Not long enough to be comfortably horizontal, the building was also too tall for its shallow depth and too wide to be reasonably vertical. Both horizontal (modern) and vertical (historic) orientations were on display in the surrounding Seton Hill neighborhood. This bastard was of neither parent. — Baltimore Business Journal
Architect and critic Klaus Philipsen takes the incursion of a faux historicist 7-11 into the westside of Baltimore's downtown to task.
34 Comments
Taking the new 7-11 to task in an inner city neighborhood of Baltimore for being faux historicist. Things must be slow. Maybe the critic would have perfered real historicism?
Did you read the article, Thayer?
Yes Fred, I read the article.
Similar nostalgic crap is being built all across the country. I think it has a lot to do with a rise in activism around urban preservation and New Urbanism.
or maybe it has something to do with the fact that people tend not to like sterile modernism...nahh, let's blame it on the folks who thought it important to deal with sprawl.
"or maybe it has something to do with the fact that people tend not to like sterile modernism"
I'm surprised you didn't show a plan of Seaside.
Why are you surprised? We're not seeing Seaside-quality architecture proliferate across the US. We're seeing EIFS cornices, brick veneer and vinyl keystones. The rejection of that "sterile" mid century modern vernacular gave way to a new kind of banality.
what a weird little building - it's strip-mall aesthetic adapted for an urban site.
this image actually made the building look a little more promising:
and then we somehow get to this:
the cornice and those pilasters don't bother me, probably because it gives some depth, but the composition totally falls apart at the ground level - and those are some sad little windows...
It's difficult to fully appreciate the context of this building. I assume most people in row houses would want the same across the street to create a neighborhood. However if the row houses are recently renovated and the area has been neglected for sometime perhaps police may hang out at the 7-11 (patrol) at night and make the area seem safer for those residents..... or the opposite.... early morning thugs will convene to satisfy their dope fueled hunger pangs. In any event, I am not planning on visiting Baltimore soon but if a good size hurricane does, residents might have some free Slurpies for a limited time. The building may once again be modern due to an act of God.
Thayer, I have a few questions:
Do you really think fake second stories are good for anything? What about the proportions on those windows? Never mind the fact that that they're missing lintels. Are you saying this isn't faux-historicism? Is this authentic historicism, then? Is this a thing that should exist in the world? Should architecture critics be writing about Israel and Palestine instead? If this wasn't a slow news day, what should architecture critics write about instead?
Who is the architect on this one? Mockery is a great word, well done. How embarrassing for whoever did this.
Fred, I'll answer your questions in the order I think they make sense to me, but first I think it fair to let you know I look at history as everything that has happened until the present. I don't have magical lines in time where I separate what is history from what is modern as I don't have lines between the races or ones sexuality for example. Obviously, I use the categories we all use to be able to communicate but I don't think they are hard lines in actuality as there's always buildings, people, and cultures that straddle the lines, and those things are as valid as anything that's as pure as one might imagine anything to be. That being said, I would call anything done recently modern, regardless of style. Modern and modernist aren't the same thing, at least in my mind.
Is this a thing that should exist in the world?
If by this you mean buildings attempting to convey a previous time in history, this has existed since time immemorial. That's why they called it the Rennaisance, for example.
Are you saying this isn't faux-historicism?
Isn't historicism faux by nature? First of all, you are getting caught up in a 'deception' that nobody cares about except modernist ideologues and secondly, who do you think this store is "fooling"? The guy with munchys? This is historicism baaaadly done, but no different than a mid-century modernist design. Conceptually, there's no difference. Would I object to the Beatles conjouring up 1930's delta blues rather than post industrial Britain or would I simply look at is for the art it is and either like the quality of it or not?
"What about the proportions on those windows?"
They're god awful, and yes, it looked better as a metal frame, but we all know you can't expose metal structure like that. Even Mies knew that, which is why he hung steel beams on the Seagrams. No one was fooled and more importantly, no one was harmed, except maybe the street wall and the aesthetic harmony of pre-war Park Avenue.
"Do you really think fake second stories are good for anything?"
They're good for trying to fit in to a taller context and not stand out as the disposable junk food outlet that this building actually is. But when it comes to fakeness, we can start with the Romans cladding their concrete to Zaha's cladding hiding her structure if you really want to be the truth patrol. What's the politically correct clothing we should dress buildings in? I don't think the public will ever care two cents about this question. They are smart enough to know it matters not a snit, at least compared to wether the building is safe, how well it functions, and wether it makes them feel something or not, assuming they don't have cotton mouth.
