If Hitler Approached You...

... as a prospective client, (making the obvious assumptions-- ie, it's the 30's...) what would you do?

formatting link
Leading question: Would you want to have your portfolio/reputation/? associated with the subject of the above link?

formatting link

code: lafts.

Reply to
Warm Worm
Loading thread data ...

How broke and hungry would I be at the time?

Too bad, no pictures.

Reply to
Michael Bulatovich

The problem with these types of questions is that if you're asking it from the point of view of "being in the period", then we don't have the hindsight to know.

But, having said that, if I get to be the person I am, just a German, then I'd have seen the writing on the wall and bailed, so I probably wouldn't be around for him to have asked...

Reply to
3D Peruna

There was a documentation on German TV about Albert Speer. He appeared to be just like many other architects: ambituous and dedicated to some luxury. Watching the story of his life...I couldn't tell what I would do in this situation...but then, considering my own attitude...I think I would stick to Mies :-)

Marianne

Reply to
Marianne Bloss

So on the one hand you don't have the hindsight to know, and yet on the other you'd have seen the writing on the wall and bailed?

Reply to
Señor Popcorn

Paul (3D Peruna) does have a point about the retrospective nature of the question. For me, it might be a question of how much I knew about the client at the time.

Ah yes, Mies...

Your response about him, and his history, as well as the responses of the rest of this thread spawns some reflection about influence; affluence, or lack thereof; personal convictions and what history eventually reads as.

"After 1933, Nazi political pressure soon forced Mies to close the government-financed school, a victim of its previous association with socialism, communism, and other progressive ideologies. He built very little in these years (one built commission was Philip Johnson's New York apartment); his style was rejected by the Nazis as not 'German' in character. Frustrated and unhappy, he left his homeland reluctantly in

1937 as he saw his opportunity for any future building commissions vanish..."

-- Wikipedia.org

Reply to
Señor Popcorn

True, and I also appreciate the other views, but maybe it's too hypothetic a question.

Marianne

Reply to
Marianne Bloss

It comes very close to being a troll, as it approaches Godwin's Law.

formatting link

Reply to
Michael Bulatovich

:-))

Well, I personally wouldn't go further than saying that the original question is quite away from reality, but it has been discussed in a distinguished way.

As for your point of view, I am with you :-)

Marianne

Reply to
Marianne Bloss

"Godwin's Law does not apply to discussions directly addressing genocide, propaganda or other mainstays of the Nazi regime..." [ie., architecture, architects and architectural/historical/moral/ ethical/etc. associations/considerations] "=2E..Instead, it applies to inappropriate, inordinate, or hyperbolic comparisons of other situations (or one's opponent) with Hitler or Nazis. However, Godwin's Law can itself also be abused, as a distraction or diversion, to fallaciously miscast an opponent's argument as hyperbole, especially if the comparisons made by the argument are actually appropriate."

--

formatting link
Nevertheless, Michael, please feel free to swap Hitler for any other preferred time and character of dubious action and intent if it suits you to do so, and perhaps you will feel more comfortable with the OP as being fair, reasonable or valid, or at least less Godwin's-Law- like. :)

Reply to
Warm Worm

"Godwin's Law does not apply to discussions directly addressing genocide, propaganda or other mainstays of the Nazi regime..." [ie., architecture, architects and architectural/historical/moral/ ethical/etc. associations/considerations]

You added that "IE"!

"...Instead, it applies to inappropriate, inordinate, or hyperbolic comparisons of other situations (or one's opponent) with Hitler or Nazis. However, Godwin's Law can itself also be abused, as a distraction or diversion, to fallaciously miscast an opponent's argument as hyperbole, especially if the comparisons made by the argument are actually appropriate."

--

formatting link
Nevertheless, Michael, please feel free to swap Hitler for any other preferred time and character of dubious action and intent if it suits you to do so, and perhaps you will feel more comfortable with the OP as being fair, reasonable or valid, or at least less Godwin's-Law- like. :)

That's ok, my response would probably be the same as before: "How hungry and broke am I?"

Ask me about people who take 90 days to pay, and I'd have a different reaction.

Reply to
Michael Bulatovich

Fair enough.

Reply to
Warm Worm

If President George W. Bush... If Senator Clinton... If your state's governor... If your town's mayor... If the busybody next door...

The question is almost completely bizarre. My portfolio would contain what I put in it. My reputation would contain some of what other people put in it. And there's why it's only "almost". Some people would say "Gruhn built something for a guy who had a lot of stark rectilinear monumental neo-Roman stuff built, therefore Gruhn's work must be SRMNR." These people are idiots. If they control my well being it may well do to pander to them. Perhaps they could be shown my portfolio. If they don't control my well being they can be ignored.

If one doesn't feel competent to do ones best to satisfy the client's needs and desires and to be a client advocate in the construction process then clearly that one should politely decline the commission.

If one feels that architectural practice is about changing the world to suit ones own twisted views rather than about getting the clients needs and desires satisfied to the best of ones abilities then clearly that one should politely decline any commission.

