NOT COOL: FLEETING MOMENTS AND TELLING AFTERLIVES WITH GOLD MIRROR ARCHITECTURAL GLASS
by Daniel Paul
The following is a historical overview, set of contexts, and limited critical perspectives discussing the advent and presence of goldcolored architectural solar performance glass — or, for present purposes, “gold mirror glass.” A largely forgotten architectural design product, the West rendered gold mirror glass anomalous shortly after its initial development, even though it performed its technical job of blocking heat and light from a glass-clad building remarkably well.
Changes in society and tastes would have one believe the product no longer exists, but gold mirror architectural glass has existed since its advent in 1963 and, per the recent past, has done so in a complicated and telling manner.
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Bell Laboratories (also known as Bell Labs) was the research and development wing of the then giant American Telegraph and Telephone Company (AT&T), and was arguably unparalleled in its contributions to mid-century high technology. Bell advanced numerous innovations in telecommunications, as well as developments related to microwave transmission, the silicone computer chip, the transistor, information theory, and space satellites. In 1956 Saarinen’s firm received the commission to build a new laboratory facility for Bell in Holmdel, New Jersey. Of its design, Saarinen stated, “It should express i t s e l f w h e re i m p o r t a n t a n d s e r i o u s developments for our time and for the future are taking place, and its material and its structure should be appropriate to the advanced technology of our time.”1
Developments Gold mirror glass — and for that matter all architectural mirror glass, was initially developed by two associates working at the office of Eero Saarinen: the architects Kevin Roche and John Dinkeloo. By the time of its 1956 completion, Saarinen’s General Motors Technical Center in Warren, Michigan, was designed with one of the widest applications of architectural glass. Even during its construction, Dinkeloo foresaw a need for a light-and-heat-reflective glass to reduce cooling costs. Sometime during this period, Roche flipped through an issue of Life magazine at a newsstand and saw a man wearing mirrored aviator sunglasses. Upon doing so, Roche thought that a similar reflective concept might work for architectural glass. In 1955 Roche and Dinkeloo designed their first project to incorporate mirror glass — an unbuilt Indianapolis design for Allison Engineering, a subsidiary of General Motors that made aircraft engines. Project elevations called for quarter-inch Libby-Owens-Ford “Mirropane,” which had only been used prior as it was intended: as one-way surveillance glass in interiors. With bright aluminum spandrels above and below the Mirropane, this would have appeared as a shiny, allreflective exterior had it been built. However, early on Roche and Dinkeloo realized that Mirropane’s coated surface was not suitable for the outdoors, as Mirropane scratched easily.
Roche and Dinkeloo’s opportunity to fully develop architectural mirror glass came with the Bell Labs commission: the first building with architectural mirror-glass cladding (Figure 1). Dinkeloo initiated the product development and, according to his obituary, the highly reflective metallized polyester film on air balloons inspired the product.2 There were few such balloons at this time, and in all likelihood this is in reference to “Project Echo” (also known as Echo 1): a highly reflective one-hundred-foot diameter Mylar balloon satellite developed by Bell Labs (Figure 2).3
Bell Telephone Laboratories, New York, press release, “Saarinen’s Design Puts Flexibility, Comfort, Beauty in New Bell Labs’ Development Center,” 27 September 1962, box 420, folder 1194, Eero Saarinen Collection, Sterling Memorial Library, Yale University (hereafter cited as Saarinen Collection). 1
2
“John Dinkeloo, 1918–1981,” Skyline : the architecture and design review (October/November 1981).
For more information about Project Echo, see Donald C. Elder, Out from behind the Eight-Ball: A History of Project Echo (San Diego: American Astronautical Society, 1995). 3
2
Figure 1. Bell Laboratories, Holmdel, New Jersey, USA. Eero Saarinen and Associates, 1957–62, 1967, 1982. The rear elevation, pictured above, was the first to have mirror cladding, which would not be applied to the rest of the building until 1965. Photo: ŠEzra Stoller in Jayne Merkel, Eero Saarinen
Figure 2. Project Echo balloon satellite, c. 1960. Photo: Techer (Caltech Alumni Association), https://www.techer.caltech.edu/
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they worked with two smaller companies, Detroit Glass and Kinney Vacuum Division of the New York Air Brake Company (also known as Kinney Vacuum and Kinney). By the end of 1961 the Saarinen firm had announced the product, which was tentatively referred to as “Reflectolite.”5 Kinney Vacuum would be the first to create and market this prototype, advertising the glass as “Reflectovue Architectural Safety Glass” by the spring of 1963 (Figure 3).
Upon a Thor-Delta rocket in 1960, NASA launched the balloon into space, where it successfully transmitted the first satellite communication that included a pre-recorded message by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. The balloon’s lightweight, all-over reflective design appears to have been highly influential not only upon Dinkeloo in his pursuit of mirror glass, but also to the later mirror glass “skin” aesthetic, which put the material upon a hermetically enclosed grid of smooth mullions or neoprene gaskets. Descriptors for this design system included “high tech,” “lightweight,” and “non-directional, nongravitational.”4 The concept of architectural mirror glass was initially dismissed by the larger US glass companies that Roche and Dinkeloo had inquired to develop the product. Resultantly,
The mirror glass skin is the invention of former Saarinen associates Cesar Pelli and Anthony Lumsden, who developed the design while working at the Los Angeles firm Daniel, Mann, Johnson, and Mendenhall (DMJM) in 1966. Lumsden served as the Bell Labs project architect, and upon its exterior Lumsden wanted to reverse all mullions to make a skin. To Lumsden, the gesture reiterated the opaque and surface-oriented elevational consistency between view and spandrel afforded by the all-mirrored building. Roche rejected the idea at the time because, if the mullions were reversed, there would be no shadow play upon the building, which would instead become a long, flat-mirrored rectangle. Though not completed until 1973, the first building designed with a mirror glass skin was Pelli and Lumsden’s Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Pacific Region headquarters, located in Hawthorne, California. At the time of its 1966 design, Los Angeles was the aerospace and high-tech capital of the world. Pelli and Lumsden have described the design as “hightech” and “future-looking.” Though Lumsden never mentioned Project Echo, he did describe the FAA design as being like a dirigible. The curved glass did not exist to wrap tight-rounded corners, which were instead aluminum-clad, and certain lites still had a slightly predominant vertical mullion. For more information on the FAA building, see David Morton, “AntiGravitational Mass,” Progressive Architecture 57, no. 7 (1976): 66–69. Also designed in 1966 by Pelli and Lumsden, the nineteen-story Century Medical Plaza in Los Angeles was completed in 1969, and is the first completed building to have a monochromatic, all-over smooth glass skin of small, equally scaled mullions wrapping the entire building. The building is not mirrored but its dark gray lites read as black in most atmospheric conditions. For the most comprehensive early article about the advent of the glass skin, see Michael Franklin Ross, “The Development of an Esthetic System at DMJM,” Architectural Record 5 (May 1975): 111–20. Additionally, see Pamela Heyne, Today’s Architectural Mirror: Interiors, Buildings, and Solar Designs (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1982); and John Pastier, “Nongravitational Architecture: Works of Anthony Lumsden,” a+u 52, no. 3 (1975). 4
5
“New Facts and Figures on Architectural Glass,” Architectural Forum (December 1961): 116.
