The CIVITAS Chronicles

An abandoned building in the village of Goshen, NY, is in the middle of a strange battle over whether the structure should be restored or torn down. What makes this fight unusual is the way opposing sides line up: Context-sensitive preservationists are on the side saying “tear it down,” while among those urging the building’s preservation is a taxpayer group that normally has little interest in historic architecture.

The building at the center of this controversy is the Orange County Government Center situated on Goshen’s Main Street. The structure was completed in 1971 to a design by then-starchitect Paul Rudolph and is considered by many to be a masterpiece of the Brutalist style. The World Monuments Fund has even placed it on its watch list of threatened cultural heritage sites in need of protection.

Although considered an architectural icon by acolytes of Modernism, in many ways the Government Center is a hard building to love. For openers, it is despised by many local residents because it is so out of character with the prevailing architectural context of the community, which consists largely of vernacular buildings from the eighteenth to the early twentieth century. So when Edward A. Diana, the executive for Orange County, declared that he wanted to demolish the structure, many local residents cheered him on.

Diana’s decision was not based primarily on architectural taste, however, but rather on operational and maintenance problems. The Rudolph building has 87 individual flat roofs, which have been prone to leaks since the building opened. The many changing levels of the interior mean it is not friendly to the disabled, and the single-glazed windows make the building expensive to heat and cool. The last straw occurred last September when heavy rains flooded the basement and the building was evacuated permanently. Diana sees the structure as one big maintenance headache and wants it torn down to be replaced by a new, larger structure that is more in keeping with the town’s architectural character.

The current dispute is whether it is more cost effective to renovate and expand the 1971 building or to tear it down and replace it. A preliminary report by the county estimated that a new, larger building would cost $136 million, while a renovation of the Rudolph building would run $67 million. However, the taxpayer group disputes the projections, claiming that the costs of an entirely new complex are under estimated, while the estimates for renovating the old building are inflated.

Most interesting of all is the way the taxpayer group also embraces the language of sustainability and environmental costs in making the case for recycling the old building.

Myrna Kemnitz, a county legislator, puts it this way: “We must contemplate a realistic cost of asbestos detection, abatement and containment for this building. If there is asbestos in the concrete, in concrete is the best containment place for it to remain. Then there is the charge for cartage of the rubble to a landfill and the reckoning of the space it will take up, and restoration/renovation uses far less energy than tearing down and building anew. Environmentally, retrofitting is far kinder than demolishing and building anew.”

It is heartening to see the language of sustainability being injected into mainstream discourse. For me personally, if environmental costs were not a factor, I would gladly urge the demolition of the existing Rudolph building. Yes, it is a historic architectural artifact. But it was a mistake to place such an aggressively non-contextual building in that picturesque town in the first place. As Steve Semes argues so persuasively in his new book, The Future of the Past, preserving the existing special character of a place should be the primary factor guiding any new construction in older neighborhoods.

But as legislator Kemnitz points out, we’re not starting with a clean slate here; hundreds of tons of concrete have already been poured. So if we believe all the things we say about adaptive reuse, embodied energy and recycling old buildings, I reluctantly conclude that the environmentally responsible thing to do is see if there are cost-effective ways the 1971 Rudolph building can be reused. Globally, we’ve reached a point where environmental costs trump aesthetic taste.

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If the Eisenhower Memorial Commission gets its way, construction will start this year on a gigantic monument to Dwight D. Eisenhower adjacent to Washington’s National Mall – in spite of fierce, growing opposition. Most prominent among those objecting are members of the Eisenhower family. However, in spite of — or perhaps because of – the mounting opposition, the Memorial Commission is determined to fast-track the highly controversial design.

Architect for this ill-considered memorial is Frank Gehry. Besides the Eisenhower family, opposition has come from a wide range of sources, including Architectural Record, the Washington Post, Foreign Policy, the Heritage Network, Better Cities, National Review, and Metropolis. They eloquently spell out many of the shortcomings in Gehry’s plan. But one of the most powerful reasons to call timeout on this misguided project is procedural: It has largely flown under the public radar and has attracted little rigorous scrutiny. The huge size of the tract (four football fields), its prominent position adjacent to the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum and major cost to taxpayers (over $100 million) should be reasons enough to say, “Slow down.”

