Moynihan Symposium on Public Design: Innovation for Public Design

[ Silence ] >> [Casey Jones] I'm Casey Jones, Director of Design Excellence at the U.S. General Services Administration and additionally at the United States Department of State. Our next panel is entitled "Innovation for Public Design." Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan was a visionary who saw the potential for the federal government to enrich the lives of its citizens and understood the obligation to invest wisely in the nation's future. He fashioned innovative public policy as evidenced by the guiding principles for federal architecture and authored insightful legislation over the course of four terms in Congress. Whether it's new technology that allows us to design a more sustainable building or a procedural change that eliminates unnecessary bureaucracy, innovation challenges the status quo. Each of our panelists this afternoon is an innovator. Over the course of the next hour they will share their insights on this subject. I would like to acknowledge our moderator, Marilyn Jordan Taylor, Dean of the University of Pennsylvania School of Design. Prior to her academic appointment in 2008 she was partner in charge of the urban design and planning practice at Skidmore, Owings and Merrill. Marilyn is an authority on large scale development, from public infrastructure works to entire cities. As someone who has devised tools that improve the public realm and who has positively shaped the world around us, Marilyn embodies multiple approaches to innovation. She is joined by David Burney, Commissioner of the New York City Department of Design and Construction. As many of you already know, David has made it easier for New York's emerging and cutting edge architects to do design work in their city. He has deployed public investment to champion the design profession. Walter Hood founded his design studio in 1992 and is a professor at the University of California Berkeley's Department of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Design. Not only has Walter helped broaden our understanding of landscape's role in health and well-being of our cities, he has done groundbreaking work in serving urban communities. Randy Mason is Chair of the graduate program in Historic Preservation and an Associate Professor of City and Regional Planning at Penn Design. Randy has a deep understanding of how the most familiar or traditional elements of the built environment can be leveraged to unexpected ends. And Kairos Shen directs planning at the Boston Redevelopment Authority and has simultaneously since 2008 served as chief planner of the city of Boston. In this role Kairos has turned innovative thinking into real change, something made possible by his remarkable ability to listen to and anticipate the needs of his city's many communities. We look to our panelists to identify where innovation is happening and to recommend ways in which we may benefit from it. At the same time I encourage the audience to seek the universal lessons in the specific projects or policies discussed. And I particularly invite the federal level attendees to consider how different models may transform our various agencies. Volunteers will again handle comment cards through the first half of the discussion and we will forward those to Marilyn prior to the completion of the panel. Lastly, I would like to remind you that there will be no intermission following this panel. At 4:15 our final speakers of the day will come up on stage with a brief introduction from my colleague, Desa Seeley. If you would like to Twitter your remarks and thoughts about the panel, you may do so. The hash tag is "mspd2012" and with that, thank you. Marilyn? >> [Marilyn Jordan Taylor] Thank you very much, Casey Jones. We really appreciate everything you are doing for the Design Excellence Program at GSA and now at Department of State. And thank you, Les Shepherd, for carrying forward this incredible initiative of Bob Peck, Moynihan supporter and extraordinary colleague on public design and making this symposium proud. You know it's hard when it's Pat Moynihan not to start with a short reflection. And I will too, but this panel is about public design moving forward in ever increasing scales and with ever greater challenges. But my really fond recollection is that Pat Moynihan thought not only about legacy as he championed design excellence, he believed in innovation, he sought out experimentation. Through our years here in Washington working on Pennsylvania Avenue and then on the Northeast Corridor rail project, as we tried to revive the aging and failing infrastructure of what is now a 100 year old embarrassing railroad in the northeast, he advocated Maglev. He said, what's wrong with you, just get rid of that old stuff, the future should be here now. He was impatient with the old, he was ready for the new. And I think that stands out from the pages that he wrote. He was also adamant about the role of inspiring, and yes monumental, public buildings and how they dignified everyday life, inclusively for everyone. He loved New York's and McKinn, Mead and White's late, great Penn Station. He told stories over and over again about walking through it daily as a young man. And those stories so inspired all of us who heard him tell them as I hope and clearly we see Penn Station inspired him. He felt the vulnerability of the public realm in his