Preservation | selophane.blog

Heaven in 3 and half rooms

In Fall of 2009 I went on a trip to Deep Creek Lake, Maryland with some friends. While I was out there I took the opportunity to visit both Falling Water and Kentuck Knob. They are about an hour away and part of the same tour system. While Falling Water may well be Frank Lloyd Wright’s most well known home, neither should be missed. Kentuck Knob is a great example of how a Usonian Home could be modified to suit the needs of a much wealthier client than the original target market. Furthermore, the house is built on a hexagon base unit which stands in full contrast to the rectangle used as the base for Falling Water.

When I returend to Northern Virignia I had the pleasure of touring a third Wright home, the Pope-Leighey House, a more traditional Usonian Home. While less well known, this house holds its own in any architectural arena. Compared to Kentuck Knob and Falling Water, this middle class home feels more garden folly than full time residence, but it is a great example of an early compact Modern compact home which manages to fit in the creature comforts in the smallest of spaces.

Which leads me to the general feeling I had about all three residences: how small and cave-like they felt. All of the spaces are characterized by tight control of light, generally short ceiling, and a lack of extraneous space. All three houses function in a completely different domestic paradigm than today’s residential housing stock. Wright’s signature styles of compression and release and geometric efficiency of space stood in sharp contrast to the contemporary residential style of orthographic expansion and redundancy. This is all part of the drama of his architecture. Falling Water, which has a total of 5,330 square feet (2885 square foot interior; 2445 square foot terraces) and a guest house of 1,700 square feet, is comparable to many of the McMansions of recent years with their 3,500 Square feet of interior space; but yet they somehow feel larger and grander. Even the minuscule solar decathlon houses which are often criticized for being free standing one bedroom apartments feel palatial compared to Wright’s 1200 square foot two bedroom, 1 bath, with office Pope-Leighey House.

All of that said, there is a comfort to be found in these small quarters. Everything feels more appropriate and human scaled and so well designed that additional space would be an unwelcome excess. Furthermore, these houses, unlike our modern bog-box storage units, are designed with a bare modicum of storage locations. The house is on display, not your collectibles. That is not to say these houses are austere, far from it, nor are they filled with a Rococo style of ornament. They walk a fine line between monk’s cell and IKEA showroom.

Preservation Matters: A Video

Above is the keynote address from the Tulane School of Architecture sponsored symposium: Preservation Matters by Tulane Alum and Editor of Architectural Record magazine, Robert Ivy, FAIA. The speech is a long overdue acknowledgement of the work of the Preservation Studies / Historic Preservation Program headed by my past professor, Eugene Cizek, FAIA and a discussion of the historic preservation movement within the city of New Orleans and Tulane’s role through the twentieth century. I have to laud the efforts of the new Dean of the Architecture School, Kenneth Schwartz, who introduces the conference and Mr. Ivy. Regional Modernism has a more detailed synopsis of the presentation.

Throughout my years at the school, I always felt that the historical importance of place and the efforts of the preservation program to bring this idea to the student body was too often bulldozed by a blind passion for high modernism and other international styles. Issues of climate and green design were handled in the structural technology classes, but too often they did not play a part in the critically explored design studio work.

As an aside, I spent a number of minutes trying to figure out where they held this symposium. This lecture hall does not remind me of any space within the building while I was there. The main lecture hall is sloped, while this is obviously flat. Eventually after much head scratching I reread the symposium invitation and realized that this was held in the new University Student Center. Now I’m glad to see that this building (which was under repair for most of my years at Tulane) is in use, but I have to wonder if this type of event shouldn’t have been held at Richardson Memorial Hall (the Architecture School) where it could have had a greater influence on the student body and faculty.

Preservation, not just for berries anymore!

[Image via Tulane School of Architecture .]

Tulane School of Architecture is hosting a one day symposium at the end of January focusing on Historic Preservation. The keynote speaker will be Robert Ivy, FAIA and one of my favorite professors, Eugene Cizek, FAIA, will be providing commentary. This symposium is free and open to the public. If I was able to be in New Orleans, I would love to attend.

