Frederique Krupa
Oct. 28, 1991

The Ford Foundation, New York City

Designed by the firm Dinkeloo and Roche, the Ford Foundation Building (1965-1967) was hailed as New York's ideal of high quality Modernism that should serve as an inspiration to designers, architects and urban planners. At the time of its opening, the professional accolades in the architectural press reflected that modernism was heavily under fire; many architects and designers were feeling that the days of modernism may soon end. Two years after Jane Jacobs published her seminal book The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961), popular discontent with Modernist architecture began in 1963, when Penn Station was torn down to make way for Madison Square Garden and an anonymous modern office building. The Pan Am Building went up the following year, disrupting the vista of Park Avenue and causing much public fury. With such evidence of Modernism's contempt for the past, its original socialism and benevolent social contract were undermined. Modernism became for many people a symbol of militant corporate capitalism and the devastation of New York's urban fabric. The Ford became the embodiment of modernism's crisis--its contradictory image and reality.

To dismiss the Ford Foundation Building simply for the politics and the style is to overlook that fact that the Ford is a superior example of Modernist architecture. The project was initiated by Ford's controversial president, McGeorge Bundy, due to the cramped and dour state of its previous home. Roche's overall design is simple, well planned and immaculately executed. The building's exterior consists of pink granite veneer on the structural columns and a curtain wall of purplish cor-ten struts and full-length glass. These materials are repeated on the interior, where another level of separation exists between the offices and the colossal atrium that encloses lush, tropical vegetation. The garden must be nice to view as a worker, though the choice of lush vegetation in a huge void often leads to comparisons with Portman's Hyatt Regency. The underground floor contains a board room, mechanical room and an auditorium, complete with leather Eames chairs. The ground floor contains the split-level library and reception area. The next ten, L-shaped floors contain offices, which all have views on the garden or on quiet 43rd street. The top two floors encircle the atrium and contain the dining facilities and the offices of the chairman and president.

The building maintenance over the past twenty-five years has been exemplary; the building still looks incredibly similar to the photos taken shortly after its opening. Compared to most other recent buildings, the Ford is much more successful in relating to its inhabitants and its site. Roche successfully blends the Ford into its surroundings through its purplish brown exterior color scheme and its restrained scale. The two different approaches to the building also work well: pedestrians enter on 42nd Street through the garden, and cars come around to the receded porte-cochere on 43rd Street. Most importantly, the Ford's sumptuous design and luxurious materials does not make the public or employees feel mediocre and unworthy of such attention.

The Ford Foundation Building became the contradictory embodiment of modernism's crisis, thanks to its president McGeorge Bundy. Bundy's Establishment background gives a good clue as to the ideals of the man and, in turn, the Ford Foundation. Bundy had joined the Kennedy administration as National Security Advisor, giving up his precocious Deanship at Harvard, where he found time to do some secretive recruitment for the CIA. Bundy assumed the presidency of the Ford Foundation, while remaining the National Security Advisor for the Johnson Administration. He played a leading part in orchestrating the war precisely as Ford Foundation was being built. A famous feature of the Ford is the ability to see into all the offices from the balconies on the eleventh and twelfth floor, including the president's. One could have observed Bundy organizing the war; however, the deprivation of sound would not have allowed any important information to be leaked. The strong anti-war movement and demonstrations made the Ford an obvious target for public outrage.

The war, in fact, was defending the ideals dear to the Ford Foundation: a strong, free, democratic America in a stable world--kept stable through intervention. The intervention on Ford's part comes in the form of generous financial aid to other peace keeping/anti-poverty organizations, not individuals, both foreign and domestic, all noble causes--unless Ford's motive is to keep the poor pacified and expand the market for U.S. corporations. The Ford Foundation was originally funded by Ford Motors in the late 40's, though all Ford stocks were wisely liquidated in the early 70's. The contradictory image and agenda make the Ford Foundation's motives questionable, especially with Bundy at the helm. The Ford is then a temple to the bureaucracy of charity.

The discrepancy of the image and reality, such as the pointless ability to see into the president's office, manifests itself elsewhere in the Ford. Many critics focus on the democracy in the design, but the hermetically sealed, democratic garden, a gift to the city, is just inhospitable, with a guard ready to ask the loitering visitor to move on if he or she attempts to sit somewhere (not on benches, because there are none). The original trees did not grow to the desired height due to the artificial conditions and had to be replaced. The irrigation of these tropical plants is done by a network of underground pipes with a timer linked to a liquid fertilizer injector, an apt metaphor for the Foundation's philanthropic foreign policies--regularly giving money to foreign organizations, for pacification and basic subsistence of workers. A sign informs visitors that the water used to irrigate is collected from various points in the building where condensation occur so as not to tap into one of New York's precious resources; that sign and the other one, indicating that the pennies thrown into the fountain are given to UNICEF, are gestures and nothing more, considering the huge sums the Foundation has at its disposal. The tiny sums collected from the fountain is not going to do much for UNICEF. These gestures also make one question the motives of this organization.

The democratic design ideal of community spirit is supposedly Roche's design's most clear intention: all the workers are part of a common purpose, even if they work on different projects. There is one standard for everyone: luxury. All the workers, from the vice-president on down except for the people in the machine room, have the same custom-designed furniture made of mahogany, polished brass and brown leather. In reality, though, the bureaucratic hierarchy is still present: the directors get the corner offices on each floor, the secretaries are at the base of each floor, the office workers are in between, the president and chairman get their own high floor with their big offices and special furniture, and the dining facilities are separated into a cafeteria for the workers and a dining room for the executives. Apparently, the class system is still part of the Ford's democratic, capitalist ideals.

The Ford's 25th anniversary reiterates that modernism's crisis has not been fully resolved. The separation of the morals and modernism raised a new set of issues--the architect's contract with society and with the client. Many architects have responded by withdrawing from building completely, focusing on theoretical paper architecture. Others have chosen to become advocacy architects, setting up storefronts in neighborhoods. Other have become Post Modern corporate architects, focusing on large-scale commissions. The Ford represents the crisis of the social contract that lead to the collapse of modernism.

 

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