Modernist Preservation in Canada
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http://www.theglobeandmail.com/docs/news/19980729/TheArts/taedmo.html
Preservationists fight to save the buildings that nobody loves
UGLY DUCKLINGS
Across Canada, architects and historians try to convince a doubtful
public to embrace modern buildings as heritage sites, before developers
trash tomorrow's history.
Wednesday, July 29, 1998
By Charles Mandel
Edmonton -- Architect David Murray and historian Marianne Fedori are
pointing out some of downtown Edmonton's notable historic sites: the
Boston Pizza on Jasper, the Howard Johnson Hotel a few blocks over.
Murray waxes enthusiastic about the exterior of the Paramount Theatre,
exclaiming over not only the marble columns and Tyndal limestone, but
especially the exposed air vents.
That's a bit of architectural detailing that doesn't normally draw
praise from passersby, but the buildings Murray and Fedori are showing
off aren't the sort usually considered heritage sites. The trend to
catalogue, cherish and preserve postwar buildings is growing across
Canada. The difficulty is convincing the public that what seem like
run-of-the-mill, relatively recent buildings are worth the attention.
"We're trying to show people the vocabulary of modern architecture,
so they can go and read other buildings," says Murray, who's leading a
"contemporary heritage" tour today as part of Historic Edmonton Week,
concentrating on structures from the fifties and sixties. "They
gradually gain an appreciation for the styles."
At Heritage Toronto, manager of preservation review John Blumenson
estimates that some two dozen postwar buildings are included in that
city's 5,000-site historic registry, among them City Hall and the CN
Tower. "People associate historical buildings with Gothic spires and
windows, classical columns and pediments," Blumenson acknowledges. "If
it doesn't have that, it's not apparent as a historical building."
While "modern heritage" still sounds like an oxymoron to the general
public, Vancouver, like Toronto, already has postwar buildings on its
preservation lists. Vancouver started cataloguing its modern
masterpieces in 1990, surveying more than 250 sites before adding 21 to
its registry of 2,200. In Edmonton, a draft list drawn up in 1993 came
up with 74 candidates for heritage designation, including a power
substation, a number of schools and the Edmonton Art Gallery, locally
nicknamed "the concrete bunker." Murray and Fedori, along with historian
Ken Tingley, hope to finalize that inventory.
But winning recognition for what look like ordinary, boxy office
buildings, stores and institutions is a hard sell, particularly in
Edmonton, where many older buildings were torn down during the oil boom
in the seventies. All over Canada, modern structure stock is not only
aging but endangered.
Currently, condominium developers want to tear down the Union
Carbide Building in midtown Toronto. According to Blumenson, the
11-storey building, designed by Shore and Moffat Architects in the late
1950s, was the first office building constructed in the International
style by Canadians.
The threat to the Union Carbide building illustrates the dilemmas of
preserving modern heritage. "It's hard to convince the public green
spandrel panels are worth saving," notes Sally Coutts, a heritage
planner with the City of Ottawa. "It's harder to get the public to stand
up and fight for a postwar building that often in their perception isn't
nice at all.
"It ends up being architect students and theorists who love this
stuff," she says, "but it doesn't trickle down to the common man."
Coutts says Ottawa has started preliminary research toward creating
its own inventory of modern buildings and other sites. The project comes
too late to save a police station designed by noted architect Peter
Dickinson. The 1954 facility was torn down in the early 1990s. A vacant
lot marks its place. "There wasn't anything wrong with it," Coutts says.
"It just didn't have a use." Other losses modern preservationists lament
include Edmonton's former city hall, the Anglo-Canada Insurance Company
building and the Salvation Army Building in Toronto, and Calgary's
Petroleum Building.
Even when buildings are preserved, they are often altered. The
former Vancouver Public Library, singled out as a heritage building,
lost a distinctive glass corner section when the new tenants, the Virgin
Megastore, decided to close it over. "It's acceptable, but regrettable,"
says heritage planner Marco D'Agostini.
So if the public isn't fond of such buildings, developers want to
tear them down, and they are often expensive and impractical to restore
-- why bother? "Because today's buildings are tomorrow's lost
buildings," answers Marianne Fedori. "It's the significance of a place
in time. It doesn't have to be 1912."
Lowell R Moorcroft
ad...@interlog.com wrote in message <35BF753C...@interlog.com>...
