Blog on the City

Demand freedom for Iranians

2009-06-21T22:20:00.000-04:00

An Indelible Design

2009-05-18T10:19:00.002-04:00

The designer of the POW/MIA flag has passed.

The Churning American Landscape

2009-02-23T21:37:00.002-05:00

As much as we don't like it, the American built landscape churns. Two recent Plain Dealer stories tell two tales of demolition or impending demolition. One talks about the dismantling of the Catholic presence in Cleveland's urban neighborhoods, the other talks about a developer wanting to demolish a piece of agrarian history embedded within the suburban millieu of Twinsburg and Solon.

As an architect, BOTC wants these buildings to remain. The Church of Saint Andrew and the Corbett Farm House are landmarks, monuments, and touchstones of everyday life and generational histories. The architectures remind us a former times, speak to another era of society, remind us of the skill of craftsmen, and the humble skills of designers long passed. Thes buildings can survive us and should survive us--yet, again, because of the flux of the American landscape they will be demolished and their remains strewn about many landfills.

The demolition reminds BOTC of a Son Volt song, written by the ascetic Jay Farrar:

"Way Down Watson"

PUT WHISKEY ON THE WOUNDS
SALT THE GLASS AND SAY GOODBYE

NO FEEL-GOOD SCENES TO BRING IT BACK
JUST FALLEN BRICK AND BROKEN GLASS

WRECKING BALL OPERATOR
TWENTY YEARS PULLING THE LEVER
THESE WINDOWS SHIELD THE COLD FROM THE WEATHER OF MY SOUL

FEEL THE HEART STRINGS SINKING FAST
ANOTHER TREASURE FOUND ANOTHER TUMBLING DOWN

I PROTECT MY EARS AND EYES FROM THE DUST AND NOISE
WORD COMES DOWN TO THE BITTER END THE DIESEL HUMS THE CYCLE SPINS

WHEN WE MEET ON THAT HARD HAT GROUND
JUST A PHOTOGRAPH NO ONE ELSE AROUND

WORDS TO LIVE BY IT JUST GOES TO SHOW
SOMEDAY WE ALL GOTTA GO

FEEL THE HEART STRINGS SINKING FAST
ANOTHER TREASURE FOUND ANOTHER TUMBLING DOWN

The Right Choice

2009-01-23T10:34:00.002-05:00

For once, BOTC agrees with the Cuyahoga County Commissioners.

BOTC believes that the Mall site is a far better choice for the Medical Mart and Convention Center than the Tower City site. However, our reasoning is not based on money, but rather, based on what we believe is good for downtown urbanism.

BOTC has felt that the placement of the facility at Tower City would have dampened the dynamism of Cleveland’s central core. A visitor to Cleveland could have come to Tower City and never set a foot outside the complex. A medical mart visitor would come from the airport via the Rapid and conducted business, eated, and sleept all in one complex and never emerged into the city.

With the convention facility on the Mall, visitors will be required to navigate the entire central core. Visitors will migrate from hotels around downtown, traverse Daniel Burnham’s Mall, Public Square, and the Warehouse District and Playhouse Square, because they will not be able to stay in one self-serve complex. Cleveland natives will mix everyday with convention visitors on our downtown sidewalks, hopefully enhancing city life.

BOTC also likes the Mall site because the architects and urban designers will be forced to re-interpret and grapple with Daniel Burnham. The Mall was designed as the "green lungs" of a growing industrial city—yet the Mall has remained somewhat fallow in recent decades. The insertion of a magnet facility will re-energize the Mall and resuscitate Burnham’s vision of civic Cleveland.

Now, let’s hope we can get this thing built without corruption.

Coosje van Bruggen, RIP

2009-01-14T09:18:00.002-05:00

May the enigmatic Free Stamp always remain enigmatic.

Frustration

2009-01-14T08:53:00.003-05:00

BOTC became very upset this morning upon reading about Mayor Jackson's trip to Chicago.

How is it that Cleveland's most important urban project is being hatched, designed, and thrown toghether in a secluded Chicago conference room with no public or critical comment?

The urban design implications of this project are profound. If this is screwed up, downtown can die. It this is successful, dowtown can thrive. Are local designers + planners even involved with the project?

BOTC has warned about the implications of the Medical Mart before:

Since Cuyahoga County has signed the deal to bring the Medical Mart to Cleveland and to establish a new convention center, many in the design community need to voice their opinions on the future sites of such institutions. Surely we know more about design than Dimora + Hagan.The placement of each building or buildings within the downtown context will impact how the city is used, how the city is experienced, and how the city will literally wear away or strengthen. The investment made in the near future will alter the dynamics of our downtown core for decades to come. The ramifications of these impositions need to understood.

BOTC agrees with Steve Litt that the process should be open to the public because of the civic nature of projects. We also believe that studies for the placement of the convention sites should include a broader study of the entirety of downtown since the placement of the convention center in relation to hotels, transportation hubs, attraction districts, and university campuses, will alter the hydraulics of the city.

For example, if the Medical Mart is built in the Tower City complex and the convention center is built on the Mall, Public Square suddenly takes on the important function of connector tissue than transcends everyday Clevelander use. Should Public Square then be re-designed?These questions should be asked and answered before any downtown site is ultimately chosen.

Previous plans for Cleveland were developed in Chicago offices - - but Daniel Burnham was a genius. We should not have the same confidence in our Chicago counterparts today without intense design scrutiny.

Public Square as it should be used . . .

2009-01-13T09:03:00.004-05:00

BOTC has long believed that Public Square is an archaic remnant of a past urbanism. Public Square does not seem to maintain a place in the collective memory of Northeast Ohioans like it once did (a la Dick Feagler). The Square is a glorified RTA stop with a Civil War monument and a statue of Tom Johnson.

However, over the past few days, the Square has come alive with protest and argument. Local Jews and Palestians have transformed the common public space into a figurative sparring ground to vent their disgust, frustrations, and agony over the latest Middle East violence. See video and the story from the Plain Dealer here.

So maybe BOTC is wrong about Public Square. However, we lament that it required a war to make Public Square a vibrant American commons.

Obama-structure

2008-12-23T21:44:00.002-05:00

Obama-structure is coming.

Millions of dollars are going to be disseminated around the country for "infrastructure" related projects.

Are our politicians and notable movers and shakers going to be ready to get our region a piece of the action?

There is no excuse for Greater Cleveland and Cuyhoga County not to be at the front of the hand-out line. Cuyahoga County helped the president-elect solidify his historic electoral win. The region deserves the fruits of victory.

But where are our politicians, especially those on the left side of the aisle? There needs to be a concentrated effort between Sherrod Brown, Dennis Kucinich, Marsha Fudge, Mayor Frank Jackson, Peter Lawson Jones, and Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher, all NEO democrats, to build a pipeline of funding from Washington to Cuyahoga County. As New Haven was to Lyndon Johnson, Cleveland must become to President Obama--a city of experimentation and federal investment dollars.

And the first project that must be funded is the Technology + Innovation Corridor.

We Must Always Remember

2008-09-11T09:24:00.002-04:00

Soul of the City

2008-05-27T15:35:00.003-04:00

How does one measure the depth of civic engagement in a particular city? What metrics can we use to register the strength of conscience? How can the soul of the city be indexed?

BOTC has written before about the simple care of the city. By “simple care” we mean the neighborly awareness and recognition of other urban dwellers or users. The exhibition of simple care is most apparent during the winter when some landlords or owners make little or no attempt at removing snow and ice from city sidewalks. No snow removal reflects an obvious disregard or de-valuing of the city. Hence, snow removal is a simple metric of civic engagement.

Another more ritualized metric that can be utilized is the community parade. BOTC has always been interested in the community parade—not necessarily at the scale of Cleveland’s Saint Patrick’s Day Parade, but more on the scale of the community Memorial Day Parade. BOTC has documented several local Memorial Day parades and ceremonies over the years, including events in Bedford, Chagrin Falls, Parma Heights, and Parma.

The Memorial Day Parade, an American ritual that has its roots in the Civil War, is, if closely examined and witnessed, a poignant and touching exhibition of civic engagement and patriotism. Although the routines stay the same every years, the gathering of veterans’ groups, high school bands, boy and girl scouts, police and fire departments, assures the solemnity and importance of the annual procession. The young and the old march together, maintaining the generational passage of the sacred tradition of honoring the fallen. The grizzled veteran straightens at the playing of the National Anthem or weeps at the emotion of Taps, all in public view and in participation with others who have not served. Children hold little American flags and fidget during moments of respectful silence, beginning to understand the rituals that they will perform in later decades. They all honor citizens who sacrificed.

However, what happens if no one comes to the parade? What if very little people actually spend a half-hour of their holiday participating in—just merely watching, mind you--the Memorial Day Parade? This is what occurred in Parma yesterday. Parma is a city of, according to the US Census Bureau, around 80,000 people. Approximately 9,300 veterans live in the city, or about 14% of Parma’s population, more than average American city. Many houses fly Marine Corps and Navy flags. Blue Star Flags hang in many windows. Yet, how can so little people turn out for such a solemn occasion?

This lack of visible and tangible participation in one of the civic days of obligation is quite distressing. This is, in our estimation, a metric that portends negatively for the soul of the city, our city. Once an urbanism or suburbanism loses its pride and erodes into apathy, the core begins to rot and weakens, eventually withering away.

BOTC hopes what we witnessed is merely an anomaly.

A Lecture worth a Damn

2008-05-22T10:15:00.004-04:00

Cameron Sinclair performs God's work.

That is our reaction to Cameron's lecture last night at the Idea Center. The lecture, the last in the recent Talalay Lecture Series sponsored by MOCA Cleveland, was clearly the most interesting, potent, and relevant talk we have experienced in quite a while.

While many of us play within the esotericism of current architectural and urban thought, Sinclair and his organization Architecture for Humanity acts, facilitates, and builds hundreds of buildings around the world, influencing thousands of people on many continents. Sinclair truly builds for the masses, all by utilizing decentralized and open networks of emerging global architectural talent, instead of top-down master dictated central planning structures.

Although we live in a spikey world of innovation and creativity (see Richard Florida's recent book Who's Your City), we also live in a flat world (see Tom Friedman's The World is Flat) which allows the distribution of innovative architectural ideas through emerging digital networks. AFH takes advantage eager+willing+idealistic professionals and designers around the globe to solve problems that heavy + clunky international organizations and NGOs cannot. AFH's portfolio of work exhibits the agency that thoughtfully construed architecture can possess, facilitating the building of community, the dissemination of education, the easing of tension and strife, the enlightening of intellect, and the bolstering of local economies. All architects wish that we could create building which could have such a profound influence.

The question for us, in Cleveland, is what we can do to aid in AFH's vital mission of delivering sensitive and effective design solutions to populations who do not usually have access to architectural and engineering professionals. Sadly, we here in Cleveland do not necessarily have to look more than a few miles to perform work that can be immediately beneficial.

Bravo, Mr. Sinclair. Your work inspires and touches the soul.

A Slow response to a Slow Lecture

2008-05-19T15:35:00.001-04:00

Carolyn Strauss, director of SlowLAB, a design think tank based in New York and Amsterdam, presented her work and thoughts to a small audience at the Idea Center on April 22. Her lecture was the second in the current Talalay Lecture Series “The New Face of Architecture” sponsored by the Cleveland Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA).

Unfortunately for the audience, there was nothing really new about her ideas, thoughts, or work, or anything readily applicable to architectural generation. Rather the talk was purely anecdotal and catalogue-like, warm-and-fuzzy, and unsubstantial.

The crux of Strauss’s presentation centered on the idea of “the slow” or the concept of “slowness,” a so-called movement that searches to leach out the hidden textures, histories, and dynamics of a given space, artifact, infrastructure, setting, atmosphere, or event. The slowness notion, according to Strauss, can be traced back to the slow food movement, which sought the raise awareness of local cuisine and food production in specific regions of Italy. Supposedly this notion of the slow is transferrable to other creative disciplines, such as architecture and urban design. Strauss sought to make these connections between ideas of regional cuisine with ideas of recent installation art and urban mapping from around the world, often citing the work a confederation of designers, artists, cartographers, and geographers.

Yet very little of the work was architectural in the traditional sense. The work shown varied from the documentation of weeds and flowers embedded in walls or sidewalk cracks, installation projection art that simulated a tree shedding leaves, and a documentary focusing on the plight of an immigrant shoe repair shop and its owner. While singularly interesting and potentially potent, the exhibited work as a collection did not cohesively suggest a new paradigm of thought that could manifest in a slow architecture or slow urbanism.

Ultimately many in the audience recognized that the lecture was merely an index of catalogued resistant moments in our globalized economy and culture. This resistance is not really new, novel, or groundbreaking in thought or practice—similar resistance practices and thought can be found in many disciplines being executed around the world. The idea of resistance or critical resistance, again, is nothing new.

