Should Cities Subsidize Developers?

Subsidies for development. The public sentiments

The public takes a dim view, when it comes to money for developers and investors. Tax breaks and subsidies are variably called extortion, bribes, nepotism, or corruption but rarely an investment in the future of a city. Popular sentiment pits neighborhoods against downtown,  affordable housing against convention centers or old downtown against downtown expansion areas. Most city residents are convinced that too much money flows into the pockets of those who need it the least. It doesn't help that city government and developers are in a tie for the bottom rank in public opinion, maybe still ahead of Congress and lawyers. The fact that today "money for developers" rarely comes from budgets but from mortgaging predicted proceeds, that only materialize if the development in question gets built, is too complicated even for some local politicians to grasp and suspiciously smacks of CDO's (Collateralized Debt Obligations) and other creative tools of virtual money creation that brought us the financial crisis. Some economists point out that the race to the bottom (of taxes) between cities in a relentless competition for investors rarely benefits the public while it depletes public resources.

The case in question

HarborPoint (front, proposed) and Harbor East (left, completed)

Clearly, it isn't always easy to see what  one is looking at, corruption or investment? Let's try to figure it out for the case of the 27 acre prime piece of real estate jotting out into the Inner Harbor which used to be the Allied Chemical Plant site and is now dubbed HarborPoint (Jay Brodie, the former President of the Baltimore Development Corporation, BDC, called it "the best piece of real estate in America").
The site is supposed to get $107 million dollars through TIF bonds right now after it already got tax breaks as a Brownfield and a 2012 empowerment zone designation. Those breaks combined are estimated to be worth another $113 million over time.   (Baltimore Brew). The issue is red hot in Baltimore,  the Mayor held a press conference side by side with the developer, city council people are issuing statements and the media are buzzing with arguments for and against the TIF bond financing and the tax breaks.

This is not going to be an easy story, it has many sidebars and necessarily meanders. Since its  represents a case typical for the rebirth of an industrial city as a knowledge community, it is worth the exploration and, as always, it helps to have some facts before forming an opinion.

The old Allied Baltimore Works

The Allied Signal "Baltimore Works" when smoke was still rising with the Inner Harbor in the background (until 1985)

Parts of the old Allied Signal Chromium Plant ("Baltimore Works") were still standing when we gathered in Allied's "Superintendant's Building" to talk about the future of this site. Peaking through between the hulking ruins one could glimpse the water and a perfect view of downtown. This prime location brought together the Fells Point community representatives and the Allied Signal people and their consultants to talk about the presence and the future. The year was 1991 and the major point of discussion was the pollution that the 140 year old factory had left behind and that could blow around during the anticipated demolition of this Baltimore waterfront icon. EPA, MDE and Allied Signal were about to sign a consent decree defining clean-up action and desired outcomes. Hexavalent chromium, a substance that is dangerous when inhaled while airborne and which also pollutes the water when seeping out of soil, was the main concern. It present everywhere since chromium had been processed here since 1845 and the harbor had carried heavy chromium loads from water seeping out of the contaminated soils.  For the City and the community it had been a foregone conclusion that nothing could ever be developed here. They planned for a cap and a 27 acre open space, possibly fenced off.

Brownfield remediation, capping and development

But Allied Signal had other ideas and saw a development site. (see 1992 SUN article). It had convinced EPA to agree to a remediation plan that allows development. However, a development plan would have to be approved not only by the usual city agencies but also by EPA. This is why a large consultant team had been assembled to plan remediation AND development and design a strategy that made both not only physically possible, but acceptable to EPA and the community. Reaching the point where EPA would give the site a clean bill of health would take 10 years and over $100 million dollars paid by Allied Signal until a  successor, Honeywell could buy the site with an approved remediation plan. Included in the acceptance were 1.7 million square feet of mixed use development (mostly office, some retail, a little housing) which were submitted to the City as a Planned Unit Development (PUD). The plan showed a waterfront promenade, a six acre park that was considered a holding site for a potential "world class" public use comparable to the Sidney Opera and staggered height limitations ending at 180' maximum height.

Diagram of the remediation plan from an Allied Signal newsletter published when EPA was still reviewing the concept

Given that Fells Point was rich in battle tested community groups who had shown their savvy some time back when they defeated the freeway plans that had threatened to destroy historic Fells Point, it was no surprise that the community had wrestled major concession from the site owner. That the hired consultants largely had the trust of  parts of the community, namely Enterprise and Struever Brothers as development consultants, Cho, Wilks and Benn as urban designers and a host of well renowned engineering firms that knew how to contain and remediate contaminated brownfields helped but didn't make almost 18 months of meetings and negotiations an easy process. My involvement was initially as was project manger for the architecture firm and later as an independent consultant. I haven't been further involved since 1994.

Harbor East, a precedent?

It is worth mentioning that back then the adjacent and now bustling Harbor East site sat largely empty with little more than publicly funded streets, bulkheads, sidewalks and lights and an award winning development plan by Stan Eckstut, the architect who had just completed New York's Battery Park redevelopment.

Inner Harbor East after roads were built but all parcels were still vacant (1994)

Harbor East 2009, almost fully built out

It is important to introduce this site into the story because it serves as the test case for both for proponents and foes of the TIF financing plans. Harbor East has gone through the same debate 20 years ago allowing us now plenty of hindsight. The development on that site was not as difficult, no cap was needed since it happened simply on the land of a burnt down sawmill. Only trouble was, there were no roads, no water and sewer and the bulkheads along the water were in terrible condition. And there was no willing developer. In fact, it was Mayor William Donald Schaefer who had pushed for development and made his friend, the mega baker Paterakis, do it. Paterakis was initially reluctant: "I am a baker, not a developer". Schaefer and after him Mayor Schmoke sweetened the deal with $20 million of public money for the missing infrastructure (according to some sources it was more like $30 million).  Either amount seems like peanuts, compared to the $107 million TIF bonds requested now by Paterakis' former partner, Michael Beatty. Still, the amount would have represented up to 10% of the total construction cost. (Back when the city built the streets of Harbor East out of the city's capital budget, the anticipated and projected development cost was estimated with $300 million). Many considered the whole idea a pipe dream. In fact, for years the site looked like a dream gone bust or like some kind of driving range for practicing drivers, traffic circle and all, but no buildings in sight.

Today, of course, Harbor East is the shiniest piece of Baltimore and is much glitzier than the famous but aging  Inner Harbor. According to the developer's website " Harbor East is a $1.67 billion mixed-use development on Baltimore’s waterfront. Replacing a landscape once characterized by derelict warehouses and factories, Harbor East is now defined by modern amenities and luxuries, gleaming architecture and high-rise towers." Today hardly anybody would say that Harbor East isn't a huge success and that its tax contributions and jobs are vital for the city. The $20 million subsidy has long proved to be a prudent investment instead of a folly, directly dollar for dollar but also through the boost it provided for the economy of the city at large. Interestingly, while the public cost  remained, of course, the same $20-30 million that were needed to get the infrastructure constructed, the actual value of completed construction more than quintupled from then anticipated $300 million to the noted $1.67 billion. This means the public subsidy was, in fact not 6.77-10% of the total development cost but turned out to be more like 1.2%. The public streets and walks were no big deal. It was a bigger deal that the first large project on the site, the Wyndham hotel, (now Marriott) not only scuttled the award winning masterplan but also received $75 million in PILOT tax relief, a matter that had been gone to court and had been called "pure fiscal insanity" by community lawyer John Murphy in 1999. To date the hotel had 13 property tax free years (except $1/yr).

