by Rem Koolhaas
The Mountain must become architecture.
COMPETITION
At the beginning each of the Associated Architects is asked to develop a private scheme in competition with the others. This ploy creates an overabundance of architectural images and energy for partial inclusion in the diagram while it drains ego from the individual members.
The two most famous of the Associated Architects, Corbett and Hood, the only theoreticians, propose retroactive versions of earlier, aborted projects.
Corbett sees a chance finally to impose his 1923 traffic/island metaphor to cure congestion by turning Manhattan into a “very modernized Venice.” Ferriss’ renderings bring only the Venetian elements of Corbett’s scheme into sharp focus: a Bridge of Sighs spans 49th Street; San Marco—like colonnades and a stream of shiny black limousines monopolize the attention. The other outlines of the scheme disappear in a mist of charcoal particles.
Corbett’s Rockefeller Center, located on a synthetic midtown Adriatic, redeems a subconscious promise made as long ago as Dreamland’s Canals of Venice.
INTERSECTION
Hood’s proposal too is testimony to the persistence of his obsession; since the three blocks of the site frustrate his intention finally to implant one of his mega-Mountains on a major intersection, he creates within the Grid an artificial intersection, two diagonals that connect its four corners, the traffic “shortcut” first applied in his City of Towers. On this artificial crossing, he places a four-part peak that slopes down in terraces toward the perimeter of the site. The peaks of the four buildings concentrate services and elevator shafts. At regular intervals along these towers, bridges connect the four shafts, so that congestion is assured. Hood’s scheme is a proposal for a perpetual rush hour in three dimensions.
“Proposal for the Development of Metropolitan Square,” plan at elevated arcade level, Corbett, Harrison & MacMurray, 1929, or “The Persistence of Memory (1).” Corbett’s private project for Rockefeller Center is the apotheosis of his planning through metaphor, a last attempt to create “a very modernized Venice” in his lifetime, presented as a logical series of anti-congestion measures. The three blocks of Radio City are treated as “islands”; the center of the middle island is occupied by the Metropolitan Opera, surrounded by seven Skyscrapers. As to be expected, the essence of his scheme is the separation of vehicular traffic—assigned to the ground—and pedestrians, for whom he creates a continuous elevated network on the second floor; its arcades line the full perimeter of the outer blocks and form, at the core of the scheme, a Square around the Opera, a metropolitan ambulatory whose circuit is completed by half-arcaded bridges—the width of the plaza itself—across 49th and 50th streets. From the Square, subsidiary bridges lead to side entrances in the Opera. The arcade network also gives access to the recessed lobbies of the seven Skyscrapers—three on the outer blocks and one, the tallest, west of the Opera on Sixth Avenue. The central Square is connected to the city’s conventional pedestrian plane—i.e., the ground—by an inclined platform that slopes down toward Fifth Avenue between two colossal pergolas. The whole arrangement resembles the “circumferential plaza” around Grand Central Station, with the station replaced by the Opera, the cars by people and the ramp from Park Avenue by the sloping plaza.
“Development of Metropolitan Square,” section/elevation from Fifth Avenue, showing, in center, sloping plaza between pergolas ascending toward Metropolitan Square in front of Opera, and section through the two outer blocks. Here a problematic aspect of Corbett’s scheme is revealed: not only are the arcades on the main pedestrian level on the second floor lined with shops—a valuable commercial proposition—but the ground floor, which ought, to be consistent, to have been completely surrendered to cars, shows a second arcade with shopping on both sides, while all other features of the scheme conspire to remove pedestrians from grade level.
“Development of Metropolitan Square,” west-east section through 49th Street, central Square and sloping plaza on Fifth Avenue. From left to right: silhouette of tallest Skyscraper, outline of Opera, cut through Metropolitan Square and sloping plaza.
“Development of Metropolitan Square,” model from northeast showing north elevation of block with three Towers and car access to covered area under pedestrian square on site of present Rockefeller Plaza.
Scheme O.
Between December 19 and 23, 1929, Walter Kilham, Jr.—working for Hood—drew up at least eight Rockefeller Centers. Each alternative was developed as a diagrammatic plan and in three-dimensional outline. Scheme O dates from December 19. Like Corbett’s “private” project it proposes a continuous elevated level for pedestrians that counteracts the discontinuity of the three separate blocks. In the O scheme the center block is occupied by an extremely tall longitudinal slab that terminates in Skyscrapers at both ends. Thus, the O project marks the first appearance in Manhattan’s architecture of a “slab”—itself a regression to the extrusion buildings of the early part of the century—the form that would soon spell the end of the Manhattanist Skyscraper. It was dictated—Hood would claim—by logic alone: access to air and light. The two outer blocks are designated as “Department Stores.” Facing the central Skyscraper Slab are two metropolitan balconies along the inside of the outer blocks, connected by two bridges to similar terraces around the perimeter of the center block; both balconies and terraces are lined with shops. The two elevator cores at either end of the Skyscraper Slab are connected by an interior arcade. Further schemes were variations on the O scheme, with alternative arrangements of high-rise elements on the center block and relocations of the bridges to create different pedestrian networks.