The notion of a slow resistance or merely slowness in architecture and urbanism is hardly novel. Firstly we can look to Marxist architectural historian Kenneth Frampton and his ever-evolving essay “Critical Regionalism” which exhibits the notion of global-resistive regionalism in architectural design. Slowness can be found in the delicate essays of David Leatherbarrow, a theorist who writes cogently about weathering, surfacing, and siting of architecture within specific environments. The slow can also be weaned from the writings of landscape historians such a JB Jackson (The Necessity of Ruins) and John Stilgoe (Outside Lies Magic). Although the above are authors and not designers, they do posit notions and provide potential constitutional foundations for slow design.

But that is not to say that slowness has not been made manifest through existing built work. Exhibitions of slowness can be found in the contemporary phenomenological architecture of Tod Williams + Bille Tsien, Juhani Pallasmaa, Steven Holl, Will Bruder, Rick Joy, Jacque Herzog + Pierre De Meuron, among many others. Much of the work of the great Alvar Aalto possesses a prediction towards the phenomenological and ruination, and therefore the slow. Whether or not identified taxonomically within the current milieu , slowness already does possess a pedigree within the cannon of 20th century modernism.

In conclusion we were disappointed in the lack of a rigorous process and annunciation of principal that such a doctrine can possess. The notion of slowness does possess merit and potential, even if its recent incarnation and presentation was rather shallow and directionless. Strauss should continue her work but recognize the movement’s hagiography and situate the antecedents that should strengthen the work.

As for MOCA’s selection of lecturers in this series, the museum is batting well below its average. Strauss’s talk was clearly weak. Although the Ball + Nogues lecture received only luke-warm praise, the duo’s built work and installations at least provided hope for a furtherance of thought. Let’s hope that Cameron Sinclair’s talk later this week provides an actual new face of architecture, not merely a simulacrum.

Parma garners attention from the AIA

2008-04-17T17:44:00.002-04:00

Parma's urban concerns have snagged the attention of the American Institute of Architects.

The city will host a team of sustainability experts, designers, and planners who will conduct a study on Cleveland's most populous suburb.

See the story here.

Also, recent work from Parma Studio, the Fall 2007 graduate urban design studio at Kent State's Urban Design Center, is still on exhibit at Parmatown Mall. See the press release here.

Visions of Parma

2008-03-26T19:22:00.002-04:00

If one was to exhibit urban design speculations about the storied suburb of Parma, Ohio, where would that be? Of course, the exhibtion would be hung in Parmatown Mall.

Work from Kent State's CUDC Fall 2007 Urban Design Studio is now on display in a vacant storefront in the Mall. The student work considered a Parma 2.0, the next iteration of this suburb that is currently losing population, investment, and value. How does a blue-collar suburb regain its footing as heavy manufacturing leaves the city and the region? How does design instigate needed change?

Student proposals include the imposition of cultural concourses, linear universities, race-track urbanisms, religious enclave networks, and the construction of a Parma Dam and resulting Lake Parma. A more sober proposal looks at the potential of reclaiming and re-appropriating foreclosed properties to create a new suburbansim.

All are worth a look.

The Permanent Convention Trip

2008-03-20T08:57:00.003-04:00

While the County Commissioners are all hot and bothered about the new Convention Center and Medical Mart deal that will be signed today, several conventions-worth of Cuyahoga County citizens are going, this year alone, on a permanent convention trip, never to come back. See the PD article from this morning.

13,000 people left the county - - -last year!

Cuyahoga County has lost more people (97,887) in the last seven years than any other county in the country, except for Orleans Parish (New Orleans), which we all know was related to Hurricane Katrina.

How and why is this happening? We have some of the country's leading arts and cultural institutions, as well as leading academic institutions. We are located on the world's largest reservoir of fresh water. Etc, Etc.

Although we here at BOTC believe the in the catalytic nature of design, design is not going to save us. We firmly believe that the obstacles to the transformation and emergence of a new Cleveland + Cuyahoga County are located in the inert pyramids of local and state political power. They need to be toppled, obliterated, and rebuilt as more nimble apparatuses that can anticipate the shifts in economies, demographics, and culture. Only after we have re-constructed our decision-making bodies will true non-machine created leadership will emerge that begin to salvage our region.

Let us be your convention guide . . .

2008-03-16T11:43:00.004-04:00

Since Cuyahoga County has signed the deal to bring the Medical Mart to Cleveland and to establish a new convention center, many in the design community need to voice their opinions on the future sites of such institutions. Surely we know more about design than Dimora + Hagan.

The placement of each building or buildings within the downtown context will impact how the city is used, how the city is experienced, and how the city will literally wear away or strengthen. The investment made in the near future will alter the dynamics of our downtown core for decades to come. The ramifications of these impositions need to understood.

BOTC agrees with Steve Litt that the process should be open to the public because of the civic nature of projects. We also believe that studies for the placement of the convention sites should include a broader study of the entirety of downtown since the placement of the convention center in relation to hotels, transportation hubs, attraction districts, and university campuses, will alter the hydraulics of the city.

For example, if the Medical Mart is built in the Tower City complex and the convention center is built on the Mall, Public Square suddenly takes on the important function of connector tissue than transcends everyday Clevelander use. Should Public Square then be re-designed?

These questions should be asked and answered before any downtown site is ultimately chosen. We here at Blog on the City in coordination with Cleveland Design City will track the deliberations and critique as needed.

The Simple Care for the City

2008-03-11T10:39:00.008-04:00

BOTC walks the streets of Downtown Cleveland everyday, usually working our way down East East 14th and Euclid, between the parking garage and the office. When you walk the same route everyday, you tend to notice things--little things--that can inform you to the state of the city. The details and micro-conditions are usually indicitive of the greater whole, or to steal a phrase from architectural theorist Marco Frascari, the detail tells the tale.

While constuction continues on the Euclid Corridor project, new details emerge, like the symbolic cross walk paving, the embedded public art, the articulated trash cans, and such. These are exciting, pleasing, and exhibit a care for the city.

Other "details" emerge after something like the recent blizzard, that exhibit a disregard for the city and the people who use it everyday. These "details" are not design related, yet testify to the lack of care for the city. Namely, along Euclid Avenue, the phenomenom of un-shoveled and icy city sidewalks and public spaces in front of absentee landlord-owned properties exhibit a disinterest in the greater good of downtown pedestrians. While some building owners assisduously clear and maintain clear sidewalks for their building tenants, as well as the passer-by, others disrespect the city by not investing this small gesture to make Cleveland more friendly and simply walkable.

Creating a better city does not always necessitate investment of million of dollars. Rather a better city can be realized with ten minutes with a shovel and some salt.

UPDATE: A BOTC colleague expressed dismay that the Union Club, a bastion of Euclid Avenue rectitude, is also guilty of failing to clear their sidewalks.

Bad Water Rising on Public Square

2008-03-06T09:11:00.006-05:00

BOTC is usually optomisitc about our fair city, despite its many faults.

However, this morning, the literal belly button of Cleveland burst and then caved-in.

A water main break at the heart of Public Square, at the intersection of Ontario + Superior, has created one hell of crater. See the NewsChannel 5 slideshow here.

This is not a good omen for the city.

And as Design Rag reminded me, why not take the opportunity to re-think the Square?

BOTC has commented on this in the past.

Endorsement: John McCain

2008-02-26T23:46:00.003-05:00

Even though John McCain is the de facto Republican Presidential nominee, we still offer our very lucrative BOTC endorsement.

Unlike his soon-to-be Democratic opponent, the traditionally urban, Chicago-based Barack Obama, John McCain hails from the American Southwest, a surging, spawling, and very dynamic region of the country. Although Phoenix is usually panned, like sister city Houston, for its uncontrollable growth, these cities possess the DNA of true American urbanism--an essential suburban horizontalism. These new cities of new economies are not riddled with the same hollow cores of the cities of the rust belt nor the same concerns about migrating jobs and brain drain. The urbanisms reflect new urbanism of churning economies, geographies, lifestyles, family structures, immigration patterns, infrastructures, etc--these are the urban paradigms of the new American Century.

There is much to learn from what has been accomplished and destroyed in Phoenix. John McCain, a son of Phoenix, and his potential administration could inject a new enthusiasm and interest in the value of the perimeter and how the urban peripheries can still serve their important purpose in our metropolian areas, albeit more efficiently and productively.

Endorsement: Barack Obama

2008-02-26T23:29:00.004-05:00

We here at BOTC spent the night watching the most likely final debate between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. We had hunches about who we wanted to endorse before hand, but we wanted to wait until after the debate to make our choice, just in case. You never know--maybe Senator Clinton would have offered a rousing speech about the value of urban civic space. But, of course, she did not.

So we offer our endorsement of Barack Obama for the Democratic Presidential Nomination. Although both talked about the investment in infrastructure, we feel that a President Obama would make more robust investment in urban infrastructures. Obama possesses an idealism that will most likely produce urban renewal-like programs on the scale of LBJ's Great Society, which will prove very lucrative and thrilling to architects and urban designers.

Even though the physical city of Cleveland was not talked about much, our fair city would be a perfect testing laboratory for radical and progressive design endeavors that can conflate issue of urban shrinkage, landscape urbanism, new public housing paradigms, new economy geographies, green technologies, and endowed transportation corridors. If a President Obama is true to his word, our cities will be the fertile territories for an American urban rebirth.

Endorsement - - Thomas O'Grady for Congress

2008-02-23T10:54:00.005-05:00

We here at BOTC are disappointed in the lack of response by all the candidates. Issues of infrastructure and its effects upon our urban, suburban, exurban, and rural landscapes + collective urbanims will be at the forefront of the next Congress and many congresses in the future. Since no candidates, including assumed poll leaders Joe Cimperman + Dennis Kucinich, responded to our memo, BOTC will make the best educated endorsement that we muster.

Firstly, we dismiss the candidacies of Rosemary Palmer and Barbara Ferris, since we can find no real interest in issues that concern us here at BOTC. We also dismiss the candidacy of incumbent Dennis Kucinich--Dennis may be a whirlwind of advovacy, but his concerns do not align with ours. If Kucinich does maintain his seat in Congress, we hope that he will be a greater advocate for the improvement of our built environment, civic spaces, and public infrastructures.

So the endorsement choice falls between Joe Cimperman, a Cleveland councilman and Thomas O'Grady, Mayor of North Olmsted.

While Cimperman seems to be "seen as involved" with many revitalization projects in his ward, we wonder where is leadership has really improved the built environment. How much influence does Cimperman have as a mere councilman in a city with a shrinking population? We question his capabilty and potential as our Representative in the next Congress to gain political capital and influence on the Hill to improve Cleveland and its inner ring suburbs. Although we may not support Cimperman's run in 2008, we may support him in future campaigns as he gains, hopefully, more executive experince in urban affairs.

Therefore, we officially endorse Thomas O'Grady, an exprienced mayor and executive who serves on a myriad of boards and committees, who is actually responsible for the contruction, operation, and maintenance of buildings, streets, infrastructures, parks. We believe that O'Grady know that value of investment in civic infrastructures and what it takes to construct such edifices for public use. Good mayors are pragmatists, necessarily avoiding un-needed political squabbles, in order to achieve goals for the greater good.

We believe O'Grady would best assuage our concerns here at BOTC. We understand that Mayor O'Grady is quite the long-shot to win the nomination, but we offer our best wishes and support for his campaign.

Endorsement Questions

2008-02-18T21:48:00.004-05:00

This has been sent to the Democrat candidates for the 10th Congressional District:

MEMO
18 February 2008

To:
Joe Cimperman
Barbara Ferris
Dennis Kucinich
Thomas O’Grady
Rosemary Palmer

From: Blog on the City (http://www.blogonthecity.blogspot.com/)

RE: Blog on the City Endorsements for the Democratic Primary 10th Congressional District

All:

Blog on the City, a local Cleveland architecture, urban design, and landscape blog, is looking to make endorsements for the March 4 primaries. We are part of the greater Cleveland Design City Network (http://www.clevelanddesigncity.com/), an aggregator of all known Cleveland architecture + urban design blog sites which frequently comment on our region’s design endeavors.

We are interested in your approaches, ideas, and notions about the built environment and how our built environment can sustain and re-invigorate our city and our region. We define the built environment as any transportation infrastructure, buildings, housing, parks, etc. As our representative in Congress, you will have the power + influence to garner appropriations, write legislation, and advocate for projects that could improve Cleveland and the region. What will you do to improve our urbanisms?

We will be making our endorsements based on your thoughts and your responses to these various questions:

What is your favorite local building + why?
In your opinion, what is the most successful urban space in the city of Cleveland + why?
Should Public Square be redesigned?
What is your position on the West Shoreway proposal?
How would you utilize Cleveland’s lakefront?
What is your position on the Innerbelt Bridge re-alignment?
How would you improve the inner-ring suburbs of Parma, Lakewood, etc.?
If you could re-design downtown Cleveland, what changes would you make?

We thank you in anticipation of your participation.

BOTC Endorsements

2008-02-14T17:11:00.004-05:00

We here at Blog on the City have quite an influence upon opinion and critique within Cleveland's architecture + urban design commnity. With influence comes responsibility. So with a sense of deepening civic responsibilty, Blog on the City will be making endorsements in the presidential primaries, select congressional primaries, and maybe some other issues (we have not decided yet).

