Buffalo Rising Online

Steel, I have seen a few conceptual drawings on the 9th Floor at City Hall for the restoration of the building on the corner with full restoration of the windows on the second floor. It looks great and would really help that corner out. Don't know the status of the project though. I saw this back in February.

This corner is no doubt Busy with activity. I see great potential in these buildings as well as the surrounding area for infill. Great photos and story Steel.

I agrew with you on the buildings' potential, but I don't like driving by that area and seeing large groups of people loitering, clearly drinking out of brown bags, and doing god knows what else. The corner needs to be cleaned up!

I thought 1377 was the old Dellwood Ballroom, but that was kitty-corner & demolished. Those blocks were classic "urban fabric", so-called now .... too bad so much has been wrecked for the sake of automobile parking. Even the subway station appears to belong in the 'burbs.

I always love driving by this corner. It speaks of "real" urbanism as opposed to the pretentious "village" crap asthetic being pushed in ahem..more prosperous city commercial districts, one in particular i'm thinking of.

This entire area could be infilled nicely, making these buildings shine even brighter, especially after increased wealth will make the facades much more attractive.

I suppose one postiive thing all the parking lots have done is preserve this land from being littered with large bad buildings that would be expensive to dismantle when reurbanization finally creeps into this area.

BTW, people "loiter" plenty on Elmwood too. But ya know, this is seen by many as "good loitering" if ya catch my drift...

The wedge as some people have adopted between Jefferson and Main will be the next area to catch the attention of people. Of course ending the Kensington at Jefferson and putting traffic back on the local streets would speed up the process immensely.

Hearty amen from this corner.

The average commercial buildings of the first few decades of the 20th century are uniformly good. They're built to the sidewalk's edge. They reward the predestrian with big windows into all kinds of interesting urban life--shops, diners, barber shops, etc. They usually have at least two stories, for mixed uses and a reassuring feeling of enclosure. They offer detail and ornament, sometimes only in modest quantities but still enough to remind you that actual human beings had something to do with the crafting of this structure.

Contrast these with the average commercial buildings of the last half of the 20th century. They are uniformly bad. They're usually one story, set back from the street as though recoiling from something contagious. They're clad in artificial coverings. They frequently have blank walls. They look like they're extruded in mass quantities from the Acme Factory of Econobox Architecture.

It says a lot about the degradation of architecture at the hands of Modernism that your only hope of getting a good building is by hiring a pricey starchitect, and even then you still get an anti-urban trophy clad in zinc tile with no windows or front door that looks like a suburban MRI facility no matter what its actual use.

Seventy years ago, all you had to do to get a good building was open up the yellow pages to Architects, an shown by the anonymous buildings shown here by Steel.

With apologies to those with Asperger's Syndrome, Modernism is the architecture of autism.

BIA Mod., "Architecture" is probably the deadest of all the arts in modern America, no matter what the architectural schools and the theorists say. Just read the preposterous, pretentious nonsense of the reviews of such anti-social, anti-urban, anti-human buildings as the new Guthrie theater. Sadly, never have architects been more out-of-touch with life, and as a consequence of their own arrogance, more inconsequential.

Unfortunately the architect many times has the least to say in today's buildings. The list of influence is something like this

Zoning Codes Nimbys Budget Developer User Marketing Lawyers Public priorities

and way way way down the list is the architect.

On top of that I would agree that schools are doing a poor job of training architects. They do ignore the humanistic side of architecture in favor of flashy and often meaningless threorism. Many architects graduate without the slightest understanding or appreciation of how an actual person uses and experiences space. they lack the basic understanding of cities and urbanism but can name the latest trendiness and who produces it.

I disagree that modernism is the problem. The problem is poor architecture (often brought about by poor architects in combination with the top portion of the list). Our priority today is expedience...not quality...put all the historic gewgaw you want on the facade if the developer wants parking it will have parking. If the developer wants cheap, it will be cheap. Modernism does not = poor quality and it does not = sensationalism. A quality modern building can animate a street just as well as any historic building. In many ways these are modern buildings. Their form is closer to modernist than historic revival. Big box stores are designed by marketing concept. The architect is nothing but the facilitator. Our hideous suburban landscapes are the results of misguided planning and over reliance on civil engineering. Much of what you see in today's building is the result of things way outside the control of the architect and no amount of historic cladding will over come these obstacles.

