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Providence is beautiful

8/11/2015

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This week, architectural gadfly, David Brussat, offers a photo essay on Westminster St.


Victoria, Billy and I adventured to Westminster Street to see a friend, Elaine Ostrach Chaika, speak about her book, Humans, Dogs and Civilization, at a bookstore, Symposium Books. Afterwards, we walked up Westminster to Empire, where we dipped into the Foo Fest, an annual block party held by the arts cooperative AS220, I had my camera, and here are some results:
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Heading back to the car after a pleasant afternoon on beautiful Westminster Street in downtown Providence.
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Mission: Impossible in RI?

7/30/2015

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Marriott hotel set for October groundbreaking in Spartanburg, S.C. (DRSM)
Here is a 10-story Marriott hotel scheduled for October groundbreaking in downtown Spartanburg, S.C. It is lovely, and it is being proposed, designed and built by people quite as human as those who do such work in downtown Providence, R.I., where two cheesy suburban hotels have been proposed that belong out on Jefferson Boulevard, near T.F. Green State Airport.

Is it truly beyond the capacity of Rhode Island architects to design something as beautiful as what is being built in Spartanburg, S.C.?

Spartanburg, S.C., for Christ’s sake!

Is it truly beyond the capacity of Rhode Island developers to imagine building something as nice as this hotel? Is it beyond the capacity of the political leadership of Rhode Island to imagine why the state should seek architecture of this quality? I say quality, not cost, because mark my words, the folks down in Spartanburg, S.C., are on a budget, too. Who is not on a budget? Is it beyond the capacity of Rhode Island newspaper editors to imagine why we don’t have to build junk in order to create jobs?

To be sure, the architect for the Spartanburg, S.C., proposal is not from Spartanburg, S.C. He is David M. Schwarz,  who runs a firm in Washington, D.C. He puts his pants on one leg at a time. Can’t our architects do that?

Just asking.
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Eyesore vs. eyesore

7/26/2015

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PictureRendering of proposed hotel in downtown Providence. (gcpvd.org)
The Providence Journal ran an editorial yesterday, “Activity vs. eyesore,” that takes a conventional attitude toward economic development that could ensure that Providence’s economy will never be as robust as it ought to be.

The editorial supports razing the city-owned Fogarty Building to build an extended-stay hotel proposed by the Procaccianti Group, of Cranston. The stand puts the paper’s editorial board (of which I was a member for 30 years) at odds with local preservationists, who hold an inordinate regard for this empty, leaky, stinky, ugly hulk.

PictureFogarty Building. (flickr.com)
It is a former human-services office designed by Castellucci, Galli & Planka Associates and opened in 1967. Its architectural style is not called Brutalist for nothing. Yes, the name comes from béton brut, or “rough concrete” in French, but it has stuck because of its accurate connotation. It deserves to be torn down. (I wrote about it in “Not so hard to say yes to beauty” on Feb. 15, 2007.)

Unfortunately, the building proposed by Procaccianti looks even uglier than the Fogarty. It is strictly suburban, and would feel much more at home out on Jefferson Boulevard. The Fogarty site is on Fountain Street next to the Journal’s lovely Neo-Georgian headquarters, designed by Albert Kahn and completed in 1934 (with its fourth floor added in 1949). The Fogarty should not be torn down unless something better – significantly better, considering the sluggardly merits of the Fogarty – is proposed. Even with the jobs, revenue and “activity” that are promised, this hotel does not qualify.

“A bright new hotel would be a vast improvement,” reads the editorial. Yes indeed, but again, this hotel does not qualify as a bright new hotel. The Journal has bought into the argument for jobs at any cost. But the cost can be too high. We recognize that when cost is conceived in terms of municipal subsidies, but there are other kinds of costs, too. The cost of inflicting a hotel that looks like this on Providence would be too high.

