News Round-Ups

Letter from a Birmingham Jail: While confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling my present activities "unwise and untimely." Seldom do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas. If I sought to answer all the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would have little time for anything other than such correspondence in the course of the day, and I would have no time for constructive work. But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and that your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I want to try to answer your statements in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms..." [mlkonline]

Guide to Catching the Inauguration from Anywhere: [LifeHacker]

Accidental Maps: [StrangeMaps]

Town Center's Urban Planning Bumps into Wal-Mart: "Eden Prairie envisions a new "town center'' in its future, and Wal-Mart -- to the company's dismay -- has a store right in the middle of it." [Minn-St Paul Star Tribune]

Superb Idea: Bike Lane that Travels With You: "The system projects a virtual bike lane (using lasers!) on the ground around the cyclists, providing drivers with a recognizable boundary they can easily avoid. The idea is to allow riders to take safety into their own hands, rather than leaving it to the city." [Good]

Pneumatic Post in Paris: "Introduced to combat the shortcomings of the telegraphic network in Paris, the subterranean Poste Pneumatique (Pneumatic Post) moved written telegraph messages from 1866 until 1984. The pneumatic tube network relieved the saturated telegraph network, delivering physical messages across the city and to the suburbs faster and more reliably than the telegraph." [active social plastic]

What Will Save the Suburbs?: "The problem now isn’t really how to better design homes and communities, but rather what are we going to do with all the homes and communities we’re left with." [New York Times]

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President Lincoln's Cottage in Winter, Photo by Jessica King

Lists and Resolutions Abound: Here's 20 things that Place Economics learned about Historic Preservation while blogging on the subject over the past year. [PlaceEconomics]

2008: A Year of Resilience: Historic Sites Weblog looks at the weather-related calamities of the past year and what can be done to prepare for the future. [Nation Trust Historic Sites]

Coastal Engineering in the Netherlands: The situation in the Low-Countries can often be seen as resembling threats that continue to face our own Gulf Coast regions like New Orleans and Galveston. "More than half of the Netherlands sits below sea level, and if a megastorm were to break through these not-so-formidable dunes, the water could inundate Rotterdam and surrounding cities within 24 hours, flooding thousands of square miles, paralyzing the nation's economy, and devastating an area inhabited by more than 2 million people." [Wired]

Is the Dubaian Dream Dead in 2009?: With falling oil prices and an unstable global economy, the Dubai-building boom may be on the way to bust. Tree Hugger has followed the "sometimes 'green'" development in the emirate over the course of 2008. [Tree Hugger]

Fortifications Tour: It may have been canceled for 2009, but it sounded extremely cool. "We will study the architectural responses to conflict; their continuing evolution and adaptation to new technology, tactics and politics; as well as their impact on the national, urban and individual scale in the built environment and landscape..." [BLDGBLOG]

Historic Site Tourism: Tiger Style: In order to help make ancient Buddhist temple tourism more profitable, the town of Guandu has done what any village in time of need would do; turn to the local Shaolin masters. "Guandu officials say they will get no money from the deal, but they hope the Shaolin mystique will pull in the kind of crowds that have turned the flagship monastery, in Henan Province, into one of China’s most popular tourist destinations. Mr. Dou said the government would save the $88,000 once spent on temple maintenance each year. They are also counting on the tax revenue from a vast new mall that is nearing completion next to the temple complex." (Meth and Ghostface could not be reached for comment.) [New York Times: Asia/Pacific]

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Preserving Susan B. Anthony's Neighborhood: The Landmark Society of Western New York's mini-grant program supplied 12 applicants with money for exterior repairs to pre-Civil War homes in the neighborhood of Rochester's favorite daughter. "Historic preservation grant programs can do more than preserve properties; they also can nurture and preserve the communities they serve!" [Confessions of a Preservationist]

Atwater Building, Wabash Ave., Chicago. From Time Tells.

Time Tells End of Year Roundup: Vince Michael’s take on preservation in Chicago-land and beyond for 2008 (with plenty of interesting photos). [Time Tells]

NYC to Test New Energy Efficient Street Lamps: Street lamps played an important role in the creation of public space in the city. Originally fueled by gas, street lamps opened up the dark and seedy areas of the city to families and the emerging middle-classes. Now, New York's DOT is taking their lamps to the next level. "Rather than just designing a new bulb to replace the older high-pressure sodium light bulbs, OVI (Office for Visual Interaction) has completely re-envisioned the streetlamps from the ground up. The new LED lamps will use considerably less energy and will reduce the city’s power usage by 25-30 percent if all the streetlamps are switched out. As an added bonus, the lamps are expected to last 50,000-70,000 hours compared to the high-pressure sodium lights that last only 24,000 hours. As a result maintenance and energy costs will be considerably reduced, and the expected ROI on each lamp is 2-3 years." [Inhabitat]

33 Stunning LEED Platinum Projects: Jetson Green discusses thirty three LEED Platinum Projects from the past year. [Jetson Green]

Touring Hitler's Air Palace: If you happened to catch the new Tom Cruise fim, Valkyrie, you may recall the scene where German reserve soldiers muster in a vast, high-walled courtyard. The space belongs to one of Europe's largest buildings, Templehof Airport. "Typical of Nazi-era architecture, Tempelhof's main building was built to last all 1,000 years of Hitler's Reich. A short walk from the U-bahn stop at Platz der Luftbrucke, the first view is a city block of art deco limestone, itself only a small part of a complex that goes on and on and on. Don't even bother photographing the exterior unless you have a satellite. The curving arms of the terminal span 1.2 kilometres, and the complex encompasses three million square feet." [The Globe and Mail]

