Why Pay for a Starchitect to Deliver a Small Town Library?

Robert A. M. Stern came back with his revised Museum of the American Revolution, and surprise,
the silly cupola is gone. Besides a couple entrances facing Chestnut Street, formerly a subtly adorned brick wall in previous renderings, much of the proposal remains unchanged.

The Art Commission approved the revisions, so we're getting what we see.

While the hokey tower was the most noticeable offender, the most offensive attribute in previous renderings was the building's lack of engagement with the streets.

As it is, its vaguely classical elements are handsome enough and won't elicit any anxiety in tourists. But as it is, those vague elements are well suited for a college library or a small town convention center. It's a gussied up suburban shopping center. It's a big box.

Given Stern's starchitect reputation - and I assume, costly contract - we deserve to demand better. The design we see could be designed by vastly less expensive architects, even architecture students. It's not bad, it's just boring.

Why?

Well, the Independence Historic District has been trending towards the more conventional. Despite the fact that a number of the district's "old" buildings are fine recreations, the district also dabbled in experimental architecture with the old Liberty Bell Pavilion and the building that preceded the soon-to-be Museum of the American Revolution.

The district may be leery of dabbling in interpretive design considering popular opinion surrounding those buildings with which it experimented. Obviously, the National Museum of Jewish American History is a recent outlier and proof that the neighborhood can successfully support exciting architecture.

Sadly the Independence Historic District, Stern, even the Art Commission may be adhering to traditional market research: a museum dedicated to American history should look like a museum dedicated to American history. And truthfully, to busloads of tourists, Stern's design fits. But that simply brings us back to the ultimate question, why pay for a Stern when he delivers a Toll Brothers if tourists don't know the difference?

Revolution Museum: Good, Not Great

Despite the fact that Philadelphia Art Commission sent Robert Stern back to the drawing board with his lackluster Museum of the American Revolution, Philadelphia's most prominent architecture critics have been relentless in their criticism of a building that will not exist. I agree Stern's design is bland, but blending in is what Stern does best. He's certainly capable of bold designs, but his initial rendering shouldn't have been unexpected. Considering the hostility from the city's architecture czars, I'm starting to feel a little bad for Stern.

Bradley Maule took to Facebook to call it "bland faux-historic dreck" while Nathaniel Popkin used Hidden City to lightheartedly declare architectural independence, but also called the proposal "utter, enfeebling blandness."

Not Awful

Sure, they're kind of right. It's not an exciting proposal, it's bland, although I'd stop short of calling it "dreck." It's traditional, collegiate architecture that echoes the history of the neighborhood, but it's not bad. It's bland, but it's inviting. I'm not one to say better is always better, but it's worth noting that it is better than the intimidating fortress that stands at 3rd and Chestnut today.

Stern is an academic architect who only occasionally executes something visionary. He academically assessed the context of the location, the content of the collection, and designed a museum that reflects the history of both. What he failed to do was recognize Philadelphians' personal investment in our sacred history and our demand for exciting architecture.

In that regard, most of the museum's criticism is valid...most of it. But Stern will likely consider the critiques and the Commission's request and deliver something new. Meanwhile the same critics have said less about the United States' tallest skyscraper outside New York and Chicago, one that will forever alter Philadelphia's skyline, obsessed with a drawing of a building that will never be.

Art Commission Blasts Revolution Museum

Philadelphia's unusually quebecois weather seems to be taking a toll on our critics and Robert A. M. Stern's firm has become their punching bag. Shortly before the Inquirer's architecture critic Inga Saffron eviscerated the LDS's 1601 Vine Street apartment building, and their Mormon Temple and community center, the Philadelphia Art Commission sent Stern back to the drafting table with his Museum of the American Revolution.

While Stern claims the museum was intended to be a flattened Independence Hall, it seems to echo the neighboring customs house with its hackneyed cupola. That cupola, easily eliminated, seems to be the source of the building's greatest gripes. But because it's been unseasonably freezing since December, those who hold the museum's balls in their hands aren't content with handsome classicism in a handsomely classical part of town.

While the building does provide a blank wall on Chestnut Street, it replaces a brick fortress entered midblock with an entrance facing the corner of Third and Chestnut. Devoid of its cupola it's a fine building befitting its neighbors and its collection. It won't architecturally rival the new Barnes Museum but it's not an art museum. When classicism is employed on the National Mall it's applauded, so why is a museum dedicated to history criticized for echoing history in Center City's most historic part of town?

Philadelphia has found itself in an interesting place. We haven't developed much in the last five years so we've demanded the best of developers who've managed to secure the funds to work.

That's good.

Now that we're faced with a building boom rivaling the early 2000s, critics are treating the bevy of development like a kid on Christmas morning: it has to be perfect. Stern's design for the Revolution Museum isn't amongst the best in the city, but neither is the museum's content. Its architecture befits its collection. We shouldn't expect less, but with skyscrapers blooming along the nether regions of the city, Philadelphia has joined the ranks of Chicago and New York, where not every new project is vying for an award.

Can Classic Design Ever be "Good" Design?

Inga Saffron, Philadephia's architecture czar and one of my favorite journalists, has some choice words for the Mormon's developing Vine Street, and she's not holding back. 

