Cities & Memory

Some Buffalove from The Atlantic

2011-07-18T16:41:00.004-04:00

Today, my friend Kaid Benfield, one of the best known green bloggers in the country used his blog in The Atlantic to talk about Buffalo's amazing architectural legacy, and even gave me a terrific surprising shoutout. It's not every city that has buildings by Sullivan, Wright and Richardson AND Saarinen, Pei, etc etc. The National Trust's Preservation Conference comes to Buffalo in October and Buffalo is making more of this conference than any other city I've ever seen. Bravo to Buffalo and special thanks to Kaid!

Launching a New Firm and Life

2011-04-18T08:38:00.005-04:00

Today I have launched my new firm Barbara A. Campagna/Architecture & Planning, PLLC. BAC/A+P is an architectural firm rooted in the belief that historic preservation values equal the best of green building practices. Our firm's work demonstrates that the artistic, scientific and cultural aspects of remaking and greening historic and existing buildings are crucial to a sustainable future. I have combined this blog, "Cities and Memory" with my former work blog, "True Green" to create my new blog "True Green Cities." Please check out my new website. BAC/A+P is located in Buffalo, NY and Winston-Salem, NC with a monthly jaunt to Washington, DC. One of my key projects will be the consulting management of the institutional development of the Buffalo Architecture Center, a new organization housed in the iconic towers of the former Buffalo State Asylum for the Insane, designed by H. H. Richardson (photo above). I hope you'll join me on my new adventure!

It Took A Storm

2010-02-09T08:13:00.002-05:00

Sometimes it takes a disaster to get me motivated to write. I have taken quite a vacation from blogging - both writing and reading, but finally got back in the blog saddle today. Here's the link to my lastest True Green blog. Hopefully it will re-energize me to writing on this blog and that one again.

A New York City Love Letter

2009-04-27T21:45:00.015-04:00

As I sit on a five hour flight from DC to San Francisco, it is New York City I’m dreaming about not San Francisco, as much as I adore San Francisco. There will be plenty of time to enjoy Northern California in the coming week. Last weekend John and I spent three days visiting with my friends and roaming around so I could show him my New York. I was a little worried that many of my favorite places and past restoration projects wouldn’t stand up under such close scrutiny (from me more than John!), but was delighted that everything we saw, everywhere we went, seemed magical. The perfect spring weather didn’t hurt either.

Central Park

We bookended a lunch visit to my friends Juliana and Bruce’s new Fifth Avenue Apartment overlooking the Reservoir with walks through Central Park. The walk there was a bit harried since we had gotten stuck in the subway waiting for the C train and decided to emerge at 59th Street and Columbus Circle instead of 79th and Central Park West. The positive, even if we were a little late – was the fresh air, sunshine and a fleeting chance to show John the new (not necessarily improved) architecture of Columbus Circle (see my previous blog on that topic). Central Park is always startling but never so much as the first day of summer-like weather after a miserable winter/spring. Every tulip, daffodil and tree was blossoming. The colors were all surreally alive and beautiful. We roamed up the West Side and crossed over the Great Lawn, so we could have a few glimpses of the Belvedere Castle. Passing the Guggenheim we were both thrilled by how wonderful it looked, since the scaffolding has come down after years of restoration. A view of the reservoir and its fortress-like features gave us the perfect birds-eye view from Juliana’s apartment and got us excited for the slower walk back through the park to the west side for a Broadway night at the theatre.

The turtles were lined up in Turtle Pond, and the Great Lawn and Sheep’s Meadow were filled with thousands of picnickers, sports enthusiasts, kite flyers, bird and dog watchers. It’s always amazed me by what a dog-city New York is. In a city with some of the smallest apartments anywhere, everyone seems to have a dog. And the city loves dogs. Some cities are dog-loving, others are not. Washington, for example, is not a dog-loving city. The Park was exploding with people and pets. When we climbed up to Belvedere Castle so I could show him my handiwork there, we had to wait in line to get into the small folly.

Long Island City

When Sharon and Henry moved to Long Island City 6 years ago, their building was the only residential one there amidst gritty industrial and railroad structures. But their riverside view of Manhattan from the 28th floor, directly opposite the United Nations, Empire State Building and Chrysler Building surpasses any other view in New York. (Adjacent photo.) The small Gantry State Park is now abuzz all the time with musicians, families, dogs, runners and rollerbladers. (See photo below.) Sharon and Henry now seem like urban pioneers. I love Long Island City now as a place to live and were I to go back to NY, I’d look there first, partially of course to be close to my best friends, but also because of the view and the wonderful community feel it now has. There have been some tradeoffs, of course. The former power station has been sanitized, a little too much and not too effectively architecturally, into very high end condos (full disclosure – John and I were intrigued and went to visit them…). Some of the buildings are not very well built yet very pricey. But there is now a “there” there, and since it’s just one stop on the 7 Train from Grand Central, it’s a lot closer to midtown than even the Upper East Side (our former stomping ground).

A New Standard

Since I’ve been reading all about the Meatpacking District lately, our one venture outside of my usual places was here, partially to see the new Polshek-designed Standard Hotel which has been receiving architectural accolades, and partially to remind myself how New York it is to hang out in the current hip location (although if we’re calling it hip, it’s hipness is on the way out!) We met my Columbia roommate Elise and her daughter Issey at Five Ninth for brunch. The food was mediocre but the ambiance was exactly what I envisioned a restaurant in this neighborhood would be – industrial and recycled. The new Standard Hotel, the first piece of the reactivation of the High Line elevated railroad line park, did not disappoint. It’s daring and groundbreaking and its boldness in New York (which of late is rarely known for architecture that is successful and bold at the same time) is refreshing. Its placement atop huge stilts hovering over the High Line and peering out over the Hudson reminded me of Archigram's walking city from 1960s London which I obsessed over in architecture school. We didn’t go inside because we were out of time, but I didn’t need to go inside. I feared that my glee over its exterior might be tempered by an uninspiring interior. So I was content with marching around it from all four sides, particularly admiring the way it meets the remaining railroad structure.

Past Projects

I bored John with tales of my favorite stores, favorite gym, even my favorite bus line as I dragged him from the Upper East Side to the Upper West Side. But I was happy that he was as delighted to see two of my past projects – the restoration of the Belvedere Castle and the interior restoration of the Shubert Theatre. It’s hard to be an architect and go back to look at your work to see if it’s holding up to the test of time and to see whether those decisions you made during design were the right ones. I was more than a little relieved that both projects held up wonderfully. The glu-lam replacement columns I designed for the Northwest Pavilion at the Belvedere were still solid and the only really weathering was on the older sections of the structure that we didn’t touch. The steel windows and doors were still functioning if a bit rusty and after 13 years definitely could use a sandblasting/repainting. But it doesn’t look like either the Pavilion or the Castle have been repainted since our project in 1996.

We went to see Angela Lansbury (at 84!) dance her way through “Blithe Spirit” at the Shubert Theatre. That was my favorite of the three theatre restorations Fran Russo and I completed over a decade ago. It was a very subtle yet expansive restoration involving the usual paint testing and research but also allowed for some creativity with the design of the seating and the missing ceiling murals. We got seats in the Mezzanine so John could see the ceiling close-up – one of the features I spent a lot of time on. The carpet was fraying a little on the edges, but everything else looked like the theatre had just reopened. What a sigh of relief, particularly as I head out to San Francisco to be inducted into the AIA College of Fellows, making me very introspective of late.

