Word: secretariats
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Sandwich on End? The U.N. buildings have roused the liveliest architectural debate in years. Some architectural critics have called the Secretariat everything from a "magnified radio console" to "a sandwich on end." Old Revolutionary Frank Lloyd Wright snorted that the design is mere "skyscraperism-a sinister emblem for world power." Said Critic Lewis (The Culture of Cities) Mumford: "A Christmas package wrapped in cellophane ... manticism." a triumph of irrelevant ro Architect Harrison is used to having these stones shied at his glass houses. And he is a pragmatist. "If in five years," says he, "somebody finds a way to build...
...height. They welcomed U.S. engineering experience on such problems as wind bracing, elevators, plumbing and fire prevention. Ideas and sketches (all unsigned, since it was to be a group project) piled in and got knocked down right & left. Harrison wanted a bow front for the Assembly; Corbusier saw the Secretariat set on delicate stilts. Both ideas were discarded. Someone wanted all the elevators put at one end of the building instead of in the center. Russia's Bassov stayed up late one night figuring how many extra steps that would mean for the U.N.'s 3,200 office...
...would sit back, listen to the arguments, then advance his own practical solutions. When the group was satisfied that it had sketched out a workable U.N. workshop, it was time to think about "making a monument." Part of the solution was to sheath the two ends of the Secretariat in unbroken, windowless walls of marble. But even here, Harrison & Co. were thinking of the things that make a workshop workable. "The solid end walls," says Harrison, "also meant no struggles among U.N. staffers for corner offices...
...introduced a steel dome to give an impression of greater interior height. And there were other troubles-problems of riveters who were almost unable to hammer in the oversized rivets needed to brace the Secretariat against the wind, of a tiny decoration budget that had to be eked out with paint, plaster and imagination. Harrison was asked last week how he ever managed to get the U.N. built. "The same way you build a railroad," said Harrison. "Foot by foot...
...Directions. The U.N. buildings have consumed most of Harrison's time since the war, but he has also been branching out in other directions. In Dallas, he is putting up a 500-ft. Secretariat-like office for the Republic National Bank, the tallest skyscraper ever built in the Southwest...