Preserving Modernist Urban Renewal

Preserving Modernist Urban Renewal PDF Author: Daniel Madryga
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 199

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Book Description
As Modernism comes of age, many preservationists have begun to campaign for the protection of notable buildings and landscapes from this recent era of architecture. While solid arguments have been made in regarding the necessity of preserving Modernism, less attention has been given to the methodologies of preserving its contentious aspects. Among these uncertain recent legacies, the Modernist urban renewal schemes of the 20th century stand as one of many types of midcentury environments that have yet to be critically addressed by the preservation community. How should this Modernist urban landscape, which has been (often over-simplistically) identified with the degradation of American urban cores, be appropriately and effectively preserved in the future? This thesis explores the complexities and challenges of preserving such an environment by focusing on Riverfront Plaza in downtown Louisville, KY. Designed in the 1960s by the renowned architect and urban planner Constantinos Doxiadis and finally completed in the early 1970s, Riverfront represents the culmination of the city's decades-long desire for urban renewal, and served as a catalyst for large-scale Modern architectural projects in the downtown district. The integration of architecture, urban planning, and landscape design comprises a total Modernist environment of varying levels of significance, quality, and success. Through a thorough examination of the history, development, and subsequent urban life of Riverfront Plaza, this thesis argues that the site represents a significant transformative element in 20th century development in the city, and thus needs to be considered by preservationists as worthy of their attention. In light of the new challenges that Modern urban renewal sites pose to preservation, this thesis suggests a progressive form of preservation that will represent the Modernist urban environment in a manner that truthfully and productively reveals both its assets and its shortcomings and failures, so that preservation can be used not merely as a detached historical document but as a valuable learning tool both for public comprehension and a catalyst for future urban development.

Preserving Modernist Urban Renewal

Preserving Modernist Urban Renewal PDF Author: Daniel Madryga
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 199

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Book Description
As Modernism comes of age, many preservationists have begun to campaign for the protection of notable buildings and landscapes from this recent era of architecture. While solid arguments have been made in regarding the necessity of preserving Modernism, less attention has been given to the methodologies of preserving its contentious aspects. Among these uncertain recent legacies, the Modernist urban renewal schemes of the 20th century stand as one of many types of midcentury environments that have yet to be critically addressed by the preservation community. How should this Modernist urban landscape, which has been (often over-simplistically) identified with the degradation of American urban cores, be appropriately and effectively preserved in the future? This thesis explores the complexities and challenges of preserving such an environment by focusing on Riverfront Plaza in downtown Louisville, KY. Designed in the 1960s by the renowned architect and urban planner Constantinos Doxiadis and finally completed in the early 1970s, Riverfront represents the culmination of the city's decades-long desire for urban renewal, and served as a catalyst for large-scale Modern architectural projects in the downtown district. The integration of architecture, urban planning, and landscape design comprises a total Modernist environment of varying levels of significance, quality, and success. Through a thorough examination of the history, development, and subsequent urban life of Riverfront Plaza, this thesis argues that the site represents a significant transformative element in 20th century development in the city, and thus needs to be considered by preservationists as worthy of their attention. In light of the new challenges that Modern urban renewal sites pose to preservation, this thesis suggests a progressive form of preservation that will represent the Modernist urban environment in a manner that truthfully and productively reveals both its assets and its shortcomings and failures, so that preservation can be used not merely as a detached historical document but as a valuable learning tool both for public comprehension and a catalyst for future urban development.

With Heritage So Rich

With Heritage So Rich PDF Author: United States Conference of Mayors. Special Committee on Historic Preservation
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 238

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Book Description


Imagining the Modern

Imagining the Modern PDF Author: Rami el Samahy
Publisher: The Monacelli Press, LLC
ISBN: 1580935230
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
Imagining the Modern explores Pittsburgh's ambitious modern architecture and urban renewal program that made it a gem of American postwar cities, and set the stage for its stature today. In the 1950s and '60s an ambitious program of urban revitalization transformed Pittsburgh and became a model for other American cities. Billed as the Pittsburgh Renaissance, this era of superlatives--the city claimed the tallest aluminum clad building, the world's largest retractable dome, the tallest steel structure--developed through visionary mayors and business leaders, powerful urban planning authorities, and architects and urban designers of international renown, including Frank Lloyd Wright, I.M. Pei, Mies van der Rohe, SOM, and Harrison & Abramovitz. These leaders, civic groups, and architects worked together to reconceive the city through local and federal initiatives that aimed to address the problems that confronted Pittsburgh's postwar development. Initiated as an award-winning exhibition at the Carnegie Museum of Art in 2014, Imagining the Modern untangles this complicated relationship with modern architecture and planning through a history of Pittsburgh's major sites, protagonists, and voices of intervention. Through original documentation, photographs and drawings, as well as essays, analytical drawings, and interviews with participants, this book provides a nuanced view of this crucial moment in Pittsburgh's evolution. Addressing both positive and negative impacts of the era, Imagining the Modern examines what took place during the city's urban renewal era, what was gained and lost, and what these histories might suggest for the city's future.

