HISTORIC PRESERVATION AND REUSE
D E S I G N
A R C H I T E C T U R
E : S U P E R B L O C K S
& S U P E R I D E A S ; D E S I G N
T O B E F L E X I B L E
On the way to a sustainable Weston? No more free
architectural education. War
Against Suburbia? 21st
century D.C. restoration...news here.
CONTENTS:
Her
New York
NYTIMES
By PHILLIP LOPATE
November 9, 2008
ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE is, hands down, the dean of American architectural
criticism. In her many books and columns for The New York Times, The
New York Review of Books and The Wall Street Journal (where she
continues to serve as architecture critic), Ms. Huxtable has brought a
sharp, skeptical, receptive eye and a nuanced writing style to the
task.
Her latest book, “On Architecture: Collected Reflections on a Century
of Change,” being published this month by Walker & Company, is a
hefty collection of keepers from the past five decades of criticism. It
tells the story of revolutionary upheavals in taste, from the triumph
of an austere modernism to an often frivolous postmodernism to the menu
of choices that exist today.
Ten days ago, in her sunny penthouse apartment on the Upper East Side,
Ms. Huxtable talked about the changing face of the city, the state of
its architecture, why Times Square dazzles and why an economic downturn
may not be the worst thing to happen to New York...
Please search the NYTIMES archives for the remainder of this story.
Le Corbusier’s Architecture and His Politics Are Revisited
NYTIMES
By RACHEL DONADIO
JULY 12, 2015
PARIS — Was the paradigm-changing architect known as Le Corbusier a
fascist-leaning ideologue whose plans for garden cities were inspired by
totalitarian ideals, or a humanist who wanted to improve people’s
living conditions — a political naïf who, like many architects, was
eager to work with almost any regime that would let him build?
Story in full: http://iht-retrospective.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/08/27/looking-back-on-le-corbusiers-legacy/?ref=topics
There
is a connection between natural happenings and the painful public
hearings on Sandy Hook - the 90 bills
proposed cover much but miss this
major point:
Architecture is like
planning - think
counter intuitively, be flexible. "Tools For Schools" cited as an
excellent, voluntary example of how to inculcate good design into CT
schools. Could work for security, too. Creative solutions
best. Natural design and natural disasters fit together to make a
better world.
Architects
warn Sandy Hook panel of security limits
Michael Gambina, CT MIRROR
February 15, 2013
School architects gave the Sandy Hook Advisory Commission a blunt
lesson Friday in the limits of physical security measures, warning that
the best architecture can do against an attacker like Adam Lanza would
be to slow him until law enforcement can arrive.
"We can mitigate risk, we can delay risk, we can control risk, but
there really is nothing we can do to guarantee a risk-free
environment," said James LaPosta Jr., principal and chief architectural
officer with JCJ Architecture in Hartford.
Gov. Dannel P. Malloy created the commission to recommend public policy
changes, including looking at school building standards, in response to
Lanza's assault on Sandy Hook Elementary School, where he shattered a
locked door with rifle fire, then killed 20 children and six educators.
Putting school violence in context, LaPosta emphasized that incidents
like the one in Newtown, although horrific, are a rarity and not the
only threat faced in school environments.
"We run the risk of responding to the last event and not anticipating
the next," LaPosta said.
He was one of four building designers from the American Institute of
Architects, and other security experts, who addressed commission
members at the Legislative Office Building in Hartford.
The architects stressed that all buildings are different, their designs
depending on location and needs. A school building in the Midwest may
be designed to protect against tornadoes, for example, while one in an
urban center may be designed to protect against gang violence.
Either way, they said, a school should be built to delay a threat,
ensuring the safety of students and faculty until first responders
arrive.
Sandy Hook panel members heard variations on this theme Friday, as well
as a number of more specific concepts and suggestions:
* Technology, LaPosta said, "often becomes a forensic tool as opposed
to a preventative tool," but he noted that voice communication via
radios, cell phones, public address and converged networks with law
enforcement can be helpful.
* Richard Munday, of New Haven-based Newman Architects, likened his
firm's concepts of creating a safer school to a neighborhood watch
principle: a building with large windows that allow those in the front
office to have a view of the parking lot and front entrance; glass
instead of walls on the interior of the building to permit visibility
from room to room. In one photo example, glass walls allowed
faculty on a building's second floor to easily see down into the
cafeteria on the first floor.