4
Figure 3. Kinney Reflectovue Architectural Safety Glass advertisement, Architectural Record (February 1963): 282.
At first Kinney did not perceive the product’s aesthetic potential, and it was marketed for its ability to keep air conditioning costs low. Kinney did not produce their own lites, but used Pittsburgh Plate Glass or LibbeyOwens-Ford glazing units, placed in a ninefoot vacuum chamber with either aluminum or gold slugs.6 Within the chamber an electrical discharge vaporized the slugs, evenly coating the glass.7 The glass would then be laminated for safety purposes, and then backed by a second lite. Kinney used aluminum to produce the silver mirror that would eventually clad the entirety of Bell Labs. However, the production process was slow and laborious: the vacuum chamber was small. The early silver mirror glass was expensive. Because of production problems, not to mention the size of the order — more than one hundred thousand square feet of mirror glass — the building would not be fully clad in the material until mid-1965. Until then, dark gray lites clad the front and sides of Bell Labs, with mirror glass only across its long, south-facing rear elevation.8 On account of Eero Saarinen’s 1961 passing at the relatively young age of fifty-one, the architect never got to see Bell Labs’ design as intended. Energy savings aside, the aesthetic power of the finished product was evocative. Fully-mirrored, Bell Labs kicked off the first wave of mirror glass design and silver mirror became tied to “high-tech” in a manner that gold mirror glass would never achieve. 6
“Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall,” Business Week, May 7, 1966,151.
7
Ibid.
Plant Service Design and Construction (Western Electric Company, New York), report, “Aging Problems in Curtain Wall Glass at Holmdel,” 1 September 1970, box 421, folder 1199, Saarinen Collection. 8
5
Office/Park The project is perhaps best known for incorporating the first use of architectural Cor-Ten steel, which Dinkeloo developed as well. However, the John Deere project is also the first building completed to have reflecting glass of any kind across all four facades.
Kinney made Reflectovue gold mirror glass with real gold, and it came in two versions: Kinney Reflectovue 35G, a light gold version that was often confused with bronze, and Kinney Reflectovue 20G, a deeper gold version that in most instances appeared as a bright, saturated gold.9 The latter featured four cents’ worth (in 1970) of gold per square foot. 10 According to Roche, the idea to develop gold mirror glass preceded that of silver, as the inspirational aviators Roche spotted in Life magazine were gold-colored. The first building to feature gold mirror glass was the 1963 John Deere Headquarters in Moline, Illinois (Figure 4).
A romanticist design, the John Deere Headquarters building is set within in a picturesque landscape, and Cor-Ten cages the building in an Asiatic-inspired brise-soleil. To Saarinen, the rusting Cor-Ten referenced farm machinery — Deere’s primary product is agricultural equipment, such as tractors. Saarinen incorporated reflecting glass to avoid
Figure 4. John Deere Headquarters. Moline, Illinois, USA. Eero Saarinen and Associates, 1963. Photo: Jason R. Woods, www.jasonrwoods.com.
9
“Monsanto Installs Metallized Glazing,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 8, 1966, 8H.
D. P. Van Court (Western Electric Company, New York), memorandum, “Gold-Colored Laminated Glass, Monsanto Building ‘G’ Creve Coeur,” 6 May 1970, box 421, folder 1201, Saarinen Collection. 10
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using Venetian blinds or curtains, which would have blocked vistas of the park-like landscape from the inside.11 Its gold mirror glass features a soft, muted, and warm gold that reiterates the Cor-Ten’s warmth — not the last time an earth tone will be used in accordance with nature during the 1960s.
Evaluation Manager, inquiring about Bell Labs mirror glass.14 The following year Monsanto began construction of a new administration building, “Building G,” on its campus headquarters in the St. Louis suburb of Creve Coeur (Figures 5 and 6).
John Deere Headquarters served a company associated with agriculture — nature and the land — and, as intended, is very much a Midwestern design. Deere Company president William Hewitt specifically desired to stay in the Midwest despite the opinions of his own officers, who had suggested they relocate the headquarters to a bigger city. Thus, Hewitt wanted a building that was “down to ear th and r ugged, ” not “sophisticated or glossy” — the latter being traits that silver mirror glass would come to represent.12
Figure 5. Monsanto Building G. Creve Coeur, Missouri, USA. Vincent G. Kling & Associates, 1966. Photo: Edward V. Olencki, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/u/ ummu/x-05-04646/05_04646.
Among other early buildings to incorporate gold mirror glass included the 1963 Dania Jai Alai Palace in Dania Beach, Florida, by an unknown architect, and a medical tower in St. Louis, Missouri, paid for by Edgar Queeny, the president of Monsanto agricultural company, in honor of his father, Monsanto founder James Queeny: the Queeny Tower at Barnes Jewish Hospital, St. Louis Missouri, 1964–65, by Murphy & Mackey.13 The Monsanto connection is worth noting. In 1963 the Saarinen office received a letter from Milton Kosmin, Monsanto’s Technical 11
Figure 6. Monsanto Building G. Creve Coeur, Missouri, USA. Vincent G. Kling & Associates, 1966. The same building in Figure 5—the character of gold mirror glass changes in different light and atmospheric conditions. Photo: www.glassdoor.com.uk.
Scott Murray, Contemporary Curtain Wall Architecture (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2009), 49–50.