As A Friend

I just finished a devastating and haunting jewel of a first novel – “As A Friend”, by Forrest Gander, on the plane. Although it takes place in Arkansas, the setting doesn’t really matter and it transported me back to mid 1990s Manhattan. While it is as spare as Faulkner and Woolf are verbose, the feelings the story and language evoked, took me back to my days of reading Faulkner and Woolf, about the same time I was finishing the restoration of the Belvedere Castle. Reading just one sentence in any book by Virginia Woolf uplifts me because the language is so beautiful. It was the same with Gander. Feeling his characters sadness was so vivid. And that brought me back around to my love letter to New York. For me, that’s what makes New York City so alive and so magical always – its vividness and its soul. It may not always be pretty but it is always alive. Many people feel alone in New York, but what I’ve always felt is that I have a friend – the city is my friend and it never lets me down.

An Easter Service for a Non-Believer

2009-04-13T20:59:00.009-04:00

I spend a lot of time these days in Winston-Salem, North Carolina where my boyfriend lives. Historic Old Salem is the home of the Th e Moravian Church in America, which continues its strong religious and cultural traditions. As one of the pacifist religions to come out of Europe in the mid 1700’s, the egalitarian and open-minded thinking of the Moravians impacted the architectural design and urban planning of Old Salem, and continues to remind us of that rich heritage today. One of the traditions that can be traced back to 1732 in Herrnhut, Saxony is the Easter Sunrise service. It has been held outdoors in Winston-Salem continuously since 1772.

I was happy to jump up at 6 am on Sunday to experience this cultural phenomenon, despite my non-believer status! The fair weather further encouraged us. The lead-up to the service actually begins around 1am in the morning when the Church band splits into groups and walks throughout the city playing chorales, partly to remind all listeners of the Resurrection, and partly to awaken people for the Sunrise Service. I heard them in the background (and this is more like a marching band, with tubas and drums) around 2:15am but managed to sleep right through their playing in front of our house after 3am.

Not doing my research ahead of time, I didn’t know that it was an outdoor service that required walking, so had brought a pretty Easter spring outfit with high heels. I was glad to learn though the night before that I could throw on sneakers, jeans and a fleece jacket and wouldn’t be out of place. John told me that up to 30,000 often attended the service which began in the town green in front of the church and then moved to “God’s Acre”, the Moravian cemetery, a few short (but hilly) blocks away. Parking was one of the major issues, but since John’s house is in town a few blocks from the town green, we had one less thing to worry about. It felt like going to a rock concert – up while it’s still dark, trying to get a good viewing spot. John told me that the service, which started at 6:30 am would finish at noon so I had no idea how I would manage standing that long, even in my sneakers. I saw others with folding chairs and thermoses which made me even more anxious.

The pulpit is set up directly at the Church’s entrance and the town green filled up quickly. But nowhere near 30,000. Still it was a lovely way to start the morning, with singing and scriptures as the sun rose behind the church. I didn’t pay too much attention to the readings, but they were definitely much simpler and less bombastic than the Catholic ones I grew up with. The gatherers were quite mixed and diverse – families, hipsters, singles, couples, dressed up in Easter finery, or ready for a hike. The minister seemed young, probably in my age range. The first half of the service lasted only about 15 minutes, and then we all walked to God’s Acre for the completion of the service.

The Graveyard – God’s Acre (adapted from the Easter Service Sunrise program)

The site for the graveyard was selected in April of 1766. The avenue bordering the graveyard was laid out in the year 1770 and the first body, that of John Birkhead, one of the eight men who first came to the settlement, was interred June 7, 1771. The Moravians still call their graveyard by the name first used by their ancestors in Bohemia. It is a “field” in which the bodies of loved ones are sown in faith as “physical bodies”, in due time to be raised as “spiritual bodies.”

One feature of God’s Acre is the use of recumbent stones, symbolizing the Moravian belief in the democracy of death and making it impossible to distinguish between the graves of rich and poor. The burial of members according to “choirs”, or station in life (married men, married women, single men, single woman, infants, etc.) rather than by families, is another distinguishing feature. In addition, it’s a chronological record.

Holy Saturday’s Flowers

Traditionally, family members, ancestors or friends place flowers on the graves on Saturday. John has been placing flowers at the graves of the two couples he feels closest to, in remembrance of his grandparents – the original owners of the house he lives in and the original owners of the house that was the first one he restored in the town. He made 4 vases out of flowers he gathered from his yard and we took them Saturday night. I found the tradition he had created touching.

Sunrise

We all gathered along the walks in the graveyard, with the pulpit re-established in a hollow which everyone could view. The sound was particularly well-done. It restarted just after 7am with the pink, orange and yellow stripes of the sun framing the minister with the various groupings of the band spread around the graveyard. The minister would finish a reading, then the band groups would play the songs in tandem with one another. The program ended at 7:30 and I wondered what we would do for the next 4 hours (meditate maybe like the Quakers?) but instead discovered that John had teased me and that the service was indeed only one hour, not five! My already aching lower back was glad to hear that!

I appreciated the simplicity of the service, the acknowledgment and integration of their ancestors into the program, the continuity of tradition, the relationship of the outdoors and integrating the whole city and the full weekend into the activities of the holy day. No, I’m not becoming a Moravian, but I do like their sense of democracy, equality, culture and beauty.

Seeing Savannah from my Bike

2009-04-06T22:51:00.004-04:00

Last week I spent a couple of hours driving up and down the grid of historic Savannah on my bike. The azaleas were blooming. The streets were quiet. It was the perfect way to start the biking season - no hills, little traffic, no complications. It was slightly overcast and a little cool, but such a delight compared to the only other visit to Savannah I had made in 2003 - when the humidity, thunderstorms and heat of August in Savannah made it difficult to enjoy Oglethorpe's squares.

Despite the quiet streets, Broughton Street seemed alive and well compared to my last visit. All the major chains plus unique jewelry stores and high end boutiques made possible by the blossoming of SCAD. River Street was still tacky but filled with people. The outdoor markets sold nothing original or indigenous.

Oh, but those azaleas, framing the squares, the historic buildings and the tour groups.

Take A Green Challenge

2009-03-15T19:39:00.006-04:00

Recently I told my sister that cows are one of the biggest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions because of their release of methane into the air. So, don’t eat beef, less cows, less methane, less greenhouse gas emissions. She didn’t believe me, thought I was making it up. Yesterday as I was driving around in the sprawl of Rockville, MD, doing my big box shopping (okay, even a green preservation architect needs an occasional fix at Target and Bed Bath & Beyond) and I was listening to a piece on NPR about that very topic – expanding the methane problems to sheep and goats as well. The reporter was reluctantly asking rhetorically how these pretty fluffy creatures could be doing more damage than Hummers and SUVs. (See the goats above at the National Zoo -are they really more damaging than an RV?!) When I got home I had a message on Facebook from an equally green friend challenging me to take the 2009 Green Challenge - From Green Day (St. Patricks Day) to Green Day (Earth Day), make ONE change in your lifestyle to live more sustainably. When I looked at the list wasn’t sure there was anything new on it I could do (or want to do) so here’s what I thought when I read it, and what I decided to do.

