Form Givers at Mid-Century

In this big exhibit, composed of scale models, artists' renderings and oversized photographs, the Museum of Fine Arts displays the recent work of thirteen of the major modern architects. The show features the work of architecture's "big three"--the late Frank Lloyd Wright, the vigorous and ceaselessly inventive Le Corbusier and the contemplative, conservative Dutchman, Mies Van Der Rohe.

It is fascinating to observe how these men, the master "form givers" of our century, have in recent years produced buildings that fulfill the promise of their varied styles perhaps as never before. The only work of Le Corbusier's shown is his Chapel at Ronchamp. The brooding, heaving forms of roof and walls have such complexity that even the many fine photographs by Life photographer Ezra Stoller do not even begin to reveal all their sculptural possibilities.

The Seagram Building represents the consummation of the classicism of Mies Van Der Rohe. Rarely has such refinement, such tastefulness and simplicity been applied to what Frank Lloyd Wright derisively labeled, the "cereal box" style of architecture. Yet "cereal box" or no, most important modern buildings as well as those throughout the ages have used the rectangular solid as their basic form.

To this reviewer, much of Frank Lloyd Wright's work has disquieting touches of fussy decorativism and makes obsessive use of the forms of nature, reminiscent of the mannered Art Nouveau school. It is in the Bear Run, Pennsylvania, home of Edgar Kaufmann, made in 1938, that Wright scores a complete triumph, a building that is livable, reserved, elegant, yet amazingly natural.

These three masters, quite understandably, form the backbone of this handsome show, but their younger colleagues and epigoni contribute a number of exciting works themselves. Perhaps the most well-known of the new buildings, Edward Stone's vibrant New Delhi Embassy, deserves top honors for its succinct and artistic suggestion of the filigree of India's most well-known monument, the Taj Mahal. A surprise in this exhibition is provided by the exciting and imaginative project of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill for the Banque Lambert in Brussels. So ingenious is its form of detail and so striking its balancing of the major areas that one feels sure that it will greatly influence the course of contemporary design.

If fault is to be found with this showing, one must regret that Pier Luigi Nervi, Italy's great engineer-architect, was not included in the show. His accomplishments are surely more significant than those of Wallace K. Harrison, who exhibits buildings for Alcoa that seem to have been designed for the sole purpose of discovering uglier and uglier ways of using aluminum. If Harrison's experiments turned out to be disastrous failures, those brave new forms at Ronchamp and Bear Run resulted in magnificent accomplishments. It is achievements such as these which have given our century the most exciting buildings since the Renaissance.