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.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Visions of Parma
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.
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.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
The Permanent Convention Trip
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.
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.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Let us be your convention guide . . .
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.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
The Simple Care for the City
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.
Thursday, March 06, 2008
Bad Water Rising on Public Square
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.
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.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Endorsement: John McCain
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.
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
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.
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.
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Endorsement - - Thomas O'Grady for Congress
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.
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.
Monday, February 18, 2008
Endorsement Questions
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.
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.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
BOTC Endorsements
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?
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?
Thursday, February 07, 2008
Cleveland Public Art - - Exhibit Opening Tonight
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.
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.
Monday, January 28, 2008
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Modernism Saved, yet Developer Post-Modernism must be Stopped
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.
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.
Monday, December 31, 2007
2007 BOTC Year-End Awards
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.
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.
Friday, December 28, 2007
Praise and Ridicule Forthcoming
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.
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
John Terrence Kelly, RIP
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.
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Attacking their Religion
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.
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.
Friday, November 23, 2007
Cleveland Design City Aggregator
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
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
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.
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.
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