BRUTAL INTENTIONS TRANSFORMING BRUTALISM & THE CASE FOR CROSLEY TOWER Anna Hargan 2022
I would like to thank Crosley Tower for always watching over me...
It’s about time I return the favor...
TRANSFORM S A V E
C R O S L E Y T O W E R
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Introduction Brutal Origins Monumentality Identifying the White Elephant Altering Identity Manifestations of Crosley Tower Design Implications Site Design
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Conclusion
1 Introduction
“No other architectural style elicits [as much negative] emotional reaction as B r u ta l ism .”1 Brutalism, born out of the post-war 1940s, came about as a type of modernism
primarily characterized by the use of raw concrete in social housing projects after World War II. Its unpopularity amongst the public and some architects have been consistent since its origins. Its unpopularity is accredited to many reasons, including its brutal nature, aging aesthetics, and association with urban decay and economic hardships. Not all aspects or characteristics that define early Brutalism are utilized in architecture associated with the style today, but the pattern of dislike amongst the public maintains certain consistencies. How can we alter the negative identity associated with Brutalism? With the active whispers of demolition for many Brutalist buildings across the world today, how do we prevent erasing an entire architectural movement from history? Addressing the negative identity surrounding Brutalist architecture today involves preserving a piece of significant architectural history and elevating it towards the present and future urban and social environments. For many architects addressing these issues in the industry today, a wide variety of solutions involving a range of alternative techniques have been utilized to alter these negative identities which cloud the potential of these structures. From very small alterations including light projection shows, to additive methods including exterior additions, to subtractive methods including innovative engineering techniques, many methods are starting to challenge traditional demolition. 1 Huppatz, “Brutalism: How to Love a Concrete Beast.”
Through the concepts of value, permanence, obsolescence, and preservation we can gain a better understanding of the core issues surrounding Brutalism and concrete structures and develop a methodology to address these issues. Obsolescence is a concept that characterizes Brutalism as a style that has lost its value over time. Brutalist buildings have aged in their perseverance through time, which reveals the style’s close ties to permanence. Their permanence allows them to blend with a city’s urban fabric and yet standalone as monuments. This same research and methodology have the potential to be applied to current and future buildings with a distinct architectural style that may acquire an outdated, negative identity. Crosley Tower, a concrete high rise associated with Brutalism, located on the University of Cincinnati’s Campus in Cincinnati, Ohio, has reached the point in question: should it be demolished, or should it be preserved? Like many historic Brutalist buildings, Crosley Tower has acquired a negative reputation, but unlike other buildings, its infamous identity has nurtured an unexpected level of appreciation. What triggers this attraction to the infamous white elephant? Its ominous, monumental character has attracted an abundance of curiosity toward its existence. A major reason for Crosley’s continued existence today is the difficulties surrounding its demolition. As a monolithic concrete structure adjacent to many campus buildings, its demolition will be costly and will have to be carefully orchestrated, which will arguably be the first time Crosley has seen such care in decades. How can Crosley Tower’s negative identity change in order to save itself from the university’s agenda? This research will involve a deep dive into the reality of Brutalist buildings in the 21st century. Although post-war Brutalist buildings have a negative reputation, by observing modern methodologies of transforming identity, altering these existing structures through physical and metaphysical innovative preservation techniques can prevent erasing physical traces of significant architectural history. The proposed series of innovative alterations to materiality, form, and identity will reveal the significance of components that make up the Crosley Tower’s infamous yet curious reputation and how these components can be utilized to define a solution.
2 Brutal Origins Crosley Tower is associated with Brutalism, but it lacks the key concepts which defined Brutalism in the first place. The building belongs to a style of architecture associated with Brutalism and similar in its use of exposed concrete materiality but dissimilar in concepts of adaptability. This branch of stylistic work began with American architect Louis Kahn’s (1901-1974) Richardson Medical Research Laboratories built in 1965 and located at University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, which influenced many others designing health, science, and academic buildings across the United States. Other monumental campus buildings that were established out of this period include: Brown University’s Science Library (SciLi) built in 1971 by Italian architect M. Rosaria Piomelli (1937-); Yale’s Kline Biology Tower built in 1962 by American architect Richard Foster (1919-2002) and American architect Philip Johnson (1906-2005); NYU’s Weiss Science Tower built in 1971 by American architect Nelson W. Aldrich (1911-1986); University of Massachusetts Amherst’s W.E.B. Du Bois Library built in 1972 by American architect Edward Durell Stone (1902-1978). This trend occurred at a time in history for universities that wanted to establish a sense of strength in academics, superiority over other universities, and worldliness through monumentality, all the while, hoping to prove their value to the world. Comparing elevation between Crosley Tower and this series of buildings, Crosley Tower falls in the middle in height, at approximately two hundred and fifteen feet, and possess a unique geometric crown that the other buildings do not.
