Charles Durning Carroll

Frank Gehry, the Canadian-born American architect, who’s now become a household name in sophisticated circles, has a great piece in The Atlantic about architecture and cities. Gehry points out that though most Americans (and Canadians) live in sterile box-like houses in the suburbs or glass curtain-wall towers in downtown cities, they nonetheless make pilgrimages to see great architecture, like his own Guggenheim Bilbao, his dorm at MIT, (pictured above) or the cathedrals of Chartres and Paris. It is odd, isn’t it? But its somehow very American. Something in the national character likes culture, art and beauty, but it likes it over there in some other place. No one wants to live it.

I spent part of last summer in Vienna. Vienna is a far smaller city than New York, or even Toronto where I live now, and small cities are obviously more limited in what they can offer culturally. But Vienna is gorgeous! I felt like I could have spent a lifetime there. The only thing missing–and that was just to a relative degree–was North America’s human diversity, its broad rainbow of faces, styles, colors, etc. Vienna, like much of Europe, is also socially tolerant. (For example, nudity is permitted on the Donauinsel near downtown.)

Have you ever noticed how even tiny European cities sometimes have dozens of museums, beautiful architecture, and great nightlife? Why is it that Vilnius is more interesting than Houston? What is it about North America that kills aesthetic ideas? Giving up the car and living downtown is always too expensive in the American mind.