Sarasota Architectural Foundation Invite

The SARASOTA ARCHITECTURAL FOUNDATION in association with SCOPE and the SARASOTA COUNTY ARTS COUNCIL presents:

Revive Rudolph's Riverview –
Campaign For Preservation & Recommended Adaptive Use Design

When: Thursday, November 29th, 2007
Time: 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.
Where: Roskamp Center for the Arts & Humanity
1226 N. Tamiami Trail, Sarasota

SAF will discuss the campaign for preserving Paul Rudolph's Riverview High School, including a showing of the Metropolis film Site Specific.

Mark Smith, AIA FL President and member of the Revive Rudolph’s Riverview Committee will discuss the program.

The team that submitted the recommended adaptive use design – RMJM Hillier with Diane Lewis Architect and Beckelman+ Capalino, LLC, New York, NY, with Seibert Architects, Sarasota, FL – will present their proposal for the Riverview Music Quadrangle.

There will also be a display of the proposals by the other three finalist teams:
Mack Scogin Merrill Elam Architects, Atlanta, GA, in association with John McAslan + Partners, London; Mark S. Kauffman, Developer, The ADP Group, Architects, Sarasota, FL; and The Folsom Group and TOTeMS Architecture, Inc. Sarasota, FL.

This event is free and open to the public.

If you have any questions, please contact:
Samantha Allard
Sarasota Architectural Foundation
941.365.4723
www.sarasotaarchitecturalfoundation.org

Rudolph's Riverview Closer to Being Saved

Harold Bubil has commented on progress made this last week toward saving the Paul Rudolph designed Riverview high School. The school board is in the process of rebuilding the entire campus, but has allowed proposals for saving the Rudolph building if the cost is not increased and the timetable is not delayed.

Harold's column says in part:

There's still a long way to go, but the effort to save the Paul Rudolph-designed buildings at Riverview High took a big step this week.

The Sarasota Architectural Foundation's Revive Rudolph's Riverview committee presented proposals to the Sarasota County School Board, which is building a new complex at the 42-acre site on Proctor Road.

Five architect-developer teams participated in the Request for Proposals process; one team withdrew. The four remaining proposals were ranked in order and presented to the School Board on Tuesday.

The first-ranked proposal, which called for an adaptive use that would join the historic and new RHS buildings, was dismissed by School Board members because it did not fit the criteria set forth by the board: the Rudolph project could not delay or add cost to the new RHS project.

That leaves the second-ranked proposal -- something called the Riverview Music Quadrangle.

Submitted by the design team of RMJM Hillier, with Diane Lewis Architect and Beckelman+Capalino of New York, and Seibert Architects of Sarasota, this plan calls for "a collaborative environment for new and existing Sarasota music activities," according to a statement by the Revive Rudolph's Riverview committee. "It would complement the Riverview High School and other Sarasota County school music programs, and it would provide studio space and performance venues for community groups and orchestras."

This and other proposals will be shown to the public on at 5 PM, Thursday (Nov 29) at the Roskamp Center on the North Trail.

More information can be found at the SAF Revive Riverview site.

World Monument Fund Tabs Riverview High as One of the World's 100 Most Endangered Sites

From a World Monument Fund press release today:

For Immediate Release—New York, NY, June 6, 2007 . . .

The 2008 World Monuments Watch List of 100 Most Endangered Sites was announced today by Bonnie Burnham, president of the World Monuments Fund (WMF), the nonprofit organization that, for more than 40 years, has helped save hundreds of endangered architectural and cultural sites around the world. This year’s list highlights three critical man-made threats: political conflict, unchecked urban and industrial development, and, for the first time, global climate change.

Announced every two years, the WMF Watch List acts as a call to action, drawing international public attention to threatened cultural heritage sites across the globe. The Watch List is assembled by an international panel of experts in archaeology, architecture, art history, and preservation. For many historic sites, inclusion on the List is the best, and sometimes the only, hope for survival.

One of the sites listed is "Main Street Modern", a catchall phrase denoting mid-century modern architecture. A specific site pointed out is Paul Rudolph's Riverview High School in Sarasota:

Main Street Modern
Various Locations, United States, 1945 – 1975

SIGNIFICANCE
Most communities in the United States have at least one public building designed in the Modern idiom. Whether community centers, schools, libraries, or religious institutions, these buildings represent an important shift in the history of twentieth-century American architecture when Modernism was chosen over traditional styles in order to project a national image of progress. More than residential or commercial buildings, it is the civic architecture of Post-World War II America that retains the early Modernist agenda––as conceived in Europe during the interwar years––to democratize design and society.

For example, Modern design principles were used to create schools that reflected the ideal that all children should have equal access to quality education. European émigrés like Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe––all former Bauhaus leaders––as well as the architects they helped train, such as Paul Rudolph, I.M. Pei, and lesser-know designers, created many of the icons of Modern architecture, including the Whitney Museum of Art, Seagram Building, and Yale University Art and Architecture Building. They were also the architects responsible for many of the everyday Modern structures that are now integral parts of the American main street.

The work of these designers was united by certain core principles, including a departure from traditional forms, the integration of arts and design disciplines, and the use of industrial materials and innovative technologies. Physically embodying these core principles, the architecture of “Main Street Modern” is typically characterized by simple, geometric or abstract forms, machine-made components, and new expressions of space, such as the use of glass walls that remove the visual barrier between exterior and interior.

