e f i n i t i o n " television mon i to rs was wel l sui ted to his showmanship . T h e saturated images t ransported one in to Izosaki's realm o f eclectic compos i t ions w i t h an immediacy not felt in either the accom-pany ing drawings or the models. In Ando's case, the videos do faci l i tate an understand-ing o f movement t h rough his archi tectural pro- ject ions, bu t their slickness distances one f r o m the t rue mean ing o f the w o r k . W h a t is most m o v i n g abou t Ando's best w o r k is that w h i c h cannot be said - the silent dialogue between the ephemeral and the eternal. At R i c h m o n d H a l l , their m e d i u m o f exchange is the m e m o r y o f a f l ow ing sketch and the haun t i ng beauty o f shadow and l ight . •

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