When does modern become historic?

[Beedok]

Originally Posted by vid

I had no idea they fixed that one up, it looks great!

As for the generic, boring modern buildings that aren't worth saving, well:


http://www.flickr.com/photos/f33/

Are these not the same? Even if fixed up, are they really that architecturally significant? Does a cornice and brick wall make a building worth more to society than steel panels and a glass curtain wall?

I'm probably in the minority here, but I see those buildings as having no more or less merit than the first building shown in the OP and wouldn't care to see either preserved if they needed to be torn down due to density requirements. Buildings serve a function, they should look nice yes, but the function is more important than the appearance.

[ThatOneGuy]

I don't see any point in saving those. They look quite run down and ugly. If those were the only historic buildings in the area, then keep them, I suppose.

If a city wants new buildings that aren't modernist, they should simply build new ones in the old style. You don't keep rotting old buildings unless your city is a living museum.

[Matthew]

This isn't anything new.

This 30-storey office building in Winston-Salem was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on April 19, 2001 (NRHP#01000376). It was only 36 years old at the time (built in 1965). The tax credits allowed the new owner to completely restore the building. And yes, it was restored to it's original 1965 appearance, with a several upgrades as well.


Source

The building was listed due to being North Carolina's best example of the International Style and it was once the state's tallest building for the headquarters of Southeast's largest bank in the 1960s (Wachovia). It was the state's symbol of financial progress during the 1960s. That was in the paperwork and it was enough to get it listed. Newer buildings can be listed if they are of historic significance to the city, state, or nation. I can remember visiting this city before the building was restored and people wanted it demolished. Today, it's among the most loved skyscrapers in the city. People love the reflections in the energy efficient coated glass and they like how it changes color to bright yellow and orange during sunrise/sunset. It is worth noting: They did a major restoration. Finding the before picture would make a good case for restoring these buildings. Sometimes, after restoration, they can look really good! I've read comments on these forums from people who love this building in this city's photograph threads.

[Private Dick]

Originally Posted by ThatOneGuy

I don't see any point in saving those. They look quite run down and ugly. If those were the only historic buildings in the area, then keep them, I suppose.

If a city wants new buildings that aren't modernist, they should simply build new ones in the old style. You don't keep rotting old buildings unless your city is a living museum.

The thing with those buildings is that they were built with VERY high quality materials compared to what was used in postwar American and obviously what we use today. They are NOT rotting.

Buildings like those, while they may be showing signs of their old age, were built to last... forever. Even though they were built as simple, functional commercial structures for a relatively inexpensive cost, they used higher quality brick, stone, wood, and plasterwork than we use in our most expensive buildings today. They require a minimum of renovation when compared to postwar buildings simply because of that fact... and can be renovated with only largely cosmetic updates to last another hundred-plus years.

[Jasoncw]

That's not really true.

Prewar buildings, especially buildings built before the 1920s aren't particularly well constructed. The way they put together the facades wasn't super great. Cornices fall off, and other parts of the facade fall off. Or, if they're not falling off, if you look closely at an old building there are a lot of cracks on the facade, and places where the stone is broken from water getting in and freezing.

And remember, in the 1950s, a lot of buildings were demolished because they were having maintenance or structural problems. You can count the decades back to when the demolished buildings were built... Can you imagine today us demolishing a post modern building because the facade was collapsing onto the street or the structure was failing? Or demolishing a building from the 50s for the same reason?

Or continuing with the subject of functionality, prewar buildings have horrible floor plans. The floor plans tend to be bad for offices because the floors are small and convoluted, and they're bad for residential because so many of the windows either face alleyways, or are party walls between the buildings.

"But so much craft went into that ornament!" Most ornament was hand crafted in the same way that nike shoes are hand crafted. Manual laborers in sweatshops made the ornament, and the companies made certain ornaments and had ornament catalogs so the architects could choose one of their standard ornament products. If the ornament is stone then they were mass produced by hand and if they were terra cotta they were mass produced from molds (terra cotta was first used as a cheaper faux stone). Sometimes genuinely crafted ornament was made but most ornament on most buildings was not.


Anyway, my point is not that those buildings do not have value. My point is that we preserve them in spite of all of their functional failings. Architects bend over backwards getting those square blocks to fit into those circle holes and spend a lot of money in the process.