BOTC will be endorsing candidates who believe that sound, progressive, and responsible design (architecture, landscape, urban design) can aid in the recovery of the city + region and candidates who will fight and advocate for those radical design endeavors.

Daniel Burnham, the great urban designer who created the Group Plan and continued to be active in Cleveland design review committees late into his life, will serve as our intellectual mentor for this endorsement process. Burnham possessed a belief in the American city, a belief in design integrity, and a belief in the transcendant power of radical civic design endeavors. Which candidates would Burnham believe would serve as proper advocates for the transformations that need to occur to improve and sustain Cleveland?

Burham had Tom Johnson. Who do we have, if anyone?

Cleveland Public Art - - Exhibit Opening Tonight

2008-02-07T10:36:00.000-05:00

CPA always puts on an enjoyable opening event . . . .

Urban Landscapes

Join Cleveland Public Art as Ryan Jaenke and Paul Rogers exhibit recent works inspired by Cleveland’s urban landscape.

This no cost opening event hits Thu 2/7 at 5:30PM at CPA, 1951 West 26th Street in Ohio City. Call 621-5330 or visit http://www.clevelandpublicart.org.

Viktor Schreckengost, RIP

2008-01-28T17:01:00.000-05:00

Another great Cleveland modernist has passed.

Steve Litt's article here.

AP Obituary here.

Modernism Saved, yet Developer Post-Modernism must be Stopped

2008-01-16T09:36:00.000-05:00

So the Cleveland Trust Tower has been saved, due to many factors. The K+D Group of Willoughby bid just enough for the property and has proposed saving George Post's Cleveland Trust Rotunda and the Tower. And that's great.

Now that one battle has been one, another needs to fought to keep crappy, developer-cheezey barnacles from populating the site. Robert Corna, mastermind of such mis-shapen piles such as Stonebridge, needs to be halted from pursuing the design published on the cover of the Plain Dealer this morning. It is no longer the early 1980's. Again, as BOTC has pleaded in the past, public officials and the public should not forgive bad design just because the developer promises to create a LEED certified building.

The once proud Cleveland Planning Commission needs to regain its footing after allowing the Tri-C Rock Hall Archive to commence construction and put a halt on bad developer buildngs that may encroach on two buildings by two fine architects.

See K+D's plans here. Ugh.

2007 BOTC Year-End Awards

2007-12-31T11:54:00.000-05:00

Overall, 2007 has been quite a year for design endeavors in Northeast Ohio. Interesting buildings are being designed or are nearing construction, design literacy is growing and starting to be appreciated by a wider swathe of Clevelanders, and design has been a topic of intense discussion at exhibitions, cocktail parties, in newspapers and the blogosphere. Young architects were exhibited, the Cleveland Competition completed its first annual competition, international-caliber designers lectured, and senior architects imparted their wisdoms and dreams about Cleveland Modernism. Let’s hope for more of the same in 2008.

However, we here at Blog on the City wish to present the several “design awards” for the past year, praising the worthy while ridiculing the awful. We hope you enjoy and cringe at the appropriate intervals.

Best Building completed in 2007:
Coop Himmelblau’s Akron Art Museum

Although the Washington Post critiqued the new addition as an appropriate 1970’s intellectual imposition in a city mired in the 1970’s, Coop’s building is a forceful, potent, startling, and correct architecture. The structural gymnastics, folding planes of glass, aggressive concrete presence, and resulting spatial arrangements will hopefully teach conservative Northeast Ohioans that architecture can transcend Western Reserve-style gables, plastic columns, and “brick” facades.

The Missed Opportunity of 2007:
Robert P. Madison’s Tri-C Arts Center + Rock Hall Archive

We all know why Madison gets local design projects—he is the most politically networked architect in the city. However, he is the most incompetent architect working on large scale commissions in the city, as is evident in the proposed Tri-C Arts center to be located at the Downtown Metro Campus. The massing is boring, lifeless and diluted brutalism. The fenestration is lifeless. A campus orientation for the building is beguiling absent. The relationship to Interstate 77 is non-existent. One has to ask how this hunk of architectural garbage was allowed to pass through the many layers of design reviews or the enlightened intellect of Tri-C and Rock Hall leadership. Local leadership missed an opportunity to create a thoughtful architectural repository for musical history.

Best Urban Design Strategy Proposed in 2007:
The Innerbelt Cap

Yeah, it would be expensive. But we have wasted more money on other infrastructural elements in Cuyahoga County. The Inner Belt Cap would essentially bury the Inner Belt and connect the Tri-C campus and the Saint Vincent Medical Campus with Cleveland State, which would be worthwhile. The application of the cap could spawn a new urbanism, not New Urbanism, unlike the proposed block copy and extension proposed by self-describe urban designer Paul Volpe. This study is worth continued exploration, hopefully devoid of the saccharine neo-traditionalism espoused in the study. Can the scar through the city still be acknowledged in the scar tissue?

The most Unfortunate Urban Design Strategy Proposed in 2007:
The Innerbelt Bridge

The people that bring you orange barrels 9 months of the year are also planning a rather uninspiring new bridge to replace the existing Innerbelt spans across the Cuyahoga Valley. Bridge designers presented some rather banal solutions to a potentially invigorating design problem, all the while pissing-off one the leading bridge design consultants in the world. Infrastructural investments like this one will affect downtown urbanism for generations, although it seems the ODOT really does not care. Let’s hope Frank Jackson, City Council, and the County Commissioners stand-up and do something about this potentially devastating project.

Best use of Architecture to shame Politicians:
The Breuer Tower Debacle

Now, mind you, the so-called “leaders” of Cuyahoga County seem a bit dim-witted, so embarrassing them is not that entirely trying. However, the Breuer Tower tug-of-war that played-out this entire year exposed the potential of an energized architectural community as well as the fiscal mismanagement of Cuyahoga County. Several boosters sponsored forums, design competitions, and even protests in order to bring some publicity to the plight of Marcel Breuer’s only skyscraper. Entrants in the design competition and several bloggers pilloried city and county leaders for their lack of tact, lack of historical perspective, and exposed the flaws in their logic for demolition. In the end, or at least as of now, the county has no money to build anything, so the building may be sold and ultimately saved.

Best Advocates for Design (Large Institutions):
Dr. Toby Cosgrove, CEO-Cleveland Clinic
Timothy Rub, Director-Cleveland Museum of Art

Each of these University Circle leaders can and do exert influence over architectural and urban design not only in the confines of the Circle, but all over the Northeast Ohio region.

Toby Cosgrove, a minimalist modernist, personally reviews and critiques every new Clinic facility that will be constructed. Cosgrove pushes his architects to transcend the normative empty formalism that is found in much medical design (see the new Clinic Heart Center under construction)—and his advocacy of an astute and responsible architecture will leave a lasting legacy within the Clinic system and the region.

Timothy Rub is an exacting architectural historian who also pushes his architects to refine, re-engage, and re-consider every notion of design. Rub, with his cadre of leading architects, landscape architects, and designers, are transforming the Cleveland Museum of Art into a lively collection of design impositions, each piece referencing and re-interpreting Marcel Breuer’s modernist propositions. Rub’s intimate involvement with each facet of the restoration and additions will ensure architectures of high quality, erudite reasoning, and superior pedigree.

Best Advocate for Design (Small Institutions):
Greg Peckham, Executive Director-Cleveland Public Art

Greg Peckham and his staff at Cleveland Public Art continued to work in the various arenas of public art, from the erudite and permanent, to the populist and temporary. Whether utilizing concrete, landscape, or spray paint, Cleveland Public Art’s Executive Director is constantly working to enliven Cleveland’s public spaces and corridors. Look for challenging work to emerge on Mall B this upcoming year, again spearheaded by Peckham.

Best Net-roots Activity for Design:
Cleveland Design Competition

Local young architects Brad Fink and Mike Christoff launched the inaugural Cleveland Design Competition this year, a competition designed to attract design attention to our fair city and region. Fink and Christoff must be congratulated for not only creating such a competition that garnered international participation, but also for protecting the integrity of the endeavor, avoiding unnecessary entanglements with traditional organizations and personalities that wanted to influence the competition. We look forward to next year’s competition program.

Praise and Ridicule Forthcoming

2007-12-28T08:14:00.000-05:00

We here at BOTC, in conjunction with Cleveland Design City, will be posting our year-end awards and commentary on the year that was 2007. We will be posting awards and ridicule about buildings, proposals, urban design schemes, infrastructural projects, architects, activitsts, and patrons that moved Cleveland design forward or inflicted irreversible harm.

Look back here on Monday for our "authoritative" take on a rather wonderful and active year in Cleveland architecture and maybe some resolutions for 2008.

John Terrence Kelly, RIP

2007-12-26T10:22:00.000-05:00

One of Cleveland's true Modernists has passed away.

See the Plain Dealer obituary here.

An exerpt about an architect's architect:

Known by family and friends as "U.J.," which stood for Uncle Jack, Kelly was described in a 1955 Plain Dealer story as an architect who would rather design than sleep, and would rather starve than compromise his ideals. Kelly was 33 then and had designed a booth at the Home and Flower Show for the now defunct Cleveland Press newspaper. The booth, constructed of illustrated Masonite panels mounted on a steel frame, reflected the two principles of design that Kelly prized above nourishment, the Plain Dealer reporter wrote: "Each design problem demands its own reasoned solution." And "building materials should be used to express their beauty and function."

RIP.

Attacking their Religion

2007-11-27T08:58:00.000-05:00

BOTC has received a few responses to our "A Needed Autonomy" post, a post questioning the championing (or marketing) of the cause of sustainability in our built environment, irrespective of the quality of the architecture that possesses this green-ness. The reponders were "offended" and quite shrill with their posts, of course, attacking BOTC peronsally with little logic, like good little true-believers in the cause of their secular religion of green design, astonished that there are people who would question the validity of green-ness.

Again, BOTC stresses that we are proponents of smart design that integrates green principles into the work of architecture. However, BOTC is always skeptical of buildngs, architects, and propogandists who consistently champion architecture that is rather bad, but offer the building a pass because it may be green.

BOTC is sick of entities either altering their logo for a week (NBC's peacock rendered in green), or creating commercials about sustainabilty (Toyota), although their products often betray the message, or placing some green verbage on a shopping bag (Arby's) that offers a pass on the green issue, assuaging the sustainabilty gods. This is green-ness as public relations, and it is very much false and mis-leading.

BOTC sees the same thing occurring in architecture and design, where entities place solar panels on their buildings, like badges of moral courage, even though the program and function of the building may be hurtful to the environment (see the new Cedar-Lee parking garage). Again, the solar panels are used to satisfy the offended or teach the unwashed, like secular didactic inconography. Utlimately these applications of sustainibility are weak and feckless, exploited for the wrong reasons, and lauded nearly automatically without proper relfection.

All BOTC is asking for is for enviro-moralists to be more critical in their appreciations for green architectural and urban design. Not all green is good.

Cleveland Design City Aggregator

2007-11-23T09:49:00.000-05:00

BOTC is part of Cleveland Design City, a constellation of Cleveland ankle-biting design blogs.

We have recently created a more comprehensive site for all of your needed architectural design news and opinion concerning our part of the world. Please start your day at the Design City site and visit often as we will begin to offer our own local design awards, editorials, and other endeavors that will spice up the local architecture scene.

www.clevelanddesigncity.com

A Needed Autonomy

2007-11-23T09:44:00.000-05:00

Architecture and Urban Design are being hijacked by overly-moralistic, faddish, and clichéd external movements. These external forces are manipulating architectures into vehicles of feel-good vacuity, laden with good intentions, yet ultimately resulting in inarticulate piles. These rudimentary piles are praised for their benevolence, offered at the altar of this movement or that, and everyone involved gets a hearty backslap. Yet, sadly amongst the self-congratulations, for all their supposed progressiveness, the architecture itself is usually diminished and sub-standard.

Hence BOTC’s skepticism with buildings, architects, or organizations that constantly litter their pronouncements with words like “green”, “sustainable,” or “LEED.” In our opinion when the “sustainability” of a project is proclaimed louder than the aesthetics, spaces, form, or theoretical proposition, the building probably “sucks,” which is a detriment to the larger endeavor of “architecture.” This green-ness fetish is especially profound in Northeast Ohio, where the socio-political zeitgeist is saturated with quasi-environmental activism, and the architectural progressivism is rather tepid.

BOTC does not condemn pursuing smart design. But we do cast a sinister eye towards bad design that is layered with a phony integrity supported by a crutch of enviro-moralism. Misapplied moralism, which is heraled by unknowing champions, will hinder the continued pursuit of a relevant architecture in Northeast Ohio, which in the end will be more destructive to our environment.

Robert P. Madison Strikes(out) Again

2007-10-25T17:08:00.000-04:00

Why is Robert P. Madison continually awarded major design commissions in Cleveland? BOTC just doesn't understand. His latest abomination is about to start construction at Cuyahoga Community College's Metro Campus. See the press release below.

Let's hope the Steve Litt recognizes this building as crap and rips Madison's design thoroughly.

BOTC apologizes for not posting an image--we wonder why we cannot find an image of this on the Rock Hall or Tri-C website. Embarrasment possibly?

