New Public Works: Architecture, Planning, and Politics

New City Books The New City Books series explores the intersection of architecture, landscape architecture, infrastructure, and planning in the redevelopment of the civic realm. Focusing on government sponsorship of design, the study of weak-market cities, contemporary American housing, and the role of a research university as a resource and collaborator, the series highlights the formative nature of innovative design and the necessity for strategies that trigger public and private support.

The New City Books series includes: From the Ground Up Innovative Green Homes Formerly Urban Projecting Rust Belt Futures New Public Works Architecture, Planning, and Politics Modern American Housing High-Rise, Reuse, Infill American City “X�

Syracuse after the Master Plan

New Public Works Architecture, Planning, and Politics Edited by Mark Robbins With contributions by Rocco Landesman Cathleen McGuigan Mark Robbins

Syracuse University School of Architecture and Princeton Architectural Press

Published by Princeton Architectural Press 37 East Seventh Street New York, New York 10003 Visit our website at www.papress.com.

Syracuse University School of Architecture Slocum Hall Syracuse, New York 13244 www.soa.syr.edu

Special thanks to: Sara Bader, Janet Behning, Nicola Bednarek Brower, Fannie Bushin, Megan Carey, Carina Cha, Andrea Chlad, Benjamin English, Russell Fernandez, Jan Haux, Diane Levinson, Jennifer Lippert, Jacob Moore, Katharine Myers, Margaret Rogalski, Elana Schlenker, Sara Stemen, Paul Wagner, and Joseph Weston of Princeton Architectural Press —Kevin C. Lippert, publisher

© 2013 Princeton Architectural Press All rights reserved Printed and bound in China 16 15 14 13 4 3 2 1 First edition No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission from the publisher, except in the context of reviews.

Every reasonable attempt has been made to identify owners of copyright. Errors or omissions will be corrected in subsequent editions.

The New City Books series is made possible by a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation.

Additional funding is provided by the Syracuse University School of Architecture, Judith Greenberg Seinfeld, the National Endowment for the Arts, The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation, the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, the New York State Council for the Arts, Deutsche Bank Americas Foundation, Furthermore: a program of the J. M. Kaplan Fund, and the Central New York Community Foundation.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Series Editor: Mark Robbins

New Public Works: architecture, planning, and politics / edited by Mark Robbins; with contributions by Rocco Landesman, Cathleen McGuigan. — First edition.

Writer and Researcher: Rachel Somerstein

pages cm — (New city books)

Design: Pentagram

Includes bibliographical references.

Project Editor: Dan Simon

ISBN 978-1-61689-115-2 (hardcover: alk. paper) 1. Architecture and society—United States— History—20th century. 2. Architecture and society—United States—History—21st century.

3. Architecture and state—United States— History—20th century. 4. Architecture and state—United States—History—21st century.

5. National Endowment for the Arts. New Public Works. I. Robbins, Mark, 1956– editor of compilation.

NA2543.S6N52 2013 720.973'09051—dc23 2012024180

Contents

8

Foreword Rocco Landesman

10

Acknowledgments

14

Design Futures Mark Robbins

24 Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts

Cathleen McGuigan 38

Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh Cathleen McGuigan

52

Olympic Sculpture Park Cathleen McGuigan

70

Fresh Kills Park Staten Island, New York

74

Chicago Mixed-Income Housing Chicago, Illinois

80

Chicago Public Schools Chicago, Illinois

86

Flemington Jewish Community Center Flemington, New Jersey

88

LINC Housing Corporation Long Beach, California

92

Tucson Gateway Tucson, Arizona

94

Arroyo Parkway Street Enhancement Pasadena, California

96

Brooklyn Public Library, Visual and Performing Arts Library Brooklyn, New York

102

Perth Amboy High School Perth Amboy, New Jersey

106

Denver International Airport Pe単a Boulevard Denver, Colorado

108

Washington Canal Park Washington, D.C.

112

Queens Museum of Art Expansion Queens, New York

116

Papago Salado Trail Phoenix, Arizona

120

Menomonee River Valley Redevelopment Milwaukee, Wisconsin

124

Gainesville Eco-History Trail Gainesville, Florida

126

Intergenerational Learning Center Chicago, Illinois

130

Carroll Robbins Elementary School Expansion Trenton, New Jersey

134

Discovery Canyon Campus Colorado Springs, Colorado

136

Fashion Institute of Technology New York, New York

140

Mill Center for the Arts Hendersonville, North Carolina

142

Malama Learning Center Kapolei, Hawaii

146

Sugar House Pedestrian Crossing Salt Lake City, Utah

148

San Jose State University Museum of Art and Design San Jose, California

152

School of Fine Arts at the University of Connecticut Storrs, Connecticut

157 159

Notes on Contributors Illustration Credits

Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts Cathleen McGuigan

26

Previous: The courtyard serves the school community as well as other residents of the metropolitan area.

