oh, and don't gt me wrong, i don't think that libraries should disappear, i just think that libraries as type have not evolved and kept pace with advances in communication or design. the internet and borrowing or renting services online should make it all too clear that these spaces need a thorough rethinking or they will become extinct.
large urban centers will always need the library as a means of free exchange, i think smaller, regional ones need to rethink the business model.
yep, you're right about the program. and i think the library has inklings of this as well.
one item, which i need to get more information about, the director has said that the program was created in 2001, before the construction of the two other branches. those branches were built with more sf than necessary, so this one may be able to be smaller than the published program. maybe 35k-45k sf??
the ancillary parking lot was, in fact, built by the high school for athletics. as i hear it, this was somewhat ironic since the high school had previously said that this area was inviolate and could NOT accommodate library parking expansion because it would compromise the ball field. when the high school needed the spaces, they built them. the library does have use of some of these spaces: 2 that puddles saw, marked accordingly, and 14 others. all together the library now has about 38-42 spaces.
i'm going to look into this further before announcing generally, but i've heard that, with plans for expansion that were drafted in the 80s (ultimately voted down), and with some dealing with adjacent/nearby properties and the municipality, the library was going to be allowed to provide only 48 total spaces after their expansion. if that agreement will still be honored with this expansion, it would make the job a lot easier. at 40-ish now, they'd be pretty close.
i have emailed the director to ask - independent of local regs - how many spaces they think the library actually would NEED.
betadinesutures, there was some talk previously- in the article linked to from puddles' original post starting this thread - that the library functions might be able to move elswhere and the Breuer building saved as a community building of some kind - teen center? public meeting forum? leased to a restaurant operator?.
I don't think there's a probem with doing a proposal that follows that idea.
big charrette TODAY!!! at my office with ms. liberty bell and me. first im going to return some dvd's to the LIBRARY and get breakfast. see you there LB!!!
Has any one generated 2D or 3D AutoCAD files for the original building? I'm in the midst of drafting 2D plans, but don't want to do work that has already been done.
betadinesutures- sorry for the tardy response to some of your concerns (i guess i missed them because they posted at the bottom of the previous page). anyhow, the possibility of relocating the libary to another site is pretty slim by my estimation. one of my initial suggestions (and i even started to solicit the help of a developer with grosse pointe connections) was to tackle the feasibility of saving the building for an adaptive re-use while the library relocated elsewhere. unfortunately the library seems to be very committed to keeping this site given it's prime central location. it's much more likely that they'd demo the breuer than move elsewhere. again, their reasoning was that grosse pointe is built-out and that they haven't had any success finding other suitable locations (and ostensibly they have looked). of course, with the charrette, you perfectly welcome to propose that they library moves elsewhere and then re-program the building however you see fit. i'd loved to see that proposal.
and regarding the subject of the changing roles of libraries in the 21st century, i just thought i'd add that there is a border's book store just down the road. i'm not sure how visible it would be on google earth...but just head about 6-7 blocks to the west on kercheval avenue and it's somewhere on the eastern fringe of the small commercial district referred to as "the village" by the locals.
I know i am coming late to the game, I have been getting a response to an RFP and presentation (which incidently I got the job). this is the letter I fired off to the board...I posted the response from Mrs. Bartell on the other discussion panel, before i found this one.
To whom it may concern,
I have been sent links and have read online articles pertaining to the demolition of the Marcel Breuer designed Grosse Point Public Library which I feel should be stopped, this would be as devastating to the Michigan cultural landscape as if we were to demolish the Fox in downtown Detroit. Being a native Michigander I have gone on to study architecture and open my own practice, and understanding great architecture’s contribution to the cultural fabric of a city and more over a society is as important as understanding how great authors and artist lend similar contributions to that very same cause. I know that the board may have already voted to demolish this historic building and I would like to join the many voices to implore you to save this building and at very least sell it off and use these proceeds to fund a new site and your new building. Saving this building would show the city the concern it has for maintaining not only its cultural heritage but its architectural heritage as well.
and then I got the same form letter response. as I stated in the other post my brother in-law up there (I am now living in Florida) is the editor for one of the Eccentric Papers, and have alerted him to this cause and hope he can take up some of the burden of applying pressure...
saw vado post on the lead thread that he and liberty are working on their charrette today. i'm also gonna try to get some quick'n'dirty charretting done today.