bones. When SOM won the project to design a great new Penn Station, he called the very next day - is it done yet, he said, of the station that would someday come to bear his name, is it done? And in response to our stunned silence because we were still kind of privately celebrating our win and getting nervous about how we would possibly please him, he continued - vulnerability is the theme, remember - this project is a fat dolphin in a sea of sharks. Get it done, do it now, make it inevitable. And it's that inevitability that I hope that we all want to talk about as we talk about public design on this panel. So inevitability, vulnerability, innovation, experimentation were also strong elements of the Moynihan commitment to public design. And when he penned them back in 1962, there was nothing inevitable about it. We were not exactly doing the best federal buildings of the year of our country. And so his inauspicious one page start has created resonance way beyond what we might have hoped or expected at the time. Each of the panelists is going to talk for just a few minutes about this question: where does it go from here? Kairos, will you start? >> [Kairos Shen] I am going to first apologize for being an unabashed apologist for Boston first, so just to get that out of the way. And share my experiences in reflecting on some of Senator Moynihan's, those principles of the context of what we know and what we have done in Boston. I think the one thing that wasn't covered in the first panel was the urban context, the historical context when that document was put together in 1962. It focused, obviously, on federal architecture and excellence and investment in that area, but it happened in 1962 when the cities of America were actually doing very poorly and Boston actually was in sad shape. It also was probably the beginning of, depending on where you think about it, a period of urban renewal where we were destroying parts of our city in order to rebuild it. And most important, I think, was that it made the assumption that the GSA and federal buildings were not the only federal investments in our city. There were all kinds of other federal funding that was actually going to rebuild our cities, build and rebuild our highway system. And those actually, those instruments of investment are actually, many of them, if they haven't disappeared, it certainly feels like on the city side that they are disappearing. But at the same time the American cities - and again, we will count Boston as one of the lucky ones, have actually gone through a renaissance. I think most people will say that cities are better off than they are certainly compared to 1962, much of it, of course, due to the many good years of investment. But I think that where we have to be really thinking about the future is how do we now make the kind of city building gestures with less investment than we have before. So in the sense that we in the city are depending more on private developers to build the public infrastructure that otherwise the public government, government agencies, either the state, the federal government or the city would have been building. And I think that the innovation that is required is how do we be creative in actually finding the right funding. And what we have found is that the kinds of traditional approach of building singular, single use type buildings that are really doing their own function themselves very well are no longer the kinds of buildings that actually we can get the most out of. So not only am I talking about mix use buildings, but also multiple use buildings or buildings that have a particular life on a weekday that will have a different life during the weekends and how they can contribute to the life of the city. And I know one of the things, and here I hope I am not too critical to the federal buildings that we have been recipients of is that they tend to still be very, very singularly oriented in its function and it does not feel that the most important thing that it's doing is to contribute to the city life around it. I know that Justice Breyer said earlier on that Boston's courthouse, the federal courthouse of the first circuit is, in fact, one of the buildings that has a restaurant in it that actually faces out instead of faces in. But that's a small gesture, a few thousand square feet within a building that is actually close to half a million square feet. So I think that this is an important component about being innovative about how we think about these buildings. And I think one of the other things that Senator Moynihan did not do that I think other people have mentioned that the third point is about siting. Maybe even more important than that, we have to be innovative and creative about programming. So what is this public building, what is the role that it plays, not only for itself, but for the city that it's part of. >> [Marilyn Jordan Taylor] So one of the proposals here, innovation if you will have, certainly extension and projection forward, is as opposed to focusing on federal only as the form of public design, we have to think in ways that integrate all levels of public design and extend it further, building to site, to setting and even, of course I would hope, on to infrastructural systems. And we'll come back to that. David, I know that explicitly the spirit, maybe not all the literal words of the 1962 page, have done a lot to frame your thinking about