Above: The renovated school and the addition at right surround the exterior courtyard and amphitheater.

New Public Works

Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts

In the city of Big D, everything seems supersized, including enthusiasm for architecture and the arts. Dallas has a remarkable capacity to harness local largesse and raise private dollars for public culture. In the teeth of the recession, two ambitious performance venues opened in the Dallas arts district in 2009, the Winspear Opera House, by Foster + Partners, and the Wyly Theatre, by REX/OMA (Rem Koolhaas and Joshua Prince-Ramus). Built at a total cost of $354 million, the new facilities joined the Dallas Museum of Art (by Edward Larrabee Barnes), the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center (by I. M. Pei), and the Nasher Sculpture Center (by Renzo Piano), all in the district. It is now the largest arts center in the United States and the only one with buildings designed by four Pritzker Prize–winning architects.

The national publicity surrounding the debut of the theater and opera house almost overshadowed the new design of their nearby neighbor, the historic Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts. The public magnet school had quietly reopened the year before, in 2008, after an extensive renovation and the construction of an 180,000-square-foot addition. While the lavish Winspear and the seductive Wyly became glamorous fixtures of the neighborhood, the modest new Booker T. looked as tough and plain as a cowboy’s boots.

But the school’s carefully considered design, by the Portland, Oregon, firm Allied Works Architecture, led by Brad Cloepfil, is in many ways the more remarkable achievement.

The expansion was a saga of true grit: its heroes were a small group of private patrons determined to buck the usual process of public-school construction. Thanks to the catalyst of a grant from the New Public Works program, an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the school’s benefactors were able to launch a national competition to find the best possible design, in keeping with the high standards of the district. They won a public relations battle over the controversial idea that a public school deserved superior architecture. And they managed to raise more than half of the $60 million cost privately at a time when Dallas was in the midst of competing capital campaigns for

27

28

New Public Works

the nearby performing-arts buildings and for other nonprofit and educational organizations, with a combined target of more than $1 billion.

A 68-acre arts district was established by the city in 1983 just north of downtown Dallas, based on a master plan by Sasaki Associates of Boston. The new Dallas Museum of Art was then finishing construction on the western edge of the district; six blocks down Flora Street, the old Booker T. Washington School anchored the eastern end. In between was a wasteland of parking lots. The neighborhood had once been a thriving African American community: known as Freedman’s Town, it was settled by freed slaves in the years after the Civil War. Nash Flores, the key patron behind the revitalization of Booker T., recalled that when he moved to Dallas in 1971, old row houses, or “freedom houses,” still stood in the area, and there was a dwindling African American community. But freeway construction that tore through the neighborhood was just one force that had already begun to erase

Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts

29

that history. Booker T. Washington, built in 1922, was the city’s first high school for African American students, and it stands today as one of the last remnants of the old community, along with St. Paul’s United Methodist Church, just east of the school.

Above: Site plan of the Dallas Arts District with the high school building in the center

A classic redbrick-and-stone schoolhouse, Booker T. suffered from a jumble of uninspired additions and from general neglect. In the early 1950s the school became a vocational/technical high school; by 1969 it was closed. Then, in 1976, as part of a court-ordered desegregation plan, the abandoned school reopened as an arts magnet high school.

By means of auditions and portfolios, a diverse population of gifted students was accepted from all over metropolitan Dallas into one of four “clusters,” or majors: music, theater, dance, and the visual arts.

Over time the school produced an exemplary array of artists despite its crumbling physical plant. Its distinguished alumni include such musicians as Erykah Badu, Norah Jones, Roy Hargrove, and Edie Brickell.

When it first became an arts magnet school, the mayor of Dallas, with the superintendent of the Dallas Independent School District (DISD), appointed an advisory board led by a local arts patron, Betty Marcus.

“In those early days, the advisory board helped open doors so that the students could go to performances in the city or to the art museum,” recalled Flores, who became the board’s second president. “By 2000 the school had built a national reputation, though we were operating out of a broken-down facility.” The roof of the auditorium collapsed during a storm; there were buckets all over the school when it rained;

Opposite: Overall view of the project model showing the intersection of the old and new wings

30

New Public Works

space was so cramped that kids were having class in the hallways.

“We created a facilities committee and had visions of raising $8 million or $10 million to make repairs,” said Flores. Though Booker T. was by far the best magnet school in the school system, as well as a national model, the district awarded it only $3 million after a bond issue—“to fix a 165,000-square-foot campus!” said Flores. “It seemed so unrealistic.”

