The Future: New Metabolisms for Declining Urban Towers
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Back to the Future: New Metabolisms for Declining Urban Towers by Shawn Butler Submitted in partial fulfi lment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Architecture at Dalhousie University Halifax, Nova Scotia June 2016 © Copyright by Shawn Butler, 2016 CONTENTS Abstract ............................................................................................................................ iii Acknowledgements .......................................................................................................... iv Chapter 1: Introduction ......................................................................................................1 Tower Typology ............................................................................................................3 Decaying Urban Towers: Locating the Problem in Halifax, NS ..................................14 Chapter 2: Fenwick Tower ...............................................................................................27 Fenwick Tower: A Framework for Change .................................................................38 Site Survey ................................................................................................................42 Chapter 3: Metabolism ....................................................................................................53 Chapter 4: New Metabolisms: Adaptive Reuse of the Urban Tower ................................69 New Metabolism: Programmatic Interventions ..........................................................75 Phase 1: Standard Ruin .......................................................................................75 Phase 2: Roots and Canopy ................................................................................76 Phase 3: From Fins to Trellis ...............................................................................77 New Metabolism: Structural Interventions .................................................................84 Slab ......................................................................................................................84 Compression ........................................................................................................85 Shear ...................................................................................................................85 New Metabolism: New Links .....................................................................................86 Clip .......................................................................................................................86 Hinge ...................................................................................................................91 Grafts ...................................................................................................................94 New Metabolism: Environmental and Material Considerations ...............................100 Environment .......................................................................................................100 Material ..............................................................................................................104 New Metabolism: A Future for Fenwick? .................................................................104 Chapter 5: Conclusion: The Problem with Utopia ..........................................................108 Bibliography ................................................................................................................... 112 ii ABSTRACT As the number of residential towers increases with the growth of modern cities, we are faced with the question of how to handle the older towers that, little by little, no longer attract renters for their apartments. Is their decline unavoidable, or like many other building types, do they have the capacity for a second life? In this project, I look at the history of residential towers, how they go from exemplifying an ideal urban lifestyle to becoming obsolete urban ruins. Looking at Halifax’s Fenwick Place in particular, I examine how a building that was designed to express an idealistic future through its brutalist idiom is now widely considered an architectural crime against humanity. To address this question, I draw upon ideas from the Metabolist movement, adapting concepts such as groupform, linkage, and megaform to twenty-fi rst-century conditions, and propose that new urban futures currently lie fallow in our recent past. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We meet here, dear reader, as if in a clearing where I have set up a small camp. But before we proceed, I must tell you that I have not reached this place alone nor are these pages the product of my sole effort. I have arrived here through wilderness and trials, tried many pitfalls and wrong turns, and would not have found my way but for the grace and efforts of others. I am thankful for my family, Butlers, Magills, and Amoses all, for setting my compass and my courage, you are both the country that I leave behind and the one I return to, and the way has never been so hard or so subtle that I could not prevail by remembering the gifts you have given me. To the teachers that blazed paths, whose camp provides for more than themselves, you are the cities of my map. To Dr. Robert Lapp for your willing suspension of disbelief, to Professor Thaddeus Holownia for your example in making work beautiful, to Professor Emanuel Jan- nasch for your heresy, to Michael Malleson for reading the wind, and to Dr. Sarah Bonnemai- son for your love of dreamers. I would also like to thank Cristina Verissimo and David Bowick for their generosity and guidance, and my external reviewers, Anne Cormier and Brian Carter for their comments and support. To Dale Arsenault, Ken Kam, and Roland Hudson, thank you for lending me your skills and doing so with great character, and to Susanna Morash-Kent, Anita Regan, and Beverly Night- ingale, thank you for amending my uncertainty with patience and high spirits. The times I have been lost, caught in my own line, I have been freed by friendships that have had the patience to follow the knot and the good humour to calm my twists and turns. Justin Connidis and Julia McArthur, Jason and Jenna Horner, Dean Dumaresq, Adam Kropp, Aaron Williams and Sue L’Orsa, you have made a labyrinth out of my maze. iv I would not have set out on this path if not for the initial encouragement of Cathy L’Orsa, who saw a way for me that I did not see for myself, nor would I be so bold in my endeavour if it were not for the example of Andrew Connidis, who made a practice out of curiosity and the love of people. By these many and more I have found my way here, but for my wanderlust I am indebted solely to my wife Johanna, who is both companion and bonfi re, my source of intrepidness and mystery. From her I have learned to love the wilderness as much as the camp, and even now I can hear her dashing back into the woods, uncovering new and hidden paths. It is with passion and joy that I follow her there and strive to meet her again along these unkown ways. v 1 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION In a 2008 article for the Halifax newspaper The Coast, Andrea Klassen attempted to summarize public opinion of a notorious city landmark, Fen- wick Place. Klassen writes, “I’ve heard it called an architectural crime against humanity, a mon- strosity, a leftover set piece from Blade Runner, 1 a giant erection, or—less imaginatively—ugly.” Fig. 1. Fenwick Place, tallest building in Halifax, NS. As the tallest building east of Montreal, located in the south end of the Halifax peninsula amidst two-hundred-year-old Georgian Revival neigh- bourhoods, Fenwick Place is an obvious target for public scrutiny. The residential tower stands out not only because of its incongruous height and massing, but because of its distinctive brutalist style and materiality. It is an unapologetic monu- Fig. 2. Fenwick Place, 2015. ment to an idea of urbanity that is distinct from its surroundings. While such extreme distinctions are viewed today as evidence of the building’s fl aws, they were originally the hallmarks of a bold, mod- ern urban lifestyle. Following the example of Le Corbusier’s Unité d’habitation (see 4) and the social housing projects Fig. 3. Fenwick Place in Victorian neighbourhood. of Peter and Alison Smithson, brutalist structures employed standardized layouts and modular con- struction techniques in order to bring amenities such as light, fresh air, and open space to a broad- er segment of society. Originally imbued with uto- pian ideals, characteristics such as the unfi nished concrete (béton brut) for which the style was Fig. 4. Le Corbusier, Unité d’habitation at Marseille, 1952; 1 Andrea Klassen, “Tower of Wobble,” The Coast, 2008. photograph by Paul Kozlowsk, from Fondation Le Corbusier. 2 named, and the decision not to conceal structural and mechanical elements, were coded as a form of architectural honesty and truthfulness intended to express the natural dignity of the structure’s modern inhabitants. As an example of a “Tower in the Park,” Fenwick Place, like its predecessors, embodies an idea that urban fabric, rather than sprawling away from the downtown core, can instead grow in density while at the same time providing the amenities and social interactions es- sential for modern lifestyles, a garden city in the air. Provided with the dual benefi t of centrality and convenient mobility, tower residents could fulfi ll their individual needs in the privacy of their apart- Fig. 5. Unité d’habitation’s béton brut;