* Glen Golenberg, principal architect at The S/L/A/M Collaborative in
Glastonbury, suggested schools could install doors that alert people
when they are breached. He also suggested window glazes, like a
laminate, which he said are effective and far less costly than
ballistic glass, which can range from $3,000 to $4,000 per classroom.
The architects said if a school district wanted to make immediate
changes, there are very low-tech things to be done, including enforcing
traffic and parking rules; removing obstructions from sight lines;
reviewing exterior exit pathways; checking the condition of window
shades and blinds and of keying and door security; and partnering with
responders.
U.S. Capitol dome readied for
$60 million in repairs
DAY
By CHARLES BABINGTON Associated Press
Article published Dec 26, 2013
Washington - A world-famous symbol of democracy is going under cover,
as workers start a two-year, $60 million renovation of the U.S. Capitol
dome.
Curved rows of scaffolds, like Saturn's rings, will encircle it next
spring, enabling contractors to strip multiple layers of paint and
repair more than 1,000 cracks and broken pieces. The dome will remain
illuminated at night and partly visible through the scaffolding and
paint-capturing cloths. But the Washington icon - and portions of the
Rotunda's painted ceiling that lies below - will be significantly
obscured for many months.
The project is beginning just as the nearby Washington Monument sheds
scaffolding that was used to repair damage from a 2011 earthquake.
Half-completed when Abraham Lincoln stood beneath it to summon "the
better angels of our nature" in 1861, the Capitol dome has since
towered over Washington, which limits building heights to 130 feet.
Time, however, has let water seep through hundreds of cracks. The water
attacks cast iron, which "continues to rust and rust and rust," said
Stephen T. Ayers, architect of the Capitol.
Night, weekend work
This first major renovation in more than 50 years should add decades of
structural integrity to the dome, which Ayers calls perhaps "the most
recognizable symbol across the globe." The $60 million undertaking will
heal inner wounds, he said, without changing the way the dome looks
from the ground.
Much of the work will be done at night and on weekends. It won't be as
flashy as the 1993 helicopter removal and return of the 19-foot Statue
of Freedom from the dome's top....The architect's office will update
the renovation's progress at www.aoc.gov/dome.
Please search the New London DAY archives for the remainder of this story.
Oscar Niemeyer, Architect Who
Gave
Brasília Its Flair, Dies at 104
NYTIMES
By NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF
December 5, 2012
Oscar Niemeyer, the celebrated Brazilian architect whose flowing
designs infused Modernism with a new sensuality and captured the
imaginations of generations of architects around the world, died on
Wednesday in Rio de Janeiro. He was 104.
The medical staff at the Hospital Samaritano in Rio, where he was being
treated, said on national television that he died of a respiratory
infection. Mr. Niemeyer was among the last of a long line of Modernist
true believers who stretch from Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe to
the architects who defined the postwar architecture of the late 1940s,
’50s and ’60s. He is best known for designing the government buildings
of Brasília, a sprawling new capital carved out of the Brazilian
savanna that became an emblem both of Latin America’s leap into
modernity and, later, of the limits of Modernism’s utopian aspirations.
His curvaceous, lyrical, hedonistic forms helped shape a distinct
national architecture and a modern identity for Brazil that broke with
its colonial and baroque past. Yet his influence extended far beyond
his country. Even his lesser works were a counterpoint to reductive
notions of Modernist architecture as blandly functional.
“Brazil lost today one of its geniuses,” Dilma Rousseff, Brazil’s
president, said in a statement issued Wednesday night...
The timing was ideal. Costa was then designing the Ministry of
Education and Health’s headquarters in Rio, and he invited Mr. Niemeyer
to join his firm as a draftsman. In 1936, the ministry hired the
Swiss-born architect Le Corbusier to contribute ideas for the design.
Le Corbusier was already a legend in architecture, and the building
would become the first major public project by a Modernist architect in
Latin America.
Mr. Niemeyer, one of several draftsmen assigned to the project,
absorbed Le Corbusier’s vision of a modern world shaped by the myth of
the machine, and drew on the master’s belief in an architecture of
abstract forms enlivened by a sensitive use of light and air...
Please search the NYTIMES archives for the remainder of this story.
There are ways to respectfully
reuse and add onto some buildings of brutalist architecture
style...if you have
a cool and talented Building Committee!
In 2001, Weston, CT designed a "skirt" for the 1960's auditorium (c)
and a
new entrance, library and science wing became the focus (r) doubling
the size of Weston High School.
