An Architectural Travesty (nearly) Averted

As someone who is pretty modern in my taste, I don't tend to get all that hung up on "rules" in architecture. Basically, if you have a good reason for something, it works well functionally and aesthetically, and the client is willing to pay for it, go for it.

I happen to be working on a project that is way outside my comfort zone, in that its by far the most rigidly symmetrical and ornate neoclassical building I've ever had to deal with. It could turn out fairly nice, but its just not normally my style. I've already ranted about the big name designer from new york that defined the "look" of the building (but has been relieved of duty so we can finally finish the thing while shaving $10 million off of the cost to meet the budget) but this time the culprit was a frightening request by the owners.

There is a bridge over a private street that cuts through the site to connect two wings of the building at the upper floors. It used to be a single shallow arch that spanned the street. The arch is non-structural, there are reinforced concrete beams inside of it that do the heavy lifting, so its just decorative.

The Original Bridge

During value engineering, the contractor and owner decided to drop a column in the center to save hundreds of thousands of dollars in structure (along with deleting the trellis on the 5th floor and some other reductions in detail). When redrawing the elevation, I made the fairly obvious decision to split it into two arches, since there is now a row of columns down the center median.

After Value Engineering

Personally, I thought it was an improvement (as did the owner of our firm), because it reduces the scale to be more pedestrian-friendly. Apparently the client decided they wanted to keep the single arch, leaving the column line in the center. Horrible idea, I thought, but they'll figure it out if I draw it up for them. So I drew it up as an "option" and sent it off for them to reject and feel like they made the decision themselves...

The Client's Requested Abomination

They liked it!

Normally I don't get all that hung up on bad ideas that come from clients... after all, its their money, their building, let them have what they want. But this one was just too much. I found my limit. I started thinking about the thousands and thousands of years of human history in which the arch has been a staple of monumental, civic, even primitive architecture... the roman aqueducts, the arc de triumph, ancient huts, modern bridges, even the St. Louis Arch. The invention of the arch as a structural system was a world-changing feat of engineering, almost as important as the wheel! I started to imagine some bonehead sticking a column in the middle of these various monuments to human ingenuity... then decided to work some quick photoshop magic just to prove my point. These three images are now hanging on the wall at my workstation:

The Project Architect at our firm showed these to the contractor and the owner's representative at a small meeting the other day and they all bursted out laughing... the message was received, but there was still no directive to ignore the clients opinion. I was starting to get worried I was going to have to make some kind of stand on the issue and refuse to put it on the construction documents. I considered sending an incognito email to the new york designer's office so they could call up the client in a rage and set them straight on what a horrible move it would be. I imagined offering the client a sizable sum of cash if they could find a single example in the last 10,000 years of architecture of such a thing. Luckily it didn't come to that.

I'm happy to report that, while the client may still be pondering a gorgeous column in the center of their arch... the owner's representative managed to get approval for the double arch scenario by going sort of over (or around) their heads to another financially interested party... so lucky for everyone, the integrity of the arch will be maintained for the indefinite future...

I really hope my next project is more up my design alley. This neoclassical stuff is driving me nuts... especially when I have to defend something as basic as the arch to people who actually want a neoclassical building...

*UPDATE - Spoke too soon... added "(nearly)" to the title... the emasculated arch is still a possibility...

**UPDATE #2: Now the project is on hold due to financing problems... Second potential prolonged hold since I started working on this project a week after moving to Denver... in July 2006!!!