*Ride your bike to run errands. Get a basket. – This just isn’t happening. I will take the Metro, I will walk and I will ride my bike 30 miles for exercise but I’m not turning my expensive bikes into commuter bikes. And with the economy, buying another bike is not an option.

* Learn how to compost. – I would like to do this, not sure if you can in an apartment? So I will research this.

* Bring your own bags when you shop. – I do this, when I don’t forget. Very proud to say that I didn’t forget them yesterday and used my own bags for 8 hours of shopping.

* Recycle ALL plastic bags at the bin in the grocery store (most have them). – Haven’t done this yet, I keep plastic bags for cat litter. Not sure what else to do for the cats, living in a city, they can’t be roaming on their own.

* Eat regional food only. – I try my best here, but I have to say one of the issues with this whole “regional” thing is I am concerned that it will make us all very isolationist. (The "heritage apples" at Filoli in Woodside, CA are served local restaurants in Silicon Valley.)

* Stop using styrofoam. Refuse it when out and about. – I never use styrofoam personally. And don’t encourage it.

* Start a food garden. It's spring! – While it’s impractical in DC, I could certainly help John plant more in North Carolina.

* Plant 10 trees for each vehicle you own, even better if they also produce food! - This I can consider. I do pay for carbon offsets each month, and my “indulgence” goes for wind energy. (The trees at the tree-line on Mt. Rainier below help clean up excess greenhouse gas emissions.)

* Buy fresh veggies, grass-fed beef, free range eggs, hormone-free dairy products. – Since I don’t eat beef I think I’m well ahead of the game here.

* Put down the Round-Up. Pull weeds or spray clove oil on them. – No problem, I have no grass or garden, so no weeds either!

* Clean your house using only baking soda, lemon, vinegar, and water. – I have tried this and wasn’t happy with the results, but I do use only Method, Clorox Green Works and Seventh Generation products.

* Buy cloth napkins in different patterns (for different people) and reuse use them all week. – I use recycled paper napkins and question whether washing more cloth napkins each week is actually better than using recycled paper.

* Own less stuff - for every item you buy, recycle or give away something else. – I should definitely do this and think this will be my big attempt before Earth Day, maybe I could even sell some things on eBay!

* Unstick your windows. An open top sash can cool your house fast ...and keep it cool. – Already do this.

Can I get more points since my job includes making the world greener? Ok, I know it’s not about getting “points”, but it did make me think that I should take a survey of my life and make an honest list of the good green things I do and the not-so-green, so I can make a better attempt at helping save the world. Of course, things we think are green today, we discover 6 months later aren't as good as they could be. Which makes me think more and more lately that "going green" is more a state of mind than a state of reality.

Take It Out Back

2009-03-10T21:24:00.015-04:00

As my week of writing in Old Salem came to an end, the snow melted away to reveal daffodils and I found myself very introspective about the level of productivity pure quiet can provide. My federal house retreat on Factory Row in Old Salem was warm and embracing (see above image). Every day I moved around the kitchen to capture the best light as I wrote and even found myself out on the porch only two days after the blizzard, refereeing our cats. I kept my iPod on shuffle all week and never even missed CNN or the Sci-Fi channel, which is something I did not anticipate, being as obsessed with TV as I am. I did have a few meltdowns - over one site calling me about a "green" carpet, about the loss of an email regarding a contract and about my perceived lack of progress earlier in the week. But now that I am back in Washington, busy at work and the usual non-productivity, it appears I actually managed to write quite a bit and feel mighty fine about it. And even had a full day of summer-like weather on Saturday hiking in the mountains and no guilt about not writing.

My Old Salem blog on True Green got a lot of coverage, including getting picked up by Kaid Benfield on his "Switchboard" b log. The evocative images of Old Salem with snow and the promise of a friendly "hello" seemed to find a wide audience. I took another walk around town later in the week when the snow melted, this time to observe and consider the phenomenon I call “urban sprawl”.

My last couple of days of writing were spent luxuriating on the back porch, admiring the expanse of green yard and trying to ignore the rows of condominiums that line the "gateway" to Old Salem, wondering why so many people with money have such bad taste and lack a sense of place. (See image above.) I thought about these really poor attempts at architectural synchronicity on Friday night when we went to a concert to hear a folk singer, Chuck Brodsky, weave his tales of irony.

One song called “Take it Out Back” resonated:

Take it out back and dump it in the river
Take it out back and throw it in the woods
Take it out back and chuck it down the hillside
Keep the front yard looking good

Let’s Look At These Poor Attempts at New Urbanism

So, I’m no fan of New Urbanism as I’ve reported in other blogs. But I would sing its praises if New Urbanism could have come to Old Salem rather than the relentlessly banal and poorly done attempts at sympathetic design found in the developments that back up to the historic town, specifically backing up to Factory Row where I was staying on my retreat. Look at the image above of individual Federal era houses on Main Street which date from the early 1800s. Now look at the image below of the attached “rowhouses” behind Factory Row. What’s wrong with this picture?

Cultural Irony

So, we have developments that are completely out of scale, show no understanding of why the original place they are mimicking so poorly works so well, and are located next to the original because it increases their property values and desirability. A developer takes some abstracted details from the original 5 unattached houses and places them all over a few pale copies, connects them all and multiplies them by a hundredfold. Now, an original street that has 5 individual houses is backed up to a street of the same length with 50 attached houses. It is both scary and sad. The development’s property values are high because they have views of our grand heritage, while the heritage is diminished in almost every way – their views, their context, their authenticity, the massive increase in traffic.

Banal Developments Push the Boundaries

Somewhere in the past fifty years we have gone astray and lost our way. Our rural wide-open spaces have been transformed into Levittown after Levittown. And our small historic urban cores are surrounded by urban sprawl.

And it’s not just in Old Salem; we see it everywhere. Petroglyph National Monument in New Mexico is ringed by suburban developments that have virtually destroyed the pristine views that inspired the early petroglyph painters – developments actually called “Petroglyph Park.” At Drayton Hall in Charleston, the National Trust has spent millions of dollars buying land to protect the viewshed and hire lawyers to battle zoning changes that would encourage suburban development along one of the great scenic highways in South Carolina. And the road to James Madison’s Montpelier is lined with suburban developments of builder homes with names like “Poplar Forest”.

One of the most important things the National Trust for Historic Preservation has done in its 60 years has been to promote smart growth and battle sprawl. Encouraging urban growth and adaptive use is one of the core reasons that preservation equals sustainable development. And at the heart of this are our historic sites – the places that matter to all of us, the reason we travel to New York City, Boston, San Francisco, Buffalo, Albuquerque and Old Salem. The unquantifiable “social metrics” that make us feel so good to be there. (See Old Salem College and the town green in the image above)

Sabbatical in Old Salem

2009-03-04T08:11:00.003-05:00

I took a bit of a blog sabbatical over the holidays, which my close friends like to remind me is also the same time that I got rather involved with my new beau!! Which proves that new love and blogging seem to be mutually exclusive! But I have started blogging again on my usual work blog, Beyond Green Building (for esoteric, sustainability big-picture views) and now a new work blog I have started on the National Trust Historic Sites Weblog called "True Green", which focuses on greening historic sites.

