Green Growth and the Past Feeding the Future
In this week’s Practice section, James Kienle, FAIA, contends, with strong reasoning, that building preservation is a resource-efficient planning approach that may be thwarted if municipalities adopt green guidelines that do not take into account the material, energy, and cultural resources embodied in existing buildings. Another argument for strong architect involvement in municipal planning?
The U.S. Green Building Council is indeed considering LEED® credits for building preservation, Kienle points out. But that may take some time, and some jurisdictions are already requiring specific levels of LEED certification for public buildings, apparently without a full appreciation of the possible results. For instance, developers looking for tax incentives or accelerated permit approvals are likely to view the point system as prescriptive minimums rather than guidelines for informed design. Historic buildings might even be lost if there are more potential points in building a replacement edifice. Good intentions become bad results.
Recently, in the Washington Post Sunday Magazine, Susan Mandel wrote of the struggle to site the Lincoln Memorial. Speaker of the House Joseph Cannon, an ardent admirer of Lincoln, objected so vehemently to the then-remote and marshy field west of the Washington Monument that he threw all of his considerable power into quashing the plan Charles McKim and Augustus Saint-Gaudens proposed. Cannon’s intentions were good, but his vision for the city—as he himself later admitted—was myopic. Mandel points out that it took architects, coming together through the AIA, to persuade the White House and Congress to do what was right.
Kienle this week also points to the too-often mindless rush to Modernism that spanned from the 1950s to ’70s and turned the concept of Urban Renewal from dream to nightmare. The worst of those buildings also spawned the idea that all older buildings are energy hogs. Not so, Kienle argues. What that era proved is that careful consideration by knowledgeable men and women is in order. And the sooner the better.
What do you think?
... and this time I bet it’ll get built. Her Innovation Tower for Hong Kong Polytechnic University’s School of Design will accommodate 1,800 students and staff of one of the most well-respected design schools in the world. In 1983 
Here, back at the ranch, we’re about to embark on a new membership campaign that centers on AIA members telling prospective members about the value of joining the Institute. You’ll hear more about that later, but it got me thinking about my membership and what it means to me. Granted, I’m not your typical demographic—I’m a long-term associate member and AIA National does hand me a paycheck every two weeks. But with great risk of sounding corny, I’ll say I am proud to belong to the AIA. It floats my boat to be able to make my own small contribution in my own way to a profession in which just about everyone wears a Good Guy white hat and, in his or her own way, makes the planet a better place.
In Rem Koolhaas’s 2003 book-magazine-monograph hybrid Content, the OMA founder wrote that the choice his firm faced between being invited to design the new WTC site and a new headquarters for the Chinese state-run television station was decided by desert. After eating Chinese food, a fortune cookie explained, “Stunningly Omnipotent Masters make minced meat of memory.” 
A minimalist curve of exposed-aggregate concrete columns and spandrels floating above bands of plate glass—the whole serving as a setting for The Octagon House and respecting its 19th century, pedestrian-oriented setback from the street—the AIA headquarters building is a masterpiece of Modern architecture. Designed by The Architects Collaborative and completed in 1973, the building has seen a brace of re-roofings, an interior retrofit or three, and various mechanical upgrades in its 35 years. But now it’s time to step back and entirely re-evaluate its rightful place in the 21st century.