"Should architecture critics be writing about Israel and Palestine instead?"
Architecture critics can write about anything they'd like and I'll read it or not...allthough it does seem a bit removed from the discussion of architecture.
"If this wasn't a slow news day, what should architecture critics write about instead?"
Whatever made it a non-slow day I suppose. Picking apart a corporate designed convenience store seems a bit lazy, unless you wanted to publish a polemic screed. Nobody is gonig to think this is a Federal era building (assuming that's what they where gonig for), which by definition was a revivalist style anyway. And nobody goes into architecture school with this kind of rigid thinking that's more concerned with the validity of a building rather than its artistic merits, unless they're just that way by nature...no fun :( You can slam these kind of buildings till the cows come home, but why not explore why people turn to this kind of aesthetic, with out looking down your nose.
Yeah, who IS the architect on this one? Let's shame him or her, unless they are at their kid's soccer game, in which case let's wait till their kid goes to bed.
I don't think the public will ever care two cents about this question. They are smart enough to know it matters not a snit
Thayer, do you really have this little respect for all other humans? People care about how well objects are made and how they look as well as how they perform (firmness commodity delight). They might not be able to articulate what they do and don't like in the same terms architects do, but they *know* when a building is a cookie-cutter POS dropped on them by an uncaring corporation looking to make a profit in their neighborhood. That doesn't mean the people in this neighborhood won't appreciate the convenience of a new drugstore, but they're smart enough to know that this building was built on the cheap.
Agreed. But it's not just cheapo shit architecture but also everything the corporate development mentality represents from sucking money out of a community to low-paying jobs to the Hecho en Chine shopping experience to environmental desecration.
The local town planner once gave a 30 minute lecture on everything that's wrong with highway-style commercial strip development as an intro to the presentation of his highway-style commercial strip development zoning plan.
As long as money rules we will have the very best commercial development money can buy. Residential, too.
"Thayer, do you really have this little respect for all other humans? People care about how well objects are made and how they look as well as how they perform (firmness commodity delight)."
Are you serious Donna? Let me remind you what you said about a critic of Paul Rudolph's threatened Government Center in Goshen, N.Y. ...
"I'd like to know what professional accreditations or experience Mr. Benton has that would impel us to pay one iota of attention to his opinion on the historic significance of a piece if architecture? None? That's what I thought."
So you're telling me you respect the opinion of the man on the street in Baltimore, yet if someone criticises a Paul Rudolph building, he needs to have the professional accreditations and experience you deem worthy?
Let me fill out my quote you parsed for your own ideological needs, one you seem to share with this insightful and clear eyed archtiectural critic...
"I don't think the public will ever care two cents about this question. They are smart enough to know it matters not a snit, at least compared to wether the building is safe, how well it functions, and wether it makes them feel something or not..."
Now I'm glad you seem to find some use in the idea of firmness, commodity, and delight. I thought it was tainted for modernists who associate it with classicists or some such ideological thinking, but since you bring it up, let me elucidate some paralells in my full quote that seemed to have escaped your professional accreditations...
firmness - "wether the building is safe"
commodity - "how well it functions"
delight -" wether it makes them feel something or not"
Did you miss that? It's like the Republican Tea Partiers, when do you get embarassed for getting your hypocricy called out? I know it's just politics, but at some point you fly straight, or your credibility begins to suffer, if I can be so polite.
Obviously Thayer has bad taste and no good sense. Let's remember that main street is almost alright, and if we have to design lick and stick Styrofoam 7-Elevens, let's work towards developing a better lick and stick aesthetic. Letting people like Thayer or crazy cat ladies with no life outside their feline domiciles that have no architecture education outside the architecture record magazine on their coffee table determine the design of an area is what causes these bad things to happen.
I propose a new rule that if you're going to criticize the built work of other people, you should provide links to the built work you've done that's better. Donna can back up her criticisms. Can Thayer?
Well here's how I see it.
A great building "should" IMO read at multiple levels. It can be appreciated by the scholars, the other practitioners, and the general public. In other words, you don't need to be a geologist to appreciate the Grand Canyon. As for time, style, genre, its all nonsense. An architect will have their thing and should probably stick to it as life too short to get good at everything, but a critic should probably judge based on quality and not their preferred genre. I may like sci-if better than crime drama but I can appreciate a good crime drama for its quality...and no I don't think sisal and ebert need to make a movie before they can judge a movie. That's silly.
cheers jla-x.
curtkram, you can call me whatever you like as that seems to be the extent of your intellectual capacities, but when you go after cat ladies, you've crossed the line.