“World Headquarters,” John Deere, accessed March 27, 2019, https://www.deere.com/sub-saharan/en/connect-withjohn-deere/visit-john-deere/world-headquarters. 12
Kinney Vacuum Coatings, memorandum, “Kinney Architectural Heat Reflecting Glass: Gold Products,” 31 March 1970, box 421, folder 1199, Saarinen Collection. 13
John Dinkeloo (Eero Saarinen and Associates), letter from Saarinen Associates to Mr. Milton Kosmin, 22 November 1963, box 412, folder 1172, Saarinen Collection. 14
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Unlike any previously existing project, Building G incorporated a rich, deep gold glazing, the Kinney Reflectovue 20G laminate, and did so in a highly visible and continuous manner.15 Building G is the first finished building anywhere that reads as an all-gold mirror glass building. Both Monsanto as a company and Building G are one part Bell Labs and one part Deere. Monsanto is a large conglomerate doing work in agriculture, agricultural chemicals, and biotechnology. The Philadelphia firm of Vincent L. Kling and Associates designed the building, and according to their spokesperson: “We wanted the warmth of gold and felt glass was of our age. It gave the building a desired continuity with its surroundings.” 16 Building G consists o f t h re e c on n e c t e d , l ow - s l u n g, a n d horizontally acclimated reflecting glass boxes of character to Bell Labs, albeit golden. ‑
‑
At its beginnings, all architectural mirror glass had a direct association to nature: for its ability to reflect it and for the simultaneous ability to view it from within a building situated in a bucolic environment. Bell Labs, John Deere, and Monsanto Building G were all placed in open, park-like landscapes. Such settings were specifically recommended by Kinney, which provided the glazing for each of the three projects. Company manager Edwin W. Bleeker had otherwise warned, “If the glass sheathed skyscraper-lined streets, it would reflect so much heat, pedestrians would find the temperature oppressive.”17 Additionally, Monsanto seems to have used Building G as a demonstration piece. The company was responsible for developing the plastic composition within the “Safelex” polyvinyl butryal (PVB), resin-like interlayer laminated between double glazing to make safety glass in the Kinney glass incorporated into Building G, and for the automobile industry in general. See “Monsanto,” 8H. 15
16 “Mirror, 17
Mirror,” 152.
Ibid.,151.
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name: the Oral Roberts University (ORU). The university was formally established in November 1962, and its mission was “The quest for the whole man,” focusing on the “human trinity” of educating mind, body, and spirit.19 Roberts’s first Dean, Dr. John D. Messick, had hoped to build a “collegiate utopia.”20 Such implicit futurism was not lost on Frank Wallace, the architect Roberts hired to design ORU’s campus. A family friend and fellow Oklahoman, Wallace was a high school dropout who did not study architecture until later in his life. Taking night classes at the University of Arkansas on the GI Bill, he had never heard the term “architect” until he was twenty-four.21 Wallace and Roberts worked closely together on all aspects of the campus design, and to Wallace, “[Roberts] is a very progressive person and is wanting progressive ideas.”22 Upon its 1965 opening, the campus, having a galactic, world’s-fair quality, became an instant tourist attraction. Gold is featured on every ORU campus building, with gold
Go[l]d In June 1960, the popular American televangelist Oral Roberts was having dinner with Pat Robertson, a fellow televangelist and the host of “The 700 Club,” a long-running Christian television show. During their meal, Roberts felt that he was receiving a message from God. On a napkin he wrote the words:
‑
‑
“Raise up your students to hear My voice to go where My light is dim, where My voice is small and My healing power is not known. To go even to the outermost bounds of the earth Their work will exceed yours And in this I am well pleased.”18
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Roberts perceived this message as his calling to establish a Christian university. By December 1961 he had purchased a 160-acre farm in Tulsa, Oklahoma, that became the future home of the college that would bear his
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Figure 7. Learning Resource Center, Oral Roberts University. Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA. Frank Wallace, 1966. Photo: www.RoadsideArchitecture.com. 18
David Edwin Harrell Jr., Oral Roberts: An American Life (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1985), 207.
19
Harrell, Oral Roberts, 219.
20
Ibid., 219.
21
Ibid., 226.
22
Ibid., 226–27.
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Figure 8. Christ’s Chapel, Oral Roberts University. Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA. Frank Wallace, c. 1972. Photo: www.RoadsideArchitecture.com.
mirror on buildings such as the 1965 Learning Resource Center, and the later Christ’s Chapel of 1974 (Figures 7 and 8). The use of gold mirror glass on the ORU campus was an idea Wallace brought to Roberts after Wallace, by his own account, saw a St. Louis building clad in the material. In all likelihood, Wallace saw Monsanto Building G.23 Most notable among ORU buildings and structures is the two-hundredfoot tall Prayer Tower (Figure 9). With separate rooms for corporate, small group, and private prayer, in design the Prayer Tower reads like the 1960 Seattle Space Needle reenvisioned by Minoru Yamasaki and Frank Lloyd Wright, whom Wallace admired, with a helping of organic modernism from fellow Oklahoman architect, the largely self-taught Bruce Goff.24 Nonetheless, Wallace himself referred to the style of all his ORU buildings — Prayer Tower included — as simply “my thing.”25 Figure 9. Prayer Tower, Oral Roberts University. Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA. Frank Wallace, 1966. Photo: ©Gregory Ballos Fine Art, http://gregoryballos.com.
23
Peter C. Papademetriou, “O.R.U. Architecture?,” Progressive Architecture 59, no. 6 (June 1978): 55.
“Our Prayer Tower Visitor Center,” Oral Roberts University, accessed March 27, 2019, http://www.oru.edu/prayer-tower; Papademetriou, “O.R.U. Architecture?,” 55. 24
25
Harrell, Oral Roberts, 226.
10
The ORU Prayer Tower is striped in nine thousand square feet of Kinney Reflectovue deep gold laminate mirror glass, and like the rest of the campus buildings, is rife with symbolism which Roberts perceived but Wallace denied. To Roberts, the Prayer Tower was placed at the campus’s center because prayer was to be at the center of life.26 None of the ORU buildings have an obvious front or back, and from a distance the tower reads as a modern-day, in-the-round crucifix, with its gold-clad observation deck as the cross arm. Extending off the observation deck is a tr iangulated lattice work design that symbolized a crown of thorns to Roberts, and the numerous triangles within it symbolized two trinities: one Christian and the previously mentioned “whole man,” trinity intimately connected to the college’s mission. The Prayer Tower is topped with a barely noticeable “eternal flame” torch, one of three on campus that Roberts believed represented the eternal flame of the Holy Spirit. Regarding the gold glass itself, one assumes that, upon the Prayer Tower and elsewhere at the campus, it must have had some deep symbolic meaning. Yet, according to ORU Learning Resources Dean William Jernigan, who knew him well, Roberts simply “liked gold and anodized aluminum, it does not wear as much.”27 Indeed, even if this was the only reason Roberts approved gold, he at least had a point. Kinney’s silver mirror glass quickly developed problems that their gold counterparts never did.28 By 1970, much of the silver mirror glass
upon Bell Labs — some of which had only been installed three years prior — was already beginning to discolor from water entering gaskets and reacting with the vaporized aluminum coating. Subsequently, upper management of Bell Laboratories and Western Electric Company proposed recladding the entirety of the building in gold, which never happened.29
26
For more information about the symbolism of the Oral Roberts Prayer tower, see “Decoding the Campus Symbols,” Oracle: Student News Media of Oral Roberts University (blog), April 25, 2014, http://oruoracle.com/uncategorized/ decoding-campus-symbols. 27
Ibid.