not sure how polished my submission(s) will be, what with being uprooted from home, managing the house renovation, working overtime, losing 3 days to an out-of-town funeral, and expecting a baby any minute, but i'm going to give it my best shot!
i've got a few ideas up my sleeve that may work out ok, but may be communicated primarily through diagramming.
arrived at the office a bit ago - 2pm saturday...did some pre-departure brainstorming with the design partner at the house...continued during the drive here. now downloading/printing survey etc, 'bout to get rollin...
lb and i were able to get our concepts and program/organization/plan "finalized" today. tomorrow we are going to try to get a presentation together. i'm pretty happy with what we've done and the process/experience has been nothing but positive. of course, my partner is the BEST! i just hope we can get it all together by wednesday!
Steven, vado and I agreed today that presentation will most likely be very sketchy, informal, and "accessible" meaning we are going to try to make them drawings that non-architects can understand/get excited about.
And of course vado is mis-representing our partnership, he's the one doing all the work while I just smile and say "Yeah, like that! Cool!"
lb (or vado, or whomever), please expand on this idea of 'accessible' presentation. i have an idea of what you mean, but it's likely that my interpretation is incomplete.
i'm at the office now - there are 10 of us here, working on a project deadline. my design charrette partner, the wonderfully talented MK, is working on our stuff...turning our scheme into plans/elevations...
Well, I think we are not doing elevations, as I don't think typically clients can understand them and will get all bent out of shape about a relationship that exists in elevation but not in experience. We're also considering adding some graphics and simple words - catchphrases, almost - to the plans. I'd like to do an interior sketch, and vado considered a Sketch-Up exterior, but we are quickly so quickly running out of time.....argh!
knocked out 3 1/2 fairly diagrammatic schemes this weekend. mainly interested in communicating ideas for how each approach could work, not so much in solving the bathroom locations.
in fact, in the spirit of 'how buildings learn', i'm proposing in each that the existing building continue to operate more or less as it is - maybe with some program switcheroos here and there - and that each of my schemes' newly constructed annexes absorb the new storage, media, and social space needs. these annexes will be fairly open floor plates, 'shell' construction into which semi-permanent 'tenant' configurations can be installed.
yay!
now i just have to figure out how to present them in a fairly attractive way...
i wish we had more time. this is a really challenging assignment to tackle in two weeks time when you only have a limited amount of free time to spare.
1- given the tight site constraints, i'm curious if anybody will dare to take advantage of the space in front of the existing breuer building and build between it and the sidewalk.
2- it might be worth remembering that even an architect of international status such as breuer was willing to compromise and clad his design in brick in order for it to get built.
i have to admit that i've been very 'polite' to the breuer. given that this is about making the point that the breuer is something to respect, i've given deference to it and allowed the new work to be backdrop (as much as possible, considering that the new work will be larger).
our scheme is also 'a backdrop' in the sense that it is entirely sited to the south of the existing. as for site constraints, we took the chunk of the non-library ground to the southwest, in order to make the site a clean rectangle (I believe someone posted here or on the other thread that the library people had already considered trying to get that piece of ground). otherwise, we're zero lot line on the south, and maintain breuer's setbacks (give or take 8 feet) to the east and west.
with a 3 level addition, and no on site/on grade parking, we were able to come very close to the 50,000+ sf that the program asked for.
It does sound as if we've all been very "polite" to the existing building. My addition added two new entrances to the east and west to take advantage of the existing parking from both the baseball field and the football field (assuming that a partnership to share this parking with the school could be worked out). The challenge then was that I had three entrances that would need to be monitored with staff. I spent the better part of my weekend trying to figure out how circulation and security would work with that arrangement.
Did anyone do any demo on the existing building? I cut two new doors into the brick on the south exterior wall, as well as demoed nearly all the walls in the existing staff area. I also retrofitted the existing reading room with IT infrastructure (saw-cut the slab, etc.) What were others take on this? Did people just very gently attach their addition to the existing structure? Was there any guilt about touching the existing building, or are we being too polite?
we carefully cut away at the south wall to make the plan of the existing work with the addition. otherwise, although we remove some interior partitions, the programmatic zones of the existing remain. the only major re-location was the mechanical equipment, from a room in the existing bldg to the roof of our addition...
i'm sure there will be more aggressive strategies submitted.