The most determined and articulate opponent of Gehry’s design has been Washington’s National Civic Art Society. This organization has created a website delineating not only the many, many problems with the design itself, but also raising pertinent questions about the closed architectural “competition” that ended up selecting Frank Gehry as the winner.

In addition, the Civic Art Society joined with the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art to sponsor an alternative design competition to show more sensible alternatives to Gehry’s unfortunate design. The society also created a detailed report citing the many flaws in the Gehry plan and circulated copies of the report to members of Congress.

The most disturbing aspect of the current proposal is that the Eisenhower Memorial Commission is determined to get construction underway later this year. They lack only an OK from the National Capital Planning Commission.

The primary rationale for urgency is to enable the last remaining veterans of World War II to see the completed memorial. This argument ignores the fact that there already is a WWII memorial on the Mall commemorating the sacrifices and achievements of “the greatest generation.”

The Lincoln Memorial provides an object lesson in the virtues of not rushing. A memorial to Lincoln was first proposed in 1867. But the project went through many design iterations before construction of Henry Bacon’s temple to Lincoln finally began construction in 1914. The drawn-out process produced the most widely known and revered memorial in the U.S. It’s also revealing to hear how Frank Gehry airily dismisses the Lincoln Memorial: “The Lincoln Memorial is in the form of a Greek temple. What’s that got to do with Lincoln?”

That attitude goes a long way toward explaining how Mr. Gehry would come up with a proposal for an Eisenhower Memorial that is so widely derided. Gehry’s design method disregards all historical precedent and glorifies chaos and pandemonium – values totally at odds with the orderly, disciplined man who organized the greatest military operation the world has ever seen.

The current proposal for the Eisenhower Memorial is massively disruptive to the architectural harmony of the National Mall – and is bad urbanism, plain and simple. A project that will endure for many generations – on one of the most prominent land parcels in the entire country – deserves a more considered process. We should all join with the Eisenhower family in urging a timeout to reconsider the design.

Please contact the National Capital Planning Commission at its website immediately and join the rising chorus of voices asking them to, “Just say no!” to this ill-conceived plan.

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A recent museum addition by Daniel Libeskind provides vivid evidence of the disdain that many Modernist architects hold not only for traditional design, but also for the work of their professional predecessors. The building in question is an addition to the Military Museum in Dresden, Germany. Not content with merely affixing an unsympathetic, context-defying appendage to the original Neoclassical building, Libeskind took the additional step of slicing through the façade of the older structure to emphasize his total disregard for historic fabric.

Interestingly, to avoid the charge of mere personal grandiosity and ego projection, Libeskind has chosen to cloak his Dresden work in political terms. Says Libeskind, “The new façade’s openness and transparency contrast with the opacity and rigidity of the existing building. The latter represents the severity of the authoritarian past. while the former reflects the openness of the democratic society in which it has been reimagined.”

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A just-issued new set of design principles for infill construction should be mandatory reading for every historic district commission and design review board across the U.S. The groundbreaking new document is from the Historic Preservation League of Oregon (HPLO) and is intended only for historic districts in the state of Oregon. However, the seven principles are relevant for every historic district in the country because they tackle head-on the plague of highly differentiated new design that threatens to undermine the character and historic context of so many older neighborhoods across the U.S.

Many design review boards today demand that new construction in historic districts be in Modernist or highly differentiated styles. To buttress their insistence on Modernism, boards cite the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards – especially the dictate of Standard #9 that “the new work shall be differentiated from the old.” Even though John Sandor of the National Park Service has pointed out that the Secretary’s Standards were not intended to govern rehabilitation in entire historic districts – nonetheless, many preservation commissions have continued to insist that new infill construction be in highly contrasting styles to provide “differentiation.”