Richardson Medical Research Laboratories
Brown University’s Science Library (SciLi)
~305’ STATUE OF LIBERTY NEW YORK, NY
1875
Yale’s Kline Biology Tower
~297’
~250’
W.E.B. DU BOIS LIBRARY
KLINE BIOLOGY TOWER
1972
1962
AMHERST, MA
YALE, CT
NYU’s Weiss
CROSLEY Crosley Tower
~215’
~200’
~180’
CROSLEY TOWER
WEISS SCIENCE TOWER
SCIENCES LIBRARY
UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI , OH
NYU, NY
BROWN UNIVERSITY, RI
~90’ RICHARDS MEDICAL RESEARCH LABORATORIES
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA, PA
1969
Science Tower
1971
1971
1965
UMass Amherst’s W.E.B. Du Bois Library
3 Monumentality Through Crosley Tower’s current state of infamy, it has acquired value. Crosley Tower possesses the three types of value as presented by Riegl: intentional, historical, and age value. Crosley Tower’s intentional monumental value takes root in A.M. Kinney Associates and the university’s original design intentions. The tower was meant to be seen as a symbol of strength and prosperity. Having been designed during a time when the university was growing and seeking to establish sophistication, its permanence aids its initial intentions to persevere through time. Historical value is achieved through the tower’s unique slip-form construction and its Brutalist stylistic qualities. This vertical construction method is a “a process of placing concrete continuously with a single form that is constructed on the ground and raised as the concrete is cast.”2 The technique was used primarily in the early 20th century for the construction of silos and grain elevators.3 Slip-forming was not introduced into residential and commercial building in the US until the late 1960s.4 One characteristic that some early examples of slip-form design include are the use of tapered buttresses, which are present on Crosley Tower. Tapered buttresses are also found on the Environmental Protection Agency, although this building is not a slip-form construction. Rumored to be second to the Hoover Dam as the largest poured-in-place concrete structure in North America, Crosley Tower’s unique technological construction has proven its worth as a historic monument. 2 Nawy, Concrete Construction Engineering Handbook, 10-33. 3 Ketchum, “The Design of Walls, Bins, and Grain Elevators,” 294. 4 “’Slip Forming’ Technique Introduced in Baltimore.”
Crosley has also gained age value due to its age of fifty-three this year of 2022. However, the university’s progressive agenda operates more as a convenient financial driver, concerned with monetary value and reputation rather than art or historical value. Like many other buildings, Crosley’s fate lies in the decisions of its owners. In the case for Crosley Tower there are two university projects that are awaiting completion before demolition begins. In a local news article in The News Record, News Director Quinlan Bentley, talks with Associate Vice President of University of Cincinnati’s Planning + Design + Construction (P+D+C) John Seibert about Crosley Tower. Seibert mentioned that “Clifton Court Hall and [the] renovation of the Old Chemistry building” will be completed before plans for demolition of Crosley take place.5 It is predicted that the Clifton court Hall project will provide “approximately 180,000 additional square feet of academic space for the departments in the College of Arts and Sciences” which will allow the university to consider “deconstructing Crosley Tower.”6 Crosley Tower’s significance for the university once established a worldly sophistication but now falls short of the desires of the university for profitability. If Crosley Tower is to persevere, it must prove its worth to the university beyond the negative perception of Brutalist architecture and associated buildings today.