Now, what makes a modern building "obsolete"? A modern building is obsolete when it needs new windows.

When is a prewar building "obsolete"? A prewar building is obsolete when taking the building apart piece by piece and reengineering the structure and the facade and rebuilding the entire building is not possible.

[Evergrey]

Modern will never be considered "historic" because humankind hates modern architecture. The only people who like these dorky monstrosities are architects.

[ThatOneGuy]

^^ Nice generalization (which is untrue as more and more modern buildings are being deemed landmarks)

My entire class was amazed at the Seagram Building on a trip to NYC. They even ignored the taller, newer tower near it.

[vid]

Originally Posted by Private Dick

The thing with those buildings is that they were built with VERY high quality materials compared to what was used in postwar American and obviously what we use today. They are NOT rotting.

Looks can be deceiving.



After three years of vacancy, this is it's third floor. It still doesn't even look too bad, as far as the exterior goes, a couple spots with peeling paint and the giant crack in the south wall (the plaster facade put over the brick is peeling off) is about all that appears wrong with it. But the roof will need to be replaced, and the structure will have to be majorly reinforced if the building is to ever be reused. It would be prohibitively expensive.

And for what? The cornice was mass-produced in a local foundry, they would put out yards of it and builders would trim to fit. Lots of buildings in the area have identical cornices. That brickwork is nothing so complex that it can't be replicated today, it isn't even that rare a skill, it's just time consuming, and time is money. It's easier to have them lay one brick on top of another than to take time to properly position things and make an arch for a window, especially since arched windows aren't in style right now.

If a building is maintained properly, it can last forever. Any building.

Old buildings are drafty, poorly fenestrated, and not reflective of how people move throughout buildings. We had to close an old hospital because it was too difficult to adapt the building to modern health care needs. The walls were solid concrete. It took a year to demolish it, and it was only 6 storeys. But that solidity was what prevented it from being saved. It couldn't be renovated to suit other needs, and its operating room was restricted to the dimensions and flow of an operating room in the 1930s. It just wasn't adequate anymore. Other historic buildings might be lacking technology options. My high school was closed not because the building wasn't sound, but because the cost of equipping it for modern educational needs was simply too much for a building so poorly laid out (it had 10 separate levels in 4 sections, built over 80 years).

[Private Dick]

Originally Posted by Jasoncw

That's not really true.

Prewar buildings, especially buildings built before the 1920s aren't particularly well constructed. The way they put together the facades wasn't super great. Cornices fall off, and other parts of the facade fall off. Or, if they're not falling off, if you look closely at an old building there are a lot of cracks on the facade, and places where the stone is broken from water getting in and freezing.

And remember, in the 1950s, a lot of buildings were demolished because they were having maintenance or structural problems. You can count the decades back to when the demolished buildings were built... Can you imagine today us demolishing a post modern building because the facade was collapsing onto the street or the structure was failing? Or demolishing a building from the 50s for the same reason?

Or continuing with the subject of functionality, prewar buildings have horrible floor plans. The floor plans tend to be bad for offices because the floors are small and convoluted, and they're bad for residential because so many of the windows either face alleyways, or are party walls between the buildings.

"But so much craft went into that ornament!" Most ornament was hand crafted in the same way that nike shoes are hand crafted. Manual laborers in sweatshops made the ornament, and the companies made certain ornaments and had ornament catalogs so the architects could choose one of their standard ornament products. If the ornament is stone then they were mass produced by hand and if they were terra cotta they were mass produced from molds (terra cotta was first used as a cheaper faux stone). Sometimes genuinely crafted ornament was made but most ornament on most buildings was not.


Anyway, my point is not that those buildings do not have value. My point is that we preserve them in spite of all of their functional failings. Architects bend over backwards getting those square blocks to fit into those circle holes and spend a lot of money in the process.


Now, what makes a modern building "obsolete"? A modern building is obsolete when it needs new windows.

When is a prewar building "obsolete"? A prewar building is obsolete when taking the building apart piece by piece and reengineering the structure and the facade and rebuilding the entire building is not possible.

