A Post architecture critic who considers urban design

I did not live in Washington when the late Wolf Von Eckhardt was the architecture writer for the Post. Von Eckhardt was one of the leading inspirations behind the old "Don't Tear it Down" preservation group that was very much an activist organization (although the backfile does have a positive article of his about the likely impact of Hechinger Mall).

Since I've been here, the architecture critic has been Ben Forgey, and Forgey has never been too concerned about the nexus of connection between a building and the sidewalk, public spaces, and the area outside of the lot lines of the particular building under review.

Today's Style section has a long piece by Philip Kennicott, "The Mediocre Mile," subtitled "Residential Projects Are Rising Rapidly Along Massachusetts Avenue; Design Review Hasn't Kept Pace," with the kind of pithy use of language that I expect from Blair Kamin of the Chicago Tribune, but not in the Post when it concerns architecture: "Mediocre Mile;" "Mass[achusetts Avenue] Production;" not bad.

However, I don't know if the article makes me feel any better about being an often lonely voice in the urban wilderness about how urban design and architectural quality does in fact matter, that architecture, urban design, and history are the primary competitive advantages possessed by the City of Washington. And when we let these qualities degrade and diminish, we diminish what makes the city special.

While I don't agree with Mr. Kennicott's assessment on every building--I like MassCourt on the 300 block of Massachusetts Ave. NW, and 400 Massachusetts across the street--his point that the mediocre architecture "reflects the economic forces that built them" and speed rather than quality is long overdue.

From the article:

Widdicombe [Gerry Widdicombe is director of economic development for the Downtown BID] acknowledges that more architectural oversight might have been desirable, but the long decay created a powerful incentive to put aesthetic issues behind economic ones. And there were many forces working against redevelopment, including inertia, the greater profitability of office space and the attraction of the suburbs.

"The city was in a quandary," he says. "They needed to do it in a hurry. But when I go to the Upper East Side in New York City, there are a lot of ugly buildings from the '60s, but it's still pretty vibrant."

So the District plunged ahead, and building after building is going up with minimal or no design review, or coordination with other planned or existing projects. Patricia Zingsheim, associate director of revitalization and design for the city's Office of Planning, acknowledges the patchwork of design that covers the avenue, but she doesn't think speed is the culprit. She points to architectural and streetscape guidelines laid down in something called the Mount Vernon Triangle Action Agenda, which includes the north side of Massachusetts Avenue. But, except in a few cases, those guidelines weren't mandatory. "The private sector felt that would be counterproductive," she says. In the future, says Zingsheim, perhaps design review can be linked to tax abatements.

Time and time again, most developers prove that they only care about the easy buck. Designing and constructing quality takes a bit longer and costs more money, so for the most part, it has to be forced.

And the focus on appeasing developers on the part of Business Improvement Districts and other similar business lobbying and interest groups means that there are few interests out there advocating strenuously and uncompromisingly for quality.

What I say about this is that "if you ask for nothing, that's what you get. When you ask for the world, you don't get it, but you get a lot more than nothing."

More from the article:

While developers and the city's planners have absorbed some of the basic insights of Jane Jacobs, they overtly and intentionally flouted one of her darker warnings. Jacobs distinguished between two types of money that contribute to the remaking of cities. There is "gradual money" that helps maintain existing properties and finance small-scale new building and evolution within neighborhoods. And there is "cataclysmic money," which can mean either the devastating removal of dollars (through, for example, the blacklisting of whole neighborhoods for mortgage or equity loans) or the blitz of new capital for urban renovation. In 1961, when she published "The Life and Death of Great American Cities," the cataclysmic influx generally meant government-sponsored slum clearance and housing projects. But her observation about the aesthetic effects of cataclysmic money -- how the sudden flood of capital generally leads to a loss of diversity and a uniformity of urban building -- still holds today, if Massachusetts Avenue is any evidence. ...

So do the economics of speed development, the prevailing ethos of disposable design, and the city's established height limits (which vary according to the width of avenues and streets) conspire to ensure bad architecture? ...

Unfortunately, rapid development can make good buildings, such as Esocoff's, look bad as they are surrounded by bland knock-offs. The larger sense of economic and development urgency also means that unfortunate precedents take root before they can be challenged.

The article discusses how architectural design review would help. Widdicombe suggests giving developers more height to allow some variety. This suggestion astounds me. I'd say, how about demonstrating that you can build something other than mediocre value-engineered crap, and then being rewarded for it. Widdicombe's way, the developers get rewarded without having to do anything. There is no reason that developers can't design good looking buildings. They just don't.

The article concludes:

A historically enshrined city plan must inevitably be either a forgotten artifact or something sacred. L'Enfant could lose his relevance to the real life of the city. Or his early vision could suggest a new imperative -- to revere our avenues as more than just frontage on buildable lots.

That's the issue in a nutshell. When place only matters to developers for its exchange value--how much it is worth--getting developers to pay attention to anything other than making money requires extraordinary measures.

Index Keywords: urban-design-placemaking