5 Bentley, “Crosley Tower to Be Demolished in 2025.” 6 Bentley, “Crosley Tower to Be Demolished in 2025.”
4 Identifying the White Elephant
There
is a sense of power and belonging that unites a city or nation and that preserves its rich history. This can be said for the city of Cincinnati and its efforts to preserve its many historical districts. For many cities in eastern Europe and Asia, Brutalist buildings represent a rich history. For Crosley Tower, its history reveals its once popular reputation when it was used as a totem for the university. Investigations into the metaphysical and physical makeup of Crosley Tower’s identity will reveal the layers of its complex memetics and iconic existence. Crosley Tower falls awkwardly between the University of Cincinnati’s beloved late 19th and early 20th century buildings and popular contemporary starchitect buildings. Outcasted to the inactive north side of campus, Crosley Tower marks the border between the University of Cincinnati and Burnet Woods. Situated on top of the hill of Clifton Heights, the tower provides a landmark for those commuting to school or work, and generates a sense of curiosity that resonates with those who seek to observe it up close or far away. Those traversing Martin Luther King Drive in the afternoons must cross through Crosley’s shadow. The physicality of Crosley’s presence cannot help but draw attention and curiosity to itself. The primary and abundant results of the curiosity surrounding the structure take the form of rumors which have contributed to the widely shared memetics of the building: “A construction worker fell in when they were pouring, but they couldn’t stop, and he’s buried within the walls; they dropped aVolkswagen in when they were pouring,and it’s still in there; they forgot to put restrooms in when they built it, so they had to put them in the stairwells; the building is sinking, and the whole thing might fall over soon; they would’ve demolished it years ago, but they don’t know how to. (Scott Hines, 2020)7
The community appreciating Crosley Tower, whether those living close by, current students, or alumni, have a complex relationship with the Brutalist structure. Lowenthal states “the worth of what we preserve depends ultimately on the various and sometimes conflicting intentions of its creators and subsequent guardians and restorers.”8 With the financial agenda of the university, Crosley Tower must prove its worth and turn a profit if it is to avoid demolition. For many students attending the University of Cincinnati, Crosley tower is a valuable part of their academic experience, and some students even seek to capture its identity through memetics with social media outlets such as personal blogs, online chats, Instagram, and Twitter. It can be assumed that Crosley Tower has existed as a meme since its initial erection, first by hand then to digital. The memetics of the building are rooted in its simplistic existence as a catalyst for imagination which takes the forms of big brotherism, underdog-ism, personification, and humor.
7 Hines, “The Story of a Terrible Building That Won’t Go Away Quietly.” 8 Lowenthal, Material Preservation and its Alternatives, 69.
UG
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For a former University of Cincinnati architecture student, the affect Crosley Tower had on Scott Hines over the years was transformative as he states in his personal blog entry “The Story of a Terrible Building that Won’t Go Away Quietly,” “I hated the building when I first began attending class in the architecture building… [but] over the years, I developed a grudging appreciation for it.”9 Similar to Scott’s found love for the building, many others have also grown fond of its brutal qualities and jarring presence. For many, their appreciation is rooted in Crosley being “a building so ugly you couldn’t help feel a fondness for it, like an embarrassing sibling” as Scott creatively describes it.10 For a former English student from the University of Cincinnati, Crosley had enough impact on him that he wrote an article for local Modernnati titled “Building A2: The Underappreciated Spectacle of Crosley Tower.” According to Scotty T. Simpson, who went back to UC in order to attain a Historic Preservation Certificate, he has “gained a greater appreciation for the building.”11 He notes that “the Queen City [of Cincinnati] is home to many different styles of architecture, various revivals, and several subcategories of modern and post-modern, but it was never overflowing with Brutalism.”12 The “one-of-a-kind” building is one of few Brutalist or associated architecture that remain in Cincinnati including “the Wesley United Methodist Chapel (on E. McMicken and Lang in OTR); 1970s additions to the Fechheimer Mansion (at 22 Garfiled Place); the 1974 Cincinnati Bell Equipment Annex; the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Building in Clifton; and [of course] Crosley Tower.”13 With the very limited collection of buildings associated with Brutalism in Cincinnati and the active demolitions of Brutalist buildings across the globe today, the existence of Crosley Tower grows rarer, demolition by demolition. Simpson brings to light the bizarre lack of attention the building has received in that “Crosley Tower is a unique building that is now being nationally and internationally recognized,” and that this should “behoove UC to have a more open dialogue with the public about what to do with this building.” 14