Thank you STEEL, architects are not the major problem here. While some are boring and anti-urban many would love the opportunity for a good infill project with multiple uses. It makes the design process much more fun when you have neighbors and variables but as steel said, money and not aesthetics is the ONLY ruling factor in contemporary construction. If the developer thinks he wonit be able to rent it, whether because of a real or imaginary reason, he wonit build it.

I also agree with urban critic, people on the street is always a good thing just because itheyi donit fit into what you think is clean or proper doesnit mean they have any less of a right to be there. But then again I just been to several countries where drinking in public is legal and it doesnit bother anyone. So what if they wanted to have a drink on the corner, I often wish I could crack open a cold one when I walk to the store but somehow that makes me a bad person that needs to be cleaned up. Maybe I just need to get used to again our society of controlling people to make the moral decision because we do not trust they can make the decisions themselves.

Sorry, Steel, but Modernism has had an unusually long time (over 50 years) to prove itself a good neighbor and it has failed. Spectacularly. As we all know from painful experience, Modernisms's average buildings are uniformly bad, while Modernism's predecessors' average buildings are uniformly good.

The reason we have such a touching and necessary commitment to preservation is because for decades the loss of even average anonymous buildings like the two you featured meant getting somethng worse--an econobox fronted by parking--in their place.

Modernism is the ideology that made possible the zoning, cost-cutting, automobile worhsip, and every other form of urban damage.

BIA,

I understand how your opinion has developed but modernism is not responsible for the ills you describe. Cars are not popular because of modernism. The problems they bring are not the result of modernism they are the result of the CAR and people's dependence on them. Likewise, Modern buildings do not need to be cheap and anonymous. That is the result of a society that builds for a short 10 year return on investment. It is the result of a society that no longer puts an emphasis on art education, It is the result of many things beyond the simple style of a building. If we ignore the great possibilities that Modern buildings offer we are doomed to have fake historic buildings with all the same problems you have just described

The corner building has been on the market nearly four years and has about a dozen offices on the second floor. The loitering issue has been a problem for store owners and especially a restaurant owner - now closed - at the south end of the building. The second floor windows are really patio sliding glass doors, behind the plywood arches.

The proximity of the Utica Station here adds to the mix and buzz around the two corners.

Both Chris Hawley and Stevan Stipanovich have recently addressed the lack of oversite when it comes to new construction along one of Buffalo's most overlooked assets, the subway...they've addressed these issues in a few links, available in a recent post about Midtown. Both studies are well worth the read if you find yourself increasingly more attracted to this emerging neighborhood.

Steel, great post, and great follow up comments.

I agree that moderism itself, like any architectural style, alone, cannot be held responsible for poor urban design, BUT, wouldn't you agree that some of the early practioners of the Bauhaus movement, along with LeCorbusier and his neophytes, were into designed anti-social and anti-urban buildings?

Remember Corbu's famous "towers in a park" scheme that called for demolishing Paris's left bank and turning it into something resembling Chicago's future Cabrini-Green projects? Corbu, being an anti-social nut, hated cities and everything they stood for. He wanted to destroy lively, dense city districts and replace them with sterile "machines for living," which would be utterly dependant on the automobile and be widely seperated from other uses.

It's a shame somany American architects and planners licked up these twisted ideas like an obedient dog. We all know how successful the "towers in a park" principles became in the US...

Modernist buildings were typical awful here unless built in an area where land values were so astronomical, the only way to fit the building in economically was to stick to traditonal urban design principles, like building up to the street and having human-scaled features.

Modernism became more a school of thought rather than just another archi-style. It spawned several generations of arrogant bastard "starchitects" who designed buildings only for their own personal gratification and aspiration of creating "cutting edge" artworks, rather than creating useable and properly-scaled habitats for normal human beings. When architecture became a self-indulgent "art" rather than a trade, the profession went quickly downhill.

I make a big distinction between "modern" and "modernist". I use the former to describe achi-trends from the early 20th century. Stuff ranging from Louis Sullivan to FLW, Art Deco, Craftsman, to early Bauhaus. The 1920s vernacular commercial structures in the pictures above are good examples of simple modern buildings.