With compelling logic and clarity, the new HPLO report refutes the notion that new infill should look radically different. With its seven clear principles, the HPLO document sweeps away previous misinterpretations of the Secretary’s Standards and focuses on preserving a historic district’s essential character as the primary goal. Principle #1 states emphatically: “The District Is the Resource, Not Its Individual Parts.” Supporting text goes on to declare that historic districts are significant as a collective whole and must be protected in their entirety.

To make sure there are no misunderstandings about how best to protect the character of a district, Principle # 4 (“Infill Will Be Compatible yet Distinct”) tackles the issue of architectural style explicitly: “Within historic districts, compatibility is more important than differentiation.” And if that isn’t clear enough, the guideline further states: “Style is discouraged from being the primary indicator of differentiation. Means of differentiation may include materials, mechanical systems, construction methods, and signage.”

These sensible design principles from HPLO are the latest development in a decades-long uproar from many quarters about the devastating effects that misguided interpretations of the Secretary’s Standards have had on historic neighborhoods. Steve Semes’s pioneering book, The Future of the Past, details the fallacies behind some interpretations of the Secretary’s Standards. A recent roundtable organized by the editors of Traditional Building magazine further examined problems posed by architectural contrast. And a 2011 symposium organized by US/ICOMOS has proposed ways to promote compatibility rather than contrast in historic contexts.

The HPLO guidelines represent a new milestone because now an official preservation organization has taken note of grassroots protests and has published clear historic district design principles that contradict much of daily practice in the U.S. The seven new guidelines emphasize – correctly, in my view – the over-arching importance of architectural compatibility in preserving the special character of historic districts. Three cheers for the Historic Preservation League of Oregon. Let’s hope that SHPO offices and preservation groups in the other 49 states are encouraged to do likewise.

 

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A radical new full-year, full-time program for teaching young architects unique design skills is now underway in New York City, sponsored by the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art (ICAA). This revolutionary school is called The Beaux-Arts Atelier and has already attracted the attention of national media like The Wall Street Journal. The fundamental goal of the curriculum is to develop an architect’s artistic sense and appreciation for beauty of form, while at the same time teaching a systematic design method.

Ironically, the unique instruction system being deployed in the Atelier would have seemed quite conventional to architectural students a hundred years ago. The Atelier is based largely around teaching methods developed originally at the world-famous L’Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris – where many giants of American architecture were educated. By the early 20^th century, most American architecture schools were using many of the Beaux-Arts teaching methods – as set forth in John F. Harbeson’s pioneering book, The Study of Architecture. However, the Beaux-Arts system was ejected from architectural courses after World War II when Modernist faculties took control of the academies – and Harbeson’s book ended up in trash bins. (Happily, Harbeson’s book has been reprinted.)

Beaux-Arts teaching is built around manual skills – especially drawing and sketching – so that the hand can educate the brain. In the age of AutoCAD, many young architects don’t learn how to draw; as a result, an ability to relate to the natural world is lost. There are no straight lines in nature, and the capacity to capture subtle curves and the interplay of light and shadow learned through hand drawing enhances the ability to design beautiful structures. That’s why you’ll find no computers in the Beaux-Arts Atelier – and why the curriculum includes such classes as figure drawing, hand-drafting, modeling and sculpting, the classical orders, proportion and geometry and architectural rendering.

All the newly heightened aesthetic skills come together in the Design Studio, where students are taught a systematic design method that lies at the core of the curriculum. To start off this year’s Design Studio, students were sent off to New York’s Bryant Park to take careful measurements of a small pavilion by Carrere & Hastings that is part of the 1911 New York Public Library complex. After making drawings based on their measurements, the students are challenged to analyze the components of the design and then to use those concepts as the basis for a large urban gateway. The idea is to guide students slowly through successive design problems – and to systematically teach something new at each step in the process.

To keep the intimate atelier atmosphere, the program is limited to 12 students per year. Having 10 instructors for the students makes the Beaux-Arts Atelier quite a varied and rich educational experience. To cap off their academic year, students spend two weeks in Rome drawing and painting – and studying how Rome has successfully integrated new buildings into its historic context over the centuries.

