Creese Traces Growth of City At Thursday Afternoon Lecture

"Try to understand the city," said Walter Littlefield Creese, professor of Architectural History at the University of Illinois, in respect to the functions of its components: the skyscrapers, the streets, and the suburbs.

Twentieth century citizens, declared Creese last Thursday afternoon, "have not made their mark on the city." He claimed many modern architects and city planners have succumbed to novelty-like changes of the city's parts, changes that do not necessarily reveal the true norms of functional urban architecture.

The Illinois educator called the constantly changing contemporary scene the "dynamic principle of architecture." Our cities are forced to change to cope with expanding populations driving millions of cars, the vehicles that strictly dictate urban habits.

The dynamic principle's motivating force--large numbers of people--has frightened some city planners. Many 20th century planners and architects, Creese continued, have forsaken the original conceptions of the street, skyscraper, and suburb in the quest for quick, but architecturally unsound solutions to the problems posed by a demanding urban population.

Creese felt that urban architecture, to be sound, must be guided by the true standards set by the early planners.

Creese, supplementing his lecture with slides, compared the modern urban forms--the streets, suburbs, and skyscrapers--to the original conceptions and standards of these forms. The street, for example, was originally to display rationalism, systemization, and a separation of parts; but, Creese explained, this conception has deteriorated to a mass of people and cars, the very antithesis of early prototypes.

Suburbs

Discussing the suburb. Creese said that American painters like Frederick Olmstead conceived of the suburbs as great works of art, a "return to nature in a new way." But the early suburbanites exhibited a "sense of immediacy in remaking nature."

Consequently, the American suburb while retaining its conceptual ideal to some degree has become a composite: neoclassic in its long, straight sidewalks; American in its different textured materials; and romantic in its gentle, rolling lawns, according to Creese.

While streets and suburbs have differed from their original ideals somewhat, correct forms of the skyscraper do appear in urban America. These forms indicate that the "surrealistic attitude is more realistic in time," commented Creese, former President of the American Society of Architectural Historians.

For example, Chicago's Lake Shore Apartments--twin skyscrapers built on one-story concrete stilts appearing "rather effemoral" to Creese--are designed to blend harmoniously with the Lake Michigan background. On the other hand, the seemingly realistic Chicago Tribune building, constructed to house a novel illuminated tower, now appears archaic in the Loop.

Just as the early towers of Italy symbolized something to the designer, so our present-day skyscrapers must usually incorporate more than mere novelty to be lasting, according to Creese.

Urban architecture then, Creese declared, requires (1) the discovery of the functions and conceptual standards of the city's components and (2) the architect's preservation of these standards while facing urban problems demanding quick solutions.