I guess on more on a philosophical/conceptual level, "What are we trying to preserve?" After looking closely at the plan of the existing library, I can understand why the staff is frustrated. There are a lot of unusable nooks and crannies (some quite large actually), like the exhibition hall. When puddles and I visited the library, we wanted to sneak upstairs to take a peak at what was up there. (This was before we had a floor plan.) We got to the top of the stairs found ourselves surrounded by closed doors and decided we were not welcome. While seemingly a public space, the exhibition hall is really quite forbidding (and I'm guessing completely unused). Similarly the upstairs stack rooms (aside from it not being accessible) is simply a functional space. We did not even go up there because we could not find the door to the stairs.
Don't get me wrong - I love the library - its scale to the neighborhood, its reading room, its history, but I do think it begs the question, "What are we trying to preserve?" and "How do we best preserve it?" And perhaps more pointedly, "Is our addition helping to preserve it or not?"
these are good thoughts, but i wonder how useful at this point. closed doors are a management decision, i would guess, and probably a symptom of the lack of space and need for more 'back of house'. it's possible that these spaces, if additional space is available elsewhere, might be returned to some interpretation of what was originally intended. or they may be reprogrammed completely.
i'd answer that what we'd try to preserve (were we the architects) is the spirit of the original and specific details which give the library its character as 1) a breuer design and 2) a building of 1953. if that means removing some doors due to different programming needs, i'd think that was reasonable.
i definitely made some openings and/or attachment incursions at the south or east sides in my schemes. while i don't think tearing the box down and leaving only the facade would be an acceptable 'preservation', i think arguments can be made for variations on what stays.
it seems to me (opinion only) that the shell should remain readable and that retaining the reading room and the overlap of the structure into the exhibition room above would be critical. to be honest, i'd prefer that the second floor 'mechanical equipment room' also become public space. there is a nice relationship between big/public and smaller/more intimate/private spaces right now that should be maintained.
We did some serious remodeling interventions in the existing building while maintaining the overall volume of the main space and definitely kept the original interior finish treatments that remain.
But we also left the second-floor mechanical room as is because it seems overly expensive to move a bunch of equipment. But that's why this is an ideas charrette and not an actual design: if I could see the mechanical room, I might decide it would be a good investment to move it.
I think we are going to see lots of very different approaches and that makes me excited. Yay!
Oh, I'm not saying we should throw up our hands, tear up our drawings and quit, but I do think it's a good time to step away from the drafting table and assess what we have actually made.
That mechanical room is interesting. I have a feeling this is where Breuer had his disagreement with the client. It seems completely arbitrarily placed, not like Breuer with his clear almost diagrammatic zoning of the rest of building. I'm guessing that Breuer wanted to have that space for the exhibition hall, but the client insisted on AC and that became were they put the airhandlers.
i think that's really the challenge of the "preservation" in general is trying to define exatly what gets "preserved". personally, i dislike the word "preservation" and try to think of the whole thing in terms of avoiding drastic change. i like the breuer and see no need to demolish at this time. however, i also would have no problem with it receiving an array of surgical procedures if they were needed to make use of the building for some purpose that would allow it to avoid total demolition. eventually, even our best efforts wouldn't prevent the building from turning to dust but what would that take? 1,000 years? 50,000 years? who knows. but i've seen enough of europe to know that even very banal buildings can easily survive for centuries.
of course, given the limitations of grosse pointe farms it appears to be impossible for the library to be anywhere else but this site and consequently we don't really need to worry ourselves with adapting it for anything other than a library.
and besides all that, i really need to do some serious charretting the next couple of days. i haven't gotten much done & feel embarassingly far behind.
Energy efficiency is another concern: Cuyahoga County wants a building that is LEED Silver certified, and commissioner Timothy Hagan says the tower “doesn’t meet the requirements of a new building as far as green architecture goes.” But Peter Jones, the only one of the commissioners still open to saving the structure, doesn’t buy that. He argues that preservation is inherently more sustainable than demolition and that retrofits could enhance its efficiency.