The Beaux-Arts Atelier holds the promise of teaching a new generation how to appreciate and – more important – how to design beautiful structures that will contribute to a more humane built environment. Let’s hope its influence spreads.

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The deadline for entering the 2012 Palladio Awards competition is fast approaching. Having been a Palladio juror on a number of occasions, I’ve noted that all winning entries have several elements in common. So I’m passing some of these observations along, tips, really, that can enhance your chances of winning one of these coveted awards.

The benefits that flow from winning a Palladio are obvious. First are the bragging rights; the Palladio Awards are still the only national architectural competition that honors projects for excellence in traditional design. So winning one is a big deal, with a lot of prestige and publicity spinoff potential. The handsome bronze Palladio trophy on your office awards shelf proclaims your achievement for years to come. And even if you don’t win one of the top awards, there’s a good chance your project will be published in Traditional Building or Period Homes magazine sometime during the next 12 months. Because Palladio Award submissions represent the best of today’s traditional design, when the editors of Traditional Building and Period Homes are looking for projects to feature throughout the year, they often turn first to Palladio entries that were excellent – but didn’t happen to walk off with a top prize.

Here are seven things you can do to improve your chances of winning.

1. Good photos are essential. Jurors are only human, and when there are a lot of projects to evaluate, their attention is more like to be captured by submissions with clear, striking photographs.

2. Big, full-page images are best, rather than multiple images crammed on a single page.

3. On renovation and restoration projects, obviously before-and-after photos are important. Sometimes the before pictures are lousy – and that’s O.K. because often you are not in control of the before photos. Just make sure the after photos are outstanding.

4. Photo captions should not be just terse labels. Rather, captions should be informative and direct readers to special features they should be looking for in the photo. Pointing things out with captions is important because jurors do spend a lot of time with the images.

5. Site plans and floor plans are always very helpful.

6. When projects involve additions, renovations or both, the photos, plans and captions should make it very clear what is old original work and what is your new work.

7. Text covering unusual features and design challenges should be crisp and concise; jurors don’t have time to swoon over poetical language. Emphasize the specific things you did on the project that you’re most proud of.

These tips may seem self evident. But I’ve personally seen too many submissions that ignored several of these points, and otherwise good projects got less attention than they should have received.

So keep these seven pointers in mind when you download the Palladio application forms. It’ll greatly enhance your chances of being on the receiving end when the editors hand out the Palladio trophies at the 2012 awards dinner.

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The announcement that Michael Kimmelman is taking over as architecture critic for the New York Times carries with it the hope that the Times’ global audience will soon be exposed to a broader, more humane view of what constitutes excellence in architecture.

For better or worse, the New York Times’ architecture critic is probably the most influential voice shaping mainstream architectural taste. Often, what people see in the Times is all they ever read about architecture. And in the 19-year reign of Herbert Muschamp and Nicolai Ourossoff that began in 1992, the architecture pages of the Times have been a never-ending stream of praise for a handful of “starchitects” who kept the two critics amused with ever-more-outlandish creations. Novelty was the paradigm that Muschamp and Ourossoff valued above all else. They paid little attention to the way a building functioned, if it was liked by people who used it or whether it made any contribution to its surroundings.

I was not the only one who found Nicolai Ourossoff’s fawning over fashionable architects infuriating. Alexandra Lange, a respected architecture critic in her own right (and not a card-carrying traditionalist), recently posted a lengthy and very thoughtful take-down of the Times’ now-departed architecture critic.

Not everyone shares my enthusiasm about the coming Age of Kimmelman. There has been much weeping and wailing and rending of garments in some of the architecture press over the fact that Kimmelman, formerly the Times’ senior arts critic, is neither an architect nor trained in design. And others fret that he’s going to be allowed, with his title of “Senior Critic,” to write on cultural topics besides architecture. Such carping is totally off the mark: It’ll be a breath of fresh air to have an architecture critic with a broad humanist background who’s not playing an inside game.

