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Nor does the U.S. lack for architects of ability, vision and daring. True, compared with many other professions, they form a thin line. There are only 29,000 registered architects in the U.S., compared with 315,000 lawyers, 315,000 doctors, 275,000 engineers, and they still have too little effect on U.S. building. But given the opportunity, the best U.S. architects often lead the world. Among the examples is the new World Trade Center, now going up in Manhattan: designed by Minoru Yamasaki of Birmingham, Mich., its 110-story aluminum-sheathed twin towers will top the Empire State Building, since 1932 the world's tallest. The steady, disciplined hand of German-born Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, 82, soon will show in Washington's pristine, block-long central library. For Oakland, Calif., New Haven-based Kevin Roche has designed a three-tier museum, with the roof of each tier serving as a broad, verdant terrace. Philadelphia's innovative Louis Kahn, whom all architects watch with what amounts to fascination, has such projects under way as a factory for Olivetti and an art museum in Fort Worth. Across the U.S., there is a wide range of powerfully self-confident and optimistic buildings.
A building stands foursquare in the open to be judged. And for all the expertise bandied about, most architecture relies basically on a massive input of common sense. A good building, like a good suit, is made of fine materials well cut and well joined. The result must cost no more than the client agreed to pay. It must fit his requirements—and at its best, the requirements of the neighborhood, the city, the culture. The buildings on the accompanying color pages point up the qualities that good building must possess.
• HONESTY. Right away, it has to be admitted that architecture, like life, tolerates contradictory kinds of honesty. Today architects like to show how buildings stand by calling attention to the structural system. In San Francisco's Alcoa building, the beautifully proportioned glass box hangs within a strong steel cage of vertical and diagonal steel beams. It thus avoids that hallmark of cheap building, a forest of interior columns. In the Gulf Life tower in Jacksonville, the architects went a step further; they expressed engineering stress lines by thickening concrete beams where they meet columns, narrowing them where there is less need for brawn.
Another school of architects feels that a building ought to tell what is going on beneath its skin. The antic conglomeration of bumps, bulges and concavities of the Morris Mechanic Theater in Baltimore fairly shouts that the play's the thing—and also divulges stair towers and mechanical equipment spaces. With its fortress style, the Boston city hall states another simple truth: that city governments are under constant attack.