Well, these developments will indeed be interesting to follow. I see some encouraging points...

1) If built as currently envisioned overnight tonight and they appeared tomorrow, they certainly wouldn't be bad, and even Brussat admits each has their admirable and interesting points. I actually think both would continue the mixed modern/traditional trend of the One Citizens (a buildings which, contrary to many, I happen to like) nicely.

2) With the mall and all the hotels there, having a "glitzy" street to contrast the old world Providence just blocks away might be a good thing... Now if we could only transform W

3) With the inevitable design presentations, proposals, reviews, etc., these designs will inevitably evolve and improve.

All good things... I'm not sure where I fall quite yet... I'm not sure all of Providence needs to look traditional (aren't we glad for the skyscrapers on Washington?), just "appealing."

Garris

PS: If everyone hasn't checked out Cotuit's posts on UrbanPlanet.org, check now. Nice work, man! You've got the kind of Providence development map that Bil needs to link to! Better yet, would you let him use it? Also, some suggestions for it... Put a "last updated," "start construction est," "end construction est" dates on there! Then it would be perfect. You might want to add the RI Philharmonic's proposed music school in Wayland Square to your list too. Given the >200 students that would be there and the size of the building to be renovated, it's worth listing I think...

I happen to like Citizens too (I'd like it a bit more if it were a bit taller though). I think we haven't seen enough of any of the proposed designs fro Capital Centre to pass much of a judgement on them.

The architect picked for GTECH scares me in that he seems to have a very heavily suburban office office park pedigree. Hopefully this is the opportunity he's been hoping for so that he can show his real abilities.

Garris, you're too kind, that development map could be so much better. I really haven't updated that thread in a while (it has old Parcel 2 designs on it), but RI Philharmonic should be added. I'd like to get out and take some pics of the developments and really update it.

Anyone is free to draw from anything posted there.

Garris, you make a good and plausible point that would be perfectly valid in almost any other American city. I concede that both the GTECH and Intercontinental projects could conceivably be done well, and create at least a bit of a pleasing environment at Waterplace. My theory, however, is that this would only serve to make Providence like other U.S. cities, undermining (really, in this case, more like destroying) its opportunity to be more like the best European cities. Why not try to make Providence a unique city on the American urban landscape, not just another version (occasionally pleasant but often deplorable) of the typical hodge-podge of the American city?
I would also agree that Providence should have a venue where modern architecture can have a free hand, to see what kind of an environment it can produce here. But given the progress represented by the Westin, the mall and the Marriott Courtyard toward the European model, why throw that away by not continuing in the same direction? True, One Citizens Plaza cannot be undone, but most of the regrettable buildings of the early history of Capital Center can be largely blocked from view. What is needed is what I like to call (in my obnoxiously derisive way) is a "sandbox for the modernists" - and I would put it, perhaps, along the Narragansett Landing (beyond the Old Harbor District created by relocating Route 195). NL is one of the three "new cities" proposed by Cianci several years before he left office. Great place for modernism! Do it there, not in Capital Center! However, when I first proposed a "sandbox for the modernists" in another neighborhood long ago, I friend of mine said, "Why inflict it on us?"
Finally, I agree with you on our modern towers in the Financial District. But they work with our older skyscrapers precisely because they are modest, even boring, in their aspirations. I figure that if each were replaced by skyscrapers of the sort designed in the 20s or 30s in New York, our skyline would be even more impressive than it is now - a lot more.
Cotuit, you also make a couple of very good points. Citizens should be taller, but it also should not be sited there. It is too much a sore thumb. (I call it the Darth Vader Building.) I agree about the GTECH architect - his work is extremely suburban - for which he can excuse himself, I suppose, by asserting that it is IN THE SUBURBS!
Must fly to work. Bil, this is a GREAT SITE!
- Dave

(Warning: long post!)

Mr. Brussat,

Welcome to the blog! You make some extremely interesting (and extremely welcome) comments. From what I gather, you had three key points:

1) Providence has an opportunity to be different from other cities and less of a "hodge-podge."

2) Modernism should have its own place in a district for it.

3) Our skyscrapers are good, but certainly could have been better.

Before I comment on your points in turn, I wish to explain my current perspective. In addition to being about to move to Providence (where I've lived very briefly before) from a truly banal mid-sized city (Rochester, MN) and being near a wonderful large city (the Twin Cities), I've just recently visited several large cities within one year's time (NYC, Chicago, Vancouver, San Francisco, Honolulu, Boston, Philadelphia, Phoenix/Scottsdale, Portland, Seattle) and several medium sized cities as well (Madison, Duluth, Worcester, Ann Arbor, and White Plains as well as several additional useless Midwestern cities I can't recall right now).