Last October the county commissioners selected a design team—Cleveland-based Robert P. Madison International and Kohn Pedersen Fox—that sided with the majority regarding demolition. Although he studied under Breuer’s Bauhaus cohort Walter Gropius at Harvard, Madison says their proposal is driven by functionality and cost—not preservation. “As architects, of course, we are sentimentalists,” he says. “But it is our job to be responsive to clients, to be as objective as possible.”
you got me with the library, but i'd have to be convinced that this one is as significant. it's big, but doesn't appear to be particularly special. also doesn't sound like it has the public sympathy the library has.
the rudolph blue cross building (for which i'll admit i could not organize myself to write a letter) was a better one to champion i think.
i'll admit to simply being ignorant of this building. if someone knows more about it and can educate me on its imptce, that would be much appreciated.
when i first clicked on the article, after reading puddles' post, i was terrified that this would be about breuer's cleveland art museum, which is sublime and would DEFINITELY be worth a fight. but i think cleveland does love that one.
BTW- this seems to be a new trend - expanding government knocking down blocks in the city centers. Its like a resurection of Robert Moses all over the USA. What are they doing with all this space? Counting parking tickets and storing simulated stone samples for their next appearance comittee?
oh, i'm not proposing that we do anything about the cleveland building at this point...and yeah, i'm personally much more attracted to the rudolph in boston where at least i can personally vouch for it.
but i found the article interesting for a couple of reasons. one, the architect's assessment that "our job is to be responsive to clients" feels like a cop out to me. responsiveness to clients is what creates so much of the schlock already littering the landscape. as professionals we were trained to appreciate the good stuff and i feel we also have a responsibility to use that to inform the public. simply letting people get whatever they want may pay today's bills...but it will leave all of us living in a complete wasteland.
secondly, that bit about cuyhoga county wanting a leed silver branding on their shiny new building and using that as rationale for demolishing an existing structure is one of my biggest concerns with the recent popularity of the whole leed program. namely, that it will replace thinking & behaving differently, i.e, in a more sustainably conscious way, with nothing more than a seal of approval.
puddles, it's like new urbanism. you apply a generic formula for all situations without being critical of its application. i'm a full supporter of leed, but it's clearly being used in the wrong way in this case. leed-eb (existing building) should be applied. in almost all cases, you're better off saving the existing building.
A quick glance at this on google image search shows fairly significant precast panels. By the looks of them they are integral to the shear force resolution thus making their replacement particularily cumbersome, and would remove much of the embodied energy already in the structure thus lowering the LEED rating. However I still cant imagine that all the columns and walls of this tall structure would count for something. My guess is the MEP wont work becase of low floor to floor.
This would be a great structure/architecture charette about adaptive reuse of old highrises.
i agree with evilplat. it is an interesting type for adaptive reuse (or just reuse in this case). i could get behind this as a MAPA charrette. i think it might also be a way to keep some momentum behind the organization.
sorry to chime in a little late, but I am left in the cold - so to speak - being out here 3 hours behind.
I found the article fascinating and kept thinking much of what you guys already have voiced.....that it's funny that people (laymen) take the new found support for "green building" and think it's applicable to any and everything in the landscape, without so much as a thought to the process. Funny thing too that it happens and has happened here with these hollywood types, where 1 celebrity supports a particular sector, and just because they are celebrities, people jump on the bandwagon, without so much as a thought. (still on the green topic here)
I am sure if Leo DiCaprio said "Hey everybody, lets all get in my hybrid car and go drive it off a bridge, because as you know that's the green thing to do!" they would all follow suit.....and, well because Leo said so.
(I know it's a bit of a stretch, but I am sure you guys get my drift).
well...although i'd be willing to contribute a design to another charrette. at this moment i'm not sure mapa has the manpower to tackle another one. we'd need some new volunteers from the cleveland area to step up and do all the legwork.
maybe breuer architecture protection agency would have been a better name. bapa instead of mapa
for marcel breuer's admirers
oh, and don't gt me wrong, i don't think that libraries should disappear, i just think that libraries as type have not evolved and kept pace with advances in communication or design. the internet and borrowing or renting services online should make it all too clear that these spaces need a thorough rethinking or they will become extinct.
large urban centers will always need the library as a means of free exchange, i think smaller, regional ones need to rethink the business model.
yep, you're right about the program. and i think the library has inklings of this as well.
one item, which i need to get more information about, the director has said that the program was created in 2001, before the construction of the two other branches. those branches were built with more sf than necessary, so this one may be able to be smaller than the published program. maybe 35k-45k sf??