Future architect meets design review board
The fake stuff Is fake because it's dishonest and poorly executed not because it's "old fashioned" . There are bands like Nirvana for instance that reinvent songs from the 40's. (lead belly.)
"in the pines in the pines where the sun don't ever shine...." Same words different execution. Relevant then now and tomorrow.
The cheap crap strip malls above do not reinvent. They are dishonest in that they intentionally seek nostalgia as a means of manipulation, and as a way to hide/ease their truly "modern" reality- a reality of centralized corporatism and the destruction of "Main Street". A reality opposite of "old world." A wolf in Sheeps clothing.
I don`t think Thayer said s-he liked that building; it seems to me that s-he was defending historicism that s-he viewed as being attacked within the fold of criticism being made against that building (if i understand Thayer`s position well).
Perhaps, Thayer has yet to say whether this is here is an instance of good or bad historicism (s-he has conceded on the pathetic windows) which is, understandably, seperate from holding the view that historicism, in principle, is good. So she could have been talking about preference for certain principles...rather than how this building succeeds in terms of these principles.
In that case, would it be fair to accuse her or him of having bad taste?
This building was designed by a computer. Cut and paste. No brains required to design or approve it. The renderings must have been dressed up with smoke and mirrors to get approved.
tammuz,
I think you got it, roughly. I said this building is atrocious, not becasue it's historicist, but becasue its proportions and detailing suck. It's construction is what it is. Not what I'd call building for the ages, but today, what is? I think tint get's it right also, which is why I thought the critic was having a slow day. Shooting fish in a barrel.
It's about quality, not ideology, for me at least. That being said, we all have our personal preferences, but I think we can all co-exist. As for historicism in general, I thought I answered that also. To my mind, everything is rooted in the past, so I don't get bent wether one was inspired by Calatrava or Palladio, which I know put's me in the minority, but I'm a minority in so many other ways. One get's used to it. All I know is I like pleasure. Sometimes it's from the peace of a minimalist design, or the riot of a baroque church, or something in between, it's just not dependant on a particular style.
Just don't mess with cat ladies, or children, or anybody that dosen't can't stand up to bullies.
We've been down this road with Thayer before. Personally, I think its a waste of time. He'll write these very long comments that go nowhere. Maybe he has terrible taste. Maybe he just likes to play devil's advocate. Either way, I don't think its constructive.
But I am glad that this critic in Baltimore has brought some attention to the issue. Hopefully it reaches the people who design buildings for companies like 7 Eleven. I also hope that it reaches the historic preservation activists. On this particular 7-11 building, its seems like the cornice, small sign and brick veneer is already a response, although a cheap and half-hearted one, to that element in every historic district that asks us (designers and architects) to create designs that literally "blend" with the context. It seems like preservationists need to realize the nature of this process and that on a very modest budget it is impossible to create historicized buildings that truly blend. Its also likely that these retail designers are not trained in creating quality historical architecture. Thats why the designers resort to appeasement by using generic elements like brick veneer or an EIFS cornice. I'd much rather see good cookie-cutter design than bad contextualism. The japanese firm Suppose has done a series a decent stores for an eyewear company in Japan called Jins.
Oh jeez Thayer there's a difference between knowledge and expertise. Seriously.
People don't want a specific style so much as they want what it evokes and awakens within them. Often the easiest route to that is familiarity nostalgia and connotations. Architecture is like cigarettes in that it delivers the nicotine. It delivers the desired feeling. People want the nicotine and they think that they want the cigarette. The cigarette becomes a symbol and trigger for the desire of the nicotine. The nicotine is illusive and invisible and no matter how many other nicotine delivery systems we create people hooked will still associate feeling good with cigarette even though the feelings come from the nicotine and can be delivered without the cigarette via gum, patch, etc. (maybe not in same way but you get the point)
the association become so strong that the image of a cigarette triggers the craving of an invisible chemical. Even a fake cigarette will evoke those cravings. Even seeing someone chew a toothpick will evoke those feelings. The form of the cigarette itself become an association with a feeling that happens chemically in out brains. Crazy really. I believe that the image of a familiar place can too trigger associations with certain feeling and chemical emotions in our minds. Even if the image is a loose or fake version of that place or thing.