What has my lesson been from these travels? Lession one: what separates the best cities from the worst isn't actually architecture, but urban layout, density, and geography. For example, San Francisco and Madison, WI actually have many buildings of varing ages with similar architectural flavors. Why does SF rock while Madison is so blah? Well, SF puts their buildings close together in interesting and hilly patterns that are pedestrian friendly while Madison is a flat, bland, lifeless grid with the usual Midwestern automotive pattern of putting everything as far away from each other as possible. Same architecture, totally different result. Now, architecture *can* kill a city (Phoenix, stand up and take a bow!), but it's usually the pedestrian friendly layout of a city that will make it great, even trumping uninteresting architecture (Portland, for example).

Lession two: The newest modernism trends can work really well. Now, I'm no modernist fan by nature. My undergraduate alma matter, Yale University, has spent tens (hundreds?) of millions to reverse the damage modernism did to the campus in the 60's and 70's. However, two of the cities I've visited, Vancouver and Chicago, have striking amounts of really *good* new modernist architecture going on right now (as does NYC as well, to a lesser extent). Seeing that applied has restored my faith that modern can be done well while living harmoniously with its neighbors.

Lession three: *All* US cities, the best and worst, are all a "hodge-podge" of styles. In the best cities (NYC, Boston, Chicago, Vancouver, SF, Minneapolis/St Paul, and maybe Phily) the representatives of each style is done *well* and those styles play off one another to create a dynamic urban landscape. Several excellent Twin Cities developments being done now purposefully mix styles in the same blocks to try to create what NYC and Chicago have done organically over time.

Now, from that perspective, I tackle your points:

1) Actually, Providence already isn't that different from most US cities, and devouring the excellent AIA/PPS Providence architecture guide from cover to cover has reinforced for me that the city is already a hodge-podge of styles. The difference between Providence and the other cities is that Providence has little *bad* architecture, from the colonial of Benefit Street to the post-modernism of the Westin. I find the contrast between Thomas Street and the Citizens plaza exciting, the contrast between the excellent grey cubist building (sorry, don't remember the name) and the Market Place thrilling, the contrasts between the PPAC and J&W, and all of the other scenes fascinating.

Providence already has great thing going for it. It has a great layout, wonderful geography, and definable "districts" and neighborhoods. The Waterplace area is, in its layout, not very dense or urban in the first place, arguably a mistake. It's more like a huge plaza. Now, I would love it to look like the cover of "Metropolis," but the only way for that to happen is for the city or state to develop the whole thing with one plan. Instead, we have individuals doing so, also arguably a mistake. When you having competing private development interests (condos, HQ's, hotels, malls, etc.) all competing for that same space, it's impossible to get uniformity. That flaw in the process out there, I'd rather have the remaining developments just be excellent examples of whatever they are, and drive the contrast. The only way they should be uniform is being relentlessly pedestrian and relentlessly accessable (two things the Mall, the Westin, and the Marriott Courtyard aren't, actually).

Now, having been to all these other cities recently, I'm actually of the opinion that making every building look like the RI capital (ex RI Credit Union) or be post-modernist Georgian or "period" (Mall, Westin, Convention Center, hotels), while very nice, has run its course in Providence and is "enough." I especially think the Convention Center's scaling of the traditional elements is off. I really think it's time for something different along the remaining parcels. It should be an attractive, wonderful, pedestrian-friendly version of whatever "different" it is, but different nevertheless. Look at Copley Square in Boston. Lots of different old and new styles together, and they work beautifully. Even most "old" style European cities are a collection of styles right now, even modernist. What makes them work is their layout.

Let's fight not for a certain style now in Waterplace, but *good* architecture of whatever style is chosen.

2) I don't think we need a "moderist" district for the same reason I don't want an entire post-modern or Federalist District. I think clustering architecture together like that purposefully gives banal, cartoonish results. Look at all the neo-Federalist stuff in Washington D.C. that everyone hates so much (ex: the Reagan Building). It is contrived, and looks contrived. Now, this "clustering" can work if done in an isolated area. Yale, again for example, built it's entire campus at first to look like Oxford, and in a closed off campus, it works. Brown built their entire campus at first to look like, well, Harvard, I guess, and it works too. However, New Haven benefits from not looking like Yale just as Providence benefits from not looking like Brown. The contrasts work. I don't think the same "clusting" ethic works for an urban space, however, unless it's an isolated area, which Waterplace isn't.