The joint project of Tri-C and the Rock Hall will feature 75,000 square feet of space that will enable the College's media arts, recording arts technology, music, theatre/dance, animation and other creative arts programs to be together in the same building. The Center for Creative Arts will also create the Rock Hall's library and archives, the most comprehensive repository of written, oral, audio and video materials relevant to the history of rock and roll.

"The Center for Creative Arts will establish a unique creative environment at Cuyahoga Community College," said Tri-C President Thornton. "The Center will be the foundation of artistic study at the College, and will allow us to centralize our creative pursuits, programs and facilities under one roof."

"The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has always sought to preserve and celebrate the spirit of rock and roll to make Cleveland a destination for fans and scholars from around the world," said Terry Stewart, president and CEO of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum. "This new Library and Archives will help us achieve our next significant milestone, to make Cleveland the premier location for scholarly study and cultural appreciation of rock and roll music."

Respect your Elders

2007-10-19T07:59:00.000-04:00

Last night BOTC, along with Rockitecture and TOI, had the pleasure to engage with a gathering of Cleveland's senior architects, inlcuding the two deans of Cleveland architecture, Peter van Dijk and Richard Fleischman. The reason for the event was the recent installmant of the Cleveland Artists Foundation's lecture series and exhibition examining Cleveland Modernism, hosted by the Beck Center for the Arts.

Although BOTC often takes critical shots at some of our elder architects, we due possess a profound respect for those architects that can get provocative and interesting buildings built in our rather architecturally conservative region. Anyone who walks through the exhibit will get a charge out of the pioneering residential work that exists in our area, especially Don Hisaka's Agnes Gund Residence in Peninsula.

Although BOTC bristles when modernism is discussed merely as a style, we nonetheless are inspired by the courage of these Cleveland Modernists to build according to their beliefs.

Ball-Nogues MOCA Lecture Reaction

2007-10-18T08:51:00.000-04:00

This past Tuesday, MOCA kicked-off the Talalay Lecture Series, a series of three lectures which will explore "The New Face of Architecture." The first lecture featured the work of Ball-Nogues Studio, an interdisciplinary studio, lead by young Los Angeles architects/designers Benjamin Ball and Gaston Nogues.

The two designers, products of SCI-ARC and Frank Gehry's practice, presented a series of temporary installations, each composed of cheap, yet imaginative materials, each by-products of concise mechanical + fabrications processes, and each laden with aspects of the spectacular, rather than and in opposition to the sublime. The installations were designed and then fabricated by the two architects, who displayed an affinity for aesthetically-pleasing forms, an appreciation and respect for craft, and, unfortunately, a notional or intellectual vacuity that could critically situate the rather intriguing work.

Now this vacuity can be the result of either a lack of interest in situating their design agenda, or represent the unsteady legs of a young practice that possesses a shallow portfolio, still groping for an intellectual strain that may simulataneously ground and propel the future work. BOTC will grant Ball-Nogues the benefit of the doubt.

However, as we sat through lecutre, we could not dismiss our gut-reaction that the temporary installations were derivative and devolved from the work of Frank Gehry. The systems that were deployed to create the different installations were rudimentary processes that simulate the structural and cladding systems that consitute much of Gerhy's built work, albeit in plywood and corrugated cardboard, rather than steel and titanium. If these systems are devolving and not evolving, where is the emergence of the "New Face of Architecture?"

Where does this work lead? Ball + Nogues were asked this question by the moderator and an audience member, questioning how this work would inform the creation of permanent architectures. Suprisingly, they did not answer this question, and somewhat dodged the question, not even offering a suggestion for a procedural enagement with permanent building. BOTC finds this a bit troubling since the designers seem very much interested in pursuing "traditional building," and hence the concern about a rhetorical vacuity.

Our concerns aside, BOTC is pleased that MOCA in engaging in such a lecture series to import talent from other parts of the country to heighten the rather lacking architectural dialogue locally. However, BOTC was distraught that the MOCA glitteratti and patrons at the lecture seemed to be so intigued with the dynamic work that could also be produced by local talent, again, if only given a chance and the freedom to pursue such work. Instead of importing content for architectural discussion, we could be exporting Cleveland-manufactured content.

Young Cleveland Architects win International Competition

2007-09-18T11:41:00.000-04:00

Gasp . . . There are talented designers in Cleveland?

Yes there are. A group of local young architects has won the Vancouver POTO competition. See the press release here.

One only hopes that potential local clients would take a chance on award-winning design that is obviously admired elsewhere.

Gwathmey's Debacle at Cleveland State

2007-08-21T08:58:00.000-04:00

BOTC is crunched for time, but had to write about Charles Gwathmey's design for a new student center at Cleveland State and Steve Litt's rather warm critical embrace of the proposed building. We are cringing at both the building and the review.

The proposed building reflects Gwathmey's formal stagnation that has plagued his work since the early 1990's. There is nothing new in the formal amalgam--Gwathmey has been regurgitating these "modernist forms" for a life time and had not advanced the investigation. The grouping of shapes, forms, and space is not adequately raw, like Gehry's 1980's architectural assemblies in Los Angeles, or adequately refined and assertive, like John Hejduk's many theoretical paper projects, such as the Wall Houses. The proposed Gwathmey scheme is adequately luke-warm and acceptable for a campus that is plagued with many bad recent buildings, like the Levin College of Urban Affairs.

As much as BOTC is concerned about the office park-like building for an urban campus, we are more concerned with Steve Litt's unequivocal embrace of the design. We fail to understand Litt's acceptance of the cliched design within a city also plagued with cliched architecture. Litt asserts that not every new "iconic" building needs possess the ego and virility of a Gehry, Koolhass, or Libeskind building--and we agree. However, a major campus building, situated on a major urban corridor, replacing an assertive and potent modern structure, should possess an individual, site-specific and situated integrity and a campus enhancing authenticity that is lacking in the proposed scheme. That integrity and authenticity does not need to translate into aggressive formalism--intergrity and authencity can reside within the calm, serene, and sublime.

Although many dislike the modernist core campus of the University, one has to admire the intentions of that ensemble as a paradigm-changing notion. Those designers accepted Cleveland State as an urban institution, sustained by commuter students, and engaged in the new era of the American city. Within the brutalist concrete was hope, idealism, and the groping for the new American college campus, divorced form the historicism of Jefferson and the East Coast. The core campus possessed an intellectual endeavor, which cannot be said of the student center.

There is one last of note of concern pertaining to Litt + the Gwathmey proposal. In a recent posting on his blog, Litt asserts that Gwathmey is no enemy of Brutalism, pointing-out that the architect is currently designing an addition to the brutalist Yale Art + Architecture building. We must assert that Gwathmey is designing an abomination next to Paul Rudolph's masterpiece. The new structure appears utterly devoid of the spatial, formal, and articulated lessons and tactics so prevalent within the original Rudolph building. If Gwathmey is perpetrating this architectural crime against his alma mater, what can we expect the architect to unleash upon Cleveland State?

We're gonna put a Cap in your Ass-embled City

2007-08-13T17:31:00.000-04:00

If we are going to spend millions of dollars on re-developing the entire Inner Belt, why not allow for future accommodation of an Inner Belt Cap? The erasure of the infrastructural scar as well as the emergence of a new, reclaimed urbanism would benefit the city and the institutions that compose the near east side. We have nothing else really to add to the essence of the debate.

However, BOTC challenges Steve Litt to get the Plain Dealer to challenge local architects to envision the potential part of the city, similar to what the Toronto Globe + Mail did this past June. The Maschke Plan was really just a pragmatic diagram with little intellectual or engaging content. Further investigation and informed speculation is warranted and needed to spur the dialogue further along.

BOTC believes that this healing scar does not need to be planted with the mythical urbanisms of the past. Rather, this scar should host emergent notions of urbanism and allow for the intellectual endeavors of enhanced + informed urban form.

L A U N C H

2007-08-03T13:35:00.000-04:00

BOTC and its brother Cleveland Design City sites are proud to announce:

L A U N C H:

L(andspace)+A(rchitecture)+U(rbanism)-i(N)-(C)leveland-o(H)io

This informal discussion group will begin its endeavors 8 August @ 6 PM @ Prosperity.

Discourse at Prosperity

2007-08-01T14:44:00.000-04:00

After MOCA's "What's good for the city" Event, much "discussion" has occurred.

Hence, a local architectural dialogue has commenced that must be sustained.

As a follow up, some of your favorite Cleveland Design City bloggers and associated parties will be gathering at the Prosperity Social Club in Tremont on Wednesday 8 August @ 6PM.

BOTC feels the dialogues need to be tightened-up, focused, and rhetorically lead somewhere in order to engender relevance. A little intellectual autonomy would prove frutiful.

We shall see.

BOTC: Noble Amateur

2007-07-30T14:01:00.000-04:00

Over the weekend, BOTC read The Cult of the Amateur by Andrew Keen.

Keen asserts that the current Internet, the "democratic" and participatory internet of Google, YouTube, My Space, etc. is essentially killing American culture (music, literature, etc.) drowning the voices of expertise, eradicating copyrights, and smothering the main stream media. Keen fears that the internet is morhphing into a hyper-Wild West which more often than not endangers rather than enlightens.

Do you agree or disagree? It is worth a read. The arguments made will tug at your moral core while simultaneously enraging your libertarian leanings. BOTC has posted previously about the use of the blog and internet as a public service.

Keen first appeared on the critical scene after penning an article for the Weekly Standard, equating the Internet to Marxism.

What's good for the city was __________

2007-07-27T09:08:00.000-04:00

Although BOTC was fearing a disastrous event, MOCA's "What's good for the city is ____" event was quite interesting, varied, funny, and at times painful. Again, the idea for the event was for 20 people to finish the sentence "What's good for the city is _____" in 90 second responses. Here is a list of ideas / reflections that were offered last night.

What's good for the city (of Cleveland) is . . . .

. . . a Cuyahoga Urban Volcanic Archipelago Commission
. . . Nothing. The city is irrelevant in the age of the internet.
. . . Respect
. . . De-construction rather than destruction + demolition
. . . New Herbinism (230,000 acres of "funny weed" farming)
. . . the Irreplaceable (from the single house to the the skyscraper)
. . . non-architects
. . . Opinion
. . . Leadership Accountability from Political + Design Leadership
. . . Graffiti
. . . Pleasant Sidewalks
. . . Memory
. . . MTV's Real World
. . . Temporary Occupation of vacant developer-owned land
. . . Closed-door enlightened design policy creation
. . . Less Master Plans
. . . Global Warming
. . . the City working for Us

Look for MOCA to present streaming video of the event sometime in the future.

Breuer Ingenuity Ideas Competition

2007-07-27T08:43:00.001-04:00

One of the highlights of the Ingenuity Festival was the Breuer Tower Ideas Competition Exhibition. While it was not really a competition since no one won anything, the resulting show exhibiting everything from the sedate + subtle to the absurd + offensive was very enjoyable to peruse.

You can see the entries at various sites and blogs:

@ RealNeo
@ Green City Blue Lake
@ Flickr

Over the past year there have been several local competitions (AIA Cleveland, Cleveland Competition, Ingenuity Breuer) and well as several architectural + urban design exhibitions + related events (Cleveland Public Art's "Influence + Imposition" + MOCA's "What's good for the city is _____") that have stirred the pot a little bit. BOTC hopes that this momentum continues and that the design discourse matures and blossoms. Look for the Cleveland Design City Network to continue pressing the issues, ruffling feathers, and having a little fun with our local design absurdities + entrenched architectural politics.

What's good for the city is __________

2007-07-24T14:20:00.000-04:00

What is good for the city?

That is the question that several emerging designers will answer in sequential 90-second responses at a discussion event at MOCA on Thursday night, starting at 7 PM.

BOTC anticipates much sarcasm, criticality, frustration, rational absurdity, farce and even some glimmers of hope. Maybe a fight or two also. Such discussion will be lubricated with a cash bar.

Look for your favorite Cleveland Design City blogger there, including Design Rag, TOI, and maybe even Rockitecture.

Look for a review on Friday.

How does Cleveland become "Design City"?

2007-07-23T09:07:00.000-04:00

BOTC wants Cleveland to become a hub of design. There are various ways that this may happen over several years. There have been several positive steps that have been taken in that direction already:

1. The launch of the Cleveland Competition
2. The District of Design
3. FOA's + MVRDV's emerging work at Case
4. Kent State's graduate design program move to downtown Cleveland
5. Grassroots involvement with the Breuer Tower
6. CIA's continuing excellence
7. The evolution of such events as Ingenuity

But maybe another avenue for the substantiation of the Design City could involve local universities acquiring the fantastic archives of leading architects. See this New York Times article about the archives of such architects as Peter Eisenman and Frank Gehry. Would it not be fantastic for CWRU or Kent State to buy Gehry's archive and establish the Center for the Study of Late 20th Century Design? Such an archive located in Northeast Ohio would instantly establish credibility for such a Center and would make the institution a instant player in international design scholarship. Such an archive would soon attract other archives that would not necessarily have to be bought, just acquired.

Maybe Peter Lewis can buy it and donate it.