The reality in this phenomenon, accredited to this attraction to Crosley Tower and Brutalism, like mentioned before, is a result of the conformity of our world today. The closer we were to war, destruction, and disaster, the closer humanity was to understanding the rigidity and brutal nature of life itself. Brutalism coming from a world we no longer exist in fuels the curiosities of those being raised in a post-modern, progressive realm. Another recent development involved an informal online social group chat called “Crosley Appreciation Club” where students are free to express their thoughts and feelings about Crosley Tower through observations, explorations, physical representations, general shenanigans, and meme culture. These often take on the form of self-made merchandise, collaging, photography, and memes. With the club achieving recognition from the university, a great wave of social awareness toward the building and its proposed demolition has been met with a greater following than previously documented before. With the event of the university’s 2021 Homecoming parade, Crosley Tower appreciators made sure to show their appreciation through signs to challenge the prodding, negative opinions that were also present at the event. The attention brought towards the building over the years has started to add up and gain social significance like many other similar buildings undergoing the same issues. This evolution of memetics for Crosley Tower has allowed for a broader conversation of anticipation on whether the building is going to extend its stay or buckle under all the pressure. 9 Hines, “The Story of a Terrible Building That Won’t Go Away Quietly.” 10 Hines, “The Story of a Terrible Building That Won’t Go Away Quietly.” 11 Simpson, “Building A2: The Underappreciated Spectacle of Crosley Tower.” 12 Simpson, “Building A2: The Underappreciated Spectacle of Crosley Tower.” 13 Simpson, “Building A2: The Underappreciated Spectacle of Crosley Tower.” 14 Simpson, “Building A2: The Underappreciated Spectacle of Crosley Tower.”
Underdogism
Big Brotherism
Personification
Humor
EME MEME MEME ME EME MEME MEME ME EME MEME MEME ME EME MEME MEME ME EME MEME MEME ME EME MEME MEME ME EME MEME MEME ME EME MEME MEME ME
EME MEME MEME MEM EME MEME MEME MEM EME MEME MEME MEM EME MEME MEME MEM EME MEME MEME MEM EME MEME MEME MEM EME MEME MEME MEM EME MEME MEME MEM
DEMOLISH Crosley Tower
SAVE Crosley Tower
5 Altering Identity
Lowenthal’s Modes of Action:
Does the value of Crosley Tower lie in the identity of the object, its form, or its
materiality? Lowenthal uses the famous philosophical dilemma “ship of Theseus” posed by the Greek philosopher Plutarch (AD 46 - AD 119) to explain the difference between identity and materialization. “Brought into port for repairs, every old plank in Theseus’s ship was replaced by new planks. Was it still the original ship?”15 The question of whether an object is original even after material replacement reveals the complex relationship between form and material as it constitutes for identity. If identity is understood as a metaphysical quality that associates itself with appearance, then materiality and the resulting form of that same object is deemed a physical tool to generate identity. However, identity can also be influenced by memory and emotions. The obsolescent behaviors of our environment, in a way, do not affect identity directly but indirectly through the aging process of physical materials and the fluctuation of fashion and market trends. For Brutalist and associated buildings that have aged visibly and fallen out of style, this contributes to their negatively perceived identity. On one hand, Crosley Tower’s value lies in its concrete materiality, which often is compared to the ruggedness of the earth and its natural materials. While on another hand, its simplistic geometric forms reveal a sense of reality or directness as if the style embodies the genetics of architecture in its purest form. Brutalist buildings today, with their materiality, form, and identity, embody a complex relationship between their past and future in a way that invokes new attention responsible for its infamous nature. With Lowenthal’s understanding of how identity and preservation should be addressed, he brings to light three “modes of action”: fragments, processing, and representations.16 Lowenthal’s “modes of action” for preservation are “not options freely open to modern Western culture.”17 They are a learned behavior through cultural and traditional development and a habitual accomplishment rather than an immediate adoption. Modern western culture clearly has developed and enforced a “commitment to material preservation,” but understanding the different modes and methods of preservation utilized across different cultures can provide an active and innovative way to address the death of our built environment.18 This “commitment to material preservation” seems to have little relationship to Brutalist architecture especially in Western cities today considering it has slowly started to gain in popularity from a time of disregard. The answer can be found in innovative approaches to preservation and transformation which will seek to preserve what is deemed valuable and extinguish elements that prove expendable. Lowenthal calls on the preservationists of today to explore and practice along the spectrum where both “immediate utility and long-term heritage” can be achieved.19 15 Lowenthal, Material Preservation and its Alternatives, 68. 16 Lowenthal, Material Preservation and its Alternatives, 71. 17 Lowenthal, Material Preservation and its Alternatives, 77. 18 Lowenthal, Material Preservation and its Alternatives, 77. 19 Lowenthal, Material Preservation and its Alternatives, 77.