In light of the natural and governmental disasters in the past few years and the public policy debates currently raging within New Orleans, this symposium seems slightly overdue. I am glad to see that the new Dean of the Architecture School, Kenneth Schwartz, FAIA, is doing something that should have been done years ago. The historic preservation program is one of the few distinguishing elements of the Tulane School of Architecture, it helps ground architectural education at TSA to “the place” as well as “the time.” In the time I was at school, it felt as if the program did not get as much attention and funding as some of the more esoteric modernist pursuits. At times we felt like the red-headed step children of the school.

I may not personally agree with all the philosophical and ideological teachings I was taught during my historic preservation classes, but i do credit this program for helping me make the shift from design student to practicing professional. It was the only area of my education where material interactions with environmental factors as a function of building life were ever considered critical, or even discussed; it is also the only time we were able to, never mind required to, design an adaptive reuse project. This program helped introduce students to public planning officials and organizations and better inform our understanding of the political and legal process of building and protecting structures. It also broke the design bubble fostered in many of the other studios by merging design students with masters of preservation students (MPS) who were rarely design professionals.

An open letter to the Municipal Government of New Orleans

As a former resident of New Orleans, Tulane School of Architecture alumni, a preservationist, and as a future architect I implore you to stop the destruction of modernist buildings in New Orleans.

Ever since the Vieux Carré Commission stood up to Robert Moses and the original planned route for I-10, there has been an understanding in New Orleans that its buildings are the presents physical link with the city’s history, and that history and tourists desire to explore it and embrace it has been the economic engine that has allowed rebuilding to be a possibility. If there has been one place that preservation has failed in New Orleans, it is in regards to Modernist architecture. The city was done a historical and architectural disservice with the destruction of the Rivergate, a building that was unique in New Orleans’s architectural landscape.

We now stand on a precipice, the bulk of the schools scheduled to be closed and demolished are some of the few examples of southern regional Modernism in New Orleans. With their destruction we stand to lose a huge part of our architectural and cultural history. In addition, by demolishing the schools we are only contributing more waste to the environment, and ever since Katrina New Orleans has contributed more than its fair share of construction and demolition waste. Instead these buildings should be preserved, even if their former purpose is lost. Let them be redeveloped into apartments and condos, civic centers and community centers, or supermarkets and office parks; all of which have been done with former warehouse and mill buildings within the city, why not schools?

It has been 5 years since I last set foot in my city, and I know the economic and cultural landscape have changed since I’ve left. But I cannot imagine driving down Claiborne and not passing Eleanor McMain High School nor will Carollton-Riverbend ever be the same without the voices of school children echoing from the Audubon Charter School (formerly Lusher Upper School). I know that I was not born and raised in New Orleans, but it is more my home than anywhere else I have lived. I may just be another Yankee who lost his heart to New Orleans, but I found my voice and my soul there. I hope that when my life brings me back to the only city I call mine, it will be to a place with a full sense of its past and present and a hope for its future.

Article: Urban Renewal or Malpractice?

Workers are tearing off the old skin to make this Katherine Hepburn into Kathrine Zeta Jones.

[Image via curbed.com]

Curbed has an article about an early 20th century façade being torn down in Manhattan to put up a glass box (apparently, this project has been in the works for some time, but is just starting construction, see this other article for before and after pictures of the overall building). The preservationist in me cries out in disgust.

This building is a great example of early 20th century architecture. The chicago style windows fitted between corinthian columns and thinner windows above that emphasis the vertical nature of this early 20th Century skyscraper scream pre-Modern to me. In an other time, the loss of a fabric building like this wouldn’t even be a story, but in the age of historic preservation and with New York City rekindling its romance with glass and steel it begs me ask the question: Do famous buildings, like famous people, deserve celebrity treatment, or is the fabric of a city an integral part of its cultural landscape worth preserving just as much as its standouts? In cities with historic districts the answer has been a resounding yes, but this historic treatment does not always extend to this past century. Some architects/preservationists who would chain themselves to a building by Burnham and Root were the ones calling the loudest for the destruction of the Rivergate in New Orleans. Again this leaves me to wonder, should history be forcibly frozen in the streets of our cities and towns, or should innovation and advancement be allowed free reign and history left to a museum and historical parks? I don’t have the answer, but I know that there is a livable middle between those extremes.

As for 3 Columbus Circle, I wish the architect and developer had looked at the Hearst Tower before they decided that total skin replacement was the way to go.