The National Trust for Historic Preservation is working hard to eschew their rep that they exist solely to validate the surly prejudices of blue-haired Southern gentlewomen against modernism by adding 2 Columbus Circle to its endangered buildings list. The American Crafts Musuem (ACM), recently rechristened the Musuem for Arts and Design (MAD), a strategically incisive move that really clarifies their mission, is proving to be particularly astute at PR as well:
“It’s not a usable building in its current form, unless you plan on using it as a tomb. It’s a mausoleum is what it is,” museum Director Holly Hotchner said yesterday.
This is not the kind of statement that gets the preservation sorts off your back. And they have a right to be angry sometimes. But there is a practical issue about when something becomes ‘significant.’ For buildings that are over 100, 200 years old, mere survival can become a marker of distinction. But when you push the goalposts back to 25 years, you reach well inside the expected lifecylce of any building. Take a look around today at anything new going up. Are you prepared to fight for its preservation only 20 years from now? And since most preservation codes see the envelope as sacred (mostly since they have had little legal success mandating control over the interior spaces), and that modern building practices aren’t nearly as stable as those that produced the post and beam, brick structures that the Trust has been trying to save for the past three decades, there is an additional issue of being forced to preserve assembly techniques that we are only now discovering shouldn’t have been attempted in the first place. Should owners be forced to absorb additional maintenance cost to preserve an failing exterior system? Since this has happened once with a Stone building, shouldn’t we pause to consider that modern design that merits preservation must succeed as a building as well?
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Of course it’s significant? Didn’t you see us ignoring it all those years?
The National Trust for Historic Preservation is working hard to eschew their rep that they exist solely to validate the surly prejudices of blue-haired Southern gentlewomen against modernism by adding 2 Columbus Circle to its endangered buildings list. The American Crafts Musuem (ACM), recently rechristened the Musuem for Arts and Design (MAD), a strategically incisive move that really clarifies their mission, is proving to be particularly astute at PR as well:
This is not the kind of statement that gets the preservation sorts off your back. And they have a right to be angry sometimes. But there is a practical issue about when something becomes ‘significant.’ For buildings that are over 100, 200 years old, mere survival can become a marker of distinction. But when you push the goalposts back to 25 years, you reach well inside the expected lifecylce of any building. Take a look around today at anything new going up. Are you prepared to fight for its preservation only 20 years from now? And since most preservation codes see the envelope as sacred (mostly since they have had little legal success mandating control over the interior spaces), and that modern building practices aren’t nearly as stable as those that produced the post and beam, brick structures that the Trust has been trying to save for the past three decades, there is an additional issue of being forced to preserve assembly techniques that we are only now discovering shouldn’t have been attempted in the first place. Should owners be forced to absorb additional maintenance cost to preserve an failing exterior system? Since this has happened once with a Stone building, shouldn’t we pause to consider that modern design that merits preservation must succeed as a building as well?