Recent Posts
Historic Preservation
Architecture as narrative: a precedent from Berlin
Batteries Not Included
This past weekend I stumbled across the movie *batteries not included on TV. I haven’t seen this movie since I was a kid, but I remembered it had something to do with robots and that I had liked it.
Well, imagine my surprise to discover that the movie has preservation issues at its core. A large corporate development is planned for a city block, and all but one of the historic buildings has been torn down. The tenants of the final hold-out decide to make a stand to preserve their home, their community, because even without the benefit of the surrounding structures, there is still a community within the building. It seems like a hopeless struggle, with bulldozers waiting at the door, and a gang of thugs sent to “persuade” the tenants to leave.
Light Rail in Indiana, Part I
Indiana's interurban light rail lines, 1910 (IHS)
Across the state, one finds fragments and ruins of what was the most comprehensive statewide interurban electric light rail transit system ever built in the United States. Every city in Indiana with a population over 5,000 except for Bloomington, Madison and Evansville was connected by the interurban system (Evansville was connected to a regional network).
Go Googie or Go Home
What do the famous Las Vegas sign, the cartoon Jetsons family, Seattle’s space needle and Disney’s Pixar movie “Cars” have in common? They’re all examples of Googie architecture.
Photo Credit: http://en.wikivisual.com/index.php/Las_Vegas_Monorail
Books to Inspire Young Designers
Now that the holiday shopping season is officially open, I’ve started thinking again about great children’s books to give as gifts. There are so many out there to help instill an appreciation for art, architecture, design and planning, and that are intelligent enough that adults don’t usually mind reading them over and over again (in fact, I have given these “children’s ” books as gifts to adults too!).
By engaging children at a young age and instilling in them an appreciation for the aesthetics of the built environment, our future might have fewer mass marketed big box buildings and more unique structures with character that contribute to a sense of place.
Preservation of Another Kind
The leaves are falling, and it’s the time of year when you start wishing you could bottle everything about the waning days of warmer weather – the sunshine, the warm air, the juicy sweet fruit…well I don’t know how to save the sunshine but the fruit I have in the bag, or rather in the jar. I’m talking, of course, about canning.
I remember when I was little my mom and grandma canned all kinds of things – pears, grape juice, string beans, beets. Over the years as we got busier they stopped. A few years ago a friend of mine decided she wanted to try making peach jam, but she had never done it before. She enlisted my help, so I dug deep in my memory and we spent a Saturday making jam. We went to the market and bought the peaches, chopped the fruit, cooked the fruit, sugar and pectin, poured it into jars and processed the jars in a canner. At the end we had dozens of little jars full of jewel-toned nectar – peach jam.
Attention Silver Screen Architects: The Profession Isn’t That Pretty
So many people I meet, when I tell them I work for an architecture firm, respond with “I always wanted to do that!” I always think to myself, “You have no idea what it really means to be an architect.”
Don’t get me wrong, I love my job – just not for the same reasons I thought I would when I chose the profession. My job is challenging and rewarding, and allows me to be both creative and logical at the same time.
The general public seems to think that the job is so much more glamorous than it really is – and for this I blame the movies.
This Place Matters
Spring is here, and so is National Preservation Month. Check out events that are happening in your area. At the top of my list are the Michigan Historic Preservation Conference in my home town of Grand Rapids, MI and the Mid-century Modern Home Tour in West Lafayette, IN. Drop me a line if you’ll be there too - I’ll look for you.
A Window by any Other Name…
As with any profession, Architecture has a specialized vocabulary that is a bit esoteric, especially when discussing historic buildings. We use words like façade, volutes and eaves, words that are useful only to architects and crossword puzzle enthusiasts. One of my favorites is fenestration. It is obscure, unusual, and it sounds a little dirty.
Nice Move
On the subject of embodied energy and the useful life of a building, here is one very unique example:
In 1929, the Indiana Bell Telephone Company (now a part of AT&T) purchased the Central Union Telephone Company Building (1906-07) at the southwest corner of Meridian and New York Streets in Indianapolis. The building, overlooking University Park, was 118 feet tall, with eight floors and a roof garden on top of the elevator penthouse. Originally the company planned to demolish the Central Union Telephone Building, but architect Kurt Vonnegut, Sr. (father of the famed novelist) determined that the building could be moved to obtain its full life of service.
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