The Harbor East and Harbor Point comparison. Similarities and differences

Can Harbor East's success be the blueprint for HarborPoint, a project estimated to have a $1 billion build-out cost for its nearly 3 million square feet development after a PUD amendment that added more than 1.2 million squarefeet to the original PUD plan and significantly increased the height limits. The Mayor sure thinks so. (see press release). Once again it would appear that the public infrastructure cost alone would be 10% of the total investment. If one adds the EZ and brownfield tax breaks, than the dollars may total well over 20%. Unless, of course, the total development cost of HarborPoint would explode in the same manner as it did at Harbor East. Once again, there are many who think the whole development will never happen.

The proposed Exelon building with the trading floor to the right. Design and rendering by  Elkus Manfredi Architects, Boston.

But before we get carried away with the similarities, we need to understand a few significant differences: First, the Harbor Point infratsructure cost wouldn't come straight from the city budget (although Councilman Stokes wants it to come from there) but from bonds which would be served by the future tax payments of the project. (The Tax Increment Financing approach). Obviously, the TIF construct and the direct tax credits work cross purpose since the payback rate is much slower when the tax payments themselves have already been substantially cut by tax benefits. (As Baltimore Brew's journalist Mark Reutter aptly pointed out, although he didn't mention that some of theCity tax losses from the EZ are offset by the State).

The second difference is that Harbor East is a capped site requiring all kinds of complicated techniques to allow for development. While the clay and membrane cap can be penetrated for piles, it can not be dug up in any big way. To run utilities and give buildings basements, it is proposed to build a large cover almost over the entire site which becomes one gigantic underground parking deck and is the place where water, sewer and electric conduits run. To create a somewhat convincing edge around the peninsula where the promenade is supposed to run, the concrete deck is concealed with landscaped berms, terraces and ramps for access and covered with enough soil to allow street trees and green plazas. The developer maintains that without the TIF and tax credit, development would not work on this site due to the large "stranded cost" for the extra construction needed to place the infrastructure. Not for Exelon, even less for other possibly less well heeled investors.

Public money or "no development"?

When Michael Beatty states laconically, "no TIF, no development" is this just one of those threats that developers make to get what they want or is it true? Consider this: Exelon, the energy giant that had just bought out Baltimore's Constellation Energy wants to be the first big building on the cap. To much consternation of many downtown advocates, Exelon picked Harbor East as its location in spite of sitting on an environmental containment cap and in spite of the absence of infrastructure on the site. Exelon could have gone on any of the large vacant sites in downtown, roads, water, sewer and electric would have been largely in place, paid and installed a long time ago by what, taxpayer money. Could the energy giant afford the extra cost of roads, sidewalks, parks and pipes? Maybe, I can't say. But doesn't it make sense to say that these items that make up the "public roam" that is so important in any city should be paid by the public? Especially so when we are talking about recycling a hopelessly contaminated site for which all talk about "market forces" that would take care of things in some "natural order" is hardly applicable?
The promenade, the streets, the proposed park, the square in front of the Exelon tower, all these items are supremely important elements in Baltimore's infrastructure network. Just recall how these items were envisioned for the site even without any development.

The former Allied site today with only one building standing, the Thames Wharf for Stanely Morgan (bottom right)

The approved 26 acre masterplan designed by Ayers Saint Gross with the 6 acre Point Park and a public square in front of the Exelon building top center

Conclusion

So how to answer the original question: Are $107 million in bonds a good investment for Baltimore?

The criteria for an answer are these:

• Will the City on balance get income it wouldn't have without development on this site? 
• Will downtown, Harbor East and Fells Point be better off with the pensinsula developed rather than it being an open space?
• Would this development happen even without city investment?

The answer to the first point comes from the fiscal impact analysis performed by an independent group for the city. It states that the City would come out ahead. After 34 years and full build out the City stands to gain more than half a billion dollars in taxes alone, adjusted for inflation. (For those who want to see more detail and snapshots in a more manageable time-frame, click the link at the bottom of this blog).
The second answer is not as easy, a 27 acre world class park on par with Chicago's Millennium Park surely would be an attractive option for this linchpin between downtown and Fells Point. But lets not be naive, why would the owners do that after the gigantic remediation cost? And who would pay for the significant investment for a first rate park?
On the third point: The site developer says no. By contrast, some who are skeptical about the public money observe that now, after Harbor East is built out, it would only be logical that the next frontier is HarborPoint, even without public bonds. To which I would say that that belief in the natural forces of the market is devoid of a vision or aim. Harbor East would not have happened on its own without the vision of then Mayor Schaefer and could easily resulted in a hodgepodge of mediocre small scale aimless developments hadn't there be a clear plan and a clear strategy which also included public investment.
The next frontier for development could just as well be Upper Fells Point or the vast bakery holdings of John Paterakis that still sit between Harbor East and Fells Point. One could easily imagine that Harborpoint would sit fenced and vacant for another twenty years, just as it did so far. The current masterplan represents a clear public-private strategy with a schedule, funding mechanisms and many of the objectives the community fought for. It is worth realizing.

In coming to the conclusion that in the given case the public investment is justified and wise, I would still have some caveats:

• The Enterprise Zone should never have been extended into this affluent area and should be renegotiated in whatever way possible especially for the remainder of developments on the site. 
• It needs to be sure that the proposed bonds are fully secured by the developers and that the city would not be stuck with any risk if the developments wouldn't materialize as anticipated or the developers would go bankrupt or dissolve their business. 
• The part of the TIF that deals with an off-site school should be removed from the infrastructure cost list since it just confuses the issue. 
• One of my reservations comes from my visions for future transportation: Parking should be drastically reduced on HarborPoint to makes this area a true transit oriented development (TOD); this would cut development cost, reduce the traffic burden for surrounding areas and reduce the cost for the expensive four lane bridge extending Central Avenue to the site and which is part of the $107 million package. The bridge should be scaled back to just pedestrians, bikes and "personal transit".

The proposed six acre Point Park and the promenade are the fruits of hard community bargaining that began in 1991. Incidentally, together these green spaces are about the size of Gezi Park in Istanbul, currently the world's most famous open space which rattled a well established national government.
As Alexander Garvin points out in his book "The Planning Game": Great cities do not just "happen". They need creative planning, risk taking and strong leaders but also community consensus and credibility. HarborPoint is too good a site to let sit fallow. It must include public investment for public benefit.

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA

Updated for added text for clarity in the conclusion section of the article. 6/16/13; 13:33h. Update for small language corrections 6/17 18:35h.

Related articles on this blog:
Why Exelon chose HarborPoint over downtown

External Links:

EPA Status webpage
1992 Sun Article
June 3 Press release Mayor
Fiscal Impact Analysis

Protecting the Bay or Government Intrusion?

An Unappetizing Topic as a Civics Lesson 

This week a Baltimore AIA training class for young architects to become civilly engaged professional leaders dwelled on the dark side of our built environment: Sewage. A topic most of us have put well out of our mind ever since indoor plumbing became the norm. Increasingly, though, we realize that "out of sight- out of mind" won't do if sewage pipes leak into streams, treatment plants overflow or the proliferation of septic systems challenge groundwater, streams and water bodies like the Chesapeake Bay. The State of Maryland as one of the states on the Bay is under strict rulings by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to clean up this "impaired water body". Control of nutrients flowing into the Bay is a central concern for the clean-up. Maryland has enacted a whole set of  regulations in response, all aimed at reducing water pollution. One of the new rules is about where septic systems can go (and which type of systems are permissible).