Starting with "It's hard not to wince when you first look at the renderings," I can't help but wonder if she's just having a bad day. This is the critic who can't get enough of Bohlin Cywinski Jackson's Cheesecake Cube at 15th and Walnut. If you wince at any building that is more stimulating - for better or worse - than a glass box, should you be critiquing architecture?

I don't know anyone who winced.

The projects along Vine Street being developed by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints include the Mormon Temple currently under construction, a small community center, and a highrise apartment building. Saffron referred to the collection as "one of the weirder ensembles produced in 21st-century America outside of Las Vegas."

That just seems uncharacteristically harsh. 

She claimed the meeting house looked like it was "dragged across town" from Society Hill, despite the similarly scaled Quaker Meeting House just three blocks away. She went on to call the church itself is "a snow-white, double-spired, French classical Mormon temple." 

Okay, now I don't think she's having a bad day. I think shes drunk.

Gracefully respecting its surroundings, Philadelphia's Mormon Temple reflects the classical architecture of its neighbors. Should every new building be innovative, groundbreaking, or an "exciting" glass curtain, even our most sacred places?

The apartment tower and community center are designed by Robert A. M. Stern. I appreciate her frustration with Stern's safe designs, but he designs handsome buildings. Saffron cites his Museum of the American Revolution a an example of his flaccid designs. The museum is no exception and it's not an exceptional building, but despite its odd cupola it's a fine building befitting its neighborhood and its collection. 

Saffron almost seems relieved that the Art Commission has criticized the design, yet she has said little of the museum since her first critique in 2012. It's almost as if the commission's decision was her cue to say, "look, I'm not crazy."

Saffron did take time to speak to Tom King who manages real estate investment for the LDS Church, appreciating the urban design of the space and the church's investment in an undesirable part of near-Center City. Parking will be underground and no walls will be blank, even those facing Vine Street and the expressway's cloverleaf.

But when it comes to the design, Saffron has no patience for what she says "belongs in the past." While developers with the LDS Church will likely move forward with the proposed design, it exists solely in two dimensional renderings, yet Philadelphia's top architecture critic has already relegated it to the bowels of the city's worst, with Dranoff's "Nightmare on Broad Street."

The LDS Church's apartment building doesn't just offer all residents unique views of the city, it's widest wall faces Vine Street's unsightly cloverleaf, blocking it from those who'd rather forget it's there. Unlike Cira Centre that flanks its western banks with modern design that defines University City's identity as unique, Stern's tower reaches across Vine Street and shakes hands with Center City's history, integrating Vine Street with the rest of the city as if it had always been there.

Its apartment tower offers more than nostalgia. Instead of facing Center City flatly, giving half of its residents a skyscraping view and the others a view of North Philadelphia, its narrow edge faces the city, offering all residents a compromising, angled view of the skyline with half facing the Parkway and the others facing the Ben Franklin Bridge. 

Beyond all the artistic rhetoric and intellectualism that only the schooled understand, it's not a dull building. It's not groundbreaking, but it doesn't need to be. It's crowned with upper floors gracefully tiered like The Drake or Rockefeller Center. Assuming developers don't skimp on materials it will be appreciated by those passing by and the general public, those that really matter.

As for the Mormon Temple and community center, they may appear to echo fanciful fairy tales or princess palaces, but they're not bland historic interpretations that attempt to fade into the shadows. Like the Basillica of Saints Peter and Paul across the street, the temple is bold. What makes the Mormon Temple look like a scene from Wizard of Oz is our local unfamiliarity with Mormon architecture. To an equally unfamiliar eye, Catholic architecture is just as bizarre. 

Developers with the LDS may not be attempting to elevate architectural design or art theory, but unlike Mac cubes and glass curtains that art critics continue to applaud for their absent presence, these projects along Vine Street offer something pleasant, classic, and lasting.

teensy redbrick meetinghouse that looks as if it was dragged across town
Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/home/20140221_Changing_Skyline__Mormon_development_combines_civic-mindedness__architectural_hodgepodge.html#jfWC6T7wBxtT7HUA.99

teensy redbrick meetinghouse that looks as if it was dragged across town
Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/home/20140221_Changing_Skyline__Mormon_development_combines_civic-mindedness__architectural_hodgepodge.html#jfWC6T7wBxtT7HUA.99

It's hard not to wince when you first look at the renderings
Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/home/20140221_Changing_Skyline__Mormon_development_combines_civic-mindedness__architectural_hodgepodge.html#5TRhdxvGuFUrMWub.99

It's hard not to wince when you first look at the renderings
Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/home/20140221_Changing_Skyline__Mormon_development_combines_civic-mindedness__architectural_hodgepodge.html#sAzDRxAmoduWOqKY.99

It's hard not to wince when you first look at the renderings
Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/home/20140221_Changing_Skyline__Mormon_development_combines_civic-mindedness__architectural_hodgepodge.html#sAzDRxAmoduWOqKY.99

It's hard not to wince when you first look at the renderings
Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/home/20140221_Changing_Skyline__Mormon_development_combines_civic-mindedness__architectural_hodgepodge.html#sAzDRxAmoduWOqKY.99

It's hard not to wince when you first look at the renderings
Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/home/20140221_Changing_Skyline__Mormon_development_combines_civic-mindedness__architectural_hodgepodge.html#sAzDRxAmoduWOqKY.99