3) Well, yes, Providence's skyscrapers certainly could be better. Citizen's should be taller, as should several other buildings in the city. We also need a tall building or two to fill skyline vacancies between the cluster on Washington and the Biltmore, and the Biltmore and the Westin. Maybe the one (maybe?) going into the old Fogarty spot would do that?

Whew! That's it! Before I come to Providence to start my medical fellowship in July at RIH, I have several weeks of vacation, and am reading lots of urbanism books right now, so I've been thinking about this (way) more than I probably should and, unlike Mr. Brussat, don't have a job to run off to until July 1 :-). Have a good day and weekend everyone and, please, open fire on my opinions!

Garris

Yikes! I had no idea these comments sections would be so lively off the bat!

I like the idea of a modernist style district (if we have to have one at all, that is), but I'd let South Providence off the hook. What about the Station District at the airport? How striking it would be for visitors to arrive by plane and behold a futuristic cityscape, only to hop a train or a cab and be transported to the best collection of unblemished traditional arcitecture in America? Talk about making an impression.

Warwick'ers are already desensitized to office parks and alienating glass buildings, I'm sure they'd love it (while protesting airport expansion, of course).

Besides, at the rate the station district is going now it will be the late 22nd century before anything really gets built over there...

Garris, you make the case I write against week in and week out better than anyone here in Providence has done thus far. If I am not reading incorrectly, your major points are that the best American cities have mixtures of the old and new that work very well; that the hodge podge already exists in Providence, and that doing the hodge podge well is more attractive an option than doing clusters of traditional (or modern) buildings.
On the first and second points I cannot disagree. On the third point, I do disagree, in general but more specifically in the case of Providence.
While I am aware that the Westin, the Marriott and the mall are flawed as traditional buildings, they do demonstrate that mediocre traditionalism is less unpleasant than mediocre modernism. Because they rely on precedent, mediocre architects working in traditional vernaculars can produce pleasant buildings, whereas the tedium or trashiness of buildings by mediocre modernists is much more painful to behold. Quality modernism requires a degree of genius or inspiration that quality traditionalism does not.
Surely you don't believe that Paris is banal and cartoonish. Don't fall for the bogus idea that architecture built today must be "of its time." No great city has been built on such a principle. Modernists use it because the idea has a shimmering surface plausibility that is hard for most people to contradict. The fact is that while traditional architecture is timeless, modernism - which buys into its own bogus dogma - is dated instantly.
Here in Providence, even buildings by the top modernists are generally unsatisfactory, as even the modernists around here admit. Read your PPS/AIA guide closely, Garris. I don't think Providence wants to wait for more such geniuses to show up here and pray they did not get out of the wrong side of the bed.
Again, I fall back on my desire to see, in Providence, a different city, a city that can slowly but surely submerge its hodge podge in a way that most cities have no hope of doing. For example, developer Buff Chace is killing a boring 1949 brick building in the Downcity area and replacing it with a parking garage flanked by condos of traditional style. True, the Citizens may be with us for a long time (blocking the view of the State House from downriver), but the rise of traditional buildings on its flanks will allow it to do what it does best - provide a striking contrast. So do it, and have done! Obviously, I do not want all buildings in Providence to be the same style, and nobody is proposing that. The degree of diversity within traditional vernacular is far greater than in the modern vernacular (if that is not a contradiction in terms). And in the old commercial district of Washington, and along Pennsylvania Avenue (including the Reagan Building), traditional architecture is bringing a degree of beauty to the capital, where I grew up, that is a joy to behold. We can do that in Providence, but not if we cross our fingers and hope that mediocre modernists of the sort that are likely to be hired to work in Capital Center do not trash the place up too badly.
I see I am going on. You make a strong case, but I don't believe it works for Providence if one wants Providence to be a cut above, a unique American city, rather than to follow the many cities heading down the sad side of the curve of decline in civic arts. Best not to rely too heavily on genius. Let's build more of the buildings we know we love, and that we have a long history of building. That, Garris, is the way Providence should go.
- David Brussat

David,

Outstanding post, one that is actually a far more cohesive and compelling argument (in my opinion) than many of your otherwise excellent articles of a similar tone. It's quite hard to disagree with the points you make, and in fact, I will agree with you on several principles...