The elements of a septic system (source)

Sprawl, the large lot isolated developments not connected to existing towns and villages, which eat up much of the open space while accommodating only a small portion of the population, is only possible with the use of septic systems. Sprawl is far from municipal water and sewer systems. Essentially we are talking about tanks and drain-fields where some of the sewage volume (the solids) are stored and pumped while the majority (the liquids) are released into nature. These systems tend to release plenty of nitrogen even if they perform as designed which especially older systems rarely do. Nitrogen, a fertilizer, once in rivers or the Bay, creates unwanted growth of algae, for example, killing the useful grasses and disturbing the Eco system.

In the AIA civic engagement session, I asked participants  if Maryland's "Septic Bill"  is a necessary and useful tool for  "Smart Growth"  or if it is another sign of government intruding and preventing citizens from exercising their rights.

The ongoing Maryland "septic battle" illustrates how the control of septic systems is not only about an unappetizing technical matter but also one of land use, clean water and the larger philosophical issues of freedom and choice.

The Sustainable Growth and Agricultural Preservation Act of 2012

Here is what it is about:
Last year the Maryland House and Senate had passed a bill under that name to clean up the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries by discouraging septic systems and encouraging development in areas that have or will have public sewer service instead. Larger developments relying on septic systems pollute local waters through nitrogen is the main argument, but land use and sprawl arguments follow right behind: developments outside of established water and sewer service areas fragment agricultural and forest land, and burden local governments with the costs of sprawl. The idea of using septic systems as a growth management tool came as a surprise to even environmentalists when the Governor first announced the idea of a ban septic systems except for very small developments in 2011. By 2012 it was understood that such top down regulation wouldn't fly. Instead, a compromise in which local government can define the  geography of the restriction themselves, with the State simply providing definitions and principles was created. With "Home Rule" thus protected, lawmakers passed the law.
Governor O' Malley justified the need for such a law in these words:
“Among the big four causes of pollution in the Bay, septic pollution is the one area where so far we have totally failed – where the graph is going pretty dramatically in the wrong direction. It’s the fastest growing cause of nitrogen pollution in our Bay, and it’s only getting worse.
In fact, all our progress to date in reducing nitrogen pollution by retrofitting existing septic systems – progress we’ve invested $40 million in since 2008 – has been completely negated by the installation of new septic systems. On the Lower Western Shore, septic pollution now accounts for 33% of the damaging flow of nitrogen into the Bay.

The Act establishes four tiers that increasingly limit the type of development that can occur. Local government has to map those tiers based on their existing plans and goals for growth management. The tier maps are supposed to reflect existing zoning, comprehensive plans, and water and sewer plans. They were defined as follows:

• Tier I areas are currently served by sewerage systems.
• Tier II areas are planned to be served by sewerage systems.
• Tier III areas are not planned to be served by sewerage systems. These are areas where growth on septic systems can occur.
• Tier IV areas are planned for preservation and conservation and prohibit residential major subdivisions

The Septic Bill, War on Rural America?

This sounds simple enough and reasonably logical. By December 2012 "the locals" were expected to have submitted their maps. By that deadline it was clear, that things were anything but simple. Not in a climate where half the country seems to have embarked in a fight against "big government"  especially those who feel they don't belong to the "urban elite"  and have identified a "war on rural America"  waged by "liberal elites".

Many counties provided reasonable tier maps that, at a minimum, reflected their existing growth management plans or showed additional control on development areas outside the designated growth areas  where septic developments had especially proliferated. Others, however, played renegade and either submitted no maps at all or maps that thumbed their nose at the overseeing State Planning Department by declaring almost their entire county to be Tier III, allowed septic zones. Some counties in the middle negotiated with MDP for exceptions or assistance.

The Act of 2012 had thought of the possibility of non compliance and prepared for it with this penalty: If a local jurisdiction decides not to adopt growth tiers or is unable to adopt them by the December 31, 2012 deadline, major residential subdivisions cannot be approved outside of areas with public sewer. Commercial and industrial development were not included in this penalty. If the Maryland Department of Planning objects to tier maps and makes comments, a jurisdiction has to hold meetings to discuss the matter publicly. However, the bill is silent what should happen after that if a map was still obviously non compliant.

In 2013, the tug of war had escalated to a point where bills were introduced to repeal the law althogether. However, that attempt failed. To aid the survival of the Act, the State Planning Department issued this progress report.

Cecil County, located in one of the last truly rural stretches in the Boston to Richmond megalopolis, clearly itched for a fight. It attached a County Council resolution to its tier map in which it maintains that the State is not using "sound science" in its determination of nitrogen pollution. The resolution states that the County submits a map only "under duress and protest". In fact, the submitted map is one big provocation by coloring almost the entire County as Tier III, i.e. an gigantic  septic zone.

The State responded accordingly:
“The Tier map violates the Act because it does not include in Tier IV the county’s Priority Preservation Area, Rural Legacy Areas, areas planned and zoned for land, agricultural, or resource protection, preservation or conservation, and areas dominated by agricultural lands, forest lands, or other natural areas.... The adopted Tier map does not include as Tier I or II all portions of the county’s locally designated growth areas. The adopted Tier map also does not include as Tier II all areas ‘planned to be served by public sewerage systems and in the Municipal Growth Element’” 

The two Cecil County maps compare the State's interpretation of how the County Tier map should  look like if it applied the State criteria correctly (left) and what the County submitted, instead. (right). Yellow represents areas where septic systems would be allowed. Source: State report

What exactly the State will do with Cecil County remains to be seen, but it is clear that administrative repercussions can be expected. Ever since Governor Glendening coined the term Smart Growth for his policies, the State has long established as one of the growth management rules that "the State will not fund dumb growth" (Governor O'Malley). Many counties still working on their maps will look at Cecil as a precedent. 

Secretary Hall of the State Planning Department sees the results so far as a success. Much potential septic development under zoning has been eliminated in the proposed maps. At least one other county, though, plans to do the opposite. Like Cecil, Charles County doesn't plan to follow the intent of the bill. To avoid to be called on the inconsistency between its comp plan and the tier map,  it will make its new comp plan so permissive that it, too, can have septic zones everywhere. But those, then would be compliant, at least technically.

State Rules versus Home Rule

So, is septic control a good growth management tool? Is it legitimate to use environmental issues such as clean water to control land use? Is the requirement to designate tiers an intrusion into local "home rule", the right of local government to control land sue, cherished in most US States? Is the septics bill a good example to show how young architects can get engaged in public affairs?

Like our future civic leader that stageda vivid   debate in their training session, many people will have many different opinions on these questions. Let's just say, a healthy Chesapeake Bay is vital to the future of the region. The water quality in the Bay, in spite of all efforts to the contrary, will be severely stressed by all the growth that will with certainty bring additional pavement, pollutants and impacts. It would make sense, then, to eliminate the most blatant pollution sources: Run off from stormwater and nitrogen influx from failing or aging septic systems. 