Ingenuity Festival

2007-07-20T10:50:00.000-04:00

BOTC was rather underwhelmed by the Ingenuity Festival last night. We were rather disappointed in several things that may improve over the next few days. Here is a list:

1. Way-finding: A visitor has no idea where and where-not he can tread, especially in the IdeaCenter and the Playhouse Square venues. Exhibition venues are not clearly delineated along the street scape, or even on the doors and entrances to buildings.
2. Un-informed docents: Many the of the docents at the various exhibits had no real idea what the exhibits were about, what they meant, or what they were trying to say. The docents at the IdeaCenter really did not know much about anything, really. A lot of people at the NASA exhibit looked rather confused and unsure what to do, what was going on, etc.
3. Organization: BOTC walked into the Festival, paying our $5, around 5:30. Things were still being set-up, or exhibits were not set up at all. I know the drums were playing over at CSU, but there should have been music going at the main stage. Everthing seemed very un-organized and rather sloppy.
4. Lack of Content: BOTC may have missed some things, but the content of the festival seems rather weak. The "Architecture Cluster" at Gallery 1305 was the highlight of the exhibitions, which is not saying much since most of the gallery was utterly empty.

Conditions may change over the next few days of the Festival and BOTC hopes that they do. BOTC feels that this a valuable event that needs to succeed, but based on last night's experience, we are not overly optimistic.

Various things . . .

2007-07-18T08:51:00.000-04:00

After several weeks of vacation time BOTC is back. There is a lot going on lately:

1. Steve Litt starts his own architecture blog at Cleveland.com. We here at the Cleveland Design City network (TOI, Design Rag, BOTC, Rockitecture, Cleveland Competition) welcome Cleveland's lone print design critic to the fold. We encourage Steve to look beyond built work and seek what is brewing in the "architectural salons" of emerging architects.
2. The Ingenuity Festival hosts an "Architecture Cluster" and exhibits entries in the Breuer Tower competition. See Green City Blue Lake for the entries. See Steve Litt's article on the exhibit here.
3. The long-awaited Akron Art Museum opens. Coop Himmelblau's first American project has received praise from many rags, including the Plain Dealer, Washington Post, and New York Times. The Akron Beacon Journal and its readers remain skeptical and parochial.
4. The Ingenuity Festival begins tomorrow. It will be interesting to see several thousand people tyring to enjoy a festival while dodging orange barrels, construction equipment, and a lot of missing pavement.

Embarrassed once again . . .

2007-06-29T14:04:00.000-04:00

The Breuer Tower is going to be demolished next spring or summer, according to news reports from the Plain Dealer and WTAM. The Planning Commission chose to buckle to (literally) heavy pressure from above.

We have made our feeling known here at Blog on the City concerning the Tower and we regret the Commission's decision.

Like Mayor Perk's wife declining an invitation to dinner at the White House because it was a bowling league night, Cleveland again looks very much like the unsophisticated bastion it is. Yes, we allowed Jimmy Dimora to demolish a Marcel Breuer building.

Additionally, we share TOI's questions about today's Plain Dealer editorial. Who supplied the paper with all that information? And where did this earthquake concern come from? And here is a good post by Tim Ferris. But let's be clear: Bob Madison is not going to design the building. Kohn Pederson Fox is designing the building. Madison is just collecting a pay check on the job.

Hagan calls the kettle black . . .

2007-06-26T08:53:00.000-04:00

Ah, Tim Hagan. The Kennedy-fawning, arrogant, "the public-is-too-stupid to understand" political hack revealed his true authoritarian colors with this quote in Steve Litt's article yesterday. Referring to the Cleveland Planning Commission's refusal to allow the demolition of the Breuer Tower, Taxin' Tim said:

"This is beyond anything I've confronted in my political life," Hagan said. "An unelected group dictating to commissioners what kind of building should be built in a city where the mayor and City Council president support it. That's exactly what's wrong with the city."

When beuacracy blocks private development and infrastructures, it is called "the process." When beuacracy blocks an ego-driven, fact-defying, history-destroying, County Commissioner project, it is described as "obstructionism."

Breuer in the NYT

2007-06-19T08:39:00.000-04:00

The New York Times covers the Breuer Showdown.

In addition, one wonders why we have not seen any of the design intentions from Madison + KPF.

Breuer Tower Thoughts . . .

2007-06-15T13:32:00.000-04:00

UPDATE: The Tower still lives. See this post at RealNeo.

There is some passionate thought out there concerning the Breuer Tower.

Please read this post at TOI and this post from Gloria Ferris.

But BOTC has another thought.

Why not move Mayor Jackson's "blue light" district totally out of the flats and into the tower? Let's stack and densify sin + skin into the behemoth. You don't need significant floor-to-floor height for stippers. You don't need them for Texas Hold 'Em, slot machines, off track betting, or even dog-fighting and cock-fighting.

Think of it. The county could still keep the building, collect revenue from the sinning citizenry, and be heralded as preservationsist pioneers. The Cleveland Police could have a neighborhood outpost in the building to keep things in check. Hell, the county commissioners could even maintain their own "suite" for their use.

Just a thought.

It's been a while

2007-06-06T09:02:00.000-04:00

BOTC has been on a sabbatical for the past few weeks. No reason, just not especially moved to write about anything. Anyways, here are some things that we should be talking about, concerning our built environment in Northeast Ohio:

1. Residents of the Stonebridge Towers should not be too concerned with their parking spaces. BOTC would be more worried with the shoddy construction, bad detailing, and overall suspect constitution. See this site for the sketchy construction at Stonebridge.

2. The death watch continues for the Breuer Tower. The one time that we wish bureaucracy would hinder political decision-making, it amazingly disappears with the wave of Jimmy Dimora's bloated hand. Props to the Ingenuity Festival for sponsoring another competition ideas concerning the tower. However, why are all the jurors from Boston?

3. As the Diocese of Cleveland embarks on the painful closings of up to 40 parishes around the city and inner-ring suburbs, what will happen to many of these magnificent older churches? These churches were built by true craftsmen, reflecting the cultures, traditions, and building techniques of the European home lands. Urbanism churns with aggregation and demolition, but it would be a shame to lose many of these embedded architectures.

4. What was with the paranoid public artist, Mel Chin, who did not want the press reporting on his presentation at the latest Shrinking Cities event? First of all, when he asked whether there was any press in the room, BOTC would have raised our collective hands. What is the definition of a journalist anyways? Many in the Cleveland Design City network would agree that we can add color and texture to architectural and urban issues that Steve Litt cannot. Secondly, we should really question the sanity of a guy who thinks the current administration is out to get him--they have other things to worry about.

5. The winners of the Cleveland Competition will be announced tomorrow at an opening at Spaces Gallery. BOTC is interested in seeing the 70+ entries and hear what the jury had to say.
Hopefully BOTC will be able to write a review of some of the entries.

BOTC offers condolences . . . .

2007-04-17T08:21:00.000-04:00

Hack Infrastructure will abound!

2007-04-14T11:10:00.000-04:00

This morning, Steve Litt reports that a world-renown bridge designer, a hired consultant for the Innerbelt project, was basically ignored by ODOT officials and Michael Baker Corp., the firm who will be designing the Innerbelt Bridge. Christian Menn, a Swiss engineer, alleges that the approved solution is not an efficient or particularly elegant design, and that most of his input was dismissed.

BOTC does not know who is in the right concerning the bridge design. But we do have a feeling, based upon looking at Menn’s and Baker’s websites, which entity is more interested in design, and which is interested in all-things infrastructural and not necessarily refined aesthetics. This may be a case of sour grapes on Menn’s part or the exposure of a design + creativity inferiority complex by Baker.

However, here in Cleveland we tend to tolerate and even celebrate the mediocre while dismissing the potentially brilliant and innovative. For example, witness the celebrated mediocrity in Bob Madison’s + KPF’s proposed solution for the Cuyahoga County Complex and the dismissed innovative in Davis Brody Bond’s + Weber Murphy Fox’s solution. For another example, see City Architecture’s proposed food court inspired solution for a renovated Public Square. Both inadequately engage the potential and flux of our future urbanisms and will become monumentally obsolete by the time of their construction.

Again, leaders in the region are allowing a potentially dynamic and unique design opportunity to recede into the overtly ornamental, the empty formalist, the false functional, and utterly normative. The kinds of projects that local authorities and governments are undertaking will exert influences that will span many generations. Unfortunately, BOTC feels that our grandchildren will be wondering what the hell we were thinking.

As Vonnegut would write, "So it goes."

RIP Kurt Vonnegut

2007-04-12T09:27:00.000-04:00

BOTC went on a Vonnegut binge a few years back, practically reading everything this American iconoclast wrote in a few months time. We enjoyed the privileging of the anti-hero in his stories. We enjoyed the absurdities, the sketches, the unique sentences + statements. We tried to correlate the literature to architecture—and we are still trying.

RIP, Mr. Vonnegut. I may have to pull-out Bluebeard tonight for old-times sake.

Cuyahoga Monumentality

2007-04-09T17:43:00.000-04:00

As we discuss the design of Tim Hagan’s + Jimmy Dimora’s Monument (aka the Cuyahoga County Administration Complex), we must consider what we are wishing to make monumental. Not much if we think about it. Let us explain.

Seats of government are usually inculcated with values + beliefs that define a nation, state, of even a city. Think of the United States Capitol, a democratic edifice fronting a democratic green expanse of the Mall. Think of the many state capitol buildings around the country, each hosting, projecting, or alluding to the essences of their states, like Nebraska’s populist Capitol Building, or more recently, the proposed State of Alaska Capitol. Even think of Cleveland’s City Hall, an important built presence within Tom L. Johnson’s + Daniel Burnham’s Group Plan.

There is pride, blood, sweat, and toil embedded within each of these physical manifestations of democratic government. Soldiers and sailors died in service of the United States and their home states, at least during the Civil War—markers, names, and remembrances can be located within Capitols or on the grounds. City pride resides in the halls of a City Hall building, usually ornamented with murals, statues, etc. which showcase the ethnicities, diversities, and beliefs of a community. These buildings possess meaning and are part of a national, state, or local collective memory that transcends generations.

Do we possess any loyalty or pride that concerns our County? Hardly. A county building will merely contain the excesses of a Democratic patronage system and nepotism. A County Building will remind us of employees who leave work at 4 PM, a bureaucracy that sucks tax dollars away from over-taxed citizens, and an impotent, gluttonous government infrastructure that is continuing to allow residents to leave the county at a clip of 10,000 people a year.

So the new complex should have been programmed to accomplish something, like offer a new paradigm of urbanism, display techniques of the proper manner of the restoration of mid-century modernism, or the re-use of existing urban buildings. There should be a reason to make something “monumental,” other than the presence of an unnecessarily massive bureaucracy.

A Proposed Hack Monument

2007-04-06T17:05:00.000-04:00

Rockitecture took great offense to our recent statement that Robert Madison, FAIA is a “local hack architect.” Rockitecture also leveled a potshot at BOTC, questioning our level of education + awareness.

However, in the face of such withering critical fire, we here at BOTC still stand by our original statement since Mr. Madison has not really contributed much original architectural thought or built work in quite a while. Rather, he and his firm have become the bagmen for many government projects, like the current Cuyahoga County Administration complex.

Anyone listening to that debacle on WCPN earlier this week could hear that Mr. Madison’s arguments for the demolition of the existing Breuer Cleveland Trust Tower were as flimsy as his, or actually, Kohn Pederson Fox’s proposed curtain walls. The answers to the many questions offered lacked any substance, narrative, or intellectual profundity. His statements resembled caricatures of bad marketing and surface historicism. Madison’s supposed reasoning for the project + demolition have been contaminated by the grease of local politics and the contamination of a lucrative contract.

BOTC does not question the intestinal fortitude of Mr. Madison and the discrimination he fought + overcame in his early days in Cleveland. However, as we enter a new century and look for true change and progressivism within our local government and design ranks, BOTC believes that we must abandon the old-thinking and closed-door politics that have driven us into the ground. Business, politics, and architecture-as-usual will not alter Cleveland’s downward trajectory.

Instead of being an international leader in the restoration or re-use of a modern master’s office tower, Cleveland will again follow, destroying a historic artifact. Instead of generating knowledge and intellectual capital (with a restoration) that can be exported, leveraged, and earn income and revenue for the region, Cleveland will import and pay for knowledge that earns revenue for other regions.

Tim Hagan is confident that Madison will create a monument. Yes, Madison, or more accurately, KPF will create a monument that will tell of the lack of foresight, intellect, and progressivism that plagued Cleveland in the first decade of the 21st Century.

Some more things . . .

2007-04-01T12:50:00.000-04:00

It has been a while since BOTC said anything. We have been really busy with life, practice, and such. But here are a few things worth talking about:

1. The Cleveland Museum of Natural History, like every other "Believe in Cleveland" institution, went once again across the country to find their design talent. The final decision for the museum came down to Denver's Fentress Bradburn and Cleveland's Westlake Reed Leskosky--and the museum decided to send its money to Denver rather than keep it locally.

