Today’s News - Tuesday, September 8, 2020
EDITOR'S NOTE: It feels like we've been away since forever - we're glad to be back! With lots of catching up to do…
● Goldberger's eloquent tribute to developer and "architects' 'Medici'" Gerald D. Hines, who held "to the credo that good design is good business - what he cared about most was fusing a point of intersection between serious design and profit-making real estate development. He took issue with colleagues who saw creative architects as dangerous to the bottom line."
● WSJ critic Michael J. Lewis: "It is hard to know which prospect is worse - that we are no longer capable of making beautiful public spaces, or that we no longer desire them" - that the City Beautiful movement "could die seems inconceivable. Yet die it did, and largely because of modernism" that "still works against the making of beautiful public space."
● Jeff Andrews explains why, "despite what cable news is saying every day, a mass migration to the suburbs isn't happening: There is zero empirical evidence to support such a trend. So why do they keep repeating this thoroughly debunked narrative?"
● Davidson's fab takedown of the gloom-and-doomers - despite meeting friends in the park, farmers' markets, and such, "obviously, New York is a fiery hellscape of crime, anarchy, and misery - from the godlike vantage point of Greenwich, Scarsdale, or Water Mill - nobody could possibly want to live in this ravaged Aleppo-on-Hudson."
● Jessica Helfand's fab Q&A with Allison Arieff, who "reflects on where we are six months into a crisis that has laid bare racial and economic inequalities - 'planning, architecture, city building are in a time of reckoning right now - undergoing this massive period of soul searching and trying to figure out how to do something different."
● Janette Sadik-Khan offers her vision for rethinking "our streets to create the six-foot city" and "a pandemic recovery led by returning urban space to citizens. Streets in the time of Covid-19 offer the precious territory needed to reimagine a new, safer, more inclusive and equitable century."
● Kimmelman "strolls" Jackson Heights, Queens, "the city's most global neighborhood, with author Suketu Mehta: "If I were Baudelaire," the pedestrianized Diversity Plaza "is where I would do my flâneur thing" - Scrabble was invented in Jackson Heights by an unemployed architect (who knew? We want a Kitchen Sink Sundae for eight!).
● Saffron parses the Philadelphia 76ers' vision for Philly's Penn's Landing on the Delaware waterfront: "Depending on how you feel about a bunch of sports executives taking on [the city's] most cursed real estate project, the proposal is either a display of canny ambition or ill-informed greed. There are other reasons to be skeptical."
● UNSW Sydney's Melonie Bayl-Smith "says debates about what is inspired and copied in architecture cut to the heart of the worst aspects of the drive for originality - architecture today suffers not because of plagiarism, but from an originality syndrome - they don't necessarily produce a better building" ("There are no prizes for reinventing the wheel").
● Gabon-born, NYC-based Naila Opiangah bemoans that "Black architects are forced to be palatable in order to be successful - I long for the day where suppressing my identity is no longer part of the job."
● The Architects Foundation aims to help change that with a Black Women in Architecture Scholarship with the Desiree V. Cooper Memorial fund (over 30 architecture firms and studios have committed to matching donations).
● "Architects are the Rodney Dangerfields of the building world," says Vancouver architect Michael Geller: "We get no respect" - it's 'terribly wrong' that architects get so much less than real estate agents"; HMDA's Darryl Condon and Omicron's Kevin Hanvey weigh in as well.
● Hausman & Rossman offer tips for "strategically planning your firm past the COVID-19 pandemic - become nimble, quick, and ready to pivot as circumstances demand: Practice may not make perfect, but it certainly makes you more prepared - planning is not just a spreadsheet of statistics."
● California architect Bill Melby creates a free, downloadable handbook that "cites the types of calamities for which a business should plan, and the tips, tactics, why and how-to of minimizing disaster consequence."
● Hopkirk was the first to report that Richard Rogers is stepping down from RSHP - "his name will be dropped from his practice by July 2022 at the latest" (the plan has been in the works since 2007).
● Wainwright parses "Richard Rogers' thrilling legacy - he has probably influenced the face of urban Britain more than any other architect of the late 20th century" by "his influence on public policy" + link to Wainwright's "Rogers' 10 best buildings - in pictures."
● Ben Flatman ponders: "Where will the next Rogers and Foster come from? We urgently need architects who can capture the public imagination - we seem to lack recognizable and effective public advocates and influencers - it's hard not to feel that the profession and our built environment would both benefit from a new Foster or Rogers sometime soon."
● ANN feature: RKTB's Carmi Bee parses the firm's Infill Housing Prototype that offers a model for developing affordable urban housing on a neighborhood scale, and that also addresses health and safety measures.