the ancillary parking lot was, in fact, built by the high school for athletics. as i hear it, this was somewhat ironic since the high school had previously said that this area was inviolate and could NOT accommodate library parking expansion because it would compromise the ball field. when the high school needed the spaces, they built them. the library does have use of some of these spaces: 2 that puddles saw, marked accordingly, and 14 others. all together the library now has about 38-42 spaces.
i'm going to look into this further before announcing generally, but i've heard that, with plans for expansion that were drafted in the 80s (ultimately voted down), and with some dealing with adjacent/nearby properties and the municipality, the library was going to be allowed to provide only 48 total spaces after their expansion. if that agreement will still be honored with this expansion, it would make the job a lot easier. at 40-ish now, they'd be pretty close.
i have emailed the director to ask - independent of local regs - how many spaces they think the library actually would NEED.
betadinesutures, there was some talk previously- in the article linked to from puddles' original post starting this thread - that the library functions might be able to move elswhere and the Breuer building saved as a community building of some kind - teen center? public meeting forum? leased to a restaurant operator?.
I don't think there's a probem with doing a proposal that follows that idea.
big charrette TODAY!!! at my office with ms. liberty bell and me. first im going to return some dvd's to the LIBRARY and get breakfast. see you there LB!!!
Has any one generated 2D or 3D AutoCAD files for the original building? I'm in the midst of drafting 2D plans, but don't want to do work that has already been done.
betadinesutures- sorry for the tardy response to some of your concerns (i guess i missed them because they posted at the bottom of the previous page). anyhow, the possibility of relocating the libary to another site is pretty slim by my estimation. one of my initial suggestions (and i even started to solicit the help of a developer with grosse pointe connections) was to tackle the feasibility of saving the building for an adaptive re-use while the library relocated elsewhere. unfortunately the library seems to be very committed to keeping this site given it's prime central location. it's much more likely that they'd demo the breuer than move elsewhere. again, their reasoning was that grosse pointe is built-out and that they haven't had any success finding other suitable locations (and ostensibly they have looked). of course, with the charrette, you perfectly welcome to propose that they library moves elsewhere and then re-program the building however you see fit. i'd loved to see that proposal.
and regarding the subject of the changing roles of libraries in the 21st century, i just thought i'd add that there is a border's book store just down the road. i'm not sure how visible it would be on google earth...but just head about 6-7 blocks to the west on kercheval avenue and it's somewhere on the eastern fringe of the small commercial district referred to as "the village" by the locals.
can you do me a favor? i know i post under betadinesutures, but from now on can you just call me ken?
I know i am coming late to the game, I have been getting a response to an RFP and presentation (which incidently I got the job). this is the letter I fired off to the board...I posted the response from Mrs. Bartell on the other discussion panel, before i found this one.
To whom it may concern,
I have been sent links and have read online articles pertaining to the demolition of the Marcel Breuer designed Grosse Point Public Library which I feel should be stopped, this would be as devastating to the Michigan cultural landscape as if we were to demolish the Fox in downtown Detroit. Being a native Michigander I have gone on to study architecture and open my own practice, and understanding great architecture’s contribution to the cultural fabric of a city and more over a society is as important as understanding how great authors and artist lend similar contributions to that very same cause. I know that the board may have already voted to demolish this historic building and I would like to join the many voices to implore you to save this building and at very least sell it off and use these proceeds to fund a new site and your new building. Saving this building would show the city the concern it has for maintaining not only its cultural heritage but its architectural heritage as well.
and then I got the same form letter response. as I stated in the other post my brother in-law up there (I am now living in Florida) is the editor for one of the Eccentric Papers, and have alerted him to this cause and hope he can take up some of the burden of applying pressure...
saw vado post on the lead thread that he and liberty are working on their charrette today. i'm also gonna try to get some quick'n'dirty charretting done today.
not sure how polished my submission(s) will be, what with being uprooted from home, managing the house renovation, working overtime, losing 3 days to an out-of-town funeral, and expecting a baby any minute, but i'm going to give it my best shot!
i've got a few ideas up my sleeve that may work out ok, but may be communicated primarily through diagramming.
arrived at the office a bit ago - 2pm saturday...did some pre-departure brainstorming with the design partner at the house...continued during the drive here. now downloading/printing survey etc, 'bout to get rollin...
lb and i were able to get our concepts and program/organization/plan "finalized" today. tomorrow we are going to try to get a presentation together. i'm pretty happy with what we've done and the process/experience has been nothing but positive. of course, my partner is the BEST! i just hope we can get it all together by wednesday!
