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Architect Magazine

Brutalist Beauty or 10 Floors of Basement?

On March 3, 2017

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.

Eisenhower Memorial Earns NCPC Approval

On July 14, 2015

by Deane

Courtesy Gehry Partners/AECOM | View of memorial core and tapestry from Maryland Avenue, with Lyndon B. Johnson Department of Education Building behind the tapestry

Following a protracted battle with design revisions and family outcry over Frank Gehry, FAIA’s proposal for a memorial to Dwight D. Eisenhower—now a joint venture between Gehry Partners and AECOM—the National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC) approved the final site and building plans [PDF] at a meeting held July 9. In the NCPC’s recommendation, the commission confirmed that the final memorial design “satisfies NCPC’s adopted site selection design principles” and that the approval “will not have a significant impact on the human environment.”

Read the full story at Architect Magazine.

Institute Honor Awards: Architecture

On January 9, 2015

by Architect Magazine: Articles by Deane Madsen, Assoc. AIA

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The Broad Unveils the Veil and the Vault

On January 6, 2015

by Architect Magazine: Articles by Deane Madsen, Assoc. AIA

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