As far as home rule, the right for local government to designate zoning remains, however, it puts some teeth into what it means to zone land agricultural. For the State to set some standards makes eminent sense when one considers that the total of local zoning rules still needs to make sense on the regional and state level, something that doesn't happen by magic but only by oversight. Economically, neither the State nor the Counties can sustain sprawl in the long run. 

As for this as a study case for civic engagement: Because the bill has caused opponents to play it up to be an issue of freedom and property rights, it is a good example of the need to balance individual freedom with the common good and to balance short term gains with long term cost. 

 Even though the US historically placed the individual right above the common good, in a society with more and more people living together in urbanized areas, certain practices just need to be re-calibrated if we want to continue to live in health and wealth and have a good quality of life.

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA

The CivicLab session addressed also Preservation which will be the topic of another blog article. Guest presenters at the CivicLab session were Kimberly Golden Brandt from the 1000 Friends of Maryland and Johns Hopkins from Baltimore Heritage. Session leader: The writer of this blog. 


Related topics on this blog:

• What Watershed Improvements, Maximum Daily Loads and Septic Tanks Have to do With Smart Growth
• Sprawl and the City
• CivicLAB - Training Leaders at AIA Baltimore (Sustainability, Smart Growth and Preservation).

External links: 
EPA septics guide for homeowners
Another fine guide for homeowners with septic systems
Advanced treatment technologies for pollution reduction

Value Engineering - the Architect's Nemesis?

Few terms are as widely misunderstood as "value engineering". While one of our projects is in the fangs of this wild beast, I feel motivated  to address a number of misconceptions about architects, design and chiefly about "value engineering".

Misconceptions About the Architect

There is hardly an architect I know who didn't have to struggle with his client's notion that architects design "frilly things" as "monuments for themselves", or that architects are for form and engineers are for function. Any number of similar misperceptions see architects either as wimpy decorators doing nothing more than putting lipstick on buildings or, on the other end of the spectrum, but equally wrong, as heroic lone wolves that fight everybody else and cater only to their own big egos. Especially for the latter image we have to thank Ayn Rand who imprinted it indelibly into hundreds of thousands of young minds with "Fountainhead", a book still frequently read in high school. In it the protagonist, Howard Roark, an architect, spouts off sentences like this: "I can find the joy only if I do my work in the best way possible to me. But the best is a matter of standards—and I set my own standards. I inherit nothing. I stand at the end of no tradition. I may, perhaps, stand at the beginning of one.” 
This is, of course, anachronistic in a world of teamwork, but never in history would it have been right since every artist, engineer, scientist or architect stands on the shoulder of others that came before. The image of the architect in the public mind is in such dire need for a reset that the American Institute of Architects (AIA) is currently spending a lot of money on "repositioning" the profession. The message: Although architects can imagine things that don't exist yet, they are not dreamers but team players and problem solvers who can put themselves in the shoes of others. Most notably, the can add value for the client.

Ayn Rand's Howard Roark has done a lot of damage to the perception of what an architect is (played by Gary Cooper in the 1949 film version)

Misconceptions of Design

Since architects design, we also have to address misconceptions about design. This is complicated because "design" is quite a chameleon with many meanings. I dealt with that in a previous blog article and will say here only this: Design, as understood by architects (and engineers, for that matter) is the "whole enchilada", i.e. problem solving that addresses a whole system, be it buildings or communities. Design (for the architect) includes projecting and anticipating an integrated solution for everything that makes up a building or a community and finding a physical form around a problem that is usually described as a program or as desired outcomes. As such, design has quantitative and qualitative aspects.

One can measure in square feet if the program areas are sized correctly , one can measure if the windows leak air or if the walls are sufficiently insulated. The quality aspects are harder to grasp: Are the spaces comfortable? Does the building look good? Does the form match the "branding" or self image of a client?

There is mounting evidence that daylight, color and a generally pleasant surrounding can heal patients in hospitals faster, can make kids learn better in schools and can make employees more productive in their work places. Although these outcomes are also measurable, it is difficult to pinpoint the causes. This requires a baseline comparison like a before or after study eliminating other variables in an almost scientific manner, something that can rarely be done to argue design in a concept stage. It is even harder to "prove" success of design as an expression of a corporate or institutional culture. That a building or campus is such an expression is increasingly required by museums, top tier universities and international corporations.

In any event, design is so much more than lipstick or ornament. "Real" design reaches deep into function, massing, structure, materials and layout.

Masquerading as Value Engineering

Finally, the misconception about value-engineering. Given the prevailing anachronistic ideas about architects, it comes as no surprise, then, that the word value is coupled with "engineering" and not with "design" or "architecture". Maybe this is because the term "Value Engineering" (VE) was born in the engineering departments of general Electric during World War II. It was geared towards optimization and the question: Can we achieve the same outcomes with less effort, less cost, less material and so forth. The Federal Government defines VE like this: "a technique directed toward analyzing the functions of an item or process to determine "best value," or the best relationship between worth and cost. In other words, "best value" is represented by an item or process that consistently performs the required basic function and has the lowest life-cycle cost." 

If we had coined the term "value architecture", maybe the term would never have mutated from the innocent beginning at GE to its current application as a guillotine used to kill design, therefore, dreaded by most architects. VE, as experienced by architects, is usually not a step in the design process but the moment when their completely designed project will be dragged to the altar of the "budget" where its design will be sacrificed, stripped down and cheapened. Under the guise of value engineering contractors and engineers often go after a building's design like the Taliban after fashion. Often the owner who started out asking for quality or even wanted to" make a statement" will be dragged into the frenzy where anything above minimum functionality is seen as frivolous. This sacrificial moment in the life of way too many construction projects occurs when the bids are submitted and sticker-shock has set in, i.e. way too late in the process to be really productive.

The graph shows that the real benefits of VE reside in the early stages of design

The Reasons Behind the Misconceptions 

The misconceptions about the architect and about design, no doubt, aid in the abuse of value engineering as a slaughter-fest. The notion of the architect as decorator or, worse, as someone brutally foisting his or her will on the poor owner and the suffering engineers consultants fuels the Schadenfreude when the architect's design gets ransacked.

Clear also, that a design process in which an architect happily progresses towards the bid set without real cost control asks for budget trouble. This is easy to diagnose but hard to remedy, even when careful and early cost estimates were put in place. Projects that are unique, creative or look difficult (i.e. probably the best designs) have to pay a premium simply for appearing to be "difficult". Big projects are often years in the making and what may have seemed within the budget at the concept and the design stages may exceed budget when the actual bid occurs. Furthermore, cost is much more driven by market than by rational calculation. My firm involved a qualified and interested general contractor in 2011 to determine the cost of a rehab and new construction project before the design was fully completed. The detailed estimate based on a full quantity take-off include a contingency and resulted in an estimated cost of $6,29 million. In 2012, when the bids came in the prices were between slightly more than $7 million and $8 million. The increase much higher than the low inflation rate. Now the owner is looking for nearly a million dollars in savings. Thermal solar elements, green roofs, Variable Refrigerant Flow Zoning cassette HVAC units, the grey-water system, rain screens and many more items are on the chopping block. All were designed to reduce operating cost and the energy footprint of the project. Some actual value engineering items, such as changing block walls into metal framing, get lost among all the things that are really scope changes not deserving the term VE at all.