Steven, vado and I agreed today that presentation will most likely be very sketchy, informal, and "accessible" meaning we are going to try to make them drawings that non-architects can understand/get excited about.
And of course vado is mis-representing our partnership, he's the one doing all the work while I just smile and say "Yeah, like that! Cool!"
Jeepers, Wednesday is reeeeeeeeeaaally soon!
lb (or vado, or whomever), please expand on this idea of 'accessible' presentation. i have an idea of what you mean, but it's likely that my interpretation is incomplete.
i'm at the office now - there are 10 of us here, working on a project deadline. my design charrette partner, the wonderfully talented MK, is working on our stuff...turning our scheme into plans/elevations...
we are being accessible by NOT referencing any architectural BS.
Well, I think we are not doing elevations, as I don't think typically clients can understand them and will get all bent out of shape about a relationship that exists in elevation but not in experience. We're also considering adding some graphics and simple words - catchphrases, almost - to the plans. I'd like to do an interior sketch, and vado considered a Sketch-Up exterior, but we are quickly so quickly running out of time.....argh!
knocked out 3 1/2 fairly diagrammatic schemes this weekend. mainly interested in communicating ideas for how each approach could work, not so much in solving the bathroom locations.
in fact, in the spirit of 'how buildings learn', i'm proposing in each that the existing building continue to operate more or less as it is - maybe with some program switcheroos here and there - and that each of my schemes' newly constructed annexes absorb the new storage, media, and social space needs. these annexes will be fairly open floor plates, 'shell' construction into which semi-permanent 'tenant' configurations can be installed.
yay!
now i just have to figure out how to present them in a fairly attractive way...
plus we're sick!
i wish we had more time. this is a really challenging assignment to tackle in two weeks time when you only have a limited amount of free time to spare.
also, a couple of late night thoughts:
1- given the tight site constraints, i'm curious if anybody will dare to take advantage of the space in front of the existing breuer building and build between it and the sidewalk.
2- it might be worth remembering that even an architect of international status such as breuer was willing to compromise and clad his design in brick in order for it to get built.
i have to admit that i've been very 'polite' to the breuer. given that this is about making the point that the breuer is something to respect, i've given deference to it and allowed the new work to be backdrop (as much as possible, considering that the new work will be larger).
our scheme is also 'a backdrop' in the sense that it is entirely sited to the south of the existing. as for site constraints, we took the chunk of the non-library ground to the southwest, in order to make the site a clean rectangle (I believe someone posted here or on the other thread that the library people had already considered trying to get that piece of ground). otherwise, we're zero lot line on the south, and maintain breuer's setbacks (give or take 8 feet) to the east and west.
with a 3 level addition, and no on site/on grade parking, we were able to come very close to the 50,000+ sf that the program asked for.
It does sound as if we've all been very "polite" to the existing building. My addition added two new entrances to the east and west to take advantage of the existing parking from both the baseball field and the football field (assuming that a partnership to share this parking with the school could be worked out). The challenge then was that I had three entrances that would need to be monitored with staff. I spent the better part of my weekend trying to figure out how circulation and security would work with that arrangement.
Did anyone do any demo on the existing building? I cut two new doors into the brick on the south exterior wall, as well as demoed nearly all the walls in the existing staff area. I also retrofitted the existing reading room with IT infrastructure (saw-cut the slab, etc.) What were others take on this? Did people just very gently attach their addition to the existing structure? Was there any guilt about touching the existing building, or are we being too polite?
we carefully cut away at the south wall to make the plan of the existing work with the addition. otherwise, although we remove some interior partitions, the programmatic zones of the existing remain. the only major re-location was the mechanical equipment, from a room in the existing bldg to the roof of our addition...
i'm sure there will be more aggressive strategies submitted.