Nuclear Urbanism: Google Maps mash-ups are all the rage (personally, I'm a huge fan of MapMyRun's distance tracker) these days. This one, while possibly a bit frightening, is worth a look. CarlosLabs.com has created a mapplet that allows you to select a place, choose your desired nuclear weapon and "Nuke It!" in order to see the results of an attack. I'm not saying I'm a fan of nuclear weapons, but I couldn't resist entering the address to a certain division-rival's stadium and looking at the results. [BLDGBLOG]

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Stadtschloss Berlin, by Francesco Stella, courtesy of anArchitecture

Kein Schloss in Meinem Namen: We recently featured anArchitecture's post surrounding the deconstruction of the East German cultural center and the plans to rebuild a Prussian-era Stadtschloss in its place. More news from this sector of the Preservodome as Berliners are speaking out against the new plans. At kein-schloss-in-meinem-namen.de (no palace in my name), citizens can express their feelings surroundings the rebuilding of the palace. Es ist nur auf Deutsch, but the point here is the discussion of which history a society is choosing to remember and represent. For a society and history that is obsessed with how remembrance and forgetting should work into its culture, the debate of what building should be placed on the site only makes sense, and fits nicely into the field of preservation. For spaces and places that have played a role in more than one era or historical moment, how do we go about deciding what should be preserved, restored, and interpreted to the public? An example here would be the restoration of James Madison's Montpelier. Although lacking the political nature of the German situation, the home of our fourth President was recently deconstructed, and rebuilt to reflect its Madison-era appearance. The building's post-Madison history is still on display in a visitor center exhibit, but not in the building itself. The Stadtschloss-reconstruction debate is far from over, and it will be interesting to see how it plays out. [anArchitecture]

Metro Solutions: A lot of us here at the National Trust use D.C.'s Metro system every day, and often realize the challenges this system faces on our daily commute. "Montgomery County Council member Marc Elrich thinks he might have found a way to let the suburbs grow without putting more cars on the roads: Build a rapid bus system that can speed past traffic. If his efforts succeed, Montgomery could become a leader in the region and one of only a dozen or so jurisdictions in the nation to embrace the low-polluting, high-end bus systems that can move thousands of riders at fairly high speeds, often in their own lanes." Could Elrich have the solution to the archaic system's problem? [Washington Post]

Midtown Mall and Revitalizing Rochester: It's Christmastime and to many Rochesterians that means one thing; the Monorail at Midtown Mall. While the monorail, the colorful clock tower and the decorations may all be gone, the discussion over what to do with this indicative place in Rochester history is still around. "Midtown Plaza, particularly the atrium, is a significant and unique historic resource that potentially presents a wealth of opportunities for reuse as part of a revitalized city core with a distinctive character. Our preference would be to see the atrium integrated into a creative reuse of this site." [Confessions of a Preservationist]

OnnenKenka Monument, Tuuri, Finland, courtesy of Virtual Tourist

The Top Ten "Ugliest" Buildings: This is just one website's interpretation, as I find some of these buildings to be extremely cool (the Lucy Shoe Monument in particular) and we've even featured the number one listing here at the Trust as an example of Brutalism in the debate over preserving the modern. “Some of these picks have all the charm of a bag of nails while others are just jaw-dropping in their complexity. Love them or hate them, the list is certainly entertaining.” [Virtual Tourist]

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Preservation and Development in New York City: A recent Times article examines the "delicate dance" between those who are looking to preserve buildings like those in Greenwich Village's Historic District and the developers who are looking to address practical, current issues. [New York Times]

Pinon House Renovation: A Modern Home that Conserves: "One of the best ways to have a green home is to renovate– and by reusing as much original material as possible, you can reduce the amount of virgin material necessary for construction." [Inhabitat]

Is the UK Failing to Adequately Preserve World Heritage Sites?: "The UK has drawn fire from UNESCO, the United Nation’s cultural agency, for failing to adequately protect seven of its 27 World Heritage sites from the effects of development." [Architectural Record]

The Future of Greensboro's War Memorial Stadium: Before Greensboro's historic landmark can be saved, deterioration to its concrete structure must be addressed. In order to do this, cutting edge "ground penetrating radar" technology may be employed. [Greensboro's Treasured Places]

Three Civil War/Lincoln-Related Anniversaries: are coming up. Take the President Lincoln's Cottage online poll to let them know which one you are looking forward to. [President Lincoln's Cottage Blog]

Hiding in Plain Sight - Matsumoto's Lipman Residence: " Located in Richmond, Virginia, it was built in 1957. This “split-level” was included in the book Contemporary Houses Evaluated by Their Owners (1961)." Check out the pictures found by MidCentury on Flickr. [MidCentury]

Ocean Pools: “Rock pools,” we read, “are one of Sydney’s defining characteristics, along with the Opera House and Harbour Bridge, though not as well known...Each pool has its own colorful history. Some were built by wealthy individuals in the 1800s, when Victorian-era morals banned daytime swimming at the beach, a concept hard to fathom in a country where going to the beach seems to be required. Some pools were built by convicts, others during the Depression. They come in all sizes and shapes, from 50 meters long (roughly 55 yards) and many lanes wide to much smaller boutique pools." I once visited the river-pool in Berlin, something tells me the Spree has nothing on the Southern Pacific. [Pruned]

LEED Changes to Benefit Existing and Historic Buildings: Our own Barbara Campagna is the featured author in this month's AIA KnowledgeNet newsletter, bringing her broad understanding of LEED and its relationship to historic buildings to her peers in the architecture community. [AIA KnowledgeNet]

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