Pierre-Antoine Gatier, Hon. FAIA

Pierre-Antoine Gatier, Hon. FAIA.  is the 1991 Richard Morris Hunt Fellow, Architecte en Chef des Monuments Historiques, and Inspecteur Général des Monuments Historiques, Président d’Icomos France.

Date: Tuesday, May 14, 2013
Time: 6:30PM
Location: Education Hall, Old Westbury Room 102 and 103
New York Institute of Technology, Old Westbury, NY 11568
Seating is limited: no admittance after 6:45pm

Exhibition is curated by Jan Greben.

To attend the lecture, R.S.V.P by Thursay, May 9th to Jennifer Mitchell at jmitchel@nyit.edu or 516.686.1280.
NYIT is a registered provider of AIA/CES educational programs.

Featured image courtesy of XiyiTang.

CityAge was born 14 months ago when the City of Vancouver took a leap of faith and decided to let us help them run an international conference. We called it the Vancouver Cities Summit. After just ten weeks of planning, over 500 people from 40 cities gathered from around the world to talk about a new idea we called “the business of city building.” We called our effort CityAge—and we’ve been on quite a journey ever since.

CityAge summits have been held in Vancouver, Toronto, and Kansas City, and new editions will be held in Ottawa, Toronto, New York City, Washington, D.C., Waterloo, Ont., and Vancouver in the next seven months. More are in the works. Thousands of people have now attended CityAge events. We often ask ourselves why it’s catching on. While we don’t have all of the answers to that, we do have a few. Primarily, we think it’s because of an emerging realization that we are living at a unique moment: the world is seeing the greatest migration of people to cities in human history. According to the World Bank, 3.5 billion people live in cities today.  By 2050, 2.5 billion more will join them. It means three out of four people will live in an urban setting, a mega-trend that is reshaping our economy, our environment, and how we live. It means the importance, and the power, of cities is on the rise. In a sense, we’re seeing the re-emergence of the city state of old.

Our cities are the crucibles of the future. How we build—and rebuild—them is one of the greatest challenges of this century. How we design and run our cities—how they use resources, whether they allow people to live well, improve their lots in life, and connect to each other and the world— just may be one of the most important factors in shaping our future. CityAge exists, and is growing, because we’ve tapped into this urban zeitgeist.

People intuitively understand the power of our cities, and they want to use them to shape a better future. They also know this era of city building is a major opportunity and will yield billions of dollars in investment and economic development. These are among the factors that have driven thousands of mayors, engineers, architects, CEOs, community activists, designers, doctors, academics, and ordinary citizens to become part of CityAge. A generation ago, federal and state governments seemed to be the agents that did the big things. Building countries, building continental highway and rail networks…even putting men on the moon. But today cities and civic leaders are proving their ability to make things happen, surprisingly fast.

Consider Kansas City. At a time when many Americans worry about falling behind other nations, the mayors of both Kansas Cities (yes, there are two) forged a partnership with Google to pipe in hyper-fast Internet to citizens, spurring innovation and making the city a hub of entrepreneurship. In Memphis, citizens have taken an old Sears distribution warehouse and are turning it into a whole new community, complete with universities and retail and health institutions. In our hometown of Vancouver, the mayor has set a goal of being the greenest city in the world and is introducing dozens of policies to make that happen. In Tokyo, the city set up the world’s first city-led carbon trading program. In Manchester, an abandoned warehouse was turned into cheap office space for startups, and now they need to build another. In Quezon City, the mayor is working on a plan to remake the city, eliminate slums, and build resilient infrastructure to improve the future of the Philippines.

The list goes on and on. Edward Glaeser has rightly called the city, “our greatest invention.” At CityAge, we also believe that cities—and the billions of people who live in them—will be our century’s greatest catalysts for positive change and innovation.

Featured image courtesy of David Skankbone (left) and Benson Kua (right).

For more on Mayor Cornett’s award and video highlights of Oklahoma City’s MAPS project go here.