In further proposals, like “Loft & Office scheme on 3 New York Blocks” and the plans for V and X schemes, the proto-project of Rockefeller Center consists—not unlike the “City under a Single Roof”—of a center slab intersected by one, two and even three north-south wings that span 49th and 50th streets, with elevator banks at those points where the transverse slabs rest on the lower outer blocks. These plans make the project a “Grid within the Grid,” with premonitions of Mondrian’s Victory Boogie-Woogie.
Hood’s personal project for Rockefeller Center—“The Persistence of Memory (2)": “Superblock scheme for Rockefeller Center,” also called “The Fling,” described by Hood as “an attempt to build a pyramid unit,” model.
“The Fling” is a barely disguised version of one of the business centers of his “Manhattan 1950.” Since the site lacks the major intersection for which those “peaks” were intended, Hood connects the outer corners of the site to create an artificial intersection, then fits the business center in by twisting it 45 degrees.
Four Skyscrapers face each other across a miniature Rockefeller Square in the center; they are connected by bridges at intervals along their length. From the quadruple central peak “The Fling” slopes down toward the perimeter to connect with the existing city.
BRAIN
Before the Center itself, the most impressive creation of Todd and his architects, now assembled as the Associated Architects—Reinhard & Hofmeister; Corbett, Harrison & MacMurray; Hood, Godley & Fouilhoux—is the theater they design to accommodate the campaign of specification.
Its purpose is not the fastest possible determination of all the details of the Center but, on the contrary, the postponement of its final definition to the last possible moment so that the concept of the Center remains an open matrix that can absorb any idea that can increase its ultimate quality.
The Associated Architects are organized on two floors in Todd’s own Graybar Building. The office is an almost literal diagram of the consecutive stages of the creative process.
On the top floor, all the Associated Architects have their individual cubicles; they meet together once a day in a conference room for collective brainstorming, so that their separate ideas can be inserted in the collective
matrix. Renee Chamberlain, an architectural sculptor, and the “delineators” of Drafting Room #1 give the still-fluid concepts of the designers a provisional embodiment, so that they can make quick decisions.
On the floor below, connected only by a small spiral staircase, the professional specificators are arranged in a grid of tables in Drafting Room #2. Here the zoning envelope is dismantled into separate fragments numbered one to thirteen, each with its own team of supervisors and technicians. They translate the ideas from above into precise working drawings that will be submitted to those who turn the blueprint into three-dimensional reality.
“In addition to a main telephone switchboard, with direct lines to consulting engineers and the blueprinting companies, is a dictograph system of interoffice communication. All departments are connected by dictograph substations, connected in turn with a master dictograph, from which a conference report can be carried on with all the substations at the same time.
“Each substation is connected with an executive office. In addition to this system is a corps of runners who transmit interoffice memoranda, mail and conference notes,”21 writes Wallace Harrison, the futurist “manager” of this quasi-rational circuitry of creation.
Theater of the campaign of specification: the office as a three-dimensional flow diagram of the creative process. “Executive offices are located on the 26th floor of the Graybar Building and are connected with 3 drafting rooms, 2 of which are on the 25th floor. Drafting Room #1 is used for designing and modeling; the other two for general production work….”
Center’s bulk was dismantled in fragments that were studied and developed by separate teams of architect, sculptor/modelmaker, delineators, draftsmen, specification writers.
MARRIAGE
The rejection of the personal projects in favor of the diagram established in the committee’s brainstorming causes no resentment. When Hood describes the committee’s mechanics—the collapse of philistinism into creativity—he seems, for once, free from disingenuousness. “Far from being a handicap, this discipline, I am convinced, of being obliged to make a project stand on its own financial feet and to submit its details and materials to a constant critical analysis leads to honesty and integrity of design. Under this stimulation, the cobwebs of whimsy, taste, fashion and vanity are brushed aside, and the architect finds himself face to face with the essentials and elements that make real architecture and real beauty.”22
If not responsible for the Center’s initial diagram, it is obvious that Hood dominates the campaign to specify the envelope. Specialist in pragmatic sophistry at the service of pure creation, Hood is the most effective member of the committee. He speaks all the different “languages” represented by its members.
When Todd, for instance, balks at the cost of cladding the entire RCA slab in limestone, Hood retaliates by suggesting they cover it with corrugated iron, “painted, of course.”23
Todd wants limestone after all.
(Perhaps Hood really does prefer painted iron?)
If the committee is a forced marriage between capital and art, it is a marriage eagerly consummated.