PROCESS Five Manhattan West
FRAGMEN Zeitz MOCAA
REPRESENTATIO Prentice Women’s Hospital
BEFORE
SESS RECLAD ~ “FACELIFT”
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WHOLE AS PIECES VS. PIECE FROM A WHOLE FRAGMENTATION
AFTER
6 Manifestations of Crosley Tower
“The demolition of a no longer be explained maintenance costs, or a considering the value gener When it comes to providing solutions for Crosley Tower, a spectrum of
methodologies ranging from preservations and transformations will provide two key observations: Firstly, on the spectrum of transformation, when and on what level does the identity of the building change? Secondly, where does the adaptability of the building as an idea meet the adaptability of the building physically? The solution will seek to capture the contradiction of preservation versus transformation challenging the buildings existence with its constraints in its adaptability of the environment, program, and monumentality. In the case of Crosley Tower, the mode of processes in preservation can be take form as annual methods addressing the age and maintenance of the building. This additive method would allow for the buildings extended use to challenge its permanence over time. This would bring funding and awareness towards the university as they may seek to re-use their existing buildings as we gravitate towards achieving a more sustainable future. Given the building has maintenance needs, anywhere between an annual to a decennial addressment of the building’s issues could start to take form as a continued series of temporal structures responding to and altering the identity of Crosley Tower as it ages and eventually decays in a natural process rather than demolition. Design competitions could take place regularly where proposals for architectural responses to the condition of the building at each time would be presented. The opportunity for transformation over time could lend itself to structural bracings, re-assemblages, and installations which introduce a new sense of use for the building’s interior, exterior or both. This will transform identity and amplify the current memetic qualities of the building as an icon and source as a creative catalyst. This allows for the identity of Crosley and its history to be transformed and re-envisioned throughout time rather than be a lost piece of history or take up space in recycled building material graveyards.
TRANSFO
architectural icons can by functional failure, aesthetic disbelief when rated by SAVING and
O R M I N G .”
May, Brutalism, 157.
The mode of fragmentation could be utilized through the method of picking away Crosley Tower piece by piece. This subtractive fragmentation method would present opportunities for how it is taken apart and what is done with the material. Recycling and re-use are both options that could reveal an intentional and dynamic design solution. Dismantling, collecting, and re-using the fragmentation of Crosley Tower could lend itself to new opportunities at a second life as a fragmented entity. Fragments could be scattered across the university and reused as interventions responding to and challenging the existing holistic vision of the university’s urban and landscape plan. Representations of identity through preservation can be achieved by virtue of events or publications bringing awareness to Crosley Tower’s history, its existence, and its pending option for removal. Its strength in memetics has proven its popularity and flexibility as an idea. If demolition occurs, Crosley Tower can take form as a representation. Opportunities for representations of preservation allows a history to live on metaphysically rather than physically. This provides the architecture with a level of memorialization that is popular in western culture today. Whether through a design competition, similar to the Old Prentice Women’s Hospital, or memorialized through funeral affairs, like the Fogarty Memorial Welfare Building, Crosley Tower can be preserved through means of events, text, memes, and even merchandise. Memorialization of the building would reveal the controversial impact the building had on those who interacted with it. Providing an outlet where memories can be shared would be a key aspect of preserving the building’s identity, given that it is our experiences and relationship with our built environment that prescribes identity to it.