D. P. Van Court (Western Electric Company), memorandum, “RE: Case 129—Holmdel Curtain Wall Glass,” 8 February 1977, box 421, folder 1199, Saarinen Collection. 28
29
Plant Service Design, “Aging Problems,” Saarinen Collection.
11
1971 was also the year President Richard Nixon undertook a series of measures to increase the United States’ role in a global economy, and primary among them was removing the US dollar off the gold standard. Though late capitalism had been discussed since the end of World War II, this newly expanded globalism hastened its effects. With it came the advent of the new post-industrial technocracy, and later, late capitalism’s most delirious and virulent strain: neoliberalism. It i s s e e m i n g l y c on c u r re n t w i t h t h e s e developments that silver mirrored glass skin became part of a new corporate vernacular.31 The designs were future forward, smooth, efficient, and slick-tech, all seen as corporateculture positives by the new service society. Such skins are transnodal, cool, and wet, implying the liquidity and fluidity of transnational, high-finance capital. Silvermirrored skins are intrinsically defensive and paradoxically opaque, yet, through implied deference, invisible. All told, the strategies of this game involved cool, if not cold, sophistication. With rare exceptions, gold mirror glass was too warm, obsolete, obvious, or idiosyncratic to express this new age.
Globalism The first buildings featuring all-over mirror glass skin were completed by 1971, and the majority of them incorporated silver reflecting glass, by then produced by multiple glass companies. This remained the case though gold mirror glass performed its technical task remarkably well, if not better. Gold has a unique ability to block infrared, and compared to every other mirror glass color family — silver, pewter, blue, green, brown/bronze, copper, and gray — gold mirror glass consistently had among the lowest U values, highest R values, lowest shading coefficient, and lowest heat gain. 30 Despite such strong performance, gold became increasingly marginalized as mirror glass skins of neutral or cooler colors became ubiquitous through the 1970s. Admittedly, there is a contradiction in associating warmth with a product whose primary purpose is to keep a building cool. But in the West, changing taste preferences, shifting with cultural determinants, fostered the relegation.
D. P. Turner and Boyd Auger, “Building Materials-3: Glass,” Built Environment 2, no 5 (May 1973): 301; and Pittsburgh Plate Glass (PPG Industries), Architectural Glass Products (Pittsburgh: PPG Industries, 1978). For the purposes of this article, “silver” mirror glass not only references silver colored glass, which itself was ubiquitous until the mid-1980s, but the term also refers to the chrome and mirror-like reflectivity seen upon any variety of mirror glass color families. For the character and degree of its warmth, gold seems to be in polarity to these, except perhaps for brown/bronze or copper varieties, passive through their darker shading and receding in a way gold does not. 30
In Los Angeles, where the mirror glass skin was first developed, there was architectural group in the mid-1970s named the “Silvers,” which included Cesar Pelli, Anthony Lumsden, Eugene Kupper, Tim Vreeland, Paul Kennon, and Frank Dimster. Common themes of their designs included high technology, an admiration for James Stirling, and a new kind of constraint that applied to large pragmatic projects for big corporate firms, where design was an unequivocally secondary matter to time and budget. The all-over glass skin was economic. One stated interpretation of their name was in reference to the reflective metal skins of many of their designs. Tim Vreeland saw the name as referencing “high-tech, chrome, machine elegance.” To Eugene Kupper silver was: a color reflecting both white and gray aspects from separate angles (The Silvers formed in response to “White” and Gray” architects from the East Coast, whom they hosted at two separate conferences at UCLA in 1974 and 1976); a “bright material, that shows an advanced ‘technological’ approach”; and a reference to the “silver screen,” a Hollywood term for regional media. Eugene Kupper, email correspondence with author, March 11, 2019. See also Peter Papademetriou, “The Silvers: Images from a Silver Screen,” Progressive Architecture 57, no. 10 (1976): 70– 73; Cesar Pelli, “Four Days in May: White, Silver, Gray Conference,” a+u 45, no. 9 (1974): 19; and Kenneth Caldwell, “Remembering the Silvers,” L.A. Architect (1991): 6. 31
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Yet in the West, gold-mirrored architecture did not disappear. Through the 1970s and 1980s, the comparatively few gold mirror buildings designed stood out in their communities as novelties in many instances, often garnering clever nicknames and endearing local statuses. In Chattanooga, Tennessee, a gold-clad 1971 John Portman design for the BlueCross BlueShield medical insurance company is simply called the “Gold Building” by locals (Figure 10).32 A little known 1968 Midwestern bank building by Saarinen associate Jack Goldman was the “Golden Nugget” (Figure 11). 33 In Dallas, Texas, the local firm of Neuhaus + Taylor completed Campbell Centre I and II in 1972 and 1977, respectively (Figure 12). Locals refer to this bright gold twenty-story dyad, featured in the opening credits of the popular late-1970s network television show “Dallas,” as the “Gold Twins.” 34 San Jose’s 1985 Market Post Tower was vacant through much of its early existence. By the early 1990s, it became “MAE-West” one of the first major internet exchange points for the western United States.35 It is a fifteen-story yellow gold office tower with dark spandrels that locals have nicknamed the “Bumblebee” (Figure 13).
Figure 10. Blue Cross Blue Shield. Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA. John Portman and Associates, 1971. Photo: Karla Davis, https://www.flickr.com/photos/ karlajeandavis/5690962335.
Figure 11. First National Bank and Trust Company. Mt. Vernon, Illinois, USA. Fields, Goldman, and Magee, 1968. Photo: “1st National Grand Opening Set,” Mt. Vernon Register News, December 12, 1968, C1.
32
Mike Pare, “BlueCross BlueShield sells ‘Gold Building,’” Times Free Press, December 22, 2010, https:// www.timesfreepress.com/news/businesstopstory/story/2010/dec/22/bluecross-blueshield-sells-gold-building/37551. Blue Cross Blue Shield is a major US health insurance company that undertook a national campaign of designing multiple mirror glass skin buildings through the early 1970s. It was one of the first major companies to adopt the glass skin as a consistent motif. This building campaign, which warrants further research, produced multiple distinctive works. 33 “1st 34
National Grand Opening Set,” Mt. Vernon Register News, December 12, 1968, C1.
