Do you think about buildings? You live and work in them, but do you ever really think about them? New ones are piling up all around you. Did it ever occur to you that they might be killing the city by overcrowding? Do you try to judge buildings, wondering why some are good and others bad? Does one structure delight you and another depress you as just one more faceless façade, adding up to more monotony, more soul-destroying boredom? Architecture has always been the mirror image of a civilization, expressing its needs, its priorities, its aspirations. How do you like what you're getting? Do you react? Do you care?
WHO poses these questions? Concerned architects, builders and planners do, and one of them presses the points with special urgency. He is Nathaniel Alexander Owings, a latter-day Jeremiah who is also a devout optimist, and who is the senior partner in America's most forceful and prestigious architectural firm. At 65, Owings is the remaining founder, the central O, in S.O.M.—Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.
He oversees a nationwide enterprise with offices in Chicago, New York City, San Francisco, Portland, Ore., and Washington, D.C. In his long career he has presided over more than $3 billion worth of construction. It began with the beaver board exuberance of the 1933 Chicago World's Fair. It led on to some of the largest and handsomest corporate structures anywhere, ranging from Manhattan's Lever House to San Francisco's Crown Zellerbach building. It raised Owings to national prominence as head of the presidential commission to replan the capital's Pennsylvania Avenue. Above all, Owings is engaged, along with many others, in a major effort to impose some direction, order and esthetic responsibility on the chaotic growth of building in America.
Convulsive Surge. The U.S. remains in the grip of the greatest construction boom in history, and the topping off is not in sight. Since World War II, building has become the nation's second largest industry (food production is first). It has accounted for about 10% of the gross national product, created new structures valued at $1 trillion—and that's a 13-figure number. In the past decade, Houston, for instance, has packed 17 major new structures into a 20-square-block area. Los Angeles has overcome its earthquake fears and built 107 high-rise office buildings. Denver has put up one new office building per year, while Manhattan boasts no fewer than 135 new office structures.
Statistics cannot express the convulsive reality. The American metropolis seems constantly to be tearing itself down and building itself up again. The din and confusion of building has become a built-in part of the city's confusion. Everywhere old towers crumble, excavations appear, followed by the quick climb of high steel skeletons. They rise straight from the busy city streets, the clusters of trucks, cement mixers and cranes hopelessly aggravating the snarl of traffic. Amid all this there arise new questions about the price of progress.