Heroes

I want to spend this entry talking about heroes. Not the costumed crusaders of the comic book realm, but the sorts of people that have "day" placed after their names. More specifically, i'm referencing people such as Chris Columbus, George Washington, Martin Luther King Jr. and so forth. For their "accomplishments" we idolize them, celebrate their lives and aspire to be as "great" ourselves. Their architectural corollary is easily made - iconic structures like the UNESCO World Heritage sites that i've referenced previously.

The mainstream attitude towards this phenomenon is to simply accept it. Hey, you get a free holiday from work (at least if you work for the gov't), right? On the other hand, you could join the counter-culture which just loves to tear down celebrities by pointing out flaws. This latter position can be seductive if you're not already fully brainwashed into proselytizing the greatness of these icons. The counter arguments do often make quite a bit of sense. Columbus did, as far as i know, slaughter both natives and his own men, burned women, raped houses and was generally a rather naughty fellow. Er...something like that, anyway. He also did settle the Americas and establish European influence there, which likely directly contributes to why i'm currently able to sit here IN the first-world country of the United States on a computer and type this entry.

On a side note, i'm still raw about being told that Columbus discovered America in the 2nd grade (mmm, misplaced modifiers...i think i'll leave that sentence as is). By the 3rd grade it turned out that he wasn't actually the first, and by 4th grade i learned that he didn't even hit the mainland, just the Bahamas. And we wonder what's wrong with our education system...
That's a post for another time. I digress.

I reject both the pedestrian acceptance and the petulant refutations of heroic icons.



While i was traveling back from my summer work situation to my year-round home i had the opportunity to visit Wright's Falling Water. Within the architectural community this home needs no introduction, but this intimate knowledge is rather insulated within the profession. For those of you unfamiliar with it, Falling Water is particularly famous for it's situation (literally) atop a waterfall as well as for its dramatically cantilevered balconies.


One of Wright's interests was building to the human scale. This meant rooms in which certain portions of the ceiling were dropped lower than the architectural standards; such a configuration invited a nestled sensation, after which entering onto the wide open balconies would be even more boundless and open by contrast. The family that commissioned Falling Water, incidentally, were considerably shorter than myself - between 5'6" and 5'4". That's 1.6 to 1.7 metres for those of you reading this outside the States (ha!). I, on the other hand, am slightly over 1.8 metres tall (that's 6 feet for those of you inside the States). As a result my head was mere inches from brushing the ceiling -- more claustrophobic than nestled.

Claustrophobia is an unpleasant feeling.

BUT! I do not mention this caveat to Falling Water's brilliance in order to degrade the home's value (2.3 million in 2007 USD from a construction standpoint, or from another perspective 120k visitors per year paying admission...what?), but rather to give an idea of how heroes and icons may have similar downfalls.

I reject both positions because i feel both are too extreme. On the one hand, to reject heroes and icons outright is to rob yourself of the opportunity to learn about something truly incredible. On the other, these are only people. The kind of fawning adulation that, say, presidential candidates drew on the night of November 4th honestly frightens me. Anyone who so totally agrees with a candidate's platform has clearly not investigated that platform nearly closely enough (well...there are probably a few dozen people out of millions who totally agree with legitimate basis). There is no way that millions of people all have exactly the same views on every issue -- some of them are going to be unhappy about one or two of them...and we're not even talking about passed legislation, just promises. Promises which political candidates are notoriously incapable of keeping.

Let us instead educate ourselves about the virtues of each heroes legacy and honor those; let us also ground these icons in the reality of their situations. I would say that we cannot all be Mother Theresa or Mahatma Gandhi, but this would contradict my entire point. I do not believe that either of them were flawless individuals. I do believe that they provided a sublime image of what an individual can be. Let us strive for the perfection of heroes and icons, accepting that such a goal is categorically impossible.