The Third Law isn’t nearly as universal as the first two, but it does suggest some possibilities. One thinks, for example, of the magnificent railroad stations that were built as late as the 1930s in far-flung American cities like Buffalo and Cincinnati, just as rail was, you’d think predictably, about to give way to the car and the plane. Or think of the imperial architecture of Britain, in London and New Delhi, as the Empire began to weaken in the early years of the 20th century. Photo ' Jeff Goldberg/Esto Polshek's Newseum opened as newspapers face threats to their survival.
I’m baffled by people who dismiss whole categories of things. Two decades ago, I was summoned to the office of House & Garden’s new editor in chief, Anna Wintour, and saw my dumbfounded expression reflected in her sunglasses as she declared, “I don’t like adjectives. You use too many adjectives. That’s all.” How can you eliminate a major part of speech, I wondered? Did she realize that her ultimate accolade — “It’s so modern” — is one-third adjective? But now I confess complete antipathy to an entire building type: the visitor center. Photos ' Paul Warchol The Capitol Visitor Center
My misgivings about “interpretive” interventions in historic precincts grew during a 2003 trip to see a trio of additions at Philadelphia’s Independence National Historical Park: Bohlin Cywinski Jackson’s Liberty Bell Center; Kallmann, McKinnel & Wood’s Independence Visitor Center; and Pei Cobb Freed’s National Constitution Center. I’ve admired work by each of those partnerships elsewhere, but at Independence Mall, all three seemed badly miscast, particularly Bohlin Cywinski Jackson. Perhaps they were intimidated by the setting’s gravitas, or were persuaded to abandon their woodsy post-and-beam manner for a less congenial mix of masonry and metal. Whatever the reason, inside their new shelter
I’m baffled by people who dismiss whole categories of things. Two decades ago, I was summoned to the office of House & Garden’s new editor in chief, Anna Wintour, and saw my dumbfounded expression reflected in her sunglasses as she declared, “I don’t like adjectives. You use too many adjectives. That’s all.” How can you eliminate a major part of speech, I wondered? Did she realize that her ultimate accolade — “It’s so modern” — is one-third adjective? But now I confess complete antipathy to an entire building type: the visitor center. Photos ' Paul Warchol The Capitol Visitor Center
Medellín, the second-largest city in Colombia, has been known and labeled for decades as a place of violence and anarchy related to the drug-trafficking conflict.
Architect Giancarlo Mazzanti’s Biblioteca España [RECORD, November 2008], completed in 2007, is one of the 10 “park-libraries” built as part of the social plan for the city’s most neglected sections. Standing as a powerful symbol of a new cultural era, the building’s three rocklike volumes visually dominate what used to be the most violent and stigmatized part of town. Nearby is Carlos Pardo’s Santo Domingo Savio High School, one of the five proposed schools for low-income sectors. Although not completely finished, due to budget cuts and irregularities in the original financial plan, the school, which overlooks Medellín’s barrios with terraces
The problem of adding onto an icon. To recognize a masterpiece in a lovely building is no great feat; the trick is to spot one in an object as insolent, as splendidly belligerent, as Paul Rudolph’s Art and Architecture Building at Yale. Few did so when it opened in 1963; it seemed willfully provocative, as if its baffling spatial sequences and corrugated concrete walls were expressly devised to repulse understanding, let alone affection. As it happened, it existed in this shocking form for only a few years before it was mauled beyond recognition. Now the A&A has been restored by
Photo courtesy Peter Schubert Peter Schubert Congress and President Obama successfully negotiated a stimulus package that should bring economic relief, and the U.S. Conference of Mayors has listed 15,221 infrastructure projects in 641 cities that are “ready to go.” But while speed in getting work started and jobs created is key, the importance of good design, which will last for generations, should not be lost in the haste. We need to ensure that the money spent goes to creative, sustainable buildings that will stand the test of time and will still be used by our children and our grandchildren. After
High-profile buildings by big names aside, new buildings in San Francisco and the Bay Area tend to be nondescript—especially the infill housing projects that often look like nothing so much as interchangeable product wrapped in unimaginative garb.
Bay Area architects see their affordable housing work as part of a long tradition of progressive culture and urbanism. That concern can spawn buildings where the aesthetic goal is to fade into the background—as is the case with many San Francisco affordable-housing projects from the 1980s and ’90s. Now, especially in more transitional districts, there’s a desire to make a splash, not just among bureaucrats or architects, but nonprofit developers who often represent a new generation of decision-makers. Photo ''Brian Rose One of Baker’s frequent clients is Citizens Housing Corporation, a 16-year-old company that has 23 complexes in the Bay
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