The latter term, "modernist," I use to describe all the anti-urban, Corbu-influenced junk that has desecrated our cities for decades.

With that said, so many elements of modern design can be used to create great urban buildings. If we stick to a few simple urban design principles, just about any style can make for good urbanism.

I just hope now we can distinguish between "modern" and "modernist".

Urban,

I agree with you whole heartedly. However, Corbu and his cronies were reacting to cities that were not quite as pleasant as our nostalgic tendencies will allow us to understand. Corbu's ideas were misguided but we have to understand were they were coming from. Corbu by the way (his anti social urban ideas aside) designed some incredible buildings.

About that, Steel, you are most certainly right. Corbusier did design some incredible buildings. Do you think the fact that he loved his mother and his dogs so much had anything to do with it?

Thank you, urban critic. I'll happily make the same distinction as you did between "modern" and Modernists or Modernism. "Modern" can be described as a style, just as you said, but Modernism is an ideology that rejects history and urbanism, and our cities have the scars to prove it.

That Corbu hated cities and did everything in his power to undo them--and that Americans followed him like lemmings over the cliff--is well-documented. This is especially perverse, since Corbu lived in Paris, one of the finest cities in the world. Paris is a far cry from the grimy industrial city that the US specialized in during the 19th century and was a beacon of culture and civilization to all kinds of American expatriates, as we all know from high school lit classes. So your claim that he was reacting to a place that was "not quite as pleasant as our nostalgic tendencies will allow us to understand" is laughable.

BIA,

No it is not laughable. Cities at that time were crowded with very poor people even Paris! They were polluted coal smoke choked places with poor sanitation. Beacon of culture or not if you were not of the elite Paris could be a tough place to live in during the early 20th century. The thinking at the time in general was that the old had to go to make room for the modern era. Corbu put into form what the society thought they wanted at the time. If you put yourself in the place of people at that time his ideas would have seemed seem amazing and liberating. They had no context as we do today to judge his ideas against. I am not saying that his concepts were good. I am just pointing out that there is a context of that time in which they were developed that we can not fully understand today.

LeCorbusier to me is alot like Freud. They were both hailed as insightful revolutionaries in one case re-interpreting architecture and in the other re-interpreting medicine. Both were reaching and neither lasted the test of time...all their theories disproved and immense harm was done in the process of embracing and then revolting.

I never liked LeCorbusier nor did I ever like Freud. If only the world could have sidestepped these two psuedo-intellectual hacks. The american and german architects were much more enlighted than LeCorbusier.

Detroit is absolutely gutted. Gone are its train stations, hotels and other landmark buildings. Downtown Cleveland is hemorraging corporate headquarters while Buffalo has demolished about 1/3-1/2 of downtown...we still have more than some other Great Lakes Cities and while we have much work to do to continue saving our buildings and our neighborhoods and making our voices heard what kind of buildings we want added....(we failed at B-P and HealthNow) the consensus is building that we want to bring back more of the old urban values of community to our city and Im proud of Buffalo and Buffalonians for doing that.

I never liked Corbu's work but I agree that cities back then were a different place. A place that you only lived in because you had no options. Remember Le Corbusier designed cities, maybe machines for living in the end, but they would hold more population with less land and more green space than old Paris ever could have wished for. he was trying to let light and air into cities that were dirty and polluted. If we are going to bad mouth him we also need to realize that Wright and Olmsted were also in this SAME movement against clogged dirty cities. Wright designed what he called Broadacre city, a place where everyone has one acre of land, a car or other transportation device thinking of future trends in transportation technology and that businesses and factories were spread out amongst the countryside. Sound a lot like suburban development? Well he was one of the inspirations; remember we praise him as a demi-god in this city for his work. It was how he saw America developing in the future and he was pretty damn close. Olmsted also could be considered anti-urban. He called his parks, the lungs of the city a place of reprieve from the congestion and pollution. Riverside Illinois is one of the first suburbs ever developed, by Olmsted and he set the precedence for sub development design. Granted we may even call it an urban neighborhood at this point in time because of its character and density but it was certainly not meant to be. Too bad the good ideas of how we should spread ourselves died with the American push always to save a dollar. Damn you Levittown!

It was the mentality of the time.

