The American Places of Charles W. Moore

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The Poetics of the Ordinary:The American Places of Charles W. Moore

Michelangelo Sabatino

In order to try to throw out ourstandard notions about shape andthe making of it and about space andits importance, I have employed theperhaps vaguer notion of place, theordering of the whole environmentthat members of a civilization standin the middle of, the making of sense,the projection of the image of the civi-lization onto the environment.1

These comments by Charles W.Moore appeared in his youthful essay,Creating of Place, published in1966. At a time when the exclusionistdogma of high modernism and thebrittle curtain-wall aesthetic of post-World War II American corporatearchitecture were dominant, Mooreand his partners attempted to redirect

architectural debate away from overlytectonic, formalistic notions of space.

By appropriating the material-ity of the ordinary, Moore andhis collaborators set the standardfor an architecture and urbanismthat interacted with the expandedfield of the public and private realm.They pursued an open-ended designprocess that promoted the ideals of

community and open society. Andby seeking to instill anthropologi-cally charged notions of place, theypresciently anticipated the repudia-tion of postwar planning and masshousing that would surface in the1980s and 90s.

Yet, despite Moores influenceupon a generation of students andprofessionals in the 1970s, his legacyas an architect and a writer has suf-fered from indifference and at times

hostility. Some critics have champi-oned his early modern productionand dismissed his later postmodernwork on the basis of its eclecticism;others have ignored him altogether.Nevertheless, his core concern forcontext and site specificity continueto challenge the profession today,even as the limits of globalizationbecome all too evident.

Modern, Postmodern, PremodernLucien Febvres dictumit is

never a waste of time to study thehistory of a wordis particularly aptfor those seeking to differentiate theconcepts ofplaceandspacein modern-ist architecture and theory during the1950s and 1960s.2The cult of abstractspace that was so powerful at the timehad grown out of books like Sigfried

Giedions Space, Time and Architec-ture: The Growth of a New Tradition(1941). Bruno ZevisArchitectureas Space: How to Look at Architecture(1957) was also current at the timeMoore and his collaborators began tochallenge the architecture of contex-tually disengaged heroic objects inthe early 1960s.

It has been said that Moores cri-tique of architectural culture at thetime involved popularizing a variety

of architectural sources in reaction tothe elitism of the International Style.3These sources ranged from classicalItalian villas and fountains to Califor-nia barns to roadside Texas burgerstands he personally visited and pho-tographed. But it is equally true thatMoores counter-current postmod-ern design production, pedagogy andwriting cannot be grasped without a

Sabatino / The Poetics of the Ordinary

Above, left to right: Villa Poiana, Poiana Maggiore,

Italy, by Andrea Palladio (photo by Charles Moore,August 1977). Barns in north ern California (photo

by Charles Moore, no date). Roadside restaurants

along I-40 in Amarillo, Texas (photo by Charles

Moore, January 1968). Photos courtesy of the

Alexander Archi tectural Archives of the University

of Texas at Austin.

Opposite:Whitman Housing (Huntington, NY)

(June 1974). Photo courtesy of the Charles Moore

Foundation.


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63Places 19.2

Research and Debate

full appreciation for the impact of theEuropean modernist avant-garde inpostwar America.

Moores interest in improvingsociety through architecture wasdistinctly modern in its advocacy ofsocial responsibility. However, hisapproach was not charged with thesame fundamentalist certainty implicitin radical European interwar moder-nity. Indeed, it would be inaccurateto describe Moore as anti-modernist.

Robert A. M. Stern has rather pointedto a productive ambivalence. Tradi-tional post-modernists like Mooreand Robert Venturi, he has argued,embraced both modernist and pre-modernist values.4

It is easier to perceive continuity inMoores strategies over the decades ifone traces his design approach backto a fascination with ordinary ways of

building and a belief in real experi-ence over abstraction. A bricoleur ofsorts, these proclivities allowed him toappropriate and popularize seeminglydisparate sources of architecture at atime when the hand-driven folk artsof preindustrial rural society (fromhomesteaders to pioneers) were beingreplaced by new middle-class Ameri-can icons such as the Campbells Soupcan and neon signs along Route 66.5

It is equally essential for those

assessing Moores work to under-stand his design process. He hadan insatiable curiosity about build-ings and objects from all periods ofhistory. But he was also able to bringthese sources together with an eyetoward accessibility and affordability,a process that often involved bridg-ing high and low design andwarming up the material proper-

ties of an original. Thus, stone wasoften replaced with wood, color wasfavored over monochrome, and orna-ment over plain surfaces.

