Theatre Design & Technology - Feb 1968 - 19

Kennedy Center's program, however, like its engirdled site,
is rigid and restrictive; it is detached from the established
living theatre in its area. It is a program that does not permit future growth. This situation, unfortunately, is typical
today.
Aesthetic Vision. Restrictive and rigid packaging is also a
major criticism of the architecture's visual characteristics.
As the basis for his aesthetic concept, architect Stone accepts the tradition of Washington's one-building monuments
that I ine the Mall. For Kennedy Center, therefore, he has
put together into one gigantic rectangular box, three smaller
but still huge marble boxes-each of which contains a theatre and ancillary facilities. The overall scheme is to enclose,
in one building, a complex such as Lincoln Center or the
Los Angeles Music Center. Kennedy Center is to be a simplex rather than a complex. Now, "simplicity," along with
"dignity" and "monumentality" are Edward Stone's avowed
goals. "I believe that an architect's job is to make very,
very complicated problems seem simple," he once said to
me in an interview.
Unfortunately, that aesthetic image is now in disrepute.
Today, the art of architecture does not approve of squeezing
compl icated facilities into simple packages, into preconceived
geometric shapes. Avant-garde architects and progressive
critics have moved on to acclaim architectural concepts that
are "expressive" and stimulating, rugged and jagged. They
emphasize that this is a truer responsiveness to sites and to
programs. They prefer fragmented structures that express
interior functions by elements visible on the exteriors. This
is a new aesthetic which is related to the "formlessness"
that is the prevailing image in "The New Theatre." For
example, architects now prefer to make the stage houses of
theatres visible as symbols of the buildings' special function;
architect Stone hides all such indications at Kennedy Center.
Edward Stone does not build his design concepts on these
architectural developments; he is of an older generation. His
vision does not accept the full range of contemporary life
nor try to include it within the scope of good design; rather,
it attempts to hide the automobile, disavows the servantless
world and the commercial era, and evidently pretends that
Picasso never existed.

Office and showroom building, Broyhill Furniture Industries. Lenoir.
N.C. The firm's brochure states, "The Concept and design of the
building were created by Broyhill's management and design staff."
Built 1965. Photo: Courtesy Broyhill Furniture Industries.

Not only has Stone failed to move toward this current
aesthetic, he has even reverted from the justly respected,
honest simplicity of his International Style background. Now,
he proclaims a simplistic grandeur and a pallid prettiness.
His Kennedy Center appears to be based on ideas current
in Hollywood a generation ago, when picturesque pure-white
marble reconstructions of the Acropolis were the romantic
ideals for a city's appearance. (These persistent ideals have
governed the building of Washington throughout this century.) In this vein, architect Stone produces lines that are
evocative of the classical dreams of the late 17th and 18th
Centuries.
His big packing carton for the three Kennedy Center theatres, for instance, is tied together by that most monumental
of all historical architectural features-a colonnade. Since the
columns are made of steel, they are properly attenuated;
however, they are finished in gilded bronze so that they
will be visually sumptuous-made so by that most sumptuous of all historical materials. But what is the usefulness of
this colonnade? Does it shelter? Has it a function? Not a
practical one; it is there to symbolize no.t that the building
contains a group of theatres, but that it is monumentally
elegant. Like Stone's velvets, crystal, and candlelight, this
gilded colonnade is backward-looking stylishness.
Let it be clearly understood: Kennedy Center will not be an
eyesore. On the contrary, nothing about Edward Durell
Stone's architecture is downright ugly. But its arbitrary stylishness and its historical pretentiousness are offensive (and
many call that offensiveness "ugly"), because they bear
no relation to needs of the site or the program.
Confirming his historicism, Stone has said about going to the
theatre, "You've got to imagine that you're in the 18th
Century." Why? That we in the United States, with our own
enormously vital achievements as a 20th-Century civilization, should entertain the leaders of Europe and the Orient
in a pale imitation of their own rich 18th-Century tradition
is a cruelly ironic architectural anachronism.
Ironically for Stone, the Center's recently appointed arbiter
of interior design, scenic designer Oliver Smith, proposes
going all the way and making the interiors of the Center a

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