 For more on Hine’s significance as real state developer go here. 

Featured photo courtesy of David Hathcox. To purchase prints of many of the photos from the Gala, including table shots, go here.

“I do not sleep though I sometimes doze a little. If up I am talked to and in my efforts to answer cause pain. The fact is I think I am a verb instead of a personal pronoun. A verb is anything that signifies to be; to do; or to suffer. I signify all three.”

While from this quotation Thomas Sebeok organizes an entire treatise on the semiosis of perception and the construction of “objects” in the world, I find the quote evocative for its relevance to an understanding of the concept of home in the lifeworld of elders. In short, if home is in any way an object, its meaning only derives from use. Hence, as designers, we must pay constant attention to the dynamics of the elder lifeworld, which is a challenge to our stereotypical view of old age as a period of stasis and rest.

Consider this beautiful passage from Wendell Berry’s The Memory of Old Jack, its description of the old farmer Jack Beechum, and the identity between self and environment that is created by movement.

He had known no other place. From babyhood he had moved in the openings and foldings of the old farm as familiarly as he moved inside his clothes. Before he bought it he had farmed it for five years as the tenant of the other heirs. But after the full responsibility of it fell to him, he saw it with a new clarity. He had simply relied on it before. Now when he walked in his fields and pastures and woodlands he was tramping into his mind the shape of the land, his thought becoming indistinguishable from it, so that when he came to die, his intelligence would subside into it like his own spirit.

The Intimate Environment
Focusing on movement, rhythm, the path and not the destination provides a schema for us to imagine an architecture for aging (and certainly for childhood) organized around a set of concentric circles that breathe in and out, expanding and contracting over the course of the day, and the course of a life. The smallest circle is our intimate space—the immediate space of the body and the interior space of our domicile. Here, we are designing for a body that traces a familiar, sometimes comfortable routine, punctuated with enough risk to make life interesting without revealing our frailties to caregivers who can “tell on us.” Consider the daily lifeworld of Naomi, one of our Bloomington research participants:

Naomi explains that she challenges herself to do one thing each day. This may be going to teach Bible study, attending the basketball game of a young member of her church, or just reading. She has also extended the challenge to the minute details of her physical existence, such as consciously deciding not to use the ejector function on her chair or making the effort not to stoop when she walks, even though she has the impulse to look where she is putting her feet…(while) she makes getting around easier by removing throw rugs and placing furniture to provide intermittent resting places as she moves through the house, she also places her everyday china “just out of reach” to promote her own range of motion. Wisely, she puts the plastic items even higher, knowing she may drop an item from time to time.

The Proximate Environment
The proximate environment, which begins at the window, the porch, the mailbox, even the telephone, connects the elder to the social world, where the goal is not intimacy, but neighborliness. Neighborly relations exist mid-way between intimacy and strangeness—at the fulcrum of the public and private life. Friendly, but not intrusive, neighbors are often the object of one’s giving, and one may be the subject of others’ concern. Neighbors share pride in the neighborhood and belong to an identified commons. Some, but not all values are shared. One basic, shared value, however, is that neighbors help “keep up the neighborhood ”  so that it is an attractive place to live. Neighbors are not family, nor even necessarily close friends. Friendships may, however, emerge from the field of neighborly
relations. Neighbors are there when you need them, but one doesn’t want to lean on them continuously. Neighbors do not substitute for family or intimate friends but, nevertheless, are extremely important to one’s sense of security and belongingness in a community.

