September 2011 Archives

In the city, sometimes it's hard to remember what was there before what's there now existed. It may have been a building you used, enjoyed, admired as you walked past. It burned or was neglected to death or demolished for new development. How easily it is forgotten.

There are iconic buildings that are remembered even if never seen in actuality. For example, every time I walk by the "sinking ship" parking garage I see the old Hotel Seattle that it replaced. How could this tiny garage be more valuable than that building? Its loss was the impetus for historic preservation in Seattle. It may have eventually been lost anyway, to fire or earthquake, we'll never know, now.



We lose bits, or major portions, or even entire cities for reasons preventable or not (think climate change; earthquake). Many places are thoroughly documented in the digital record thanks to omnipresent cameras and cellphones. I'm not up to date on the tech but I believe there are apps that can show you the historic record of the place in the city you are currently looking at. You might see the city in composed layers of transparency and diffusion, like layers of history over time (see poem in previous post).

This reminds me of Italo Calvino's novel Invisible Cities, where Marco Polo is using objects from cities he has visited to explain them to Kublai Khan, who doesn't share a common language. Now (or soon) we can say "there's an app for that".

Contrast and balance of past and present
Compressive stone, tensile steel
Steady past containing (in part)
The springing moment of now
History and its secrets hold
A new language, to be deciphered
Over time.

Light invades the depths, askew
Gently washing bones of ancient earth
Worked and placed by long-dead hands
More brashly it meets the youthful now
Sometimes stubborn, unperceptive, impenetrable
Rejecting, reflecting what is offered
But gradually, as it deepens and matures,
Accepts in part, and sometimes completely
In composed layers of transparency and diffusion,
Like layers of history over time.

Past and present in dialogue
Face to face, acknowledging
But ever separate.
                                    

This untitled poem was part of a project in the historic preservation district in downtown Austin, Texas. I like to think poetry and art are relevant parts of the design process.

I was dismayed to read that this building in London was to be demolished as part of the rebuild of London Bridge Station. As part of a grad student project I had developed my own plan for the station which retained this building. How could this destruction be allowed to happen? I looked at it for a while until I could understand the reasoning. "Let it go", a commenter said. Letting go can be difficult.



It's something I struggle with, as I personally love old buildings in cities. I also love density, adaptability, and survival of the cities I love, and sometimes those things are hard to reconcile. Older buildings have elements of hand craft and diversities of scale in the details that are rarely seen with modern construction methods. Mixes of buildings from different eras of history add to the interest of the cityscape and give a sense of continuity, of caring investment, of permanence.

Yet buildings are not permanent. Walking around Seattle I take note of all the buildings that will be lost in the next big earthquake. Or the beautiful and well-used low-rise buildings in areas that need to grow, to accommodate more people in the space these precious beauties occupy. I think of cities much older than ours that could easily be crushed and suffocated by the massive weight of their own history.

London deals with its history in pragmatic ways that sometimes seem destructively cruel. Venice, a city that for centuries rebuilt itself on the higher foundations of previous generations of buildings, is drowning because it tried to freeze history at a certain glorious point in time.

We may be losing many coastal cities in the future. Cities are organisms, ecosystems, they have to adapt or die. Do we perform triage, allowing loss of some (buildings) for the greater good, for overall survival? How do we learn to say goodbye, to admit when it may be time to let go? It's a painful question for which I don't have a satisfactory answer.