Aspen Art Museum and the Given, letter to the editor 2014

I'm posting some old letters to the editor. This is so I can remember what I wrote, and to keep myself honest.  I'm posting them in the order I wrote them so this goes back a couple of years.

The more things change….

This was in response to an Aspen Art Museum Press Release calling the new museum the greatest piece of architecture in Aspen for a century. Summer 2014

"The most important building in Aspen in a century." Love it or hate it the Aspen Art Museum is many things, but it is not that. We demolished what was, in my opinion, the most architecturally important building in a century. We demolished the Given Institute. 

I am certain that the inside of the new Art Museum is spectacular. I am equally certain that it invites the glory of our outdoor scenery inside. The rooftop parties are going to be *fabulous*. The installations will be displayed with love, attention and detail. It will be an "Art Experience" for those who walk through. Over time it will become "ours" and we'll give directions to tourists "walk one block past the basket weave building" just the way we use the Wheeler as a navigation point now.

It is different than the Given Institute in one major respect. The Given not only followed the spirit of Herbert Bayer's Bauhaus "form follows function"  it also followed the spirit of Frank Lloyd Wright and honored the land around it. The Given embraced the trees around it. The windows were placed so that you could look north to Smuggler and Red Mountain through the circular window behind Mrs. Paepcke's cottonwood tree and that tree was also framed in the southern view. Harry Weese designed a building which did not shout "look at me!" he designed a building which whispered, "Come, sit by me and be restored. Come, share your spirit with me." 

The angled walls changed with the sun and shadow with the same dynamism as curved walls of Gehry's Bilbao. It sat as lightly on the land as any "green" building built today. 

The Given did not call attention to herself. She rested silently in her garden and nurtured countless Scientists and "thinkers" from all over the world. She aged quietly wrapped in wildflowers and evergreens. There was no public passion to save her from the bulldozer. She was razed in 2011, along with Mrs. Paepcke's cottonwood tree. 

I will surely come to accept the new Art Museum, I may even come to love it over time. I will certainly continue to love the exhibits and the energy inside it's walls and the enormous benefits to our community. "The most important building in Aspen in a Century"? No. Not that. Should the bulldozer ever hover over this building the way it did over The Given let's show a little more passion.

footnote: I wrote this before I toured the inside of the museum. Reactions to the completed Aspen Art Museum can be found on this link: http://ziskac.blogspot.com/search?q=aspen+art+museum

Buildings Perdu

We have a new Art Museum being build in Aspen. It's been a supremely controversial process. The naysayers have been storming the castle "it's too big!" That's been the primary complaint "it's too big!"

None the less up she goes - a new architectural icon in the city a large block of man made already dripping with the promise of cutting edge avant guard wow with Shigeru Ban recently winning the Pritzker.

Walking past the construction block yesterday I couldn't help but notice how that straight edged cube cut against Aspen Mountain and reduced the ridge line of Shadow Mountain to nothing more than a frost tipped line of crenolated cake decoration. It is not another peak in the mountain range as pictured in the sketch it is a big rectangular bite of brutalism. I'm certain the Calders will be happy gently swaying on the roof and the view from the inside will be stunning but this designs mocks it's setting, and not in a nice way.

Oh, I miss the Given Institute soooooo much. That was poetry in the trees.  Take another look at Greg Watts requiem in photographs of Harry Weese's masterful humanism: