The Revitalist

Does architecture define our own personal views? As Pogrebin argues in his article, “I’m the Designer. My Client’s the Autocrat”, all architecture has ulterior motives in many spheres—be it financial, political, religious—architecture is not architecture without contextual purpose.

Still, many architects believe they can separate themselves from the context and design simply for the sake of design. Consider many of the great buildings throughout history—most encompassed some political or religious ideal. Even within the movement of humanism, powerful merchants used the archetypes of the time to raise their status and power. We could even argue that much of significant architecture, which remains, is such because of its surrounding context. Perhaps it even remains because of its context—consider the basis of preservation initiatives.

But, the ethics of designing for a nation or person whose actions or beliefs you are fully against still remains. As China and Dubai suck in many of the major architects of our day, few architects remain who stand for national ideals through refusing to accept enticing international commissions. The reward is too great and the loss of integrity undervalued.  (Image: CCTV in Beijing, Rem Koolhaas; This is where China will screen and censor the Olympics before they're broadcast to the world.)

So, what do ethics mean in design? Is it more ethical to design in the hope of engaging societies through architecture to help them move in the right direction, or should architects refuse services to nations who are not in accordance with their own nation’s values? But perhaps design transcends ethical boundaries. Just consider the following:  if Bernini had refused to design for the Vatican or Postnik for Ivan IV, would architecture have progressed to where it is today?

Read more in the July issue of Architectural Record about China and building ethics. 

In 1801 in Canton, Massachusetts the first copper-rolling mill was founded by none other than Paul Revere. In its hey-day this mill produced both the dome of the Massachusetts State House and the hull of the USS Constitution. While the copper rolling days of the Revere & Sons Mill are long behind us, its future existence is being questioned. In 2007 a Chicago-based developer, Napleton Acquisition LLC, purchased the mill and nearby J.W. Revere Barn, and in May submitted a request for a demolition permit after a zoning change was rejected by the planning board. Specific plans for the site and unclear reasons for potential demolition are leaving many uneasy. Find out more about the situation by clicking here, and more about the history of this site by clicking here.

Sad news for the City of Holyoke as one of the city's earliest paper mills smolders after a devastating 9-alarm fire. The Parsons Paper Co. on Sargeant Street, a 300,000 sf mill which takes up three city blocks, was abandoned in 2005 with $1.8 million in back taxes on the books- Sunday night it erupted in flames for reasons yet unknown. In a city with an amazing core of historic fabric but with a struggling economy, this is a major loss on many levels. What is interesting and even more sad is that we recently became aware of an advocate who had some creative ideas of how to put the Parson Paper Co. Mill back into service. We hope that this loss will serve to inspire more intensity in preservation and re-development efforts for the remaining historic building stock in Holyoke.

It seems like the question of whether a particular structure is worth preserving will always be addressed as the thirty-year mark approaches and it becomes eligible for the lists. Though some buildings are recognized as being eligible for and needing preservation even prior to this milestone, many buildings are not even considered until many years later.

Post-war structures face quite a bit of opposition as many of them are not viewed in a pleasurable light by the general public. Perhaps the reason for this distaste relates to our relatively calm current state—contrasting the origin of Brutalist design in period when society found the appearance of defensive strength and fortitude beautiful and comforting. The head of the Columbia University preservation department provided this as an argument for the preservation of Boston’s City Hall in his keynote address at the Campus Heritage Symposium in Boston in October 2007.

The United States is about to open up their embassy in Berlin—a project highly contested by the Germans for several reasons. First and foremost is the controversial site, but the Germans are offended greatly by the way the new US embassy on the Pariser Platz engages or refuses to engage in dialogue with the Brandenburg Gate and other important historic German buildings surrounding the site. It comes as a slap in the face for the US Embassy building to “fold its arms” against Germany though the US refutes this interpretation of its intention.

Brutalist buildings were accepted during their period and many even loved for a short amount of time. Now, it seems the US is responding to bombings at the Kenya and Tanzania embassies and the September 11 attacks (follow this link to read about new guidelines which were considered during the building of the German Embassy), so its defensive stance is not without reason from an American standpoint. Still, the building was not built on American soil, so the German interpretation has validity as they are the people directly affected by the solid placement of the US embassy.
Ironically, the US has now erected a wall which stands against the same site where Reagan declared to Gorbachev, “tear down this wall”.

