Dear Stanley Tigerman; you are my first idol

I was disappointed when Helen e-mailed me to tell me that I couldn't research Peter Zumpthor for my case studies paper. I was upset, Zumpthor is a cool dude that is all about the senses and user experience. Plus the spa he did in Sweden became a national historic site 3 years after it was built. Another indication that he's doing something right. I took this rejection and typed in 3 random architects, none of which I knew anything about. One of them was Stanley Tigerman, and once I started looking at this man's work and reading his words I became intrigued. This architect is doing what I aspire to do, making buildings baised on metaphors of who the client really is. The end product is a structure that embodies the client, to use his words, 'reeks' of the client. Its awesome.

"Architects are wild-eyed optimists... Needing to build a building, to put something where nothing ever was, is an act of will. And if you know Mies [van der Rohe]--and I did--he reeked of will. He would will things into existence."

He invented this thing called the 'head pointer';

Archework's motto is "Make no big plans but let every little one be the best that it can be." [The process] is incremental. So we make little things like the head-pointer.
MT: What is a head-pointer?
ST: It is a device that goes on the head that has a thin arm that pokes at keyboards and word processors and makes a cerebral palsy patient viable. [In victims of] cerebral palsy, the body is entirely in spasm except for the spinal cord. That's the only thing that's stable, so you can control your head.
MT: So the pointer allows you to communicate.
ST: And to work, to have a job. [The head pointer is]beautifully designed because children make fun of children who have disabilities. We want to reverse [that perception and behavior]. This is what I've always done as architect anyway. Library for the Blind was done so that able-bodied people would be envious of it. The Boy Scout camp for the handicapped [Hoover Outdoor Education Center] in Yorkville on the Fox River I did to make it a real authentic camping experience so that all the able-bodied boy scouts in that paramilitary organization would be in envy of it.

He's not simply making something that 'works' or 'does the job', but goes beyond that and does amazing things such as making a dissability (almost) desirable.

MT: These projects are not architecture as we usually think of it.
ST: But it's all architecture. Times have changed. Barriers are being broken down. It's a new day. It's "make no big plans but let the little ones be as good as they can." What we're still suffering from is that big plan. Dan Burnham [of Burnham and Root]is no hero of mine. My hero is the male architect Howard Roark in Ayn Rand's book The Fountainhead. It's a heroic vision. It's not about interaction. It's not about democracy.

Now I gotta read this book.

ST:In my masters' year, Ayn Rand gave a colloquium at the law school. I walked up to her after the colloquium and said, "Miss Rand, my name is Stanley Tigerman. I'm in the graduate school and I just want to tell you it's because I read your book when I was 12 years old that I became an architect." And in the way that New Yorkers have of looking you up and down like you're a piece of shit, she looked at me and she said, "So what?" It was a crushing but wonderful blow. I can say now years later that it was great, because then I got it.

MT: During your years at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) ...
ST: I was fired. But for my getting fired, I wouldn't have founded Archeworks.
MT: What is your relationship with students? I still hear stories about "Stanley the terror!"
ST: I'm great with kids but I'm very tough. During my tour of duty at UIC I was burned in effigy. A big sign hung up on the brassiere factory near campus. It was me. There I was in flames. (laughs) I had no problem with that because I was tough. I would take students' drawings if they were [not up to my standards] and tear them up. And boys--not just girls--I made cry. That's the way I was trained at Yale.

This reminds me of a conversation I had with Greg about his dad in architecture schoool in Poland. I'm not a fan of the tearing.

MT: What's the benefit of teaching like that?
ST: I didn't suffer fools quietly. This is the tradition I came from. In my time, Paul Rudolph was the chairman at Yale. He used to give us weekly grades. One day I got an 89. So, quaking in my boots, I went to him: "Well, Stanley, I see by your grades that you're obviously not interested in architecture any longer. I want you to meet Mr. Smith"--some crew-cut, Brooks Brothers, ... Princeton type--"of the Yale Placement Bureau ... [who] is willing to underwrite a battery of tests to find a discipline more suited to your energies."
MT: Because you didn't make 90? For one point off?
ST: Right. You go back and work your balls off, which is the whole point of it, right? I loved it, I thrived on it. Those of us who didn't end up on shrink's couches--one kid committed suicide--did very well. In the words of [my wife] Margaret [McCurry]: "Of course, they're going to find you face down in an alley one day. It'll take years to figure out who did it because the list is so long." With civilians, I'm actually a very nice guy. With architects, I'm brutal. I'm interested in excellence. I always have been. I always will be. Period.

Interesting, I wondered why some teachers are into the 'tearing method'. Still, that's harsh. It makes me realize that my program is soft compaired to what others go through.

MT: I'd like to know how this city, which you love so much, informs your work.
ST: It's home. When you get to a certain age, kids start to ask you, "When should I open my own practice? Is it when I get a client? When I've saved up some money?" And my answer is always, "When you discover that you can't take direction you're no longer employable. Then you should open your own business. If you can still take direction, you shouldn't open up a practice."
They say, "Well where should I go?" And the answer's always the same: "Home." Always. I don't care if you're from Tupelo, Mississippi. If you stay in one place your whole life, you own it. It's yours. If you move around, you've got a problem. If you don't have longevity, what's the point?

Now that is some good direction.

MT: It's more than that, isn't it? It's about this notion of being rooted in identity.
ST: First of all, you should be at home. Secondly, being an architect in Chicago is like being a Muslim in Mecca. Why would you be an architect anywhere else on the planet? To be an architect in Chicago and to be born here, I mean, come on, Mara, it's like mother's milk. This is the place!
MT: This from the man who has had not the kindest words for recent Chicago architecture!
ST: I don't like sycophants. I don't like mediocrity. I don't like people diminishing this discipline because I see architecture not as a profession but as a discipline, like a monastic pursuit. I'm not interested in those who may see architecture as a way to make money. I hate that and I hate architects that do it and I'm very verbal about it. It goes back to The Fountainhead. I'm interested in the heroic. I'm interested in Louis Sullivan. Why? Because he died a bum, an alcoholic living in a large linen closet in a flea-bag South-side hotel.

Burn on Sullivan. I think he has good work. It's interesting how he looks at architecture as a religion.

MT: And yet you have great respect for Mies.
ST: But that's different. He was the man. He was a brilliant architect. I've lived in a Mies building for 31 years. You know why? So I always remember that I'm in the presence of greatness--lest I get out of control in my own head--in the presence of a challenge. I've always felt that these guys are looking over my shoulder.


MT: You and Margaret [McCurry] talk about this architecture that's "authentically American." What does that mean?
ST: It means "hybrid." This is not our land. This belonged to the Indians. We're colonialists. We came here as exiles--the Irish, the Italians, the Jews.
MT: How does it manifest itself in bricks and mortar?
ST: Because [as an architect] you feel responsible. Responsible means responsibility. Without morality and ethics, what is architecture? A profession? An art? A money-grubbing thing? Unless it has a moral root supporting its existence, it's of absolutely no interest. Not to me. Not at all. How would you sustain an interest in one field for over a half-century unless there's a moral or ethical dimension? You can't do it just based on art. You surely can't do it based on professionalism and you certainly can't do it based on money. It would only be out of an ethical belief, by principled behavior. Now, there's always the question, of course, whose principle? Whose morality? It's a real question and it's an honest question but I'd rather argue and debate that question than not have any. At least it's the right question.