All I'm saying is take two buildings (let's say a 1920 commercial building and a 1970 commercial building) of comparable quality, cost, and use relative to their day. Build them side by side and then let them sit vacant for 20 years... it will be glaringly obvious which one is in far better shape after those 20 years of neglect... and it will be the one built in 1920... every time. I see it in my line of work every day.

Originally Posted by vid

Looks can be deceiving.



After three years of vacancy, this is it's third floor. It still doesn't even look too bad, as far as the exterior goes, a couple spots with peeling paint and the giant crack in the south wall (the plaster facade put over the brick is peeling off) is about all that appears wrong with it. But the roof will need to be replaced, and the structure will have to be majorly reinforced if the building is to ever be reused. It would be prohibitively expensive.

...

If a building is maintained properly, it can last forever. Any building.

Old buildings are drafty, poorly fenestrated, and not reflective of how people move throughout buildings. We had to close an old hospital because it was too difficult to adapt the building to modern health care needs. The walls were solid concrete. It took a year to demolish it, and it was only 6 storeys. But that solidity was what prevented it from being saved. It couldn't be renovated to suit other needs, and its operating room was restricted to the dimensions and flow of an operating room in the 1930s. It just wasn't adequate anymore. Other historic buildings might be lacking technology options. My high school was closed not because the building wasn't sound, but because the cost of equipping it for modern educational needs was simply too much for a building so poorly laid out (it had 10 separate levels in 4 sections, built over 80 years).

Sure, three years of vacancy on a 100 year old building. Of course that's going to happen.

And the exact same thing can be said for buildings built in the 1970s... they can be terribly inefficient energy-wise, have poor fenestration (if they have barely any to speak of, often with hardly any windows -- which provides an absolutely awful interior experience), and simply have terrible designs for the flow of the humans inside. There are countless school/institutional buildings and office buildings which are abominations of properly functional education and work environments.

[Jasoncw]

Can you post some examples?

[photoLith]

Originally Posted by Evergrey

Modern will never be considered "historic" because humankind hates modern architecture. The only people who like these dorky monstrosities are architects.

I concur, modernism is shit, its the lack of human emotion and feeling. Its insipid bs. Dont get me wrong, I like a nice glass supertall or some city defining modern skyscraper but for the most part, anything built after 1945 is complete garbage. Even buildings that are built to mimic historic ones still dont come close to their historic counterparts 99 percent of the time. Nobody will look at a mass produced crap suburban home in 100 years and be like, hey we should preserve these for future generations the way we look at Victorian homes today. Victorian homes are beautiful and made with skilled labor. They were made during a time before most things were mass produced. Do you really think someone in 100 years will go hey, lets preserve the Woodlands, Texas or the terrible suburb of Plano in Dallas? There will never be anything historic about our postwar cookie cutter Mcmansion suburbia and the modernistic architecture that goes along with it. Remember Im not saying all modernism is complete shit. But I hope 95 percent of it gets demolished in the future as our cities come back and hopefully developers will start embracing pre WW2 ways of making buildings again.

[novaCJ]

@photoLith: I hope you realize that modernism and post-modernism are two separate things...
A Charles Goodman house in Montgomery County and a McMansion in Plano are not in the same category, not did anyone here suggest they are.

I grew up in a home with some mid-century modern characteristics (combined with 60's ranch), and I have to say it is still the best home I have lived in to this day. The mid-century modern aesthetic I am familiar with is not the lack of human emotion, instead it fosters creativity and clarity by eliminating unnecessary clutter and establishing a connection with nature.

The 80's shitbox I live in now is the complete antithesis of the mid century modern aesthetic, and probably what you are thinking of when you think of 'modernism'. Even though it was built only 20(ish) years after my childhood home, I would not think of putting them in the same category.

Granted, there are some (okay, many) pretty bad examples of (true) modernism out there, but saying they are all bad is just flat-out ignorant.

[photoLith]

I meant by modernism anything built after ww2. I know there's modernism, post modernism, international style, etc but you know what I meant.

[RCDC]

Here's a comparison, yeah it's slanted but it's in response to "before = GOOD, after = BAD":

20s:



40s or 50s



The latter is in every way more appealing while the former is stuck in incorporating "tradition" and doing it cheaply and badly.