What I most like about that last one is that some people will say "but he said Hitler, this is an ethics issue!" Yes, yes it is.

How many people who wouldn't build a "death camp" would gladly build a new NEA office?

Can you think of a way to phrase the question so that it relates to Aldo Rossi instead of Albert Speer? How does that change the nature of the question? Can you imagine why I might chose Rossi in particular?

Reply to
gruhn

"In general, there were two primary National Socialist styles of architecture"

Make that "subjects".

Reply to
gruhn

Clearly, at the time ugly ass pseudo Roman bombast was the wave of the future. Who the heck WOULDN'T want their portfolio associated with it.

Witness this thing going in up the road

formatting link
It's a rectilinear box with a Gehry bunting.

At least a person could join the Nazi Architecture bandwagon and build honestly.

Some quotes from the Wiki

- Many Nazi buildings were stages for communal activity

That sounds like something most modern intellectuals can get in to

- This was an attempt to link the German people back to both their history and their land.

The National Historic Trust tossed with an egalitarian appreciation of the "red neck." The latter as opposed to an elitist prejudice which is exactly equivalent to racism. In short, Nazi Architecture was a better human than 21st C American leftists.

- arrested in the world of his youth: the world of 1880 to 1910, which stamped its imprint on his artistic taste as on his political and ideological conceptions

Caught up in the foolish idealism of his youth. Again, the modern American left should be well able to relate.

- Most Nazi Architecture was neither novel in style nor concept; it was not supposed to be. Even a cursory inspection of what was intended for Berlin finds analogies all over the world. Long boulevards with important buildings along them can be found in the grid pattern road structures of Washington and New York, the Mall and Whitehall in London, and the boulevards of Paris. Large domes can be found on the buildings of the Mughal Empire of India, the Capitol in Washington, the Pantheon and Basilica di San Pietro in Rome.

Formal architectural mechanisms are not style. I could argue that they are concept. More to the point, since specific examples are used, they are, in those contexts for the reasons they appear in said, concept. In short, big straight roads are grand and glorify the state no matter where you go, why try something different? The urge to make new things with little regard to their effectiveness is more a preoccupation of now.

- This confuses the Nazi dislike of certain styles like the Bauhaus with a blanket dislike of all modern styles. This was based mainly on what the Bauhaus and others were seen as representing,

The wiki doesn't mention it, but it is well on record that the Bauhaus claimed to and was seen as representing socialism. While National Socialism had "socialism" in its name, it (again, according to wikipedia) stopped being socialist in practice when it became Hitlerian in nature. My observation is that the Nazis tended to specify their hatred towards "Bolshevism."

- To criticize Speer's architectural style is to criticise buildings being built at the same time all over the world.

See, who WOULDN'T want to be associated with that? I'll repeat - the urge to make new things with little regard to their effectiveness is more a preoccupation of now.

- but as symbols of a new Germany

The Constitution is a living document. I am the decider. A New American Century A New World Order We have to scorn sprawl and embrace New Urbanism Progressive [sic]

Reply to
gruhn

LOL

Ideally, perhaps, but we both know that's not what actually occurs, right? The "bizarre" factors in.

Hitler, this is an ethics issue!" Yes, yes it is.

office?

I guess we find that out through these kinds of bizarre questions. :)

You tell me.

Reply to
Warm Worm

Stark stark stark rationalist work based on Roman forms. Not known for being a "bad" person.

Reply to
gruhn

How could anyone wish to scale Speer down to the size of a citizen? He wasn't just an architect but also war-minister und directly involved in the genocide and concentration camps. As a member of the Third Reich government he IS responsible.

That's what he is blamed for, and not for designing rectilinear buildings, as you described so nicely. In trial, he was clever enough to talk his way out of being sentenced to death by claiming the "ethics issue" he would talk and insist on to Hitler about.

I mean, as an architect he had been 'the right hand' of the dictator for years and therefore grew into his hegemonial politics as well. In the process of years they lost every human scale and ended up in designing this one monstrouos development, that fortunately has not been built, because war broke out. I think, going this far is got to add to the evaluation of him.

Now, what is that to do with any democratic business? Not much I think.

Marianne

Reply to
Marianne Bloss

What? I just answered the question.

More to the point... I have no idea how what you are saying follows from what you quoted.

"blah blah blah". Yeah, Nazi's were bad. It's common knowledge. Now that we've acknowledged that can we get back on track? Or are you one of those who can't?

Actually it was a quick hack job of analyzin Nazi Architecture, but thanks for the compliment.

Now let's reread the question at hand...

I repeat, I have no idea what you are talking about.

I take that back. I have every idea of what you are talking about but no idea why.

I take that back. I have every idea of why you are talking about that. I have no inclination validate your off topic rant any further.

Though you inadvertently and rather illuminatingly answer my question:

Reply to
gruhn

So are you saying that you'd work for Hitler then, designing his death camps (to place in your portfolio), because it's about the architecture, not the client?

Reply to
Señor Popcorn

HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.