To fully address the issue of cost and benefit, one needs to take a harder look at what constitutes "cost". For example, "initial cost" versus "long-term cost", or "construction cost" versus "operating cost". In the early stages of a project everybody can easily see both types of cost. At bid time, the construction cost looms so large that it obscures the view of the long-term cost, even if it is "internal" in the sense that the owner actually would have to pay for operation the same way as for the initial cost. If the building is "speculative" and the initial investor is not the user, operating costs or other efficiency benefits become "external" in the same way as the societal costs of air pollution, heat island effects, global warming or water shortages are always external to a construction budget (except where regulation internalizes them).

Indeed, fledgling awareness of societal impacts has led to new codes and regulations addressing these externalities and has driven up the initial cost of construction. But when confronted with the cost to get the building constructed, being a long-term steward of funds or being a good citizen is suddenly much less a concern. Once the bids come in, a lot of good intentions are forgotten, often even the regulations. Bypassing regulations becomes acceptable: Will anybody notice when the items that provided LEED equivalent points per the local green building codes get cut? When the wood doesn't have the FSC stamp, the floor more non biodegradable plastics, the paints more VOC, the walls less insulation? If the owner is looking for LEED certification, such potential shortcuts will be noticed, but in many cities permit reviewers are clearly not yet qualified or equipped to spot these things in their regular inspection process.

Clearly, throwing out the benefits of design because they come later or are hard to quantify (as in employee morale, productivity and the like) is NOT what value engineering should do. Anything that is simply cutting the construction cost by eliminating scope of work or reducing quality standards should be called cost cutting and not value engineering. The  AIA points clearly describes the misconception in one of its online practice guides for architects:
Simply reducing cost at the expense of quality, performance, and scope is not value
analysis. Reducing costs without consideration of value is simple cost cutting. Problems
and fractured relationships often result when cost cutting masquerades as VA. 
Yet, almost always the term VE is used as a euphemism for what really happens. Meanwhile, the architect becomes the scapegoat who receives both, insult and injury.


What Can be Done?

What can be done to avoid this cycle that directly and indirectly leads to many ills we can observe way too often: Shoddy design, poor building performance in terms of energy, air quality or comfort, blatant disregard of occupants such as windowless classrooms and offices?

Firstly, VE has to happen early.  For example, as practiced by the General Services Administration, the big bureaucracy that procures all federal buildings, their construction and professional services for them. GSA includes value engineering long before the bid phase and the sticker shock phase. In their own words:
 GSA generally contracts for two value engineering studies - one at completion of concept design and the second at completion of design development. In each, GSA asks a value engineering consultant to identify and evaluate changes that could result in increased functional value (including customer satisfaction) in the completed facility while reducing construction or operation and maintenance costs. The value engineering effort is scaled to the project size, complexity, and status.
GSA concentrates value engineering efforts in the early stages of project design because early review affords greater savings and allows a change of direction, if appropriate, without affecting project delivery schedules. Emphasis is on obtaining maximum life cycle value for 'first-cost' dollars- the dollars budgeted for the project. If savings are identified, the project budget may be reduced, or the money may be reallocated, if justifiable, for features that would lend greater life cycle value to the building.

Another possible solution is a different project delivery model that doesn't have the linear sequence of "Design-Bid-Build" that often  leads to crashing into the budget wall. New delivery models involve contractors early on.  One of those models is "design-build" in which architect and contractor work together from the beginning. Another is "integrated project delivery" in which owner, architect and contractor are brought onto the same page early on by incentivizing good outcomes and performance.

Lastly, though, it takes education and maybe nothing less than a cultural shift. A departure from a fixation on quantity and a new orientation on quality. Architects, always firmly anchored into function and form, engineering and art, materials and people, quantity and quality maybe uniquely positioned to be players in such a shift. Let's hope the re-positioning effort at AIA will help.


Klaus Philipsen, FAIA

Related blog articles on this blog:

What is the Architect's Kodak Moment? 
What has Architecture to do with Quantum Physics?

Links on the topic of Value Engineering:

GSA: Implementing Value Engineering
National Institute of Building Sciences
AIA: Value Analysis
New England Real Estate Journal Network: VE, Good or Evil in Architecture?

Can Cities be Both Livable and Resilient?

UWith resiliency seemingly an urgent necessity, urban designers have to ask, can livability, sustainability and resilience be combined? Are they like Russian dolls all part of the same package or will resilient cities  be fortresses that will lose livability elements such as history and charm?

Tornados, earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, there hardly seems to be a week without some type of large scale calamity striking communities small and large somewhere on the globe. There is little doubt that nature has increasingly a hard time striking where no people are. With seven billion people populating the globe in ever higher proportion in metropolitan areas, the need for city resiliency seems to be a logical consequence, even for those who still doubt global warming.

(Last week the Hawaiian Mauna Loa observatory measured for the first time an average of over 400 ppm of CO2, continuing its continuous rise since 1958. This makes it abundantly clear that the threshold of 450ppm, considered by many as the point where catastrophic disasters are almost certain, is not only all but inevitable but at the current rate it will be met in a breathtakingly fast 25 years! In other words: Climate change is certain).

One of the answers to the resiliency/livability question comes from statistics. Interestingly, global death toll rates from natural disasters have been shrinking even while the frequency of natural disasters is increasing at alarming rates. What is going on? A 2007 Geotimes study suggests that the death toll from disasters goes down the more democracy and GDP a country has while the material cost from disasters increases with GDP.   (The study looked at a period of several years in the sixties and compared it with 200-2004. In 2010 the trend stopped and there was an all time high death toll from natural disasters). Nevertheless, resilience coming from wealth suggests that a host of factors come into play that have to do with available resources from technology to good governance, good emergency services, education, excellent communication and other non physical issues. That would still leave the cost to deal with, i.e. prevention from some type of fortification.

A good time to bring up Christchurch, NZ. This town of 350,000 on the eastern shore of the South Island of New Zealand hasn't necessarily been on my mind at all, esepcially not in the cotext of resilience and climate change. But it is a labatory of the intersection between livability and resilience. Two weeks ago, I was asked to moderate a panel on future cities in Washington DC as part of the US-New Zealand Forum, a bi-annual event this year hosted by the US-NZ Council which promotes Pacific partnerships and trade. That is when I started to study Christchurch.

The Council thought it was a good idea to have a panel about the future of cities due to a harrowing experience during the last US-NZ Forum in 2011 when the conference was rudely interrupted by a violent earthquake. The 2011 earthquake devastated New Zealand's second largest city, Christchurch, or more specifically, its center. Over 130,000 structures were damaged in a two-punch quake series with the first strike in September 2010 and the second, more devastating one, in February 2011 when the tower of the famous Christchurch Cathedral was knocked down, several large office buildings collapsed and 180 people were killed. (Compare that death toll with the single building collapse in Bangladesh that cost nearly 1000 lives and one can see that wealth really creates resilience). Today the total damage in and near Christchurch is estimated to be nearly $40 billion, a gigantic number in part due to the fact that many buildings which look relatively intact can't be saved due to "liquefaction" of the soils in which due to the shake up sandy soils lose almost all bearing capacity.