>From The Globe And Mail
> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/docs/news/19980729/TheArts/taedmo.html
>
>Preservationists fight to save the buildings that nobody loves
>UGLY DUCKLINGS
>Across Canada, architects and historians try to convince a doubtful
>public to embrace modern buildings as heritage sites, before developers
>trash tomorrow's history.
>
Another aspect of preserving modernist buildings is, there apparently do not
exist methods or approaches to historically restoring modern building
materials , i.e., plastics, aluminum, etc. It's a quandary, but one is
tempted to mock modernism for not realizing its timeless constructions would
be, er, subject to time. And although they were supposed to replace the
accumulated, hoary, outmoded buildings (a la Corbusier), what do we do with
these hoary replacements???
Someone must have constructed an installation piece somewhere showing an
archaic site with rusty I-beams and busted aluminum panels strewn
about...although it might be hard to outdo the local dump.
Replacement of steel, stucco, concrete, aluminum are all possible, but these
are not renewable, nor is marble, granite, etc., though these latter are
"eternal" (if they stay where they're put!). But a more meaningful
question: should we replace extravagance? Regardless of how ugly, or
unpopular the building is, what if it's just too big, too specialized,
too...unenvironmental?
Perhaps more important right now: what are the preservationist aspects of
designing a building today? What will happen to the Bilbao Guggenheim in
75 years? The Getty in Los Angeles in 2200? Not to worry...?
Can we recycle skyscrapers into live-work lofts, tenements, or is
demolishment always the option?
Sorry for the simplistic questions...
Lowell R Moorcroft
lmoo...@dnai.com
Colin R. Leech
> At Heritage Toronto, manager of preservation review John Blumenson
> estimates that some two dozen postwar buildings are included in that
> city's 5,000-site historic registry, among them City Hall and the CN
> Tower. "People associate historical buildings with Gothic spires and
> windows, classical columns and pediments," Blumenson acknowledges. "If
> it doesn't have that, it's not apparent as a historical building."
The two examples listed are buildings that would stand out in any case:
the world's largest freestanding structure (CN Tower), and City Hall is a
couple of semicircular buildings which makes it quite distinctive anyway.
How many examples are there in the registry of "normal" buildings from the
era? Probably none. Now step into your time capsule, go back to the era
when today's historic buildings were being built a dime a dozen. How many
would you have designated?
> But winning recognition for what look like ordinary, boxy office
> buildings, stores and institutions is a hard sell
See above.
> The threat to the Union Carbide building illustrates the dilemmas of
> preserving modern heritage. "It's hard to convince the public green
> spandrel panels are worth saving," notes Sally Coutts, a heritage
> planner with the City of Ottawa. "It's harder to get the public to stand
> up and fight for a postwar building that often in their perception isn't
> nice at all.
You betcha.
> "It ends up being architect students and theorists who love this
> stuff," she says, "but it doesn't trickle down to the common man."
Academics trying to impose their artsy-fartsy ideas on real people, at a
cost. :-)
> Coutts says Ottawa has started preliminary research toward creating
> its own inventory of modern buildings and other sites. The project comes
> too late to save a police station designed by noted architect Peter
> Dickinson. The 1954 facility was torn down in the early 1990s. A vacant
> lot marks its place.
It wasn't anything special.
> "There wasn't anything wrong with it," Coutts says.
> "It just didn't have a use."
If it could have been renovated more cheaply than being demolished, it
would have been. So the first statement cannot be true.
--
#### |\^/| Colin R. Leech ag414 or crl...@freenet.carleton.ca
#### _|\| |/|_ Civil engineer by training, transport planner by choice.
#### > < Opinions are my own. You may consider them shareware.
#### >_./|\._< "If you can't return a favour, pass it on." - A.L. Brown
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> > At Heritage Toronto, manager of preservation review John Blumenson
> > estimates that some two dozen postwar buildings are included in that
> > city's 5,000-site historic registry, among them City Hall and the CN
> > Tower. "People associate historical buildings with Gothic spires and
> > windows, classical columns and pediments," Blumenson acknowledges. "If
> > it doesn't have that, it's not apparent as a historical building."
>
> The two examples listed are buildings that would stand out in any case:
> the world's largest freestanding structure (CN Tower), and City Hall is a
> couple of semicircular buildings which makes it quite distinctive anyway.
> How many examples are there in the registry of "normal" buildings from the
> era? Probably none.
