Deane Madsen | Articles

The Modern Library Is about More Than Books

On May 10, 2017

Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, Washington, D.C. Image by Deane Madsen

As we become increasingly reliant on digital content available on-demand, what happens to our repositories for printed matter? The answer may be simpler than you think: Libraries aren’t just about books any more. Most have shifted focus from their collections to the communities they serve, and adjusted their design to match.

Library-sponsored programs, such as children’s reading hours and job-search assistance sessions, are bolstering each location’s outreach and education efforts. A 2016 library use study from the Pew Research Center indicates an increase in the number of people visiting libraries for educational purposes: 27 percent of library users said they’d attended classes, programs, or lectures at their local institutions, a 10 percent increase over 2015.

A major part of the library’s recalibration as civic anchor comes in the form of reconfigured spaces. In the nation’s capital, as elsewhere, library systems have been improving their physical structures over the last decade to accommodate shifts in usage. Marquee projects by renowned architects have reinvigorated the Washington, DC, Public Library (DCPL) properties, with 15 completed remodels (two of which were designed by the dynamic pairing of Adjaye Associates and the Freelon Group, of National Museum of African American History & Culture fame). Six more facility upgrades are currently on the boards, including a $208 million renovation and addition to Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library in downtown DC.

Read the full story at Topic Architecture.

The secret to creating a successful coworking space

On March 25, 2017

by Deane

WeWork’s Wonderbread Factory location in Washington, D.C.

As the name implies, WeWork’s Wonder Bread Factory office in Washington, DC, is a former industrial bread production facility, now baking ideas from dozens of local companies that make these offices their home. On the other side of an open area, a small conference hall is filled with a dozen or so people attending a courier training session for Caviar, an application-based meal delivery service. In the communal kitchen, a beer delivery man connects the tap line to a keg and explains how to keep it from going flat while a bespectacled gentleman prepares his lunch on the counter. Garage doors on the southern side of the room open—when the weather allows it—to a sunny patio with an assortment of seating for lounging, dining, or meeting al fresco.

Coworking spaces such as these have been springing up all over the country. In cities where office space rental is prohibitively expensive, coworking affords the opportunity to conduct business within professional environments without taking on the high cost of overhead. Think of it almost like getting a group of friends together to rent a house: With pooled resources and some shared amenities, each person can perhaps pay less for rent while enjoying more overall space as well as a healthy sense of community. And through architect-led redesigns and renovations, that sense of an office as a community can be enhanced even further.

These shared spaces often come with flair specific to each locale; in DC, a graffito by District native Kelly Towles overlooks the third-floor common area, and the caffeine supply comes directly from local roaster La Colombe. A local firm, Georgetown-based R2L:Architects, added three levels to the existing structure, and rehabilitated the existing historic façades. Within the WeWork offices, glass walls and doors enclose variously sized private offices arranged on long corridors, allowing natural light to fill each space.

Read the full story at Topic Architecture.

Brutalist Beauty or 10 Floors of Basement?

On March 3, 2017

by Deane

AIA Now

Robert C. Weaver Federal Building (U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development)

The architectural significance of the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) cannot be overstated. Designed by Marcel Breuer and his associate Herbert Beckhard along with the firm Nolen-Swinburne, the 1.3 million-square-foot office building was completed in 1968—the same year Breuer won the AIA Gold Medal—and was the first government building completed under the U.S. General Services Administration’s Guiding Principles for Federal Architecture.

The 10-story building rests on tapered, board-formed pilotis that comprise a ground-level Brutalist colonnade, establishing it as the anchor of Washington, D.C.’s Southwest Washington, Urban Renewal Area. Rededicated as the Robert C. Weaver Federal Building in 2000 to honor HUD’s first secretary, the building is remarkable for its expressive modular deployment of precast concrete—another first for a government structure—as both structure and finish material throughout its curvilinear, elongated X-shaped volume. Upon its opening, The New York Times architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable praised the building for its “contemporary monumentality,” noting that it was a “Federal demonstration project for better government architecture.”

Civil servants housed in the HUD building, however, told a different story. HUD’s ninth secretary, Jack Kemp, is said to have described the headquarters as “10 floors of basement.” Dim lobby and general lighting made wayfinding difficult amongst the long hallways of similar-looking offices. Mid-’90s landscaping additions made by Martha Schwartz to enliven the main façade and provide outdoor seating via circular concrete planters and plastic shading devices met with mixed reviews.

In recent years, complaints about indoor air quality led HUD to undertake a modernization that earned the building LEED Silver certification in November 2016. In 2008, the building was added to both the DC Inventory of Historic Sites and the National Register of Historic Places, earning landmark status for its pioneering materiality in a government context as well as for its enduring and exceptional formal qualities.