the way that one builds public buildings in and for New York City. Tell us a little bit about that. >> [David Burney] Yes. I mean, not only did it inform us, but it informed GSA's Design Excellence Program and to Bob Peck and Ed Finer and really Bob and Ed were our mentors in initiating the Design Excellence Program in New York. I mean, I think fifty years later, I mean I think that Patrick Moynihan would be gratified by the sort of resurgence of city living and the resurgence of the city because as Kairos was saying in the '60s and '70s, urbanism was not a popular thing. And here we are now in a situation where I think it's now 50 percent of the world's population lives in cities and by 2030 it will be 70 percent. So there is this huge resurgence in the idea of urbanism. And with it bring a lot of challenges. And I think what's interesting also about cities now is that even though there is this renewed interest, people don't have to live in cities in the same way that they used to, say, in the 19th and 20th century because they were centers of manufacturing or they were ports or whatever. Now people live in cities because they want to. It's choice. And I think particularly about in New York City after the attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001, a lot of people said well, that's it, New York City is really finished because the economy depends on Wall Street. Now with the internet and technology, they don't have to be there anymore, they can be in Bangalore or they can be in Connecticut. They will never come back. And what happened, Goldman Sachs built a $650 million dollar building right there on West Street within a stone's throw of the World Trade Center. And why did they do that? Because all of the 20 something and 30 something people that they need to recruit and retain want to be in the city where there's access to culture, to educational opportunities, to recreation, to the quality of life that cities can really build. So I think that speaks to your point that we have to take a very holistic approach to the quality of life of the 21st century city. It's not about individual buildings; it's very much about the space between buildings, about supporting the infrastructure, between providing public spaces that are walkable and active to deliver that quality of life that I think the 21st century city really needs. >> [Marilyn Jordan Taylor] When I first began working for Skidmore, Owings and Merrill here in Washington we were given Nat Owings' autobiography to read. And bridging between you and you Walter, one of the points he makes as he approached the work that he did on the Washington Mall which frankly was one of the ways that we had that special privilege of working closely with Senator Moynihan before he was Senator Moynihan and after he was Senator Moynihan and during his extraordinary career. And it's quite remarkable for sort of the giants of modern American, of American modernism mid-century to say when they arrived here in Washington you know, buildings are just the biggest thing in the large landscape that really is what makes our cities work. So the pressures on the spaces in between is very real in New York and making spaces, in addition to the space, that's in between is very important to you. Walter? >> [Walter Hood] Yeah - well, that's where we spend most of our time, right, going from meeting to meeting or whether we're out for leisure activities. But I think for me the bigger issue today is when we think of GSA and you think of government, it's like, what is their role. Because I think we're all smart architects, landscape architects, planners. I mean, we know today what we can do to create better environments. I think the bigger issue is then what is the role of government and how does government then play a role in our everyday lives. And I think we are at that point in our country where there is a big debate about that. And that debate has always been running. I am always reminded when I come here, I go to the Lincoln Memorial and I read the second inaugural address and it is as if it was written yesterday. So when I was reading Moynihan's pieces, it was like it was written yesterday. And so there is this, I think within the republic of America, I think there is this tension that is constantly pushing against what constitutes the public realm. And I think we then have to sort of step back. I think in the last panel I think they stated very clearly that we need people, particularly I would say our elected officials to step up. And I think one, I listed five things. The first one, I mean, I think government should inspire us. The story of America is just beautiful allegory. I mean, it's about a nation being built along a river and the river happened to be named after the Roman river, but the Tiber and from the Tiber this beautiful city, shining city, set up on a hill. There is no hill, but it's a beautiful allegory that allow us to sort of be this amazing democracy. It should challenge all of our citizens to be citizens, to participate. But I think the government should lead by example. In many places you go that is supposed to be about us. We should be able to look at that and see ourselves in that. So in a way, it's allowing the private to sort of go forward. But one of the most important ones I think, and hopefully you will speak to this, is how do we deal with history? And America has a very interesting way