That disappointment only fired the ambitions of the advisory board, which spearheaded a grant application to the NEA’s New Public Works design-for-schools program. The DISD was awarded a $50,000 grant for a design competition in early 2001. The advisory board raised $150,000 privately to match the grant and hired an architectural consultant to write the program. Eighty international firms responded to the request for qualifications, including such global stars as Jean Nouvel and Daniel Libeskind (both were also on short lists for the performing-arts houses, for which the architect selection process was still under way). Lawrence Speck, former dean of architecture at the University of Texas, chaired the design jury: it included representatives from the school district, Booker T. Washington, and the arts district; art patrons Howard Rachofsky and Deedie Rose, whose donations helped fund the competition; Carole

Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts

31

Brandt, dean of the Meadows School of the Arts at Southern Methodist University; and the architects Julie Eizenberg, George Miller, and Ron Skaggs. Sifting through the submissions, the jury decided not to invite the biggest names but to choose emerging and midcareer architects.

They came up with four finalists besides Allied Works: Carlos Jiménez Studio of Houston; Charles Rose of Cambridge, Massachusetts; Mack Scogin Merrill Elam of Atlanta; and Steven Holl of New York, though Holl later dropped out. Each finalist was paid a $25,000 stipend.

Above: Classes in the dance studio are visible from the internal circulation space.

The NEA grant not only jump-started the search for an architect but also helped promote the highly unusual idea of a joint public-private initiative to build a public school with the best possible design, allowing the advisory board to avoid relying solely on the school district’s construction process. “In the beginning there were some questions in Dallas,” said Veletta Lill, who was then a city council member and is now executive director of the Dallas Arts District. “Do we really want to enter into this public-private partnership? Can we make it a success?”

But the public perception of the NEA was “very positive.” During the first week of September 2001, the architects on the short list presented their work in a public program at the Dallas Museum of Art; privately,

Opposite, left: Exterior detail of old and new brick cladding Opposite, right: The central atrium of the new building

32

New Public Works

Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts

33

they made their proposals for the school to the jury. “Because the competition had the NEA name, people began to hear about it,” said Deedie Rose. “When the architect was chosen, there were newspaper articles, and it raised the profile of the project.”

Shortly after the presentations, the jury voted unanimously to select Allied Works. Cloepfil had won over the jury with his idea that Booker T. should be a “factory” for the production of art. “The new high school manifests the qualities of creative industry: it is both a workshop and a factory,” he wrote in his monograph Occupation. The idea was that students could learn to master their art in studios and rehearsal rooms and produce work to present in a gallery or auditorium. The school would be a setting for the industry of making art: “The brick and concrete structure is elemental, the space raw and open,” wrote Cloepfil. The qualities of flexibility and durability suited the school’s budget and program.

The architect also likened his concept to that of a “city. . . humming at night,” with raw interiors that exuded “the life of the place.” In plan, the new building is a series of long bars, or L shapes, behind the original 1922 school (the later additions were razed) that joins the landmarked building and creates a courtyard between the old and new structures.

Known as the Green Room, this enclosed outdoor space is raked like an amphitheater and is in constant use for music and other informal performances during the day, especially at lunchtime. The addition’s long corridors are like city streets, and, as noted by the architect, students occupy the school late into the evening, rehearsing or working on art projects. The design—with a strong circulation spine and varying types of spaces that branch off it—inspires both collaboration and quieter contemplation. The new addition contains studios, rehearsal rooms, and the flexible 475-seat Montgomery Arts Theater (MAT).

The old building, handsomely restored, holds academic classrooms, a spacious art gallery, and a display area for showing off photographs and artifacts from the school’s proud history.

The students refer to the old building as “the red,” and the new one, clad in variegated dark gray/burgundy brick, as “the purple.” “The red is where the heart is,” explained Courtney, a senior who is a theater major. “It’s like you have the new but remember the history.” The dark addition presents a tough, fortress-like appearance to the neighborhood.

The MAT entrance, with its cascade of wide stairs on the western side of the school, opposite the Winspear Opera House, is the design’s most open gesture toward the arts district.

Opposite: Aerial view of the Dallas Arts District, with the school at lower right and, beyond it, the Winspear Opera House by Foster + Partners, the Meyerson Symphony Center by I. M. Pei, and the Nasher Sculpture Center

by Renzo Piano

34

New Public Works

Getting the new school built took six years. Cloepfil won the competition just before the September 11, 2001, attacks, and the national shock waves were just one factor that slowed down construction of the project.

