Are modern architects overrated compared to their predecessors

[Michael Morandi]

Ok. This is a provocative post. But it seems to me that modern architects have an advantage over those  who came before them. The best get to work on ideal sites far from population centers while those before them had to work with available land close to cities. They made due with what was available. Money and private jets have changed everything. Sand Hills would never have happened in the 1950s. Some great courses, like Friars Head, have been developed within car distance but it seems that many new ones are out of the way. 

[Ben Malach]

Every single Canadian born architect since WW2 not named Rod Whitman is overrated to some degree.

[Matt Schoolfield]

I doubt it. Survivorship bias complicates the issue significantly. Combine that with the fact that we are typically looking at modern presentations of many historic courses.

[Tim_Weiman]

Ok. This is a provocative post. But it seems to me that modern architects have an advantage over those  who came before them. The best get to work on ideal sites far from population centers while those before them had to work with available land close to cities. They made due with what was available. Money and private jets have changed everything. Sand Hills would never have happened in the 1950s. Some great courses, like Friars Head, have been developed within car distance but it seems that many new ones are out of the way.

Michael,


Do you know if Alister Mackenzie got to work on any good sites?


Tim

[Tom_Doak]

Ok. This is a provocative post. But it seems to me that modern architects have an advantage over those  who came before them. The best get to work on ideal sites far from population centers while those before them had to work with available land close to cities. They made due with what was available. Money and private jets have changed everything. Sand Hills would never have happened in the 1950s. Some great courses, like Friars Head, have been developed within car distance but it seems that many new ones are out of the way.

1.  I don't care if I'm "overrated" . . . I don't know why anyone would try to "rate" an architect. 


2.  My product is golf courses, that work product is what is rated highly.  Yes, many of my highly-rated courses are built on beautiful sites.  The same is true for others.  Any architect's best courses are bound to be on the most interesting pieces of ground, and/or for clients who give them freedom to design.


3.  There were many fine sites close to cities that were affordable to build on in 1924.  There are not many of those in 2024.  I don't think I've had a single contact about such a project.  [CommonGround and Memorial Park are redesigns, neither of them on an above-average piece of ground.]


4.  We all "make do with what is available," particularly if you allow money and equipment as variables rather than disqualifiers.

[zachary_car]

Every single Canadian born architect since WW2 not named Rod Whitman is overrated to some degree.

Ben, I agree for the most part but Ian Andrew is one who isn't; if anything, it's the opposite in my opinion

[Ira Fishman]

I do not think so. In the recent GM US Top 100, only 21 (not counting Lido) are new courses since Sand Hills. That does not strike me as a high proportion. My guess is that it is an even lower proportion for the World Top 100.

[Ben Sims]

Philosophically (and agreeing with another distinguished poster in this DG) I believe post-1995 modern designs to generally be better than classic designs.


Deference to canon is a human trait that’s hard to break.


So, overrated? Hardly. Underrated if anything.

[Michael Morandi]

Put another way, do modern architects have it easier than their predecessors because their sites are not constrained by urban proximity? Accordingly, do they have different skill sets.  As to the Alastair MacKenzie comment, he did indeed have some very good sites to work with but not being familiar with most of his work I am in no position to judge.

[Peter Sayegh]

Yes.

[Dan_Callahan]

I would think it would be far easier to build a golf course in the 1920s or 1930s when environmental restrictions were far less of an issue. Could Fisher's even be built today? Or Kittansett's 3rd green? Or most of Cypress or Pebble? How many classic courses in New England were made possible by building through wetlands in ways that would never be allowed today?

[Craig Sweet]

I doubt it...Besides, there hasn't been enough time to move past comparing everything to a Ross or Mackenzie course. Give it another hundred years and we'll have several generations of architechs to rate and compare.

[Thomas Dai]

Turn it around.
Could those of yesteryears various eras going back near a couple of hundred years ago have produced the quality of work of todays practitioners given the restrictions placed on todays practitioners by modern society in relation to quality of available land, locations, government and semi-government regulations, environmental influences, health and safety restrictions etc etc etc?
Atb

[Kalen Braley]

This feels similar to the thread on rating golf courses a few weeks back

Specifically what criteria are you going to use and how are you going to weight/score it?  I can think of 15-20 categories off the top of my head and some are more favorable now vs then, and visa versa.

[Tim_Weiman]

Turn it around.
Could those of yesteryears various eras going back near a couple of hundred years ago have produced the quality of work of todays practitioners given the restrictions placed on todays practitioners by modern society in relation to quality of available land, locations, government and semi-government regulations, environmental influences, health and safety restrictions etc etc etc?
Atb

Thomas,


If modern day architects learned to deal with all those challenges, what makes you think architects like, say, CB Macdonald couldn’t do the same?


Tim

[Ira Fishman]

Put another way, do modern architects have it easier than their predecessors because their sites are not constrained by urban proximity? Accordingly, do they have different skill sets.  As to the Alastair MacKenzie comment, he did indeed have some very good sites to work with but not being familiar with most of his work I am in no position to judge.

My guess is that if you looked at courses that seem constrained by urban proximity now, that was not the case 100 years ago in the US when they were built.

[Niall C]

I'd suggest the biggest advantage modern gca's have is not bigger budgets, more earthmoving equipment etc but that they have the advantage of looking back and learning from all the great stuff that went before, as well as the bad. A lot of modern courses are rightly lauded and perhaps what their designers have done is produced something greater than what went before, and in that respect maybe they do deserve their plaudits, but the ODG's maybe deserve more credit for paving the way for later exponents of golf course design IMO.


If you like, Doak, C&C etc are standing on the shoulders of giants.


Niall

[Mark_Fine]

I consider myself mostly a purest (I love the old stuff) but the best of the new stuff is as good or better than much of the past.  As such I say NO they are not overrated. 

[Tom_Doak]

Put another way, do modern architects have it easier than their predecessors because their sites are not constrained by urban proximity? Accordingly, do they have different skill sets.  As to the Alastair MacKenzie comment, he did indeed have some very good sites to work with but not being familiar with most of his work I am in no position to judge.

My guess is that if you looked at courses that seem constrained by urban proximity now, that was not the case 100 years ago in the US when they were built.

Exactly.  Have you seen pictures of LACC and Bel Air and Royal Melbourne from the 1920s?  They had all the land they wanted.  However, tastes were different, and nobody was looking for a course that wandered over 300 acres.  Sand Hills changed that standard.

[Tom_Doak]

Turn it around.
Could those of yesteryears various eras going back near a couple of hundred years ago have produced the quality of work of todays practitioners given the restrictions placed on todays practitioners by modern society in relation to quality of available land, locations, government and semi-government regulations, environmental influences, health and safety restrictions etc etc etc?
Atb

It’s funny, when I started in the business other designers told me my business plan didn’t make sense because all of the good sites had been taken 


Now it turns out they were wrong and I’m the luckiest designer ever!


I think that most of the excuses about “modern restrictions” are overblown, although it’s true that the EU and the USA have made it harder to work in beautiful sites . . . which is why I had American clients for three golf courses in NZ and the current one in Mexico.  Even in the Hamptons the restrictions were expensive to solve but they didn’t handcuff anything we wanted to do.