we appear to have lost the vision and desire to create masterpieces. We have placed profit and earnings above art; we stop funding the creation and maintenance of places like Charleston. Taking down bad buildings is a lot harder than putting them up. Charleston should be picky and take it’s time before letting “carpetbaggers” move in. FlagReply 1Recommend Share this comment on FacebookShare this comment on Twitter Anne Russell Wilmington NC 3 hours ago Love Charleston, lived at 13 Logan Street as a child, do Spoleto every year, and at least one more visit (from Wilmington NC). Married to an architect who enthusiastically supports contemporary design in Charleston, rather than imitative traditional design, so long as it works well with existing architecture. Reply Recommend What me worry nyc 4 hours ago Charleston is lucky to have escaped a building by Brad Cloepfil-- who designed the hideous new Museum of Art and Design which replaced the loveable altho much hated by some Durrell Stone Lollipop Building. BTW why in NYC are we so anxious to keep the tenements on side streets instead of pulling them down and putting in up-to-date (fireproof) housing? or even worse the replacement of the tenements in the South Bronx and elsewhere with the hideous two family houses. There are issues with ultra modern -- went to see the ultra-modern in the ranch house neighborhood praised by the Times in Racine WI. Somehow it was odd. Reply 1Recommend Michael Amsterdam, the Netherlands 5 hours ago Cities are not museums. They are living growing organisms. One need only see Zurich, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Stockholm or a number of other historic cities that have successfully combined historic architecture and modern architecture in a wonderful and cohesive way as they grew. What these cities have done is impose regulations on scale, material and proportion rather than impose architectural or sentimental design requirements. Reply 2Recommend PatitaC Westside, KCMO 20 minutes ago There is a place for the sentimental, especially in the American Deep South. Reply Recommend whimsy florida 5 hours ago most Americans AND all Banks dont give a hoot about old buildings & historic preservation too costly to try and save, easier to tear down and build new cheap, that wont last. I love old log cabins, soon there will be none but pictures, all memories of life gone, even books are being lost. sad every time I see a landmark removed and forgotten Reply 1Recommend Justice Holmes Charleston 5 hours ago Charleston is suffering, albeit to perhaps a lesser degree, from the same desease as NYC---greed and arrogance. Just the idea that a modern piece of architecture no matter how bland no matter how our of place, no matter how ugly, is progress in architecture is enough to make one scrat ones head. There is nothing so jarring as walking down a beautiful tree lined street of beautiful clapboard houses with wide proches or elegant door ways and meeting up with a house designed to be build in the middle of an urban industrial setting. The building is inappropriate and, often, badly done even if the design was appropriate. Money does not breed taste or competence. The lack of respect for Hitoric neighborhoods and historc structures is appalling. Modernists need to travel more. European cities know how to respect their historic cores and allow for modern experimentation elsewhere. Its a good model. Architects arent the ones who should be setting the guidelines for new building in historic districts. People committed to preservation should be. We have so little history in this country; we would do well to preserve what we have. Reply 4Recommend minka lola SanFrancisco 5 hours ago For the most part Im sick of so called modern architecture. It has become bullying and sterile. It has become oddly like neoliberalism in that it is basically a force of corporate dominance over the local style and community but that is dressed up with various theories to make it sound well meaning. It also doesnt age well. Aging looks like failure in these buildings, unlike older styles. They are build to dominate and when they show their age they just look contemptible. Reply 1Recommend Deborah Lee Sarasota, FL 5 hours ago Charleston, you would be wise to stay away from Duany. He came here to Sarastoa, FL, and his ideas have really destroyed the specialness of our town. Were now just another cookie-cutter medium-sized city. Stick to your guns and preserve your history. Ours is just about all gone! Reply 1Recommend disenchanted san francisco 5 hours ago Unless every new building has the high ceilings of the SOB (South of Broad) mansions, the major factor should be air conditioning. Bet everyone can agree on that. Reply 1Recommend Floyd Nightingale Detroit 1 hour ago Such problems may seem trivial to the Detroits of the world... Really? What does that even mean? Reply Recommend Chris Hassig Colorado 5 hours