Archinect - News

Historic preservation and its (many) American discontents

2022-05-09T16:57:00-04:00

It seems incredible that a mid-century marvel like Geller I should fall victim to redevelopment while a government agency nearby intervenes to prevent someone from replacing an old front door with a similar-looking new one. In the world of historic preservation, however, a loose relationship between a building’s historical value and its likelihood of being protected is all too common.

The recent loss of Marcel Breuer’s first post-war Geller I design on Long Island is used to highlight the tension between developer-friendly preservation laws in smaller communities like Lawrence, and the prevailing approaches to preservation controlled predominantly by city dwellers and their “superficial attempts to reframe historic preservation as a progressive endeavor.”

Harvard Doctoral candidate Jacob Anbinder takes a broad look at the (highly political) history of American preservation efforts, which, he says, have shifted in recent decades to become an exclusive domain of the Democratic Party and its “growing base of white-collar professionals attempting to reconcile their material interests with their egalitarian ideals.”

AIA's political action committee has paused all activities and contributions indefinitely

2021-01-14T11:13:00-05:00

The AIA announced yesterday that ArchiPAC (the AIA's political action committee) had "paused all PAC activities and contributions indefinitely, pending further review of the political situation and to enable the development of protocols to address this and future events aimed to undermine American Voters." The rest of the statement reads:

AIA is taking these steps as a direct result of the inflamed rhetoric and violence that preceded last week’s Congressional vote to certify the election of President-Elect Joe Biden.

ArchiPAC was founded 40 years ago to further amplify the voice of architects to Congressional policymakers. ArchiPAC is bipartisan and supports candidates from both political parties who value policies supporting the built environment and advocate for solutions to issues architects face in protecting the health, safety, and welfare of people.

AIA remains a bipartisan organization and ArchiPAC is supported solely by the voluntary contributions of AIA members. Its disburs...

How much does politics affect architecture? An MIT architectural historian explains

2019-09-13T09:00:00-04:00

In a recent news article from MIT News, architectural historian Timothy Hyde explains why "every building is ultimately a compromise.”

Hyde shares, “It’s a compromise between the intentions of architects, the capacities of builders, economics, politics, the people who use the building, the people who paid for the building. It’s a compromise of many, many inputs.”

An associate professor, author, and former practicing architect, Hyde has explored the relationships between architecture, politics, and society throughout his career. Having written two books on the subject, Hyde has spent his time dissecting the topics of modernism and democracy in Cuba during the 20th century and has also found connections between architecture and power in Britain.

Architecture historian Timothy Hyde. Image © Bryce Vickmark

"I really think about myself first as a historian of modernity,” Hyde explains. “Architectural history is the particular vehicle that I use to explore the history of modernity.”

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Is far-right ideology twisting the concept of 'heritage' in German architecture?

2018-10-06T14:02:00-04:00

Krier himself may not be fascist. Nor are most of the people involved in reconstructing the Garrison church or the new Old Town. But the defence of the political neutrality of architecture is wearing thin.

In 1991 Max Klaar, a retired German lieutenant-colonel, presented the municipality of Potsdam with a replica of a famous carillon, which from 1797 to 1945 had played themes by Bach and Mozart (Papageno’s Ein Mädchen oder Weibchen from The Magic Flute) from the tower of the city’s Garrison church. Both the tower and bells had been wrecked in an air raid – the ruins finally being removed by the East German government in 1968. The carillon, paid for by private donors, was a step in the hoped-for reconstruction of the church.

How very charming, you might think, except that Klaar had an agenda: he was a Nazi apologist. If you look on the internet (but please don’t), you will find him, for example, endorsing the thoroughly debunked lie that General Eisenhower had a million German prisoners of war killed in death camps."

According to Stephan Trüby, a professor of architecture at the University of Stuttgart, the Garrison church plan is an example of what he claims is now a disturbing patter...