House on a Washtub-Sized Eminence: Ellis Parker Butler’s Critical Satire of Site-Specificity

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Notes

1 Ellis Parker Butler, “Serio-Piffle Architecture,” Architectural Record 28, no. 5 (November 1910): 331–332.

2 Butler, “Serio-Piffle Architecture”: 332.

3 For specific rebuttals of modern architecture’s supposed disregard for site, see David Leatherbarrow, Uncommon Ground: Architecture, Technology, and Topography (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000) and Marc Treib, Landscapes of Modern Architecture: Wright, Mies, Neutra, Aalto, Barragan (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016).

4 Frank Lloyd Wright, “In the Cause of Architecture,” Architectural Record 23, no. 3 (March 1908): 157.

5 Wright, “In the Cause of Architecture.”

6 Reflecting on the dystopic nature of his subject matter, Garnett once quipped, “seventeen thousand houses with five floor plans, and they all looked alike, and there was not a tree in sight when they got through.” As quoted in Francesca Russello Ammon, Bulldozer: Demolition and Clearance of the Postwar Landscape (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016), 111.

7 “Review of Current Architectural Press,” The American Architect 98, no. 1825 (December 14, 1910): 199.

8 For discussions of satire’s critical potential, see E.M. Dadlez, “Truly Funny: Humor, Irony, and Satire as Moral Criticism,” Journal of Aesthetic Education 45, no. 1 (Spring 2011): 1–17, and Marla Brock, “Political Satire and its Disruptive Potential: Irony and Cynicism in Russia and the US,” Theory and Critique 59, no. 3 (2018): 281–298.

9 Michela Rosso, ed., Laughing at Architecture: Architectural Histories of Humour, Satire, and Wit (London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2018).

10 Mayanthi Fernando, “Critique as Care,” Critical Times: Interventions in Global Critical Theory 2, no. 1 (April 2019): 15. Also see Bruno Latour, “Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern,” Critical Inquiry 30, no. 2 (2004): 225–248.

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Zachary Tate Porter

Zachary Tate Porter is an assistant professor of architecture at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. His current research draws upon historiographical, curatorial, and speculative methodologies to investigate conceptions of ground within modern and contemporary architectural production. Porter holds a Ph.D. in Architectural History from the Georgia Institute of Technology, as well as a Master of Architecture from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. His dissertation project, “Shifting Grounds of Architectural Practice,” analyzes the ways in which jurisdictional competition shaped the professions of architecture, landscape architecture, and city planning during the early 20th century. Prior to joining UNL, Porter held teaching positions at SCI-Arc and the University of Southern California.