The Southampton Press, August 18, 2005

By Miles Jaffe

With all the recent attention on my father's life and work I have been compelled to reexamine his affects, not only on my design practice but on my life as well. For Norman was more than a father to a son, he was a master to an apprentice. Our relationship makes it impossible to separate these roles, so I shall endeavor to concentrate on lessons learned and lessons taught, and where possible to dispel rumor and myth.

There are a great many practical lessons, such as the five elements of design, that are too specific to process to address here. What I am thinking of are broader teachings that can be shared by all. Norman was, after all, a philosopher, and his search for truth was both explored and expressed through his work.

Lesson one: the project always comes first. It even comes before the client, who must be educated (or bullshitted if necessary) into creating the potential for good to happen or prevented (if possible) from compromising that potential. Once committed, it is one's sacrosanct responsibility to see the project through to the end - there is no quitting, even in the face of a disaster such as non-payment. The architect is the glue that holds the project together in the face of what, even if they don't start out that way, often become competing interests.

In the sixties Norman was working on a commercial building in Georgia. Those good old southern boys gave the Jewish architect from New York a taste of their hospitality by sending him out into a field full of chiggers, tick-like spider mites that feast on blood. That didn't stop Norman from completing the project, or giving them the best design he was capable of.

Lesson two: you can always do better. Norman was never satisfied with his own work (and needless to say, rarely satisfied with mine, either). This resulted in seemingly endless creative effort. Many of his designs evolved like Picasso's painting on glass, one composition after another, rapidly and spontaneously formulated only to be immediately replaced by something completely different, and sometimes not nearly as good as what had come before. It wasn't unusual for us to be literally knee-deep in tracing paper for days on end, generating concepts and variations one after another. This was some of the most fun we had together.

The process didn't end there. Houses under construction were often treated as full-scale models for further development. While this has been blamed for massive cost overruns that often accompanied my father's projects, changes in the framing stage are relatively inexpensive. Anyone who has ever built a house or even seen one built knows that while it only takes a few weeks to frame a structure it often takes a year or more to finish it.

That Norman made changes in the field is well known; that he did so with the enthusiastic support of his clients is not so readily acknowledged. Despite having hired one of the premier residential architects in America to design their dream house, many clients were only all too ready to demonstrate their wealth, power and lack of knowledge with changes of their own. Many simply couldn't resist gilding the lily. 'Hot' landscape architects and interior decorators were frequently hired to further stroke the owner's ego while simultaneously compromising the integrity of Norman's vision. The worst of these clients, often media personalities themselves, used cost overruns on work they had approved or changes they had made as an excuse to avoid paying architectural fees.

One of the more persistent rumors is that Norman was difficult if not impossible to work with. In reality, working with Norman (and especially for him) required only an abundance of patience, something that many of his overly successful clients had in exceedingly short supply.

Lesson three: design is not style. Fashion changes with the season; design is lasting, as evidenced by any of the great works of architecture. The substance that separates design from style is based on an understanding and appreciation for needs, conditions and constraints, both aesthetic and functional. That my father's kitchens were invariably best suited for bachelors only reflects that he was too busy cooking up things other than food (we ate out a lot).

Norman's work clearly reflects this philosophy in its transformation over time. As clients grew more demanding and projects larger and more complex, the change in function from vacation home to status symbol demanded a shift from the needs of shelter to ever more expressive sculptural forms intended to reflect the client's financial status.

In this respect the so-called "Jaffe style" often became a programmatic requirement of the projects. Yet this did not compromise Norman's devotion to the delicate interplay between site and structure, form and function, man and nature. Norman called the application of these principles to trophy houses "making chicken salad out of chicken shit". It is ironic how even the largest and most elaborate of his designs, those he referred to as 'pig-outs' seem downright modest and restrained today.

Lesson four: true luxury cannot be purchased. Luxury is not big, no matter how richly adorned - expensive materials lavished over huge expanses of surface are simply grotesque. Luxury is not ownership of mass-produced goods, no matter how costly or finely manufactured - indeed it is not anything that one owns; luxury is an experience. It can be as simple as an umbrella in a rainstorm, or no umbrella when one can afford to get drenched. More than anything else, luxury is time, simplicity, and freedom from one's daily concerns.

It was this luxury that Norman's early works expressed so elegantly. There were no fax machines, cell phones or cable television; reception, with rabbit ears, was limited to a single very fuzzy station broadcasting from Hartford Connecticut. There was no such thing as the Hamptons, and there wasn't even a highway to get here on. People came to the East End to escape the pressures of business and urban life, and a vacation house was a sanctuary.

Then came a moment in time when the cost of property became so expensive that a vacation house became an investment rather than an escape, a source of additional pressure rather than a release. The avant-garde disappeared, replaced by increasingly more voracious consumers of status, whose accumulation of wealth and material goods only provided the illusion of luxury; many owners never had time to properly enjoy their vacation homes, or were so self-frustrated that they couldn't enjoy them. Others treated them as extensions of a consumptive lifestyle, oblivious to their true charms.

As Norman discovered these truths, his patience for so-called luxury work evaporated. At the same time he was able to create buildings that would provide a luxurious experience for thousands of people for generations to come - Gates of the Grove Synagogue in East Hampton and 565 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.

Lesson five: to thine own self be true. Some owners of early houses have accused Norman of selling out, and it has even been published that his architectural fees were astronomical. In fact his fees were, like most architect's, based on a standard percentage of the cost of construction as estimated at the beginning of the project. It was not at all unusual for Norman to have difficulty collecting what was eventually owed.

Since Norman was never satisfied with his own work, the amount of time and effort that went into his projects invariably made the practice of architecture somewhat less than financially rewarding. On those projects where he did earn a substantial fee, he used the proceeds to finance the design of Gates of the Grove (for which no fee was charged) or to underwrite charitable causes (most notably ICROSS).

The perseverance of the art he lived for, in the face of conditions that often made it painfully difficult for him to continue this work, contradict any such claims. Even Norman's death, a conscious choice on his part in the face of deep emotional stress and deteriorating health, demonstrates his independence and self-determination.

One of the most difficult aspects of this kind of work was (and still is) finding clients of sufficient knowledge, understanding and sensitivity to support it. In this way my father's work can be seen as a test that only a few have been able to pass. That so many of Norman's projects have been altered, often horrifically, only reflects how little understanding and appreciation there is for those qualities that make his work so special. With any luck, this rediscovery and newfound recognition of his work will prevent any more of his projects from being torn down, which in many ways would be preferable to their radical alteration.

I am deeply appreciative and respectful, far more now than ever when he was alive, of my father's examples and teachings, which, while often difficult to live through, demonstrate a path of self-discovery and spirituality that I strive to follow every day.