Conservation/Regeneration: the Modernist Neighbourhood

Conservation/Regeneration: the Modernist Neighbourhood PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 807

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Book Description


Saving America's Cities

Saving America's Cities PDF Author: Lizabeth Cohen
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 0374721602
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 331

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Book Description
Winner of the Bancroft Prize In twenty-first-century America, some cities are flourishing and others are struggling, but they all must contend with deteriorating infrastructure, economic inequality, and unaffordable housing. Cities have limited tools to address these problems, and many must rely on the private market to support the public good. It wasn’t always this way. For almost three decades after World War II, even as national policies promoted suburban sprawl, the federal government underwrote renewal efforts for cities that had suffered during the Great Depression and the war and were now bleeding residents into the suburbs. In Saving America’s Cities, the prizewinning historian Lizabeth Cohen follows the career of Edward J. Logue, whose shifting approach to the urban crisis tracked the changing balance between government-funded public programs and private interests that would culminate in the neoliberal rush to privatize efforts to solve entrenched social problems. A Yale-trained lawyer, rival of Robert Moses, and sometime critic of Jane Jacobs, Logue saw renewing cities as an extension of the liberal New Deal. He worked to revive a declining New Haven, became the architect of the “New Boston” of the 1960s, and, later, led New York State’s Urban Development Corporation, which built entire new towns, including Roosevelt Island in New York City. Logue’s era of urban renewal has a complicated legacy: Neighborhoods were demolished and residents dislocated, but there were also genuine successes and progressive goals. Saving America’s Cities is a dramatic story of heartbreak and destruction but also of human idealism and resourcefulness, opening up possibilities for our own time.

Adapting the Modernist Civic Center

Adapting the Modernist Civic Center PDF Author: Andrew W. Fox
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 99

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Book Description
The rise of the personal automobile led to drasticchanges in the urban form of American Cities during themid-twentieth century. Suburban sprawl left city coresimpoverished and vacant, prompting municipalities todevelop radical plans for total urban renewal. Citieslike Grand Rapids, Michigan adapted modernistsuburban planning techniques and the latest inmodernist architecture in order to persuade businessesto stay downtown. The single-use, low-densityVandenberg Civic Center successfully stabilized andcleaned up a struggling section of downtown GrandRapids, but in the process destroyed its urban life. Thevast plazas of the Center often go unused during themiddle of the day, and that entire area of downtown isempty in the evenings. The design of the Vandenberg Center must undergomajor revisions in order to increase density, diversity, and accessibility, to better reflect the traits of Midwesternurban lifestyles, and to ultimately restore the vitalityof the district. However, the Center has assumed acultural and historical significance that must be carefullyconsidered. The district is significant as the focus of citygovernment and cultural events, and for its role in thedevelopment of modernism in the city. This thesis willbalance the issues preservation and public space designin order to determine an approach which will transformthe center into a fully functional and diverse urbanneighborhood while retaining elements which are mostcharacteristic of the modern movement.

Preserving the World's Great Cities

Preserving the World's Great Cities PDF Author: Anthony M. Tung
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 516

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Book Description
Both epic and intimate, this is the story of the fight to save the world’s architectural and cultural heritage as it is embodied in the extraordinary buildings and urban spaces of the great cities of Asia, the Americas, and Europe. Never before have the complexities and dramas of urban preservation been as keenly documented as inPreserving the World’s Great Cities. In researching this important work, Anthony Tung traveled throughout the world to visit remarkable buildings and districts in China, Italy, Greece, the U.S., Japan, and elsewhere. Everywhere he found both the devastating legacy of war, economics, and indifference and the accomplishments of people who have worked and sometimes risked their lives to preserve and renew the most meaningful urban expressions of the human spirit. From Singapore’s blind rush to become the most modern city of the East to Warsaw’s poignant and heroic effort to resurrect itself from the Nazis’ systematic campaign of physical and cultural obliteration, from New York and Rome to Kyoto and Cairo, we see the city as an expression of the best and worst within us. This is essential reading for fans of Jane Jacobs and Witold Rybczynski and everyone who is concerned about urban preservation. From the Hardcover edition.

Historic Preservation Through Urban Renewal

Historic Preservation Through Urban Renewal PDF Author: United States. Urban Renewal Administration
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description


From a Cause to a Style

From a Cause to a Style PDF Author: Nathan Glazer
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400827582
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 309

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Book Description
Modernism in architecture and urban design has failed the American city. This is the decisive conclusion that renowned public intellectual Nathan Glazer has drawn from two decades of writing and thinking about what this architectural movement will bequeath to future generations. In From a Cause to a Style, he proclaims his disappointment with modernism and its impact on the American city. Writing in the tradition of legendary American architectural critics Lewis Mumford and Jane Jacobs, Glazer contends that modernism, this new urban form that signaled not just a radical revolution in style but a social ambition to enhance the conditions under which ordinary people lived, has fallen short on all counts. The articles and essays collected here--some never published before, all updated--reflect his ideas on subjects ranging from the livable city and public housing to building design, public memorials, and the uses of public space. Glazer, an undisputed giant among public intellectuals, is perhaps best known for his writings on ethnicity and social policy, where the unflinching honesty and independence of thought that he brought to bear on tough social questions has earned him respect from both the Left and the Right. Here, he challenges us to face some difficult truths about the public places that, for better or worse, define who we are as a society. From a Cause to a Style is an exhilarating and thought-provoking book that raises important questions about modernist architecture and the larger social aims it was supposed to have addressed-and those it has abandoned.

Urban Planning Conservation and Preservation

Urban Planning Conservation and Preservation PDF Author: Nahoum Cohen
Publisher: McGraw Hill Professional
ISBN: 9780071375849
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
CD-ROM contains complete text of book, 700 color illustrations, international case studies, 100 video and sound clips, essential tables and charts, calculations module, review questions.