To Save or Not To Save: It's No Longer a Question

This past week marked two momentous events in the world of architecture, one of local and the other of international significance. The Old Coast Guard Station, which had silently suffered an increasingly abject existence since it’d been abandoned in 1980, was finally torn down; and French architect Jean Nouvel was announced the winner of the much-coveted Pritzker Architecture Prize.

The two events may appear unrelated, but by juxtaposing the two I’m doing more than indulging my appetite for delicious incongruities. What actually caused me to dwell on the connection was a quote by Jean Nouvel upon receipt of the honor which was published in the Architectural Record.

“It’s impossible to create a timeless building,” says Nouvel. “Knowledge evolves, techniques also. A city is like a museum and what’s interesting is you can find the thinking and feelings of a generation, the preoccupation of an epoch, within the parade of architecture.”

He constructs this suggestive analogy as a framework within which to place his own high-tech constructions, which employ the latest technologies and materials. He cares little if his buildings become outdated as the technology itself becomes outdated – it will, like the architecture of the past, become a relic to be studied not just within the context of architecture but the society that gave birth to it.

This idea of a parade of styles is the reason why overtired architecture students are paraded around cities like Rome and Venice. It’s the reason why London is such an incredibly vibrant organism which keeps acquiring new and unusual appendages. Yet what is contained within Nouvel’s words is simultaneously an indictment and a positive affirmation of historic architecture. On one hand it suggest the architecture of the past should be preserved, on the other it describes it as obsolete, a relic to be observed but hardly emulated. Both perspectives that can be applied to the fate of the Old Coast Guard building.

The building was a good example of the Prairie Style, which in itself is remarkable considering most the Colonial Style was considered far more appropriate for public works of this period. Though it was still quite a handsome structure it had suffered much since being abandoned, first by a fire in which a hole had been gouged into the roof, and then by damage resulting from the hole in the roof which had left the building vulnerable to the weather. Even then, saving the station had always been part of the agenda; it was just a question of the right party being able to raise the sufficient fund – which none ended up being able to secure.

There are clearly a number of people who feel the building should have been saved and rehabilitated to its former glory. It too may then have joined Milwaukee’s parade of styles. At the same time, it begs the question of whether we should be expending energy and finances on rehabilitating an old building when we could be investing in one that speaks of the present. For my own part I believe architecture of the past is always worth preserving, but sadly in this case it wasn’t. But in its place it leaves an opportunity which shouldn’t be squandered; an opportunity to build something that speaks of Milwaukee as it is today. I sincerely hope any proposal for the site won’t attempt to ape the style of its predecessor, nor vie for cheap modernism through swathes of blinding glass and pokey ribs of steel. For there is one point on which I disagree with Nouvel. Buildings are as finite as the people and societies that create them, but some are far more capable than others at engendering an almost timeless appeal.