Pritzker laureate Richard Meier shares insights with CU architecture students

By Linda Myers

Nineteen Cornell architecture students were chosen by lottery to take part in a master class last week taught by Pritzker laureate Richard Meier '56. The architect was visiting campus for the fourth time since he was named a Frank H.T. Rhodes Class of '56 University Professor in 2000.

Meier, who is perhaps best known as the designer of the Getty Center in Los Angeles, was relaxed and candid as he talked in a Sibley Hall classroom March 4, 5 and 6 with the students -- a mix of undergraduates in their fifth year of B.Arch. studies, M.Arch. graduate students and a Ph.D. candidate in the history of architecture.

Architect Richard Meier, left, and fifth-year B.Arch. student Andres Stebelski join other architecture students in critiquing a project by fifth-year student Elie Gamburg to reinhabit the World Trade Center area, during Meier's master class in Sibley Hall, March 6. Charles Harrington/University Photography

Dressed casually in a black cashmere sweater and charcoal gray slacks, Meier answered questions ranging from his response to the winning design for Cornell's soon-to-be-built architecture building (the design, by Steven Holl Architects, was his first choice, he said) to his reaction to the Getty's landscaping (he dislikes it). He also informally critiqued students' projects -- among them fifth-year B.Arch. student Elie Gamburg's process for reinhabiting the World Trade Center area -- and offered his own notions about what might happen in the area where the twin towers once stood. And at the students' request, he presented a slide show on some of his own works, past and in progress, with commentary on the issues that had informed his design and choice of materials. Here are some of his remarks.

On what might be built at the Ground Zero site in Manhattan: "What's built down there has to have a presence, be a place of distinction, which means, I guess, that it has to be a tall building. My first analogy was it has to be a Rockefeller Center for downtown Manhattan. When people come to New York, this is where they'll want to go, to move through. But there will be serious resistance to a tall building that sticks out like the twin towers did. The danger is people will say, 'We want something mundane, background. Let's not make it too noticeable or significant.' I worry about that and hope it's short-lived. It's going to take a lot of courage to do something outstanding."

On a memorial commemorating lost lives: "There's a difference between the event and the people killed. I don't think anyone wants to memorialize the buildings. Making something that can express the grief is challenging. There are very few great memorials. If you could make something that conveys what The New York Times portraits of grief series conveys every day, they're amazing. There's no reason it has to be a single memorial. There's an opportunity for different kinds of memorials."

On computers in architectural design: "The computer is an incredible tool that helps us do things better than before. At my firm, we used to do construction documents by hand with ink and mylar. When we changed the elevations, everything [in the drawings] had to be changed by hand. Now with the computer, you make one change and everything else changes automatically.

"But I'm amazed at how you can make a bad idea look good on the computer, make it look a lot more thought out than it really is. Ideas don't come from the manipulation of lines. Architectural design on the computer is about making images rather than about making architecture. Clients love it, expect it, but it offers no understanding of relative scale. It really gets me upset that so many people are making images without understanding their meaning and their scale."

On the use of natural materials: "There's a difference between what's natural and what's man-made. The minute you cut down a tree, it's no longer organic, you have to protect it with paint or a sealer, so you might as well make it what you want it to be. Architecture is not organic, it's inert, man-made."

On his favorite projects: "My courthouses make me feel like I've done something right. To me they represent what's important about the democratic system. I took my 10-year-old daughter to see one of them, and she said to me, 'Dad, this looks like an important building.' That's exactly what we want people to feel. Courthouses can be depressing places for those on trial and their families. There's an immense amount of time spent waiting around. It's that amount of time that the place is about. What do you experience when you're sitting in a hall and it's a dark, dank space? But if you see light, landscape, life around you, you don't feel like your life is in a holding pattern."

On the use of white in his buildings: "The whiteness enables one to see the architectural ideas, openness vs. closure, linear vs. plane elements, solid vs. void, public vs. private. In the Smith house [a house Meier designed in Florida] it helps reflect and refract [the landscape that surrounds the building and makes it] a part of the outside. But I don't believe in the extension of space from outside to inside. There's a difference between inside and outside, inhabited and uninhabited space."

His latest project: "Two small buildings on Perry and West streets in Manhattan's West Village, overlooking the Hudson River, that will open in May. It's a great project. The buildings are totally glass on all sides. Each floor is an apartment. You get to make it what you want, like a loft."

On the difference between making architecture and making art: "You can inhabit architecture one way or another. That's not possible with art or sculpture."

What would he refuse to design? "I wouldn't design a prison or a gas station. I have nothing to say about either one."

What he'd do if he had the time and resources? "I'd like to do a high-rise building -- I know the perfect site. And I'd like to take a trip across America, talking with people at different schools of architecture to learn how schools differ across the country."