1) I actually would *prefer* that Providence's upcoming developments stick to traditional architecture. I'm not sure how realistic it is considering the development types (corporate HQ and high rise condo)... Given that, I just want the best architecture possible...

2) I definitely agree that mediocre traditionalism is much better than mediocre modernism, which admittedly does require an above average talent...

3) I definitely don't think Paris is banal. We'll disagree about the Reagan building (maybe after another 20 or 30 years of "maturing," the building will look less derivative, but that actually proves your point perfectly :-) ). I still think parts of Boston are just trying too hard to feel "traditional Boston," and thus the city feels less, um, authentic (yeah, that's the word) to me than NYC, Phily, Chicago, DC, etc...

4) I agree that modern architecture has not had a sterling run in Providence...

I yesterday went to photograph the old Minnesota river town of Red Wing, population 10,000-ish or so, famous for Red Wing shoes and pottery (part of my farewell tour of the Midwest prior to moving to Providence... I'll post my pics if anyone is interested). Anything built after about WWII or so was terrible (in part because the town's relative prosperity plummeted and has only recently recovered). I don't think I photographed anything built after 1940. Seeing this town in such close proximity to reading your post prompted some thinking. I'm sure when their public library, for example, was built back in the 1960's, it's then progressive design was celebrated. Now, it's just old, uninspired, and, well, ugly... When I was in Vancouver, I openly wondered if the excellent (in my opinion) modern towers will just look dated in about 30 years...

My amateur understanding is that most urban architecture of the last 300 years or so, including what was considered architecture "of their times," was actually never really driven by trends originating in their eras, but was instead inspired by archeological digs, often of Greco-Roman and medieval structures. So, my understanding is that only in the last 80-100 years has urban architecture been driven by contemporary trends of their times.

So, perhaps my yearning for pleasant, contextual, and interesting contemporary architecture in Providence, or anywhere else, for that matter, is driven by my hope and wish that there has to be something else appealing to the human eye besides Colonial, Federal, Renaissance, Gothic, Greco-Roman, etc. styles and their endless smoothed-over recycling and regurgitation. Have we exhausted our G-d given architectural abilities? Is there nothing else pleasant that humanity is capable of designing?

That said, I have some questions for you...

1) If the Providence Capital design committees are so pro-modern, how did all of the other recent post-modern traditionalist designs (mall, hotels, etc.) happen? Why the shift away from that now and why are there no laws on the books regarding the acceptable styles of developments there?

2) What is your opinion of the proposed Chase structure at RISD?

3) If we want to fight for more traditionalist architecture in these proposals in Providence, are there advocacy groups we can put our names, efforts, and donations to?

4) What have you thought of photos of many of the newly designed towers in Europe and, especially, Asia?

Garris

Re: #3 - Sounds like a job for the URBlog...