On May 19th the US Green Building Council released V.3, I think they are calling it LEED 2009.
I learned about this from Wendy Nicholas, Director of the Northeast Office of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. She also directed me to a posting on the National trust blog by Barbara A. Campagna, AIA LEED AP of Graham Gund Architects.
As a developer trying to do preservation redevelopment, I would like to think I am building in a sustainable and responsible fashion but have been frustrated that the emerging best standard for green buildings, the LEED standard, has not been attainable for preservation projects such as ours. We recently did an analysis of a 75,000 mill redevelopment effort and determined that the added cost of basic LEED certification was between $7.50 and $10.00/ sq ft. We could not conclude that there was any demonstrable benefit to income. Worse, we received an equal point score for re-using a building or having covered bike storage. Our buildings are usually 120+ year-old brick and timber mills in downtown settings.

The headline says it all: "'Green' Buildings Don't Have to Be New." The NY Times catches on to all the green renovations of existing buildings that are going on across the country using the US Green Building Council's LEED for Existing Buildings program—revised standards were released last October.

An ad from The National Trust's Sustainability Initiative

The PreservationNation blog points out a new Embodied Energy Calculator that is available at thegreenestbuilding.org website. You select your building type, put in your square feet, and the calculator spits out an estimate on the number of MBTUs per square foot that it took to build your building. The idea is to reinforce the concept that preservation is an inherently sustainable style of development because it capitalizes on the energy already expended to build our existing structures. The site also includes a Teardown Calculator that attempts to sum the lost embodied energy, the energy expended in the demolition and the energy investment in the new construction.

To take this one step further, the National Trust is working on a methodology for Life Cycle Assessment for historic structures, as part of their Sustainability Initiative. An LCA seeks to encompass all the energy and materials consumed throughout a building's lifecycle, including resource extraction, energy consumed in manufacturing, use and disposal, etc. That, of course, is a much bigger project, but it could make a compelling case for reuse over demo.

The H.H. Richardson House in Brookline has a new owner. The house was listed on the National Trust's 11 Most Endangered Places 2007 list because it had been left unsecured against the elements for several years and then acquired by two concerned neighbors who were anxious to sell. The new owner is the H.H. Richardson Trust, whose spokesman is Michael Minkoff, who is also owner of National Development Corp, a D.C. based adative reuse developer. He says that his plans are to preserve the facade, several of the front rooms, Richardson's highly customized master bedroom, and other features. He will build an addition to the rear of the building. He did not say what use he plans for the house.

211-215 Pearl Street. (211 being prepared for demo.) From Alan Solomon's blog Pearl Street Revival.

Sean mentioned recently that he had been enthralled by a piece in the New Yorker about one of the city's preservation sagas (sorry, only the abstract is online). The story of 211 Pearl Street has all the making of a good thriller: a mysterious pattern in brickwork long hidden from sight, a shadowy corporate entity who wants to tear it down, a lost connection with the country's economic history, and a man obsessed with knowing the building's secrets and saving it. If this were a Disney movie, there would also be a beautiful, but skeptical, preservationess; the shadowy corporation would employ gun-toting thugs; the building's rediscovery would restore a worthy but disinherited heir's fortune; and the hero and heroine would be chased through the jungle and make a breathtaking jump off a waterfall (in Manhattan?). But this is real life, so the demo permits eventually went through and the would-be savior of the building had to content himself with saving what pieces he can.

A New York Times article from 2003 lays out the story. 

Alan Solomon has continued to track down the history of the building and the mysterious symbol in the brickwork. Read about it on his blog Pearl Street Revival. 

A Boston fire alarm box. (Photo: Mike Legeros on Flickr)
There are photos from around the world on Flickr that are tagged firealarmbox.

Someone must have put a bug in the Globe's ear about this one. A recent article looks at the 1,259 street fire boxes in the city of Boston. The familiar red boxes with a pull lever transmit a signal (including the box location) via telegraph to the Boston Fire Department almost instantaneously. Boston and several neighboring cities, including Cambridge and Brookline, have been maintaining their boxes in the face of recurring criticism that they should be scrapped now that we are in the digital age. The Fire Department points out that the boxes work when the power is out and the cell circuits are busy and for those who don't speak English or know where they are. Critics point out that it cost the city $1.8M last year to maintain the boxes (employees and parts), and that they are a large source of false alarms. For me, they add a bit of charm to the streetscape and add a sense of security to being out on the street.

 By the way, if you're interested in this kind of thing, the article mentions that Boston was the site of the first municipal fire alarm system. There is a bronze plaque at Old City Hall acknowledging the location of the system that was installed by IEEE in 2004.