Having followed Michael Kimmelman’s writings in the arts field, I have been impressed with his wide-ranging cultural framework and rationality. He seems to love places that provide emotional satisfaction, as well as academic and intellectual stimulation. Even though I’m no fan of Peter Zumthor, I found Kimmelman’s profile of him quite engaging and insightful. His analysis of David Chipperfield’s reconstruction of the war-ravaged Neues Museum in Berlin was a poetical evocation of the building’s fusion of past and present. And Kimmelman became my BFF with a piece he recently published decrying the museum world’s dismaying lack of interest in figurative sculpture. (Anyone who loves figurative sculpture is a friend of mine!)

So I have hope. The architecture critic of the New York Times is under enormous pressure from many different constituencies. And I suspect I’ll disagree with Michael Kimmelman on more occasions than I agree with him. But his past writings encourage me to believe he understands that architecture is a public art with civic obligations. In the past he’s stated he cares about “how we live . . . how buildings actually work . . . city planning, public policy, neighborhoods, communities and characters . . . architecture as a complex and contradictory discipline . . . .” In a portfolio that large, there should be room for traditional architecture!

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It’s gratifying to see that at least one of the housing reconstruction programs in New Orleans believes in context-sensitive design. Too many well-intentioned housing programs fall short when measured against the yardstick of humane urbanism. But Project Home Again, sponsored by the Leonard and Louise Riggio Foundation, is providing much-needed housing, while also helping to re-establish the special character that has always defined New Orleans neighborhoods.

Project Home Again has already built nearly 100 new homes, mainly in the Gentilly District. In addition to featuring high-quality, energy-efficient construction, the homes display a traditional New Orleans vernacular look. As a result, the new construction is contributing to New Orleans’s unique sense of place, knitting together neighborhood fabric that was badly torn apart by Katrina’s disastrous floods.

Spearheaded by Leonard Riggio, the founder and chairman of the Barnes & Noble book retailing empire, Project Home Again’s underlying mission is to develop a scalable affordable housing program that features energy-efficient construction and that fosters neighborhood recovery, while also supporting returning homeowners. The basic idea underlying Project Home Again’s low-cost, high-efficiency approach is to use passive energy-conserving features that complement natural ventilation whenever possible. Design details include strategically placed shading, ceiling fans in every room and double-hung, double-glazed, low-e windows – supplemented by high-performance mechanical systems, including dehumidification.

Further economies are achieved by limiting construction to a small number of basic home models – four so far – with sizes ranging from about 1,000 sq. ft. to 1,500 sq. ft. The designs, all based on traditional New Orleans housing types, were created for the project by John L. Schackai, AIA, a local architect with deep understanding of the city’s building culture. In addition to cross-ventilation and passive heat-reduction features, whenever possible, Schackai also incorporates good-sized, screened-in porches that can be used for sleeping.

What raises Project Home Again above humanitarian relief and places it in the realm of humane urbanism is the approach to exterior design. The exteriors are purposefully modest and intentionally avoid the “bold architectural statements” that characterize many of the houses of Brad Pitt’s Make it Right Foundation.

Schackai’s designs blend seamlessly into the mix of surviving houses in the small communities that form the larger Gentilly neighborhood. As a result, the focus is not on “look at me!” architecture, but rather on healing the neighborhood by filling in devastated blocks in ways that emphasize the continuity of New Orleans’s tradition.

Through a holistic architectural design process, Project Home Again is doing more than putting a roof over people’s heads: It is also restoring communities and reviving a reassuring sense of place.

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Preservationists who believe the duty of landmark commissions is to preserve the special character of historic districts have been dealt another blow. An amazing 9-0 decision by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission has shown once again that the commission – like many similar review boards across the U.S. – functions like an architectural awards jury when it comes to additions and infill construction. Similar to their peers everywhere, commission members seem unwilling or unable to evaluate projects on the impact they’ll have on the historic character of the entire district.