An old monstrosity always holds out the hope of replacement by something the public can admire, something that will build upon the city’s historical character, and possibly earn a higher return. A new monstrosity promises to glare at us for decades. Why replace a building we can blame on our fathers with a building we can blame only on ourselves?

Act in haste, repent at leisure!

The city deserves better. Tell Procaccianti to hold its horses and submit a superior design that strengthens the state’s brand rather than diluting it. If it refuses, the city should wait it out while seeking a new developer.

The city and state do themselves a disservice by assuming that second best is the best Rhode Island can do. We have embraced second best in the Route 195 Corridor, in the Capital Center District, at RISD, at Brown and at Providence College (the latter two having briefly seemed to learn their lesson). Please, not downtown as well! Why must Rhode Island sell itself short every time? Mediocre is not the new excellent. The Ocean State deserves better, and should demand it. Genuine prosperity requires it.

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Bibliotopia in Tiverton

7/21/2015

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Tiverton Public Library, designed by Union Studios, in Providence. (Union Studios)
PictureEssex Library. (tivertonlibrary.org)
Tiverton, which faces the twin threat of a mega-retail/residential development and a new casino amid its charms, may rejoice that it has a beautiful new public library under its belt. When the design was shown to me several years ago I said to myself, “Not gonna happen!”

But there it is in all its glory.

The Providence Journal, in Christine Dunn’s story “A new chapter begins for town’s public library,” reports that 500 new library cards have been issued since its opening in June. Also, it came in $500,000 below its $11 million budget. At 23,886 square feet, the new library dwarfs its cute predecessor, the Essex Library.

The photo above shows a library that breathes in the traditionally bucolic character of the town. Tiverton is among the loveliest names for a place, and its architecture should reflect the quiet beauty that is its brand.

Designed by Union Studios, in Providence, with Douglas Kallfelz as lead architect, the library’s arched and gabled entry portico features a tower with decorative arches etched into its sides that reflect those of the portico. At the other end, special spaces inside the library are highlighted with gabled bays connected by a terrace behind its own three arches. The design’s simplicity belies the size and complexity of the interior, which has about six times the room as the Essex, which remains.

They say architecture is the great unsung happiness of life. Well, these days that is debatable, but when when a work of design manages to express the pleasure of reading while accommodating the heavier burden that libraries take upon themselves in the modern era, well, it’s no wonder that the market for library cards is in growth mode!

Let us hope Tiverton can thwart the twin evils headed its way – but if the town is not thrice lucky, its leaders should propose that the twin evils (the “mall” and the casino) are made to parade in the falseface of beauty.

(Here is the deep skinny on the new library, “The Story of Tiverton’s Quarter-Century Crusade to Build a New Public Library,” by Gina Macris for the Rhode Island Library Report.)

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A (possible) fall from Grace

7/16/2015

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PictureGrace Episcopal (flicker.com)
(Editor's note: Gadabout David Brussat posted a series of stories about the building of a glass addition on Providence's historic Grace Episcopal Church this week on his blog, Architecture Here and There. We have condensed them into one piece, with subheadings. You're welcome.)


A failure of Grace

The Providence Journal reports today in “Age and Grace” that Grace Episcopal Church, in downtown Providence, plans as part of its restoration to add a new glass addition. This festered within me all day, and so I went downtown to take some pictures to help me assess where it would be added to the church, designed in the Gothic style by the ecclesiastical architect Richard Upjohn, of New York, and opened in 1848. The Journal story, by Patrick Anderson, reads:

Repair work on the building exterior is already under way, and church leaders are finishing plans to extend a new parish hall off the west side of the building. The new hall would replace the church’s current basement gathering space with a glass-enclosed, wheelchair-accessible, single-story structure fronted by a new sanctuary garden.

It seems as if the glass addition would take up at least part of the church’s current parking lot, seen from Westminster Street through a wrought-iron fence. The firm hired for the job is Centerbrook Architects, of Centerbrook, Conn., which designed the elegant restoration and addition to Ocean House in Watch Hill. But a visit to its website reveals that beauty is not the firm’s only product.

