Select a contemporary indigenous project threatened by climate change or a project threatened by gentrification. Consult Lange’s Writing About Architecture (2012) and the ‘activist approach’ to writing architectural criticism, and pay close attention to its discussion of historical value, artistic value, and age value (79).
Choose a theme (imagine, security, play, power, work, comfort, tradition, progress, freedom, happiness, reflect, sell, family) and create an outline to write between 900 and 1200 words. Who are the stakeholders in the decision to preserve, modify, or replace the structure? Who speaks in favour of the building, and who or what represents a threat? What values, as mentioned above, were stressed, by whom, and why? Which values are important to your argument? Are new values required to properly assess the building’s significance to the life and identity of the city? Is the structure unique or part of a greater collection? Does the greater public good reside in preservation, conservation, or demolition? State your point of view in your opening paragraph and then prove it through history, visual description, and political argument. What is the history of building and how is that relevant to its current state? What are its good qualities? What are its drawbacks? What makes it worth preserving? Who benefits from preservation or demolition? What are the real-world pressure points that could change the building’s fate? How does it respond to the diverse needs, values, behavioral norms, physical abilities, and social and spatial patterns that characterize different cultures and individuals?
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