INTERVIEW
A Conversation with Alfred Browning Parker
By Eric Oskar Kleinsteuber
Edited by Andrea Truppin
The following is a transcript of a telephone interview conducted by Eric Oskar Kleinsteuber, AIA, architect and professor of architectural history, last May with architect Alfred Browning Parker, AIA, the subject of our feature “The Master of Coconut Grove.”
Mr. Parker will be 92 years old on September 24, but his resilience and drive to create structures that are useful and beautiful is strong now as it was 50 years ago.
Eric Oskar Kleinsteuber: Mr. Parker, people have defined the work of yourself and your south Florida colleagues as the “Coconut Grove School.” Do you find using terms like Sarasota School and Coconut Grove School, which lump architects together, is accurate?
Alfred Browning Parker: My answer to that is, I am only concerned about my next work, my next home, which I now have under construction. I’m just starting it this coming week. This will be number ten that I have built using what I call three-in-one, where I am the designer, I am the builder, I am the owner. Not the labels.
EOK: Wallpaper magazine in 2005 named your Woodsong residence in Coconut Grove one of the ten best houses in the world. Do you consider Woodsong to be one of your ten best works? If such an honor as this isn’t the highlight of your career, then what is?
ABP: No, I don’t. It’s not the highlight. I can tell you what’s next; the highlight is what’s next. The next house, the one that I’m working on now. So that’s a fair answer to that one.
EOK: You received your education at the University of Florida and eventually returned to teach. You still teach today as a professor emeritus, and I personally had the honor of having you on some of my critiques. How has the architectural pedagogy influenced your practice? How has the student changed over the years?
ABP: Well, to answer how it has influenced my practice I would answer that architectural pedagogy has not influenced my practice, not at all… And then how has the student changed over the years? Well, that’s an easy answer. The computers changed them.
EOK: Being that you brought up the computer I’ll ask this. The computer itself has the tendency to create a provocative image just to be provocative…
ABP: You don’t even have to finish the question. I can give you the answer. From my point of view, I have yet to see a computer designed building that I thought was architecture. That’s pretty harsh isn’t it? But you know why? Because of what we do with computers. That guy who’s one of the biggest computer architects in the world, he went to Vienna. And I’m sure he has Mozart jumping in his grave. But in Vienna he did two buildings… the intertwined ones he called Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire.
EOK: You’re talking about Frank Gehry
ABP: So the buildings are known all over the world as Fred and Ginger. And those are an example of computers. Is that architecture? No! That’s playing games. It’s just silly. That’s a bunch of [baloney] if you want to know it. I’ve always called a spade a spade and, boy, when I see all these computer buildings going up, and the only thing they have going for them…money. Now one guy at the start of all this did pretty good. That’s Paul Rudolph. You know in Florida, he’s pretty well known but nationally, he’s probably one of the most underrated architects around. You know I knew Paul personally. I liked him. When he went on after the disaster at Yale, he went on to New York, he designed some of the highest buildings of his time. He did some and proposed some in the Orient. At the end of the day, Paul Rudolph is one of our finest and the most underrated architect. It’s not just the Sarasota School. That was minor and that’s all they focus on. The big thing was he got into the computer before us, but as a device to propose “mile high” buildings, not as a design tool.
EOK: Learning, teaching, practicing and living in Florida for as many years as you have, has allowed you to see unprecedented changes. How do you feel about the influx of people into the context of the native Florida landscape?
ABP: I would answer that one by saying the influx of people has been overpowering and it has been to the degradation of the environment.
EOK: Throughout the county and especially in Florida, this rise in population has led to a culture of temporariness. Your works themselves have unfortunately been subject to demolition and insensitive renovations. How does the architectural community hold on to the millennia-old tradition of permanence in architecture? Especially with today’s culture being “minutes old, already outdated”?
ABP:Good question. I say the answer to that is up to the preservationist, and right along as a corollary with the preservationist is their funding, the money.
EOK: Do you feel that Disney as an institution has contributed to the idea of temporary architecture in Florida?
ABP: Absolutely, yes! You know if you don’t like it, if it’s not commercially selling, don’t worry about it, tear it down and build another one. And that’s Disney all over again. I’m not degrading Disney it’s just, well, that’s why they’re as big as they are. In fact, I looked forward to Disney coming. I’ve actually written a screen scenario and hope that Disney produces it; I think it would be a blockbuster.
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