PLANNING at the Planning & Zoning Commission!

By Charles Mueller

Main Street, Chester, CT

In his October 2, 2009 blog entry, “Zoning Out the Best Laid Plans,” Centerbrook Partner Chad Floyd tells us about the unfortunate ramifications for communities all across the country, including 23 towns in Connecticut, which have adopted boilerplate zoning codes provided decades ago by a Florida company.  Well, change does occur here in the “Land of Steady Habits,” but sometimes you need time-lapse photography to see it.  Little by little, however, we are planning our zoning better, at least in one Connecticut town.

For the past 16 months I have been serving on a subcommittee of the Planning & Zoning Commission in my hometown of Chester.  Our mission is to completely re-imagine the zoning regulations for the town’s much-loved Village District.  The hope is that the new regulations will reflect the actual context and character of our pocket-sized town center, rather than some generic, homogeneous vision imposed by those alien, boilerplate zoning codes.

For decades now, virtually every parcel in Chester’s Village District has been classified in zoning parlance as an “Existing, Non-conforming Use.”  What this means is that although the current eclectic mix of two- and three-story structures are more or less situated cheek-by-jowl and cover most, if not all, of their respective lots, the currently required 20-foot setbacks from front, side, and rear yards, and the maximum lot coverage requirement of just 25 percent, would not permit a new building of even remotely similar size to be constructed.  This is, of course, completely ridiculous.

Read More »

March 4, 2010 – 3:43 pm | Posted in Planning | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

The Rain in Centerbrook

By David Holahan

Late this week here in the Land of Steady Precipitation has been dreary to the Nth power, unless, of course, you are calculating the kilo wattage that the winter freshet is producing at our corporate dam site out back, as “rain man” Bill Rutan is wont to do on his PC.  The word that our hydropower plant was inching toward producing 10 kilowatts, a record, oozed inexorably along the architectural grapevine this morning: 9, 9.1, 9.2, 9.52 …etc.  Typically, 7.5 is a good number.

Bill can monitor all things green and electric thanks to Spire software, which keeps hourly tabs on water, solar and geothermal power generation on site, which combined accounts for about 40 percent of office needs.  Spire also tracks how much juice we are using in each building.  On sunny days, for example, the “Gold Coast” office building, (there are a bunch of buildings here) with its solar array on its west-facing roof, is exporting electricity into the Great Greedy Grid.

It is also worth noting that despite this ever-so-gray day, the solar panels are producing a handful of kilowatts.

Ten kilowatts power one hundred 100-watt incandescent light bulbs, or more than twice as many of those more efficient compact florescent versions that we use here.  A lot of our electric usage, however, comes from our computers and servers, and we are working on ways to reduce that demand.

The hydropower plant has been operating since 1982, and last year Bill did some maintenance that improved its performance.

So the weather outside may be frightening, but rain or shine we’re making hay.

Update from rain man Bill: At 5 AM this morning (2/26), the hydro peaked out at 9.97 KW.  It has been over 9 since Wednesday morning.

February 24, 2010 – 5:24 pm | Posted in At Centerbrook, Sustainable Design | Tagged | Comments (0)

The Birds of Centerbrook

By David Holahan

This post is about cormorants and kingfishers.  It is not a metaphorical rant by a disgruntled employee.  I am, in fact, more or less gruntled.  One of the appealing aspects of working here is the attractive campus and the concomitant avian activity about the Falls River, which bounds the offices of Centerbrook Architects.

The first specimen I saw in July, when I joined the firm, was a great blue heron plying the shallows of the millpond above the dam.  They are hard to miss, these elegant creatures, fully three-feet tall, with astounding patience, and a long beak designed for plucking small fry from the shallows.  I saw one flying by at the turn of the year, during a cold snap, lumbering upstream.  I wish it luck and open water. Read More »

February 19, 2010 – 11:37 am | Posted in At Centerbrook | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Pre-Fabulous Aluminum House

By David Holahan

This Mars Rover-esque vision of far-out shelter from the Centerbrook archives was designed by Charles W. Moore at the invitation of the Alcoa Aluminum Company, which wanted to mass-market a bare-bones, mobile, prefab vacation house.  Five architects, including Moore and Ulrich Franzen, were invited to brainstorm with Alcoa and explore the design versatility of aluminum.

