[Continued from yesterday's Part 1.]

In yesterday’s post, I expended several hundred words in a possibly-unnecessary exercise – intellectually demolishing the feasibility of architectural speculations, presented in the Boston Globe, that I believe even their proponents would concede are whimsical fantasies, never intended to exist beyond CAD/CAM screens and jpegs. 

They represent an effort to do something creative with a landscape marred by a prolonged slump in commercial building.

I tripped over that imprecision.  The landscape is marred, if indeed it is, because construction stiopped after it was started.  Had there in fact been a prolonged slump, then Filene’s will still be a department store.  Rather, Filene’s disappeared for a combination of two reasons: (1) a boom in property growth, with the resulting boom in real estate property values, and (2) the decline of the department store as a business model.  Filene’s became Macy’s, and Jordan’s became Macy’s, and Macy’s didn’t need two department stores across the street from one another. 

There is no telling when a building will rise again at the stalled Filene’s redevelopment, so the city’s architects are filling the void with a few ideas of their own:

In Part 1, taking the Globe at its word, I cherry-picked the most outlandish, the least practical.  But is architecture allowed to be completely impractical?  Only with the whimsical discretionary money of a plutocratic patron interested in creating new urban follies.  Yet, having disarmed us with an of-course-these-are-unserious disclaimer, the Globe in fact wants us to buy the product:

At stalled work sites, architects and planners are seeking to create forums for artistic expression and experimentation, transforming weed-strewn lots –

My hackles rise at cliches. 

Beware my hackles

Weeds are not strewn; they sprout.  Litter is strewn.  And when was the last time you went strewing, anyway?  Does ’strew’ have any conjuration other than a past passive?

In a word, “No.”

– into places where people could pause to enjoy intriguing urban scenery, or at least walk their dogs.

And not coincidentally, to create work for architects J.  Like this proposal, the first of several seeking respectability:

Filene’s design #8: Designer: Brad Koerner. Design firm: LAM Partners Inc. Koerner proposes draping the Filene’s site in enormous fabric that would serve as the canvas for supersize LED video screens. The screens could project any number of animations, such as a waterfall, or artists could be commissioned to produce animations that reflect the spirit of the Downtown Crossing area. Flood lights would accent the remaining portions of the structure.

“The idea is to breathe new life into these projects at a time when people would really appreciate it,’’ said Shauna Gillies-Smith, a landscape architect who proposed a medicinal garden for an empty site in the Longwood Medical Area.

Longwood design #2: Architect: Shauna Gillies-Smith. Design firm: Ground Inc. Gillies-Smith, a landscape architect, proposes to build a temporary medicinal garden at Longwood Center. Some of the plants Gilles-Smith proposes planting are: Echinacea, begonia, California poppy, chrysanthemum, honeysuckle, nasturtium, and valerian.

“It’s about signaling a present and future commitment to the public realm.’’

While I doubt there would be much health or economic benefit from this use, it would be visually pleasing. 

While some submissions are whimsical, others propose straightforward improvements such as basic lighting improvements or graphics to upgrade dull construction fencing.

What these more modest designs have in common is appearance – covering up the urban surgery with an optical band-aid.  They also have in common acknowledgment of their transitory nature:

In Miami, officials are renting idled sites from developers for $1 a year and making temporary parks of them.

In Seattle, one developer of a stalled 15-story office building volunteered to build a fountain, benches, and landscaping, while another allowed local food vendors to set up at the proposed site of a hotel he hasn’t been able to build.

Filene’s design #7: Designer: Dave Waller. Design firm: Brickyard VFX. Waller proposes to use the empty Filene’s site to post vintage neon signs from New England’s history, featuring signs from old drive-ins, Howard Johnson’s, and Dunkin’ Donuts.

At Columbus Center, principals of Schweppie Lighting Design Inc. proposed covering a fence with panels that change color as people pass by. At Harvard, John Powell suggested covering the fence in a video screen with images of Allston’s past and renderings of how development could change it in the future.

There’s only one problem: money.

The fixes range in cost from $300,000 to $1.2 million.

Who will pay for it?  The architects are unanimous – someone else.

At the least, said Tim Love, a principal of design firm Utile Inc., developers have an obligation to see that stalled projects don’t become eyesores.

“Any landowner has a civic responsibility to make their property look attractive,’’ Love said.

Really?  Says who?

“If a homeowner has a weed-filled front yard or leaves trash out, they would face penalties in most municipalities.’’

Garbage is a health hazard.  Weeds aren’t.  Mr. Love’s hypothesis is wishful thinking.  Less wishful-thinking is to imagine the city might fund the beautification.

Boston officials are now mulling whether to install temporary dressings at several sites. The Boston Redevelopment Authority asked developer John B. Hynes III to cover the two half-demolished buildings on his Filene’s site with large screens.

