Tag Archives: architecture

Scale, urban design, and architecture

CC image from MV Jantzen

Last week’s City Paper cover story, a profile of DC architect Eric Colbert by Lydia DePillis, contains several jabs at Colbert’s not-so-daring designs:

You may not remember precisely what they look like, though. They form a background blur in neighborhoods where much of Colbert’s work is clustered, blending together quietly in the mind of people walking down the street—just the way the neighbors, developers, and bankers intended.

Throughout the article, there’s an undercurrent of disappointment about this blending in that Colbert accomplishes, as if the lack of a bold design is the sign of a bad design.  What’s missing in this conception, however, is the difference in scale between architecture and urban design, between the scale of a building and the scale of a city.

Colbert is now a major influence on entire neighborhoods, not just individual blocks. Nowhere is this truer than greater 14th Street, where Elinor Bacon had accorded him the status of the Creator. But unlike his more imperialistic architectural predecessors, who knew they’d get to design large chunks of the city at once (and often had their own money in the deal), Colbert doesn’t think about leaving an imprint on the built environments he’s played a huge part in shaping.

“You know, it’s hard, because each project comes to us individually, with a different client, a different set of neighbors,” he says, when I ask whether he thinks about molding a place like 14th and U. “We really look at the block. It never occurred to me that we would be doing four projects on 14th Street, with potentially two more in the wings. So it wasn’t possible to know in advance, and say, ‘This is how I’m going to shape 14th Street.”

“Not that I would want to be that controlling,” he adds.

Even the more “imperialistic” predecessors DePillis mentions (Harry Wardman, for example*) weren’t really ‘shaping’ their areas of the city so much as they were styling it.  The shape of the city is a product of urban design and the way that the buildings frame public spaces, as opposed to architecture that operates at a smaller scale.  In unpacking Colbert’s appeal, DePillis hints at the real forces shaping that design:

In Washington, where knowing local zoning codes and historic districts saves time and angst, hiring an architect remains a model of shopping locally. With the exception of Georgetown-based Eastbanc and local heavyweight JBG, who are willing to spend a bit more on a name-brand architect from out of town, most developers have a stable of local architects and rotate through them. “It’s a small town feel to it, and nobody likes outsiders,” says Four Points Development’s Stan Voudrie, who retained Colbert for his Progression Place project in Shaw. “D.C.’s a little bit of a closed loop.”

What’s Colbert’s competitive advantage? In large part, it’s that Colbert isn’t just an architect. He’s a development partner through all stages of a project, from conception to interior design to city review processes to working with contractors through the mundane details of construction—which a snootier designer might consider beneath him.

Emphasis mine.  In short, the codes shape the built form of the city, if not the architectural style of the individual buildings.  Building a narrative about an individual’s style and his ability to shape the city accordingly is enticing, but the more important forces are legal ones. Now, whether those codes are shaping the city as intended or not is another question.

The other question is if bold architecture is wanted. Every city needs the kind of urban fabric that provides the bulk of the buildings but tends to blend into the surrounding context (more often, it is the surrounding context). That Colbert aims to contribute to this shouldn’t be a negative. Jahn Gehl has repeatedly noted how Dubai’s emphasis on monumental architecture with no surrounding context (“birdshit architecture“) fails to create a sense of place.  If every building tries to be unique, then none of them are.

*I’ve been meaning to link to this map from Park View DC, showing the development of various tracts of land over time in Park View. The key takeaway is that almost all of our cherished residential neighborhoods were once created via for-real estate development. Too often, NIMBY attitudes seem to denigrate developers, but this is merely the process of city building in action.  These old rowhouses are no different, they’ve just aged over time.

Some for you, some for Mies – a defense of DC’s MLK Library

IMG_2103(Mies’ Chicago Federal Plaza, with Alexander Calder’s Flamingo sculpture.  A note about the lack of people in the plaza – this photo was taken with a temperature of about -5 degrees and a wind chill well below that.  Author’s photo)

Today, Lydia DePillis has a guest post from Kriston Capps offering a well-put defense of DC’s oft-maligned MLK Library, the sole work of Mies van der Rhoe in the city.  DePillis recently wrote about DCPL’s building boom and the modern taste it has.  Capps defends Mies’ design and chalks up the library’s deficiencies to poor maintenance of the building, but also falling victim to the larger social ills that often make the location undesirable.

But more than a renovation, even, the MLK Library needs city serves downtown to step up. It will never be an inviting place like Shaw or Tenleytown until the city does something to serve D.C.’s homeless population downtown. The library serves as a de facto shelter and has since before Armstrong v. District of Columbia Public Library. Mayor Williams was kidding himself to say that it was a lack of WiFi, and not an abundance of homeless men, keeping families away.

Design matters – but it can only do so much.

The MLK Library has always reminded me of the uniquely frustrating promise of the District. Here is the start of this soaring Mies skyscraper that stops before it starts, well short of the Seagram Building in New York or 860–880 Lake Shore Drive in Chicago. We get a Mies, but a Mies cut off at its knees. It’s a perfect architectural metaphor for the almost-urbanism that characterizes life in Washington.