One of the totally destroyed downtown buildings immediately after the Feb 2011 earthquake 

the badly damaged Christchurch Cathedral. Alternatives for reconstruction from rebuild to a modern structure are still discussed

Since then the city is in recovery mode and has gathered experts wordlwide, including Gehl architects of Copenhagen who call themselves "Urban Quality Experts". So what to learn from Christchurch? The New Zealand panelists at the Forum  assumed that Christchurch and its disaster response would be instructional to the rest of the world. As best I can gather, these were their key reasons:

• New Zealand is turning disaster into an opportunity to build one of the world's most advanced cities
• New Zealand has a very open and corruption free structure of governance 
• Christchurch employed an inclusionary, transparent and participatory recovery planning process
• Planning principles for Christchurch's recovery are realistic based on a diminished size with provisions for future growth
• The recovery "Blueprint" encompasses quality of life, sustainability and resilience 

continued below the images

The Christchurch "Blueprint" Plan showing a reduced size downtown with a "frame"  bracketing downtown between the existing park lands along the river and a new park to the east 

The "anchor projects" of the Blueprint

This diagram shows the complicated relations and parts involved in the creation of the Blueprint plan 

The New Zealand Institute of Architects NZIA, although it has been involved in the recovery planning, and similar to the AIA developed various documents addressing disaster response, was not part of the Forum event. As I learned, AIA and NZIA have no current collaboration on recovery strategies. A surprising finding given the similarities between the two countries in terms of standard of living, lifestyle and construction technologies. Theresa Fulginiti, Director for International relations at the AIA Headquarter in Washington, explains this so:

Regarding collaborating with the NZ Institute of Architects, the AIA’s current strategy for building formal alliances directly with architectural organizations in other countries and regions is to focus on where our members are currently living / practicing and where we see opportunities (such as in emerging markets).  Other than that, we collaborate with most organizations through our membership and participation in the International Union of Architects, which represents about 130 national architectural organizations (including the NZIA) and focuses on issues like education, practice, sustainability, etc.  

Unlike New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina, Christchurch apparently had less "ambulance chasers" and carpet beggars flocking to the town to dispense advice with handsome profit in mind. Actually, the Chamber of Commerce would like to see more people knocking at their doors to assist in the huge amounts of investments needed to bring Christchurch back. The official delegation at the Forum could not quite decide between a euphoric "sales mode", touting the progress of recovery, the quality of the plans, the amount of business and population actually retained and a more sobering tone admitting that much, much more is needed to make the recovery plans reality.

Although the NZ government is not federal (no States), it is still complicated. In additional to the national government, there is the Canterbury regional government which runs the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Agency (CERA), and the city council and the citizens of the area, all collaborating in recovery planning. One collaborative recovery document is called the Blueprint.

Given the absence of  NZIA at the Forum event,  I asked its President David Sheppard who was involved with recovery planning from the beginning about his assessment of the recovery efforts.  He sent me a presentation he had recently given in Dhaka, Bangladesh on the occasion of the Commonwealth Association of Architects (CAA) Conference there. In it he summarized the Christchurch recovery and the role that architects played in it. He begins with an explanation why Christchurch matters internationally:

How the city manages its reconstruction is being watched with major interest by the International community. It is on the list of just 16 cities around the world whose future could provide leadership and innovation in urban development,  badly needed at present  around the globe.  

It is exciting but an extreme challenge for this particular City and no less so for the Architectural profession working within it. There is evidence everywhere of the need for action, ideas, help and hope.

David Sheppard observes, that (local) architects are not always called to the table after a disaster and are not easily considered the "go-to" entity that would have much to say how recovery should be planned. Naturally, as architects we would disagree.

In the recovery phases, there have been ongoing difficulties experienced by the local Architectural profession to get their feet under the table and to participate in the formulation and development of recovery plans.  Those at the table have been largely local and national politicians,  government department staff, directors of large construction companies, project managers and property developers.  

It has been through smaller, impermanent projects that the local architect’s influence has been evident. There have been imaginative ‘Pop up” and temporary responses to immediate commercial, cultural and social needs of the city which have resulted in some lively and innovative projects. These include this pop up shopping mall, Art Box mobile exhibition spaces, temporary bars and cafes and the ubiquitous “Gap fillers”, informal installations created by young designers, artists and students on the empty blocks of land which have become available as the result of the considerable demolition in the city. The result has been funky and fun and has led to the “Lonely Planet” tourist guide currently listing Christchurch as one of its most interesting, different and enjoyable tourist destinations throughout the world.  

It looks, though, as if  the architects' knowledge has been better utilized in the more recent past, David mentions the already noted Blueprint as a notable collaborative effort:

Due to the sustained efforts of a large group of local professionals maintaining  persistent contact with those in charge of the recovery effort, a number of the group was finally engaged as a team to prepare, within a very limited time frame of 100 days during 2012, a “Blueprint for the recovery of the central area of the City”. This followed a detailed submission prepared by the local Branch of the Institute which attracted the interest of some of those in charge of the recovery. The Blueprint was launched by the Government on July 31 2012 and it has been widely accepted. It sets the stage for the recovery of the central area and located key anchor projects vital to the economic recovery of the City as a whole. Implementation of this plan is underway.

The Blueprint plan is well presented and boldly reduces the development footprint by introducing the "Frame", a park-like green bracket that acts in tandem with the already existing park along the river Avon. In addition the plan proposes 17 "anchor projects" which are carefully placed throughout the recovery district as catalysts or kickstarters for investment. The anchors include the "classics" like a convention center and a sports stadium but also placemaking elements such as the "frame" park itself, a "square", an arts district and an innovation district. The Blueprint also limits building heights to seven stories, less for earthquake resilience than for a distribution of density that is more like in a European city. Although the Blueprint envisions a bus hub as one of the anchor projects and talks a lot about pedestrians and bicyclists, the plan offers little in terms of a new transportation vision. Somewhat disturbing, though, and that gets us back to the question if livability and resilience can coexist, the plan has little to say about preservation and maintaining the character of the city. Of the 17 "anchors", not one is dedicated to a "historic district". Not even the preservation and reconstruction of the signature Cathedral is a sure thing.

As far as "future" goes, there are plans underway to make Christchurch the first real "smart city" in the world in which planning decisions are based on real time data collected from a fully integrated data sensing network that includes private data as well as publicly collected data. This project dubbed "sensing city" was presented by one of the panelists, "serendipity architect" Roger Dennis, who travels around the world to make this project a reality with the help of international corporations. Via Dennis' expansion of the definition, O'Malley's CitiStat sounded all fresh and innovative again, a reminder that we, in fact, live in the information age. Roger Dennis may hit the nerve of what it means to build a 21st century "knowledge community".  He has placed this quote on his website that may best describe the potential benefits of a data driven "smart city":

“The technology-enabled city is an untapped source of sustainable growth and represents a powerful approach for tackling unprecedented environmental and economic challenges. By unlocking technology, infrastructure and public data, cities can open up new value chains that spawn innovative applications and information products that make possible sustainable modes of city living and working.” (Arup, The Climate Group, Accenture and Horizon, University of Nottingham, 2011)

Temporary uses on vacant lots organized and created by Gap Fillers. Here the Pallet Pavilion

Of course, the idea of a "reset" of cities is not new at all. Some resets were driven by catastrophe (Lisbon's earthquake, the Chicago fire), some by innovation (Haussmann in Paris, Robert Moses in New York), but all past resets were driven by men with big plans (Dan Burnham: "Make no small plans") and were implemented largely top down. Today this type approach won't do anymore.