The project currently at issue is the addition of two stories onto an existing three-story building in New York’s Tribeca West Historic District. Rather than consider the project in light of its effect on the entire district, the members seemed to focus primarily on design issues of the proposed new façade. And in so doing, they have implicitly applied a simplistic interpretation of the Secretary of the Interior’s Standard #9: “New work will be differentiated from the old.”

The design for the proposed addition was vigorously opposed by New York City’s Historic Districts Council on the grounds that the façade was unsympathetic to the existing character of the neighborhood. But commission members brushed aside these objections, using words like “smart,” “delirious,” “exciting,” “robust and inventive” to laud the proposed new façade. The commission’s chairman, Robert Tierney, went so far as to enthuse: “It actually enhances the richness of the district.” It’s a remark that makes sense only if the commission’s purpose is to promote radical contrast, rather than aesthetic wholeness, in the district.

The contradiction between the Landmarks Commission’s fixation on the character of individual buildings as opposed to entire districts is best illustrated by the commission’s regulations on windows. If a building owner in an historic district wants to replace windows, there is a highly complex permit-and-approval process that gets down to the level of regulating muntin profiles.

Having gone to this degree of detail to protect the character of existing buildings, it seems ludicrous (to this writer at least) that the commission imposes no such tests on the effect that additions and infill construction will have on the character of the entire district. Instead, approvals on additions and new construction seem to rest on the architectural tastes of commission members. And for most new projects, current commission members seem to favor Modernist styles, regardless of context.

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The Pritzker Architecture Prize is titled incorrectly. It should be called “the Pritzker Prize for Modernist Architecture.” That’s what it is, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But its current name implies that it recognizes achievement in the entire field of architecture, and that posture is misleading – if not downright deceptive.

The recent announcement of Eduardo Souto de Moura of Porto, Portugal, as winner of the 2011 Pritzker Architecture Prize confirms once again that the Pritzker Prize is restricted to a certain type of architecture. Pritzker juries have invariably only honored architects who adhere to Modernist ideology and who believe that architecture has nothing to learn from the past. This latest Pritzker award also casts into sharp relief why the Driehaus Prize is so important and necessary.

According to its prospectus, the purpose of the Pritzker Prize is: “To honor a living architect whose built work demonstrates a combination of those qualities of talent, vision and commitment, [one] which has produced consistent and significant contributions to humanity and the built environment through the art of architecture.” It’s a very general specification – leaving almost total latitude to the jury. Nothing in the purpose speaks to architectural style or philosophy. Therefore, the critical determinant of who the winner will be is: who’s on the jury. And if the jury panel is stacked with persons imbued with Modernist ideology, the type – if not the name – of the winner is preordained.

A roster of some recent Pritzker laureates makes the case: Peter Zumthor, Jean Nouvel, Richard Rogers, Thom Mayne, Zaha Hadid, Herzog & Meuron, Rem Koolhaas, Norman Foster, Renzo Piano, et al., et al. Some are international “starchitects”; others are not as well known. But they all share the same emphasis on novelty and the belief that buildings should be stand-alone sculptures. The concept of buildings as harmonious components of an urban ensemble is totally alien to them. And the Pritzker’s system of overlapping terms of jurors – along with the predilections of the prize’s administrators – assures continuance of the Modernist culture in the Pritzker jury pool.

The advent of the Driehaus Prize was a welcome counterweight to the Pritzker. First of all, the Driehaus has an honest name: “The Richard H. Driehaus Prize for Classical Architecture.” Unlike the Pritzker, the Driehaus specifically recognizes fundamentally different philosophies within the architectural universe. Driehaus laureates are drawn only from the ranks of architects who work in the classical and historical tradition – architects who are de facto excluded from the Pritzker. The Driehaus Prize does not pretend (like the Pritzker) to cover the entire world of architecture.

 

So I extend hearty congratulations to Robert A.M. Stern, the  2011 winner of the Richard H. Driehaus Prize for Classical Architecture. And, in the spirit of bi-partisan comity, I also congratulate Eduardo Souto de Moura, winner of the 2011 Pritzker Prize for Modernist Architecture.

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