Connor Crumpton, interview with author, November 22, 2018.
Carey and Co. Architecture, The Place: Greyhound Bus Station; Draft Historical Resources Technical Report, rev. ed., December 16, 2016, 10; and Center for Land Use Interpretation, “55 South Market Street Data Center, California,” accessed March 27, 2019, http://clui.org/ludb/site/55-south-market-street-data-center. 35
13
This is not to say that every gold-skinned building of this era became a local kitsch symbol. Some gold works possess an unusually thoughtful design treatment or develop from a context of deeper meaning, thereby transcending the joke. One such project, vaunted by local pride from its start, is the 1979 Toronto headquarters for the Royal B a n k P l a z a ( F i g u re 1 4 ) . W h e n i t s construction was announced in 1972, the Royal Bank Plaza was the first major bank project in Canada, and one of few large-scale commercial developments to solely use Canadian engineers and architects.36 Designer Boris Zerafa of WZMH was inspired by Johnson and Burgee’s Pennzoil Place (Houston, Texas, 1970–75).37 Like Pennzoil Place, Royal Bank Plaza is a dyad of triangular-plan twin towers joined by a tall, glass-clad public atrium of protruding silvermirror cubes. A crisp and crystalline dyad, with stainless steel mullions and tightly handled glaces à répétition sawtooths, the gold incorporated into its skin — over four million dollars’ worth in today’s money — reads like sunshine (Figure 15).38
Figure 12. Campbell Centre I and II. Dallas, Texas, USA. Neuhaus and Taylor, 1972 and 1977. Photo: distributedmarketing.org.
Figure 13. Market Post Tower. San Jose, California, USA. David Takamoto and Associates, and CRGP Limited, 1985. Photo: Danny Valdez, https://www.flickr.com/photos/ dmvcomics/3195401937/in/photostream.
36 “Architectural
Marvel Designed for the People,” Windsor Star, August 2, 1972, 18.
Rhodri Windsor Liscombe and Michelangelo Sabatino, Canada: Modern Architectures in History (London: Reaktion Books, 2016), 280. 37
38
Patricia McHugh and Alex Bozikovic, Toronto Architecture: A City Guide (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 2017), 91.
14
Conceived and built during a lengthy and intense historical period, the Moscow Presidium of the Russian Academy of S c i e n c e s ( R A S ) ( Yu r i P l a t o n o v o f GIPRONII, et al., 1966–97) is an imposing complex of multi-paneled 1960s-type concrete slabs that reference the massing and s p a t i a l a r r a n ge m e n t s o f t h e n e a r by Andreevskii Monastery (Figures 16 and 17).39 Per writer Frédéric Chaubin, Late Soviet Modernism combines monumental “might” to future-forward science fiction.40 The latter is a vector of mythological belief taking the place of other spiritual pursuits the USSR hoped to ban. The thirst for the absolute was to be quenched, in part through science itself.41 The post-Khrushchev individualism of such works was concurrent to the USSR’s decline. A deeply memorable design, the RAS mirror gold detailing includes a series of intricate and prismatic, multi-part, cupola-like cubes, which in multiple places top the complex.42 A sublime gold mirror treatment unique to the world, RAS is nonetheless referred to by local Muscovites as simply “Golden Brains.”
Figure 14. Royal Bank Plaza. Toronto, Ontario, Canada. WZMH Architects, 1979. Photo: Robin Runck.
In other faraway places, prominent works received virtually no coverage in Western architectural journals when new, with limited documentation occurring later. Beginning in the 1960s, as countries gained independence across the continent, multiple entities in Western and Central Africa arose to establish monetary policy and encourage economic development of various member states. They
Figure 15. Royal Bank Plaza. Toronto, Ontario, Canada. WZMH Architects, 1979. Photo: Mabry Campbell, www.mabrycampbell.com.
39
Alexander Ryabushin and Nadia Smolina, Landmarks of Soviet Architecture, 1917–1991 (New York: Rizzoli, 1992), 150.
40
Frédéric Chaubin, CCCP: Cosmic Communist Constructions Photographed (Cologne: Taschen, 2011), 8–15.
41
Chaubin, CCCP, 12.
42
Ryabushin and Smolina, Landmarks, 150.
15
Figure 16. Russian Academy of Sciences. Vladimir Platonov of GIPRONII, et al. Moscow, Russia, 1966–97. Photo: ©Nikolay Sachkov.
included the Central Bank of West African States (BCEAO), the Bank of the Central African States (BEAC), the Development Bank of the Central African States (BDEAC), and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). BEAC, B C E AO, a n d E COWA S u n d e r t o o k
substantial building campaigns beginning in the late 1970s, completing a series of company headquarters, typically towers, within a number of capital cities (Figures 17 and 18).43
Information regarding many of these buildings, particularly their architects and build years, is still relatively unknown. Often the buildings were only made public in African business journals and news magazines — if that — as a project announcement or opening ceremony. Many of the buildings discussed here were only recently regarded for their architecture by the photo-documentation of M. M. Jones through his remarkable Instagram account @bauzeitgeist, and his Tumblr account (see: http://bauzeitgeist.tumblr.com). The BDEAC did not undertake a similar building campaign as the above-mentioned organizations; however, they are also headquartered in a gold-colored building, with light gold mirror glass. Nabemba Tower (also known as Tour Elf, Brazzaville, Republic of the Congo, Jean Marie Legrand, 1986), which at thirty stories is the tallest building in the Republic of the Congo, was constructed by the Elf-Aquitaine oil company. Owned by France and the parent company of Elf-Congo, Elf had a monopoly of oil exploration in the Congo through the 1990s. Nabemba Tower was rebuilt after the 1997 civil war in Congo, and its maintenance costs are considered a substantial drain upon the economically depressed country. The building’s value is perceived as largely symbolic. François Ngolet, “African and American Connivance in Congo-Zaire,” Africa Today 47, no. 1 (Winter, 2000): 71. 43
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Figure 17. Architect Pierre Goudiaby Atepa with a rendering of his ECOWAS headquarters (“Le Pont de I'Alliance”) in Lomé, Togo. African Business 113 (January 1988). Figure 18. Central Bank of West African States (BCEAO). Lomé, Togo. Architect unknown, c. 1979. Photo: M. M. Jones / @bauzeitgeist.
