Meadow Brook Hall tour

Here are some pictures taken from a recent AIAS-BCF tour of Meadow Brook Hall. This building is a great example of Tudor-revival architecture and was designed by William Kapp of Smith Hinchman & Grylls. The home is the sixth largest historic estate in the United States consisting of 110 rooms and boasts an interior space of  88,000 square feet. The tour was a great opportunity to see some great craftsmanship in person and spend time with club members outside of a college setting.

Here is a link to the slideshow.

Bricks Bridges & Buildings

This evening I attended a tour of some historic sites in downtown Flint. The tour was called Bricks Bridges & Buildings; it was provided by the Michigan Historic Preservation Network (MHPN) as part of their annual conference. Thanks to the graciousness of the Flint AIA, students were able to participate in these tours free of charge as guests and I found myself lucky enough to be included. 

I found this experience to be great. The information provided by our guides, Jackie Hoist - AIA and Ron Campbell - AIA was very interesting. I am sure that I will never remember everything that was discussed but I have filed away some interesting facts about Flint. For example: 
 - The Mott Building (a 16 story building) sits on large, wood piles not, a poured concrete foundation.  
 - Riverbank Park was actually created to protect the city from annual flooding of the Flint River and contains many fountains which have been shut off for decades.
 - Despite being built almost half a century after the Mott Building, The Genesee Towers Building is nearly 12" out of plumb and is crumbling.
 - Blackstone's pub & grill was originally Blackstone's men's clothing store. The investors who reopened the building chose to keep the name in homage to Flint's past.
 - The current Halo Burger at the corner of 4th and Saginaw was one of the first Vernors outlets and the huge Vernors mural was painted on the adjacent building (a hardware at the time) to give outdoor diners something interesting to look at.
 - The bricks which are laid on Saginaw Street are originals from 1899 when they were first set. In the 50's the bricks were pulled up, the road-bed was graded and re-packed and the brick was flipped over and re-set. This is sustainability a century before it was a buzz word!

Ms. Hoist and Mr. Campbell were fantastic guides with a great knowledge of the city as well as a genuine interest in its' preservation. I have driven down Saginaw street several times and "noticed" the architecture there but, walking the street gave me the opportunity to really "see" the great buildings that occupy the main thoroughfare.

I took a great many pictures on this tour. Here is a link to all of the pictures. I will give fair warning, I am not a photographer and, I have an obsession with stone details!

If you wish to skip the link, here are a few, select pictures.

 

The Vernors mural

The round windows in this building were previously covered up by an earlier 'renovation'.

An old painted sign

The highly decorated elevators inside the Mott Building

Stainless steel art-deco details in the second floor lobby of the Mott Building

The heavy masonry details of the Masonic Temple

Another building mural

Coastal Library

Recently, the Design Committee entered a design competition which had some interesting site and building constraints. Our committee chairman, Joshua Steere, found this opportunity through arcbazar.com and was inspired by the challenge. What made this particular project difficult was the fact that the site is located in a flood plain. Due to this, the community was looking for a structure that would be elevated to protect both the building and it's contents. The odd shape and somewhat small area of the site added to the constraints.

This competition was open to everyone which means that our design team was up against not only students, but also professional designers and architects. There were 129 entries vying for the approval of the community leaders and when it was all said and done we were not included in the top 12 entries. Although our team did not gain any recognition in this endeavor, we did gain experience. I also think that it brought more understanding among us as to what our shortcomings are and where our strengths lie.

Overall I feel that the experience was a great one. I had a lot of fun working with the design team and, it seems to have brought interest and camaraderie back into the group. I think that projects like this are important to the continued growth and prosperity of our chapter.

Credit must be given to Joshua Steere who headed the design not only with his creativity and vision, but also managed to keep us on task and on schedule.

Thanks to Melvin Kellog, who's awesome work with the elevations really helped to bring the vision to life.

Thank you Renata Pfeifer for working out several technical issues, and lending your creativity to the final project.

Also, a thank you must go out to Skye Croff. Although she is no longer an official member of the organization, her renderings (done by hand!) were the centerpiece of our design board and really helped the visual presentation.

The following are the results of our design committees' hard work. If you find the pictures are too small to see clearly, this link will allow you to access the full size files. Please feel free to comment on the design and it's execution; we can not improve without feedback!