A glass addition would almost certainly represent a fall from grace for Grace Church. Even if it were as modest as the glass addition behind Round Top, the Congregational church nearby on Weybosset, it would be as much a spiritual as an aesthetic betrayal of its people, its neighborhood and its mission. Churches are not normally expected to stick their thumb in the eye of their community.

While my family and I were living downtown just a couple blocks from this church, I used to take my little boy Billy, then age 1 or 2, to services there, not to inculcate him early with lofty thoughts but to try to imbue him with a taste for beauty. (You can’t start too early!) I cannot forget its lovely services. The congregation was so nice to Billy and me.

We moved out of downtown with the arrival at Grace of the Rev. Jonathan Huyck. Hard to believe now, but to take the job in Providence he left a congregation in Paris. I have a call in to him, and maybe he will assure me that my skepticism has jumped the gun. A glass parish hall needn’t be an abomination. It could pick up rather than rejecting, as usual, the church’s architecture. But these days that is rare. I will report what he says.

Grace in glass additions

In researching glass additions worthy of downtown Providence’s Grace Episcopal Church, I came across the image above of the Royal Opera House (formerly Covent Garden), designed by Edward Middleton Barry and completed in 1858, with its elegant glass addition followed by a bungled modernist addition with a glass “hinge.”

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The assemblage that makes up the Royal Opera House, in London. (emergenturbanism.com)
PictureTietz Dept. Store, in Berlin. (Michael Rouchell Collection)
The “addition” is actually the former flower market of Covent Garden, which was built in 1830 but absorbed into the opera house in the 1990s. A next-door neighbor became an addition, which doesn’t quite fit the program of Grace Church. Still, it offers an idea for how a glass addition could work.

Another idea comes to us from the Tietz Department Store, in Berlin. Completed in 1900, it no longer survives. But this photo does, and while it has little to say about the fate of Grace Church under the shadow of glass, it does suggest an infinitude of possibility that need not bring an air of sterility, or worse, into the makeup of Richard Upjohn’s local masterpiece.

The department store suggests that even the plainest glass, fitted into a well-articulated frame, can prove enchanting. Even a one-story parish hall of glass is not going to be made entirely of glass. So what framing is contemplated? Something as flat and featureless as glass (bless its heart in all other regards) requires, to set off its asceticism, a degree of ornament in the vertical and horizontal framing members that enclose each pane of plate. It needn’t be elaborate but it mustn’t be as plain as the glass itself.

PictureAwkward moment in downtown Providence. (Photo by David Brussat)
After visiting Grace yesterday I came across this abomination, in which a modernist brick building clouts an elegant pediment from an earlier building. The treatment of the glass in the modernist building is precisely what Grace must strive to avoid.

Traditional Building magazine is a treasure trove of companies that provide a more elegant sort of glasswork. Centerbrook Architects, hired by Grace Church, is certainly aware of that. Let us hope the board of directors at the church is aware of it, too. All of the examples cited here are of greater scale than is contemplated for the single-story addition at Grace Church. This means that a new glass parish house in sync with the church’s original design should be affordable.

Below, coming in just before I sent this post, is an amazing building called the Palmenhaus Schönbrunn in Vienna, Austria. It is an actual greenhouse, built as part of the Schönbrunn Palace. It was bombed in World War II, rebuilt, and reopened in 1953. Hats off to Seth Holman for sending it to TradArch in the nick of time.

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I hope all of this will amount to something interesting to chew on as Grace Church completes its planning for a new parish hall.


Reverend, grace and Grace


Had a very nice talk by phone with the Rev. Jonathan Huyck, of Grace Episcopal Church, and he assured me not just that nothing was set in cement regarding the design of a proposed new parish hall (possibly of glass), but that he understands that there are alternatives to the sort of glass carbuncle the idea of which, for now, is a shadow passing slowly over the future of one of the city’s most beautiful buildings.

