Brad Cloepfil

Brad Cloepfil (born 1956) is an American architect and principal of Allied Works Architecture of Portland, Oregon. Cloepfil's architectural style can be classified as part of the classic modernist revival movement.^[1] His first major project which provided a spark for his later projects was an adaptive reuse of a Portland warehouse for the advertising agency Wieden+Kennedy.^[2] His more high-profile work include the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis and the controversial redesign of 2 Columbus Circle.

[edit] Early career and influences

Brad Cloepfil was born and raised in the suburbs of Portland, Oregon and attended the University of Oregon. After receiving his bachelors of architecture in 1980, he went to Switzerland to work with Mario Botta for two years. He then studied at Columbia University and received his masters of architecture in 1985.^[3] He founded Allied Works Architecture in 1994.^[4]

At the University of Oregon, he had worked under a professor that had worked with Louis Kahn. Cloepfil became entranced by his work.^[1]

During his time in Switzerland, he observed the divergence in architectural styles between the United States and other locations where modernism was evolving such as Europe and Japan. Cloepfil termed the American postmodernism as a "diversional aberration", driven by commercialism rather than architecture.^[5]

Despite the influences of architectural philosophy from architects like Mario Botta and Louis Kahn, Cloepfil credits the physical and spatial qualities of the Oregon landscape as his largest influence.^[1][5] He also believes the most evocative architecture in the Pacific Northwest are not the buildings, but the unrestricted and pure forms of the rural landscape such as the dam system on the Columbia River, the silos in Eastern Oregon, and the old log flumes.^[4]

[edit] Career at Allied Works

One of his earliest projects at Allied Works was "Sitings", including the piece titled Maryhill Interpretive Outlook. Though it was a major notch in his young career, it was a piece that was more sculptural than architectural. It was a very conceptual piece and the crisp geometrical edges have not weathered well. Cloepfil admits that it should be taken down.^[6]

His first major commission for the Wieden+Kennedy headquarters was granted to him after the co-founder Dan Wieden sought out the designer of a local Portland bar called the Saucebox, which was one of Cloepfil's early tight-budget projects. The headquarters was an adaptive reuse of a dilapidated storage building. Wieden had major doubts of ever moving in there, but Cloepfil convinced him with his ideas. He turned the dark warehouse into a light-filled, open structure with cold concrete juxtaposed against warm wood. This project earned him several other projects from Dan Wieden and would prove to be instrumental in further commissions.^[6]

Contemporary Art Museum in Midtown St Louis

Cloepfil's firm was selected in a 1999 design competition for the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis over world-renown architects such as Peter Zumthor, Herzog & de Meuron, and Rem Koolhaas.^[5] The museum was sited next to an existing Tadao Ando building for the Pulitzer Foundation and completed in 2003. The program of the museum was open-ended in the model of European Kunsthalls and does not own a collection. Cloepfil responded by similarly creating spaces that are as open-ended as possible, which allows the artists to complete with their own works.^[7]

Seattle Art Museum expansion

When the Seattle Art Museum expansion committee was seeking an architect, it was the chief curator of architecture and design at the Museum of Modern art in New York, Terry Riley that suggested they consider Brad Cloepfil based on the work done on Wieden+Kennedy.^[6] In 2002, the Seattle Art Museum decided on Allied Works for the expansion project, which more than doubled the museum's space, accommodated Robert Venturi's original design in 1991, and also included offices for Washington Mutual until the museum expands again.^[8] Allied Works was selected over other finalists Polshek Partnership and Cooper, Robertson & Partners.^[9]

Cloepfil has also been commissioned to design the Clyfford Still Museum, which will sit adjacent and in contrast to Daniel Libeskind's design of the Denver Art Museum. He says that his goal is to provide the visitors an intimate experience with the artist and that the contrast of architectural styles between him and Libeskind's will create an interesting dynamic.^[10] The museum is set to open in 2010.^[11]

[edit] Controversial Redesign of 2 Columbus Circle

The original design of the Edward Durell Stone building in 2 Columbus Circle.

