Barnes Part Redux

As a follow-up to yesterday's post, I find myself in wholehearted agreement with Steve Ives' assessment--he says it more eloquently than I ever could:

Source:

"Any institution that is located along The Parkway yet fails to prominently present itself along this grand avenue doesn't need to be there. Shy architecture belongs on Ludlow Street...or 202. That was my first reaction to these images...not even the design, the orientation, the ghastly surface parking lot. It was the fact that it doesn't announce itself proudly among the venerable institutions along The Parkway and I genuinely do not care about efforts to recreate the museum's pastoral Merion setting.

The Foundation is not moving to Merion. It is moving to the heart of the city.

I'm having difficulty picturing any such institution hiding in plain sight in other cities. If the idea was to preserve the grove of London Pines along that block, I can understand. I'd still disapprove. The Rodin seems to work quite nicely both being a factor along The Parkway streetscape and as an object amidst a surprisingly tranquil background - particularly once inside the gate.

This project has already duplicated one of the worst aspects of another heartachingly underachieving venue, the Kimmel Center - it's bereft of a grand street entrance. The building is oriented almost exactly like the YSC was - even down to having the main entrance face away from The Parkway which was what I hated most about that building. That block is the gateway to the pastoral, green BFP and Fairmount Park. It's bad enough that the intersection there is totally hostile to pedestrians, is cleft by highway underpasses, is woefully undermanicured and, until earlier this year, bookended by a museum and a prison...an ironic commentary on two things this great city does well.

Why do we as a city keep doing this? Why do we keep accepting such unassuming designs? I know the process is just beginning and what we see here may not - hopefully will not - be the exact final product but we have a long history of understated, unassuming, demure, deferential architecture. It seems to be in our civic DNA. Perhaps it's a product of this city's Quaker roots. Buildings don't need to look like glass abortions to be great or exciting architecture. Not everything has to look like a Greek temple and not everything needs to be built of brick. Philadelphia has great architecture by the ton but, in my honest opinion, few exciting, stirring buildings considering the history and stature of this city. Much of what once was was torn down in the name of modernity which turned out to be soulless shoeboxes more often than not. Other cities have expanded their great art institutions - how many large cities have had the opportunity to build completely new art museums? How often does the opportunity to create a project of legacy such as this come about? This city's two current major art museums are timeless, stunning buildings that, each in their own way, speak of the era in which they were built and were then and remain to this day unmistakably and beautifully Philadelphian - one so much that it's as closely identified with this city as the Liberty Bell.

I've spoken very little about the project here but have heard good things about Williams/Tsien when their names first came up. I've anticipated this building more than any other that has come down the pipeline since I've been following this sort of thing because this is the sort of project that can say a lot about the city that it is in. I wanted to see a building embraces its unique location. I wanted to see a building that adds to the feeling of the street, that becomes part of our collective image and doesn't retreat from hints of grandeur or novelty the way Philadelphia projects so often seem to. A lovely fountain plaza is not enough penance for this iteration of the project to pay for the sin of its existence. Almost every other choice made the architects confounds me and unless I'm missing some larger theme I don't see how Philadelphia should accept this building without starting from scratch."

Barnes on the Parkway

I have never been excited about Todd Williams and Billie Tsien's work. I think that Skircanich (sp.?) Hall's brickwork is vomit-colored (which overwhelms the handlaid character of it) and that Williams-Tsien's other projects have been other such well-intentioned misfirings, at best, and debacles, at worst. So when they were announced as the architects for the new Barnes Museum on the Parkway, I was underwhelmed. How could they mess this up this time?

And so we waited for renders. And waited. And waited. Neither hide nor hair of them had been seen, until the City, via the Freedom of Information Act, was forced to release them some three days prior to what was supposed to be their unveiling. Well, one at least.

What does this render tell us?

That, as usual, there's a major misfiring.

It's not the buildings--the main hall is perfectly proportioned and stated; it integrates well into the Parkway Museums complex. The classroom buildings behind it are made of glass and will relate to, and evoke, the Safdie Central Branch expansion that the Free Library's been raising money for for, like, ever.

Evenly distributing mechanical around the block's non-Parkway sides is a major risk that may or may not pan out, so the major misfiring is not quite there yet--at least.

Where is it, then? Parking. There should be no surface lot whatsoever--and a major one faces Pennsylvania Avenue! (Yes, the Art Museum has surface parking, but...) Rodin has no parking. Eakins Oval's surface lot destroys the City Beautiful Beaux-Arts beauty.

Note: Since writing began more updates came out.
http://www.philly.com/philly/entertainment/homepage/Barnes_on_the_Parkway.html

Why I Think the Drexel Dorm Is The Best Erdy-McHenry Building Yet

Note: This is a rebuttal to Inga Saffron's lackluster review of this building. With pictures, no less.

Of all of Erdy-McHenry's buildings, the new Drexel University 34th Street Dormitory just might be their most impressive. Where the firm has seemed to specialize in building commie block slabs at times in the past (witness Penn's Radian and Temple's Edge) with the Drexel Dorm we get something completely different: a gently twisting, undulating structure on a narrow footprint overlooking fantastic views of Center City and Fairmount Park. Only one other E-M design exhibits the complete package as well as this dorm: Hancock Square--but even there, its low-slung power is its defining characteristic, its clear influence of all it sees: Onion Flats Row along Laurel, and developments along Liberties Walk and by Liberty Lands Park. No: here E-M had to do something it's never done (to my knowledge) before: fit a building into a small footprint in a densely-developed area. The Edge and Avenue North complex had a full block to play with, and the Radian possibly more; Hancock Square is the bottom third of what was once an industrial superblock; E-M simply does not think small.

