SEB-ITECT-URE

Few others understand the horror of two meticulously compartmentalised aspects of one’s life colliding like Harold Finch does. To think a passing comment about how the SOLOMON R. GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM NEW YORK CITY is in a bunch of film and TV, during my 9am FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT lecture, could make me fixate on a scene that was probably not meant to be dwelled on for too long by anyone. I’m not even joking: this has been marinating in my brain for about half a semester and like Finch himself, something has to give eventually.

Welcome to the very first Seb’s Title Blocks, the segment where we all stare blankly at the walls. Otherwise known as analysing media through its architecture. I’m your host, Seb, the English teacher that points out “deep philosophical themes” in your rushed creative writing assignment, while you nod and say YES that is exactly what I was going for.

Frank Lloyd Wright lived from 1867 to 1959. He is probably the biggest (Western) name in the pop-architecture consciousness. He was ridiculously prolific and helped popularise design features that today are second nature, including the open plan. Yes, the Guggenheim was one of his final projects, but Wright started on houses. The pinwheel plan, as seen in his Wingspread/Herbert F. Johnson House, is one of the most dramatic examples of his sprawling prairie style. Where Western homes were once arranged around privacy, isolation and visual obstruction, the spidery programmes of these houses were tethered by a central hearth, a pinpoint of human connection. Enter PERSON OF INTEREST SEASON 2 EPISODE 8, “TIL DEATH.”

The central hearth of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Wingspread/Herbert F. Johnson House.

"Wingspread living room 49” by Stilfehler is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Getting clocked over the head with this architectural baggage, in the middle of an episode about a marriage breakdown that culminates in the parties taking out hits on each other, was an experience. The association of this story with Wright’s evolution from a thoroughly domestic programme to the great wider world is surely not a coincidence. Especially given the ending of this episode, which for early Season 2 is fairly dark. Reese essentially letting these people at each other, declaring they are too far gone, brings up questions around The Machine’s role in meddling in the messiest of messy human relationships. Of course this is what architecture does, like all the time. And this is what is articulated in the appearance of the Guggenheim, Finch, and Grace Hendricks; in a single flashback of sweeping romantic gestures and the forces that contend to disrupt them.

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum NYC exterior.

"NYC - Guggenheim Museum” by Jean-Cristophe Benoist is licensed under CC BY 3.0.

Preamble over. Now, I wasn’t kidding when I said Frank Lloyd Wright was prolific. At one point in his career, the subject of his practice ballooned all the way to the scale of urban planning. And so that is where we will begin. The Guggenheim, with its unusual cylindrical, almost conical silhouette, somehow finds itself locked in the rigid New York City grid. This is a moment of time where Finch stands at a crossroads, on the precipice of when standing out from the crowd of human data points becomes dangerous. The flashy form contributes to the particular brand of blue, cold uncanny that seeps into the pre-ferry incident flashbacks. Wright’s gestures are unapologetically grand, noteworthy from street level. Look at it. Grace walks in and sees Harold standing above her, gazing down into the atrium from the outer spiral ramp. Look at him. For a moment, ADMIN’s conspicuousness grants him power. As the climate of tension and suspicion boils over in this series, and the forces of authoritarianism muster, his act of standing out contorts in my mind to one of vulnerability.

The tightly wound spiral circulation of Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum NYC.

"The Guggenheim Museum (4)” by PortableNYCTours is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

The circulation of the Guggenheim is key to understanding both Wright’s architectural thinking and the scene itself. The main access ramp is like a compressed spring; it is somehow both stagnant and in perpetual motion. As I write this, I am actively losing my mind over the Season 4 finale, so this language of compression especially leaps out at me. With the compression of The Machine comes the compression of Finch. And like a cornered animal, difficult things, such as his emotional attachment to it and application of human ethics to its treatment, are forced out of him.

Wright’s form acts as architectural foreshadowing in this way. I’d say at this point most skyscrapers were being built with central service cores with floors and facades hanging off them, but Wright makes a point out of challenging the vertical efficiency of a typical New York City corporate tower. The movement within the space is engulfing and hypnotic. It is a mental state frozen by doubt, fear, guilt and shame that, by the beginning of Season 5, Finch can’t afford to entertain as the hellscape he tried to prevent through The Machine’s safeguarding is upon him and out of his control.

The public is gifted panoptic views by the atrium, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum NYC.

"The Guggenheim Museum (5)” by PortableNYCTours is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

In other words, the smooth, geometric, curated, sterile, distant, rational? concrete render of the Guggenheim is a self-made prison. Shockingly I think, it took until Episode 1 of Season 4 for the notion of “Panopticon” to be explicitly explored in Person of Interest, in relation to the rise of Samaritan. But Finch, in his world of hypotheticals, acknowledged that his Machine had the same dangerous power. The Panopticon comes from architecture, being an 18th Century concept for a prison by Jeremy Bentham. It is a circular building with a watchtower in the middle, meaning guards have a vantage point over every inmate. Interestingly, it was proposed that this scheme allow the prison to be manned by a single guard, meaning cohesion and compliance were ensured psychologically: the feeling of being watched. When compared to the “human element” safeguards of The Machine, the requirement for interpretation and investigation of data, both act as checks for the scheme’s absolute power.