The Public Environment
The third circle, the public environment, has enormous significance in the lives of elders and we all suffer when we don’t see “old people everywhere” as Christopher Alexander would recommend. Regretfully, architects charged with designing single residential buildings, or even retirement “communities” are not empowered to make the leap to designing public environments that work for older people. Access is, of course, paramount, and I won’t presume to add to the wonderful work of designers such as Ed Steinfeld, represented in a recent AAF Guest Writer’s feature. More than access, however, our goal should be engagement, which is access with a purpose. Being in the world is much more than simple “consumer behavior.” Getting the stuff that feeds us, cleans us, comforts us, entertains us is, of course, important, but falls short of fulfilling our hunger for social interaction, for sociability. Consider a typical grocery shopping excursion for Milton, one of our Bloomington research participants:

Milton spends hours in the grocery store, stopping to greet children along the way who, when riding in the grocery cart, are at eye level with him from the electric cart in which he rides. He enjoys making faces at the children who try to mimic his facial tricks and expressions. He explains, “I feel babies are the closest friends I have. Everyone smiles back at me. It’s a heavenly thing.” He explains that he never used to have time to talk with people and clerks in the store when he was a young parent. He says, however, that “Now it’s part of my social life. Everybody knows me and I make myself known. Without relationships I’m a dead man.”

As designers, then, (and those like me who “pretend to want to be architects”, like George Costanza), we should design for all three circles of life, the intimate, the proximate, the public. But to carry on life in all three circles means they must be permeable. We need mediating elements to move in and out—we need the path. Unfortunately, our best intentions to design environments for elders often fail in this regard, as AAF Guest Writers Steinfeld and Scott Ball have noted. We design suburban enclaves that become “no exit” spaces for elders who give up driving. We box up elderhood through our persistent age-segregation practices in both the physical and the social environment. Take one simple example: on the east side of town, residents of a sizeable retirement living community must get in a car or van to visit the Kroger Store/Pharmacy and shopping center which could otherwise be accessed by a 200-yard  foot, tricycle, or golf cart path.

In Bloomington we have discovered an important new mediating structure with the potential to transform and “desegregate” our age relations. It’s a simple trail—a 14-foot asphalt path that once served the Monon railroad and runs directly through the heart of the community for 3.1 miles—connecting public housing on the north end of the downtown with a future massive park on the south end, site of the old switchyard. The trail was originally spoken of as a linear park. Recently, in the neighborhood of the trail, a structured walkabout with 20 adults with intellectual disabilities revealed the significance and potential value of the trail as a virtual lifeline to fresh food, pharmacy, the arts, education, sociality, and intergenerational interaction. Now, motorized chairs are beginning to share the trail with the bikers in Spandex. On Saturday mornings, entire families can be seen moving together as pedestrians on their way to the (fabulous) Farmer’s Market.

This revelation of the potential mediating role of the B-Line Trail has spurred discussion about the development of a sub-area plan for the trail (A Lifetime Community District) that would incentivize development of a broad range of affordable, accessible, and visitable housing options, increase access points to the trail for adjacent neighborhoods, and expand the number of senior households to a level that provides economies of scale for the creation of new businesses and supportive services. The planning process is supported through participation in a national program of the Grantmakers in Aging—Community AGEnda, funded by Pfizer Foundation.

And back again…
In the end, we return to the starting point—home is a verb, not a noun. Home is created by going in and out of the circles of life that surround us. I have found no better definition of this premise than one provided by a poetry group of Adult Day Care participants with dementia:

I have several homes 
I know a home is a home when I can
Go there 
Stay 
And go out again.
Home is where the dog goes 
When it gets too cold to roam
When winter’s coming on 
That’s when I want to go 
Home.

Notes
U.S. Grant quote from Sebeok, Thomas, 1986. I Think I am a Verb: More Contributions to the Doctrine of Signs. New York: Plenum.
Wendell Berry quote from The Memory of Old Jack, 1974. San Diego: Harcourt Brace.
Naomi and Milton observations and quotes from ethnographic fieldnotes, Evergreen Project, 1996-2006, Bloomington, IN.
Christopher Alexander, Ishikawa, and Silverstein design principle is from A Pattern Language, 1977. Oxford.
For video of the Bloomington downtown walkabout by people with disabilities see YouTube at: Red Team and Blue Team.
Community AGEnda: Improving America for All Ages is an initiative of Grantmakers In Aging and is funded by the Pfizer Foundation. It seeks to enhance and accelerate age-friendly development work in communities across America.
http://www.giaging.org/programs-events/community-agenda/
Poem by participants of Bloomington Hospital Adult Day Care, circa 1999, Jody Curly, Director and poetry leader.

