Evans Woollen, the Minton-Capehart Federal Building, and the Circle

Last night I had the opportunity to see and hear Evans Woollen speak for the second time in just a few months. And what a pleasure that was. (See my blog post below about Woollen at New Harmony.)

The lecture at the Indianapolis Museum of Art was more formal than the panel discussion that included Woollen at New Harmony. And it was packed full of more Woollen goodness.

I took notes, but unfortunately some of the most interesting stuff came during the lights-out portion of the talk when Woollen was discussing slides of the Minton-Capehart Federal Building in Indianapolis. This is a building that is often maligned in Indianapolis but its very simple aesthetic has always pleased me. I've written about it before for the Urban Times. (You can see that article here: http://www.urbantimesonline.com/?p=822)

Woollen's insights made me appreciate it even more.

Here are some of the bits of architectural history that one rarely gets to hear straight from the horse's (architect's) mouth.

Woollen and his partners landed the federal contract from the General Services Administration, which was primarily building tall towers at the time. Woollen talked the feds into allowing his firm to basically squish a tower into a shorter, wider footprint that would help to frame the American Legion Mall and allow for use of the entire block without rising taller than the War Memorial across the street.

Thus the inverted ziggurat shape of the building. He talked about "weaving the building like a tapestry" to get the window placement just right and as minimalist as possible so that it would pay homage to the two grand buildings framing the mall on other sides, the Scottish Rite Cathedral and the War Memorial, both of which have few windows. Woollen also spoke about making sure the concrete in the Brutalism style Federal Building would match the limestone color in these two older buildings, and about his desire to design a new building that would be "subservient" to these historic edifices. His modern design was inspired by the Saarinen American Embassy building in London.

He also spoke about the Milton Glaser graphic that acts as a mural on the first story of the building. It was Woollen's idea to have a painting that "wrapped around the building." He wanted something like a "continuous Rothko" but he couldn't find anyone who could grasp the idea or who would take the assignment until he talked to Glaser. The now-famous graphic artist made that painting his own with vertical bands of vibrant colors. Those colors, which have now faded to pastels, showed up boldly and brightly in the vintage kodachromes of Woollen's slides.

What a delight to hear of the careful, thoughtful approach this man took to a building that has not been loved in this city. Earlier in his talk, Woollen said that "sometimes a building is despised at the beginning and loved at the end, or vice versa. I will abide by the end." I hope that his talk last night converts at least a few more Indianapolis residents to an appreciation of his federal building and I wonder if more of us will grow to love it over time.

Oh, Woollen answered a question about the proposed closure of the Circle to vehicles (see my recent blog post about that below). He says he was for it in 1955 and he's for it now. I cut him some slack on that opinion though. He's only human. He can't get everything right.

New Harmony, Evans Woollen and Architecture

Last week the annual Indiana preserva-tion conference, with the new name of Preserving Historic Places, took place in New Harmony, Indiana. I have an incredible fondness for New Harmony. The site of two failed 19th Century Utopian communities, it is very close to an architectural Utopia with amazing buildngs from the 1810s to the 1990s. The Rappite architecture beginning in 1815 includes lovely log cabins with innovative insulation and air lock entries to keep the cold Indiana winds from blowing into the houses. Their brick community buildings are resplendent.

The residential buildings of the Owenite years, and the grand Workingman's Institute and Thrall's Opera House, are equally beautiful. And the Victorian era, after the Utopian failures, was also kind to this small town, leaving grand and modest homes and a beautiful downtown commercial area.

Even tiny infill ranches from the 1950s are sweet in New Harmony. Mid-Century Modern has a small voice, as well.


Then Jane Owen, starting in the 1970s has given us the Richard Meier Athenaeum, a building memorable enough to be listed on Meier's biography, and the Philip Johnson Roofless Church. Proclaimed by Johnson protege, Dean of the School of Architecture at University of Houston---and soon to be New Harmony resident---Joe Mashburn,`to be one of Johnson's best buildings.

The town amazes me and is reason enough for a visit. But there was so much more.

Included in the offerings for the conference was a talk by Bernhard Karpf,associate partner of Richard Meier & Partners, about the Athenaeum.

But the two star performances of the conference were the panel discussion by Joe Mashburn, Bernhard Karpf and Evans Woollen and, of course, the keynote address by Paul Goldberger, the architecture critic for the New Yorker. I may talk about Goldberger some other time. For me the funnest moment came in the panel discussion with Mashburn, Woollen and Karpf (that's Woollen in the center of the picture).

After brief introductions, and a few planned questions the moderator turned the questioning over to the crowd. I screwed up my courage and asked the last question of the day:

"Richard Meier said that light is one of his favorite building materials. If each of you had to come up with one sentence like that to describe your own work, what would you say?"

Berhard Karpf punted on this question, claiming to not have much architecture to draw conclusions from. Mashburn said that he and his partner (his wife) relied on the power of the landscape to shape their thoughts about what should be built. And Karpf made the intersting point that well-known architects all possess one similar trait, which is that they "are all good marketers." They know how to talk about their work in order to get other people talking about and appreciating it. He also confessed that he didn't really appreciate Philip Johnson's work. [perhaps a bit snarky considering the company]

But the big payoff was getting this answer from the leprechaunish Evans Woollen, one of my Indianapolis architect heroes:

"For me, every building is a whole new venture into a different context, different community. My buildings are crazily different from each other. I've been criticized for that but it's not an accident. My buildings are purposely inconsistent." Woollen used the New Harmony Inn as an example. He built that building to blend into the landscape. It was not intended to stand out and compete but to harmonize with New Harmony. And that it does. And there's a little insight into an interesting modernist architect's brain.