Wherever possible, Moore and hiscollaborators also tempered archi-tectural gravitas with wit and levity.Recall, for example, his Piazza dItalia(197378) in New Orleans, wherethe seriousness of a classical foun-tain was irreverently undercut withneon lights and exaggerated effects to

encourage public interaction.Foremost, however, Moores

work and that of his many collabora-tors, including his partners DonlynLyndon, William Turnbull, andRichard Whitaker in the firm MLTW(founded in 1962), sought to activatethe poetic qualities of prose (i.e., ofthe ordinary, familiar or vernacular).


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Senses of the OrdinaryOver his career Moore refined his

understanding of the ordinary, thefamiliar, and the vernacular in relation toa particularly North American context.

I have taken great pleasure, all mylife, in ordinary American placesand garden variety tourist attrac-tions.I am especially interested invernacular architecture. It is famil-iar to me, I enjoy it, and I believe itis proper for it to be the prime sourceof my own work. I think it is impor-tant to note that ours is not a peasantsociety; to see vernacular architectureas hooked to the land, free of exoticinfluences or of pretension, at someodds with an aristocratic high

architecture is, in the United States,altogether to miss the point.6

Driven by wanderlust, Moore trav-eled extensively throughout his life toseek out and write about the architec-ture, built environments, and materialcultures of the distant and not-so-distant past. His vast slide collection,now housed at the University of Texas

and the Moore Center in Austin,attests to this voracious appetite fordiscovering (and documenting) exam-ples of both high and low architecture.Thanks to his extensive travel, Moorewas also able to pinpoint and vindicate

the differences between the vernacularof North America and that of othercontinents:

What is most familiar, of course, iswhat lies around us, loosely labeledthe vernacular. The term, Imafraid, confuses: it immediatelyconjures up in the minds of art his-torians and many others, images ofthe elegant cubist assemblages of theGreek islands or Mexico, beautifulcompositions made by villages in

strict response to familiar conditionsof site and society, with a stringentlylimited palette of materials and(for us) thrilling level of agreementabout color and shape and scale.The contemporary North Americanvernacular, on the other hand, theone that concerns me here, is verydifferent from that, on just aboutevery count.7

To be sure, during the 1950s andearly 1960s several European archi-tects and migrs had laid the foun-dation for a renewed interest in theprimitive preindustrial vernacular.Among them was Sibyl Moholy-Nagy, with her pioneeringNativeGenius in Anonymous Architecture(1957). Bernard Rudofskys polemicalexhibition at the Museum of ModernArt and its related book,ArchitectureWithout Architects: A Short Introduc-

tion to Non-Pedigree Architecture(1964), also initiated intense debateover the possible role of preindus-trial vernacular as a tonic for modernarchitecture in the United States.However, both works fell into thecamp of Greek islands or Mexicothat Moore distinguished from a spe-cifically American twentieth-centuryvernacular.8Moore was able to makethese distinctions thanks to his travelsand his willingness to understandforeign cultures before formulat-ing his opinions, thus avoiding snap,

unsubstantiated judgments.Like such English and American

Pop artists as Richard Hamilton,Roy Lichtenstein, and Andy Warhol,Moore saw the working class of the1960s as the protagonist of a peo-ples art that was taking shape in aheterogeneous, mass-media-based,entrepreneurial culture. In this regard,Moore related to the position of JohnA. Kouwenhoven, whose importantstudyMade in America: The Arts inModern Civilization(1949) attempted

to vindicate the specificity of anAmerican vernacular as the unself-conscious effort of common people tocreate satisfying patterns out of theirenvironment.9Moore understoodthat the slow fine-tuning typical ofthe European rural vernacular assureda situation of little transformationover the centuries, while the NorthAmerican commercial vernacular was



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Research and Debate

subject to the rapid change typical ofcapitalist economic dynamics.