of dealing with its history. The buildings that we built for government become monuments immediately and there is no change, there is no polomses (ph.). So it doesn't speak of multi-generational, it doesn't speak of the people today versus the people a hundred years ago. So how does that sort of exchange itself? And lastly, I think someone referred to it as a house or a public building should be a house, but they should be a place that bring people together. They should be places where people want to go. And I know there are some public buildings that I don't like to go to because of what they mean or what they have meant to me or other people. And so I think we have to somehow figure out how to somehow mitigate that. >> [Marilyn Jordan Taylor] That is interesting, because that really ties to something the panel was discussing in the last round which is in our late 20th century fascination with consumption and brand and all the branding that is going on, and even to a certain extent around governmental experiences and governmental buildings, isn't it better, said Harriet, to think about what the values are that are manifest. >> [Walter Hood] Right. >> [Marilyn Jordan Taylor] As one of the people who wrote in, I will find it while we're talking, said the goal of a public building should be to blur the space between the providers and the receivers and make everyone feel welcome there. So, Randy, we are stuck with a past, part of which we can celebrate when we think about going forward. By the way, if any of you want to come to Penn Design and drop into a conversation, Randy has a seminar in which he is asking what will preservation save fifty years from now. But that is too big a topic for today. What can we do, we have got an inheritance, whether we want it or not, of lots of existing buildings. On the more positive side, embracing them and understanding that in scarce resource times it's really important to cherish them, honor them and use them if we can give them due life. What do you see are the challenges? >> [Randy Mason] Well, I think the challenge for me is to, especially being among capital D designers, and I am not a capital D designer, I work in design, but I just play one on TV, I am not a real landscape architect. I see this more from the perspective as an historian. And being a historian, one has to put oneself in the moment of, the historical moment of, for instance, Senator Moynihan writing these principles and ask what he was reacting against - and Kairos brought this up - what was happening in cities. These were all manifestly part of what was motivating him. So as I look at it today and the challenge that we had of how to think ahead with these principles in mind, there are three things that occurred to me that we needed to go back to and sort of pull these threads from the intact fabric of these great principles that we've been working with, to pull them out and think about them maybe a little bit differently. One was about the public realm so I will do as you said, Walter, and talk about that or just raise it or agree with you. Public realm is exceedingly important despite the sort of permanence that was being talked about in the last panel. The federal government is permanent, but the public realm is anything but permanent, it is always in turmoil, it is always at odds with itself. We as a people are still a people, but we are different people from who we once were, we will keep changing. So that's kind of, to me, public realm is always something kind of fraught and always has a little bit of conflict in it. It's conflict between different interests, it's also conflict between ideals and realities, between pragmatics and utopias. And we were all trained to think utopian thoughts in design and to try to use them. And we should still do that, but we have to really reconcile those with the pragmatics. So the second piece I think flows right out of that, the second issue I would bring up, which is about tradition or history as you framed it, Marilyn. Tradition ain't what it used to be. I was born in '63, not '62, so I can't speak to 1962, but I know that a heck of a lot has happened to our attitudes to the past in the last 50 years. We all can cite our different versions of this roiling relationship between how we look at the past, how much more complicated it is now than it used to be, how we use it in different ways. It always reminds me of this phrase from, I think it was from the 1910s, a great literary critic named Van Wyck Brooks cooked up this term "the usable past." He was talking about traditions in American literature. And it's a very apt phrase for us because we, at least I think the best and most thoughtful of us in the preservation field, are not out to just copy and imitate or to literally transcribe; we are there to use and apply the past, materially, formally, as narratives, et cetera. So asking ourselves how are we using the past today, how should we be using the past today, that's more the question. And it's a very different question from the one, to give a gentle critique to the late Senator, to today's years. The Pericles quote strikes me as a little bit, that made me sit up in my chair a little bit and pay more attention. It sort of suggests that there is a choice between imitation and innovation. And in 1962 I accept that that was against modernism with a capital M and it needed to be asserted. Today we think about it