I have the delight of being on a one week sabbatical in Old Salem, North Carolina to work on a Best Practices Manual for work. (Writing in an early Federal house pictured here, which was offered to me by a close friend who lives in Old Salem.) I wrote a blog on the joys of saying hello in snow-covered Old Salem. And will continue to write more this week in "Cities and Memory" about the beauty of taking a time-out in small cities where people you don't know offer you a ride home and locking your car door and home door is optional.

Form or Function?

2008-11-29T17:31:00.025-05:00

Form or Function? Does one trump the other when designing a new Museum? Should one? This is what I was pondering as I visited the new Burchfield Penney Art Center in Buff alo, NY - the first completely new museum building built in Buffalo in over a hundred years. My expectations were low, despite the fact that Gwathmey Siegel Architects from New York designed the building. Quite frankly it's probably been a decade since I've seen a design of theirs that interested or impressed me - probably since the last building they designed for Buffalo at the SUNY Buffalo Amherst Campus. My expectations were also low because there was a complicated story regarding the land the new museum sits on - belonging to the Buffalo Psychiatric Center. There was great concern in the preservation community that the Psych Center, by turning that land over, was continuing to whittle away at the historic acreage originally planned and designed by H. H. Richardson, Olmsted & Vaux. Then personally my expectations were low because I hadn't really paid attention to what was going on with the design or construction of the building, despite being on the Richardson Architecture Center Board - too many buildings in too many states to worry about. But I had wondered over the past year as I'd drive by - what is that lousy concrete block structure going up on the northern end of the Psych Center's parking lots? I thought it was a parking structure. I woke up and started to pay attention about a year ago at one of our board meetings when I heard discussion about the new museum building.

So, now it's finished, and the past week has been the grand opening (free to everyone for 10 days). And no, I was not surprised by a beautiful and inspiring exterior. The exterior is banal and mediocre at best. But that doesn't mean it's a bad museum. Quite the contrary. And here is where my question regarding form vs. function comes into play. I'd like to believe that a museum can be both a piece of iconic, amazing architecture and function well to display art. In the past few years both architects, museum boards and architecture critics would like us to believe otherwise, and that is a disservice to all of us. Certainly, there are many pieces of starchitecture I've visited in the past couple years which focused on the building design to the detriment of the purpose of the building - Libeskind's Denver Art Museum, Gehry's Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis (see photo above), and Jean Nouvel's Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis (it also has gallery space). But then there are some brilliant pieces of architecture I've visited that prove that icons can also function - Renzo Piano's addition (and completion) of the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Santiago Calatrava's addition to the Milwau kee Art Museum, Herzog & de Meuron's San Francisco de Young Museum (adjacent photo) and their Minneapolis Walker Art Center, and Richard Meier's Getty of course, to name a few. Unfortunately, I've also seen a great many uninspiring buildings that exhibit art beautifully and that's a shame. In addition to the Burchfield Penney, there is the Seattle Art Museum and the Museum of Arts & Design in NYC both by Allied Works, and the addition and re-working of the Morgan Library by Piano in NYC.

One paragraph in the museum brochure particularly disturbed me and my artistic sensibilities:

"Not long after the architectural firm was engaged to design a new home for the Burchfield Penney Art Center, a debate began about whether the building itself should be conceived as a work of art or designed primarily as a container to hold and exhibit the museum's collections. The fear was expressed by some, quite openly, that if the architecture was too compelling, the art would have to compete for attention."

What Makes the Burchfield Penney Art Center a Good Museum?

Unfortunately it's not its exterior architecture. Let me get that criticism out of the way. Its use of gray brick and stone are monotone and monotonous and other than the curved solid wall and ridiculously large letters on the street facade of the building, it does not distinguish itself as the cultural icon it should be. It's barely better than a suburban office park building or a college administration building, really, and that makes me sad.

It completes and balances the cultural core of Buffalo. Were it not for the overly-trafficked Elmwood Avenue and exits to the Scajaquada Expressway directly adjacent to the Albright-Knox, this would really be Buffalo's cultural Acropolis. The Albright-Knox Art Gallery (Photo above) on the west side of the street is one of my favorite pieces of museum architecture anywhere - the 1905 Classically-inspired Green & Wicks marble building with its 1962 Gordon Bunshaft-designed glass box addition masterpiece, represents the layers and memories of Buffalo and the hope for its future. (Gordon Bunshaft, that towering designer of SOM midcentury modern architecture was a Buffalonian.) Now with Rockwell Hall flanking the southern half of the Albright-Knox and the Burchfield Penney flanking the northern half, this intersection has become the undeniable center of Buffalo's very rich art heritage.

The Albright-Knox Art Gallery is one of the earliest museums in the country to have collecting modern art as its mission. Rockwell Hall at Buffalo State College, was the original main building (1931) of the college and the home of the initial Burchfield Penney Art Center for many years until it moved to the new building this year. It now houses the College's Performing Arts Center and Conservation School.

It showcases Western New York Art and Artists. Buffalo has produced some of the greatest artists, architects and designers - either as people who were born here or came here to design or create a project. There's just something in the water here that encourages and inspires creativity . The Museum's purview is interesting - not just artists who are from Buffalo, or are living in Buffalo. If you were born here and then moved elsewhere. If you went to school here and then moved on etc. I think it's quite appropriate that the rotunda tower actually frames the glass box addition of the Albright-Knox Gallery across the street which was designed by Gordon Bunshaft, a Buffalonian by birth (I believe). (See adjacent photo.) And then of course the museum is the largest repository for Charles Burchfield's art - a transplant 20th century artist known for his visual commentaries on the effects of Industrialism on small town America (primarily watercolors), a friend and peer of Edward Hopper.

The Interior of the Art Center is actually quite well done. What does every museum that showcases modern/contemporary art really want? Just lots of white walls and wood floors. And the Burchfield Penney has that. The spaces flow really nicely. It's not a large museum, but it is filled with various types of spaces, niches, windows that frame different views, private spaces to reflect and view the art or just reflect. The light is quite wonderful throughout the museum. I sort of wanted the Burchfield Rotunda to be larger or to be more focused (on the first floor). Its accompanying space above on the second floor has no art but benches with a window that frames views of the Albright-Knox. And treating the view of that as a piece of art is quite brilliant - probably the best gesture of the building.

So, as an architect I was very disappointed by the building presented to the street and its contribution or lack thereof to the neighborhood. But as a museum-goer, I enjoyed my visit. And as a native Buffalonian, I think it's an important contribution to the community and the community is really proud to have this new addition - and raising $36 million in Buffalo is no easy feat. It was exciting that we had trouble finding a parking spot and that the galleries and shop were full of people. Granted it was free the first week, but still that bodes well I hope. I hope that despite its lack of stellar design, it will become an important component of the city's art world and its story. (See my Facebook page for a photo album of my visit to the Burchfield Penney.)

After all , the name of my blog is "Cities and Memory" because I love cities, their architecture, people, places, layers and what they say about us, remembering our past and creating our future.