Which they should – helps protect the remaining shell, costs little, improves appearance.

Hynes and city officials are considering whether to print graphics or other designs on the screens.

Talk is cheap. 

Talk, in fact, costs nothing.

The BRA is also consulting with the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority about restoring the land at the Columbus Center site.

Columbus Center design #3: Architect: Simon Hare. Design firm: Placetailor Inc. Hare proposes to cast a nylon canopy over Columbus Center, to reconnect the community with the construction site and its possibilities. The canopy, to be spread across the Massachusetts Turnpike work site, would be supported by metal poles and braces that would lift it 30 feet over the highway.

“There’s not a lack of ideas being batted around,’’ said Kairos Shen, the BRA’s chief planner.

Ideas are cheap too.

Slightly more than four (!!) years ago, I posted about the Fan Pier’s empty site in the Curse Of Too Much Value; my point being that a well-located site that has already had substantial investment will not be redeveloped into a lower-value use.  Being cursed with so much value and sunk cost – financial and emotional – to be recouped, it

 “The problem is, how do you implement them? The reason these installations seldom get off the ground is there is no money to pay for them.’’

Ay, there’s the rub.

In most cases, the burden of paying for temporary installations falls on the developer. Builders already don’t have the money restart construction, so they are reluctant to find and spend as much as $1 million for aesthetic improvements.

You think not?

Change this planet as we know it!

“I’m not averse to landscaping and creating something unique, but by the time you take down the fencing and mobilize to do the work, we hopefully will be ready to proceed with our development,’’ said Tom Alperin, chief executive of National Development, which stopped construction last fall on the Longwood biotech lab.

That’s the second practicality: time.  Developers with stalled properties want to get them moving.  Anything established on the site merely means something to be dismantled later, at a cost of time.

Alperin said it would be too much work to accommodate [the Globe's] proposals in the time frame he’s working with. He said he hopes to resume construction within 18 months.

However, if somebody paid him to put in the public amenities, that would be a different story.

Some architects and designers urged the city to consider new regulations to help pay for art installations. Josh Barandon, chief executive of Squared Design LLC of Los Angeles, said the city should consider levying a penalty on developers who leave their sites dormant for prolonged periods.

Trust an Angeleno to recommend something for a Bostonian to do!

You, Kev, we’ve got a good idea for you

“In our opinion, such a penalty is both logical and feasible, especially in light of the current situation at Downtown Crossing,’’ said Barandon –

How thoughtful of him to offer his opinion that one third party (the city) should tax another third party (the developer) to pay for something his firm would be paid to create.

– whose firm collaborated with Howeler + Yoon of Boston to create a vertical garden at Filene’s to grow algae for the production of alternative fuel.

Oh, that’s sensible!

Love, the principal of Utile, said the city could require developers to buy insurance that would pay for aesthetic improvements in case financial problems forced them to stop construction.

I doubt such insurance exists now.  Still, if there were a market, somebody would write the coverage.  But why would a developer want to buy that insurance? 

“If developers want to play in this city and take risks, one of the risks they have to mitigate is the chance that the economy might collapse between permitting and construction,’’ he said.

Yes, that’ll certainly revive the economy and make Boston more business-friendly.

 “To financially penalize developers trying to hold onto their projects is ludicrous at a time like this,’’ said David Begelfer, chief executive of NAIOP Massachusetts, a commercial real estate trade group. “We have a unique circumstance in the financial markets. If you try to put in place regulations because of that, it could have unintended consequences for future growth.’’

That’s ludicrous!

Hynes, the Filene’s developer, doesn’t know when he’ll be able to resume construction. In the meantime, as he prepares screens to protect the two buildings on the site this winter, Hynes said he is willing to consider incorporating art but is more focused on the functional than the fanciful.

“Priority one is to protect the structure of the buildings, and priority two is the aesthetics,’’ he said.

Remarkably rational.

“We’re not predisposed to anything, but the hope for us is that whatever we end up doing, the emphasis is on temporary.’’

There’s the third obstacle: risk of losing development rights.  Install anything, anywhere, and someone will decide it should be preserved as a permanent use – then all your value is lost.  If the site is ugly, everyone will want you to get on with the business of developing it.

Beauty, to a developer, is a clear path to building.  And for that, an ugly lot is better.

It’s all in the eye of the beholder

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By: David A. Smith

“So this unemployed architect walks into a bar and says, ‘our erections can last for years’.” 

Okay, maybe not precisely that cheesily, but something similarly whimsical had to have been in the minds of Boston Globe editors when they sent out an offer to under-employed architects, What would you do to beautify under-developed property? 

We asked designers to suggest ways to spruce up stalled building projects around the city.

