[ed. See also: Nice Downtowns, How Did They Get That Way?]
Nobody would for one minute mistake a car or an airplane from 1955 for one from today. Everything, from technology to style is just too different.
By contrast, enter a new house or an apartment and clues that give away the newness are harder to find: They may be obvious in kitchen and bath, but even that is not certain, since fashionable retro stoves and claw-foot tubs could be deceiving even in those places where technology would be most likely. The new house would probably be more open and bigger, but from light switches to receptacles, from door hardware to double hung windows, things look essentially the same. On second glance, though, things in the new house feel flimsier, thinner and less substantial. Maybe there is a white plastic porch railing masquerading as solid wood or vinyl siding doing the same, maybe the doors are light, hollow and molded instead of being made from actual wood panels. This general impression might deepen when one starts looking "under the hood": copper and cast iron pipes replaced by PVC, true dimension heavy wood joists and posts replaced by engineered trusses, strand board, and quick growth studs light as cigar boxes. Slate has yielded to asphalt shingles, wood floors have become laminate, and porcelain sinks replaced by cultured stone. Brick now comes as a thin cement imitation, cornices are made from Fypon, and flagstone water tables are only paper thin. (...)
The rather recent appearance of the "one-plus-five" formula has moved the debate from the suburbs to the city and from a discussion about components to one about whole buildings and even urban form. What is "one plus five"? It is the wood construction, "stick-built" urban mixed-use building, exactly five stories tall, erected on a concrete podium. The first level capped by the concrete deck is retail, parking, meeting rooms or amenities and the floors above it are apartments, condos, or dormitories erected under the 3A construction type classification of the building model code IBC. (...)
With the stroke of a pen (via IBC 2009) an entire building group, the urban elevator building, moved from being a substantial structure made of concrete, steel or brick to one that is put together with two-by-fours like a single family home. This change amounts to an often overlooked revolution in the construction industry and in urban development. (...)
For centuries the quality of their buildings and a certain permanence set cities apart and allowed decades and centuries of layers to create the textual richness we associate with them. City buildings could be reused in many ways because their structure were still good after 50 or a hundred years or more. Baltimore has a rich tradition in creative reuse of beautiful breweries, factories, mills and warehouses, each with substantial bones and each having been once each a trail blazer of sorts for innovation and skills. It is hard to imagine that fifty years onward folks would get excited about the one-plus-five buildings or contemplate an adaptive re-use. Too flimsy to last even that long, these buildings will probably have to be demolished once they become obsolete, unable to stand as the testimony of our times.
by Klaus Philipsen, Community Architect | Read more:
Image: ArchPlan, Inc.
Nobody would for one minute mistake a car or an airplane from 1955 for one from today. Everything, from technology to style is just too different.
By contrast, enter a new house or an apartment and clues that give away the newness are harder to find: They may be obvious in kitchen and bath, but even that is not certain, since fashionable retro stoves and claw-foot tubs could be deceiving even in those places where technology would be most likely. The new house would probably be more open and bigger, but from light switches to receptacles, from door hardware to double hung windows, things look essentially the same. On second glance, though, things in the new house feel flimsier, thinner and less substantial. Maybe there is a white plastic porch railing masquerading as solid wood or vinyl siding doing the same, maybe the doors are light, hollow and molded instead of being made from actual wood panels. This general impression might deepen when one starts looking "under the hood": copper and cast iron pipes replaced by PVC, true dimension heavy wood joists and posts replaced by engineered trusses, strand board, and quick growth studs light as cigar boxes. Slate has yielded to asphalt shingles, wood floors have become laminate, and porcelain sinks replaced by cultured stone. Brick now comes as a thin cement imitation, cornices are made from Fypon, and flagstone water tables are only paper thin. (...)The rather recent appearance of the "one-plus-five" formula has moved the debate from the suburbs to the city and from a discussion about components to one about whole buildings and even urban form. What is "one plus five"? It is the wood construction, "stick-built" urban mixed-use building, exactly five stories tall, erected on a concrete podium. The first level capped by the concrete deck is retail, parking, meeting rooms or amenities and the floors above it are apartments, condos, or dormitories erected under the 3A construction type classification of the building model code IBC. (...)
With the stroke of a pen (via IBC 2009) an entire building group, the urban elevator building, moved from being a substantial structure made of concrete, steel or brick to one that is put together with two-by-fours like a single family home. This change amounts to an often overlooked revolution in the construction industry and in urban development. (...)
For centuries the quality of their buildings and a certain permanence set cities apart and allowed decades and centuries of layers to create the textual richness we associate with them. City buildings could be reused in many ways because their structure were still good after 50 or a hundred years or more. Baltimore has a rich tradition in creative reuse of beautiful breweries, factories, mills and warehouses, each with substantial bones and each having been once each a trail blazer of sorts for innovation and skills. It is hard to imagine that fifty years onward folks would get excited about the one-plus-five buildings or contemplate an adaptive re-use. Too flimsy to last even that long, these buildings will probably have to be demolished once they become obsolete, unable to stand as the testimony of our times.
by Klaus Philipsen, Community Architect | Read more:
Image: ArchPlan, Inc.