Likewise, although Moore wasinterested in Robert Venturi andDenise Scott Browns popularizingof complexity and contradiction (asDean of the Yale School of Architec-ture, he even encouraged them to givea studio on Las Vegas), his approach

was far less conceptual. Even theircommon interest in the overlap ofthe classical and the vernacular led toquite different results, especially atthe beginning of their careers.10Onemight, for example, compare Ven-turis design of his mothers housein Philadelphia (1962) with Mooresdesign of his own house in Orinda,California, completed the same year.

In the Venturi design, classical andvernacular allusions were combinedto achieve ironic, almost surrealeffects; Moores was a more distilleddesign, whose deceptively simpleexterior masked a complex interiorfeaturing salvaged columns from ahistoric building.

Yet Moores interest in appropri-

ating commercial and noncommer-cial vernacular did not extend to theconventions of the builder vernacularcelebrated by Sigfried Giedion inMechanization Takes Command:A Contribution to Anonymous History(1948). Indeed, Moore workedagainst the grain of such builderdevelopments, especially those of theilk of the Levitt brothers that sur-

faced in the postwar period that heconsidered devoid of the urban plan-ning ideals crucial to the constructionof place. If anything, he was moresympathetic to Gustav StickleysArts and Crafts bungalows, whichflourished on the West Coast (andelsewhere) under the influence ofCharles Keelers moralizing text

The Simple Home(1904).

Opposite:The Moore House in Orinda, California,

under construction, December 1961. Photo by

Richard Whitaker.

Above:The completed Moore House, showing the

complex relation between interior and exterior. Photo

courtesy of the Charles Moore Foundation.


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Mobility and ImpermanenceIf any one thinker of the times

espoused a view of the ordinarysimilar to Moores it was the J.B.Jackson. Jackson believed that thetwentieth-century American vernacu-lar landscape embraced the variedexpressions of human ingenuityresulting from peoples interactionwith the specificities of place.11Thespirited, unself-conscious ingenuity ofthe commonplace intrigued Moore.

And whether this ingenuity was theresult of mobility (associated with

Route 66) or the urbanity of classicallyinspired sites, it often was perceptiblein spatial arrangements characterizedby a pragmatic intelligence that trans-formed prose into poetry.12Mobilitywas central to Moore and Jacksonsconcept of ordinary landscapes. In oneof his many essays, Jackson traced thegenesis of American wood buildingin relation to mobility.13He assignedgreat importance to wood as a con-struction material in conferring a

transitional or impermanent quality toa building typethe single multifunc-tional room that was originally meantfor the working class or rural popula-tion, but which eventually developedinto the mobile trailer.

Upon Moores arrival at the Uni-versity of Texas in 1984 to occupy theONeil Ford Chair of Architecture,he and Sally Woodbridge published a

small catalogue to accompany an exhi-bition that had originally been heldin Los Angeles and entitledHomeSweet Home: American DomesticVernacular Architecture.14In theTexas version of the exhibition, TheCabin/The Temple/The Trailer,Moore looked to the overlappingfeatures of the indigenous log cabin,the clapboard house as miniaturetemple, and the Airstream trailer.15The modest scale of these units, their

intimate relationship to the humanbody, and their cost-efficiency wereall part of their allure for him.16

The idea of impermanence, epito-mized by the mobile home, as well asby such objects as the disposable Bicpen, invented in the 1960s, emergedat a time when increased opportuni-ties for travel were igniting imagina-tions. And compared with the stabilityand rootedness of rural societies ofEurope, the mobility and prosperity ofpostwar America encouraged Mooresrestless freedom.

The influence of the automo-bile was particularly important inAmerican architecture and urbanism.During the 1960s, it far outpaced theother modernist icons of progresscelebrated by Le Corbusier in Towardsa New Architecture(1923) andAir-craft(1935). But where Le Corbusieradopted the aircraft, ocean liner, andautomobile as types that could inspiredesign, Moore was primarily inter-ested in the car as a means to exploreand discover new realities.

At the time an endless array ofnew motor hotels (motels), shoppingmalls, and fast-food drive-ins alreadyattested to the power of car cultureto generate new types, and evenmonuments like the artist collec-tive Ant Farms Cadillac Ranch(1974)in Amarillo, Texas.17Until the late1950s and mid-60s, the roadside stillalso provided a fertile cross-section of

American working-class culture andits creative talentas well as a pen-chant for excess that excited Mooresimagination.