THREAT
The primary threats faced by Modern architecture are demolition or inappropriate renovations and the technical challenges of conserving the experimental materials and innovative building systems used in their construction. These two factors pose an immediate threat to many mid-twentieth-century buildings. However, the greatest threat is perhaps public apathy––a lack of consensus or confidence––that buildings of the recent past can be important enough to be preserved for the future. This could be because the public feels alienated from the theories and intellectual concepts that informed Modern architecture and because it will take additional time and research to understand how these buildings fit into the continuum of American architectural history.

There are a number of significant “Main Street Modern” buildings threatened with demolition or degradation right now, including Paul Rudolph’s Riverview High School (1957) in Sarasota, Florida and Marcel Breuer’s Grosse Pointe Public Library (1953) in Grosse Pointe Farms, Michigan.

The world continues to watch the threat of demolition of Rudolph's Riverview High School building.

In the News - The Hits Keep On Coming

Time Magazine's on line version has a story about the demolition of Paul Rudolph buildings. Included is a reference to Riverview High School here in Sarasota:

And Riverview High School in Sarasota, Fla., the city where Rudolph started his career in the 1940 and '50s, is now in danger of being sacrificed for a parking lot.

Check the entire story at this link. There is also a reference to the NY Times article about the same issue a couple days ago.

School Board Accepts National Trust's Offer for Independent Review

Today the Sarasota School Board voted 4-1 to accept the offer made by the National Trust for Historic Preservation to facilitate an independent review of the Rudolph buildings on the Riverview site.

The review will likely be a three-day workshop at no cost to the community or the Sarasota County School Board and will focus on the feasibility of rehabilitating the original Paul Rudolph courtyard buildings and incorporating them into the campus of the new 21st-century Riverview.

We are pleased that the School Board took this step.

Good News

Article published Feb 3, 2007

PODCAST: Riverview debate continues01/21/2007
Saving school may be studied
By LATISHA R. GRAY

SARASOTA COUNTY -- School Superintendent Gary Norris agreed Friday to recommend an independent study to see if some parts of Riverview High School can be spared the wrecking ball.Norris met with the Save Riverview Committee and said he would talk to School Board members about allowing the National Trust for Historic Preservation to study the viability of saving some of the original courtyard buildings, designed by architect Paul Rudolph.

School Board members voted in the fall to demolish the buildings and use the land for parking and a bus loop once the new school is built.Mold, drainage and other problems have plagued the school for years, and school officials have maintained it would cost too much to save them.

But architects and preservationists say the district didn't do enough to try to save the buildings designed by Rudolph, one of the founders of the Sarasota School of architecture.

They recently nominated the part of the Rudolph campus to be included on the list of "America's 11 Most Endangered Historical Sites."

"We're pleased that an organization of this stature will be looking into how the Rudolph courtyard buildings can really be used," said Mark Smith, a member of the Save Riverview Committee. "The National Trust will be picking up the costs, and we'll be working in close cooperation with the associate superintendent to make this happen.

"If the School Board agrees, the National Trust will bring in an architect to hold workshops and look at factors such as safety, costs and security.

The National Trust is a nonprofit preservation organization with about 250,000 members.The district hopes to have the new three-story campus building completed by August 2009.

Recent News of Interest

We are happy that the County Commissioners are taking a look at the school board decision to demolish Riverview's Paul Rudolph buildings.

The Trust for Public Land will be working with the county to identify specific parcels of land to purchase for the Environmentally Sensitive Lands program. TPL is an excellent organization. Examples (case studies) of their "Greenprinting" program can be found here.

Someone is asking questions about the fertilizers and pesticides we put on our lawns and what effect these chemicals have on the bay.

Sarasota County has purchased 3.9 acres on Longboat Key that fronts both the gulf and the bay. The land will add to exosting park l;and on Longboat Key.

Charles Gwathmey Visits Rudolph's Riverview Building

Members of the Save Riverview group met with Charles Gwathmey on Oct 26 at Riverview High School.

Shown are Carl Abbott (architect), Charles Gwathmey, Guy Peterson (architect), Richard Storm (architecture critic) and Lee Byron (former Sarasota School Board member).

Gwathmey was visiting Sarasota to participate in an awards ceremony honoring Abbott, Peterson and other architects. One of his current projects is restoration of Paul Rudolph's School of Art and Architecture Building at Yale University.

Gwathmey had previously written to the Sarasota School Board urging them to reconsider the decision to demolish Rudolph's Riverview High building.

Gwathmey said in his letter : "Riverview High School is a historic building and modernism is now a critical and legitimate period in the continuum. The architectural legacy of the "Sarasota School" is a laboratory for students and architects, and Riverview is a pertinent, iconic representative work.

The building also pioneered "green architecture" initiatives, that were both intuitive and visionary, that could be restored, refined and reinforced as examples of environmental awareness and sensitivity."

We continue to urge the school board to review their decision. In addition to the world wide architecture community urging rehabilitation for historic reasons, it is becoming more and more apparent that the cost of saving the building (the steel, glass and concrete) will be a significant savings compared to current estimates for a new building.