He said he would give a traditional design solution for the parish hall equal billing with the modernist “solutions” that he and his board are sure to hear about from those who, as far as beauty is concerned, have already fallen from grace.

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Let Tiverton be Tiverton

7/10/2015

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A very large retail and residential development proposed for Tiverton by the Carpionato Group has advanced through several stages of town review and approval without, so far as I can find online, any indication of what the place would look like. The Journal’s story today, “Big crowd, fiery debate on big development proposal in Tiverton,” had no pictures of the plan, once called Tiverton Crossings and now called Tiverton Glen. But the story suggests that trying to pull a fast one on the citizens of Tiverton is unlikely to succeed.

Carpionato is capable of pleasant enough design packages. Its proposal for a development on the east bank of the Providence River, part of the Route 195 corridor, was beautiful, but it has stalled since the 195 commission sold to a rival developer one of the parcels Carpionato had planned to build on. As for the firm’s signature development, Chapel View on Route 2 in Cranston, its renovation of old buildings of the former state Training School, including the chapel for its juvenile delinquents, was fine, but the overall project is marred by the mediocre quality of new buildings between the old ones.

Carpionato has allowed several projects to fall through, including hotels in Providence on the triangular land at the northeast corner of Burnside Park/Kennedy Plaza, and on land cleared by razing the old Produce Terminal across Route 95 from Providence Place.

What seems clear is that Carpionato lacks the developmental drive to bull its way through local opposition. That should be encouraging to citizens of Tiverton who oppose the firm’s proposal there.

Even if the project Carpionato intends for Tiverton were elegant enough to please Prince Charles, it would be a hard sell in Tiverton, a very low-key, bucolic community. The project is just too big.

Here is a presentation by Carpionato, somewhat confusing as to whether it includes any attempt to illustrate what Tiverton Glen might look like, but generally illustrative of the firm’s aesthetic tastes, which range from excellent to execrable. The apparent absence of architectural renderings for Tiverton Glen on the firm’s or the town planning board’s websites at this stage of the project should certainly raise eyebrows.

Economic development is where the rubber hits the road in a democracy – where voting most directly reflects the interests and the sentiments of citizens. People buy houses and pay property taxes in Tiverton because they like it. They have a right to crank up the drawbridge and keep it that way.

Of course, Carpionato and its supporters in Tiverton have an equal right to argue that the new revenue represented by the proposed development would be worth the erosion of the town’s ambiance, its quality of life. If they can persuade enough Tivertonians of this, then Tiverton is likely to feel the winds of change, like almost every other place.

However, the planners, the council members and the developers do not have a right to trample on the town’s comprehensive plan, which is also a product of its voters and reflects their idea of the paradise they call Tiverton. They have every right to be angry if they conclude that officials are trying to facilitate a Carpionato effort to get around the principles embodied in the comprehensive plan.

My next blog will be about Davy Crockett, the frontiersman from Tennessee who had an especially evocative vocabulary according to The Adventure of English, by Melvyn Bragg. Citizens of Tiverton might find words invented and popularized by the King of the Wild Frontier useful to deploy as the Carpionato project rolls merrily along.

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The consequences of design flaw

7/3/2015

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(Editors note: This blog post, my the inimitable David Brussat, made us wonder, "What if the City of Providence had the same approach to design management?")
PictureKim Jong Un at site of new Pyongyang airport terminal. (DPRK official website)


It It. It appears that the architect of Terminal 2 of North Korea’s international airport, Ma Won Chun, was executed because the Dear Leader failed to appreciate the design. This according to “Kim Jong Un EXECUTES airport architect because he did not like the design,” by Steve White in the Mirror.

The other day Kim and his wife toured the new facility, expected to open this week. Not many people probably noticed the absence of the architect from Kim’s entourage. Ma was executed last November as part of a larger purge for “corrupt practices and failure to follow orders.” Here is a statement that contains Kim’s indictment of the design:

“Defects were manifested in the last phase of the construction of the Terminal 2 because the designers failed to bear in mind the party’s idea of architectural beauty that is the life and soul and core in architecture to preserve the character and national identity,” Kim said, according to NKNews’ transcript of a state media report.

