“An Ugly Building Makes My Teeth Hurt”

By Charles Houston

So said architectural icon Frank Lloyd Wright. Let’s use his lens to examine design in Loudoun County. After all, our ballyhooed new General Plan has an entire chapter titled “Quality Development” which asks, “How does the development exhibit high quality design through shape, materials, finish … ?”

Our new zoning ordinance is supposed to enshrine those aspirational goals as mandates. Unfortunately, so far, it makes only a single, lone stab at quality design: It requires that glass windows be installed on the ground floors of parking garages. Whoopie-do. 

Design Surrounds Us

“Design” is all around us and touches your days from dawn to dusk: Shampoo bottle and toothpaste tube, the clothes you wear, your cell phone, the carpet on the stairs, every automobile, the building in which you work and your laptop. Your house.

You get the picture: Design is everywhere, but are you aware of it on more than a subconscious level? Do you even care? 

Yes, You Should Care

We are visual creatures, so as you drive around, think about what you are seeing, not all of which will be pleasing. Does that apartment building fit into its surroundings? Architects call that “context.” Does that new house have any redeemable character? Does the new Leesburg subdivision, White Oak Farm near the high school, actually have any oaks? Nope. Its low-quality developer bulldozed every single tree, every blade of grass, on the site. Quality design at that subdivision? Nope. 

Good design should please us just like a dramatic sunset does, or like the sublime appeal of early morning mist over a meadow. Bad design, at best, can be ignored, or at worst, it can make our teeth hurt, as Wright would say.

What’s Your Opinion?

Things become controversial when you comment on a particular design – Is it good? Is it bad? Does it look substantial or shoddy? Does it fit properly with its neighbors? Rendering these verdicts raises the issue of taste.

Everybody has taste but is one person’s taste more refined than others? Consider art. Van Gogh’s Starry Night has near-universal appeal. So do the Impressionists’ paintings, but I’d guess that less than half of us like Picasso. I think he’s a genius even though his art does not always appeal to me.

Now to cars. Some like the looks of big SUVs such as new Escalades; others like the sinuous lines of iconic Jaguar XKE’s of times past. Personally, I’d say that the Jaguar-lover has the better taste. 

Looking at cars and other everyday items is a good start on developing your own sense of design. Looking at art is even better.

Some Buildings

With my background developing office buildings, I really notice the built environment – structures of various sorts. I’ve bolded some buildings and building types in the paragraphs below and hope you will Google each of them and see what you think:

Malaysia’s Petronas Towers are important not because they are among the world’s tallest, but because they are inspirational, mystical. Note the tops of these two buildings, which architect Cesar Pelli conceived as a homage to the stupa – the pyramidal top of Buddhist shrines. 

Now look up One World Trade Center. What a missed opportunity. It meets the sky with a flat roof topped with one dinky spire, a boorish composition that looks like a gigantic hypodermic needle. 

Good design does not need to be monumental. Google Francis Kere and click on “Images” to see many of his elegant works in Burkina Faso. Of course, monumental scale can help – Look up Beijing’s MAD Architects to see the Harbin Opera House, an incredible structure, and other of that firm’s estimable projects.

While you’re at it, Google “Batman Building,” a skyscraper our firm developed. It’s unique.

Bringing It Home

Loudoun is a bedroom community and thus lacks large signature buildings, so let’s talk about some house types. 

Google “inexpensive colonial style house” which show houses much like the subdivision houses we see here. Now Google “historic colonial style house” and compare. Notice the many details which mark the latter as better designs.

Sometimes “unspectacular” is good enough. Visualize One Loudoun and the Village at Leesburg. Their overall looks are not remarkable, but kudos to their developers for making these projects appealing at the pedestrian level. 

Many governmental buildings take the “neo-colonial” approach and fit the context of our historic county. Good.

On the other hand, look at some of the three- and four-story apartments that have been built recently. Their designers seem infatuated with the color brown, for which they should be taken to task. 

Back to Wright

Frank Lloyd Wright’s houses are interesting. Google “Fallingwater” and next, “Frank Lloyd Wright houses.” Look carefully. What do you see?  Most showcase his signature “Prairie Style” design: Strong horizontal lines, flat roofs, wood and stone, swaths of windows.

They are not to my taste, but I recognize Wright’s importance – Much like my thoughts about Picasso’s art.  

What Can You Do?

Not much, really. If you’re rich and want a new house, hire a good architect. If you’re a young couple and need a starter house, boycott that treeless “Farm” in Leesburg and look for an older home you can renovate. If you’re young and single, “affordable housing” means renting.

Any of us can develop an eye for design, and then a sense of taste. Simply look around you, but look deeply.

Don’t count on a new zoning ordinance that dictates specific architecture or design. I prefer freedom, which unfortunately includes the freedom to have poor taste. That’s what led to the blandness of much of our built environment. 

That Toothache

Salve that dental pain by looking at our countryside, our farms and forests, our mountains, our historic villages. They give Loudouners a special relief from generally bland and sometimes toothache-inducing architecture. 

Charles Houston developed more than six million square feet of office buildings throughout the south for an Atlanta-based firm. He lives in Paeonian Springs.