December 28, 2010

The CIVITAS Chronicles
Clem Labine

More On 'Starchitecture's' Hidden Costs
Taxpayers in London are angry that it's costing $220,000 per year just to wash the windows on their new City Hall. Designed by Norman Foster, the semi-spherical building contains more than 3,000 panes of glass, and it's been costly from the start to keep the windows clean. What really has people indignant, however, is the doubling of the window washing bill since the building opened eight years ago. Read more.

A Capital Column
Kim O'Connell

A Streetcar Named Desire--or Desecration?
Streetcars are a hot topic in Washington, DC, these days. The DC government has begun laying track for a planned 37-mile streetcar network through the city, to supplement the existing Metro bus and rail system, with a focus on under-served neighborhoods. The plan has ignited the age-old preservation-versus-progress debate, but it has also pitted preservationists against preservationists. Although the issue may not deal with architecture and building directly, it has much to do with how we view and treat our historic downtowns. Read more.

Sticks and Stones
Gordon Bock

Going Dutch
Having grown up in the eclectic, pre-1930s suburbs of New York and New Jersey, I've always had a soft spot for Dutch Colonial Revival houses. As a child, I enjoyed picking them out wherever we traveled – that double-pitch roof was a ready tip-off for young eyes. Anytime I got to visit the two or three examples in the neighborhood, say at a birthday party, I was also magnetically attracted to the nifty inset porches and the occasional two-piece Dutch door – practically exotic compared to the Americanized Tudor where I lived.. 
Read more.

The View From Rome
Steven W. Semes

Building a Bridge Between Past and Present
The current confusion about how contemporary design should relate to architecture of the past is well illustrated by the recently restored Markets of Trajan in Rome, one of the most fascinating ancient sites in the city. The Markets are, in a way, the ancient ancestor of the shopping mall; from the grand hall on the upper level, a person can visit rows of commercial storefronts arrayed on several levels terracing down the hillside site. It is a spectacular work of architecture and urban design that, despite its fragmentary and ruined state, is powerfully suggestive. Read more.

A Place for Trades
Rudy Christian

What Have We Lost?
One thing I have always had a problem with is some people's attitudes toward stewardship. More often than not, owners of historic buildings find it perfectly reasonable to justify their plans for maintaining or restoring a property based on how long it might be useful to them. Even though the structure may have been built 200 years ago or more and served many generations prior to the new owner's tenure, they have no problem making conservation decisions that effectively reduce or eliminate the possibility that the building will last another 200 years.

I think the problem may be as simple as ownership versus stewardship. Ownership doesn't lead directly to stewardship any more than stewardship leads to ownership, but these positions lead to different results, depending on if and how they are carried out. The real problems seem to arise when ownership replaces the stewardship. We seem to have lost track of what the justifications are for good stewardship, replacing them with the economics of ownership. Read more.