This is not especially chilling only because it is North Korea. Who knows why the guy really had to hang at the end of a rope (or got a bullet in the base of the neck)? It is not the way architects, not even celebrity modernists, usually die in civilized nations.

Imagine if architects here could be executed for “failing to bear in mind the party’s idea of architectural beauty.” Who would “the party” be? The AIA?

In most countries, including America, architects would be at wit’s end to figure out how to avoid execution. They would have to rely on the ability of the “jury” to look deeply into the architect’s ego and measure his zeal to reach the apogee of novelty, rather than judging him according to some culturally determined and generally explicable set of design rules. Pity his lawyer! Figuring out a useful defense strategy for a modernist would be no easier than trying to figure out a rationale for the latest Pritzker Prize selection.

So, while most Americans would probably draw their fingers across their necks to signal their assignment of fate to the architects of their built environment, let us hope it never comes to pass literally, as it seems to have done in Pyongyang.


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Modern GMO Architecture

6/21/2015

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Typical modernist building. (lifepixel.net)
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Typical traditional building. (knoji.com)
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Corncob column capital at U.S. Capitol. (flickr.com)
Yesterday evening I had the pleasure of appearing on WPRO’s Coalition Radio with Pat Ford and David Fisher (6 p.m. Saturdays, 630 AM and 99.7 FM). I was preceded on the air by Elizabeth Guardia of Right to Know RI, which supports legislation in the Rhode Island General Assembly to require labeling of GMO foods in this state. As Elizabeth and her associates filed out of the studio, I had the most alarming epiphany:

Modern architecture is GMO architecture.

GMOs are foods produced by manipulating the gene content of agricultural products. The acronym stands for genetically modified organisms. Instead of mating cows that produce more milk or corn that resists bugs better, as has been done for centuries, strains of corn or cattle feed that accomplishes those goals is produced in a laboratory by manipulating genetic material. GMO opponents think people have a right to know whether food they buy at their groceries was produced using this process. The big fear is that the practice, and research into its safety, has not gone on long enough to ascertain whether it carries hidden dangers.

Likewise, as I pointed out yesterday for the listening audience, modern architecture turns centuries of design practice on its head. Modern architects pride themselves on the novelty of their designs. They ignore best practices evolved over generations to produce the safest, most useful and most attractive buildings. They specialize in, and indeed revel in, the untried and (reluctant as they’d be to admit it) the untrue.

But what scientists are learning is that human neurobiological traits that hark back to our evolutionary survival of the fittest are embedded in traditional architecture. Ornament in particular reflects the information that early humans gathered from their environment to detect, often by instinct, threats ranging from poison in vegetation to tigers in trees. We do not need that sort of information today, but our brains still crave it. Architecture without embellishment literally makes us uneasy, according to such theorists as Nikos Salingaros, a mathematician at the University of Texas in San Antonio. (Full disclosure: I am editing his latest book on the biophilic healing properties in architecture.)


On the other hand, traditional architecture reflects the organized complexity of nature, and is naturally soothing and even alluring to people. Traditional architecture evolves over time in ways that reflect the way nature evolves and reproduces. The slow food movement is the cuisine equivalent of removing GMOs from buildings and the built environment. Modern architecture, alas, labels itself. Consciously and unconsciously, most people prefer traditional to modern architecture. It’s not just “a matter of taste.”

Over a quarter of a century I have blazed new trails in the art of demonizing modern architecture. In recent years, science has become a major ally in that endeavor. So I thank Right to Know RI and Coalition Radio at WPRO for identifying another arrow for my rhetorical quiver.
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    David Brussat

    David is a former architecture writer and editorial board member of the Providence Journal. You can read more of his musings on architecture at www.architecturehereandthere.com

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