7 Design Implications
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3 Given the various methodologies observed, this design proposal aims to
define and challenge the existing identity of Crosley Tower. To illustrate the spectrum of identity the building possesses now and could possess in the future, this project explores a matrix of iterations utilizing the additive and subtractive nature of physical operations and challenges the relationships between transformation, preservation, and demolition. By responding to the monumental and geometric nature of the building itself, design decisions can influence or be influenced largely by historical, social, and physical contexts. Site, program, and design illustrate the paradox between our understanding of addition and subtraction of our physical and metaphysical environments as well as how these factors affect our perception of the identity of our built environment.
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How it works...
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he nature of the site of Crosley Tower is a function of past planning and the current urban vision of the university. The University of Cincinnati campus is a unique campus, priding themselves on their sandbox of unique architectural gems. Located in Clifton Heights, the university serves as a central node atop the hill overlooking the basin of main city districts below. Crosley Tower serves as a landmark to many commuting to the university and can be seen from most angles surrounding the central hill. The tower is situated on the northside of campus, adjacent to Martin Luther King Dr. This edge of the campus sees the least foot traffic but experiences heavy vehicular traffic as Martin Luther King Dr. is the primary artery connecting the two major highways bordering Clifton. The road serves as a hard border between the university and Burnet Woods. With few crosswalks connecting the university campus to Burnet Woods, there is an opportunity yet to be acted upon by the university to develop solutions to make the traversal of Martin Luther King Dr. easier and safer for students moving between the park and the campus. Crosley Tower marks this boundary and serves as a seed of curiosity influencing students and locals to explore it. Another aspect of the site is the tower’s relationship with its adjacent buildings. Rieveschl Hall is attached to the tower, while the College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning (DAAP) and the Langsam Library are in the periphery. Rieveschl Hall and DAAP both respond to Crosley. Rieveschl has a small building that serves somewhat like a breezeway with program between the two buildings. DAAP on the other hand, specifically the Aronoff addition, has an exterior stair that extends to the base of Crosley slightly off centered. The reason for the off centeredness is due to the university’s preliminary intention to remove Crosley Tower around the time of the Aronoff Center’s construction. The stair was placed with the idea that the urban plan on the northside of campus would develop into something different once Crosley Tower was removed in the future. Opportunities to envision the urban plan on the site, keeping Crosley Tower in mind as well as the university’s holistic landscape and urban planning vision, will allow for currently absent resolutions to be realized. The urban plan of the university lends itself toward pockets of foot traffic for students, teachers, and public events. These various corridors and courtyards of detailed landscape are interconnected throughout the campus but there are potential pockets that are left disconnected. The northside of campus, particularly the area surrounding the tower, is one of these currently disjointed opportunities.
Crosley Tower’s cruciform shape can provide structure to generate future urban design potentials in juxtaposition to existing axial relationships on campus. Anchored by Crosley Tower’s existing cruciform footprint, a loose abstract grid of cruciform shapes can be extended across the north campus to inform new development. Utilizing Crosley Tower as a favored central axis of development, is a natural response to the building’s monumentality. To build off the holistic vision of the university, where much of their urban design allows old and new architecture to respond to one another in the urban and landscape plans, the cruciform grid can warp as it intersects neighboring buildings. Its orientation can be shifted to the geometries of its interceptors. Additionally, this proposal for the site will allow for the opportunity to play as much horizontally as vertically, where lines of existing and proposed corridors and courtyards will generate a field of extrusion versus impression. This will provide the university with a new take on their existing holistic vision. The northside of campus has not yet been a target for development but has the potential to become another prominent corridor for which students and campus life can transpire and transform the way we think about the university in the future.
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the identity of Crosley Tower. The matrix is comprised of additive and subtractive axes which include the physical constraints of periphery, operation, form, shell, armature, and fragmentation. In order to obtain a desired level of design, four options from the matrix process are iterated on a more detailed level to explore the results and effects each section of the matrix presents. The potentials that the matrix presents will challenge the current solution presented for the building, demolition. The selected four designs prove the range of options possible to evade an uninventive and terminal demolition, while also studying the relationships between transformation, preservation, and demolition. Each of the four designs represent a quadrant from the matrix. One represents additive constraints, while another represents subtractive. For the other two iterations, both look at combinations of additive and subtractive constraints, but on opposite quadrants of the matrix so that more than one iteration type can be observed. Each of the four introduces novel methodologies for altering the identity of Crosley Tower. It is important to understand the advantages and disadvantages of adaptively transforming a monolithic structure like Crosley Tower. One disadvantage for vertical slip-form construction but advantage for future alterations is that “the monolithic pour precludes the placement of floors during the extrusion process” allowing the possibility of degutting the building without significantly damaging the monolithic pour.20 Despite the previous conception that the building is “unadaptable,” opportunities for adaptability are present due to innovative engineering, historic preservation, and sustainability techniques. 20 Nawy, Concrete Construction Engineering Handbook, 10-36.