Garris - Sorry for the delay in answering your questions. The first is the best. If the Capital Center Commission (and its design review panel) is so pro-modernist, why have the most recently built projects been so good (that is, traditional, historical, neoclassical )? The answer is that while the commissioners lack aesthetic sensitivity to the public taste, the developers do not - or at least not anywhere near to the same degree. The developers want to make money on their projects, and don't really care about the design - yet are less inclined to buck public taste than the panel members, who are less interested in making money than in satisfying their own sense of what the design elites they rub shoulders with will think of the proposals they superintend. Of course, not all the panel members are the same, but they tend to follow, intellectually, in the wake of the strongest member, Derek Bradford, the arch-modernist RISD professor who is the only member who has a genuine grounding in architecture. The other members are more or less tentative in their outlook. Only one member, of eight (I think) expresses any tendency toward traditional design. He is Barry Fain, whose family owns a rug store, and who is the publisher of Providence Monthly and the East Side Monthly. Although he provides a very slight counterbalance to Bradford, he is too sensitive to his own limited knowledge of the field. I wish other members with even smaller grasp of architecture had similar modesty. As I say, most of the members are interested in getting something built, and seem unwilling to do more than nag a developer who proposes a traditional building - except, of course, for Bradford. The Westin Hotel (1994) caught the tail end of '80s neoclassical movement that I hope is not yet dead; Providence Place is traditional in design, I think, because it was too close to the State House to do anything else, and the panel knew it; and the Marriott Courtyard was conceived as part of a complex that is traditional. In all of these cases, the panel has tried to diminish the exuberence (such as it is) of the classicism proposed; in the case of the Westin, Bradford wanted to slice the gables off the top and have a flat roof. The Marriott and the mall are much tut-tutted by local modernists. I do not know why the developers of the latest projects - GTECH on Parcel 9 and Intercontinental on Parcel 2 - have proposed such modernist designs. GTECH apparently believes that, as an information technology company, something glitzy is appropriate. (In fact, GTECH is a company that bribes state and national governments to let it suck money from the pockets of citizens who can least afford to lose it to the video slots.) As for the reason why Intercontinental abandoned a reasonably decent design with a similar program (by Eastman Pierce, which sold the rights to the project after the design had been approved by the CCC), go figure. Perhaps one of the principals is a modernist himself: In fact, he said as much at an early workshop, as I reported (shuddering) in my column. I guess he would rather make an aesthetic statement than make money. Well, I guess I'd better get on to the other questions.
I think the proposed RISD project on North Main Street, formerly called the RISD Center but now the Chace Center (for the Chace family, which made a large donation; the Chaces are funding most of the projects in the Downcity section of downtown; Buff Chace is my own landlord in the Smith Building), sucks bigtime. It bears not the slightest relationship to its very historic context. If built, it will stick out like a sore thumb. Rafael Moneo, the architect, is a Spaniard with a reputation for building in historic contexts, but notice that this rep does not necessarily mean that he respects the historic contexts he builds in. That is key.
There are no advocacy groups that push for traditional architecture in this place whose sense of place exists because there is so much traditional architecture (and so little modern architecture). The Providence Preservation Society is about as aesthetically correct as they come: They love old buildings but shrink from building new ones that respect the principles that make the old ones lovely and worthy of preservation. If more people who joined the PPS were to raise a ruckus with members of the board, that could change, I suppose. PPS is looking for a new director, and maybe one who respects the reasons why most people join preservation societies will be found. They are looking for someone who is a good fundraiser rather than a thnker of big architectural thoughts, so there is hope, but I am not holding my breath. A less well known organization called Preserve Rhode Island has a director who understands but her organization is small and underfunded.
I can't think of any newly designed towers in Europe or Asia worth spit. The modernists will eventually destroy the beauty of Europe if they are allowed to - and only Prince Charles seems to be lifting a finger (dreadfully weaker since Diana's death) to stop it. In the Third World, nations that broke away from the imperialist yoke half a century ago are sitting back as imperialist bad taste destroys the cultural patrimony of their great cities. Don't have the foggiest idea why.
Well, Garris, I hope this will slake your thist for wisdom for a while!
- Dave Brussat

This whole traditional vs. modern argument is bizarre to me. The term "modern" seems to have become a slur for any architecture that doesn't look like it's from another century or is just outright bad.

It also appears that the only voices we hear on this topic are from this "it needs brick or it sucks" camp. These architecture "purists" who are pushing for "traditional" design are unknowingly lobbying for mediocrity. I think that the Marriott, the Westin and Center Place are all examples of this mediocrity. All of these projects could have been spectacular, and all were wasted opportunities. Or in the case of Center Place, an eyesore.

Providence has a vibrant urban fabric that would only be enhanced by the addition of well-designed, forward-thinking projects. Not just architecture, but all design should be approached with an understanding of the past, but with both feet planted firmly in the present. Materials, tastes and needs evolve, and if a design is implemented with integrity, the building/product is guaranteed to have lasting power.

There is good and bad architecture in every decade. It seems that what the "purists" are really looking for is an adherence to traditional design principles: shape, proportion, scale, line, texture, etc. A building doesn't have to be a hollow echo of the past in order to uphold these principles.

Moneo designed the new LA Cathedral which is absolutely awful. I think the RISD Center is ugly, it will be made of horizontal bricks and a translucent tupperware material.

Providence needs to improve streets for pedestrians big time. I dont think I have crossed at one crosswalk where the crosswalk signal actually works. Memorial Blvd cant be much better than the old elevated railway tracks in terms of the wall it creates downtown. Traffic calming is needed big time. Memorial Blvd really cuts the capital center away from downtown with its heavy volume of high speed traffic.

Thanks Bascule, those are my thoughts exactly. These forums often devolve into the simple dichotomous argument you so succinctly summed up. Modern architecture is not synonymous with bad architecture and it can coexist quite harmoniously with the historic fabric of our fine city. The Chace Center that pdxstreetcar seems to hate so much is one example of this. It is a very well-behaved addition to RISD's already fine collection of excellent buildings (most of them historic) along Main. It is consistent with traditional design principles without being a mediocre duplication like the Marriott. (Not to mention it brings a much needed landmark to the Market Square view corridor.)