About the Author

Anthropologist Philip B. Stafford, Ph.D., is the Director of the Center on Aging and Community, Indiana Institute on Disability and Community, Indiana University in Bloomington. He has been researching, teaching, consulting, writing and aging in community himself for 40 years. Recent books include Elderburbia: Aging with a Sense of Place in America, 2009 (Praeger), and Gray Areas: Ethnographic Encounters with Nursing Home Culture, 2003 (SAR Press).

Featured image courtesy of the Salvation Army.

Additional information on the summit, including profiles of the American delegates, will be made available on this website shortly. To receive updates on the summit and all the programs and initiatives of AAF’s Center for Design & the City, please sign up for our mailing list.

Featured image by Azchael

The Octagon, designed in 1799 by Dr. William Thornton first architect of the United States Capitol for wealthy Virginian Colonel John Tayloe III and his wife Ann Ogle Tayloe, is a historic residence with an enduring legacy. Designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1960, the building is nationally recognized as one of America’s earliest and finest examples of Federal period architecture demonstrating outstanding originality of design, extraordinary craftsmanship, and remarkable attention to detail.

The Octagon has had four owners: the Tayloe family from 1799-1902; the American Institute of Architects (AIA) from 1902-1968; the American Architectural Foundation (AAF) from 1968-2009; and, AIA Legacy, Inc. 2009-present. During these periods, five major restorations occurred. The most recent restoration was made possible in 2005, when a Save America’s Treasures grant was awarded to assist with Phases 4-6 of the American Architectural Foundation’s ambitious restoration program begun in the 1980s. This grant and matching funds provided a new red cedar shingle roof with additional lathe; conservation and restoration of the 11 exterior fragile, built-in, metal balconettes; repair and stabilization of stone and brick masonry elements; conservation and repair of all exterior wood fabric (window sash, frames, doors, and cornice); an additional archaeological study of the lower rear entrance and underground coal storage vault areas; conservation of the entry portico (including Coadstone capitals and bases) and its roof; and, exterior waterproofing of the underground barrel-vaulted coal storage tunnel.

Educated in London, Colonel Tayloe appreciated Neoclassicism and the architecture of Robert Adam and sought to express the beauty, symmetry, attention to detail, and decorative ornament of this style in his in the nation’s new capital city. Tayloe had purchased the odd-shaped triangular lot at the corner of what is now 18th Street and New York Avenue, NW at the urging of President George Washington, who envisioned the future capital of the nation as an economic, cultural, and governmental center. He needed educated, wealthy men like Tayloe to invest in the city and help formalize Pierre L’Enfant’s street plan. For Tayloe, a young entrepreneur with political aspirations, being close to the center of government was a powerful incentive to invest in this still undeveloped location.

Tayloe first hired Benjamin Henry Latrobe to design this city residence as a winter home for the family, whose main residence was Mt. Airy, a 1740s residence and plantation that lies 75 miles south of Washington on the Potomac River. Tayloe found Latrobe’s plan too ostentatious and expensive and then hired Dr. Thornton to design and oversee construction. Originally budgeted at $13,000, the building cost Tayloe $33,000 in the end.

From basement to attic, every detail was addressed. Examples include the impressive entry hall twin coal stoves, imported from Scotland; drawing room and dining room mantels and fireplace surrounds, imported from the Coade stone Factory outside London; beautifully appointed plaster and applied decoration throughout the entire building; and, a specially engineered guttering system that collected water from the roof, transported it through a highly sophisticated drain system to an interior cistern, and out of the building as needed. Upon completion in 1801, The Octagon became one of the most important homes in Washington, DC. Visitors included Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, Stephen Decatur, Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, the Marquis de Lafayette, and John C. Calhoun. The Thorntons were also frequent visitors and remained lifelong friends of the Tayloes. Colonel Tayloe and William Thornton died a month apart in 1828.