Museum of Arts & Design at 2 Columbus Circle, nearly completed in July 2008. The redesigned building now seems to spell "HI" in its gray paneling. A piece by David Dunlap's in the NY Times reveals that the appearance of the letter "H" was an owner driven design change.^[12]

In a project that has faced much controversy, Cloepfil won the redesign of Edward Durell Stone's 2 Columbus Circle for the Museum of Arts & Design over other architects such as Zaha Hadid, Toshiko Mori Architects, and Smith-Miller & Hawkinson Architects. Interest in landmarking this building began in 1996, soon after the building turned thirty years old and became eligible for landmark designation. In this year, Robert A. M. Stern included it in his article " A Preservationist's List of 35 Modern Landmarks-in-Waiting" written for the New York Times.[1]

Proposed changes to the building touched off a preservation debate joined by Tom Wolfe, Chuck Close, Frank Stella, Robert A. M. Stern, Columbia art history department chairman Barry Bergdoll, New York Times architecture critics Herbert Muschamp and Nicolai Ouroussoff, urbanist scholar Witold Rybczynski, among others. When the building became vacant in 1998 it was neglected. Yet, plans to alter the building were called the erasure "of a rare American modernist." ^[13]

Stone's design at 2 Columbus Circle was listed as one of the World Monuments Fund's "100 Most Endangered Sites for 2006." In 2004, the National Trust for Historic Preservation called it one of America's "11 Most Endangered Historic Places."

Brad Cloepfil and other argued that the building failed its function, and Cloepfil claimed that Stone's design was "introverted," partly because during that time, the adjacent Central Park was a "scary" and "dangerous" place to be, but since that time, the area had blossomed. ^[14] Cloepfil also inexplicably claimed that he wished to render the building "more ephemeral," which means "here today and gone tomorrow," as author Tom Wolfe pointed out in a New York Times essay about the building. ^[15]

Cloepfil attempted to appease both sides and pay homage the building designed by Stone while at the same time, open it up for the public. He used the same massing and geometric shape, but carved channels into the structure to bring in natural light. The redesigned building replaced the original white Vermont Marble with a glazed terra-cotta and glass facade. Its nacreous ceramic exterior is said to change color at different viewing angles, although, eyewitnesses of the redesign have compared the new facade to "suburban aluminum siding." [2] The extent of the emotional fervor of those who were opposed to the redesign of this building is demostrated by those who claim that the building now seems to spell the German word "HEIL" in its gray paneling. ^[16] Cloepfil's redesign has received largely negative comments in feedback on the New York Times website. ^{[17] [16]}

Of the newly uncovered redesign, James Gardner, the architecture critic for the NY Sun wrote:

Brad Cloepfil, was dismissive of the building itself and of the concerns of many eminent architects and historians: "It's far too weak of a piece of architecture for that site. That site deserves and demands more"...Given such talk, one would have expected something brilliant from Mr. Cloepfil or, at the very least, something boldly, memorably bad, a defiant stunt of landmark proportions. And yet the new façade is so mind-numbingly dull as to lack even the posture of ambition. In place of Huntington Hartford's Venetian reverie we have a structure that would not look out of place as an annex to a suburban outpatient center. The brilliant white marble is gone, together with the portals, and in their place Mr. Cloepfil has come up with a flattened, vaguely asymmetrical mess of off-white, sallow, and pale gray panels that lack any formal, cultural, or contextual resonance or coherence. ^[18]

Francis Morrone, also of the NY Sun, wrote:

The new façade...uses glass bands, or "cuts," rather than conventionally patterned fenestration, across a plane of ceramic tiles glazed so as to change color subtly when viewed in different light conditions. For me, I am sorry to say, it's all scaleless. Where Stone's original building read as neatly scaled to its setting, Mr. Cloepfil's redesign reads as a piece of abstract sculpture that, at building scale, seems all wrong. ^[19]

Paul Goldberger praised the new building's "functional, logical, and pleasant" interior in a review in the New Yorker, but wrote:

Ultimately, Cloepfil has been trapped between paying homage to a legendary building and making something of his own. As a result, if you knew the old building, it is nearly impossible to get it out of your mind when you look at the new one. And, if you’ve never seen Columbus Circle before, you probably won’t be satisfied, either: the building’s proportions and composition seem just as odd and awkward as they ever did. ^[20]

Architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff named the building as one of seven buildings in New York City that should be torn down because they "have a traumatic effect on the city." ^[21] Ouroussoff also wrote:

The renovation remedies the annoying functional defects that had plagued the building for decades. But this is not the bold architectural statement that might have justified the destruction of an important piece of New York history. Poorly detailed and lacking in confidence, the project is a victory only for people who favor the safe and inoffensive and have always been squeamish about the frictions that give this city its vitality.^[22]

Pulitzer Prize-winning critic, Justin Davidson, said:

This version won’t satisfy those who thought it should never have been touched, and it’s not bold enough to overpower their arguments—or, I suspect, to turn the Museum of Arts and Design into an essential destination. ^[23]

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Official firm website of Allied Works Architecture
• PORT review - drawings and models
• Missing the Marble at 2 Columbus Circle