Again hypocrisy drips from the lips of another instititution that supposively believes in the region, sustainability, and the economic viability of Northeast Ohio. Had the museum awarded Westlake Reed Leskosky the job, the firm could have produced local design intelligence, technique, methods, and systems that could have been exported through other design commissions, therefore bringing more design fees back to the region. Instead the museum will get a bad building, designed by the C-team of an out-of-town architect.

Although these institutions will need to depend upon a burgeoning creative class to bolster their attendanmce, endowments, and efficacy, they are sure doing a bang-up job of alienating local design professionals who actually visit these institutions.

2. Peter Lawson-Jones seems to possess too much intellect, ethics, and reason to be a Cuyahoga County Commissioner. Jimmy Dimora and Tim Hagan are intellectual midgets, political hacks, and stasis-oriented Democrats.

In a 2-1 vote, Dimora + Hagan voted to demolish the Cleveland Trust Tower, designed by a great Bauhaus architect, and to allow a over-hyped local architect to "design" a "monument." So instead of a Breuer, Clevelanders will be receiving a C-team designed project by Kohn Pederson Fox of New York in collaboration with local hack architect, Robert P. Madison. This whole process has been a sham.

BOTC agrees with TOI that we need a transcript of the latest Commissioners' meeting. Dimora flatly lied about many aspects of the design process and the proposals of many of the six architectural teams who presented solutions. Namely, Dimora stated that 5 of the 6 teams suggested that the County needed to demolish the building. However, each team was told that the commissioners wanted the building demolished and they would not be persuaded otherwise.

Once again local political leadership is leading to the futher degradation of our built environment. Let's hope the Peter Lawson-Jones runs for Mayor of Cleveland where he can apply his intellect and passions without the interference of dimwits like Dimora + Hagan.

3. In happier news, Cleveland Public Art is hosting an exhibit of urban speculations for Cleveland and its environs. "Influence + Imposition" exhibits the work of several young architects as each engages with places such as Public Square, Scranton Peninsula, and the region as a whole. An important lesson is to be garnered from the work: architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design can really only be unleashed to engage potentialities with the acquiesence of enlighted political thought, appopriation, and fortitude.

A few unconnected things . . . .

2007-02-27T08:53:00.000-05:00

Props to re-design cleveland, a local blog that is soliciting design ideas for our fair city . . .

Al Gore's personal inconvenient truth? . . . .

The future seeds of an interactive urbanism?

And . . .

The designers of Steelyard Commons should have considered the roofs of these big boxes more thoroughly. As BOTC heads up and down the Jennings every day, we are confronted with the vast acreage of Big Box roofing, populated with hvac units, exhaust fans, and we think some skylights. Developers, architects, and the city missed an opportunity to make the utilitarian landscape more iconic, relevant, educational, or just aesthetically pleasing.

But then again, as you can see in the renderings, the overall kitschy design and ornamentation effectively demonstrates the shallowness of the architectural + urban intentions.

Futurist in Cleveland

2007-02-23T08:18:00.000-05:00

Interesting article about Futurist Andrew Zolli speaking to a local advertising group.

His website is here.

Note the rapid growth of cities, not Cleveland mind you, that do not even exist yet.

How about we close an interchange?

2007-02-22T18:38:00.000-05:00

Another inane column against an interchange in Lorain County. See here.

Come on people! There are a myriad of reasons why some inner ring suburbs falter, and an interchange in Avon is not one of those reasons. High taxes, failing schools, etc. cause exurban sprawl, not the other way around.

Why don't we institute an interchange exchange program, similar to the dopey carbon emissions exchanges that the UN is proposing. If we build one interchange out in Avon, we can close one in Cleveland, Lakewood, Bay, etc. Let's see if the mayors would allow that study.

When is Sprawl Acceptable?

2007-02-21T12:39:00.000-05:00

Continuing on our discussions about the new I-90 interchange in Avon, Ohio, when is an interchange acceptable to anti-sprawl advocates? Meaning, when shopping centers, big boxes, and malls are the stimulus for an interchange, the investment in infrastructure is frowned upon. However, if the interchange is built to give access to medical campuses, research laboratories, a university campus, or cultural institutions, is the investment then correct?

Sprawl hosts not only strip centers and tacky housing. Sprawl also hosts programs, typologies, architectures, and urbanisms that posses collective value, as suggested above.

Avon + Interstate 90 + Sprawl

2007-02-20T13:01:00.000-05:00

It seems many are atwitter over the new proposed interchange in Avon, in Lorain County, just over the border from the "County of Choice," Cuyahoga County. More cars! Pollution! Big Boxes! More suburbia! Global Warming!

BOTC sees the usual greens + anti-sprawlers + bureaucratic do-gooders lining up to oppose such an infrastructural addition to the region. BOTC gets rather bored with the complaining and such and is always skeptical of the intentions and pretensions of such activist forces.

We would suggest that anyone involved with the planned interchange, either for or against, pick up Robert Breugmann's Sprawl: A Compact History (see website + list of reviews here). Breugmann's book situates American Sprawl within the greater history of urban decentralization and critical social commentary (Lewis Mumford, William Whyte, Herbert Gans, etc.). Breugmann also presents counterpoints to the many assertions made by anti-sprawlers and provides some of his own statistics.:

1. All of the urbanized area of the United State could fit into the state of Wisconsin
2. More acres of land are designated as parks, preserves, etc each year than are developed, and by a large margin.

And there are many more interesting facts, figures, and histories put forth.

The fact is that "sprawl" is the dominant + most dynamic urban form today. Yet do we try to decipher and analyze its structures, complexities, and potentials? Instead of merely criticizing from a far, can we not manage a way to co-opt sprawl's means and methods in order to create more palatable urbanisms?

BOTC recognizes that sprawl is by the most part "ugly." But that should not prevent us from discovering + deploying the tropes of decentralization for alternative solutions, that yes, can involve new interchanges in Lorain County.

UPDATE: Design Rag's Bradley is skeptical of my suggestions of co-opting tactics of sprawl.

First, please read this Lorain Morning Journal editorial first: The interchange is not using state or federal tax dollars. Note that non-retail development is planned around the area. Eastern Lorain County is growing and will need infrastructures to support its population, like healthcare institutions. Should residents in Lorain County be penalized because leadership elites in Cuyahoga County believe they know best? This is incumbentism and elitism at its worst.

Secondly, BOTC respects NU's progenitors for offering design solutions to "ugly" decentralization and growth. Instead of just throwing stones, NUs build. But BOTC suggests that NU is not co-opting sprawl in its purest form. We would suggest that Wright's Broadacre City schemes or Thomas Jefferson's plans for checkerboard cities in the Midwest should be reconsidered since each scheme excepts the notions of decentralization while still engaging the notions of civic responsibility, individual freedom, and an urbanism of intelligence. Why fight for "density" when historical evidence exhibits the continuing decentralization of American "urbansim"?

Cleveland loves MVRDV + FOA + ?

2007-02-17T10:45:00.000-05:00

The Cleveland Institute of Art has announced that Winy Maas + MVRDV will be designing the new CIA building. CIA's building will have a contemporary neighbor, FOA's Cleveland Museum of Contemporary Art. The carpetbagging firm Burt Hill will work with MVRDV and Cleveland's Westlake Reed Leskosky is currently working with FOA.

The next big announcement will come from the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, when they pick their architect for the expansion of the Wade Oval institution.

BOTC applauds these institutions selecting bleeding edge international firms to design their future buildings. However, BOTC also wonders if given the chance, time, budget, and creative licence, could some local architects achieve a high level of design? Some could, many could not.

The lack of confidence in local architects by leading institutions is something that the local chapter of Cleveland AIA and local architects must remedy. This lack of respect for local design is one of the factors that is driving young architects to start design competitions, like the Cleveland Competition, start blogging, and seek to exhibit radical design work. Younger architects, already wary of corrupt local government entities, like Cuyahoga County and the City of Cleveland, are also wary of older generations of architects who pay to play, self-appoint themselves arbiters of design, and generally produce awful buildings that continued to tarnish local design ability.

Foreshadowing Regret in Cleveland

2007-02-12T10:04:00.000-05:00

BOTC has traversed the halls of the architectural elite and knows which "world-reknown" architects are actually worth their salt. Like other walks of life, some got game, some live on the hype, others are self-aggrandizing hacks.

The poster child for self-aggrandizing hacki-ness is the design architect for the Cleveland Museum of Art, Raphael Vinoly. Any architect or architecture student knows that this architect's work is intellectually vacuous, superficially articulate, and shoddily designed + detailed. It was a mistake to the CMA to hire him and the institution should prepare for many troubles ahead, even though they are experiencing cost overruns currently.

Read this article about RVA's latest calamity in Pittsburgh.

It is amazing to think that Cleveland could have been home to a Sir Norman Foster building instead of the mess of a building that we are going to receive. Foster's work is internationally respected, exerts an intellectual thrust, and pushes the profession and art of building forward. The same, unfortunately, cannot be said of the architect who wears three pairs of glasses simultaneously.

Slackin' pretty hard . . . .

2007-02-05T08:51:00.000-05:00

So much for resolutions, of course.

It has been a month since my last post. And this one will be short until time allows for more illuminating discourse.

But there are few things to take of note in the past month:

1. Jimmy Dimora is a scummy politician who, through campaign shakedowns, ultimately controls the design of much of our important civic and social architecture, as well as infrastructure. Again, where is our Mayor Daley?

2. How does corruption alter our built environment? Indictments against local retired architects, construction managers, and contractors hint at the level of shoddy design and construction that hinders our regional architecture + infrastructure.

3. The Cleveland Competition is launched.

4. AIA Cleveland announces winners of its Storefront competition.

5. Steve Litt seems to favor saving two examples of 1970's Brutalsim--and hacks at KPF's blob + crystal design for the County Administration Building.

More commentary as BOTC finds more time to write.

Cleveland International Book Fair?

2007-01-02T10:13:00.000-05:00

BOTC is an avid CSPAN watcher, especially on the weekends when CSPAN2 goes into Book TV mode. You can always come across an interesting author lecturing about their work.

Many of the lectures or discussions televised usually take place at book fairs around the country, like Miami, Washington DC, Austin, etc. There is no reason that there should not be a similar event here in Clevlend. Imagine an entire week of events tied to reading + text, all arrayed around University Circle in the early fall. The concept is quite compelling.

BOTC endorses the founding of such an event. It's mission melds well with other endeavors that are re-shaping our intellectual brownfield landscapes, like Ingenuity, Design City, etc.

The Dynamism of the Suburbs

2007-01-02T08:30:00.000-05:00

There is a lot of criticism concerning the suburbs and their associated strip malls, parking lots, and unfettered avarice. The criticism and ranting gets old, stale, and boring. BOTC is always on the look-out for alternative perspectives of our suburbs, places that seem to be the site of the greatest economic, political, and culutral dynamism, however "ugly."

Please read this Washington Post story about the changing geographies and identities of some Virginia strip malls.

J. Milton Dyer's Coast Guard Station

2006-12-29T15:34:00.000-05:00

Local leaders are not consiously demolishing a landmark, like the Cleveland Trust Building; rather, the City of Cleveland is simply ignoring the old Coast Guard Station at the mouth of the Cuyahoga River and allowing the stunning structure to deteriorate.

See a recent Plain Dealer article here.

See past BOTC post + links here.

The building, desinged in a similar, yet toned-down, expressionist manner to Erich Mendelsohn's Einstein Tower, should be saved for many reasons:

1. The Coast Guard Station is one of the few, if only, expressionist buildngs in the region. The melding of European styling with American pragmatism is very unique to this usually architecturally conservative part of the country. Mendelsohn's Park Synagogue in Cleveland Heights also shares a similar formalism.

2. The building was designed by one J. Milton Dyer, a true tragic character in Cleveland architectural history. Dyer was known to intensely design splendid buldings, such as the Coast Guard Station and Cleveland City Hall, and then proceed to go on weeks-long benders in Cleveland's seedier haunts. Out of his office came the greatest Cleveland architectural parntership, Walker + Weeks.

3. The building and site can serve as an anchor in the city's lakefront planning. Although a lakefront plan was proposed (and trashed thoroughly by local and international designers alike), other plans are percolating that should utilize this amazing structure. If Cleveland wants to emerge as a "Design City," a crucial first step must involve the rescuing of this building.

2007: The Year of Design in Cleveland

2006-12-29T08:59:00.000-05:00

Props to Design Rag . . .

BOTC: Time's Person of the Year

2006-12-28T08:58:00.000-05:00

Time Magazine has designated you, me, all of us, as persons of the year.

Congratulations.

We are transforming media and the dissemination of news, opinion, and information.

We here at BOTC have posted in the past about the role of blogs and the like. We still stand by those sentiments.

Old media is fading away.

BOTC New Year's Wishes

2006-12-26T14:48:00.000-05:00

Um . . . yeah.

It has been really slow around the BOTC in the past few months. Teaching and working will do that to a blog. Yet nonetheless, I make a resolution to post much more often than the later half of 2006. I know you (all 10 of you) are thrilled.