ago I think whats often overlooked in these discussions of aesthetics is the role of scale. The buildings we build today are almost always bigger, and that is a problem (Im talking mostly about how much space they use up, not height). Bigger buildings destroy diversity on the street, in turn degrading the pedestrian experience--columns and decor cannot remedy this. Even many of the New Urbanist developments that try to artificially break down the scale of overbuilt buildings fail on some level. The current structure of development financing seems to focus on bigger, costlier projects with the assumption of bigger one-time profits, but big projects are just about always worse than a number of smaller projects. So what would be my recommendation to the Mayor of Charleston, Mr. Duany, and, for that matter, anyone involved with city planning? Try to institute rules that reward small lot sizes. Penalize lot consolidation. Walk the talk--government buildings are often the worst offenders! That Gaillard center didnt need to be one building. It could have been three or four, distributing its benefits, and impacts, more widely. Smaller projects just cant do as much damage to the urban fabric. And the diversity of different people pursuing different visions--even if that occurs within an aesthetically historical design code--is what creates a charming, a thrilling, a livable urban ecosystem. Reply 2Recommend Out of Stater Colorado 1 hour ago Denvers recently expanding Cherry Creek North and its unnecessary abandonment of proper, relational scale does indeed come to mind. Thanks for a thoughtful post. Please, save Charleston! and Savannah, too. Reply 1Recommend PatitaC Westside, KCMO 20 minutes ago Yes please save these city centers. Reply Recommend NYT Pick Cormac NYC 8 hours ago American architecture today greatly reflects the narcissistic values epitomized by reality TV: The need to stand out, to make “a statement,” and to project an attitude of defiance, confrontation, or transgression. Design and construction are further driven by values of marginal costs, uniformity, and disposability. “Value engineering” and standards entirely driven by the 30-year mortgage cycle lead to exactly the lack of excellence Mayor Riley notes. In contrast, the historic preservationist ideal is something like a living room of a home occupied by the same family for generations: Furniture and bric-a-brac have accumulated, but each piece was selected to complement what was already in the room, not to compete with it. This is a very different aesthetic than that beloved by most advertisers (and architects), in which their product pops against the backdrop of the quotidian. I’m a fan of modern architecture, and it is possible to make a modernist building that is mannered, elegant, and built to last—a structure whose “dialogue” with its older neighbors is a hushed murmur rather then a “loud and proud” boom. But the business and ideology of architecture in America today make these the rare exceptions. Too many architects echo the radical argument of “property rights” advocates: that my individual right—to self-expression, career advancement, profit making, etc.—requires everyone else stand aside and let me destroy what they value. Reply 10Recommend Will New York, NY 8 hours ago Dear Charleston: Beware of developers. They will DESTROY your beautiful city. They will turn it into a slum as fast as they can and run away with the profits. We have an architect here in New York City named Gene Kaufman who is doing untold damage at the behest of developers who wish to maximize profit on ever square foot regardless of the long term damage to the city. Run such people out of town before they can unpack. Reply 5Recommend whimsy florida 5 hours ago they live in Florida the tear down developers Reply 1Recommend coale johnson 5000 horseshoe meadow road 8 hours ago hmmmmmm...... i did not read anything in this article that told me what was being torn down to make way for the new buildings. this would be important information. Reply 2Recommend Dusty Chaps Tombstone, Arizona 8 hours ago Oh, please...it doesnt take a committee of genius to figure out how to organize historicalLY appropriate expanded commercial and residential space in colonial cities. DISPUTES MONG DEVELOPERS AND BANKERS WHO ALWAYS HAVE THE FINAL WORD, INEVITABLY BOILS DOWN TO MONEY, MONEY, MONEY. The only hard thing to figure out is, who gets what, following the public charade. Do what Santa Fe and Tucson did, just sell out. Reply Recommend MB New Jersey 8 hours ago Boston is a beautiful example of mixing old architecture with new in artistic balance. Reply 2Recommend Hope Cleveland 8 hours ago My advice: as much as possible, do not build new buildings. Only as a last ditch effort. Reply 1Recommend Brianna Atlanta/Charleston 8 hours ago Duany is super famous in the planning world (I was lucky enough to see him talk last year!) and that movie only came