As a kid i had this apple tree in my yard. I remember my grandmother relentlessly picking up fallen apples. The smell and the form of the tree is so deeply engrained in my mind and so tightly connected to certain emotions and memories that the sight of an apple tree makes me feel happy and nostalgic.... Sometimes i will see a tree that may look like an apple tree and the same emotions are evoked. The "good feelings" from architecture are also delivered by and through the architecture and so long as those feelings are associated with a certain type of architecture people will have a hard time accepting that those feelings can be delivered with these other foreign looking things. Feelings become married to specific forms. They associate a very familiar and specific delivery mechanism to a feeling. Its not a matter of being smart or dumb or uneducated so much as being familiar and unfamiliar.
Please don't take this as me saying that classical architecture is bad like cigarettes. Lol. That's not the point. I'm saying that the basic feelings being sought, as Thayer points out, are independent of form but also psychologically attached to it. This leaves people vulnerable to manipulation. IMO post modernisms success as the architecture of strip malls is completely tied to this. It on one hand allows for cheap and modern construction and still maintains an ability to manipulate the psychology of the customer. It's the greatest architectural gift to advertisement
Really this stuff is all at its core completely new and foreign. How else could the centralized corporations ease out minds. They are like those aliens that shape shift to look like us so they can invade without much resistance.
So I also agree with Donna that many/most people really do understand quality on a conscious level but subconsciously this stuff gets accepted and slipped under our noses pretty easily.
jla-x,
I agree with your point on nostalgia, and that it can evoke happy feelings. As a pleasure seeking hedonist, I wouldn't dare let ideology or religion stand in the way of these the little pleasures in life. These kind of feelings are anathema to 'serious' architects, yet as human beings we are simply wired this way, ergo the disconnect between many architects and the public (aka human beings).
I also agree with Donna that most people really understand quality. My point was that the whole hang-up on what is true and false is over hyped by many architects, a relic of the modernist training most of us recieve. Micha Brazinski lives in a lovely Tudor in Bronxville... I'd guess she knows the difference between real or fake tudor as she might know the difference between crapy tudor and well done tudor. And that was my point, that it's not the historicism per say as much as the quality of execution that people will find fault with.
Eitherway, I'm off to San Francisco to enjoy the lovely faux Queen Annes of Haight Ashbury, faux Edwardian apartment buildings, and faux shingle style of Pacific Heights. I'll also probably enjoy some faux Mexican and Chinese food that DC just can't compete with, all the while contemplating the difference between knowledge and expertise.
Don't forget to smell the flowers.
This building was designed by a computer. Cut and paste. No brains required to design or approve it. The renderings must have been dressed up with smoke and mirrors to get approved.
Just like 95% of all architecture produced today.
Well, yes it was a slow day in the world of architectural criticism. Maybe that is exactly the point. Architectural Design with a capital A and D plays such a small role in our everyday life compared to, say, slurpees. Besides, observing the architecture of the everyday, slow day or not, may tell us more about ourselves than the glossy architecture of the magazines. Lastly, it was, indeed a polemic, some fun, a big blast for a small gnat. But those gnats are really pesky, especially when they come in great numbers and in lederhosen.
I think this kind of architecture is more interesting to talk about anyways, the everyday stuff. Which is still done by an architect, with the same edumacation as the rest of us. I wish there was more news that wasn't starchitect focused.
@davvid - 7-11 are franchises - they have very minimal design requirements - this is very likely a local spec developer and local architect.
This, to me, is more the result of a failure of policy, planning, and lack of leadership at the neighborhood level - and an example of where we are culturally after decades of urban disinvestment due to the federal highway program. we get this odd single-use building on a prominent corner lot - yet they still somehow manage to preserve parking, even though the neighborhood is pock-marked with parking craters - and it sits on the east-end of what looks like a halted highway project. It's sad - it's like someone is attempting to be "urban" - but they don't know how to engage the street or even include an appropriate program (mixed use?) - and the quality of construction is suburban strip mall - not urban site.
it's way too easy to pick on the material/construction quality, but what's missing from this criticism is a real understanding of all the forces that led to this. This building didn't "disfigure a historic district." the historic district was already disfigured.
Exactly toast. What are the forces that led to this and how can we do something about it. Next time you have a slow day, spare us the insightful criticism of a 7-11's proportions and dig a bit deaper. Just a suggestion.
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