The Guggenheim, whether intentionally or not, emphasises the psychological impacts of this climate of surveillance on the people. For starters, the watching power is democratised. The central tower is replaced by a naturally lit atrium, and so the subjects around the ramp are constantly aware of each other. From Finch’s perspective, this is a source of existential dread, representing either an omniscient entity in the wrong hands or an algorithm that is logical to a cutthroat fault. Wright’s curated experience is never stable, with a slightly unnerving effect created by mounting artworks along curved walls and non-level ground. The architect funnels the New York City grid into a deeply unnatural theatre, shifting the people’s relationship with urban infrastructure by becoming the infrastructure.

Like The Machine, the Guggenheim feeds on people and information to come alive. It uses physical gesture, the architectural promenade, like the Machine uses CCTV cameras and webcams. By manipulating and filtering people-data, it consumes and enmeshes itself in the city and its people. So of course, it is here that ADMIN’s relationship with Grace really blooms. Really, their dynamic reflects what happens when you mix information technology with interpersonal connection. It is thoroughly of the information age, based around what Harold can find out about Grace and present back to her. The image of Finch standing alone above the carousel-like network of galleries becomes the ultimate expression their meeting. And whether the Guggenheim, or The Machine I guess, actually facilitates or hinders the capacity for human closeness is one of the most highly contested questions on the show.

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum NYC’s ornate skylight.

"Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum skylight” by T Meltzer is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

On a related note, I promise, one of the biggest concerns of architectural Modernism, which Frank Lloyd Wright is often lumped into, was the rapidly deteriorating welfare of industrialised cities. Natural light was a major priority for these designers no matter the programme. Sunlight has always been prized for its benefits to physical and mental wellbeing. This, combined with increasingly sophisticated engineering technology, led to experimentation with skylights, strip windows, and atriums, with the Guggenheim being no exception. Anyone familiar with art curation however can tell you that this is an insane approach by Wright to designing an art gallery. UV light is the mortal enemy of artworks, especially paintings, causing paints to crack, fade, sag and degrade. Imagine UV resistant barriers don’t exist for a second. Then, the curation of the Guggenheim would need to be based around the rapid rotation of artworks. The curved gallery really would be like a carousel, flooded with constant streams of data that mirror the information inundation of the digital age, and the dizzying scrolling effects of both The Machine and Samaritan’s UIs.

Within this data is Grace’s favourite painting, which Finch acquires from Venice to the Guggenheim in New York City as a birthday gift. The painting is 1913’s The Red Tower by Giorgio de Chirico. There is an eerie blankness to the composition, with the titular structure’s isolation emphasised by long shadows, and its uniform texturing with the sky. Both The Machine and its ADMIN hide in such plain sights. Harold’s pursuit of normalcy forces him to the margins of his own life and relationships. The atmosphere of the painting and the gallery that encases it, the language of the tall, solitary fortress, speaks to this. Here we have this symbol of Grace’s hopes, passions and happiness, as well as Harold’s way out of the dangerous situation he built himself and the world into. Wider still, we have art and human expression and free will.

Where Finch has placed it, in the sunlight, in proximity to the power structure around The Machine, it is actively degrading. After all, how can an inhuman entity that preys on the quantified remains of humanity truly act in its service? The scene takes place in the refuge of night, so there is a sense that the damage is as imminent and inevitable as the sunrise.

Balkrishna Doshi’s Amdavad Ni Gufa, Ahmedabad, interior.

"Interior of amdavad ni gufa 2” by Sushant Salva is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

This is what had me freaking out about this scene in the first place, and the reason I wrote this analysis. I cannot stress this enough: this one thing that some consider a design flaw of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City is basically the entire reason that this segment exists. The specific genre of art galleries that are, based on their form, sort of unfit to be art galleries, is so interesting to me. Another more extreme example of this phenomenon is Balkrishna Doshi’s 1992 Amdavad Ni Gufa. The complex curves of its internal spaces are absolutely ethereal, a work of art in and of themselves. But the architect’s brief was for a space to hang paintings. The nature of design process, what it means to create things, is admittedly not the most immediate theme explored in Person of Interest. But it is definitely there, beneath the surface of this scene and the series as a whole. This is embodied in the architectural expression of these unconventional galleries: the lesson here is not to chain oneself to arbitrary rules, freezing yourself in place before you even start. This extends to relationships. Human connection withers in fear, distance and hesitancy, just like creative output. Did this insignificant little flashback scene just foreshadow Harold’s entire character arc?

In Season 4 Episode 11 “If-Then-Else” (peak TV alert), we see Finch teaching The Machine the art of decision making through a game of chess. Design, as we are taught it in school, is also a series of choices. The Machine overthinks at the start; there are too many options. At the start of a project, the page is blank and the choices are infinite, a void of everything and nothing. Finch tells The Machine that by the time it’s done running over every possible chess game, the match will be over. He tells it to just make a move, because the further you are from the end, the easier it is to set things right. And like Frank Lloyd Wright’s generation of Modernists, in a rapidly changing world, one can only hope that they created something meaningful.

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