I guess on more on a philosophical/conceptual level, "What are we trying to preserve?" After looking closely at the plan of the existing library, I can understand why the staff is frustrated. There are a lot of unusable nooks and crannies (some quite large actually), like the exhibition hall. When puddles and I visited the library, we wanted to sneak upstairs to take a peak at what was up there. (This was before we had a floor plan.) We got to the top of the stairs found ourselves surrounded by closed doors and decided we were not welcome. While seemingly a public space, the exhibition hall is really quite forbidding (and I'm guessing completely unused). Similarly the upstairs stack rooms (aside from it not being accessible) is simply a functional space. We did not even go up there because we could not find the door to the stairs.
Don't get me wrong - I love the library - its scale to the neighborhood, its reading room, its history, but I do think it begs the question, "What are we trying to preserve?" and "How do we best preserve it?" And perhaps more pointedly, "Is our addition helping to preserve it or not?"
these are good thoughts, but i wonder how useful at this point. closed doors are a management decision, i would guess, and probably a symptom of the lack of space and need for more 'back of house'. it's possible that these spaces, if additional space is available elsewhere, might be returned to some interpretation of what was originally intended. or they may be reprogrammed completely.
i'd answer that what we'd try to preserve (were we the architects) is the spirit of the original and specific details which give the library its character as 1) a breuer design and 2) a building of 1953. if that means removing some doors due to different programming needs, i'd think that was reasonable.
i definitely made some openings and/or attachment incursions at the south or east sides in my schemes. while i don't think tearing the box down and leaving only the facade would be an acceptable 'preservation', i think arguments can be made for variations on what stays.
it seems to me (opinion only) that the shell should remain readable and that retaining the reading room and the overlap of the structure into the exhibition room above would be critical. to be honest, i'd prefer that the second floor 'mechanical equipment room' also become public space. there is a nice relationship between big/public and smaller/more intimate/private spaces right now that should be maintained.
We did some serious remodeling interventions in the existing building while maintaining the overall volume of the main space and definitely kept the original interior finish treatments that remain.
But we also left the second-floor mechanical room as is because it seems overly expensive to move a bunch of equipment. But that's why this is an ideas charrette and not an actual design: if I could see the mechanical room, I might decide it would be a good investment to move it.
I think we are going to see lots of very different approaches and that makes me excited. Yay!
Oh, I'm not saying we should throw up our hands, tear up our drawings and quit, but I do think it's a good time to step away from the drafting table and assess what we have actually made.
That mechanical room is interesting. I have a feeling this is where Breuer had his disagreement with the client. It seems completely arbitrarily placed, not like Breuer with his clear almost diagrammatic zoning of the rest of building. I'm guessing that Breuer wanted to have that space for the exhibition hall, but the client insisted on AC and that became were they put the airhandlers.
i think that's really the challenge of the "preservation" in general is trying to define exatly what gets "preserved". personally, i dislike the word "preservation" and try to think of the whole thing in terms of avoiding drastic change. i like the breuer and see no need to demolish at this time. however, i also would have no problem with it receiving an array of surgical procedures if they were needed to make use of the building for some purpose that would allow it to avoid total demolition. eventually, even our best efforts wouldn't prevent the building from turning to dust but what would that take? 1,000 years? 50,000 years? who knows. but i've seen enough of europe to know that even very banal buildings can easily survive for centuries.
of course, given the limitations of grosse pointe farms it appears to be impossible for the library to be anywhere else but this site and consequently we don't really need to worry ourselves with adapting it for anything other than a library.
and besides all that, i really need to do some serious charretting the next couple of days. i haven't gotten much done & feel embarassingly far behind.
.
not sure if this belongs on the featured thread...
aaacck!! either i'm drawing more slowly in my old age or i've blocked a lot of painful memories.
Oops, posted this on the wrong one...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMenB9Ywh2Q
7 sheets uploaded. Time to run home and enjoy a night with the kids.
j
that architecty solution is bad, real bad, the original is nowhere to be found. sad.
poor breuer...cleveland too
excerpts from the article:
Energy efficiency is another concern: Cuyahoga County wants a building that is LEED Silver certified, and commissioner Timothy Hagan says the tower “doesn’t meet the requirements of a new building as far as green architecture goes.” But Peter Jones, the only one of the commissioners still open to saving the structure, doesn’t buy that. He argues that preservation is inherently more sustainable than demolition and that retrofits could enhance its efficiency.