Sbrof is absolutely correct about Olmsted and Wright as two of the best-known proponents of what eventually became American suburia. That's why Richardson is my favorite architect. :)

Olmsted is so revered as a landscape architect that Americans can no longer conceive of any other way to do parks. We no longer know how to properly site and design public squares, for example. Savannah is the last great American city to have excellent public squares, and it is no coincidence that it is a pre-Olmsted city.

Olmsted is so influential that "park" now means rambling meadows and wilderness with winding paths, when new urban parks are rarely big enough to pull this off. Many of them would be better off as ordered gardens, or public squares with monuments, or myriad other forms.

The Eiffel Tower ? n Modern. The first Modernist monument.

The Guaranty (Prudential) Building ? n Modern

The Larkin Soap Building ? n Modern

The Martin House ? n Modern

The Brooklyn Bridge ? - Modern. The first Modern American monument.

The Johnson Wax Building ? n Modern. Belonging to the canon of Modernist Architecture.

The Guggenheim Museum, NYC ? n Modern. Belonging to the canon of Modernist Architecture.

The Chrysler Building ? n Modern. American Modernism, ca.1928

The Empire State Building? n Modern. American Modernism, ca.1929

City Hall, Buffalo, NY ? - Modern. American Modernism, ca.1932

Grain Elevators ? n Modern. An Icon of Modernism, worldwide.

The Golden Gate Bridge ? n Modern. American Modernism, ca.1932

The Saint Louis Arch ? n Modern. Modernism.

Dulles Airport, Washington D.C. ? n Modern. Modernism.

TWA Terminal, JFK Airport, New York ? n Modern. Modernism.

Unity Temple n Oak Park Illinois ? - Modern

First Unitarian Church, Rochester, NY ? n Modern. Modernism.

The Salk Institute, La Jolla, CA ? n Modern. Modernism.

The Kimball Art Museum, Fort Worth, TX ? n Modern. Modernism.

Any professional sports stadium you can name - Modern

Any High-rise or Long-span structure you can name n Modern

Any bridge made from cast iron, steel, or concrete n Modern

I donit think that there is a single building on this list that anyone would demolish, or replace with a etudor-stylei building n something, you know, more etraditionali.

People. Please stop throwing the baby out with the bath water.

sbrof beat me to the punch.

It always surprises me to find so many well-informed opinions in this forum. I wonder how many buildings the self-annointed critics of Le Corbusier have seen for themselves, given that only one stands in the US.

I also wonder how the God of American Architecture would stand up to the test of viable eurban planningi.

Let us first look at the evidence:

iThe New City will be nowhere, yet everywhere.i Frank Lloyd Wright

Unity Temple, Oak Park Illinois. Little possibility to see into or out from the building. A masterpiece nonetheless.

The Larkin Soap Administration Building, Buffalo, New York. Ditto.

Midway Gardens, Chicago, Illinois. Ditto.

Johnson Wax Administration Building, Racine, Wisconsin. Ditto.

The Guggenheim Museum, New York, New York. Ditto. Seems to be a pattern here.

One can add The Marin County Civic Center, The Temple Beth Sholom, and numerous other examples from his Oeuvre.

The fact of the matter is that Frank Lloyd wright was much more phobic about cities than any other emaster builderi ever was, but because we can see the evidence with our own eyes, we tend to see that the greatness of the architecture outweighs the anti-urban characteristics of the buildings themselves.

But donit take my word for it.

Just consider what Mr. Wright did and drew up over his long and illustrious career.

Not only did he move from Chicago to the rural hills of Wisconsin , he did so during the period that this city was considered to be the birthplace of Modernism. Later, he built Taliesin West in the Arizona desert, far away from anything that could be considered eurbani at that point in time.

His so-called city planning could be seen as a blueprint for todayis suburban sprawl.

iThe broad acre city, where every family will have at least an acre of land, is the inevitable municipality of the future . . . We live now in cities of the past, slaves of the machine and of traditional building. We cannot solve our living and transportation problems by burrowing under or climbing over, and why should we? We will spread out, and in so doing will transform our human habitation sites into those allowing beauty of design and landscaping, sanitation and fresh air, privacy and playgrounds, and a plot whereon to raise things.i n Frank Lloyd Wright, 1932.

His Broadacre City Plan, from 1934, proposed that Americans had the right to own land, deeded to them by the Federal Government.