because the town is so well done - he did not design Seaside FOR the movie. And so what if Charlestons Duany-fied planning efforts attract the movie business? The film industry is working wonders on Atlantas economy (lately dubbed the new Hollywood of the South... also Yall-ywood) so it certainly wont hurt Charlestons. I was born and raised in Charleston and have been in Atlanta for my architecture undergrad and finishing my planning masters degree, and I definitely support the efforts of Riley (hes been my mayor since the womb!). I am impressed the City was able to recruit Duany and I cant wait to see what he does. Reply Recommend Jerry Gropp Architect AIA Mercer Island, WA 8 hours ago Although Im a long-time modernist architect, I can see why Charleston people are worried about whats being built nowdays. JG- docomomo-wewa.org/architects_detail.php?id=79 Reply Recommend carolyn new york 8 hours ago as a part time worker in charleston for 35 years and a homeowner there, i cant understand why anyone needs new buildings on the peninsula. granted the population is growing, but certainly there is no more room in the historic downtown unless you demolish old structures (please dont!) or you pack things in so tight that you lose all sense of scale (which is happening). any new building should be out there i have to disagree with the glowing assessments of the new Gailliard. the old one was ugly as sin, its true, but at least it was set back and had air around it. the new one, for all its classical ornamentation, violates all rules of scale. it forms all wall; it fills the entire visual field. you cant see past it or beyond it. many newer buildings in charleston have this problem- they are just too big for the space, the result of developers trying to maximize their investment. charleston, like all of us, has to realize that unlimited growth is not possible in a finite space. cherish what you have. dont keep trying for more Reply 3Recommend Jim Victoria BC 8 hours ago And both sides agree that many of the buildings approved by the city’s Board of Architectural Review in recent years have been duds that tried, and failed, to have it both ways. This is the fundamental issue addressed by this article, and yet the photos completely ignore it. Why not include a couple of photos of these duds so readers can see what youre talking about? Reply 2Recommend NYT Pick comtut Puerto Rico 8 hours ago Tell me: what is the purpose of having an historic district and an architectural review board of that district, if they allow totally non-conforming structures? Why cant you have both? Have an historic district clearly delineated, where architectural guidelines conserve the flavor of the history. Isnt that the whole purpose in designating an historic district? And then leave the rest of the city to zoning boards to do as they wish. I believe this is the way its done in the French Quarter of New Orleans, which is every bit as much an historic district as any other. Reply 2Recommend Robert Friedman Orlando FL 8 hours ago Charleston needs to look at the few other cities in North America that are as old and have examples of keeping historic identity. But they may do better by looking at examples with cities in the UK and Europe of what works and what doesnt work. Mid 20th century car oriented developer ideas and zoning are poison to a historic human scale city identity. Reply 1Recommend JDM Boston 8 hours ago Having lived through the urban renewal exercise foisted on certain Boston neighborhoods many decades ago and the subsequent building of both attractive and hideous modern structures after the bulldozers left, I would think Charleston ought to be very careful indeed. There is no going back to the West End to retrieve the charm of the cityscape grown shabby but retrievable given reverence for the history of place, political will, and a temperate attitude toward modernism. Too late now, the high rise towers are there for good...they were ugly then as they are now. They clash badly with what was left of the old city after the British were finished with their own brand of destruction. In another downtown neighborhood, Charlestown, the oldest of them all, there are those who would remove 18th century dwellings with insufficient respect for the preservation of the last remaining vestiges of that early life. The community objection backed by sensible regulation should result in preservation of the neighborhood. Reply 2Recommend bbergarch brooklyn 8 hours ago I visited Charleston in May of 2014 and saw the Gaillard building far enough into construction that it reminded me of something Bokassa would have built in the Central African Republic. A misguided and grandiose attempt at classicism, the center is overblown and clumsy. It lacks any of the sensitivity of scale or detail that Charleston is known for. It is the Emperors New Civic Center. 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