Last October the county commissioners selected a design team—Cleveland-based Robert P. Madison International and Kohn Pedersen Fox—that sided with the majority regarding demolition. Although he studied under Breuer’s Bauhaus cohort Walter Gropius at Harvard, Madison says their proposal is driven by functionality and cost—not preservation. “As architects, of course, we are sentimentalists,” he says. “But it is our job to be responsive to clients, to be as objective as possible.”
another spineless architect...what the hell?
Sharpen those pencils folks
you got me with the library, but i'd have to be convinced that this one is as significant. it's big, but doesn't appear to be particularly special. also doesn't sound like it has the public sympathy the library has.
the rudolph blue cross building (for which i'll admit i could not organize myself to write a letter) was a better one to champion i think.
sounds like a job for MAPA. maybe we should become breuer specialists.
i'll admit to simply being ignorant of this building. if someone knows more about it and can educate me on its imptce, that would be much appreciated.
when i first clicked on the article, after reading puddles' post, i was terrified that this would be about breuer's cleveland art museum, which is sublime and would DEFINITELY be worth a fight. but i think cleveland does love that one.
BTW- this seems to be a new trend - expanding government knocking down blocks in the city centers. Its like a resurection of Robert Moses all over the USA. What are they doing with all this space? Counting parking tickets and storing simulated stone samples for their next appearance comittee?
oh, i'm not proposing that we do anything about the cleveland building at this point...and yeah, i'm personally much more attracted to the rudolph in boston where at least i can personally vouch for it.
but i found the article interesting for a couple of reasons. one, the architect's assessment that "our job is to be responsive to clients" feels like a cop out to me. responsiveness to clients is what creates so much of the schlock already littering the landscape. as professionals we were trained to appreciate the good stuff and i feel we also have a responsibility to use that to inform the public. simply letting people get whatever they want may pay today's bills...but it will leave all of us living in a complete wasteland.
secondly, that bit about cuyhoga county wanting a leed silver branding on their shiny new building and using that as rationale for demolishing an existing structure is one of my biggest concerns with the recent popularity of the whole leed program. namely, that it will replace thinking & behaving differently, i.e, in a more sustainably conscious way, with nothing more than a seal of approval.
definitely agree with both points. maybe letters to the architects giving them a good dressing down?
i love the photograph of the cleveland building, by the way. the people in the foreground look two stories tall.
puddles, it's like new urbanism. you apply a generic formula for all situations without being critical of its application. i'm a full supporter of leed, but it's clearly being used in the wrong way in this case. leed-eb (existing building) should be applied. in almost all cases, you're better off saving the existing building.
ya. maybe you should LOSE leed points for opting out of leed-eb when it could be relevant.
A quick glance at this on google image search shows fairly significant precast panels. By the looks of them they are integral to the shear force resolution thus making their replacement particularily cumbersome, and would remove much of the embodied energy already in the structure thus lowering the LEED rating. However I still cant imagine that all the columns and walls of this tall structure would count for something. My guess is the MEP wont work becase of low floor to floor.
This would be a great structure/architecture charette about adaptive reuse of old highrises.
forget leed points...let's dock'em some frequent flier miles
i agree with evilplat. it is an interesting type for adaptive reuse (or just reuse in this case). i could get behind this as a MAPA charrette. i think it might also be a way to keep some momentum behind the organization.
sorry to chime in a little late, but I am left in the cold - so to speak - being out here 3 hours behind.
I found the article fascinating and kept thinking much of what you guys already have voiced.....that it's funny that people (laymen) take the new found support for "green building" and think it's applicable to any and everything in the landscape, without so much as a thought to the process. Funny thing too that it happens and has happened here with these hollywood types, where 1 celebrity supports a particular sector, and just because they are celebrities, people jump on the bandwagon, without so much as a thought. (still on the green topic here)
I am sure if Leo DiCaprio said "Hey everybody, lets all get in my hybrid car and go drive it off a bridge, because as you know that's the green thing to do!" they would all follow suit.....and, well because Leo said so.
(I know it's a bit of a stretch, but I am sure you guys get my drift).
the problem isn't the green bandwagon. it's not seeing the real green solution through the greenwash.
eloquent as ever Steven - right O mate!
well...although i'd be willing to contribute a design to another charrette. at this moment i'm not sure mapa has the manpower to tackle another one. we'd need some new volunteers from the cleveland area to step up and do all the legwork.
maybe breuer architecture protection agency would have been a better name. bapa instead of mapa
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