In the mid-1960s, Moore broughtautomobile and design together inhis essay You Have to Pay for thePublic Life.18In it, he acknowledgedAmericas romance with the freedomoffered by the car and the car culturesinevitable influence on the built envi-ronment. Yet, unlike Buckminster

Fuller, for example, he expressed littleinterest in the streamlined aestheticsof the car (or the machine) as a sourcefor architectural design.

Homes as PlacesInstead, it was the experience of

dwelling in the domestic realm thatoccupied an increasingly importantrole in the buildings and writings ofMoore and his collaborators. Homesfunctioned as catalysts for collectivedesign and for contemplating thenotion of place.

Writing in The Place of Houses(1974), Moore, Donlyn Lyndon, andGerald Allen drew attention to thequalities of the small town of Edgar-town, Massachusetts. In particular,they observed that it preserves thedecorum of a black-tie dinner, whereeveryone manages to look his bestwhile dressing very much like every-one else.19But this was just one ofmany instances in which Moore andhis collaborators identified the ver-nacular as a conduit for individual and

collective identities to coexist.20

By the time The Place of Houseswaspublished, MLTW had already com-pleted the Sea Ranch Condominiumnorth of San Francisco (196365)and Kresge College at the Universityof California, Santa Cruz (1964-74).These projects reflected a desire tointegrate architecture with context(a windswept coastal meadow and



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Research and Debate

a redwood forest, respectively) andfacilitate mixed private and public use.Within the currents of modernismat the time they also indicated howMoores realism might provide abrake on the grand urban gestures andutopian megastructures of those years.

At Kresge College, MLTWfocused on the street as a space forinterpersonal interaction and aconduit for placemaking.21But thefirm also revealed keen interest in

high-density low-lying Mediterraneantownscapes.22Both it and the con-temporaneous Church Street Southhousing in New Haven (196669)were organized around open-airpiazzas. These provided areas forsocial interaction that recalled Medi-terranean prototypes, despite theirdistinctive Pop Art-inspired super-graphics and the cheapness of thecinderblock construction.

In his early work, Moore had alter-nately cited the vernacular cabin andprimitive hut as design precedents.

Indeed, his house in Orinda (1962)was a melding of the lowly hut withthe high form of the Renaissanceaedicule, which he and his colleagueshad discovered, thanks to JohnSummerson. The combination wasthen adapted to the scant practicalneeds of a bachelor.23But with theadvent of his collaboration in MLTWhis designs abandoned such overtsimplicity and became more complexand articulated.

Nevertheless, Moores concept

of the ordinary was always closelylinked to notions of place. Writingon the sources of inspiration for theOrinda house, he stated that theoverall design for the house took thearchetypal form of a square hut, notunlike those to be found in primitivevillages or those symbolized in themotifs carved in the stone of Mayan orHindu temples.24

Other residences he designed atthe time, such as the Bonham Housein Boulder Creek, California (1961),and the original Sea Ranch Condo-minium, combined the understated,introverted qualities of sheds andbarns with open, highly articulatedinteriors.25The dichotomy betweentoned-down, ordinary exterior andwunderkammer-like complex, color-ful interior (perhaps most evidentin his last house in Austin, designed

with Arthur W. Andersson) allowedhis domestic designs to affirm civicmodesty externally without forgoinginterior richness.

Moores love for folk objects hasnever been adequately discussed, andit was in the design of residential inte-riors (for his own homes, especially)that his affinity for ordinary materialculture was most visible. During his

life he acquired a vast collection ofobjects as diverse as toy soldiers andfolk masks. His passion for such formsis especially revealing in the currentinstallation of items from his collec-tion in the Moore house in Austin.Moore looked to these objects as asource of design inspiration. Onemight recall his transformation of afamiliar Adirondack chair by refash-ioning its profile and adding color andornament (c. 1990).

Opposite:Exhibition cover page for the The Cabin/

The Temple/ The Trailer, Charles W. Moore and

Sally B. Woodbridge, 1984.