They didn't think small here, that's for sure. What Drexel wanted was a dorm; what they got was clearly a showpiece and a monument, a building shaming its built Big 5 rivals. At Temple, 1300 is still considered incoming freshman students' dorm of choice, despite the Edge clearly eclipsing it in terms of age; I'm not too sure about the Penn situation, but somehow I would doubt the Radian is choice. But this 34th Street Dorm is. There is no denying that it is the most stunning piece of architecture raised in this city since the Thin Flats, or quite possibly even Hancock Square itself. In this I agree with Inga, but then our views begin to diverge...

Inga says that:

That's very nice for the people on the inside, but there are serious problems with the building at the ground level -- more serious than any of Erdy McHenry's previous projects. While the architects argue that a slender tower is less intrusive than a bulky structure that filled the site, they never found a way to mediate the high-rise's abrupt change in scale from the largely Victorian neighborhood.

And while, yes, there is a neighborhood of Victorian rows heading to the west--Frat Row, in fact--this is not the context of the Drexel dorm. Actually, this building's context is not to be found to the west at all but rather to the south, namely, to Kelly Hall, which by being equally as out of ‘scale from the largely Victorian neighborhood’--about two-thirds as high as Millennium Hall, as apparently it's called, creates two things: precedent and context.

What do I mean by this? Well, consider Rittenhouse Square. 1706 Ritt, in fact. On three sides 1706's neighbors are low-rise structures, along Rittenhouse Square (street) stand townhouses, mansions from the glory old Gilded Age days; to the south rowhomes belonging properly to the South Street neighborhood; to the west a low-rise society structure of some sort. Following Inga's logic, shouldn't 1706 Ritt be embracing the southern, low-rise neighborhood? But it doesn't: instead, 1706 Ritt is contextualized by the Medical Building across the street, and by the other high-rises surrounding Rittenhouse Square proper. The Medical Building, by being the first there, created the precedent allowing 1706 to go so high; the neighborhood 1706 looks to creates the context.

Millennium Hall is no different. Kelly Hall set the precedent; the rest of the Drexel campus, as studded with high-rises as Penn and Temple, creates the context. It's not Frat Row that Millennium Hall needs to refer to at all (and what a joke it would be if it were!); rather, it's the campus grounds. She sees the building as looking westward where it primarily looks to the east and southeast. And as 1706 Ritt shows us this whole paragraph is naught but hot air.

Then you have this:

One rationale for elevating the tower on pilotis was to soften its landing and open a path into Drexel's evolving greenway. But the concessions are undermined by the tower's one-story companion, which houses an apartment for the dorm's adviser and mechanical systems. All three sides are blank walls, including the one facing the greenway. The south-facing wall is worse: With its corrugated metal and a visible cooling tower, it looks like the back end of a refrigerated warehouse.

Can somebody please explain to her what a blank wall is? Or why mechanical systems are important? While there is some truth to her criticism of the east side--which is where the main entrance is--I will argue that neither the north nor the west nor the the south sides are what she makes them out to be.

A blank wall means that there is nothing to look at. No windows to draw the eye in, no murals or sculpturing to provide a diversion. Yet when we look at Millennium Hall's north and west sides, what do we find? The west side has a glass wall letting us see into the rec room--and so no blank wall--and when I walk under the pilotis on the north side (disregarding the wind-tunnel effect), I find them nothing short of awe-inspiring, sculptural. I would hardly call that a blank wall.

The last--the south side--is at once the most insidious and inane criticism; buildings of this size need their mechanical outhouses to regulate things such as temperature and electricity, and to house the offices of essential personnel, i.e. the superintendent or RAs' boss. Where to put it? Surely you don't want it mucking up the top, especially after you got the whole thing to sinewy twist like a muscle throwing a hammer? Shouldn't you then put it by the other dorm building not twenty feet away? ...What do you think Erdy-McHenry did?

Nobody's going to notice, or care, about the south façade for the rather simple reason that hardly anybody's going to see it in the first place: it's positioned across from the maintenance strip for Kelly Hall! All we're going to see is a few scraps of corrugation at a distance, and as the designers at Budd knew well, corrugation adds its own sort of interest. Why would we want to look down that service alley at the dumpsters unless we really need to?

In fact, Millennium Hall responds excellently to its site: it supplies a view in and out towards 34th St.; its pilotis create a marvelous gigantic architectural sculpture on the north side; its maintenance wing on the south side abuts Kelly's on the north side. The only change I would make would be that the main entrance (on the east side) seems somewhat too sparse, too minimalist.

Inga's final issue, though, is spot-on: the emergency stairs' insulation board really shouldn't be there. They block the view--for what? Surely you can create sun-drenched emergency stairs people actually want to take in a building with as many windows as this one? And yet, that that's my biggest concern with this building says something wholly positive on how well, all in all, it was executed. Millenium Hall stands tall, no matter where you are looking at it.
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Source: http://archrecord.construction.com/yb/ar/article.aspx?story_id=135714594.