{"id":1498,"date":"2012-07-17T13:17:47","date_gmt":"2012-07-17T19:17:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/?p=1498"},"modified":"2013-12-10T07:01:56","modified_gmt":"2013-12-10T14:01:56","slug":"demolition-denver","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/?p=1498","title":{"rendered":"Demolition Denver: The View From California"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/strong>California Home and Design <\/a><\/em>Magazine has identified 25 American buildings that need immediate demolition<\/a>. It offers this as the criterion for making the hit list:<\/p>\n

When proportion, balance, form and function come together in a delicate harmony, architecture is nothing short of an art form. But when, on occasion, those principles clash, the results can be eye-searingly awful. We asked 15 architects and our own staff to weigh-in on what buildings, given the chance, they’d take a wrecking ball to.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Denver has one building on the list, our main Public Library Building<\/a>.\u00a0 CAH&D<\/em> says the following about it:<\/p>\n

While we appreciate architect Michael Graves<\/a>‘\u00a0attempt to break out of the box, this postmodern project is a slight catastrophy <\/em>[sic]. Funky can be good, but this is just fugly.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Denver Public Library, as pictured by CH&D Magazine<\/p><\/div>\n

Denver Post<\/em> freelance columnist and de facto architecture critic Susan Barnes-Gelt<\/a> disagrees with CAH&D about the Denver Public Library, but has some other demolish-now suggestions.\u00a0 Foremost among these is the latest addition to Denver’s skyline, the Ralph L. Carr Colorado Judicial Center<\/a>. Of course, there\u2019s no accounting for taste when it comes to appreciating individual buildings, and Barnes-Gelts\u2019 readers<\/a> let her know as much in, at times, fairly rude terms.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Ralph L. Carr Colorado Judicial Center<\/p><\/div>\n

I rather like the Denver Public Library building on its own whimsical, postmodern<\/a> merits.\u00a0 But I mostly like it because of its context and the \u201cdialogue\u201d in which it engages two other buildings in its immediate area.\u00a0 These are the two wings of the Denver Art Museum<\/a>: Gio Ponti<\/a>\u2019s brutalist<\/a> building from 1971 (the first and only Ponti building in the United States) and Daniel Libeskind<\/a>\u2019s deconstructionist<\/a> wing from 2006. I think it\u2019s marvelous to be able to stand in the middle of Civic Center Park<\/a>\u2014itself an original City Beautiful<\/a> set piece from 1919\u2014and be able to view, in a single field of vision, iconic examples (like \u2018em or not) of three different late 20th<\/sup> century\u00a0 building styles. \u00a0Minimally, the tableau is fabulous for pedagogical purposes<\/a>, to get\u00a0 students thinking about the meaning and social impact of urban architectural decisions. \u00a0And even if this isn\u2019t quite the \u201caesthetic progress<\/a>\u201d imagined or desired by City Beautiful pioneer Charles Mulford Robinson<\/a> (and notwithstanding its homage<\/em> to white, Western architectural tastes) the buildings certainly make an impressive catalogue of aesthetic change<\/em>.\u00a0 And that, for my money, adds up to a very nice example of urban place-making.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Three Architectural Icons (Graves, Libeskind, Ponti, left to right) and Food Trucks, Denver’s Civic Center Park<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

California Home and Design Magazine has identified 25 American buildings that need immediate demolition. It offers this as the criterion for making the hit list: When proportion, balance, form and function come together in a delicate harmony, architecture is nothing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[4,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-architecture","category-denver-urbanism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1H2bI-oa","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1498"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1498\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3142,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1498\/revisions\/3142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}