Above:Interior of Bonham Cabin, Santa Cruz

Mountains, California, 1961. Photo courtesy of the

Charles Moore Foundation.


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Construction TechniqueWhether making reference to

barns found in situ (Sea Ranch) orrethinking shingle cladding for theWhitman Village public housingcomplex in Huntington, New York(197175), Moore and his collabora-tors also demonstrated a commitmentto building in wood. Although thispractice was typical of many regions ofthe United States, it clashed with theuse of industrially produced materi-

als like glass and steel that were beingchampioned at the time in the modernarchitecture of European migrs.

Low-tech construction in wood,using familiar, and therefore lesscostly, materials and techniques, alsoallowed Moore to design projects thatwere affordable (to both low-incomepublic-housing residents and individ-ual clients of limited means).26Thislow-tech approach often involvedsimple platform wood construction,a distinctly American method fordomestic building. Despite Moores

affinity with the spirit of Pop Art(American and English), his designsnever embraced the high-tech attitudeof contemporary British design spear-headed by the likes of Peter Cook.27

During the postwar period, Euro-pean-born modernists like SigfriedGiedion, Walter Gropius, andKonrad Wachsmann identified tradi-tional American wood constructionas a model for new factory-producedhousing that was affordable.28WhileMoore was captivated by the modesty

of indigenous wood construction,he was less enthusiastic about themodernists interest in mundaneanonymity or serial repetition. Onthe contrary, Moores projects werecarefully articulated to show off theartistry of the designer and the iden-tity of the patron (public or private).It is no coincidence, therefore, thatVincent Scully celebrated Moores



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Research and Debate

work as a creative continuation ofthe Shingle Style, inaugurated by tal-ented American architects of the latenineteenth century.29

Despite his commitment to author-ship, Moore firmly believed that asophisticated yet empirical approachcould also be applied to modest ends.For example, the New Zion Com-munity Center in Kentucky, the firstcompleted project of the design/buildprogram he initiated at the Yale School

of Architecture (1967), demonstratedWilliam Morriss principle that archi-tectural design should not be divorcedfrom the process of building.30

Yet, in contrast to the English Artsand Crafts movement, which washeavily influenced by the built envi-ronment of rural peasantry, Mooresunderstanding of ordinary Americaalso led him to consider such simula-cra of real places as Disneyland.31

An Important LegacyWere it not for the unifying

element of Moores concern forordinary American places and theirimportance for contemporary design,his contribution to architecturalculture might be lost. He was a keenobserver in the tradition of HenryJames, whose writing he admired. Anddespite his erudition, extensive travels,and personal library, he was neversnobbish or condescending. ManfredoTafuri admired Moores sophistica-tion, and aptly described him as arefined populist.32

During his life, Moore publishedseveral books (mostly in collaborationwith others) and numerous seminalessays, yet none of these texts havefound their way into scholarly anthol-ogies published in recent years.33Nev-ertheless, The Place of Houses(1974)was reprinted in 2000 and has soldsome 35,000 copies. Despite Mooresprolific production as an architect and

writer, he has also been marginalized

in recent assessments of twentieth-century architecture and urbanism.34Dell UptonsArchitecture in the UnitedStatesvirtually ignored him.35Andunder the rubric of populism inModern Architecture: A Critical History,Kenneth Frampton denounced hisflaccid eclecticism, and scolded himfor abandoning the constructionalpurity of Sea Ranch.36

Rather than seek out aspects of

continuity throughout his career (i.e.,his unfailing interest in the ordinary),

Opposite:Kresge College, Santa Cruz, California

(1964-74). Initial site plan drawing courtesy of UC

Berkeley Design Archive.

Above:Adirondack chair by Charles Moore (1990).

Photo by Kevin Keim.


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critics like Frampton have divided hisoutput into periods of good and badwork. Nevertheless, more sympatheticcritics did assess his contributionover the years. These have includedCharles Jencks in England, Paolo Por-toghesi and Manfredo Tafuri in Italy,Heinrich Klotz in Germany, and in

the United States, Vincent Scully.By activating the poetics of the

ordinary, Moore and his collaboratorssought to counteract postwar formal-ism with a more humanist strategyof placemaking. Their accessible andopen-ended design process provided achallenge to the architects and urban

planners of the affluent society.37

Today, in light of the alarmingwithdrawal from civic life demon-strated by the increase of gated com-munities and concern for security since9/11, Moores optimistic and generousvision of an ordinary architecture forthe public realm is an important legacythat deserves rediscovery by studentsand professionals alike.