Delving into Centerbrook’s primordial past, way back to the late 1960s, Genie Devine extracted this visual gem from the cobwebbed attic.  She is organizing the firm’s material through 1990 to be shipped off to Yale, to be part of the university’s architectural archives.  This sketch was made by the late Charles W. Moore and William Turnbull, and a model of same (nowhere to be found) was created in one evening, on deadline, by Bill Grover, Centerbrook partner emeritus, who, at the time, was an architectural student of Mr. Moore at Yale.

Besides teaching, Mr. Moore had established an architectural firm that would become Moore Grover Harper that would become Centerbrook.  Alcoa, corporate to a fault, picked a bland, cookie-cutter, white bread design over this funky-town entry, according to a contemporary Time magazine account.

Genie will be providing visual material from the archives for the blog from time to time.

February 12, 2010 – 8:52 am | Posted in The Archives | Tagged | Comments (0)

The Ravages of (Not Very Much) Time

By Chad Floyd

I have a friend whose job is to maintain boats.  He labors on white decks varnishing, painting, and caring for wood and composite materials.  He’s been doing it for thirty years.

Recently he told me he’s noticed boat materials are degrading faster than ever.  He said fiberglass and composites don’t resist chalking and pitting as well as they once did, and even renewable materials, which can be re-painted and re-varnished to be kept spiffy, require more work.  He believes the problem lies with hotter sunlight and harsher acid rain.

We choose modern materials for their sharp looks and durability on boats and buildings.  But if my friend is correct, maybe some of these materials are not so durable after all, meaning they won’t necessarily weather well.  The difference from boats is that we can’t be expected to wash, polish, and wax our buildings.  Buildings have to stand for the ages.

In small samples the cool new materials that we’re considering always look compelling.  Nobody wants to think about how a material in a little sample will look after years of weathering on a big wall.  But we should.  We should ponder how our new high-tech materials will look five years, ten years, fifty years, even further out to the point when they’ve really been battered badly by sun and rain. Read More »

February 8, 2010 – 2:46 pm | Posted in Materials, The Future | Comments (0)

Our Once and Future Future

By Mark Simon

A Portfolio of Probabilities, Syd Mead for US Steel, 1961

It is time for architects to think about the future; I mean REALLY think about the future, not try to “look like the future,” or contemplate next week, but consider the way-out-there tomorrows, say 30, 50, or 100 years ahead.  And not what it will be like, but what it SHOULD be like.  In this post I will tackle why today’s future has gotten so dark (compared with yesterday’s future).  In subsequent entries, I will opine on the world our grandchildren will inherit with the assumption that it can be brighter than contemporary cynics believe.

Looking back (always a good thing when you are about to look forward), we enjoyed periods where the deep future inspired expectant awe rather than constant apprehension.  I recall my childhood in the 1950’s when the likes of Buck Rogers zoomed across our TV screens, followed by the Jetsons not long after.  Those visions portended progress; the future would be better than today.  GE declared ‘Progress is our most important product.”  But the optimism faded, perhaps trumped by the lingering horrors of wars (hot and cold), genocide, and the A-bomb.  Or perhaps after we reached the moon, we realized that not much had changed in our lives.  We still had war, poverty, discrimination, and miseries and some of our apparent advancements turned out to be horrors, like thalidomide, or the fouling of the planet by energy generation. Read More »

January 25, 2010 – 11:03 am | Posted in Beloved Buildings, The Future | Tagged | Comments (1)

A Symphony with an Ocean View

By Peter Majewski

As an architect involved with projects great and small, I am always struck by how disparate elements come together to work towards a distant and unifying goal.  An aerial view might reveal all of the “usual suspects” – designers, engineers, consultants, carpenters, painters, pool builders etc. – scurrying around below like monomaniacal worker ants, somehow managing not to bump into one another or to come to blows.  All for one and one for all … well, with some exceptions.