At the time of their completion, these were often the tallest buildings in their given skylines or viewsheds.44 By African or French architects, their designs made a distinct and recognizable effort to integrate Modernism and various African traditional or vernacular features. The 1990 BCEAO headquarters in Burkina Faso references ancestral pillars, specifically the form and fenestration of traditional Gurinsi housing at its base (Figure 19).45 The crownlike upper portion of the BEAC headquarters building in Yaoundé,
Rene Boer, “Two Banks Shaping the African Skyline,” FA Failed Architecture, https://failedarchitecture.com/bceao-andbeac-buildings-the-lonely-towers-of-african-capitals. 44
45
Nnamdi Elleh, African Architecture: Evolution and Transformation (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1997), 279, 282.
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Figure 19. Central Bank of West African States (BCEAO). Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. Sawadogo Wango Pierre, 1990. Photo: M. M. Jones / @bauzeitgeist.
 
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Cameroon (known as “Siège Beac”), is intended to resemble a headdress (Figure 20).
l’Alliance” (Figure 21). As a body of work, these and additional examples consistently incorporate gold mirror glass of varying tones and hues, and seemingly do so more than other shared typologies anywhere. Given the excellent solar performance of the material relative to the hot climate, its application may have been practic al, or picturesque, considering Western and Central Africa’s natural settings. But it might also be noted that for the Ashanti, and across West African states in general, gold dust was traditionally a currency — apropos for buildings associated with finance, money, and the development of the African economy.46 In interviews, Goudiaby has called on other African architects to root their work in African culture, as they open themselves to international and Modernist values: “African architects . . . must emphasize black African traits in the design, decoration, and colour [emphasis added] of their buildings . . . ”47 Africa has long been globalism’s geographical and metaphorical Other. Against this, the rightness of Goudiaby’s calling lies in the fact that, in his words, “After all, the world belongs to everybody.”48
Figure 20. Bank of the Central African States headquarters (BEAC / “Siège Beac”). Yaoundé, Cameroon. ATAUB Architects, 1988. Photo: M. M. Jones / @bauzeitgeist.
The form of ECOWAS headquarters in Lomé, Togo — designed by Africa’s most prominent Modernist, the Senegalese architect from Casamance, Pierre Goudiaby Atepa — references the bridge of solidarity between the fifteen African member states, and is therefore named “Le Pont de Frank Willett, African Art (New York: Thames & Hudson, 1993), 138. In addition to these larger economic entities, even smaller bank chains exhibit a propensity to toward the gold mirror skin. CCEI Bank, also called Afriland First Bank, has multiple branches across Equatorial Guinea that apply the medium in varying designs. Matthew Jones, email correspondence with author, April 10, 2019. Completed in 2012, the CCEI Bank headquarters building in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, is pictured here: http://www.journaldemalabo.com/article.php?aid=674. 46
47 “The
High Rise of an African Architect,” African Business 113 (January 1988): 13–14.
48 ”The
High Rise,” 14.
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Figure 21. ECOWAS headquarters (“Le Pont de I'Alliance”). Lomé, Togo. Pierre Gouidaby Atepa, 1992. Photo: u/Murghchanay, https://www.reddit.com/r/travel/comments/9ol8×t/ a_lot_of_africa_images_but_none_from_cities_here.
Codas healthcare facilities — staffed with “prayer partners,” and incorporating prayer at all levels of the healing process. Shortly after having this vision, Roberts reconnected with ORU architect Frank Wallace to draw up building plans. With certain similarities to ORU — not the least of which was gold — Wallace’s design was a mirage-like grouping of three triangular-plan towers, twenty, thirty and sixty stories, clad in gold anodized aluminum and rising from a shared mirror glass skin base. The protruding entry lobby was a stylized gold mirror diamond with articulated structural members that looks like an abstract set of praying hands from certain
In 1977 Oral Roberts’s daughter and son-inlaw died in a Kansas plane crash. A few days after taping the telecast announcing their passing, Roberts and his wife travelled to Palm Springs to rest. While there, Roberts had what he referred to as “The Desert Vision,” in which God directed Roberts to build a medical research facility and hospital, based on the city of God described in the Book of Revelation 21 and 22, to feature a “River of Life” and broad avenues. According to Roberts, God wanted the facility to be called “The City of Faith.”49 This medical complex was going to be different from other 49
Harrell, Oral Roberts, 333.
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angles, and standing in front of this: the world’s largest pair of cast-bronze praying hands. In 1980, as Roberts struggled financially to finish the project, he was visited by a ninehundred-foot tall Jesus who assured him that the project would be completed. He began to request money from his viewers in increments of $7, $77, or $777.50 Sure enough, in 1981, at a cost of 120 million dollars, Roberts opened the City of Faith Medical and Research Center (Figure 22). From the beginning, the 2.2 million-square-foot facility, which included a projected 777-bed hospital that Tulsa had never needed, struggled. By 1987, eight million dollars in debt, Roberts climbed up his Prayer Tower in a highly publicized event, fasting and praying for the debt money to come - or else God would to “take him home.” The money came, and Roberts lived. However, two years later his ministry was twenty-five million dollars in debt and the hospital closed.51 Today the complex is called Cityplex Towers, and is primarily use as office space. For many years, parts of the complex were never occupied, let alone finished.52
Figure 22. City of Faith Medical and Research Center. Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA. Frank Wallace, 1977–81. Photo: Bill Ackers.
Mirror glass skins fell out of vogue about thirty-five years ago; yet, they began to appear on new hotel and casino buildings in Las Vegas shortly thereafter. This includes multiple gold-mirrored examples, and reasons for this local proliferation are likely economical — as previously mentioned, gold mirror glass has excellent solar performance. But, along with the other skins, these prominent but rather homogenous designs might have been pursued to bring a sense of
“Four Years of Donations Built 120 Million Hospital of Faith,” New York Times, October 20, 1981, A24; and John Estus and Tony Thornton, “How City of Faith Led to Fall,” Oklahoman (Sun), December 2, 2007, https://newsok.com/article/ 3176022/how-city-of-faith-led-to-fall. 50
51
Estus and Thornton, “How City of Faith Led to Fall.”
“Roberts’ ‘City of Faith’ Up For Auction,” Chicago Tribune, September 24, 1992, https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ ct-xpm-1992-09-24-9203270281-story.html. 52
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“taste” to a city that many saw lacking in its earlier, neon-lit programmatic heyday. Though mirror gold matches Las Vegas’s terrain and light, the material has obvious connotations beyond the sun: to an excess of money, power, and other kinds of bling. Numerous recent Vegas buildings incorporating gold mirror glass include: the 1989 Mirage Hotel and Casino by Bregman, Walls & Associates with Marnell Cornao Associates; Mandalay Bay; THEhotel (also known as The Delano); and, most notably now, the Trump International Hotel (Figures 23 and 24).