Read the original story via AIArchitect at Architect Magazine.

HUD’s Next Chapter Proves Elusive

On March 3, 2017

by Deane

AIA Future

Incoming HUD secretary Ben Carson says he will bring a holistic approach to housing. But his beliefs on housing policy spell an uncertain future for the agency.

To understand what lies ahead for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and its new secretary, Ben Carson, it’s useful to examine HUD’s legacy as well as Carson’s backstory.

HUD was formed under President Lyndon Johnson with a mission of building inclusive communities while ensuring affordable housing for all. This started with the Fair Housing Act (also known as Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act of 1968), which prohibited discrimination in housing on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. The agency has earlier roots in the U.S. Housing Authority, which was created by the Housing Act of 1937 as a part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. This legislation was aimed at providing safe and sanitary dwellings for low-income families by establishing subsidies for local agencies.

The objective of allowing all people, regardless of means or personal characteristics, to live in decent housing has survived in subsequent policy updates and revisions. HUD’s mission has evolved to include protection against discrimination, promotion of sustainability, and, following the housing crisis of 2008, distribution of $13.61 billion of economic stimulus through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 as well as insuring about one in five mortgages.

Carson’s upbringing began in a 750-square-foot house purchased through the GI Bill with a lawn and a one-car garage in southwestern Detroit. When his parents separated, Carson and his mother moved to Boston to live with relatives before resettling in a multifamily building back in Detroit. Carson was not yet 17 when the Fair Housing Act was passed. He left Detroit soon thereafter to attend Yale University, where he earned a psychology degree in 1973. A medical degree from the University of Michigan followed in 1977, and he completed his neurosurgery residency at Johns Hopkins in 1983.

At his confirmation hearing in January, Carson detailed his personal experience with housing insecurity as well as the lessons he learned from his mother. He has stated elsewhere that she was eligible to receive assistance through the federal Aid to Families with Dependent Children program, but insisted that she would not be dependent on anyone but herself. She instilled in him the belief that people could lift themselves out of poverty rather than relying on help from others, whether in the form of government aid or otherwise.

This belief in everyone’s self-reliant potential for upward mobility—the bootstrap argument—puts Carson at odds with the agency itself. HUD provides assistance to Americans who cannot overcome impoverishment or disenfranchisement. The department’s 2015 final rule, Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH), establishes guidelines by which equal opportunity and fair housing goals can be achieved because, as the legislation states, “no child’s ZIP code should determine her opportunity to advance.” Carson suggests that environment isn’t as much of a determining factor as willpower.

Read the full story via AIArchitect in Architect Magazine.

Netflix and Build: “Abstract: The Art of Design”

On February 10, 2017

by Deane

As part of a new Netflix documentary series on design, Bjarke Ingels dives into his firm’s projects and process.

Morten Germund/Netflix

Architects can be just as susceptible to the lure of binge-watching full seasons of programming as everyone else, and there’s a new reason to pull an all-nighter with Netflix’s release of a new documentary series, Abstract: The Art of Design, tomorrow. The eight-episode season charts the creative processes of eight designers from a range of disciplines, with Danish architect Bjarke Ingels headlining the episode on architecture.

Episode four traces the growth of Ingels’ firm, Bjarke Ingels Group(BIG), from an upstart practice in Copenhagen, Denmark, to a sought-after architectural juggernaut with offices on both sides of the Atlantic. At age 42, which is relatively young in a profession that sees its most renowned practitioners hit their stride around the time that most people are retiring, Ingels has amassed an impressive collection of competition wins, commissions, and accolades. The 45-minute episode of Abstract was directed by Morgan Neville and follows the six-month, inception-to-completion timeline of BIG’s 2016 Serpentine Gallery Pavilion in London, punctuated by site visits to early works such as the Maritime Youth House and t he Mountain, both in Copenhagen, and construction tours of New York’s VIA 57 West and Copenhagen’s Amager Resource Center (both of which won citations in ARCHITECT’s 2015 Progressive Architecture Awards).

The Ingels episode continues themes that BIG has developed in lectures, publications, and exhibitions, such as “hedonistic sustainability” and “pragmatic utopia.” Ingels talks about hybridizing seemingly incompatible ideals, aided by diagrams and fly-throughs, in a manner that is relatable. “An apartment block doesn’t have to look like a big, boxy slab,” he says. “It could be this sort of man-made mountain. You don’t have to choose having a house with a garden or having a penthouse view. You can actually have both!”

Read the full story at Architect Magazine.

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