Notes

My interest in Charles W. Moore was sparkedwhile I was a lecturer at Yale University School of

Architecture. Special thanks go to Dean Robert A. M.

Stern for his continuing support. Kent Bloomer and

Stephen Harby were especially generous in sharing

their knowledge and insight. Special thanks go to

Donlyn Lyndon and David Moffat for their patient

guidance and to Kevin Keim for his hospitality in

Austin. All original images used to illustrate this essay

are housed at the Charles Moore Foundation and the

Alexander Architectural Archives of the University

of Texas Libraries in Austin (Charles Willard Moore

Architectural Drawings and Manuscript Material).

1. Charles Moore, Creating of Place,Image4 (1966),

pp. 2025.

2. Lucien Febvre, Civilisation: Evolution of a Word

and a Group of Ideas, in Peter Burke, ed.,A New Kind

of History and Other Essays, trans. K. Folca (New York:

Harper and Row, 1973), p. 220.

3. See William H. Jordy,American Buildings and Their

Architects: The Impact of European Modernism in the Mid-

Twentieth Century(New York: Anchor Books, 1976).

4. Robert A. M. Stern, The Doubles of Post-

Modern,Harvard Architecture Review1 (Spring 1980),

pp. 7587.

5. Arnold Hauser, The Art of the People, the Masses, and

the Educated, in The Philosophy of Art History(Evanston:

Northwestern University Press, 1985), pp. 279365.6. Charles W. Moore, Personal Statement, in Charles

Moore(Tokyo: Global Architecture, 1978), pp. 716.

7. Charles Moore, Human Energy, in Byron

Mikellides, ed.,Architecture for People: Explorations in a

New Humane Environment(New York: Holt, Rinehart

and Winston, 1980), pp. 11521.

8. While Rudofskys book focused primarily on

Mediterranean examples, Moholy-Nagys also looked

to the preindustrial vernacular of the Americas (she



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included Mexico, for example). Charles W. Moore and

Wayne Attoe, eds.,Ah Mediterranean! Twentieth Century

Classicism in America(New York: Rizzoli, 1986).

9. John A. Kouwenhoven,Made in America: The Arts

in Modern Civilization(New York: W. W. Norton &

Company, 1949).

10. Jean La Marche, The Familiar and the Unfamiliar in

Twentieth-Century Architecture(Urbana: University of

Illinois Press, 2003).

11. John Brinkerhoff Jackson, The Word Itself,

in Discovering the Vernacular Landscape(New Haven:

Yale University Press, 1984), pp. 19. Also see D. W.

Meinig, ed., The Interpretation of Ordinary Landscapes:Geographical Essays(New York: Oxford University

Press, 1979); and Paul Groth and Todd W. Bressi,

Understanding Ordinary Landscapes(New Haven: Yale

University Press, 1997).

12. Charles Moore, Peter Becher, and Regula Campell,

The City Observed: Los Angeles, a Guide to its Architecture

and Landscapes(New York: Vintage Books, 1984).

13. John Brinkerhoff Jackson, The Movable Dwelling

and How it Came to America, in Discovering the

Vernacular Landscape, pp. 88101.

14. Charles W. Moore, Kathryn Smith, and

Peter Becker, eds.,Home Sweet Home: American

Domestic Vernacular Architecture(New York: Rizzoli

International in collaboration with the Craft and Folk

Art Museum, 1983).

15. Charles Moore and Sally B. Woodbridge,The

Cabin, The Temple, The Trailer, a self-published

catalogue printed ca. 1985.

16. On the relationship between body and

architecture, see Kent C. Bloomer and Charles Moore,

Body, Memory and Architecture(New Haven:Yale

University Press, 1977).

17. See, for example, Richard W. Longstreth, City

Center to Regional Mall: Architecture, the Automobile, and

Retailing in Los Angeles, 19201950(Cambridge, MA:

MIT Press, 1997).