In August 1814, during the War of 1812, the British burned many public buildings in Washington, including the U.S. Capitol and the President’s House (now the White House). President and First Lady Dolley Madison rented The Octagon from the Tayloes for $500 per month, which had escaped the flames. The French minister Louis Serurier, at the request of Mrs. Tayloe, declared the property French territory, flew the French flag, and notified the British, thus ensuring additional safety for the building. The Madisons resided here for six months and it was in the second floor parlor on February 17, 1815 that the Treaty of Ghent ending the war was signed by the President. Today, this treaty still governs relations between the U.S. and Great Britain.

Although Colonel Tayloe died in 1828, Mrs. Tayloe continued to play an active role as a prominent social figure in Washington, DC and lived in The Octagon until her death in 1855. No Tayloe has occupied the residence after this date. For the next 47 years, The Octagon served as a girls’ school, the offices of the government’s Hydrographic Office, and, finally, a boarding house. By the 1890s, leading members of the fifty-year-old American Institute of Architects (AIA) determined to move their headquarters from New York to Washington, DC. Like Tayloe a century earlier, members of the architectural profession sought to be close to the White House for political reasons. Recognizing the architectural significance of The Octagon, they approached the Tayloe family, leased the building in 1897, and purchased it in 1902. During AIA’s occupancy prominent organizations were formed there including the McMillan Commission, the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, and the Historic American Building Survey (HABS).

With the growth of AIA and construction of the new AIA Headquarters Building on most of The Octagon’s original 18th-century site, AIA sold The Octagon to the American Institute of Architects Foundation, now the American Architectural Foundation (AAF), which became The Octagon’s third owner in 1968. In 1970, AAF opened The Octagon to the public as an historic house museum and museum of architecture and design. In 1973, AAF and The Octagon received museum accreditation from the American Association of Museums. Reaccreditation was retained consistently during AAF’s period of ownership.

During its 42 years of ownership of  The Octagon, AAF took its role as steward of the building, collections, and site very seriously. It was during this period, particularly from the mid-1980s through 2008, that AAF’s Octagon restorations, partnerships, symposia, exhibitions, publications, educational programs, and public outreach were well-recognized nationally and internationally. Both the National Trust for Historic Preservation and The Getty Institute for Conservation presented their national awards to AAF for its exemplary restoration and care of The Octagon. The Save America’s Treasures grant greatly assisted AAF’s continued preservation of the building from 2005 – 2009. The match for this SAT grant was achieved in part from a capital campaign directed by the AIA in celebration of their 150th anniversary.

Discussions between leadership of the AAF and AIA ultimately led to a decision for AIA to purchase The Octagon from AAF and in 2009 ownership was transferred to AIA Legacy, Inc. for the building’s continued care and operation. This transfer enabled the AAF Board of Regents to devote the organization’s full attention to a broader scope of national and international programs in support of the organization’s expanded mission.

Featured photo courtesy of Save America’s Treasures, National Park Service.

On September 11, 2001, the United States suffered devastating terrorist attacks at sites in New York, Pennsylvania, and Washington, DC. The destructive events of that day changed American lives and the nation’s history. This architectural model is the original presentation model from the office of the World Trade Center’s project architectural firm, Minoru Yamasaki Associates. The model was acquired in 1992 by the American Architectural Foundation (AAF) and is the only extant model of the site illustrating the original six buildings. AAF recently donated the model to the National September 11 Memorial and Museum. Minoru Yamasaki, FAIA, (1912-1986) established a full-scale model shop, led by Mr. Alex Tunstall, within his firm. Yamasaki’s directions to Tunstall were to make the WTC model shimmer and shine, demonstrate the power of the site, and visually illustrate how the completed project would look for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. It was under Tunstall’s direction that the large-scale model of the site was designed and created in 1971. The model’s towers measure over seven feet high. Using wood, polystyrene, molds, plaster, paint, sand, and other materials, this extraordinary piece, meant to be a temporary example of the early WTC site, survived time, but with damage to its fragile components.