Union Carbide (mentioned below) is closer to "normalcy", i.e. rectilinear,
glass & steel office building (though far from simply "ordinary"). Don't
forget that learning to recognize "normal" buildings can occur in concert with
a broader understanding of "period" style; think of Blueprint magazine, the
vogue for things 50s and 60s, lounge culture, cheese, Austin Powers, et al.
In increments, these acts of high and pop historical-aesthetic recognition can
stimulate an appreciation for 50s and 60s architecture, even if unlandmarked
and (relatively) "ordinary". Imagine the son or daughter of a building owner
who convinces the father to spare that 50s canopy...more likely today than 20
years ago, and you don't need the crutch of official "designation" to justify
such a move, either.
> Now step into your time capsule, go back to the era
> when today's historic buildings were being built a dime a dozen. How many
> would you have designated?
You have a point--in that era, buildings were seldom self-consciously designed
to "last" as landmarks. Which adds an unsolicited, almost subversive element
to the bid to recognise, landmark, preserve--it's almost an act of happy
interventionism. It makes the "boring" relic interesting. How many would I
have designated? Well, put in a time capsule, I might have been a different
person in that era, with all attendant bigotries, so the comparison's unfair.
Conversely, I currently almost find myself cherishing (cautiously) landmarks
of the recent past and present, almost as an investment for future
recognition. So you should ask, how many from NOW, the 90s, would I designate
in the future--and my answer is, I'm leaving my options open. It's
fascinating to see a building from within your lifetime (say, the Ontario
Place Forum) fall prey to "progress" and to feel that tweak of
preservationist's regret. Again, I'm a different person today from what I
might have been a generation or two ago, just like those who campaigned on
behalf of Victorian architecture a generation or two ago differed from real
Victorians. You don't have to long for June Cleaver in order to love 50s
modernism...
> > But winning recognition for what look like ordinary, boxy office
> > buildings, stores and institutions is a hard sell
>
> See above.
To whom?
> > The threat to the Union Carbide building illustrates the dilemmas of
> > preserving modern heritage. "It's hard to convince the public green
> > spandrel panels are worth saving," notes Sally Coutts, a heritage
> > planner with the City of Ottawa. "It's harder to get the public to stand
> > up and fight for a postwar building that often in their perception isn't
> > nice at all.
>
> You betcha.
Whom?
> > "It ends up being architect students and theorists who love this
> > stuff," she says, "but it doesn't trickle down to the common man."
>
> Academics trying to impose their artsy-fartsy ideas on real people, at a
> cost. :-)
Boring guys trying to dismiss the artsy-fartsy academics, at a cost. :-)
(That's one reason I bailed out of alt.planning.urban; too many boring
guys.) Though it IS a dilemma I've been observing for some time; that the
notion of "modernist heritage" refuses to trickle down. Perhaps because the
artsy-fartsy academics themselves have a tenuous link to the popular 50s-60s
revivalist middle ground;-) But watch it; many of the higher grade of "real
people" of the future may be a touch like the artsy-fartsies of today...and as
for the lower grade, well, if we're talking about the sub-Andrew Lloyd Webber
populist tail wagging the cultural dog, a real shame...
> > Coutts says Ottawa has started preliminary research toward creating
> > its own inventory of modern buildings and other sites. The project comes
> > too late to save a police station designed by noted architect Peter
> > Dickinson. The 1954 facility was torn down in the early 1990s. A vacant
> > lot marks its place.
>
> It wasn't anything special.
One person's entrenched-attitude opinion.
> > "There wasn't anything wrong with it," Coutts says.
> > "It just didn't have a use."
>
> If it could have been renovated more cheaply than being demolished, it
> would have been. So the first statement cannot be true.
The entrenchment continues...though I do see your point about preservationists
being mealy-mouthed.
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> Union Carbide (mentioned below) is closer to "normalcy", i.e. rectilinear,
> glass & steel office building (though far from simply "ordinary"). Don't
> forget that learning to recognize "normal" buildings can occur in concert with
> a broader understanding of "period" style; think of Blueprint magazine, the
> vogue for things 50s and 60s, lounge culture, cheese, Austin Powers, et al.
Excuse me. I said Blueprint when I meant to say Wallpaper. Freudian slip with
all these London-based publications...though Blueprint isn't bad. And Metropolis
has always been extraordinary. The namby-pamby design elite can truly open our
eyes...