Another aspect is not new either: The city as a global trade unit that is open and flexible and can act directly, more or less independent of the nation state it belongs to. This was the model of the Hanseatic League of the middle ages and this may very well be a model we will trend towards again. New Zealand, the Forum stressed, sees itself as an important bridge in the Pacific region in a world that may well shift from trans-Atlantic emphasis to a new trans-Pacific emphasis. Christchurch as a major port city can carve out a role in that.

As societies, democratic or not, we are still grappling with crowd sourcing, emergence, self organization and other kinds of bottom up processes that promise to be future. In Christchurch to date, what may be most convincing are the unplanned spontaneous activities of pop-up architecture and gap- filling, response born from impatience, creativity and the power of many that brought life and joy back into the streets and ruins of Christchurch. The panelists didn't mention it, but NZIA's David Sheppard did, and it occurs to me that, that maybe so far these fledgling elements of a bottom-up culture are the best lessons from Christchurch.

Postscript:
 Resilience against earthquakes is possible without changing the city visibly. San Francisco and California have largely retrofitted their structures, small and large to withstand larger tremors. Already in 1906, after first a devastating fire and then a catastrophic earthquake, did they reject Burnham's big "reset" vision of a different San Francisco.  Today it is considered a very livable city. The San Francisco Chronicle ended its 2006 article about the Burnham plan with this conclusion:
A great city is organic. It evolves with society and responds to unexpected stimulation. It is judged by quality of life, not quality of design -- and by that standard, San Francisco fared just fine.
Resilience against riots, by contrast, created some of the most horrible urban renewal schemes and fortresses in the wake of the 1968 urban unrests. Resiliency against rising waters and floods is still in its infancy and it remains to be seen if port cities like New York and Baltimore have to retreat from the water's edges which  in recent decades had turned from industrial working areas to most cherished real estate. Resiliency, of course, is an age-old city shaping concept, most notable in the walled medieval European cities which are tourist attractions where castles, moats, walls and fortifications have been preserved. The Netherlands have so many centuries of experience with resilience against rising waters that they are invited experts around the world today.
Current resilience efforts (for Baltimore: look here) are just another round in humans fighting both, nature's and their own adversity. A city that is not resilient, cannot be sustainable and ultimately also not livable.

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA

updated 5/26/13 9:36h, 21:04h. 5/27: Added external links.

Related posts on this blog: 

Do we have to rethink our urban waterfronts again?
Are Cities resilient enough to withstand "Storms of the Century"?
Suburban America - Not resilient enough in global warming

External links for resilient cities:

Resilient Cities Conference 2013
Susannah Drake: Resilient Urban Environments (Video of a lecture. Start at about 3:30 min)
MoMa exhibit: Rising Currents
Siemens report on savings from resiliency
Vancouver Climate Adaptation Strategy 
New York's Resiliency Task Force
Visualized sea-level rise Atlantic Coast

http://qz.com/80657/the-return-of-the-city-state/

Why dealing with the past through Demolition may not work

Even in the wake of the Sandy Hook school shooting the US Senate did not have the strength to curtail the access to weapons although a gunman armed with four firearms, one of them semi-automatic, killed 26 human beings, including 20 children.  Instead, according to a task force recommendation, the school building should be torn down.

(CNN) - To erase some of the emotional scars left behind from the December shooting massacre at the Sandy Hook Elementary School, an advisory board wants the building torn down and replaced.

The Sandy Hook Task Force voted unanimously late Friday to recommend to the Newtown, Connecticut, board of education to build a new school on the site of the existing building.

The Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut (Internet image)

What does this tell us about ourselves? I don't know if the school was on some kind of obsolescence list, although I doubt it. Schools in small communities are typically just fine. So why demolish a presumably functional school, turn classrooms and libraries into rubble only to then erect another school with classrooms and libraries in the same space? Save the survivors from the demons of evil in some act of exorcism? As if those demons weren't lodged in our heads already in the form of pictures, screams and fear; traumatically so for those who where right there when it happened, to a smaller degree for all of us who believe in sending little kids to school who saw the pictures of this terrible event over and over.

Leveling the building so that the halls in which terror reigned and blood flowed can never again be entered solves nothing. It shows action in the wrong place. It fakes resolve when we just proved to be powerless in the face of the NRA and the industrial complex behind it.
Meanwhile, by the time a new school will be complete, the survivors will be middle schoolers if not in high school already. So what would be the point?

It has become a worrisome practice to level buildings to hide societal failures. Governments and dictators have practiced eradication of memory via demolition forever. Victors taking down the monuments and the representative buildings as a means of conquest. Even the defeated did it: Germans buried much of the Nazi past through demolition and where it not for the WWII allies there wouldn't be any concentration camp standing anymore as a place of remembrance and reminder of past horrors. While West Germans tried to wipe out the Nazi history, their socialist brethren went back to the imperial period preceding the Nazis by leveling the splendid old Stadtschloss (castle) in Berlin which had survived the war. Then, after unification the West Germans quickly demolished the East German Volkspalast (people's palace) that had taken the place of the royal Stadtschloss and was nothing less than the Parliament building of the socialist East. Of course, the once dividing Wall and the accompanying deaths strips were obliterated so thoroughly, that today concrete pieces of the wall can be traded for money. Money needed to rebuild the royal castle didn't materialize yet, so now, after  the demo of the castle and the Peoples Palace, Berlin has a a derelict site in its center.

The historic Stadtschloss in Berlin (demolished)

Closer to home exorcism through demolition can be found in a grand scale in the spectacular implosions of public housing. Cabrini Green in Chicago, Lexington Terrace and four other complexes in Baltimore and much more around the country, all were leveled without a trace, the effort funded by HOPE VI money from HUD. No question that the conditions in these complexes were disastrous, that the whole idea of warehousing the poor in high rises was ill conceived and deeply unjust to boot. But was dynamite really the only possible answer?

The Lafayette Courts public housing towers in Baltimore when they were new. (demolished. Source: Baltimore Housing)

These were buildings that had won design awards only 50 years ago. Solid concrete and brick buildings that had replaced dilapidated "slums" of shoddy rowhouses were reduced to rubble. Ironically they were then replaced once again by rowhosues, flimsily constructed of 2x4 wood frames, gypsum and plywood. Couldn't the old concrete high rises be rehabilitated as retirement homes or residences for childless urban dwellers? Wouldn't there have been a way to mitigate their anti urban layout through appropriate infill as has been just proposed for NYC public housing? Here, as in the German example, the double demolition conceals the deeper underlying failures that led to slums and warehousing of poverty in the first place. It weren't so much the buildings that failed as the policies. Granted, HUD is now guided by different policies but one could certainly argue that the change could have happened without turning thousands of dwelling units that were public property into dust.

These examples lead us back to the question if society should remove from the face of the earth what was witness to events we would rather forget. Can demolition really be more than a symbol and truly function as therapy or healing?

It is for psychologists to answer these questions with competence. As an architect who designs places and buildings I can only speculate that the demolition of buildings in order to wipe the slate clean may be more voodoo healing than problem solving. The buildings are just scapegoats.

The demolition method is costly and appears to be wasteful. Cost wouldn't be an issue, if the community in Connecticut and the children of the school would really be better off for it, if the implosion of housing would really have solved poverty, if Germany would now be free of neo Nazis.

But none of this has happened or is likely to be the result of demolition. For Sandy Hook one could easiliy imagine many more productive things to assist the survivors than additional destruction.