Weighing Costs of Demolition or
Preservation
When questions of aesthetics can't be
resolved, creative solutions are needed.
NYTIMES
Raksha Vasudevan (Sustaininability Associate at the National League of
Cities’ Center for Research and Innovation. She blogs a t
citiesspeak.org)
Updated April 9, 2012, 8:15 AM
...If not beauty, what criterion should we use to determine the ultimate
fate of a building? In a society dominated by overconsumption and
wastefulness, we automatically look for a quick fix in matters of
architectural preservation — demolish or preserve exactly as is.
What is needed is an acknowledgement of the multiple and hidden costs
of our choices...
Please search the NYTIMES archives for the remainder of this story.
Atrocities Should Be Eliminated
Preserving stark, modernist buildings
denies their crimes against humanity.
Anthony M.
Daniels (Anthony M. Daniels is a frequent contributor to New Criterion,
a monthly journal of culture and ideas)
NYTIMES
April 8, 2012
Buildings should be preserved for one of two reasons: they were the
site of events of great historic importance, or they are of aesthetic
merit. Buildings in the Brutalist style — which uses raw concrete or
other materials to make art galleries look like fallout shelters — are
certainly aesthetically outstanding: unfortunately, in an entirely
negative sense. A single such building can ruin an entire townscape,
and it is often difficult to believe that such ruination was not the
intention of the architect...
Please search the NYTIMES archives for the remainder of this story.
NOW ON YOUTUBE,
COOPER UNION LOOKS TO GET RID OF WHAT MADE IT SPECIAL.
How Cooper Union’s Endowment Failed in Its Mission
NYTIMES
By JAMES B. STEWART
May 10, 2013
Since Peter Cooper’s heirs gave the Cooper Union for the Advancement of
Science and Art the land under the Chrysler Building in 1902, the
school’s endowment has enabled it to offer students a high-quality,
tuition-free education through two world wars, the Great Depression and
multiple stock market crashes and financial crises.
So why does Cooper Union now find itself forced to charge tuition of an
estimated $20,000 a year, abandoning what many consider its most
important legacy?
This week, angry students were occupying the president’s office in
protest. They might be even angrier to learn that some of their future
tuition dollars could be going to support wealthy hedge fund managers
who oversee some of the school’s $666.7 million endowment.
Cooper Union may be an extreme example...
Please search the NYTIMES archives for the remainder of this story.
Cooper Union’s Free Tuition Tradition May Be
Near Its End
NYTIMES
By ARIEL KAMINER
Published: February 15, 2013
The new academic building was glamorous, its perforated metal skin
shooting up dramatically from the streets of the East Village, then
swerving around a daring gash of glass. It made a statement about just
how far the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art had
come, from its 19th-century origins as a charity for the poor to one of
the most selective colleges in the nation.
But that was before market convulsions shook the school’s finances, and
before the truth about its dire budgetary situation came to light. Now
the audacious building, at 41 Cooper Square, completed in 2009, has
become the most visible symbol of a debate about the future of Cooper
Union on the eve of what could be the most important decision in its
history....
Developments like that rarely go over well with students, least of all
with art students. Along with their classmates in other programs, and
with outspoken alumni and faculty, they have produced some great
visuals, including the sight of students barricading themselves inside
the school’s historic Foundation Building and YouTube
agitprop set to terrible but amusing rap...
Please search the NYTIMES archives for the remainder of this story.
Architecture Review | Cooper
Union for
the Advancement of Science and Art; The Civic Value of a Bold Statement
NYTIMES
By NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF
June 5, 2009
We’ll have to wait to find out exactly what the end of the Age of
Excess means for architecture in New York. Yes, the glut of
high-concept luxury towers was wearisome. But some great civic works
were also commissioned in that era. And given the hard economic times,
they may be the last we see for quite some time...
The building occupies a contentious site at Cooper Square, between
Sixth and Seventh Streets, in the East Village. The area has
experienced a particularly painful process of gentrification in the
past decade. First, generic glass boxes began popping up along the
Bowery. Then CBGB closed. For me the final straw was the opening in
2005 of Gwathmey Siegel’s undulating glass luxury apartment tower at
Astor Place, a vulgar knockoff of Mies van der Rohe’s unbuilt Glass
Skyscraper project and a symbol of the era’s me-first mentality.