Leaving Logan: Trash the Bach, Bring on The Verve

2008-11-22T00:05:00.012-05:00

I spent the past week in Boston at the monstrous and inspiring Greenbuild conference. It's the second one I've attended. Last year I really only got to attend one day because the APT conference in San Juan overlapped its beginning. The conference is the hottest thing on the planet in the design field right now - from 0 to 30,000 attendees in less than a decade. I've been thinking alot about the market forces, the interest, the people who attend and are true believers and why this movement is literally changing the world, when the preservation "movement" has been around for 60 years and while, yes, it's changed the world too, not with such exhilaration. And looking around the conference, the way it was managed, the excitement that is exuding from almost everyone, I've made some very opinionated observations.

1. Youth and hipness. Doesn't get any simpler. Greenbuild and green buildings are hip. There are no fuddy-duddies. And I don't mean just "youth" in terms of age, youth in terms of frame of mind, world approach. These guys are rarely wearing ties. And the women are all stylish and gorgeous. Malcolm Gladwell's new book, "Outliers", pronounces that a lot of innovation seems to be just being in the right place in the right time. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and their Silicon Valley clan were all born in 1955 and were 21 when they started changing the world. "21" seems to be the age that the geniuses are formalizing their world view. Hmmmm, gotta read that book and see what that's all about...

2. Diversity. It's not all white. We have to struggle to get diversity at preservation events and preservation organizations. Why don't we just attract all people? We have to give out diversity scholarships to get people of color or gender differences at our conferences and then we pat ourselves on the back - oh aren't we being inclusive?

3. Perception. I'm starting to think more and more that "Historic preservation" - the label - is too past-looking. While people get that buildings are the biggest contributor to green house gas emissions in the US - it's still hard for most people to grasp that "preservationists" are doing more than saving Mt. Vernon. We just have to work harder with our PR, with our outreach. Preservation Nation is a great start but we have to be even more hip. We need some leaders who are younger, have business savvy, and twitter as much as communicate on facebook. We need freshness. I think we need a new name, something that doesn't end with "ist". It's not a mistake that all of the plenaries and keynotes at Greenbuild had Coldplay and Radiohead in the background, leading in the speakers. We have to trash the Bach and bring on The Verve.

4. Brilliance. Greenbuild is filled not only with hip architects, designers and engineers (yep, engineers can be hip too), it's filled with scientists, chemists, energy consultants, inventors. When was the last time you could say inventors were hanging out at a preservation conference?
Green=innovation. I met energy consultants, glass scientists, real estate gurus, biologists. My mind was spinning. And I was thinking non-stop. I had to work really hard to keep up intellectually and I love that. While it's sometimes nice to be the smartest one in the room, it's exciting to be challenged. I am constantly learning.

5. Saving the World. This is saving the world stuff, bigtime. You feel like you're part of a bigger thing. You feel like you are making a difference. And that's what everyone's talking about.
So, what can the preservation world do to open itself up to being taken seriously? Stop being so darn stodgy. I have noticed a lot of the older generation of preservationists are just inflexible. Save the Main Street or do nothing - complain about everyone else. Stop complaining. Start doing. Start collaborating. Green folks have figured out how to criticize and collaborate in many ways better than the old-time preservationists. And they just don't include the "preservationists" because so many of them come with this chip on their shoulder. Now while you rarely see green folks who don't consider themselves preservationists at a National Trust conference, I could count on my hands the number of "preservationists" at Greenbuild. Open up people. Reach out. The Greenbuild conference had 2000 people sign up onsite on Tuesday!! That's more people than came to our entire conference in Tulsa.

Sounds like I'm denigrating preservationists? Maybe a bit. I call myself a "preservationist" less and less. I'm an architect first. Actually I'm a human first. An Architect second. Preservationist somewhere further down the line. I care about saving our species and keeping the world around for our grandchildren. If it came between a wind turbine and a viewshed, guess which one I'm picking. Now, it's rarely ever that black and white, but I'll tell you as I read through "Hot, Flat and Crowded" and all the new research coming out that's saying the biosphere is collapsing, melting, heating, cooling, "weirding", exponentially faster than even the IPCC thought last year, a lot of the fussiness just isn't going to matter any more. Get with the program folks. We need to save the world so that the pretty communities matter, but if the world and our species are gone, then that nice main street around the corner isn't going to matter one bit.

Taking the M79

2008-11-12T09:51:00.026-05:00

What I miss most about living (or not living currently) in Manhattan: dry cleaners, delis, nail salons, and shoe repair shops on every corner; a subway that never closes; Central Park; the fact that everyone goes to therapy and talks about it; Central Park; the fact that everyone knows they're the hippest people on the planet; Central Park; the Met, MOMA and the American Museum of Natural History; takeout for anything and everything; Agata & Valentina, Zabars, and Butterfield's Market; my best friends and the M79 crosstown bus. Manhattan has style and soul. Washington DC doesn't have style. It's pleasant, has great restaurants and museums, and lots of space, but it just doesn't have a soul.

These are my ruminations as I spent the past two days roaming around Manhattan and Queens, taking photos, doing my favorite things like taking the M79 bus (don't ask), walking down my favorite streets, and hanging out with my closest girl friends (in between work meetings of course).

Usually these days I run into Manhattan for a day or two filled with meetings, driving quickly by the latest buildings with barely a chance to take closer looks at them and even get some photos. So this time I arranged a day of meetings after a holiday, so I could actually spend some time just enjoying the streets and visiting some of the new buildings that have gone up in the past few years. Good news - spent some time at 4 of those buildings. Bad news - they were all incredibly mediocre.

40 Mercer Street - by French Prizker-winning architect Jean Nouvel, hotel, residences, retail on the corner of Mercer and Broome. Given that this was the first major new building/skyscraper in SoHo and it had to go through years of reviews, it's not surprising that the result is an uninspired building by committee. It's quite jarring to look at Nouvel's Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis and then this building. 40 Mercer is elegantly detailed. But there is just no soul (ah, that word keeps popping up today doesn't it). Nothing really grabs your eye. It's better than a spec office building, but not by much I'm afraid.

AOL/Time Warner Center - by SOM/David Childs. Now I never anticipated that this would be any good. And it's certainly not as horrible as the first concepts for this complex showed it could have been. But like 40 Mercer, there is nothing special about this mammoth. It's livelier than the old Convention Center that used to anchor this part of Columbus Circle, but the "grand lobby" is no better than a Galleria Mall and I have no idea why there are big purple stars hanging in the totally under-designed space. It's dark inside and out. In fact I didn't even bother to take any photos of it - it didn't seem worthwhile to waste pixels on it!

Museum of Arts & Design - by Allied Works/Brad Cloepfil from Portland, OR. Oh, Brad, Brad, Brad - we had such high hopes for you. If you absolutely insist on deconstructing a quirky landmark because the spineless NYC LPC abstains from making a decision about whether it's worthy of landmarking, then at least have the common decency to make it a better landmark! But no, all we got was another quirky building with no relationship to the street or Columbus Circle. Edward Durell Stone's original lollipop columns at the base (one of the truly memorable elements of the original building) are hidden behind fretted glass. It's just so uninteresting all the way around. The lobby is barely a lobby; it's dark and has no distinction. The terra cotta tile glazing is a little too gray to make it look dirty. The zig-zag lighting strips down the elevations look like big zippers. Poor Columbus Circle. They gussied up the fountain finally, improved the traffic flow but anchored it with two overpriced, under-designed, second-rate, inferior icon-wannabes.