Given this, what’s a CAS-CAM designer to do but crank up the fantasies?  As the Globe’s introduction said:

The ideas are not restrained by considerations of practicality or cost, and they are not meant to be.

Some are reality-based, some float in the Empyrean realms unfettered by the necessity for practicality, like these two:

Filene’s design #1: Design firms: Howeler + Yoon Architecture and Squared Design. The team proposes to build a vertical algae-powered bioreactor on the Filene’s site.  The structure would be composed of prefabricated modules, or “eco-pods,” containing materials to manufacture biofuels. The eco-pods would allow scientists to test algae species and methods of fuel extraction. The fuel produced by the algae would power robotic arms that could reconfigure the pods to enhance growing conditions.

Reason staggers at the impracticalities of this one. 

Why put eco-pods, whatever they are, in stacks that are on the one hand physically inaccessible – so that anything good derived has to be lifted out by antiseptic arachnid arms – and on the other hand in a high-people-traffic area, so that anything bad can infect the maximum number of zombies right away?

Rule Number 2: Double Tap

Why take really valuable downtown land – it may be idle but it’s not valueless – and use it for something that could be placed anywhere?  Shades of Charles V and the Mezquita of Cordoba.

Operator!  Give me the number for 9-1-1!

A stalled construction property is unquestionably an eyesore:

Stalled site: Filene’s redevelopment, Location: Downtown Crossing, Estimated cost: $700 million, Status: Construction halted in November 2008 (Wendy Maeda / Globe Staff Photo)

However, as we saw in temporary permanence, city dwellers rapidly become used to work-in-progress or chiuso per restauro signs, so the eye elides them from our memory – which makes the windblown and trash-accumulating site not an affront to our daily living but merely a civic embarrassment:

And I know about embarrassing institutions

Only a smidgen less absurd is this one:

Filene’s design #11: Designer: William Frese. Frese, who is a sculptor, proposes to turn the Filene’s site into an abstract apothecary chest, evoking the neighborhood’s history in the jewelry trade. The “jewels” and a jeweler’s hand tool would be placed throughout the site.

Seeing aside the charming-because-transparent self-interest of a sculptor proposing to turn a construction shell into a rack for macro-sculpture – and where would be get these sculptures, O wise one? – one has the sense that this contributor knows full well this is a fantasy.

Or to be more precise, an architectural folly, for which there is a long and rich tradition.  A folly is a small building with no practical purpose at all, placed into a landscape to provide physical piquancy.  Some are purely visual, placed to create a natural vista or strolling point in a large garden:

Stowe Rotunda

Others stand like monument to childhood:

Broadway Tower, Moreton-in-Marsh, Cotswolds

Many follies are consciously self-deprecating, like this monument to architecture from Auckland, New Zealand:

Former headquarters, Bank of Ozymandias

Most follies result from personal wealth and architectural penury, but some are products of personal obsession, like the Watts Towers of Sam Rodia:

Watts Towers

Rodia called his creation Nuestro Pueblo (’our town’) and as the Watts Tower Web site puts it, “when he was asked why he made the towers, he answered, ‘I wanted to do something big and I did it.’” 

Even follies require maintenance, though, which is why this one is beyond folly:

Filene’s design #2: Architect: Christopher Golden. Design firm: Carol R. Johnson Associates. Golden, a landscape architect, proposes to fill the void in Downtown Crossing with a waterfall and urban oasis. The waterfall would drop from the side of the Filene’s building and cascade into a swimming pool, which would be surrounded by a sandy beach. At night, lights and music would emanate from the core of the Filene’s building.

Any property owner knows that a swimming pool is a hole in the ground into which one pours money.  They cost money to build; cost money to operate; have ongoing maintenance problems; create liability risk; and more than likely, reduce your property’s value upon sale. 

Add to that the impossibility of keeping clean a public-use swimming pool in the middle of a bustling city, with all its attendant risks:

And a beach?  We can safely consign this one to the world of fantasy – a wonderful place to imagine or experience vicariously (the lure of travel writing), but not to visit on one’s own.

Then there’s this wishful exercise:

Filene’s design #6: Architect: Travis Ewen. Design firm: Carol R. Johnson Associates.  Ewen, a landscape architect, proposes to create an urban garden on the Filene’s site with wind turbines and solar panels to be supported by the existing buildings.

Setting aside the implausibility of cows wandering Washington Street, if we can’t place wind turbines in the relative isolation of Martha’s Vineyard, what makes one think that the NIMBYism will be any less potent in the middle of downtown Boston?

