FRANKLIN TOKER, ARCHITECTURAL HISTORIAN

Frank Toker died a few years back and I missed it. So I'm taking a few moments, now, to look back on his legacy and his impact on my early education. He was my architectural history professor at Carnegie Mellon University. And even as a young professor back then, he was world famous, but very approachable. Every other professor there was deliberately intimating. But you've got to understand, it was CMU Architecture for god's sake: one of the top five schools in the country, back then. CMU Architecture had a rep as an intellectual "boot camp" that deliberately tried to break every student down... rip oven their brains... and stuff in new knowledge. Not always a clean operation. Back then, Carnegie had the highest suicide rate in the country with so many beautiful bridges connecting the campus to the rest of the city... and the afterlife.

On the first day, one of the main drill camp instructors, Pete Adkins, sauntered in with his leather jacket slung over his shoulder and a Marlboro constantly lit. He spoke before all 240 freshman students in a clipped and threatening language. He told us that most will not make it. He was right. Then there was Del Highlands, the Dean of Architecture, a mystic, philosopher, and architect who created the best damn school of knowledge back in the day. Del was a big man with black hair slicked back who looked like George C Scott, the actor in is famous role of Patton. Del would suck on a Marlboro and look up, at no one, while discussing the "screen of knowledge" and other metaphysical trash. No one knew what Del was talking about, but I believed he was trying to get us to understand the emergence of meaning in form. CMU Architecture is not that place anymore. It is, now, much bigger and wealthier. The rumor was that Del was forced out as Dean because he didn't want to grow the School of Architecture into a mill. Too bad. Rest in peace Del.

So here's the thing: in order to graduate, you had to write a thesis and do a project. The thesis is graded by three professors... one of which the student picks... and two out of three must give your thesis a passing grade. And all thesis were about proper architectural subjects. However, I was a student during the emergence of the "Whites": the architects Peter Eisenman, Michael Graves, Charles Gwathmey, John Hejduk, and Richard Meier. And as a result, the university taught figure-background, squinting, and other fallacious tactics as legitimate design methodology. Right.

A short digression: Meier is a design god, but was genuinely nice to me. His construction drawings remain an inspirational work of art. Eisenman was an admitted fraud who, like politicians today, used language to confuse people to make himself appear brilliant. He was not. And John Hejduk was merely my hero, even though his work was largely unbuilt back then. But his drawings were art on yellow trace. John was a New Yorker and had a very thick accent. He showed up at one of my charrettes (where a classes' design work is hung on a wall for comment) and was more than a bit disheveled. He stopped at my work and leaned in to studied it briefly. I just gotta tell you I was holding my breath for words of wisdom. And then, without looking up, he said in his thick New York brogue, "it's gonna leak" and walked away...

So back to that thesis. I strongly objected to this notion that meaning emerged from changing, temporal, and even silly things. The thesis, however, gave me time to read what I wanted to read and I wanted to read Phenomenology... particularly that Nazi Wittgenstein, the Austrian Husserl, and the Frenchman, Merleau-Ponty. All rather confusing, complex, and caught up in the politics of Europe, Germany, and Russia, at that time. But weaving its way through all this was, in part, the study of the emergence of meaning. This was what Del was teaching. For me, back then, meaning was rooted in underlying structures that could be observed... if you trained yourself to "look". I felt that Paul Cezanne was the first modern "architect" because all his work was in pursuit of an "emerging" reality that existed "a priori". Perfect. Turned in my thesis choice and it did not go down well. However, I knew that Frank Toker was a lover of Cezanne and he agreed to be my third advisor. Lovely man, Frank Toker.

So now, in my senior year I finally became a committed student and all I did was read philosophy. Back then, I lived in a large apartment with Steve Falatko, a student of architecture and man of mystery. I had a long screened-in side patio with a long wooden table. And every day I would read and copy quotes onto a yellow stick-on note. And every day, I would have my first cup of java and stare at those quotes moving them around until something made sense... until a fuller meaning appeared. And after a year, it suddenly appeared. I wrote my thesis with an unusual forward: I would not transcribe these philosophical quotes into my own words as that would diminish their power. My 14 page thesis was quotes strung together with my comments. Not well received, again. But the methodology was right on.

Now finally, back to Frank Toker and the other two professors. The first professor said he had no idea what I was talking about and failed me. The second said he had no idea what I was talking about, but passed me because I had been there long enough. And then there was Franklin Toker, a lover of Cezanne, who said he understood exactly what I was talking about... loved my thesis... and passed me. Thanks to Frank, I become a graduate architect. I still have that thesis, but we've all lost Franklin Toker.

Thank you, Frank, for all your intellect, passion, and guidance to so many young people finding their way. Rest in peace...