Archives: January 2010
Pictured above are two proposals for Midtown Plaza in Rochester, NY. The Plaza was a 1950s planning experiment aimed at propping up downtown retail business that had diminished with the expansion of suburban shopping centers. Thus it’s with some irony that these two proposals each convert the existing office building over the old mall into housing, in some manner suburbanizing the urban in a seeming development trend across the country. A new proposal, yet to be unveiled, is in the works according to rochesterdowntown.com. Midtown Plaza, vacated in 2008, was designed by Victor Gruen. Local historian Dan Palmer believes the building is an integral part of the Rochester skyline and holds great architectural integrity inside and out.
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Posted in CUBE’s proposal for Richard Neutra’s Cyclorama Building featured in Architectural Record’s First Word by Alek Bierig.
It has been called a “flying-saucer,” a “fish bowl,” a “fat man in a skinny man’s shorts,” and even the “ugliest building in the city.” Chicago’s Soldier Field addition was completed several years ago and the controversy surrounding its design draws attention to the same obstacles that confront today’s historically-significant buildings: Outdated preservation standards.
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Can preservation be transformative? This was the central question in Chris Novelli’s master’s thesis at the Boston Architectural College. With CUBE serving as Chris’ thesis advisor, he set out to examine the possibilities of existing buildings, infrastructure, and landscapes if relieved of the curated formal constraints imposed under the U.S. Department of Interior Standards for Preservation. He selected Paul Rudolph’s heroic parking garage in New Haven, Connecticut as a fitting laboratory for his experiments.
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