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Obituary by Paul Goldberger: Gerald D. Hines, Developer and Architects’ ‘Medici,' 95: He transformed skylines around the world by recruiting blue-chip architects and holding to the credo that good design is good business...a soft-spoken engineer who started out as a builder of small, anonymous warehouses in Houston and went on to transform the business of commercial real estate development...what he cared about most was fusing a point of intersection between serious design and profit-making real estate development. He took issue with colleagues who saw creative architects as dangerous to the bottom line...[he] was the first real estate developer to win the Urban Land Institute J.C. Nichols Prize for Visionary Urban Development... -- I.M. Pei, Harry Cobb; Philip Johnson; John Burgee; Cesar Pelli; Kevin Roche; Jean Nouvel; Frank Gehry; Robert A.M. Stern; Kohn Pedersen Fox (KPF); Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM)- New York Times |
Michael J. Lewis: The Death of Public Beauty: How city planning went wrong: Have we lost the art of making fine public spaces? It is hard to know which prospect is worse - that we are no longer capable of making beautiful public spaces, or that we no longer desire them...Technically speaking, the public space is not quite dead; we still pour extravagant resources into their making...there should be no question that something has gone badly wrong...City Beautiful movement...That such a vital and visually satisfying tradition...could die seems inconceivable. Yet die it did, and largely because of modernism...the legacy of modernism still works against the making of beautiful public space. -- Frank Gehry; Le Corbusier; Mies van der Rohe; Louis I. Kahn; Jane Jacobs; William H. Whyte; Charles Moore; Richard Serra; Roger Scruton- National Review |
Jeff Andrews: No, the Pandemic Is Not Emptying Out America’s Cities: Despite what cable news is saying every day, a mass migration to the suburbs isn’t happening: There is zero empirical evidence to support such a trend. None. Nothing. Zero...housing-market data do not support the theory of an urban exodus...So why do news outlets keep repeating this thoroughly debunked narrative? Well, there are half-truths to the narrative that...form what sounds like a logical idea...journalists seem to be confusing the minor outbound migration from two ridiculously expensive areas [San Francisco and Manhattan] with the double dose of demand happening across the country.- Curbed |
Justin Davidson: Obviously, New York Is a Fiery Hellscape of Crime, Anarchy, and Misery: Bicycling. Meeting friends in the park. Late-summer produce. Nightmarish: Gaze upon New York City from the godlike vantage point of Greenwich, Scarsdale, or Water Mill and you behold an urban wasteland...the trappings of contentment cloak depths of urban misery...nobody could possibly want to live in this ravaged Aleppo-on-Hudson...those who populate the metropolis now are the sad cases, the addled, and the left-behind. That must be true, because by now anyone with any sense or resources, or a healthy sense of fear, has surely heeded the message that hisses ceaselessly through the dead city’s streets: Go! Get out! Head for Greenwich, Scarsdale, or Water Mill!- New York Magazine |
Urban Reckoning: Jessica Helfand talks with writer, editor, and urbanist Allison Arieff. Having written early on in the pandemic about a possible silver lining for cities, Allison reflects on where we are six months into a crisis that has laid bare racial and economic inequalities: "...planning, architecture, city building, etc. are really in a time of reckoning right now...cities and all the people who work on them are just undergoing and need to undergo this massive period of soul searching and trying to figure out how to do something different."- Design Observer |
Janette Sadik-Khan: we must rethink our streets to create the six-foot city: New York’s former transport commissioner explains her vision of a pandemic recovery led by returning urban space to citizens: Masks are the most visible line of defence against the coronavirus...But physical distance is the invisible yet even more crucial barrier against infection...creating a six-foot city is a challenge not of epidemiology but of the geometry of street design...Streets in the time of Covid-19 offer the precious territory needed...to reimagine our avenues for a new, safer, more inclusive and equitable century. School space; Voting space; Commercial space; Transportation space; Social/active space. -- Seth Solomonow- Guardian (UK) |
Michael Kimmelman: Jackson Heights, Queens: Walk Where the World Finds a Home: Stroll through the city’s most global neighborhood with the author Suketu Mehta: [We] “met”...at Diversity Plaza...pedestrianized in 2012, which has become Jackson Heights’s de facto town square and a proud symbol of Queens as the city’s most international borough..."If I were Baudelaire, this is where I would do my flâneur thing...Scrabble was the invention of a Jackson Heights resident (an unemployed architect) named Alfred Butts...architecturally speaking, the neighborhood is not Versailles. There are some really unlovely buildings and shabby dwellings...comes down to its people and their stories - and to the surprise and joy you feel walking down a street like 37th Avenue."- New York Times |
Inga Saffron: Sixers eye more than a new basketball arena along Philly’s Delaware waterfront: Philadelphia 76ers are promising to bring thousands of apartments, a hotel, two museums, a dozen restaurants, a supermarket, a new public school - along with that 19,000-seat arena...team’s vision for Penn’s Landing...one of several...development proposals...Depending on how you feel about a bunch of sports executives taking on [the city's] most cursed real estate project, the Sixers’ proposal is either a display of canny ambition or ill-informed greed...There are other reasons to be skeptical... -- Hargreaves Associates; Cooper Robertson- Philadelphia Inquirer |
