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•ATTIRE. Expensive materials like marble, bronze, granite and stainless steel can lend an air of permanence and grandeur to otherwise undistinguished buildings. Look at the nearest cultural center. But they also demand less maintenance than cheaper materials—which is one reason why they show up so consistently in corporate headquarters, where vanity must be mitigated by accounting to make sense to stockholders. Glass has very different values. It looks pristine, pure, rational, and it reflects. The Lake Point apartment tower's curving glass facade marvelously catches, distorts, amplifies and refracts light and the reflections of an ever-changing skyscape. As for concrete, much in vogue these days, it is heavy, malleable, strong and cheap. In the hands of Paul Rudolph, its effect can also be sculptural.
• GRACE. A building, by its placement, can greatly detract from or enhance its surroundings. The 50-story General Motors building, by far the largest structure in its neighborhood, overwhelms everything in sight, including the small, lovely New York plaza it fronts. In New York's financial district, 140 Broadway, a restrained, withdrawn dark glass building, occupies only 40% of its site, giving away the rest as a plaza for the enjoyment of the public. Yet the problem of siting is never solved merely by creating plazas, which usually end up as unused sidewalks anyway. It takes deeper thought. Gulf Life, placed in a shoddy, chaotic part of Jacksonville, is a tonic for its area, acts as an organizing beacon. And the bold Alcoa building upgrades the bland apartment houses around it and thus makes a positive contribution to San Francisco. Both buildings thus achieve excellence.
• PROBITY. Poor workmanship in construction can ruin the effect of the best of designs. How different materials are joined, how columns meet floors, how corners are turned—these are things to notice. For in a good building, quality pervades to the smallest details, even in how a doorknob looks, how a door swings open. Which is why Mies van der Rohe, still the most important architect in the U.S., has always insisted that "God is in the details."
• PERSONALITY. If a man looks hard at a building, both inside and out, and tries to understand it, he will find that it has a personality and a gender. Chicago's Lake Point Tower is a sleekly dressed girl (but the circular bar on its roof is a silly hat). The John Hancock obelisk in Chicago is a new breed of circus giant, and New York University's apartment buildings are a trio of lean, tough city kids. Boston's city hall, with each facade different, is a politician with an intricate and elusive turn of mind, and the University of California at Irvine's library is a fussy fat lady. A building can have the effect of a slap in the face or a warm handshake, a serene smile or an aloof stare.