Since we are entering 2007, I would like to propose a wish list concerning architecture + urbanism in our fair city of Cleveland and Northeast Ohio:

1. The success of the first annual Cleveland Competition.
This competition idea sprung from some young local architects who are seeking to inculcate "design" into the physical, political, and professional fabrics of the city. These young guys are trying to begin marketing Cleveland as "Design City," to a potential international pool of competition entrants. Good for them--they are making strides where the impotent AIA cannot. Look for the publication of the guidelines in January or check in at www.designrag.blogspot.com or www.clevelandcompetition.com.

2. The success of Cleveland design firms.
In order for the "Design City" to happen, local designers must be successful. In order for local architects to be successful and creative, they must have clients who believe in the value of design and the exhilaration of that speculation. Although BOTC has local allegiances, the health of the region and the city will be apparent through the productivity and growth of all our Cleveland practices.

3. The Design Wisdom of Local Politicians.
Cleveland and Cuyahoga County possess some of the most dim-bulb political leaders in the United States. Let's hope that the likes of Commissioner Jimmy Dimora and Mayor Frank Jackson, major design decision makers in the region, become educated about what constitutes successful and awful design. Fellow Democrat, the enlightened tough-guy Mayor Daley of Chicago, understands the potency of good design and urban stewardship. Maybe he should sponsor a seminar our "leaders."

4. The Continued Evolution of KSU CAED.
Kent State's College of Architecture + Environmental Design, or simply Kent Architecture + Design, is engaged in a pedagogical evolution. KSU students are slowly emerging from the object building + site trope and are beginning to engage + re-construe the many contexts + flows + networks + forces that influence the making of structures, infrastructures, and spaces. BOTC hopes that within a few years, Kent will begin to intellectually compete with in-state rivals Ohio State, Miami, and Cincinnati.

5. More design emphasis in the Plain Dealer + local media
As BOTC has stated before, Steve Litt fights an uphill battle as the only critic in town. BOTC wishes for more design criticism from Steve in the upcoming year. But BOTC also wishes for some alternative criticism from the likes of Angle, Pressure, WCPN, Applause, and the Cleveland Free Times. A "Design City" also needs a pestering set of ankle biters for provocation, besides BOTC, Design Rag, TOI, and Improvised Schema.

Since the last post . . . .

2006-12-05T08:03:00.000-05:00

Posting has been slow recently for no particular reason, like the Browns offense. But since the Browns won on Sunday and will surely demolish the Steelers on Thursday night, I decided to post.

Recent architectural happenings in Cleveland to keep your eye on:

1. AIA Cleveland sponsored a competition for a new awning for the chapter offices on Huron--the boards were due on Friday to Cleveland Public Art. Word is that participation was extremely low. Interestingly enough, no architects will be on the jury--just leaders from many arts institutions around town, like CMA, MOCA, and Cleveland Public Art. It will be interesting which entries will be favored.

2. Public Square Studio at the Kent State's downtown CUDC will be presenting their work to a distinguished jury on Friday (8 December @ 2PM), including architects, professors, and landscape urbanists from New York, Toronto, Cleveland and Chicago. BOTC looks forward to the discussions not only about speculations about Public Square, but also the future constitution of American common space. Student speculations have engaged the development and deployment of spectacle, intellectual grazing fields, and intensity-density derived flow armatures and programme displacements.

3. OC (Ohio City) Studio at Kent State CAED will be presenting their speculations to a distinguished jury on Friday also. Students engaged with the rich contexts of Ohio City, proposed a master planning of the entire neighborhood, and then have developed parcels and programmes.

4. TOI studio has speculated about the re-use of the hundreds of pre-cast panels from Marcel Breuer's Cleveland Trust Building. The building, which will be demolished because the county administrators do not like so-called "ugly" architecture is slated to be demolished in the near term. Cleveland architects should advocate for the salvaging of these panels for alternative uses.

5. Foreign Office Architects, in association with Westlake Reed Leskosky, will be designing the new Cleveland MOCA. BOTC looks forward to seeing the development and design process of such a progressive international practice working within the very provincial quarters of our fair City.

6. Coop Himmelblau's Akron Art Museum will be opening soon in downtown Akron. Let's hope that the crew from FOA spends more time in the area, unlike the Coop boys who were rountinely no-shows for Northeast Ohio cultural events. The Akron Art Museum is likely to be criticized as mere empty-formalism, albeit structurally spectacular. BOTC thinks FOA will present a more didactic architecture.

That's it for now.

Go Browns. Beat Pittsburgh, which like the University of Michigan, is a bastion of evil.

Save the Cleveland Trust Tower

2006-11-14T10:50:00.000-05:00

An Intelligent Public Square

2006-10-26T12:24:00.000-04:00

Since May, this blog, along with some other local blogs, have been discussing the present condition and the future constitution of Cleveland’s Public Square. You can read our past posts here, here, and here. Clearly, some consequential and progressive re-consideration must be undertaken to improve the region’s most recognizable public space.

BOTC now hears that several organizations (Downtown Cleveland Alliance, College 360, etc.) are indeed looking to spearhead a campaign to revitalize Cleveland’s most recognizable public space. We are happy to hear that significant studies will be executed that hopefully will inform the re-design of the area. These “private” organizations, unlike government entities like the City, County, or Regional Transit Authority, seem to possess a charged, coherent vision, unencumbered with constituent political baggage or incompetent political narcissism.

However, we implore the potential stake-holding organizations sponsor an international competition for the Square. Similar international competitions occur every year for cities across the globe, but also in our regional backyard. Although BOTC routinely chastises local institutions for running to the coasts to find their architects, we now suggest this international competition vehicle in order to solicit a broad scope of design notions. The competition will not only accrue global ideas but also place Cleveland at the forefront of international design attention.

Public Square needs to become an “intelligent” space, unlike any other public space in the United States. What is an “intelligent" space? What are other intelligent spaces + fields in the region? Burnham's Mall? Others? Look for future speculations from Improvised Schema, Design Rag, Public Square Studio, and BOTC.

More bad design decisions by a Cleveland institution . . .

2006-10-05T15:54:00.000-04:00

It has been reported that Charles Gwathmey is now back in the good graces of Cleveland State and will be working on the new student center.

But we should all be very afraid of the fromer New York 5 member. Look here to see what a travesty he is planning for the Yale Art + Architecture building addition, a cardinal building of mid-century American Modernism. If he is putting forth his best effort at Yale with that awful design, what will Cleveland State get? More of the same, I susupect.

Politics or Progress?

2006-10-05T15:14:00.000-04:00

The Cuyahoga County Commissioners have picked their architect for the new administration complex.

Unfortunately, political connections still trump talent and credentials in this one-party town.

Too Negative or Rightfully Critical?

2006-09-26T17:33:00.000-04:00

BOTC has been called out for being too negative by Rockitecture, another Cleveland architecture blog via Florence. It seems that we may rough the quarterback up too much. BOTC disagrees.

I would argue that BOTC, Improvised Schema, and Design Rag are not being overly negative. Instead we are critically questioning much of the mediocre design and regressive atmosphere that fosters that design in our region. We are offering informed criticisms of projects that are otherwise praised by major media outlets or institutions that claim to be the intellectual stewards of the city.

The four above mentioned blogs, including Rockitecture, do serve a purpose. Steve Litt, who BOTC believes does fight the good fight by trying to advance architectural dialogue in the collective consciousness, is not educated as an architect, but rather in Art History. The many authors of the previously mentioned blogs are educated as architects and all currently practice. Because of our professional orientation and our training, we can offer something different to the discussion. And that is what we will continue to do.

Knowing several of the authors, BOTC is comfortable asserting that we all believe in strengthening the city though competent and potent design. However, if we see abominations of architecture or urban design being flung upon the masses under the banner of "contextualism" or "populism" or any other false contrivance, we will pounce and criticize. Bad design can inflict more damage on a city that just mere latent negativity.

Public Square Studio continues . . .

2006-09-25T08:30:00.000-04:00

The Fall 2006 Gradaute Design Studio at Kent's State's CUDC is completing the initial precedent analysis and testings of precedental tactics on Public Square.

Please check their progress at the Public Square Studio blog.

Design proposals will begin to emerge over the next three weeks.

Public Square Speculations

2006-08-30T10:16:00.000-04:00

The Fall Semester Kent State CUDC Graduate studio will be speculating about the future of Cleveland's Public Square.

The studio will be posting / blogging about their research and design work regularly throughout the fall. You can follow the work here.

Please stay appraised of emerging alternative renderings of Cleveland's most recognizable public space.

Cape May, New Jersey

2006-08-12T13:22:00.000-04:00

BOTC took a little vacation time last week and visited Cape May, New Jersey, a Victorian beach town at the southern tip of state. We had an enjoyable time—the future Mrs. Doctor enjoyed the beaches, while I enjoyed the resort town landscape and geography.

Resort + vacation towns are “urban” anomalies, unlike the typical American urban or suburban conurbations. A town is in constant flux, shuffling new populations of tourists and vacationers every few days. A resort community may maintain, sustain, and promote an atmosphere. Animated public spaces possessing all the accruements of a pedestrian environment are filled with people day and night. Vehicular traffic is limited, as well as asphalt parking lots.

Cape May is no different. Tourists, like us, come in for a few days, become quasi-citizens use the city and beaches, and then leave. The town tries to maintain a Victorian aesthetic presence with many of its beautiful bed and breakfasts, cottages, and vacation homes (“Idustri-victorian” architect Frank Furness designed buildings in town). Houses are grouped tightly together on narrow tree-lined streets with flagstone sidewalks. The ocean-front avenue and the Washington Street Pedestrian Mall are engaging public spaces, full of people, activities, pleasant aromas, shading vegetation. Cape May is a pleasant place.

But why can we not transfer such conditions back to our everyday lives back in the suburbs of Cleveland? This is an old and tired question that always devolves into the typical clichéd answers, political disagreements, and arguments. I cannot assert any answers or new solutions myself.

Yet quick trips to these urban anomalies always refresh the inner-debate between desires for a new pleasant populist (sub)urbanism and a more aggressive, progressive, and density-driven urbanism.

It's freaking hot . . . .random thoughts

2006-08-03T17:50:00.000-04:00

BOTC has been busy with other things in life, like studying for the architectural registration exam and trying to avoid heat stroke.

Books that BOTC is trying to find time to read:

Recombinant Urbansim
The Average American
American Green
Symbolic Essence (essays by William Jordy)
Society of the Spectacle

Maybe I will write a response to all this literature.

Here is link to cross-continental yard sales that will be happening in the near future.

The Browns new face masks are bad-ass.

New Orleans Metrostudio

2006-07-27T10:51:00.000-04:00

I would encourage everyone to vote for BOTC's friend and classmate, Ken Gowland of Metrostudio, and his submission for the New Orleans Sustainable Design Competittion.

Ken and his family withstood Katrina's sacking of the city, the evacuation, and now is taking part in the vital re-building of the city.

A Delayed Campus-Making Tactic

2006-07-20T08:18:00.000-04:00

How do you transform a loosely grouped ensemble of medical buildings into a "campus"?

Commandeer a major piece of city and federal infrastructure and transform the street, Euclid Avenue, into a organizational pedestrian spine. That is exactly what the Cleveland Clinic is studying and proposing.

The Clinic is a monster institution, possessing blocks and blocks of inner city Cleveland, abutting University Circle. The Clinic is the largest institution in the city and adds luster to the rusting hulk of this post-industrial region. To say the least, the hospital maintains a muscular presence.

Many were astounded by the brashness and scope of the plan, which would alter the urban landscape for over 20 city blocks. But this is in by no way a new tactic for institutions seeking to engender or further enhance the notion of "campus". Penn State turned a campus and State College Street into a Jefferson-inspired academic mall, a space now considered the main organizational element. Yale University has transformed New Haven streets into University campus walks, connecting Old Campus to Cross Campus and the Sterling Memorial Library. Case Western Reserve University has morphed alleys into student thoroughfares. And there are many other examples that escape me.

The scale of the endeavor is intriguing, as well as the retroactive urban design tactic that Peter Walker and the Clinic are employing. The deployment of a organizational element, a massive pedestrian mall, after over 90 years of campus development, overturns the normative methods of campus design. Instead of inducing the instant campus, the proposed plan suggests the acquisition of "campus" can be attained many decades after the planning and building begins.

Although the Clinic may be inciting a political firestorm, the methods and tactics that Peter Walker is employing are nonetheless interesting and deserve further critical scrutiny.

For more on the Clinic plan see Design Rag's take.

Thanks for the interest, now get out of the way

2006-07-12T10:55:00.000-04:00

This week's Crain's Cleveland Business publishes a letter to the editor concerning the potential changes with Cleveland's Public Sqaure (subscription needed). The authors--Mayor Debbie Sutherland (Bay Village), Martin Sweeney (Cleveland City Council), Andrew Roth (Notre Dame College)--all members of the Leadership Cleveland Class of 2004, take credit for the original design visions for Public Square.

BOTC applauds their recognition of the restoration of Public Square as a transformative agent. However, while they advocate for more unified green space and the re-routing of Ontario and Superior, they botched everything else.

These potential decision and policy makers need to engage in an all encompassing design process that can flesh-out all possible solutions. A progressive vision can be quickly snuffed by mediocre design.

