[JMorgan]

"Architecture has to have the element of time.  How can you judge a work today, let's say a work by anyone among these well-known architects that is exciting and wonderful?  And then what will happen to it twenty, fifty years later?  That's the measure.  That is why the Salk Institute will always be as perfect as it was conceived.  The teak wood may fade away ... probably did, or has ... but the spirituality of that project will remain.   Now that building will with stand the test of time, no question about it."

This is architect I.M. Pei on the work of Louis Kahn.  Pei even once admitted that he would trade his oeuvre for Kahn's three or four great works.

It has also been said that Kahn brought spirit and poetry, mysticism and authenticity back into a field dominated by industrial modernism and sleek design. 

I remember how palpably jealous I was of the students working in the Salk labs when I visited in my early 20s.  The place is a temple to science where one cannot but be inspired.  One of Kahn's colleagues has said that for Kahn every building was a temple, whether it was a temple for science, government, or learning. 



And thinking about these quotes and some of Kahn's projects, both realized and thwarted (Philly, you lost out big time), I was wondering if there are any parallels between the thoughts and ideas inspired by Kahn and golf course architecture? 

Between the spirit of building and the spirit of golf?

Is it fair, say, to draw parallels in the US between the monumentality of Kahn's work and golf architects past or present? 

Any particular courses? 

And what aspects of golf course architecture stand the test of time, twenty, fifty years down the road? 

What aspects of a golf course project, if any, inevitably ignore the element of time and are therefore doomed to extinction? 

[Tom_Doak]

JMorgan:  I don't think any golf course has quite the same standing as a building, because no landscape is truly static.

There are certainly aspects of golf architecture which stand the test of time, and certainly particular courses which have done better than others.  We talk about those here all the time.

By the way, this is THE ONLY good reason to separate the "Best Modern" courses from the "Best Classic" courses.  I have come to believe it's impossible to have a bulletproof perspective on whether modern courses will stand the test of time, because our own biases today are parallel with the biases of modern architects.  Our grandkids will have different perspectives and some of what we adore right now will be as passe as roller skates.

[Tom Naccarato]

The Mind and Experimentation of Desmond Muirhead....A sure sign to make Tom Doak and even myself cringe, but what a great man with a acerbic wit. He would have never participated on this site, but if we were all together in one room, he would have commanded our attention and he would have loved it!

This work of Kahn's is no different then Desmond's Temple at the Imperial Golf Club in Jakarta. It regret that I didn't take the plans for this one because I felt that the notes were interesting. It was like Desmond had delved into Buddhism, but didn't enter its spiritual realm, for  anything but inspiration, to tell a story, to tell THE story. Love him or hate him and his work, Desmond seemed to get it in that regard. he always fancied himself as a land planner first and golf architect second, but I think he just said that to get bigger and better, more grander projects that would allow his "visions." For me, the artistic vision is more that of a mausoleum. It has negativity and Desmond would have liked to put that in a Golfer's mind while standing on the tee; looking back at it a certain mortality to it, almost as if its a cemetery. Death. But the positive is that it is peaceful. In Desmond's mind, he would have wanted you to walk away from the hole, looking back and seeing how truly peaceful the entire setting was.

[Peter Pallotta]

JM -

Pei seems to be making two separate points - first, that only Time can give us a proper perspective on modern work and second, that Kahn consciously embued his work with spirit and permanence.  I disagree with the first point, i.e. I think time gives us ONE perspective, but just one among many such perspectives and not necessarily the "proper" one. But I think his second point is crucial, and may have a parallel to golf course architecture. It is the architect's CHOICE whether to embue a golf course with spirit and permanence (or at least to try to).  And the only aspect of modern work that Time cannot change is that -- the artist's INTENTION.
 
Personally, I've never played a golf course where I thought the architect did not know what he was doing; I've never played a badly designed golf course in this sense. But I've played many where it was clear that the architect's intention was not to create a course embued with a sense of spirit and permanence. How important is that, or should it be? I don't know. 
Some of the oldest courses, of course, get a free pass on the permanence part, in a proof-is-in-the-pudding sort of way...

Peter   

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