site report

Smith—UN  Secretariat  Curtain  Wall—1    

John Smith Sample Site Report 21 February 2015

The Anonymity of the UN Secretariat Curtain Wall Observation The United Nations Secretariat curtain wall employs an austere regularity that highlights its factory production and suggests an impersonal anonymity. Existing Literature: A few publications have considered the design of the Secretariat’s curtain wall, and multiple other publications have explored the impersonal, factory-produced tendencies of mid-century modernism and the social and political implications of that aesthetic. The most direct consideration of the Secretariat curtain wall is an article by Robert Heintges that details the history of the Secretariat curtain wall, arguing that it can be understood as one of the first realizations of aluminum manufacturers’ marketing efforts. These marketing efforts suggested enlarging traditional punched windows until they touched one another and became a continuous enclosure. 1 The article also charts the process of design of the building by a committee of internationally-renowned modernist architects, but it offers no direct consideration of the cultural or symbolic significance of the curtain wall design for the UN.2 It does, however, point out the irony of the false and apparently blind confidence of the lead architect, Wallace Harrison, that the newest glass technology would allow for the sheer, factory-made, technological-looking façade to adequately resist the heat of direct morning sunlight. Among those who have treated the cultural implications of post-war modernism, Reinhold Martin, in his book The Organizational Complex, makes little direct reference to the Secretariat building, but he does considers the regular, anonymous, factory produced components in early post-war architecture and argues that this aesthetic embodied the corporate ethic of the era. He examines the ways in which this aesthetic was informed by the post-WWII military-industrial complex, with which those corporations were closely affiliated.3 Analysis While Martin’s argument treats corporations, it seems all the more meaningful that the United Nations, an organization committed to not corporations, but to the people of the world, would build its most prominent symbol in the same vein. Indeed, the full east and west walls are composed thousands of identical units, each approximately 4’ by 8’, (see figure 1), with only slight variation for mechanical floors that require glass to be replaced by louvers.4 Each of those units is composed of extruded aluminum mullions that offer virtually no visible details— only a bare silver-white face that seems intent to offer no individuality or even identity beyond                                                                                                                           1  Robert  Heintges,  “The  United  Nations  Secretariat  Façade:  Past,  Present,  and  Future,”  Docomomo  US  Journal,   Dossier  8  (2008),  4-­‐19.   2  Heinges,  page  14.   3  Reinhold  Martin,  The  Organizational  Complex,  MIT  Press,  Cambridge:  2003.    See  especially  the  introduction  and   chapter  2.   4  Heintges  notes  the  dimensions  on  page  23.  

Smith—UN  Secretariat  Curtain  Wall—2    

their own austerity (see figure 2). And those bare mullions hold in place similarly anonymous and identical units of glass. While Heintges points out that the original design aimed for a transparency that would reveal the interior workings of the organization, that intended transparency has been recreated with the recent renovation.5 However, the objects once again visible behind the glass only reinforce the anonymity of the wall itself: the identical columns, identical desks, even the occasional identical bureaucrats in a dark business suits all seem to match the impersonal repetition of the factory-made wall (see figure 3). Indeed, the Secretariat curtain wall, a literal embodiment of the United Nations, presents itself as impersonal, undifferentiated, and in seamless collaboration with industrial producers.

                                                                                                                          5  NYTimes,  April  10,  2009,  A7.  

Smith—UN  Secretariat  Curtain  Wall—3    

Figure 1. Photograph of the Secretariat Curtain Wall, east elevation.

Figure 2. Photo of mullions at third, fourth, and fifth floors on the secretariat east elevation.

Smith—UN  Secretariat  Curtain  Wall—4    

Figure 3. Pencil sketch. Elevation of UN Secretariat curtain wall, typical curtain wall unit, with interior elements.