Then there's the Hearst Headquarters - it looks like an overblown TARDIS on steriods dropped out of the void onto the quirky (there's that word again) Hearst building. Now, let's be clear. I LOVE Norman Foster. His British Museum courtyard reinvention and now his Portrait Gallery courtyard are divine. And I have always had a strange fondness for Joseph Urban's stucco deco Hearst building. My first job as an architect in NYC was in the Fiske building across the street from it and I did a semester long paper on it at Columbia. I never thought it was a superb building, but a fun one. Added some whimsy to what for a very long time was a very bleak 8th Avenue. But Norman Foster and Joseph Urban just don't belong together. Like the Museum of Arts & Design which is kitty-corner to Hearst, why couldn't they just have been bolder? If you're going to make a bold gesture, then do it already!! Don't leave us bored. Bold or bored - can't seem to get anything in between.

So, I am not bored to tears by every new building in Manhattan. I LOVE the New Museum on the Bowery designed by Tokyo-based architects Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa/SANAA. It's perfectly located at the intersection of Bowery and Prince. I've seen it at night, all lit up, and on an overcast afternoon. And it made me smile both times. It's fresh, unique, bold with a capital "B" but not overwhelming, and says "contemporary design". It has reactivated a very gritty part of the Bowery. It's an understated piece of starchitecture by some young, new stars who took their task very, very seriously. I read an interview with them in which they described being scared of the site actually - the grittiness and the courage needed by the Museum to choose that location. More architects should take their projects as seriously.

A Lived-In Modern Icon

2008-11-11T22:39:00.009-05:00

A friend of mine who's a writer recently asked us to name and describe our favorite modern building in Washington, DC. That was so easy for me, no need to even compare or consider. Mine is the Ann & Donald Brown House, designed by Richard Neutra overlooking Rock Creek Park in Forest Hills in 1968. I love the way it's perched above the street and park almost like a treehouse. Despite being a glass and steel box (layers of box really) it is very organic and it's hard to tell where the Park ends and the house begins. What I like even more about it is that I ran by it for years (it's in my neighborhood and on my running path) and had no idea it was a Neutra house. It's so clean, crisp and modern; I assumed it was a recent building and kept meaning to find out who had designed it. When I read an article in the Post over the summer about it and realized the house I had been admiring for 2 years was a Neutra, the only Neutra in DC, I was equally tickled and surprised and honored to have it around the block from me. It looks different with the seasons and the hours of the day. Sometimes it's opaque and reminds me of the flatness of a Mondrian painting, other times it looks like a piece of sculpture. The red steel is unexpected.

Heather Cass, a DC architect, designed an addition to the front of the house in the 1990s and it continues the floating perpendiculars that comprise the design parti. A stunning, brilliant house that the orginal owners still live in 40 years later - a testament to its design and functional success. When people come to visit me now, it's the first place I take them to see, even before the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument.

Cleaning & Dreaming

2008-11-08T10:32:00.007-05:00

I'm giving my apartment a thorough cleaning today for the first time in maybe 6 months, but you can see how "thorough" it's going to be since I'm writing my blog. I am completely overwhelmed by the magnitude of my mess and can't focus on finishing one task before starting the next several. Add to that, a need to finalize my dinner menu for tomorrow night (the reason behind all the cleaning), then a trip to Whole Foods and the bank to get quarters so I can do laundry to have something nice to wear tomorrow. Blaring The Verve too is probably not helping either - as much as I love morose Brits, it's probably not helping my energy level!

So, as I dream about finishing the much needed cleaning, I am also dreaming about what our world might look like in 5 years. It is pretty astonishing how everyone now thinks Barack Obama is going to save the world. I certainly do. And it's not based on anything concrete other than someone my age who can break all barriers, raise himself up from a confusing background and complete an amazing Ivy education, and accomplish all he determines to do at the age of 47 MUST be meant for great things, for the greatest things. I would throw myself in front of a train for him. It makes absolutely no sense. I have never felt this strongly for any public persona, not even Hillary. I want to make changes to help him save our world. And that's it isn't it, everyone, around the world, thinks that this huge uprising of change in America means the best for the entire world. Maybe he is our messiah, no offense intended to previous messiahs...

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Cleaning continues, hazelnut torte baking, laundry done, vegetables chopped, Doctor Who on the television. Whole Foods was pretty insane today although the parking lot was only half full. I noticed that all the loft apartment buildings on P seem to be open now; maybe that's where all the shoppers were coming from. It is intriguing to think about living in a loft apartment within walking distance of both Whole Foods, the office and the yoga studio. Like being back in NY... But I like being near the Park and the beltway.

Pondering Climate Change

2008-11-07T16:20:00.006-05:00

Today, it hit 72 degrees in the District of Columbia, several degrees higher than average. It was a welcome surprise - a group of us ran out at lunch to Dupont Circle eating our sandwiches while we enjoyed the warm sun and pontificated about the new administration. Some of my colleagues joked about enjoying global warming. Of course, who knows if it's really climate change that gave us such beautiful weather today or just an anomaly. But it prepared me for my afternoon of pondering how to measure the actual impact of climate change on our historic sites so that I can speak in more scientific manners and not so anecdotally. ICOMOS is developing a Climate Change tool kit to do just that, and the National Trust in the UK is about a decade ahead of us in measuring this as well. (Note the flooding at Farnsworth House above this September, one of the historic sites in my purview, which had a second one hundred year flood in as many years.)

I was reading Nicholas Kristof's blog today presenting his ideas for Obama's Cabinet choices. There is a lot of debating in the comments, with some really innovative ideas I never would have thought of. But I did notice three common themes - people have specific thoughts on Secretary of State, Secretary of the Treasury and a new Climate Change Cabinet position. Certainly those are the three topics I think about most - improving our world engagement and involvement, saving the world economy from armageddon and just plain saving the planet. It's been so heartening to see the world response to our election. It made me cry to hear of people pouring into the streets in Paris in jubilation. I feel like we're coming out of this dark abyss of 8 years and we've shown the rest of the world that we can take control of our actions and our politicians. Now maybe we'll remind everyone that we can play nice in the world sandbox.

Traipsing Across the Piedmont (North Carolina, that is)

2008-11-06T08:34:00.014-05:00

I have a real love/hate relationship with my job. Love: because I get to work on some of the most iconic and important architecture in the country and travel all over the continent, meeting new, inspiring and exciting people. Hate: for the same reasons, well not working on the iconic architecture of course, but certainly the travel. I've lived in DC for almost 3 years but my social life tends to be dinners, events, sports, parties in other cities since I'm so rarely at home. Of course I realize I plan my own travel schedule so it's really my own fault where I spend my weekends. I am hoping that the influx of Democrats and hope with Obama to DC will encourage me to put down more roots here. Although it may just not be in my make-up. One friend recently called me a gypsy, and others have called me a professional fidgeter. That may be closer. Enough whining for one posting (oh, isn't it sad, she gets to travel all over the country, see some of the best buildings in the world, stay at the coolest hotels, visit friends, boo hoo)...