Architecture: the fine line between inspired and copied: Melonie Bayl-Smith/UNSW Built Environment says debates about what is inspired and copied in architecture cut to the heart of the worst aspects of the drive for originality...architecture today suffers not because of plagiarism, but from an originality syndrome. “When architects try to do something completely original, they don’t necessarily produce a better building"...the imperative to be unique could be to the detriment of the field...doing something well is more important than doing something for the sake of its novelty. Historically, this is how architecture was principled...many architects are...celebrated for paying homage to their influences...There are no prizes for reinventing the wheel.”- UNSW Sydney Newsroom (University of New South Wales, Australia) |
Naila Opiangah: "I long for the day where suppressing my identity is no longer part of the job": Black architects are forced to be palatable in order to be successful, says New York architectural designer...who shares her experiences of racism within the industry: "Blooming into my full self and attempting to exert my full potential was always something that I felt could negatively affect my career growth; unfortunately, it did...Although a very few of us manage to make it as far as possible, the treatment of the majority of us remains increasingly appalling."- Dezeen |
Katherine Guimapang: Architects Foundation Launches Black Women in Architecture Scholarship: The AIA's philanthropic partner...Desiree V. Cooper Memorial fund...Created to honor the late...DC-based architect who sadly passed in 2015, the scholarship celebrates her work and highlights her efforts as a Black licensed architect in the U.S...over 30 architecture firms and studios have committed to fundraising donations...will be matching donations...- Archinect |
"Architects are the Rodney Dangerfields of the building world," says Vancouver architect Michael Geller: “We get no respect"...it’s “terribly wrong” that architects get so much less than real estate agents. “And architects have more legal liability worries than real estate agents...Society would benefit in the form of better buildings if architects received greater recognition and earned more for their designs"...Darryl Condon/HCMA Architecture + Design: “The possible business models are many and varied and that’s a good thing"; Kevin Hanvey: “The architectural profession began to fragment in the middle of the 20th century, with more and more responsibilities formerly undertaken by architects being taken over by a new generation of specialists. Now, Omicron and other architectural practices are...putting them under one roof again.”- Journal of Commerce (Vancouver) |
Tami Hausman & Lonny Rossman: Strategically planning your firm past the COVID-19 pandemic: As AEC firm leaders consider worst-case scenarios and explore possible solutions to surmount them, they learn to become nimble, quick, and ready to pivot as circumstances demand: Practice may not make perfect, but it certainly makes you more prepared...planning is not just a spreadsheet of statistics. It also requires big-picture thinking about qualitative ideas. -- Matthew Mueller/PBDW Architects; Jonathan Marvel/Marvel Architects; Jim Donaghy/The STO Building Group- Building Design + Construction (BD+C) |
How Ready is Your Firm’s Emergency Readiness? California architect Bill Melby’s handbook cites the types of calamities, i.e., hurricane, wildfire, earthquake or other unforeseen events, for which a business should plan, and the tips, tactics, why and how-to of minimizing disaster consequence: COVID-19 is a slow-moving disaster but regular run-of-the-mill disasters can still happen any time...he decided to create a free downloadable handbook with more details than the typical “top fives” and “stop, drop and roll” educational efforts...cites the types of calamities for which a business should plan, then gets into the tips, tactics, why and how-to of minimizing the consequences of disaster. -- Ordiz-Melby Architects- GlobeSt.com |
Elizabeth Hopkirk: Richard Rogers steps down from RSHP: Exclusive: Architect announces his retirement after more than six decades: The decision...means his name will be dropped from his practice, Rogers Stirk Harbour & Partners, by July 2022 at the latest...in a statement issued to BD the practice said his retirement from the board had been “planned since 2007, as part of the comprehensive succession planning strategy established when the Richard Rogers Partnership became Rogers Stirk Harbour & Partners.” -- Graham Stirk; Ivan Harbour- BD/Building Design (UK) |
Oliver Wainwright: Bamboo airports and psychedelic oil refineries: Richard Rogers' thrilling legacy: The visionary architect behind some of the world’s favourite landmarks - and some of its most expensive housing - is hanging up his pencil. Our critic assesses his impact: ... as an advisor to government, [he] has probably influenced the face of urban Britain more than any other architect of the late 20th century...his impact...has been less about his own buildings and more to do with his influence on public policy...a vision of Barcelona street life transplanted to British shores, sometimes at a cost to existing communities...His early buildings remain by far the most compelling... -- Rogers Stirk Harbour and Partners; Renzo Piano- Guardian (UK) |
Ben Flatman: Where will the next Rogers and Foster come from? We urgently need architects who can capture the public imagination - response to...Richard Rogers retiring at 87: His seductive and exciting pitch of frumpy British cities transforming themselves into liveable European-style hubs of vibrant city centre living...helped drive two decades of urban revival in the UK...And yet we seem to lack recognisable and effective public advocates and influencers...who government ministers know they must consult...it’s hard not to feel that the profession and our built environment would both benefit from a new Norman Foster or Rogers sometime soon.- BD/Building Design (UK) |
ANN feature: Carmi Bee, FAIA: Health and Safety in Urban Housing: RKTB’s Infill Housing Prototype offers a model for developing affordable urban housing on a neighborhood scale, and that also addresses health and safety measures.- ArchNewsNow.com |
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