Model of the World Trade Center Towers courtesy of Lee Stalworth

In 2002, AAF received a Save America’s Treasures grant to conserve, restore, and preserve this important piece. New molds were made, damaged portions of the model restored, and existing model elements conserved and preserved. Missing pedestrians and automobiles were replaced and damaged areas of the base were carefully conserved. “The World Trade Center should, because of its importance,” Yamasaki said, “become a living representation of man’s belief in humanity, his need for individual dignity, his belief in the cooperation of men, and through this cooperation, his ability to find greatness.”

Featured photo courtesy of Lee Stalworth.

Date: Thursday, April 4, 2013
Time: 6:30 PM – 8:00 PM
Location: National Building Museum, 401 F Street NW, Washington, D.C. 20001

The form of Paris’s Notre Dame Cathedral is rooted in Gothic architecture. The classical additions of Viollet le Duc centuries later were met with fury. Now undergoing restoration in the 21st century, how will these two architectural visions be represented? In this lecture presented by the Richard Morris Hunt Fellowship, Benjamin Mouton, Hon. AIA, chief architect of Historic Monuments of France, and vice president of ICOMOS, discusses the major restoration of Notre Dame Cathedral, the scientific grounds for historic monuments conservation, and the modern tools used by preservationists today.

The Hunt Fellowship is a program of the American Architectural Foundation and French Heritage Society, and is supported in part by Lafarge.

Tickets will be available for purchase at the door:

$12 for AAF, FHS, Alliance Francaise, and NBM Members | $12 for Students | $20 for Non-members

 Featured image courtesy of Olivier Bruchez.

Fulton Industrial Boulevard District Master Plan – Atlanta
40th/Colorado Transit Oriented Development – Denver
Bloody Run Creek Greenway Redevelopment Project – Detroit
Integral City – Greensboro, NC
Greenwood, Mississippi Comprehensive Sustainable City – Greenwood, MS
UTC Warner Center – Los Angeles
Morristown Station Redevelopment – Morristown, NJ
Linking the Warehouse Arts District – Tucson

The selected teams—consisting of city leaders, developers, and design professionals—will join national sustainable design experts for one of two intensive, three-day design workshops in Washington, DC, June 5–7 and September 11–13.

Teams compete to attend SCDA, which provides resources, education, and best practice support needed to make environmentally responsible design decisions. SCDA helps these teams to formulate action plans for their projects while providing the design leadership training and technical assistance needed to address the specific design challenges that they face in their cities.

Since establishing SCDA in 2009, AAF has served 31 development teams in cities across the country through the program.

For additional information about the American Architectural Foundation and the Sustainable Cities Design Academy, visit www.archfoundation.org.

ABOUT THE AMERICAN ARCHITECTURAL FOUNDATION
Established in 1943, the American Architectural Foundation (AAF), is a national 501(c)(3) non-profit organization headquartered in Washington, DC. AAF is dedicated to the vibrant social, economic, and environmental future of cities. In the past decade, AAF has provided design leadership training and technical assistance to hundreds of mayors, public-private partnerships, education leaders, business leaders, and other local decision makers in the design process. During this time, AAF has worked directly with leaders in every major metropolitan region in the United States. www.archfoundation.org

AAF would like to thank United Technologies Corporation for generously supporting AAF and the 2013 Sustainable Cities Design Academy.

Media Contact:
Mark de Groh
202.787.1008 | mdegroh@archfoundation.org

Featured image Bloody Run Creek Greenway Redevelopment Project, Detroit, Michigan. Courtesy of Detroit Collaborative Design Center.