Moving from the realm of the infeasible to the charmingly useless, we have this:

Filene’s design #5: Architect: Cynthia Bubb. Bubb proposes a bike park on the Filene’s site, along with a large projection screen to show movies at night. Along the bike path, Bubb suggests wrapping the Filene’s construction site with a fence made of perforated aluminum, painted or imposed with a scene from a forest. The construction site itself would become an urban parking lot for bicycle commuters, with a large movie screen in front of the Burnham building for people to watch films at night. A grass berm at right would accommodate viewers and picnickers.

The problem here is not infeasible but inutility and scale – as in, there isn’t any.  The Filene’s site is maybe fifty yards across, making a bike path scarcely long enough even to start you rolling.  You could walk across the site faster than you could mount a bike, ride it, and dismount. 

Nor is shackling bicycles a good use.  I work within three hundred yards of the Filene’s shell, and while I see the occasional bicycle, there’s no indication anywhere that bike-racking is a pressing need. 

As for ‘large movie screen for people to watch films,’ when was the last time you or anybody you know gathered in a plaza, the Esplanade, the Boston Common, or another picnic grounds to watch a movie outdoors?  Drive-in movies are dead, and for good reasons.  If there’s a metaphor for the twenty-first century’s home entertainment options, it’s the home theater.

High-tech entertainment … circa 1955

The architect, in other words, has taken an empty site and overlaid on it a currently-fashionable idea (urban bikes) with a conveniently visual illusion (an outdoor movie screen).  It’s harmless but it’s pointless.

Shifting from downtown – prime retail, office, or residential land – to a clearly underused spot, we swing now to the Columbus Center area.  Back in the 1950’s, America and most of the developed world embarked on the Great Urban Highway Mistake, putting concrete ribbons over, around, and through most of our cities – and in traffic, pollution, and urban dysfunctionality we’ve been paying ever since. 

Stalled site: Columbus Center. Location: Between Arlington and Clarendon streets over the Massachusetts Turnpike. Estimated cost: $800 million. Status: Construction was stopped more than a year ago as developers search for funds to resume the development. Meanwhile, the state has said it will pay to undo construction work at the site, which has been the subject of many neighborhood complaints. (Wendy Maeda / Globe Staff Photo)

Count me among those who would love to see established ugly necessities like the Massachusetts Turnpike covered over, Big-Dig-style, both to hideaway the arterials and to create valuable walkable new-urbanist land.  Such land costs money – the curse of too much value – and hence construction starts only in the boomiest of booms, and stalls in the breathiest of downturns.  It would be nice to have the site developed, but in the meantime, can we really imagine something like this?

Columbus Center design #1: Architect: Chris Reed. Design firm: Stoss Landscape Urbanism. Reed proposes suspending an energy-producing public garden from latticework over the Massachusetts Turnpike at Columbus Center. The latticework supports a field of microturbines that harness wind created by passing vehicles; it also supports walkways connecting the Back Bay and South End neighborhoods.

With this conception, we find ourselves back in the land of gravity-defying phantasms.  It’s a lovely visual – one can imagine the Disney bluebirds chirping – but ‘energy producing public garden’?  In downtown Boston?  ‘Wind created by passing vehicles’?  As if that would flow in a harnessable direction instead of simply swirling, as it now does.  (If one wanted to harness vehicular wind effects, the place for turbines would be at tunnel entrances and exits, but in fact fans are placed into those tunnels precisely because vehicles merely displace air, they create no steady breeze.)

Then there’s this mixture of the inexpensive and the unhygienic:

Filene’s design #3: Design firm: Utile Inc. Utile Inc., an urban planning firm, proposes to install crisscrossing boardwalks across the Filene’s site that would provide new shortcuts through Downtown Crossing. Below the boardwalk would be a manicured pasture fit for sheep and other livestock that used to roam the nearby Boston Common.

Nothing wrong with crisscrossing boardwalks except the legal risks.  I cannot imagine that the site’s insurers would be comfortable with pedestrians walking in proximity to an unreinforced building shell.  But sheep grazing underneath?  Why?  For their manure?

They’ll work in downtown Boston!

By now readers may be wondering why I’ve double-pumped so many shotgun shells into these helpless barrel-bound fish.  The reason is simple – these designs were offered, if not by their architects then by the Globe, as physically doable.  Somebody thought they could in fact be built, and inviting a referendum on them:

Boston’s stalled construction sites — from the site of the former Filene’s building to Harvard’s stalled science center in Allston — have become eyesores dotting the city’s landscape. The Globe’s Casey Ross asked some local artists and architects to reimagine these stalled projects and come up with ideas to make them part of the city’s culture again. Click through for a variety of renderings and ideas, and vote on which Filene’s site design and which design among the other stalled projects you like the most.

Then, submit your own rendering of your designs for one of Boston’s stalled sites.

There is, of course, a serious point to all this folly.

No, really, we’re about to become serious

[Continued tomorrow in Part 2.]

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