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Posted by Edgar on July 16, 2007, 5:02 pm
> Michael Bulatovich wrote:
>
>>
>>>Holburne wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>Take a look at www.HaltTheHolburne.com
>>>>
>>>>The developers are moving in on Bath (England), and using completely
>>>>inappropriate architecture. There are wars on several fronts. They
>>>>need to be stopped, before the destroy the city.
>>>>
>>>>One such front is The Holburne Museum, a classical building, in a
>>>>classical landscape, and they're going to bolt a glass and ceramic cube
>>>>on the back of it.
>>>>
>>>Washington, D.C. has been altered by just such inappropriate
>>>juxtapositions. A rather nice classic row of townhouses becamse imbedded
>>>in a fatalist crass glass facade.
>>>
>>
>>Link?
> Basically, in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood (near George Washington
> University and a Metro stop ), an entire block of townhouses was
> demolished except, to satisfy some preservationists, their facades alone,
> which became a part of a mid rise strip concrete and strip glass boring
> office building. The result was interesting, garnered a positive review
> in the Washington Post by Benjamin Forgey, if I remember correctly, but is
> unsettling and irritating ,an example of a curse instead of a neighborhood
> context because it became the excuse for all manner of architectural
> salvage as building material, without it being even amusing like the sort
> of shop with the Cadillac through the glass storefront or some other
> visual joke.. Today, we have a variation on the preservation of single
> facades with "wedgie" architecture that imposed a glass atrium entrance in
> part or the whole of a recovered, sometimes boring re adapted facade that
> is a part of some new pedestrian office building once a pedestrian office
> building of the past. .
> Here's a writeup on the project:
>
>> 2000 Pennsylvania Avenue
>>
>> The site o the north side of Pennsylvania Avenue on the wedge formed with
>> I Street was declared The Western Market in 1802 by President Jefferson.
>> Western Market was a 32 booth produce market with proprietors from all
>> over the city. The development of 2000 Pennsylvania Avenue was originally
>> related to Western Market, with one of the oldest stores to occupy the
>> commercial strip being a grocery store. The use of these historic
>> commercial structures today is an example of architectural adaptive reuse
>> and historic preservation. As most of the buildings had become decrepit
>> and unusable, there was prolonged deliberation as to what to do with the
>> row. In November of 1979, GW agreed to build a large income producing
>> office building that would be behind the row of historic structures, thus
>> preserving the Victorian row houses. It is now the only block between the
>> White Housee and Washington circle which retains is historic scale and
>> character without intrusion. Today it houses many retail stors,
>> restaurants, ice-cream and coffee shops.
>>
> You see, the original facade just didn't provide enough A office lease
> space Hmm, can't believe it but someone has put it into Wikipedia.:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_Pennsylvania_Avenue
>
> It occurs to me that one of the elements that simply does not work is that
> all the windows end up looking like paper cutouts instead of operable
> windows of the period.
It doesn't help that the office buidling itself looks hideous (from what I
can see of that tiny picture). There is absolutely no communication between
the two, and just using the facades just makes it worse IMO. Looks like a
Universal Studios backlot.
--
Edgar
--
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