Mr. Mayne’s building does not shy away from this debate by trying to
fade into the background. Seen from the old Cooper Union Foundation
building across the street, its big concave facade is enveloped in a
glittering perforated metal screen, like armor, so that it’s hard at
first to get a grip on the building’s scale. A big vertical slot is cut
out of the facade’s center, as if it had been ripped open.
Yet the more you look at the building, the more it looks right at home
in its surroundings. From certain angles the facade’s concave form
seems to exert a magnetic pull, as if it were trying to embrace the
neighborhood in front of it. The curve of the corner, which lifts up to
invite people inside the lobby, has an unexpected softness. Even the
bulky exterior mirrors the proportions of the Foundation building — a
friendly nod to its older neighbor.
The
effect is tough and sexy at the same time...
Please search the NYTIMES archives for the remainder of this story.
Design: Typography Fans Say Ikea
Should Stick to Furniture
NYTIMES
By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN
September 5, 2009
Maybe the mistake that the Ikea people made last month when the company
released its 2010 catalog was that they didn’t follow their own
instructions.
They should have first taken everything out of the carton and made sure
nothing was missing and that they weren’t mixing up, say, a Bjursta
with a Leksvik or a Muddus. Then they should have taken a look to see
how it all would fit together (serifs, strokes and counters), and only
then should they have taken the many parts (stems, extenders, legs,
spurs and chins) and started to jostle them into place, making sure
they had enough help for heavy lifting when anything resembling pressed
board was involved.
Instead they violated their aesthetic and their method: they went cheap
(O.K., that’s part of Ikea’s appeal) but they also went pre-fab,
ready-made. They even jettisoned their own distinctive, Swedish-owned
design for something generic, multinational and bland. What good is
designing furniture with coy names few outside your country can
properly pronounce if you print a catalog describing those items using
a font designed by Microsoft?
Yes, it’s fonts that we are talking about here, and as anyone who has
seen the documentary
“Helvetica” or fiddled with computer programs can tell you, there’s
a big difference between Wingdings and Bauhaus. And there are many
people who care deeply about the ways letters are given shape, how they
descend below the line, where they get thicker or thinner and how
elaborately they are ornamented....
Please search the NYTIMES archives for the remainder of this story.
The War Against Suburbia
by Joel Kotkin, NewGeography blob
01/21/2010
A year into the Obama administration, America’s dominant geography,
suburbia, is now in open revolt against an urban-centric regime that
many perceive threatens their way of life, values, and economic future...
Please search the web for the remainder of this story.
This article first appeared at The
American.
Joel Kotkin is executive editor of
NewGeography.com and is a distinguished presidential fellow in urban
futures at Chapman University. He is author of The City: A Global
History. His next book, The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050, will
be published by Penguin Press February 4th.
ARCHITECT MARCEL BREUR, DESIGNER
OF FURNITURE, TOO. GERTRUDE STEIN PORTRAIT (by Picasso - her quote
re: Picasso's abrupt style changes (Blue Period, Pink Period,
etc.) - "And then he emptied himself"
NEWS
New occupant of this Bauhaus architect's 1966 design to be the
collection (which includes some of my favorite paintings and
watercolors by American artists) of modern art from the Metropolitan Museum.
From our personal experience, this is the most important question for
planners to deal with - streetcorners. But first you need sidewalks.
NYC's
Whitney Museum of
American Art to move downtown
Published 05/16/2011
12:00 AM
Updated 05/13/2011 06:22 PM
A Monument to Roosevelt, on the Eve of Dedication, Is Mired in a
Dispute With Donors
By LISA W. FODERARO, NYTIMES
October 15, 2012
It was supposed to be a moment of triumph: Decades after the
architect Louis I. Kahn designed it, a monument to Franklin Delano
Roosevelt is scheduled to be dedicated on Wednesday on Roosevelt
Island. Among those expected to take part are Tom Brokaw, Bill Clinton,
the West Point Band and the singer Audra McDonald...
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City reps pull plug on StamfordLights
Kate King, Stamford ADVOCATE
Updated 10:00 p.m., Tuesday, July 10, 2012
STAMFORD -- The Board of Representatives cut the power on
StamfordLights Monday night after members expressed concerns over
spending $150,000 in taxpayer money on the public art display.
The funding request fell four votes short of the two-thirds approval
required to authorize additional capital appropriations. The majority
of representatives opposing the funding said they liked the proposal to
install a colorful outdoor light display at the Stamford Transportation
Center, but couldn't justify using money for capital projects to
finance it...
Please search the ADVOCATE archives for the remainder of this story.