From Wikipedia:

iBroadacre City was the antithesis of a city and the apotheosis of the newly born suburbia, shaped through Wright's particular vision. It was both a planning statement and a socio-political scheme by which each U.S. family would be given a one acre (4,000 m<=) plot of land from the federal lands reserves, and a Wright-conceived community would be built anew from this. In a sense it was the exact opposite of the recent idea of transit-oriented development. There is a train station and a few office and apartment buildings in Broadacre City, but the apartment dwellers are expected to be a small minority. All important transport is done by automobile and the pedestrian can exist safely only within the confines of the one acre (4,000 m<=) plots where most of the population dwells.i

Wrightis ideas attracted considerable attention at the time they were introduced. Perhaps the strongest support was a petition sent to Washington, D.C., in 1943 urging the Roosevelt Administration to adopt in principle the concept of Broadacre City and to authorize Wright to develop it in practice. The petition was signed by sixty-four important sympathizers, including John Dewey, Albert Einstein, Archibald MacLeish, Nelson Rockefeller, and Robert Moses.

In 1956, Wright proposed the One Mile High High-Rise for Chicago, complete with atomic-powered elevators. The famous rendering indicates a bit of shoreline that one assumes to be Lake Michigan, but the nationis second-largest metropolis is not recognizeable.

In 1958, he produced drawings for the Living City, where the traffic jams that came along with post-war suburban sprawl were solved by envisioning the suburban vehicle of the future- the personal helicopter.

In 1958, he produced drawings for the Living City, where the traffic jams that came along with post-war suburban sprawl were solved by envisioning the suburban vehicle of the future- the personal helicopter.

Enough said.

pio throws the word "modern" at completely different structures, built over a period of more than 100 years. Some of them aren't even buildings - grain elevators are bins with machines attached - a row of soup cans on a shelf is as much a work of "architecture" as a grain silo. It's pathetic that they would be an "icon of modernism".

"Modern" is a filler word, used when nothing else seems to fit or when the user is ignorant of terms like "Art Deco" "Prairie School", etc. The Brooklyn Bridge is two huge Gothic towers. All tall buildings are "modern"? The Gothic Woolworth Building? The Second Empire Singer building? No.

Now we have frauds like Gehry, copying blobs of crumpled aluminum foil & calling that a design.... the Brooklyn Bride concept is even more ridiculous. They "design" such trash and then leave it up to the contractors to figure out how to make the thing stand up. Unless they are going to design nothing bigger than a 2-story frame house, all architects should first be required to earn a degree in structural engineering.

Architecture has suffered the same ruination as music, painting, and sculpture: rejection of tradition, forced onto students by higher education. I suspect that if they got hold of other traditions, we'd be eating BAD-tasting food and calling it "modern" - cladding food in historical good flavors is so 19th Century, dontcha know.

DrKAy,

If you were to dine on food prepared the way it was 100 or so years ago

you might come away severely disappointed. Modern food is far far more

complex and interesting than historic food.

You really don't want structural engineers designing buildings either.

That will really seal the fait of architecture as an art. Engineers as

architects is basically the cause of our horrid suburban environments.

Its too bad you have no appreciation for anything contemporary and new.

To live your life enjoying only what has been created and lacking an

appreciation for what can be created is quite sad.

Dr Kay

Just how many Gehry buildings have you seen in person? And do you have even the slightest idea how they are built? I doubt this in all sincerity.

I am no fan of his projects, but the office of Frank O. Gehry has revolutionized the way the profession works, simply from the perspective of computer technology.

Before Gehry, we had no crumpled aluminum foil buildings, but after him, we have Catia, a program that allows the three-dimensional pre-fabrication of steel members, regardless of the geometry created by the architect.

The steel is shipped to a robotic cutter that machines the members to size and welds joining plates to a quality that no human being can match. You clearly have no idea of what concentrated thought and incredibly difficult work goes into creating efraud e buildings.

As far as calling the Brooklyn Bridge two Gothic towers, I think you miss the point. It is not called the Brooklyn BRIDGE for nothing. The towers were the simple part. And I challenge you to find a single steel cable detail in the Gothic canon (the collected works of an era, as agreed upon by architectural and historic scholars, in the event you need a definition of canon).

