The Smith House by Richard Meier turned 50 years old last year. In celebration of that, photographer Mike Schwartz took these photographs. And just recently they were published in Surface Magazine along with an interview of both Meier and Chuck Smith. Smith’s mother commissioned the house (completed in 1967) and he was 8 years old when the family moved in.

My favorite comment in the article is this one by Smith:

“Don’t throw balls in the house, and don’t touch the walls.” I must have heard “don’t touch the walls” three or four times a day. That said, there’s a crack in one of the windows where I shot it with a BB gun. We got away with some things.

Modern architecture was supposed to be a perfectly engineered machine for living. But I guess living didn’t include touching the walls or shooting BB guns in the house.

My favorite photos – both from Mike Schwartz – are these two:

They feel like inversions of each other. The first one (day shot) is all about the views outward. Meier also talks about how the white on white helps to enhance this experience. The second one (night shot) turns the house inward on itself. Smith talks about how at night the view disappears and all you’re left with is your own reflection.

I also like how the paint is flaking on the fireplace, which by the way, is perfectly on axis with the home’s entry. It makes you work a little bit for the view. Apparently keeping the paint on was a problem since day one. But it gives the house – which is otherwise seemingly perfect – a bit of a patina. 

However, I’m guessing that Meier would prefer the paint stay on.

Whenever I’m not sure what to write about, I just read. That’s one of the big benefits of daily blogging – it forces me to do that.

This morning I stumbled upon the blog of Jed Kolko. Jed is an economist and, up until 2015, he was Chief Economist and VP of Analytics at Trulia.

His most recent post argues – naturally with lots of data and charts – that for all of our talk of (re)urbanization, it’s actually a specific subset of the population that is far more likely to be have urbanized between 2000 and 2014: the young, rich, childless, and white. (Note: His post is talking specifically about U.S. cities.) 

Below are a few of his charts. 

In all cases, the x-axis represents % change in urban living between 2000 and 2014. All of the data is from Public Use Microdata Samples (PUMS) - 2000 decennial Census and from the 2014 one-year American Community Survey (ACS).

Here is age:

Household income:

Education and children:

And here is race/ethnicity:

Some buildings should be torn down. And others should not be. The challenge, sometimes, is figuring out which is which. But when a great building is torn down, I get upset. 

I get upset because good architecture should represent the place and era in which it was built. This means that, in a lot of cases, it’ll never be replicated. When it’s gone, it’s gone.

Take for example the old Penn Station in New York City. Designed by renowned architectural firm McKim, Mead, and White, the station opened in 1910 and was an iconic Beaux-Arts structure. Here’s an historic photo:

In 1963 the building was demolished. It was eventually replaced with a building that, I think most people today would agree, is quite awful. And while it did teach New York City a lesson about historic preservation, the loss still sucks.

Ultimately I think that preservation is about balance. I’m obviously pro-development but, at the same time, I don’t believe in erasing our history.