Witold Rybczynski wrote on his blog this week about historic preservation. He cites a number of reasons for why one might want to renovate, restore, and preserve an old building. But he also provides a reason for why one might not want to renovate, restore, and preserve an old building.

“What seems to me a less compelling reason is the idea that a building should be preserved simply because it is representative of a previous period or architectural fashion. In architecture, as in many human endeavors, not all periods are equally admirable; there are ups and downs.”

I thought this was an interesting comment because it reinforces the idea that this is a fairly subjective exercise. One of his reasons for preserving a building is that it might be particularly beautiful or represent some sort of human achievement. But beautiful to whom?

Similarly, who determines which architectural period or fashion is an up or a down? Is brutalist architecture worth preserving or is it not yet old enough to have perceived value? Will it ever be widely admired? And is there really an architectural cycle?

Many of us can probably agree that New York City’s original Penn Station by McKim, Mead and White was a tragic loss. But I am sure that many of us will also disagree on what are considered to be the most admirable periods of architectural fashion.

I promise that this post won’t be all about laneways.

This afternoon Erin Davis of Torontoist published a post called: Are Laneway Suites a Solution to Toronto’s Housing Crisis?

There’s a quote in it from yours truly:

Brandon Donnelly, a 34-year-old real estate developer, has submitted plans to the City to build a laneway home behind the house he owns in the St. Clair Avenue and Dufferin Street area. “Look, nobody is claiming that laneway housing is going to solve all of our affordable housing woes. But it will do two important things. One, it will unlock new ground-related housing, which is precisely the kind of housing that we’re no longer able to build at scale. And two, it will create additional rental housing,” says Donnelly.

But I particularly like this one from Christopher Hume – urban affairs columnist at the Toronto Star:

“But the City has all kinds of rules against it—‘You can’t do it for this reason, you can’t do it for that reason; oh no, we can’t have that!’ Why? Says who and for what reason?

This morning my friend Alex Bozikovic also published a piece on Toronto’s new 1.75km of public space under the Gardiner Expressway called The Bentway. It’s currently under construction and will open this winter.

The timing of his article is actually quite serendipitous because I was in the area last night and as I walked past the construction site I couldn’t help but think to myself: “This is going to be absolutely brilliant once it’s done. Complete game changer for the area.”

My point with these two examples is that in both cases we are rethinking – or at least trying to rethink – neglected urban spaces. It’s about finding value where no additional value was thought to be found. And I love that.

Conventional wisdom has told us that our laneways and the spaces under our elevated Gardiner Expressway are not spaces to be celebrated. They are utilitarian at best and they are to be completely ignored at worst.

But when The Bentway opens this winter I have no doubt in my mind that it will prove conventional wisdom entirely wrong. Who wants to hang out under an elevated highway? Watch the entire city. 

One day I believe that we will also look back on our laneways just as we look back at the The Bentway before it became The Bentway. We will ask ourselves: How did we overlook this for so long?

Image: PUBLIC WORK via the Globe and Mail

Back in 2014, Witold Rybczynski (who taught at Penn while I was there) wrote an article in The New York Times Style Magazine called The Franchising of Architecture. In it, he argued against the trend of “starchitecture.” 

Here’s an excerpt:

“Architecture, however, is a social art, rather than a personal one, a reflection of a society and its values rather than a medium of individual expression. So it’s a problem when the prevailing trend is one of franchises, particularly those of the globe-trotters: Renzo, Rem, Zaha and Frank. It’s exciting to bring high-powered architects in from outside. It flatters a city’s sense of self-importance, and fosters the perception of a place as a creative hotbed. But in the long run it’s wiser to nurture local talent; instead of starchitects, locatects.”

Following this, James Russell (a longtime architecture critic) wrote a searing rebuttal called The Stupid Starchitect Debate. He called Witold’s story a piece of utter laziness and urged us to stop whining about celebrity architecture.

Here’s an excerpt:

“Celebrity architecture is not a franchise (McDonalds is a franchise), but branding. Branding is repellently ubiquitous, and it is pure romanticism to think architecture can escape a trend that so powerfully guides spending. A friend became a museum director in part because building a new building was part of the job. I thought he would bring up an energetic young local talent, but he ended up with an international big name because, he said, only the stars would bring in the donors. That’s sad, but emblematic of an era when private wealth builds the cultural facilities the public won’t pay for. That’s why celebrity architects are brands—a title none of them sought, though all are adept at exploiting. Even wealthy, sophisticated trustees like to bask in the glow of a name that’s got cachet, rather than look hard for someone with obvious talent but who is not well known.”

This is a fascinating debate. And I would be curious to hear your thoughts in the comment section below.

My own view is that, yes, it is wonderfully romantic to think that we can go back to a period of time when London architecture was designed only by English architects, Paris architecture designed only by French architects, and so on. But the world has changed. The genie is out of the bottle on that one.

I also don’t think that brand needs to be a dirty word in the context of architecture. There’s value in brand equity. And everything can be construed as a brand. This blog is part of my personal brand. That’s our world.

The problem I have with this line of thinking is when architecture gets reduced to style, to form, to a veneer. Architecture is an opportunity to solve problems and respond to real (including local) constraints. That also creates value – arguably much more value. And I don’t believe that only “locatects” have the ability to respond to that challenge.

There’s so much more that can be said about this topic.