Figure 24. Trump International Hotel. Las Vegas, Nevada, USA. Bergman, Walls & Associates, 2008. Photo: Steve Jurvetson, https://www.flickr.com/ photos/jurvetson/31353840774.
This distant desert city is neither a global power node nor a historic cultural center. Regardless, it is already established that in Las Vegas one can attain “Learning from . . . ” As late-finance capitalism is increasingly scrutinized, the people, ideas, and for present purposes, the design elements once relegated to its cultural fringe are nowadays front and center. Concurrently, meaning gleaned from the city’s mirror gold architecture, including, most prominently, a particularly blunt and one-dimensional example built by Donald Trump, the sitting President of the United States of America.
In late capitalism, gold mirror glass was not just absurd but rhetorically corrupt. Yet, some may perceive this as the pot calling the kettle black: gold mirror glass was perceived as not cool by a cold West of my ster ious mechanizations, global systems of invisible high technologies, and instant borderless finance that, culturally and economically for the past thirty-plus years, has left far too many behind. In turn, many now back an openly flawed if not corrupt outsider who to them is warm (though still opaque), upfront, bold, direct, politically incorrect, and ostentatious. According to late capitalism’s own conceivably elitist take, gold mirror glass also embodied all of the aforementioned characteristics. As stated, the material’s original intent through much of the 1960s was simply to express warmth and connect with nature while performing brilliantly with regard to solar gain, and only later was the material considered amusing and vulgar. Paradoxically, to the degree late capitalism dismissed it, gold mirror glass now reflects the new zeitgeist that much more.
Figure 23. Delano and Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino Buildings. Las Vegas, Nevada, USA. Klai Juba Architects, 1999. (Mandalay Bay) and 2003 (Delano). Photo: Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, https:// www.mandalaybay.com/en.html.
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Astana, even writing a promo-like treatise on the subject called The Heart of Eurasia.56 Astana now includes multiple highly visible gold mirror glass buildings, including many government offices, completed between 1998 and 2007. The House of Ministries complex features a symmetrical pair of long and boxlike, but curving, medium-rise office buildings (Figure 25) with reflecting gold single-unit fixed window fenestration, handled in the same manner as the low-rise portions of the previously mentioned RAS. Extending from each structure is a fourteen-story conicalshaped tower covered in a bright gold mirror glass skin. Among the agencies and entities housed in the twin towers is the seventyeight-billion-dollar national wealth fund and joint stock company Samruk-Kazyna, which more or less owns every public utility and all major infrastructures across Kazakhstan. Though the mirror glass skin is a Western motif, the round-plan, flat-topped cone is not, and neither is the use of gold mirror upon government buildings, which doubly read as a modified form of business architecture. Yet, to Forbes writer Wade Shepard, “The choice of
New Town After the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, early nineties energy investment from Western oil and gas companies spearheaded an economic transformation in Kazakhstan.53 Since 2002, Kazakhstan, which is now the largest economy in Central Asia, has seen its gross domestic product (GDP) grow sixfold.54 President Nursultan Nazarbayev oversaw the country from 1990, a year before the Soviet collapse, March of 2019. In December 1997 he decided that Kazakhstan’s capital, in part for geo-strategic reasons, would be relocated nine hundred miles to the north from Almaty to Akmoly — a former prison camp.55 The f o l l o w i n g ye a r Na z a r b a ye v s e l e c t e d Metabolist architect Kisho Kurokawa to draw up a master plan for the new capital city, built across the Ishim River from Akmoly and named Astana (Астана), which in Kazakh and Russian means “capital.” It is widely acknowledged that Nazurbayev has imposed his wishes with regard to planning and architectural design across
53
Rachel Keeton, Rising in the East: Contemporary New Towns in Asia (Amsterdam: Sun Architecture Publishers, 2011), 161. “Kazakhstan Overview,” World Bank, accessed March 27, 2019, https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/kazakhstan/ overview. 54
N. A. Nazurbayev, The Heart of Eurasia (Almaty: Baspalar Uyi, 2010), 23. Whether it was really necessary to move the capital nine hundred miles away from its former location is a point of debate, and many have written of Astana as Nazurbayev’s vanity project. 55
Rowan Moore, “Astana, Kazakhstan: The Space Station in the Steppes,” Guardian, August 7, 2010, https:// www.theguardian.com/world/2010/aug/08/astana-kazakhstan-space-station-steppes; Nazurbayev, Heart of Eurasia; and Keeton, Rising in the East, 150. 56
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color of these towers is no accident, as they house the beating heart of Kazakhstan’s economy.” 57
Nazurbayev on napkins. Nazurbayev intended the thirty-five-story Bayterek Tower to be Astana’s signature structure (Figure 26). The Tower’s design references the Turkic folkloric myth of Samruk, the magic blue bird of happiness who lays a golden egg between two crown-like branches of a poplar tree that was quickly devoured by Aydakhar, a snake dragon from the underworld. This egg is a symbol of the sun and its life-giving power, and it’s devouring symbolic of night, and the changing of seasons. Eventually Er Tostik, a Kazakh knight from the underworld, shot an arrow into Aydakhar’s heart, killing the dragon. As a reward, Samruk lifts Er Tostik out from the underworld.58
Figure 25. Palace of Ministries. Astana, Kazakhstan. Shokan Mataybelcov, R. Musabaev, Zh.Z. Ainabekov, 2007. Photo: Pavel Parmenov.
Bayterek Tower consists of an open steel frame, referencing the poplar tree branches that then support the elevated sun-egg: an orb of gold mirror glass twenty-two meters in diameter, open to a public who might thereby recreate Er Torstik’s heroic ascent.59 The sphere contains a two-level observation deck — the second level being ninety-seven meters off the ground, symbolizing the year of Astana’s establishment in 1997. Centered inside is a gilded imprint of Nazurbayev’s
Because of their location, though the Palace of Ministries towers are only fourteen stories high, they are among the most standalone and readily visible of any Astana buildings. Each tower flanks the main civic axis, and together frame Ak Orda, the Presidential palace akin to an oversized White House with some mirror glass and a blue dome. Additionally, the House of Ministries Towers frame another structure, which was conceived by
Wade Shepard, “New Silk Road: Inside Kazakhstan's Incredible Economic Transformation,” Forbes, November 17, 2016, https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2016/11/17/inside-kazakhstans-incredible-economic-transformation/ #20b3d40b4e69. Nazurbayev’s government has overseen the seventy-eight billion-dollar Samruk-Kaznya. Welfare Fund that finances this and other Astana-related projects from its start, but some reforms are afoot in an attempt to privatize and encourage outside investment. According to the Fund’s own news site: “The Fund has made the decision to undergo a sort of mini-reformation, reviewing and testing its performance in the last five years to take further more efficient steps with the goal to reach the level of big-shot international funds which generate bigger profits.” See “Samruk-Kaznya Fund News,” Samruk-Kaznya, accessed March 3, 2019, http://www.samruk-kazyna.kz. 57
58
Nazurbayev, Heart of Eurasia, 226.
