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DESIGN PHILA 2011: (Muted) Shades of Gray
Despite a packed house, last week's panel presentation "Gray Area: Provocations on the Future of Preservation" did little to provoke engaged discussions.
DESIGN PHILA 2011: (Muted) Shades of Gray
Despite a packed house at the Center for Architecture, last week’s panel presentation “Gray Area: Provocations on the Future of Preservation” did little to provoke engaged discussions or form strong opinions. Instead, the panelists — Tod Williams, treehugger.com’s Lloyd Alter, Greenworks founding director Mark Alan Hughes and Metropolis magazine editor in chief Susan Szenasy — remained muddled in the titular gray area.
Does and should historic preservation affect our actions in the present? Is it more important to move forward with sustainable, flexible building projects or keep relics from the past? Are they mutually exclusive? What principles should help us decide what is kept and what is demolished or left to ruin? Who should be doing the work to save these spaces, and how? All of these questions presented by the moderator are vital to the topic of preservation. Sadly, few got answers.
One presenter did provide his own principles for preservation determination: It should be a lovable area/building, usable and sustainable, flexible to modern living and frugal in upkeep and running. This is a solid set of rules with lots of possibilities for real-world application. The last part, frugality, tends to lend itself to older buildings — they were sometimes built better than modern buildings, often made to stay warm in the winter and cool in the summer, thus limiting costs — which can sustain themselves, creating the ultimate in green living by reusing what’s already there.
Panelist Franklin noted that suburbia should probably be burned down and that “no one from this audience ever goes to South Philly,” a curious statement given what’s going on right now in East Passyunk. The rest of the panelists remained vague, answering questions with more questions and never really providing innovative ideas the way events like Ignite Philly, Nerd Nite and Digitas Health’s Idea Night have.
The panelists’ lack of creativity may have been disappointing, but several audience members brought up poignant, specific questions to keep the ball rolling. For instance, panelist Williams is partner in the architecture firm Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects, which is designing the new Barnes on the Parkway. Someone asked of this still-sore subject, why couldn’t the building have been restored instead of replaced? When a man from the Netherlands spoke up to provide an example of city planning from his native country, he asked if we have any direct approaches to planning and preservation with our city planning councils. No one had a straight answer to either of these questions, but at least they’re being asked.
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