The Architectural Stewardship of Our Fair City
January 19, 2008 |
John's Corner
John Clagett worked as a senior designer at the
office of Frank Gehry and Associates
and is the principal of the firm John Clagett,
Architect. The director of the Center for
Ecumenical Research in the Arts and Sciences, Mr.
Clagett was awarded a Fulbright Commission
Senior Research Grant for his ongoing research
into the philosophical and mathematical meaning in
the religious architecture of the west. Mr.
Clagett is an avid naturalist, photographer and
4-year resident of Englewood.
I have been asked to contribute a column to The Englewood Report. I take this invitation by the paper's editors as a great privilege: it offers me the opportunity to share my thoughts and observations with my close and not so close Englewood neighbors, and in turn to hear their reactions. But I take the Englewood Report's invitation also as a solemn responsibility. I say this, for Englewood is now facing a number of crises, each of which have the potential to desecrate our town.
I admit that it might seem highfalutin to describe the current fix that Englewood, New Jersey is in as a "desecration" of the city. For if what our eyes tell us is reality, we may accept that Englewood is nothing more than another small city to be aesthetically ignored and economically exploited. After all, Englewood is in a state whose residents are called the "bridge and tunnel crowd" and whose most well known family is the emblematic Sopranos. And then there's the sarcastic joke: "Which Jersey Turnpike exit do you live off?" All these and plenty more socio-pop dismissals of NJ municipalities render Englewood as the civic equivalent of a cup of Dunkin Donuts coffee. This metaphorical stimulant, with its styrofoam cup being disposable, is meant just to keep you awake and on the phone, preferably on the way to an Atlantic City casino.
In my next blog, I will take on such derisive slurs of our city and our state. I will counter that Englewood and New Jersey should instead be held as hallowed ground by all Americans and deserving of great care, worthy of being nurtured with a high degree of financial and creative resources. This is surely an idea whose time has come for Englewood, as it is for the rest of our state and country.
Related viewing:
James Howard Kunstler – The Tragedy of Suburbia
Related reading:
Le Corbusier – When the Cathedrals Were White
Plato – The Republic
I have been asked to contribute a column to The Englewood Report. I take this invitation by the paper's editors as a great privilege: it offers me the opportunity to share my thoughts and observations with my close and not so close Englewood neighbors, and in turn to hear their reactions. But I take the Englewood Report's invitation also as a solemn responsibility. I say this, for Englewood is now facing a number of crises, each of which have the potential to desecrate our town.
I admit that it might seem highfalutin to describe the current fix that Englewood, New Jersey is in as a "desecration" of the city. For if what our eyes tell us is reality, we may accept that Englewood is nothing more than another small city to be aesthetically ignored and economically exploited. After all, Englewood is in a state whose residents are called the "bridge and tunnel crowd" and whose most well known family is the emblematic Sopranos. And then there's the sarcastic joke: "Which Jersey Turnpike exit do you live off?" All these and plenty more socio-pop dismissals of NJ municipalities render Englewood as the civic equivalent of a cup of Dunkin Donuts coffee. This metaphorical stimulant, with its styrofoam cup being disposable, is meant just to keep you awake and on the phone, preferably on the way to an Atlantic City casino.
In my next blog, I will take on such derisive slurs of our city and our state. I will counter that Englewood and New Jersey should instead be held as hallowed ground by all Americans and deserving of great care, worthy of being nurtured with a high degree of financial and creative resources. This is surely an idea whose time has come for Englewood, as it is for the rest of our state and country.
Related viewing:
James Howard Kunstler – The Tragedy of Suburbia
Related reading:
Le Corbusier – When the Cathedrals Were White
Plato – The Republic