very differently and in a much more complex and complicated ways. So the last thing I wanted to bring up was what we're talking about when we talk about public design, public designing what? We were remarking that that incredible video that started out today's proceedings was impressive in a lot of different ways. And it really foregrounded charismatic buildings, charismatic design, design with a capital D, these great courthouses and other buildings I didn't actually know what their uses were, which is interesting. But we also have to think in terms, we have to think more expansively about schools, about libraries, about visitor centers. One of the things that I have been involved with and really challenged by is the National Park Service wrestling with how they think about design as applied to this amazing set of assets we have called the national parks. It's not a matter of architecture or landscape architecture; it's also a matter of conservation, more to my field. It's a matter of interpreting it. And it's not just a matter of whether it's a stylistic question about a visitor center, it's this very holistic, very encompassing way of thinking about how we organize and steward the built environment. >> [Marilyn Jordan Taylor] Starting with program, thinking it all through. David, you had a reaction about imitation and innovation. While you are thinking about it, I sat up straight when I realized that there are members of this panel who didn't know how to read when the design guidelines for federal office buildings were written. So I am feeling much older now. I am going to lean forward and talk - David? >> [David Burney] Well, some architects still have trouble with the reading and writing part. No, what Randy was saying just reminded me of a design issue and I am thinking about this issue of history and innovation. New York City has a very extensive system of public libraries. There are three systems, actually, that are sort of quasi-governmental organizations funded largely by the taxpayer that manage literally hundreds of branch libraries throughout the city. And the legacy comes from the Andrew Carnegie days when Carnegie funded the construction of over 100 libraries around the turn of the century. And those libraries are designed mostly by McKinn, Meade and White and Karen Hastings, these kind of classical mausoleums to books. You go in there, they have the columns and the frieze. And their role, originally, I guess was to sort of defend books against nasty little boys like me that that would tear out the pages. But there has been a huge resurgence in the branch library business, mostly fueled by a lot of the immigration coming into the city, the kind of working class didactics who are looking for access to knowledge to the point where the libraries have become these sort of community centers now. It's not only about the books, there are digital, access to the internet, after school programs, there are teen rooms where kids can hang out and play music and so on. And a big expansion of the library system was funded by the city. So we didn't know quite how to face this challenge and we got the three library systems together and we had that conversation about history, about branding. We said originally the libraries went out, they hired two major architectural firms, they designed all of the library branches, they all look the same. Shall we do the same, shall we just hire Skidmore, just have them do the next fifty libraries, right? But they said no, no, no, we don't want to do that, we love and cherish our Carnegie branches, but we think our libraries should be contemporary of our time, contextual with the neighborhoods that they serve and our generation's contribution to the library program. So as a result, the new generation of libraries are very idiosyncratic, very different. We cherish and preserve the Carnegies and when we build expansions to the Carnegies, they are very modern expansions. But our challenge is what is our generation's version of the Carnegie era? And I think that is informed by what they did then, but it has to be of our time. >> [Marilyn Jordan Taylor] Kairos? >> [Kairos Shen] You know, this is a very interesting thing. In Boston we are actually, have the same demand for libraries, but what we are finding exactly the same way is that people conceiving and thinking about the library in an entirely different way. And I want to make two particular points. First, I think the infrastructure, the public infrastructure is no longer just physical; it's the social infrastructure. And I would link this back into the kind of competitiveness that we have to think about in terms of the cities. Because you and I and Philadelphia are competing for the same smart people that are going to be the leaders and thought leaders and business entrepreneurs that are going to grow our cities. And what they are looking for is a kind of social infrastructure and a kind of vibe, if you want to call it, that will make their quality of life really worth them moving or staying in a city. And specifically with libraries, what we have started to do - two things. One, some of you may be distressed to hear that we are thinking about putting in a new set of programs on the street in the Johnson Building to the addition of the McKinn, Mead and White public library. Literally bringing something completely different, maybe retail, we don't know, into the street level