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Posted by Michael Bulatovich on July 16, 2007, 5:25 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
We get quite a bit of that here. I call it 'the facade of preservation'. The
argument is that a facade is better than nothing at all, and it's hard to
argue with that when the facades are really good, but it denies the
completeness of the architectural of the original buildings: their scale,
their typology, etc.
> 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
>
Ouch. I didn't know you got whales that far south. Those little ones in
front look to be preserved in 3d, not just the facades....
--
MichaelB
www.michaelbulatovich.ca
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