Tuesday, January 27, 2004
Frank Lloyd Wright apprentice shares vision for community, development and artfulness
GOSHEN, Ind. -- As a
17-year-old, Vern Swaback became an apprentice of renowned
architect Frank Lloyd Wright, spending 22 years living and working
at Wright's Taliesin home and office -- "a model of community where
life and work were one." The greatest lesson he learned there from
Wright was that "everything is artfully related and
integrated."
Today, as founder of the
40-person and 25-year-old Swaback Partners architectural firm in
Arizona, Swaback is continually asking, "Can we take [Wright's]
artfulness and put it in a production-driven society?"
On Jan. 23, Swaback shared his
vision for the built environment, community and artful development
at Goshen College as part of the Yoder Public Affairs Lecture
series, including a morning convocation, classroom presentations
and an evening lecture. He then visited GC's Merry Lea
Environmental Center the following day.
"We are at a place where we
have exhausted doing things the easy way," Swaback said. "We have
never had more clear warnings or more clear opportunities to do
things a better way."
As he presented slides of
dense European communities, Swaback redefined the commonly used
word, "sprawl," because "no one knows what it means," by saying
that sprawl isn't about density or growth as many believe, but
rather it "has everything to do with artless development" and has
"a look" of total dependency on the automobile. He showed slides of
American suburbs and "cookie cutter" developments to illustrate his
point.
Instead Swaback encourages
building and designing community, which he defines as the "art of
doing more with less; the conservation and amplification of
resources." He said one essential ingredient is beauty, but not as
an afterthought or only if there are enough resources left over.
Instead, Swaback said "community can thrive by its design" and that
"it is all about people."
Examples of ways to build this
kind of community, a "new urbanization" as Swaback said, are to
learn from the past and include front porches, pathways and alleys
in design; to blur the edges between lots; to make streets for
people and not just cars; to design for informal encounters; and to
create buildings that fit with the land. He also pointed to
co-housing communities as a solution, where people share resources,
have others around and where there is a mix of business, recreation
and residences. One model of this "new urbanization" that Swaback
believes is working is the 130-year-old "experiment in community"
at Chautauqua, N.Y. Swaback asserted though that
solutions need to be both visionary and relevant, which are "the
most profitable and exciting." Showing a slide of Central Park in
New York City, Swaback said that there is a need for a redefinition
of environmentalist, because it shouldn't mean just "don't touch."
Central Park was created by draining a swamp and intentionally not
developing it as a business or residential area and today it is one
of the city's hallmarks. And he said, "I am not opposed to
technology, but I don't think that because we can do something it
is the right thing to do." In the fall of 2003, Swaback's
fourth book, "The Creative Community, Designing for Life," was
released by Images Publishing in Australia. Editors: For more information, contact Jodi H.
Beyeler at (574) 535-7572 or jodihb@goshen.edu.
Goshen College,
established in 1894, is a four-year residential Christian liberal
arts college rooted in the Anabaptist-Mennonite tradition. The
college's Christ-centered core values -- passionate learning,
global citizenship, compassionate peacemaking and
servant-leadership -- prepare students as leaders for the church
and world. Recognized for its unique Study-Service Term program,
Goshen has earned citations of excellence in Barron's Best Buys
in Education, Kaplan's "Most
Interesting Colleges" guide and U.S.News & World
Report's "America's Best
Colleges" edition, which named Goshen a "least debt college." Visit
https://www.goshen.edu/.
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