And yes, the Woolworth building and the Singer building are Modern Architecture. They just donit seem so to you because they are decked out in historical drag. I mean, come on, just how many elevators did Gothic and Second Empire Architects build?

And Dr Kay, you can save your venom for other more worthy adversaries.

I do know what I am writing about.

By any truly academic measure of things, Modernism in architecture began shortly after the Industrail Revolution n youive heard of it Iim sure, even if you havenit read about it.

It began more than one hundred years ago. And even if you are not about to accept the opinions of people who assuredly know much, much more than you do, it is relatively common to cite the Crystal Palace in London to be the very first large scale Modern Building.

England is a country across the Atlantic Ocean.

London is a city in England.

The building was built in 1851 n more than one hundred years ago, if my math is correct n and it was designed by a structural engineer.

Yes, this argument over modern is great but remember we are talking about infill in urban neighborhoods.

This argument is about how we handle car parking and pedestrians. This argument is about how we reknit Buffalo with quality designs, quality materials, details and craftsmanship that adds to the quality of life.

AND HERE IS SOMETHING SOBERING TO BRING EVERYONE BACK TO WHATS IMPORTANT! BROWSING UPSTATE NEWSPAPERS CAME AN ARTICLE IN THE DEMOCRAT&CHRONICLE THAT ROCHESTER HAS MORE YOUTH THAN ANY OTHER UPSTATE CITY. http://www.democratandchronicle.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060816/NEWS01/608160367

Now what we are arguing about is how to reknit our economy and our communities so that the next generation of Buffalonians wants to work, live and raise their kids here. Get that!

(Am I the only one that wants the original facade returned to the Hengerers building on Main Street yet even I digress in this comment. Yes, cities were safer...you could leave baby carriages outside of stores while you shopped and walk the streets at night...conversely cities were run by dirty coal and kids were raised on the streets....food was more bland but healthier. It was a different world. The big difference between the American/German design and LeCorb was American/German design could blend with the urban ... while LeCorbusier's designs justified large swaths of demolition called urban renewal.)

NOW CAN WE TALK ABOUT BUFFALO, OUR ECONOMY, OUR NEIGHBORHOODS AND OUR KIDS?

Yes, this argument over modern is great but remember we are talking about infill in urban neighborhoods.

This argument is about how we handle car parking and pedestrians. This argument is about how we reknit Buffalo with quality designs, quality materials, details and craftsmanship that adds to the quality of life.

AND HERE IS SOMETHING SOBERING TO BRING EVERYONE BACK TO WHATS IMPORTANT! BROWSING UPSTATE NEWSPAPERS CAME AN ARTICLE IN THE DEMOCRAT&CHRONICLE THAT ROCHESTER HAS MORE YOUTH THAN ANY OTHER UPSTATE CITY. http://www.democratandchronicle.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060816/NEWS01/608160367

Now what we are arguing about is how to reknit our economy and our communities so that the next generation of Buffalonians wants to work, live and raise their kids here. Get that!

(Am I the only one that wants the original facade returned to the Hengerers building on Main Street yet even I digress in this comment. Yes, cities were safer...you could leave baby carriages outside of stores while you shopped and walk the streets at night...conversely cities were run by dirty coal and kids were raised on the streets....food was more bland but healthier. It was a different world. The big difference between the American/German design and LeCorb was American/German design could blend with the urban ... while LeCorbusier's designs justified large swaths of demolition called urban renewal.)

NOW CAN WE TALK ABOUT BUFFALO, OUR ECONOMY, OUR NEIGHBORHOODS AND OUR KIDS?

ah, just as I expected. My dislike of "modern" fraud is branded as "venom", and something so UTTERLY UNRELATED as woven wire rope is somehow sucked into "modern architecture". Anyone who doesn't suck-up the LIES of those who cannot think for themselves must be ignorant, of course. Odd that most private homes look nothing like "modern" anything, isn't it? That is the failure of "modernism": no adaptation to real life. People do not want to live in a can, or a globe, or a machine.

You know how I appreciate life? The way it CAN be, if I make it so. I listen to the music I love, I prepare the food I like ( and can hardly believe that Steel even brought that up. Do you really let "fashion" tell you what to EAT? Have you no taste of your own?)