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The generative nature of the proposed matrix provides iterations for altering
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For the additive iteration, its detailed design requires an understanding reminiscent to that of renovating a masonry building. From a sustainability perspective concrete and masonry have similar properties and are given similar guidelines in applying sustainable solutions. In essence, the additive design heavily involves observing methods for attachments and punctures to the existing building. Like most methods used today for adding additions to buildings, the edge of convergence allows many opportunities for design thinking. The additive design addresses the current cruciform shape of the structure head-on. Cruciform buildings are rare, and a cruciform tower is even more so. This is due in part to the cruciform shape being an undesirable footprint when it comes to prescribing space within the plan. Its strength, however, lies in its uniqueness, centrality, and axial nature. The additive design challenges the geometry by changing the negative outlook on cruciform footprints by introducing geometries that both alter and amplify the cruciform shape and Crosley overall. For the subtractive iteration, its design involves a comprehension of structure unlike that of the purely additive iteration. Subtracting components or pieces of a whole, especially a concrete whole, can seem intimidating. What subtraction provides for this project is a challenge to the permanence and perceived strength of the building’s structure. A very basic understanding of physics and materials will reveal that the subtraction of a structure must be done carefully and consciously. Respect gravity and the elements, and subtraction can be achieved in a situation like Crosley Tower. There also must be accountability for the subtractive aspects of the project. This type of method is seen being practiced in the construction methods of the Zeitz MOCAA by Thomas Heatherwick where concrete grain silos are cut by first pouring an additional structure to serve as structure and a cutting guide. Where structure may be lost, additional structure will account for and prevent further, undesired loss. What the subtractive design reveals is how much power a wall has in changing our perception of our built environment. As much as a wall may protect, shelter, and confine elements, its absence can undo, expose, and display an aspect of our built environment that we are not used to observing. For the final two iterations, the designs explore and exhibit how both the additive and subtractive aspects mentioned above can come together and illustrate another level on the spectrum of identity. The layering of these two operations requires a holistic and intentional approach to the future of the structure. Not only does combining additive and subtractive methods make for more complex solutions, it also brings a bigger challenge to the building. For these two combination iterations, the key to their interpretation is in observing where additive methods overtake subtractive or vice versa. Each combination iteration from the matrix is selected to include both, but one favors additive and the other favors subtractive. By setting these constraints, the adaptability of the building itself takes on a larger challenge while also providing a somewhat radical approach to form, materiality, and the identity of Crosley Tower.
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Subtraction/Fragmentation
Addition/Structural Wall
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Core & Circulation
Atrium & Core
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Structural Wall
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Exterior Facade
Floors
8 Conclusion
As we seek out a more sustainable solution for our existing buildings, raising
the question “how can we use what we have?” introduces a new dimension to how we understand our built environment. For buildings that are targeted for demolition today, how can we transform them to be what we want and need? For Brutalist and associated concrete buildings, this question isn’t asked enough. Demolition is occurring everywhere, and for monolithic concrete structures, their negative identity, permanence, and obsolescence are responsible. Falling under this category, Crosley Tower has seen a controversial existence with little care given to its existence. Many Brutalist and concrete buildings around the world are gaining attention from communities and architects that value what they represent. All that is needed for these buildings is for the architectural community to seize the opportunity to transform their identities so that they may continue to inhabit and elevate our built environment. The same should be done for Crosley Tower, not only because it is architecturally valuable and historically significant but also because without efforts to preserve Brutalist architecture, there may come a time in the near future where iconic buildings like Crosley Tower no longer exist.
TRANSFORM S A V E
C R O S L E Y T O W E R