And as someone who's gone into countless old buildings, while many are rock solid I can assure you that there isn't some across the board high standard; there are plenty that were slapped together as quickly and cheaply as possible. Renovations are costly because you have structural problems to deal with, old wiring, old plumbing, old radiators, leaky damp basements etc. I can't count the number of houses that had flimsy structures such as 2x6 roof rafters, or where the t&g flooring was nailed directly onto the joists with no subfloor. The old school way of building a bathroom was to put boards in between the joists and fill with mortar.

As far as style, much of DC for example consists of cookie-cutter townhouse developments, developments that are every much the same as any subdivision but attached instead of detached. They don't have "soul" just because they're old, made of brick and have some decorations and likewise, modernism isn't "soulless" just because it eschews ornament and punched windows.

[ThatOneGuy]

The 'souless' thing is just classicist propaganda.

I felt like a badass walking around the Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, and I didn't even like modernism/brutalism back then. 'Modern buildings having no soul' is just a lie pushed on by the people who can't live without superficial ornaments. They certainly have souls, but different ones. Older buildings have elegance, but modern buildings have a strong, intelligent and reserved look.

The buildings with the least soul, IMO, are copy/plaste green glass condo towers seen everywhere in Vancouver and Toronto, as they weren't built with any feelings in mind. They are not boxes, but they are far from unique and they are neither elegant, nor smart looking. It's just living space for the sake of living space.

[photoLith]

Brutalism is smart and elegant? What would are you living in?

[ThatOneGuy]

When did I say it's elegant? Elegance isn't integral to looking good.

I said Brutalism is smart and strong looking. Are you saying its not? If so, why not? Clean lines and geometric shapes aren't smart looking for you?

[photoLith]

Brutalism is crap for the most part. There are a few cool examples of it. But it ruined most of our college campuses during the later part of the 20th century and for the most part, brutalism is horribly to the urban fabric. Look at the Boston City Hall, its a monstrosity that destroyed an incredibly historic neighborhood.

[Private Dick]

photoLith - You want to be dominated by giant, brutal concrete buildings. Admit it!

Now that you're a Pittsburgher, head over to Oakland and succumb to the ultimate power of the FORBES QUAD!! Now known as Wesley Posvar Hall -- he is your overlord.

[Insoluble]

Originally Posted by vid

When you think about it, we don't do this to any other artform except architecture. There was no point where everyone got together and said, "music from the early 1900s is shitty! Let's destroy all the records from that era and never listen to it! Everyone should replace their tastes with Rock and Roll!"

A bit off topic, but something like this did actually happen
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disco_Demolition_Night

Back to the topic at hand, I think there is definitely a case for preserving some Modern architecture (I believe the same will be true of some Postmodern as well). Not all pre-war buildings are worth saving, and similarly not all Modern buildings are worth saving. The point was brought up that re-using pre-war buildings can be difficulty because of their layout.

Originally Posted by Jasoncw

Or continuing with the subject of functionality, prewar buildings have horrible floor plans. The floor plans tend to be bad for offices because the floors are small and convoluted, and they're bad for residential because so many of the windows either face alleyways, or are party walls between the buildings.

...

Now, what makes a modern building "obsolete"? A modern building is obsolete when it needs new windows.

This is missing one of the major problems with a lot of Modern architecture. One that was highlighted with the old Safeway Buildings up thread. Similar to how many pre-war buildings have floor plans that don't fit with modern use, many Modern buildings have site plans that don't really jive with how we want buildings to fit in with the urban fabric these days. Back in the 50s and 60s, there was a push for making things convenient for the automobile and buildings tended to turn their backs to the street. Current planning practices have gone in the other direction. Parking is still important for many projects, but I think most of us would agree that a surface parking lot in front of a building is not ideal in an urban setting. I'm not talking about the burbs here, I'm talking about many Modern buildings in the heart of cities that plop surface lots, garages, or blank walls down at street level.

Here's an example in Philly:

School of Design students fight to save 'Roundhouse' from demolition
http://www.thedp.com/article/2013/01...rom-demolition

(Picture from the linked article.)

The building is aesthetically interesting and worth preserving in that sense, but it makes terrible use of the lot its on (the entire site is surrounded by a blank wall). I think this kind of layout is every bit as obsolete as a pre-war building that just so happens to have a lot of interior columns breaking up the space (something that isn't as much of an issue for, say residential use)