Gold mirror being applied to Bayterek Tower and used as a sun motif is apt, considering the material’s original intent to provide warmth to architectural design. The sun is also a primary feature on the flag of Kazakhstan. Here one also wonders if there was a subconscious desire for an ever-present sun. Next to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, Astana is the second coldest national capital, with winter temperatures regularly dipping to below twenty degrees Celsius. The Bayterek Tower is superficially similar to the “Sunsphere,” another gold-mirrored sphere containing an observation space built upon a standalone, 266-foot (81-meter) tall tower. Designed by Community Tectonics, the still-extant Sunsphere was the signature structure for the 1982 World’s Fair in Knoxville, Tennessee. 59
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right hand, set into a triangle whose apex faces the presidential palace. Visitors are encouraged to set one of their own hands into his golden one, and make a wish.
Tianjin, and Shanghai are all coastal trading ports. Launched in 1998, the government initiative “Go West” infused Chongqing with billions in government yuan to stimulate its economy and therefore grow the municipality. Chongqing’s gross domestic product has quadrupled since that time, and for a while in the early 2000s it was the fastest growing major city in the world. Even now, with a tenpercent-plus GDP growth rate year-over-year, it is still the fastest growing major city in China. It is unknown if “Go West” was intended as a double entendre, not only for Chongqing’s location but also the Western investment encouraged to partake in its expansion. Nonetheless, numerous Western corporations are now present in Chongqing: Ford, Microsoft, Walmart, and for present purposes, strikingly, Sheraton Hotels and Resorts. Located in Chongqing’s Nan’an District and overlooking the Yangtze River, the Sheraton International Business Center comprises forty-two-story twin towers, each capped with blocked-and-stepped Deco-style chevron and peak-like spires (Figures 27 and 28). The design is a blatant but gold-on-gold replica of Philadelphia’s One and Two Liberty Place (Helmut Jahn, 1987 and 1990), which themselves heavily appropriated the design of the Chrysler Building. The Chongqing location is not Sheraton’s first golden mirror project in China. In 2006 the company opened the massive and Xanadu-like Sheraton Xiamen. When one visitor asked Xiamen staff why the buildings were gold, they reply — more clever than plausible— was because gold is one of China’s two official colors.60 Two seems like such an unusual number for such an overt theme, and one
Figure 26. Bayterek Tower. Astana, Kazakhstan. Akmurzu Rustemebekov, Suyerkahn Bazarbaev, Aituar Ospanov, 2002. Photo: Olga Tropynina.
With similar aims toward ambitious global growth, China split the greater Chongqing metropolis away from the Sichuan province on March 14, 1997, and made it one of only four direct municipalities overseen by the central government of the People’s Republic of China. Of these four municipalities, Chongqing is the only one that is located in the country’s western interior. Beijing,
Wade Shepard, “China’s Gold Plated Sheraton Hotels,” Vagabond Journey, June 5, 2014, https:// www.vagabondjourney.com/gold-plated-sheraton-hotls-china. 60
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wonders if the Sheraton had more gold projects planned, now shelved with President Xi’s 2014 speech of no more “weird buildings.” Even if their gold mirror skin does reference the supposed state color of China, both properties would seemingly fall under Xi’s category.61 Ironically for present purposes, in his denouncement of weird architecture, the president did say that good art should be “like sunshine [emphasis added] in a cloudless sky . . . ”
wealth and power, undoes the cultural coding of cool and slick-tech. Akin to the earlier African works, gold in such settings — global but non-Western, new cities rooted in old cultures — somehow seems ancient, if not grounded. Whether an ambivalent West initially saw it or not, in faraway places gold mirror glass found a place in the sun some time ago, and in the warmth of its light, was already home. Gold mirror glass began with the best of intentions: to both provide and protect from warmth, and did so with unmatched solar performance. However, in the West the product has absorbed a peculiar and secondary status for most of its existence. For nearly fifty years the now critically questioned recent paradigm stigmatized gold mirror glass. Concurrently as the West now sorts this era out, it seems this product was ahead of its time- and misplaced. The sampling is limited, these times impermanent. The recent nonWestern work may or may not portray a coming golden age. But like the sun itself whose warmth gold mirror glass originally referenced, in the East the medium has risen again. Its glint, in this new present moment, is now unavoidable.
Figure 27. Sheraton International Business Center. Chonqing, China. Shenzhen General Architectural Design Institute, 2011. Photo: Jack Zalium, https:// www.flickr.com/photos/7666975@N03.
In the East’s various new cities, there is an amalgamated approach to the open market, wherein free-range corporatism is confined to zones and subject to the dictates and ground rules of the host state. In the above case studies and elsewhere across the Middle East, Eurasia, and East Asia, gold mirror architecture is analogous to this phenomenon. As in the West, mirror glass enclosed skin volumes are a late capitalist business vernacular. However, in these new and revived places, gold, which represents the sun, the state, and - couth or otherwise - newfound
Humbly dedicated to Kevin Roche (1922–2019)
Southern California Architectural Historian Daniel Paul works for ICF, a global consulting firm.
“China's 'Weird' Buildings: President Xi Jinping Wants No More of Them,” Building Design & Construction, October 23, 2014, https://www.bdcnetwork.com/chinas-weird-buildings-president-xi-jinping-wants-no-more-them. 61
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Figure 28. Sheraton International Business Center. Chongqing China. Rendering, artist and date unknown. Courtesy: Guangzhou Baiyun Chemical Industries Company.
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Figure 18: Used with permission from photographer. Citation specifically cited as requested.
SOURCE OF IMAGES Figure 1: scanned from book
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Figure 2: Found online Figure 3: Scanned from magazine Figure 4: Found online (reached out to photographer and never heard back)
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Figure 5: Found online
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Figure 22: Postcard purchased
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graphic design by Valentino Danilo Matteis 28