Phyllis Lambert will give the RSA Llewelyn-Davies Sahni Innovative Practices Lecture on Monday April 14 at 5:30 pm in the Farish Gallery, Anderson Hall, Rice University. Her talk is titled “Mies Constructs.”
Few people could write a book about a single building from so many standpoints as Phyllis Lambert in Building Seagram (Yale University Press, 2013). At one level, the book is a memoir. Mark Lamster’s review in the New York Times focuses on the audaciousness of the 27-year-old Lambert who wrote a letter to her father, the founder of Seagram’s, demanding that he scrap the company’s plans for a new headquarters. Reading that letter alone is worth getting hold of the book.
Lambert’s father ultimately yielded to her passion and hired her to choose the architect (Mies van der Rohe) and oversee the planning, design, and construction of one of the most important buildings of the twentieth century—the archetypal glass and steel corporate tower.
However, what I found most astonishing about the book is its polyphony. Lambert moves between many different selves. The little girl whose art teacher filled the void left by distant parents. The 27-year-old with no training in architecture receiving a crash course from Philip Johnson and Eero Saarinen. And the octogenarian with a profound understanding of design, both scholarly and pragmatic, gained by earning a Masters in Architecture, designing buildings herself, founding the Canadian Centre for Architecture, and more. Some traits are constant. Yes, she is indomitable, facing off legions of mad men. I find the most hope, however, in her openness to discovery, her fear and vulnerability.
Architecture books and lectures are typically so weighted down by jargon and references that lay people have no point of entry. Which is a crying shame because you can’t not live in architecture the way you can ignore paintings or poetry. Of course, Building Seagram can’t be imitated. Few people will ever occupy all the roles that Lambert has. Yet…