Blog on the City, Design Rag, and Improvised Schema are all searching for better ideas and will be posting notions periodically. See BOTC's recent ideas and parameters here and here.

The Arts Migration

2006-07-05T13:29:00.000-04:00

In the past week, the Beck Center for the Arts in Lakewood, an inner-ring Cleveland suburb, announced it was studying a possible move to a booming and bustling "neighborhood", a lifestyle center in outer-ring Westlake, called Crocker Park.

Much consternation erupted from sectors of the Cleveland blogosphere. How could such a venerable institution leave Lakewood? How could an arts organization sell out to the evil developer? Fake urbanism is wrong and despicable! It is not a real city! And on and on.

Let's face it. American urbanism and/or suburbanism of our emerging century will not mirror the urbanism of the last century. These pockets of New Urbanist mixed use should not necessarily be viewed as something aberrational--these conurbations are the harbingers of future "urban" development and must be seriously considered. As populations become ever more mobile and less tethered to certain geographies, routines, and schedules, the normative understandings of "city" and "urbanism" become incrementally obsolete.

So why would not such an organization as the Beck Center want to be involved and ingratiated within the fabric of a potential urban core? The move of the Arts to the booming suburbs is not a phenomena occurring only in Northeast Ohio. This is a trend that Joel Kotkin has been writing about for many years now.

Progressivism + Design

2006-07-03T08:20:00.000-04:00

As people continue to debate the future of Public Square and the public funding mechanisms that would need to be instigated to facilitate the re-design, I would like to direct people to some pertinent reading.

Thomas Hines, a professor of architectural history at UCLA, wrote Burnham of Chicago, a biography of Daniel Burham, father of the Cleveland Group Plan. One chapter, Chapter 8, discusses the intersection of Mayor Tom Johnson's Progressive politics and Daniel Burnham's passion for urban design and architecture.

We need to revisit the lessons of a century ago, understanding the potency of urban design as a resurrecting agent.

Blogging as Civic Responsibilty

2006-06-24T11:28:00.000-04:00

Brewed Fresh Daily posted a question/thread the other day: Why do people blog? Should civic responsibility drive the interest + passion?

We have been blogging here recently about the abomination, the Public Square design proposal, that Paul Volpe + Ann Zoller sprung in the Plain Dealer a few weeks ago. And we have been continuously blogging in tandem with Design Rag and Improvised Schema about avenues to pursue alternative strategies. And we have been ruminating about the plight of the Huletts.

Our constant criticism is Civic Resonsibility, albeit in a self-interested manner, since we are all architects + designers. These forums are the rebuttal to the conventional wisdom that seems to plague cities like Cleveland. Our blogs hopefully enlighten the passer-by or informed citizen + decision-maker.

I would suggest some reading that may further enhance the understanding of the power/potency/agility of bloggers + blogs:

Army of Davids by Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit
Blog by Hugh Hewitt

Although is seems most of the Cleveland bloggers tilt, um, left, the libertarian Reynolds and conservative Hewitt offer insight into how the further democritization of information and access is altering the balance between the slower print + broadcast media instituions and passionate and sage bloggers in their pajamas.

Last week's issue of The New Republic delves into blogosphere, also.

The Plain Dealer + the Huletts

2006-06-22T08:52:00.000-04:00

Like it or not, for us in Cleveland, the Plain Dealer sets the rhetorical agenda each day for the rest of the regional media and even for the bloggers. Today is no different.

The PD editors take a stand against the relocation and preservation of the Hulett ore loaders. I agree that wholly re-erecting these behemoths is probably untenable in the sites that decision-makers have suggested. But again, we need to think beyond the normative. Instead of describing where they cannot go, list locations where can they go--whether near or far. How can the pieces be disseminated? Can they be placed in areas away from the lake? What happens if the Huletts are re-erected in a foreign context, like the London Bridge which was re-built in Arizona? Maybe all these questions have been asked, but they have not been thoroughly answered in a public manner

We here at BOTC have our own idea, which is posted below.

Huletts on Public Square

2006-06-21T09:25:00.000-04:00

Cleveland's favorite dormant industrial relics ,the Hulett ore loaders (picutred here) are going to be drawn, quartered, and spread around Cleveland. Read the PD article here.

This may be a crazy idea, but why don't we plop one, or at least parts of the rustbelt behemoths down on Public Square? Public Square needs to be re-constituted, as has been discussed in the PD, Blog on the City, and Improvised Schema. Yet the character of this re-constitution is by no means resolved.

A possible solution for Public Square would involve transforming the square into a monumental dumping ground, creating a indexical menagerie of regional history. Imagine Public Square, which already hosts the Soldiers' + Sailors' monument (which thoroughly documents Cuyahoga County's participation in the Civil War), also hosting an immense Hulett, a machine that fueled Cleveland's industrial economy for a healthy part of the 20th century, allowing for cross-era narrative. But also imagine in the future decades other remnants of important artifacts filling the space: pieces of NASA space vehicles that are currently being developed at Glenn Research, a toothbrush light tower from Jacobs Field, prototype wind-turbine technology developed in Cleveland, etc.

Many possibilities exist out there. We just have to be willing to explore them. Creativity can solve several problems with one answer.

More on Public Square

2006-06-20T13:22:00.000-04:00

Roldo Bartimole writes about the Public Square proposal here.

Roldo hates the plan--but it has to do with public financing and the evils of business self-interests and Dick Jacobs. Yawn. Different subject, same old playbook. No new ideas. Just regurgitating the same pseudo-populist diatribes.

While BOTC despises the proposed design, we do endorse the idea of rejuvenating Public Square. We do not like what Paul Volpe and Ann Zoller created, but we applaud their interest in reviving Public Square.

To paraphrase Daniel Burnham, we need plans to stir men's souls. The collective soul will be stirred by progressive design speculation concerned with how spaces like Public Square, the Mall, and the Lakefront will subsist through the 21st century.

These spaces are each proverbial canaries in the Greater Cleveland mineshaft. If they fail, or continue to fail and deteriorate as they are presently constituted, Roldo will really have something to write about. But he will be happy since Dick Jacobs will be losing money.

Thinking beyond the Square

2006-06-19T09:31:00.000-04:00

Cleveland gets this: ugh.

Let's think about other ways:
wow.
nice.
interesting.

But the Plain Dealer describes the propsed plan as "thoughtful."

The proposal is as thoughtful as a second-year architecture school student project.

But at least the PD is looking for an open flow of ideas--let's hope the proposed plan is merely a departure point, not the final destination.

Where is the design outrage?

2006-06-15T17:13:00.000-04:00

It has been several days since the Plain Dealer published an asinine proposal for the re-design of Public Square. Accept for a few vociferous protests from Blog on the City and Improvised Schema, the Cleveland blogosphere has been disturbingly quiet and rather unconcerned.

The relative silence from Northeast Ohio’s digitally enlightened again supports my perception of Cleveland as a lower-tier design city, incapable deciphering what constitutes good design and awful design. The lack of indignation further reinforces Steve Litt’s assessment of Cleveland’s design culture (see posts below).

We can wait no longer . . .

2006-06-13T13:00:00.000-04:00

Steve Litt reviews the interviews for the Cuyahoga County Adminstration Complex.

One commissioner reveals that the project will not move quickly because they have not figured out how to fund the project. Huh?

Indecision is killing this city and county.

Public Square is Dead! Long Live Public Sqaure!

2006-06-12T18:05:00.000-04:00

Cleveland’s Public Square is an empty vessel. It no longer functions as the community space that Moses Cleaveland and the boys designed back in the early 19th Century. Sure, the square has hosted some important events, like Lincoln’s funeral procession, the filming of A Christmas Story, and some very Cleveland-like events, like the celebration that followed the Indians losing the 1997 World Series. And the Soldiers’ + Sailors’ monument is a very uniquely American structure, monument, and interpretive piece, unlike any other non-battlefield monument in the country. Yet in most part, Public Square has seen its better days.

Public Square and the Mall, the spatial progeny of the Burnham’s Group Plan, are flaccid relics of past urban design models. At one time each space constituted the democratic and green lungs of a thriving, dirty, and pulsing industrial city. No longer, though. Each space is devoid of relative meaning, use, function, or future. These organizing voids are merely vestiges of past planning strategies that no longer unite. We must either re-use these spaces intelligently, provocatively, or hand them over to private interests to be ruthlessly in-filled.

Let’s say we are forward thinking citizens, tired of the defeatism of the baby-boomer politicians of this one-party town who do not have to compete for votes with ideas. How should we approach the re-design or re-constitution of such deteriorating, yet historically important, and potentially instigating spaces?

Forget nostalgia. The 1950’s are gone, as well as Higbee’s, May Company, and the entire socio-economic climate that seeps from Dick Feagler’s black and white photographs.

Forget history. We do not need interpretive panels explaining what occurred in 1814 at this spot to alter Ohio history. We should keep the Soldiers’ + Sailors’ Monument, though--it is uniquely Cleveland and can anchor the whirlwind of urban change that can potentially occur. Everything else in the other quadrants can go. Small crowds gather for Downtown Memorial Day or Veteran’s Day ceremonies—many attend ceremonies in the suburbs.

Forget ceremony and tradition. The most tangible taste of ceremony that still inflects the square would be the Saint Patrick’s Day Parade. The Columbus Day parade has even left Downtown, scadaddling for the friendly confines of Little Italy.

Maintain the perimeter. Like many European public spaces which have been re-born again and again, the bounding periphery of the spaces have maintained their integrity while churning within over the centuries.

Re-think the circulation. Close down Superior, Ontario, or both, or recalibrate the flow of circulation through and around the square. How could parking be achieved in an alternative manner. How can RTA service or not service the area?

Engage technology. Wi-fi clouds, Ipods, nanotechnologies, smart advertising technologies, infinite accessibility and connectivity are evolving the constitution of our shared public spaces. Could a public space be automatically personalized by your presence?

Provide Protest Space. Where could a good protest occur? The closest event that resembled a protest was John Kerry’s election concert on the Mall. Pro-Choice and Pro-Life counter demonstrations would surely charge-up and enliven the commons.

Embed Flexibility. As society evolves at an ever-quickening pace with technological innovation, Public Square needs to be able to change as quickly. Accepting temporality and an ephemeral character may compose the proper concoction to assure lasting reliance and relevance.

Encourage Ad-hocism.

And we could continue on.

But first and foremost, we cannot let the saccharin, one-off, life-style center skin-deep post-modernism + weak contextualism of the Plain Dealer scheme define and lead-off our collective regional future. We are better than the vision of the presented Plain Dealer scheme--if we do not recognize and reject this utter shallowness, we are not worthy to call ourselves competent architects + urban designers.

Bad Public Square! Bad Public Square!

2006-06-12T08:46:00.000-04:00

ugh.

Just because some local architects say they are urban designers, does not mean they actually are urban designers. Rendering yourself as a contextualist does not offer a liscense to cogently design seminal Cleveland urban spaces.

A perfect example is the proposed scheme for a new Public Sqaure presented in the Plain Dealer on Sunday. It is awful, suburban, tacky, and tinged with sugary nostalgia. It is everything that Millenium Park in Chicago is not. The proposed scheme actually makes Cleveland dumber. It pushes Cleveland architectural thinking backwards a decade.

God, deliver us from such flaccid design philosohpies that cripple this region!

Similar sentiments at Improvised Schema.

More later.

Cleveland design being discussed . . .

2006-06-09T16:02:00.000-04:00

Two letters to the editor appeared in today's Plain Dealer in response to Steve Litt's commentary of last week. Read them here.

It is good to see design debate get a little testy.

I encourage the Plain Dealer to become an advocate for better urban and architectural design. As the only newspaper of consequence in the region, the Plain Dealer and its editors should pressure local decision-makers to make the correct design decisions that will benefit the city and region for generations to come.

Many major projects are going to tranform downtown Cleveland in the next half-decade. An enlightened voice should guide public opinion.

Discourse Re-freshers . . .

2006-06-06T15:21:00.000-04:00

Because of Steve Litt's recent call for design excellence in Cleveland and some indirect blog traffic from Brewed Fresh Daily via Improvised Schema concerning the same subject, here are links to past Blog on the City missives.

Architecture at the Margins

Call for Intellectual Discourse

Call for Discourse

Litt shoots across the bow . . . .

2006-05-31T16:47:00.000-04:00

Steven Litt calls out everyone in Cleveland's design community, as well as the patrons, institutions, and politicians, to create and foster a healthier and robust design community in a Plain Dealer commentary today. Design excellence will bolster the region, Litt believes.

We have commented in this space many times about the feckless constitution of the current state of design in the region. We will not belabor the point anymore.

However, Litt's latest missive is fired on the eve of the Cuyahoga County Commissioners selection of a design team for the new County Administration Complex. If the County awards the building to a weak design team, it seems Litt will not be hesitant to admonish the Commissioners.

IM Pei knows the Code!

2006-05-22T08:48:00.000-04:00

In case you did not see The Da Vinci Code this weekend, let it be known that IM Pei is complicit in the "sacred feminine" conspiracy.

I would like to see Pei's section drawing though the Louvre.

Keynote #20: Remains of Mary Magdelene