18. Charles Moore, You Have to Pay for the PublicLife,Perspecta9/10 (1965), pp. 5797; reprinted

in Charles Moore and Gerald Allen, Dimensions:

Space, Shape and Scale in Architecture(New York:

Architectural Record Books, 1969), pp. 10530.

19. Charles Moore, Gerald Allen, and Donlyn

Lyndon, The Place of Houses(New York: Holt, Rinehart

and Winston, 1974).

20. In the last twenty years, the New Urbanism has

sought to identify a similar socially driven urban

strategy, but it has never advocated the same freedom

to re-create experiences of place that so intrigued

Moore and his collaborators.

21. At the time, Bernard Rudofskys Streets for People:

A Primer for Americans(Garden City, NY: Doubleday,

1969) was in the process of being published.

22. Gordon Cullen, Townscape (London: The

Architectural Press, 1961); and Ivor de Wolfe, The

Italian Townscape(London: The Architectural Press,

1963).

23. Robert Stern has pointed out the fundamental

differences between Moores house (1962) and Philip

Johnsons earlier glass house (1949), despite theircommon programs. See Robert A. M. Stern,New

Directions in American Architecture(New York: George

Braziller, 1969), p. 71.

24. Moore, Allen, and Lyndon,The Place of Houses, p. 60.

25. For an extensive discussion of the Sea Ranch,

with many excellent images of the Condominium, see

Donlyn Lyndon and Jim Alinder,The Sea Ranch(New

York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2004).

26. Philip Johnsons low-tech glass house (whose

structural eclecticism disturbed Mies van der Rohe) is

thus closer in spirit to Moores approach than Miess

own Farnsworth house.

27. See Patricia Phillips, Why is Pop so Unpopular?

in Edward Leffingwell and Karen Marta, eds.,Modern

Dreams: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Pop (Cambridge,

MA: MIT Press, 1988), pp. 11831.

28. See Sigfried Giedion,Mechanization Takes

Command(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1948);

and Gilbert Herbert, The Dream of the Factory-

MadeHouse: Walter Gropius and Konrad Wachsmann

(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1984).

29. Vincent Scully, The Shingle Style Today or the

Historians Revenge(New York: George Braziller, 1974).

30. Richard W. Hayes, The Yale Building Project: The First

Fifty Years (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007).

31. Charles Moore, You Have to Pay for the Public

Life, republished in Kevin Keim, ed., You Have to Payfor the Public Life: Selected Essays of Charles W. Moore

(Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001), pp. 11141.

32. Manfredo Tafuri,La sfera e il labirinto(Turin:

Einaudi, 1980), p. 364; (Cambridge, MA, MIT Press,

1987), p. 298.

33. For a complete bibliography, see Eugene J.

Johnson, ed.,Charles Moore: Buildings and Projects

19491986(New York: Rizzoli, 1986; repr. 1991).

Some of Moores writings have been republished in:

Robert A. M. Stern, Alan Plattus, Peggy Deamer,

eds.,Re-reading Perspecta: The First 50 Years of the Yale

Architectural Journal(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,

2004), which reprinted three: You Have to Pay for

a Public Life (pp. 17383), Hadrians Villa (pp.

9399); and Plug It In, Rameses, and See if It Lights

Up(pp. 24245).

34. A few exceptions do exist. The most recent

contribution is the exhibition organized in 2001 by

Eve Blau at the Yale School of Architecture and her

Architecture or Revolution: Charles Moore and Yale in the

Late 1960s(New Haven: Yale School of Architecture,

2001). See also Kevin P. Keim,An Architectural Life:Memoirs and Memories of Charles Moore (Boston and

New York: Bulfinch Press; Toronto and London:

Little, Brown and Company, 1996). The most

comprehensive book to date is Eugene J. Johnson, ed.,

Charles Moore: Buildings and Projects 19491986(New

York: Rizzoli, 1986; reprint 1991).

35. The omission is surprising in light of Uptons

sustained interest in the American vernacular.

36. Kenneth Frampton,Modern Architecture: A Critical

History, 3rd ed. (London: Thames and Hudson, 1992),

pp. 29194.

37. The frequently quoted phrase comes from

Galbraiths landmark study The Affluent Society

(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1958), p. 253.

Research and Debate

Documents

The American Places of Charles W. Moore