At the time of the competition, the capital funds were not yet in hand, nor was there a formal agreement with the DISD. Allied Works drew out the planning process over many months—conducting research with teachers and students, cutting back on the proposed size, and looking for cost savings—before embarking on schematic design. Meanwhile, the advisory board began tackling the fund-raising. “They didn’t have the money to build it,” recalled Cloepfil, “but they had a kind of optimism they have only in Dallas, that some force will make it happen.”

Above: Corner facade detail Opposite: The exterior courtyard

Another obstacle was the turnover of DISD superintendents. “About the time we did the competition, a new superintendent was coming in,” said Flores. “At our first presentation, he thought we were nuts.

He didn’t think we could raise the money. But by the time we got to the first $4 million or $5 million, he began to be a believer.” The board eventually raised $35 million from private donors, while the DISD, after a successful bond issue, allocated $25 million: the project cost about $60 million in the end, up from an original budget of less than $40 million. The advisory board helped sell the project publicly with a marketing campaign that stressed the need for good public education “in a city that aspires to be a major force,” said Bob Marshall, who headed the capital campaign. “People were giving money for an investment in the future.” Major donors made big gifts to the Booker T. while also supporting the construction of the opera house or the theater. “If they had just built their places, they could have been seen as very elitist,” said Marshall. “We brought them youth, the future, talent, energy.”

Today the school of eight hundred students is abuzz all day long and full of activity deep into the evenings. “We live here,” said Courtney, the theater major. “We’re here from 7 in the morning until 10 at night.”

In a courtyard off a ground-floor art studio, a senior named Anthony put down his welder and lifted up his mask to explain the sculpture he was making. It was an abstract piece of rusted metal strips and other odd bits that he was joining together to create a dynamic series of diagonals.

Anthony is also a theater major, but students at Booker T. Washington are allowed to cross clusters to explore other art forms. When complimented on his work, Anthony broke into a winsome grin and said, “I guess I’m just talented.” Talent and energy are abundant all over the school: in a mirrored studio where ballet dancers practice at the bar, or in a hallway where a clump of freshmen are sitting on the polished

Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts

concrete floor, making perspective drawings of the school’s interior.

The main spine of the school is a brick-walled, light-filled atrium, open all the way up the four-story building, with balconies and bridges that cross it on the upper floors. From a faraway corner comes the sound of someone playing a cello.

Yet the energetic engagement and the synergy with the performing groups and the museums in the district are not obvious in the design of the school or the surrounding urban area. Booker T. is a building turned inward: Cloepfil cites the sensitivities of budding student artists as the reason the school’s teachers discouraged creating a more open building, with lots of large windows looking into studios. And though the architect met with the designers of the Winspear and the Wyly early on, the idea of collaborating on a shared public space soon fizzled.

But programmatically the school hooks up to its neighbors. Booker T. students have exhibited their work at the Dallas Museum of Art.

35

36

New Public Works

The view from the interior of the new building encompasses the outdoor amphitheater and the old building.

They get free tickets to some operas and regularly audition for plays at the Wyly, and are free to attend rehearsals. Major artists who come to speak at the salon series at the Nasher or to perform at the Meyerson frequently stop by the school to speak with students or conduct a master class. Guests have included Twyla Tharp, Glenn Close, Harry Belafonte, Marvin Hamlisch, and Wynton Marsalis, who discovered Roy Hargrove while visiting there: “Roy just came out and blew his horn,� said Flores.

Still, there is a surprising lack of urbanity in the arts district that has little to do with the architecture of the school but does have a negative impact on its students. Despite 1.5 million annual visitors to the neighborhood, there is almost no street life: most turn up to see an exhibit or performance and leave, rather than linger. There are almost no places to eat, shop, or hang out; kids who stay late to work at school have few

Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts

options for getting a bite to eat besides a 7-Eleven or a Tex-Mex restaurant on the ground floor of a nearby condo tower.

Future development slated for the district may eventually bring retail, restaurants, and more apartments. The last planned arts facility— the City Performance Hall, designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill— is opening in 2012 across the street from Booker T., and several projects that could help elevate the urban pulse have been planned. One is a six-acre park that would cover part of the adjacent highway and reconnect the arts district to the neighborhood farther north; another is the extension of a trolley line into the district, with links to light rail.

Meanwhile, the city has been pushed to allow taco trucks to park off Flora Street—a big concession in a place known for its stringent urban cleanliness. “We need food trucks here and outdoor entertainment— the shorthand is alcohol, food, and coffee—to keep people coming and staying,” said Veletta Lill. “But literally every day things are changing.”

Whatever change comes to the neighborhood, Booker T. Washington High School will remain a vital player and, in its own quiet way, a star.

37