the need for architects to work in concert with engi-
neers, planners, and landscape architects to an ex-
tent unimagined in earlier times. At the same time,
building regulations became more stringent and
contracts became more complex, requiring numer-
ous consultants.
Notable U.S. Architects and Buildings One of the
decade’s most recognizable buildings was the Crys-
tal Cathedral in Southern California, opened in
- Architects Philip Johnson and John Burgee
designed the $18 million extravaganza as the church
and headquarters for television evangelist Robert
Schuller. At Schuller’s insistence, the massive struc-
ture was made entirely of glass set into welded steel
tubing painted white. The interior was 128 feet high
and spanned 200 feet without interior columns.
Viewed from the outside, the building reflected the
landscape and changing patterns of light through-
out the day; from inside, one looked out to the flat,
suburban landscape and the massive parking lot.
The church was as much a tourist attraction as a
house of worship.
At the opposite end of the spectrum was the small
but dramatic Thorncrown Chapel, designed by
E. Fay Jones and completed in 1981. Set in the Ozark
Mountains of Arkansas, the chapel was built com-
pletely with materials that could be carried to the
site by two workers, to prevent damage to the sur-
rounding environment. Although it covered only
fourteen hundred square feet, the chapel soared
forty-eight feet into the trees. Like the Crystal Cathe-
dral, Thorncrown Chapel was primarily made of
glass—more than six thousand square feet of glass,
including more than 425 windows. The remainder
of the structure was wood, with only a small section
of steel. The native flagstone floor was surrounded
with a rock wall. The distinctive design received the
AIA Design of the Decade Award for the 1980’s and
was ranked fourth on the AIA’s list of the top build-
ings of the twentieth century.
Michael Graves, who had embraced modernism
early in his career, soon turned away from the style,
believing it to be irrelevant to the people who had to
work in and use such buildings. One of his best-
known and most controversial commissions was the
Portland Public Services Building, completed in
1982, and considered by many critics to be the first
postmodernist office building. Its colorful—some
argued garish—exterior did complement the many
colorfully restored Victorian buildings in downtown
Portland, but its unusual forms and decorative ele-
ments, meant to be symbolic, were confusing to most
observers.
Despite Graves’s concerns that buildings should
be relevant to their users, the Portland building was
criticized for its small, dark offices and poorly de-
signed public spaces. However, part of Graves’s origi-
nal design was altered and simplified to meet budget
and time constraints. It was Graves’s first commis-
sion for a large building; he went on to design less
controversial projects and was the recipient of the
2001 AIA Gold Medal for significant influence on
the profession of architecture.
Another civic building of note was the Thompson
Center (also known as the State of Illinois Center) in
Chicago, built by late modernist Helmut Jahn and
dedicated in 1985. The blue glass building filled and
dominated a city block with an unusual rounded
shape tapering inward as it rose seventeen stories to
the angled dome on top. Each floor opened onto
the circular central rotunda, 160 feet across. Pri-
marily a government building with state agencies
and offices, it also contained a commercial area of
shops and restaurants and the State of Illinois Gal-
lery, Illinois Artisans’ Shop, and an impressive col-
lection of contemporary Illinois art. Its assembly hall
and lower concourse level were available for public
and private events, and the building became a major
tourist attraction in Chicago.
One of the great failures of modernism was its
use for large public-housing projects. After a massive
public-housing project in St. Louis was completely de-
molished because it had deteriorated into a crime-
ridden slum, planners looked for ways to provide low-
income housing on a smaller, more human scale.
Charleston, South Carolina, took a new approach:
Some 113 apartments for low-income residents were
built in the style of single homes that were common to
the area, and the units were distributed among four-
teen sites around the city. The project was divided be-
tween Bradfield Associates of Atlanta and Middleton
McMillan Architects of Charleston, with each firm
employing its own contractor. The project came in
under budget and won numerous awards, including a
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Develop-
ment award for innovation and a 1984 presidential
award for design excellence.
Frank Gehry (born Ephraim Goldberg in To-
ronto, Ontario, in 1929), is one of the best-known64 Architecture The Eighties in America