Gwathmey's Debacle at Cleveland State

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

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

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

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

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 __________

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

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 __________

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"?

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

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 . . .

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 . . .

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 . . .

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

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 . . .

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

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 . . . .

Hack Infrastructure will abound!

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

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

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.