It’s not easy being an architect. Aside from the years of schooling, tireless internship hours, expensive nine-hour tests, and impending deadlines, an architect must deal with the community’s reaction to his or her designs, which can sometimes be the greatest challenge. This aspect of the profession is one of the reasons that the Rhode Island Chapter of the American Institute of Architects will be presenting “Transforming Providence: A Civic Discussion on Design” on November 4.
Joan Slafsky, communications director of the initiative said, “the conference provides the opportunity for the public to hear local and national authorities present thoughts on contemporary design in a city known for its architectural character and to form and express their own opinions.”
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Kip McMahan, chair of Transforming Providence and an architect at Robinson Green Beretta, said the forum seeks to challenge current local assumptions about Providence’s architectural and cultural heritage as “we contemplate new buildings and spaces alongside the old.”
“You accurately define a city by the period in which it was built,” he said. “The buildings should be truthful and accurate for the time.”
McMahan said “Providence has a long history of contention over its buildings,” citing everything from the objections to the Rubik’s cube-like Providence Washington Plaza in the eighties to the more recent brouhaha regarding the State House-blocking design of Providence Place. Incidentally, Providence Place designer Friedrich St. Florian will be one of the speakers at the upcoming summit.
“People get all worked up about art they don’t understand,” said Slafsky. who said the week leading up to the conference may even feature an exhibit of architectural projects in Providence from days gone by that never even saw fruition. That exhibit, which will most likely be put together by the Providence Chapter of the AIA and feature presentations by students at Rhode Island School of Design and Roger Williams University, has a working title of “Past Futures.”
“In the early seventies there was a plan advocating demolishing all buildings and putting up new ones,” said McMahon.
Those plans still exist in the archives of the Department of Planning, and will most likely be on display as part of this exhibit. It is called Past Futures because of what people in the past envisioned as the future of Providence.
According to Slafsky, the conference will examine historical perspective in Providence and identify architectural controversies of the past, which are now considered successful buildings, to demonstrate how stylistic developments can be accommodated within an older context.
In addition to St. Florian’s assessment of the design process will be presentations by Robert Campbell, Boston Globe architectural critic; Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, author of the Downcity Plan; Hugh Hardylead architect for the new residential/retail complex planned for Parcel 9 and Trinity’s new master plan. George Hargreaves and J. Max Bond, Jr. will also speak.
The Web site for Transforming Providence, www.transprov.org, will be up and running this Friday, June 23.