A construction site is, indeed, a stimulating, fast-paced environment.  There are deadlines to keep and budgets to meet.  I owe much of my continuing architectural education to the daily interaction with varied professionals on the job site, seeing the project and its many challenges from multiple perspectives.  At ground level, the constant coordination and cacophony of construction are reminiscent of that most civilized of endeavors: a symphony orchestra making music.  Bear with me on this.

Read More »

January 14, 2010 – 11:28 am | Posted in Architectural Process | Tagged , , | Comments (1)

Ocean House, To Save It We Had to Destroy It

By Jefferson Riley

More than half a dozen grand hotels once graced the Watch Hill peninsula on the western shore of Rhode Island, but a decade ago only one remained, Ocean House, an aging and ailing wooden behemoth whose top floors had been condemned for years.  Odds were increasing that this iconic landmark, its era long past, would soon vanish like the rest.

By 2003, bumper stickers around Watch Hill implored “Save Ocean House.”  The 1868 renowned, resort, ocean front hotel, where the silent movie “American Aristocracy” starring Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. was filmed, had just closed for good.  Its future was manifestly uncertain.  If Ocean House was torn down, could a litter of McMansions be far behind? Read More »

January 8, 2010 – 10:53 am | Posted in Beloved Buildings, Preservation | Tagged | Comments (1)

The Gift of Good Design

By Patrick McKenna

Green Street Arts Center, Middletown, Connecticut

Nothing says the Holidays like the gift of elevated cholesterol, unless it is giving people something they really need.

People are always in need of good design:  whether it is for a home that uses materials and energy efficiently, a school building that promotes learning and community, or a public space that unites and delights a neighborhood.  Unfortunately, not everyone has access to good design, and as a result they may be left to inhabit buildings or spaces that affect them negatively.  Buildings built without the input of designers or architects often fail to adequately shelter the body or enlighten the soul.

The challenge for me and others is how to widen access to good design to those who need it, not just to those who can afford it.  There are many organizations working toward this end, such as Public Architecture and Architecture for Humanity, as well as colleges offering courses that teach about social responsibility and design, like Rural Studio and the Yale Building Project.  The majority of architects, however, do not work for non-profit organizations, but many still want to share their skills with individuals or groups that are not paying clients. Read More »

December 22, 2009 – 4:37 pm | Posted in Public Architecture | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Taking the Stage to Architecture

By Chad Floyd
Set of "Breaking Point", designed by John Jacobsen, with Chad Floyd at right.

Set of "Breaking Point", designed by John Jacobsen at Yale in 1964, with Chad Floyd at right.

In college I was bitten by the theater bug.  I found that acting was not only fun but it helped build my self-confidence speaking in front of people.  I spent hours at the Yale Dramat and came to marvel at the magic that student stage and scene designers conjured for each new production by simply reading the script and applying their imagination.  The designers were left remarkably alone to create illusions with bits of canvas, paint, and whatnot.

Set designers like the brilliant John Jacobsen, who later would found White Oak Design and do major theater and museum design work, created complex environments that not only reflected the proper mood and milieu of the action, but also were critical to how the director could deploy the cast.  Dramatic movement of actors, nearly as important as their lines in some cases, depended on how the stage was configured and outfitted, where the doors, windows, furniture, steps, and heather were located.  Without a proper, well appointed heath, the impact of King Lear’s rage would be a much diminished thing.  There are no firm directions, however, on how to construct a stormy heath. Read More »

December 15, 2009 – 10:58 am | Posted in Architectural Influences | Tagged , | Comments (2)