I wonder how well that principle applies to architecture? I remember walking through the financial district in lower Manhattan, coming across some unknown (to me) office towers. Their appearance was nothing immediately spectacular--faintly post-modern, but nothing that made me want to whip out my camera and photograph like mad...until I noticed one thing.

The way the windows were treated changed as the building progressed upwards. At first, they were barely punch-windows, but with each stage higher (that was also stepped back in narrow terraces), they became larger until finally, at the highest point, the glass merged into one volume, with the intervening granite disappearing. It was almost as if the building was being unwrapped, layer by layer, into nothingness. Once I recognized this fact, I did indeed photograph, and sketch, the building. Only later did I find out that I had been looking at Cesar Pelli's World Financial Center.

This experience can be contrasted with another I had during the same trip to Manhattan. Having recently studied the work of Eero Saarinen in studio, I attempted to find the CBS tower, knowing only that it was black, with triangular highlights running the full height of the building. With resolute determination I inspected every black tower I could find, discarding each one that didn't have the requisite highlights. When I found it, it seemed no less spectacular than did Pelli's building (if anything, it was less so). But because it was "a Saarinen building," I dutifully photographed it, and forced myself to admire it.

In a way, I think my experiences with these two buildings are indicative of Rybczynski's point--one was experienced with no foreknowledge of its virtues, the other was actively sought out. Although these two incidents don't have a large separation in time (only 2 days, in fact), they still show, I think, how the culture of the "celebrity" architect can serve to blind our eyes to good design. The CBS Tower was valuable, so I sought it out. The World Financial Center wasn't known to me, so I almost walked right by it, not knowing that it expressed its own theme much more clearly than the CBS Tower did. Looking back, I can only wonder what buildings I discarded because I was set on finding "a Saarinen building." Was Lever House one of them? Or were there other, less famous examples of good design that I ignored? I will never know, although I do hope that the next time I got to Manhattan (or anywhere else) I will have my eyes more open to the happy discovery of sound design.

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