Pio, a bank of elevators inside the Woolworth Building does NOT allow you to claim it as a "modern" design on the outside. Of course it has elevators; who the *** would climb 50 flights to an office? It also has electric lights; is EVERY building with electric lights "Modern"? If a 2006 building reverts to gas lights, does that mean it was built in 1875?

Architecture and architects have one purpose: to cater to the desires of clients, in a way which guarantees safety, utility, and (one hopes) beauty. You are not artists, you are artisans.

Any semi-literate citizen can get a degree in architecture from a state university such as SUNYAB, unfortunately. Any "pio" can quote from a few web sites to prove a very misguided point, too. Neither means than the average person is well served by contemporary buildings. The truly unfortunate effect of "Starchitects" is that they encourage GOOD architects to imitate them, making for bad buildings, bad reputations, and an unhappy public.

As I said earlier today: "weird is good, nice is bad, and if you please normal people, you are a failure". The same applies to concert music, painting, and sculpture in 2006. Happiness is dead to "artists" in general, but there are exceptions, and (anti-"sadly" enough) I am happy to encounter them.

Now, let me go cook some of my great-grandmothers' recipes, so I can be "disappointed" by the unModern flavors of wheat flour, sugar, eggs, spices, and other ungodly horrors of the pre-Gehry world of life. hah.

ps- Spelling is all, to me - grammar is one thing, typing mistakes another, but nonwords such as "fait" only seal my opinion about semi-literate monkeys, getting degrees at State universities. If you don't know English, why do you have ANY degree from New York?? I wish I could be nicer, but Steel does not warrant kindness; he only proves he is subordinate to the goons who graded his acceptance of their "teaching". If he can come up with his own ideas, maybe some respect will follow.

Dr Kay-

What does the Dr stand for - Dumb Reactionary? Doesn't Read?

Fait is a word, originally Latin, taken over into French, in such phrases as fait accompli. This term is currently found in every decent dictionary - you know, that big book with all the words in it.

Here is a definition for you. You might get someone to help you understand it.

Fait accompli comes from the French, literally meaning "accomplished fact": fait, from Latin factum, "a thing done," from factus, past participle of facere, "to make or do" + accompli, past participle of accomplir, from Latin ad- + complere, "to fill up, to complete," from com- + plere, "to fill."

Now please stop spewing venom and insulting someone who has put a lot of time trying to bring out the positive in Buffalo - something you are certainly not capable of.

P.S. I doubt respect from you has very little worth.

Dr Kay

Excuse me. I meant to say that earning your respect has very little worth. Sorry for the error in grammar and syntax, and any confusion it might have caused.

Well this conversation has become a Titanic.

DrKay,

Some points to be made.

The food comment was started by you, not me.

There is no such word as inonwordi. You might try to avoid use of that group of letters in the future since such use might offend your sensibilities.

I have made no insults on here and hope that others would not as well. That kind of talk does not add to the conversation about architecture. Anger hatred and demeaning comments are boring and are not in keeping with the Buffalorising.com mission.

I received a great education form SUNY. I recommend it to anyone. Its cheap too! Perhaps since you have tried denigrating that institution you could enlighten us with knowledge of your educational background.

OeOeOeOeOeOeOeOeOeOeOeOe.

Now, getting back to architecture, most private homes are not in a historic style either. They are in some kind of strange ideveloper / Home Depot / great roomi style that fits no period and is usually lacking in any kind of quality of space and urbanism. As a matter of fact most houses built today are guilty of all the ills you attribute to modernism. Come to think of it, if we did not build so many houses in the current sprawl style manner we probably would not need so much parking and our cities would not be so decimated with parking lots and highways. By the wayOehighwaysOe.not designed by architects.

Exactly what does this architectural debate have to do with Buffalo's economy and how best to serve the pedestrian the customer and the resident through excellence in urban architecture.

Its about quality design, quality materials, quality details, convenience, safety and compatibility with the customer and the resident that makes a neighborhood livable. The debate is moot because when a design is from the 1800s brick warehouses to the 19th century international style to the 21st centry glass crystaline towers....quality designs are universal and bad designs are seemingly ubiquitous because their cheap....but the difference is that quality designs have a magnifying effect on the livability of the community while cheap designs have a deleterious effect.

Your arguing about style...when your underlying concerns are in agreement...regarding substance. What design characteristics best serves the community!