Last week I was off to Winston-Salem to give my "save the world" speech to the University of North Carolina/Greensboro Department of Interior Architecture. A friend and colleague, John Larson, invited me. John is the Vice President of Restoration at Old Salem Museums & Gardens in Winston-Salem, and teaches at UNC. We have been serving together on the Montpelier Restoration Advisory Committee and he's been wanting me to come visit Old Salem since I met him. Now being the modernist I am, colonial architecture doesn't usually get me too excited, but I can respect and admire the beauty of any good design - be it a building or a community. The weather was beautiful during my 3 days there, so the red brick and lush foliage were welcoming, calming and inspiring. And surprisingly I discovered that there was more to Winston-Salem than Moravian heritage (which turns out to be far more interesting than I had thought it would be).

We drove to the top of Pilot Mountain (a wacky quartzite monadnock seemingly transported from the west to the middle of North Carolina) to get a good flavor of the lay of the land, and admire the changing colors. John showed me the rambling remains of the RJ Reynolds tobacco factory - just on the edge of downtown and looking for a new use; a restored Shell gas station that everyone loves including me; the requisite historic mansions now used as conference centers - GrayLyn and Reynolda; one of the oldest Nascar tracks (1920s) in the country built out of early reinforced concrete; the usual 1970s Brutalist government buildings in downtown Winston-Salem and a lovely wood frame Carpenter Gothic church outside of downtown that just finished a restoration. All my photos can be viewed as a photo album on my Facebook page.

Winston-Salem (hyphenated by the Post Office early last century for some crazy reason I didn't quite understand) is actually Salem (and Old Salem) and Winston. Downtown Winston has a cute main street, a few blocks long with the usual condos taking over a former department store, some hip restaurants, a Federal building and some tobacco and banking headquarter skyscrapers. Old Salem is a smaller version of a Colonial Williamsburg - a restored and sometime reconstructed town built by the Moravians who came here en masse in the early 1800s. But unlike CW it does have different layers of history, building styles and types - early timber framed houses, Colonial and federal era brick structures, and some later 19th century buildings including a hotel. There are apparently a lot of gardens also but I never quite had a chance to roam around a bit. I was staying in an 1833 guest house on the main street, but John and his colleagues had me going from dawn to midnight so I didn't ever have a chance to explore on my own. And that wasn't a bad thing! Everywhere I went was a delight. We even made it to the Obama Headquarters downtown where I got a huge sticker for my car!

Our New Green World

2008-11-05T18:59:00.017-05:00

Today we all awoke to a brand new world. A world filled with hope. A world with an America we can all believe in again. For the first time in probably a decade I woke up free of apathy and cynicism. And I woke up so proud to be an American and proud of my fellow citizens for standing up and declaring that we would no longer stand the status quo, and that in one day we could change the future. Tuesday, November 4th, 2008 the majority of Americans reminded the world why America is so special and why democracy, our democracy, has changed the world and can change it again.

I started crying at 11:08 pm when CNN & MSNBC both declared Obama the winner and I've barely stopped since. The city roared and people poured out onto their balconies, into our courtyard and into the streets. The only other time I've experienced anything like this was 1986 when the Mets won the World Series and all of NYC let out one large gasp. I had no idea that I would react like that. Hope and jubilation makes you do things you never thought your jaded city persona would ever do. Like hug every one of your colleagues all day long. Like smile and say hello to every person you pass on the street. Like start making plans for staying in Washington, DC when all you've done for the past two years is try to find a way to leave. Like keep hugging your kitties and telling them that the world has changed. Unfettered optimism is a new world order for me.

Electing Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States signals the coming of age of our generation - the Baby Boomer Cuspers - those of us born in the early 60s who aren't quite GenXers and not quite Baby Boomers. I like to say that we have the best aspects of each of those generations. And Barack represents the best aspects of the best of us. We have now entered the "Age of Obama". And it's an age that I am honored to be in.

Thomas Friedman ended his op-ed today in the Times by saying "There is just so much work to be done. The Civil War is over. Let reconstruction begin." What was so brilliant about Obama's acceptance speech was the way his strength of purpose, confidence, and elegance embraced and engaged everyone rather than set him apart. He was sober and honest, commanded respect and from me, undying devotion. And I was a diehard Hillary follower. But I don't think anyone could do what needs to be done now to lead the salvation of our world except for him. Do I think he is a messiah? I think he has tapped into what is good in all of us and that he will surround himself with the right people who will ask the right questions. What I have seen in the past 24 hours is that this election is bringing out the best in everyone. I suspect that he will not solve all of our problems himself but he will give us the tools to let us work with each other to solve them together.

In an interview last week, Obama was asked what the top goals of his administration would be. And he responded 1. Stabilize our economy and take control of our finances and 2. Develop our energy independence. For someone who makes her living promoting the greening of our planet, these are words dear to me. Today my dreams of a carbon zero planet filled with plentiful natural resources don't seem that far fetched any more.

For the past year I have been traveling around the country giving my speech on "saving the world through sustainable preservation" and ending my talk with 3 slides that say "If you want to save our planet, and everything in it that we hold dear, then we all must work together to impact the political will." And last night we did that. We have huge mountains to scale to get ourselves out of this political and financial armageddon we find ourselves in, but with Barack Obama at the helm, most of us will be able to say "yes, we can."

PreservationNation & beyond green building

2008-05-27T21:27:00.005-04:00

Since the Fall I have been posting exclusively on my work blog - beyond green building - on the National Trust for Historic Preservation's website, PreservationNation. Check me out there...

Rescuing an Icon - Mies van der Rohe's Farnsworth House

2007-08-25T22:39:00.000-04:00

A story of how a typical business trip turned into a tale of disaster management of national importance...

Thursday, August 23rd, 2007

My day began like many others since I joined the National Trust - board a plane for another city, actually leave and arrive on time (not the norm), rent a car and soon find myself driving out of a city and across the plains and sprawl of middle America. This time briefly passing through Chicago enroute to Plano, Illinois, the location of one of the world's most famous and influential modernist icons - Mies van der Rohe's vacation home for Edith Farnsworth. I arrived on time at 1pm for a day of project review with the new Site Director, Whitney French.

It was sunny and humid, not unlike my home in Washington, DC. A week of massive rains in the midwest had left the Fox River, next to which the Farnsworth House lies, full and rising. Thirteen inches of rain left spots of minor flooding on the 7 acres adjacent to the house, mostly evident along the quarter mile trail from the Visitor Center to the House. These patches caused the tour groups to detour to the house via a ride along Fox River Drive to the rear garage entrance - not the best scenario because the preferred trail brings the visitor up and around the house, giving you that "ah ha" moment when you come around a copse of trees and suddenly see the white steel and glass cube that changed the way architecture is made. But a rear entrance is preferable to no entrance - people literally come from around the world to pay homage to one of the 20th century's grandest yet simplest architectural gestures.

Whitney and I spent the afternoon reviewing projects that had been completed or partially completed, the progress of grants, and the scope of work for the new SAT (Save America's Treasures) grant the house had just received. We roamed around the site, discussed the need for a disaster management plan, checking on cracked travertine, speculating as to the cause of the oxide jacking at the building's steel frame corners, debating when to paint the peeling paint beneath the terraces, and wistfully looking at the custom bed that Brad Pitt had briefly rested on during the filming of a Japanese jeans commercial a week earlier!