Raymond Hood, Wallace K. Harrison and Andrew Reinhard: the architects of Rockefeller Center as they inspect a plaster model of La Maison Française and the British Empire Building…” Ashtray-like objects on pedestal are models for fountain in sunken plaza.
SIEGE
Outside Rockefeller Center’s “brain” reigns the Great Depression: the cost of both labor and materials keeps dropping during the design period.
The two floors are under constant siege from outsiders who want to contribute ideas, services and products to the realization of the Mountain. With the economy desperate and the Center one of the few works in progress, the pressure from these outsiders is often irresistible. It is one more reason for the committee to avoid premature definition; the longer they postpone nonessential decisions, the more the answers appear to them in the form of luxuries that were impossible before.
They appoint a Director of Research to exploit this unexpected potential. Thus the Center continuously raises its sights. While the usual process of architectural creation is like a narrowing horizon, the horizon of Rockefeller Center becomes ever wider. In the end, each fragment of the structure has been exposed to unprecedented scrutiny and is chosen from a terrifying number of alternatives.
This density of rejected possibilities still emanates from the Center as built: there is at least one idea for each of its 250 million dollars.
Further evidence of “density of rejected possibilities”: facade alternatives for RCA Building; cladding in painted corrugated iron was also considered.
“I would not attempt to guess how many…solutions were made: I doubt…if there were any possible schemes that were not studied before the present plan was adopted. And, even after arriving at a definite scheme, changes were continually being made to coincide with rental developments….” (Raymond Hood.) Once the individual schemes were out of the way, their metaphors—Venice, the pyramid—digested, the Associated Architects worked on the elaboration of the Reinhard & Hofmeister envelope: tallest Skyscraper at the center, four secondary Skyscrapers on the far corners of the outer blocks. In front of the central Tower, a midblock plaza—as in Morris’ scheme—sunken to facilitate communication between underground and grade levels. Lower structure on Fifth Avenue was first an oval bank, soon replaced by two identical seven-story structures—the French and the British buildings—which channel pedestrians toward the sunken plaza. Symmetry of the initial concept was abandoned, with northeast Tower now facing Fifth Avenue. Originally it had a solid department store fronting it on Fifth Avenue; this block soon “split,” to form, as an echo of the French and British buildings, an entrance court to the International Building, whose slab repeated the stepping motif of the RCA (“necessitated” by the dropping-out of elevator banks). Southeast tower became the Time-Life Building. As the thirties proceeded and the Center was realized in installments, overall design became less recognizable—to suit demands of specific tenants, and in response to creeping Modernism.
ARCHAEOLOGY
Rockefeller Center is the most mature demonstration of Manhattanism’s unspoken theory of the simultaneous existence of different programs on a single site, connected only by the common data of elevators, service cores, columns and external envelope.
Rockefeller Center should be read as five ideologically separate projects that coexist at the same location. Ascent through its five layers exposes an archaeology of architectural philosophies.
Project #1: Underground Beaux-Arts, plan of concourse (basement) level. Counteracting surface independence of the three Rockefeller Center blocks, a system of underground arcades radiates from Rockefeller Plaza—turned into a skating rink in 1937 after a listless existence as shop window/entrance to the subterranean domain—to form a grandiose, if pathetically two-dimensional, Beaux-Arts composition.
PROJECT #1
The most prominent New York architects, like Flood, have been marked by the teachings of the École des Beaux-Arts, with its reliance on axes, vistas and the articulation of civic monuments against a background of neutral urban fabric. But each and every one of these doctrines is invalidated and denied a priori by New York’s Grid.
The Grid assures every structure it accommodates exactly the same treatment—the same amount of “dignity.” The sanctity of private ownership and its inbuilt resistance to overall formal control preclude the creation of premeditated perspectives, and in the city of the Automonument, the isolation of symbolic objects from the main fabric is meaningless; the fabric itself is already an accumulation of monuments.
In New York, the Beaux-Arts sensibility can only go where there is no Grid, that is: underground.
Rockefeller Center’s –1 level, the basement, is a traditional Beaux-Arts composition finally established on Manhattan: buried vistas that culmi
nate not in the monumental entrance of a new Opera but in the subway. In the Center’s basement, Beaux-Arts planning establishes surreptitious connections between blocks that are scrupulously avoided above ground: a grand design that never makes it to the surface.
At the east end of the composition, the sunken plaza negotiates the transition between the surface of the Grid and the Beaux-Arts intricacies underneath it.
Project #2: Metropolitan resort, three-block theatrical carpet of five to eight theaters—where, theoretically, a single cast could perform up to eight simultaneous spectacles—connected by “Radio Forum,” a hybrid bridge at grade level blocking 49th and 50th streets, which dive underneath it. Concentration of elevator banks shows tallest Skyscraper on Sixth Avenue, two smaller ones east of “private street.” The five theaters were eventually reduced to single Radio City Music Hall.