Mies isn’t all skyscrapers, of course.  I’ve visited other low-slung libraries of his (on Chicago’s IIT campus) that work well.  I’d also argue that Mies’ other works do work well in “almost-urbanism” of places like Detroit’s Lafayette Park, or when given sufficient space to contrast against the predominant urban fabric as the Seagram Building or Chicago’s Federal Plaza do.  The MLK Library instead conforms to the city’s plan and fabric, with only the slight jog in G Street NW as it skirts the Portrait Gallery offering a chance to see the building from a distance.

It’s certainly not Mies’ best work, but the library isn’t the negative many make it out to be.  With some thoughtful renovations to care for the original design, it has potential to be a great public space once again – insofar as design alone can tackle the human challenges of the library’s primary users.

Things that matter

Museo Guggenheim Bilbao - from La Tête Krançien

Museo Guggenheim Bilbao - from La Tête Krançien

Mammoth directs our attention to this post from LA Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne, talking about the systemic flaws of lists of the best buildings (and architecture criticism in general):

When Vanity Fair magazine recently released the results of a survey ranking the most significant pieces of architecture of the last 30 years — with Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, topping the list — the poll was met with more than a little grumbling. Some people griped about the many architects, including Richard Meier and Daniel Libeskind, who voted for their own work (talk about a vanity fair!); others noted that the average age of those polled, a group including architects, critics and academics, seemed to be pushing 70.

Mammoth also notes the tendency for architects to nominate their own buildings to the list – particularly the ones that don’t show up on any other lists.  Another criticism was the list’s complete whiff on any green architecture, spurring an alternative contest with an emphasis on sustainability.  Hawthorne delves into the more fundamental issue:

Asking voters to submit a list of single buildings necessarily produces results that give a skewed view of the way architecture — and more important, the way we think and write about it — has evolved in recent years.Among critics and architects alike, there has been a growing understanding that architecture is not just about stand-alone icons but is tied inextricably to real-estate speculation, urban planning, capital flows, ecology and various kinds of networks. Similarly, ambitious architecture criticism now means a good deal more than than simply writing about impressive new landmarks, green or not, produced by the world’s best-known firms […]

Maybe, in other words, the most important achievement in green architecture over the last 10 or 30 years is not a single building at all. Maybe it’s a collection of schools or linked parks or the group of advisors brought together by a young mayor somewhere. Maybe it’s a new kind of solar panel, a tax credit or a zoning change. Maybe it’s tough to hang a plaque on — or photograph for a magazine spread.

Emphasis is mine.  The same logic applies to the environmental benefits of urban density and city living, as opposed to just adding LEED certified buildings.   How about hanging that green award on a carbon tax or the elimination of parking minimums.

Gehry to Planners: Drop Dead

From Catherine V on flickr

From Catherine V on flickr

Can’t help but mention this – from the UK’s Independent, a conversation with architect (but not a fucking starchitect, damn it) Frank Gehry: (hat tip – planetizen)

“I don’t know who invented that fucking word ‘starchitect’. In fact a journalist invented it, I think. I am not a ‘star-chitect’, I am an ar-chitect…” Just 10 minutes into the interview, Frank Owen Gehry, the world’s most feted building designer, is already a bit irate. A short, owlish man, who looks younger than his 80 years, he speaks quietly when left to his own devices, and meanders, never quite finishing one train of thought before it segues into the next. When he is tackling something more contentious, though, he relaxes and becomes animated. His head rises and so does his voice. He even smiles. This is a man who likes a scrap.

Fiesty!

But other charges are a little harder to dismiss – or at least they rile him rather more. Shouldn’t he make some more socially relevant buildings? Aren’t his designs too extravagant? Times are tough, after all. This lights the touchpaper as effectively as the s-word. “We are architects … We serve customers!” he barks. “I can’t just decide myself what’s being built. Someone decides what they want, then I work for them. Look, I went to city planning school at Harvard and I discovered that you never got to change a fucking thing or do anything. Urban planning is dead in the US.”

So that’s urban planning dealt with. Gehry doesn’t really do discussion.

Thanks for the kind words, Frank. Infrastructurist chimes in with their thoughts:

Is urban planning in fact dead in the U.S.?

Short answer: No, but it has some serious health problems. When you consider the massive projects in areas like Tysons Corner and the efforts of New York’s Janette Sadik-Khan, it’s clear that innovation in urban planning hasn’t entirely met its demise — though granted, there are certainly problems with our accepted paradigms for city planning, such as the idea that cars should be the locus of urban design.

It’s always interesting to me to see what ideas and topics people will pawn off on the faceless profession of ‘urban planning.’  So, the field gets no credit for innovative policies and designs, yet has to bear the burden of past mistakes and zoning codes?  In the comments, BeyondDC nails the real reason planning and planners are so important:

Only an egomaniac would think Gehry’s stylistic contributions to pop culture make a bigger difference than writing the laws that guide development. Please.

It’s easy to think you’re providing real change when you’re creating shiny titanium monuments, but that doesn’t do much for the everyday spaces we inhabit and use on a daily basis.  Planning isn’t (and shouldn’t be) about doing what Gehry’s done for architecture – deconstructing buildings and making everything a bright shiny object – so it’s no wonder he thinks the profession is dead.  That’s not how cities work, nor is it how they are built.

But, if we’re in need of a new sculpture or a new monument, we know just who to ask.