We finished for the day around 5 pm and went downtown for dinner. Around 6 pm, while eating our Italian dinners, suddenly the skies opened up, and filled with claps of thunder and streaks of lightning. After a half hour of relentless torrential rains, Whitney and I realized that there was no way I could safely drive the 50 miles to Chicago where I was planning on spending the night. She called the only Bed and Breakfast in town and secured the last room available for me. I spent a dry night in the very Victorian "Homestead Bed & Breakfast" although we had joked that I could stay at the Farnsworth House!

August 24th, 2007

Whitney and I had plans to drive out to Chicago for a 10:30 am meeting at the Landmarks Illinois office in the Monadnock Building with David Bahlman and Al Novickis, the architect ready to start work on the SAT grant for the house. I went down to a scrumptious breakfast to be told that Whitney had called at 7:30 am to say that the house had been completely surrounded by 4 feet of water during the night and I should get out there as soon as possible. I emailed my office and drove there to find that the Farnsworth House was peering above the water just barely, its 5 foot high stilts completely submerged and the water lapping at its front door. David Bahlman, President of Landmarks Illinois our co-steward partner at the house, drove down from Chicago, and he, Whitney and her boyfriend and I, tried to figure out how to get to the house to see if water had gotten in and/or to try to elevate the furniture and the rare Primavera wood panels.

We are fortunate that Whitney, the new site director who has only been in her job for 4 months, has lived in the community for 15 years and knows everyone. The water was too high and too dangerous to consider wading through. So we knew we needed to find a flat-bottomed boat. She called everyone she could think of including the Fire Department and no one had a boat. We feared we would be able to do nothing but watch as the house became submerged and possibly damaged as extensively as it had in 1996 when water rose 5' into the house.

Then, serendipitously, one of the House's volunteers was driving to the site with her son to see how they could help and they saw a boat for sale up the street. They spoke to the owner, who agreed to bring the boat down for us to use. He graciously drove the boat over and set it up for us. David rowed, while Whitney and I navigated. Whitney had 2 pairs of wader boots and gave me one of them to wear. As we approached the house, the top of the travertine terrace was just barely visible. David got the boat near the terrace and I jumped out and pulled them in closer and tied the boat to one of the famous Mies' steel stilts. Whitney and I went into the house, saw no water had entered yet, found some towels which we used as buffers between the boat and the travertine.

We didn't really have a disaster plan but created it on site. In the garage we had found garbage bags, duct tape and a screw driver. David thought to stop at Office Depot and buy a bunch of plastic milk crates to use to elevate the furniture. We didn't know how much time we had. The water had surrounded the house in less than an hour the night before when the locks on a dam further up the Fox River had been opened and within an hour had inundated the low flood plain surrounding Farnsworth. The rain had stopped at 1:30 am but 3 more inches were expected later in the day. We were sure we would get water in the house, so needed to move quickly to see how much we could get moved to higher locations.

We put all of the Tugendhat chairs on top of the bathroom counters, tied the curtains which wrap the house into garbage bags and lifted them up about 2 feet off the floor. We decided (with no scientific information) that we would try to raise everything up at least 2 feet. There are several very heavy pieces of furniture (a desk, dining table, custom bed) and we raised those onto the milk crates with wood planks for support. We removed the demountable Primavera panels in the living room, wrapped them in blankets someone had in their car and placed them on top of the wardrobe. By 1 pm we felt we had elevated everything as much as we could. We had originally, before we actually experienced this, thought we could remove the furniture and take it to higher ground. But once there we realized that the furniture was too heavy and it would be far too dangerous to try to put the furniture into a row boat - dangerous for us and dangerous for the pieces.

Several of David's colleagues had come down from Chicago to lend support. We piled back into the row boat, which by now had it's motor working thanks to Whitney's boyfriend, and retreated to higher ground (having turned off the electricity to the house as well). Exhausted and covered in mud and mosquito bites, we went to lunch (more Italian!) and shared our hopes that the house and its furnishings would survive. Whitney kept calling friends to get the latest weather update. At 2 pm, the huge thunder clouds suddenly dissipated without warning and it appeared that all we had gone through was probably just a drill.

Whitney, David and I drove back to the house around 4. As the sun started to shine on the house, we noted that the water hadn't risen any higher. David headed back to Chicago and Whitney, her daughter and I went back in the boat to photograph all sides of the house. Throughout the day, various colleagues of mine from Washington had been calling and emailing, reminding me to take photos while they tried to locate reporters around the country to cover the story. After our last row around the house, Whitney took her daughter to a football game and I found a cafe with free wi-fi. At 5 pm I downloaded all my photos and started sending them to our VP of Communications. By 5:30 I had been interviewed by the New York Times and an AP reporter. The following day I would discover that our story opened up an article on the flooding in the Midwest that was posted on nearly every online newspaper.

Saturday, August 25th, 2007

Saturday morning found us back at Farnsworth House with no further rains the night before. We took the boat out again and checked the house, emptied out the melting ice in the freezer, took more photos and then motored around the site to see how the trees and landscape had fared. There were many trees and branches floating in the water, fish swimming where only bushes and flowers should be and the pedestrian bridge from the Visitor Center was completely submerged. Still, we sighed happily that no water had breached the doors into the house. Whitney and I finished our day by writing down all we could think of that would be important for future disasters. And I drove back to Midway, happy to be going home and happier still that our precious resource had been saved - at least this time!!

Back to Work

2007-07-09T22:30:00.001-04:00

I still have jet lag after 2 days, waking up every hour, anxious about whether I should or could get up at 6am and go running before work. It was 75 deg when I woke up at 6, so figured running while so exhausted would not be healthy. Got to work for 9am Department Heads meeting and Jim (our boss) was stuck in the subway, at least I had a few minutes to get situated after being out for 10 days.

The day blew by with a Sustainability Initiative meeting with Rhonda, Patrice and Emily, trying to get through my 10 days of unanswered emails, and of course ended with yet another interminable APT Budget Call.

I received a lovely birthday gift today from Tania - a set of cat quilted place mats, napkins and pot holder, and chocolate from their trip to St. Petersburg. Still waiting for the first 7 seasons of Stargate SG-1 that Mom ordered me. Wore my new dragonfly purse from Joanne to work and my very hip Dolce & Gabbana black sun glasses.

Best part of the day was organizing the photos from my trip to LA and Seattle. The Space Needle, my all time favorite building, is well represented, as are the Getty, Schindler's House, the Goldstein extravaganza and even Lake Serene.

So far this posting is rambling, just too tired from jet lag to write anything meaningful. Maybe tomorrow.

My First Blog

2007-07-07T21:11:00.001-04:00

So I turned 45 this week and I'm not quite sure how that happened. I still love stuffed animals, desperately want a tattoo and belly button ring, and wear a size 8 (sometimes a 6 when I'm really lucky) so I'd say I was 35 if anyone asked how old I feel and act...

I spent my birthday with my longtime friend Lynn and her family in Seattle, my former hometown. My 6 days in Seattle were days of glorious weather, filled with outdoor activities (hiking to Lake Serene, running around Green Lake and Volunteer Park, taking Maya for walks), watching fireworks on Lake Samamish, and salivating over some of the best damn architecture and design in this country.

My last full day in Seattle was spent going from museum to museum, to gallery, to the new Olympic Sculpture Park. The Sculpture Park is one of those drop-dead gorgeous pieces of design that I want to pay homage to - I felt not worthy to be in its design presence. I think I may have died and gone to design heaven.