Monuments, castles and peoples' palaces, Sandy Hook and public housing high rises are each unique in their own way and the reasons for demolition  certainly differ significantly. Yet, they have in common a desire to get rid of bad memories via demolition of brick and mortar.

I would like to offer a view in which instead of being scapegoats buildings are an expression and witness of society's failures and successes. Instead of wiping the slate clean like a blackboard, one could see buildings as places of remembrance, as a collective memory from which we mature, move forward and onward cognizant and reflective of all layers of time good and bad.

Seen this way, the built environment could contribute to healing, learning and awareness. In due time Sandy Hook could become a monument of our adoration of guns. A learning place of a different kind. Wouldn't this be more prudent and more honest?

 Klaus Philipsen, FAIA

What exactly is Design Thinking?

The tower of Babel project came to an end with the curse of many languages that foiled any further teamwork. By contrast, the English word "design" is understood without translation around the globe.

But far from giving the universal word automatic clout, there is mass confusion about its meaning. Naturally, the English speaking countries are most aware of the ambiguities of the term design and it's may meanings. For the English speaker "design" can be a verb or a noun, it can describe the process and the result. For a designer it is shaping a product. For an architect it is a phase in the process of drawing up a new building, for a transportation engineer it is the period when a project moves from planning to engineering. For most laypeople it has to do with fashion or the shape of products, something at best skin deep.

Then there are the christian fundamentalists who pose "intelligent design" against evolution. Here, sorry for the pun, design is understood in a fundamental way, certainly not just the looks of things: Design understood as active intervention instead of evolution based on internal rules.

Is that what people mean when the propagate "design thinking"?

The young artists, architects, engineers and planners who, after an evening of heavy brainstorming, set out to found the Baltimore D Center had "design" in mind, "with a capital D". They wanted nothing less than putting "Design into the DNA of Baltimore". Clearly, they had more in mind than prettier facades. They, too talked about "design thinking".

So what, then, is "design thinking"?

Tim Brown, President and CEO of IDEO, often credited with having coined the term, in an article in the Harvard Business Review put it this way: " Rather than asking designers to make an already developed idea more attractive [... ], [they are now asked] to create ideas that better meet [...] needs and desires. The former role is tactical, and results in limited value creation; the latter is strategic, and leads to dramatic new forms of value".  (Tim Brown's blog named Design Thinking here).

Design going from skin deep to fundamental. An event of the Commonwealth Club of California  announced a panel talk with Tim Brown in March of this year with these words: Design is not just for house interiors or a tech gadget’s user interface. Design has come to infiltrate how great leaders think, collaborate and tackle the world’s smallest and greatest problems. The idea of design thinking,  has transformed analytical thinking into creative yet practical problem solving. (Podcast about the discussion between Yves Behar and Tim Brown).

This pretty much mails it. The Baltimore D center, meanwhile, has held over 50 "Design Conversations", a series of events that turned out to be one of the most successful means to engrain design into Baltimore's culture. The most intriguing result of these curated talks about all things design has been the broad range of topics spanning many different disciplines in front of very diverse audiences. People of all walks of life and all ages came to converse about design.

The most recent conversation circled back to a more traditional concept of design as in "Baltimore Design School". A new middle and high school magnet with three tracks most would readily associated with design: Graphic Design, Fashion and Architecture. Fittingly, the school will find its permanent home in a building that was last used to tailor suits. But beyond the teachings in these three tracks the school clearly understands design as an emancipatory and pedagogical tool.

Design per the Oxford dictionary is "to form a plan or scheme of, to arrange or conceive in the mind...for later execution."

This can be about "gestalt" (shape) but it can also be a complex model of inner workings such as in rocket or nuclear power plant design.

This gets us back to the question of design thinking. Design as a tool of harnessing complexity and linking many aspects into a system which can be realized and solves a problem, ideally even creates delight. Far from being strictly analytical, design makes creative leaps and creates something substantially new, something unique that needs to be first thought, then documented and then may potentially be realized.

As Sir Francis Bacon observed in 1605 in his books about "the Advancement of Learning", new ideas come about by connecting and transferring observations of one "arte" to the uses of another, "when the experiences of several mysteries shall fall under consideration of one man's mind".

What a beautiful explanation of the creative leap!

In a world of experts, where explanations and interventions have been delegated to ever more narrowly defined fields, "design thinking" is a response and a reaction. At a point where many areas have entirely lost the view of the woods before all the trees, there is thirst for a more holistic approach. Where doctors see only an organ or a bone and not the human being, engineers just see cars and not the purpose of a city, where humanity seems to have lost its way with nature, new ways to address problems are needed, methods that recognize how everything is connected with everything else.

Architects are design thinkers by definition. Wether we talk about climate change, water scarcity, sustainable energy management, maintenance of complex infrastructure systems, health or anything else, really, with seven billion people on planet earth, the built environment is always front and center. A huge opportunity for architects.

Design thinking is right out of the architect's toolbox.
"ArchPlan offers clients a comprehensive approach to design in a profession which often has become fragmented by narrow fields of expertise" I wrote into my firm's profile when I founded it in 1992.

Twenty-one years later, I still think that interdisciplinary collaboration, a holistic approach and the big picture are exactly what we need. The more complicated the problem, the less we can leave it to experts.

"Design Thinking" is precisely that, the big picture, comprehensive approach that considers the overall outcome and not the myopic metric. In Bacon's time, the connections may still have happened in one man's mind. Today the lone creative individual isn't enough anymore. Today we need collaborations, teams, many perspectives and diversity.

Design may just be that operative word that can unify the many experts lost in their individual languages, so we can continue the tower of Babel, symbol of our civilization. It has become a matter of great urgency.


My Dictionary app offers these definitions for "design":

[ dih- zahyn ]
verb (used with object)
to prepare the preliminary sketch or the plans for (a work to be executed), especially to plan the form and structure of: to design a new bridge.
to plan and fashion artistically or skillfully.
to intend for a definite purpose: a scholarship designed for foreign students.

to form or conceive in the mind; contrive; plan: The prisoner designed an intricate escape.

to assign in thought or intention; purpose: He designed to be a doctor.

Obsolete . to mark out, as by a sign; indicate.

verb (used without object)
to make drawings, preliminary sketches, or plans.
to plan and fashion the form and structure of an object, work of art, decorative scheme, etc.

noun
an outline, sketch, or plan, as of the form and structure of a work of art, an edifice, or a machine to be executed or constructed.

organization or structure of formal elements in a work of art; composition.
the combination of details or features of a picture, building, etc.; the pattern or motif of artistic work: the design on a bracelet.
the art of designing: a school of design.
a plan or project: a design for a new process.

a plot or intrigue, especially an underhand, deceitful, or treacherous one: His political rivals formulated a design to unseat him.

a hostile or aggressive project or scheme having evil or selfish motives: He had designs on his partner's stock.
intention; purpose; end.

adaptation of means to a preconceived end.

Example Sentences
Origin: 1350–1400; Middle English designen < Latin dēsignāre to mark out. See de-, sign
Related Forms----
out·de·sign , verb (used with object)
o·ver·de·sign , verb
pre·de·sign , verb (used with object)
re·de·sign , verb
self-de·sign , noun
un·der·de·sign , verb (used with object)

Recommended reading:
Frederick Brooks
"The Design of Design - Essays from a computer scientist. "
Addison Wesley 2010

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA