Persuasive Brick Speech # 9 - final draft, blue ribbon winner

Time for Bricks to Change Project # 9

As you look at Raleigh architecture, you see a lot of brick. Think of the Dillon Supply warehouses, huge brick warehouses. The turn-of-the-last-century storefronts on Wilmington, Fayetteville, and Martin Streets – all brick. You may have noticed the parking deck across the street from this building – it’s concrete, but covered in brick. Maybe your house is brick. Think of prestigious neighborhoods in town – the houses? All brick. As an architect, I draw bricks almost every day. But brick is not always what it appears to be. I’m going to convince you to think differently about brick, and I’m going to show you another option.

I. History of bricks
a. According to Britannica, brick has been in use since 4000 BC.
b. It’s a durable, convenient, attractive material. It’s fire-resistant and can support weight.
c. The bricks that are made today are very similar to the bricks made six thousand years ago. A brick is, simply, baked clay.

II. The perception. Brick has:
a. Integrity, stability, timeless style.
b. Weather resistance – durability in storms
c. Adds Value - higher sales value.

III. The deception.
a. The brick in the Dillon Supply warehouses and the storefronts I mentioned had integrity. The integrity of brick ended in the mid 20th century with the mass production of steel.
i. Brick doesn’t support weight anymore – it adds weight. Today, we call brick a “veneer.” It’s one wythe thick, suspended from the building by steel.
ii. The stability of a building has nothing to do with the brick on the outside.
iii. As to timeless style, frankly, brick buildings look old.
b. Weather – one wythe of brick will stop little more weather than vinyl siding, and it is much less water resistant.
i. Remember that brick is dried clay? Brick soaks up water, and mortar joints leak.
ii. Once the water gets in your wall, we have to keep it out of your house and find a way to get it out of your wall.
iii. Modern air conditioning makes the cavity of a brick wall an ideal habitat for mold – moist, warm, and dark.
c. No value – just more money.
i. According to the Brick Association, the labor to build a 10’ x 10’ brick wall costs 1½ times as much as the materials. $500 materials, $750 labor.
ii. In an age of automation and innovation, brick walls are an anachronism: they have to be built by a specialist, one small, mind-numbing piece at a time.

IV. Why you should care – the consumer
a. In a southern town, clay and bricks are as much a part of the culture as barbeque and tobacco. The clay comes easily out of the ground and nuclear power plants provide cheap heat to bake it.
b. Almost every client I’ve had has asked for brick on his building because that’s what he’s used to and that’s what he knows will sell.
c. Until you, the consumer, begin to demand something better, developers will keep building buildings with one layer of leaky, drafty, outdated, expensive brick, and I’ll have to keep drawing it.

V. The alternative
a. Rain screens - the exterior skin is just to look pretty and slow the rain down, not to keep it out. Let it be designed that way.
i. Terra Cotta – beautiful, very modern, low-labor cost, natural and durable material. Conceivably, our local plants could be retooled to make these panels from our same southern clay and nuclear energy.
ii. Keep the weather out with materials that do it best. Rainscreen materials will stop the wind and rain and will keep water from staying inside your walls. Rubber flashing and quality windows will keep the water from coming into your home.
b. Use brick like it wants to be used in our modern age; don’t waste it where something else would do a better job.
i. Arches and curves – Louis Kahn – elegant, expressive, honest.
ii. Detailing – take advantage of the small size and hand-crafted installation with various patterns, colors, and techniques.

VI. You may be surprised to hear that brick is anything worth thinking about, but it certainly is.
a. As Raleigh continues to plan for its future and think about what it wants to be, we need to think about what materials we want to use.
b. Brick shouldn’t be the same old option that it used to be. It’s not used the same way that it was a hundred years ago.
c. If we want to keep putting baked clay on our buildings, the brick needs to change to become something that works and looks better.

IM-ing about Architecture

My lawyer friend and I decided to document one of our conversations on faith and the built environment. You can read it on our church Arts web site: Click Here. As a document, it's pretty free-form and untested, but it's nice to get to review a real conversation and try to assess what we each were trying to say.

What to Look for in a City - Speech #8

Now that vacation is past, it's time to get back into the speeches. This one includes visual aids. This speech is my favorite yet - unfortunately, for a 5-7 minute speech, this one is running about 12-14 minutes. So here's the full preview. (Again, sorry about the lack of formatting.) The scissors come out tomorrow night:

Speech #8
What to Look for in a City
10/4/06

The city of Raleigh is involved in a captivating pursuit to become a recognizable city. Town officials, developers, business owners, and citizens are looking for ways to become a place that thrives and continues to draw people and new businesses.

But, what is a city? How will we know when we've accomplished our goals? What will it take to create the thriving place that we think we want?

Through this speech, I’ll give you a VERY brief outline of what a city needs. A city needs TIME, PEOPLE, and DIVERSITY.

I. Time
a. There’s no magic pill to make a good city. A city takes a lot of time. This is the ingredient that is most necessary to develop all the other ingredients.
i. SLIDE: Chartres
1. begun in 1145, surrounded by modern road construction
2. It’s a small village now, but what will it be in the future?
b. You can see time in the materials and methods of construction that we use. This develops the character of a city.
i. SLIDE: Fayetteville Street Mall
1. Obvious styles chosen in each era – not a good idea to put them all together at the same time.
2. Also note that this was taken before the mall was reopened – another sign of the time.
ii. SLIDE: ROSS store
1. The challenge today is that developers seem to want to design with materials that look old, but which fit their tight budgets.
2. A hundred years ago, this cornice might have been made of stone. Today it’s made of Styrofoam. What will this look like a hundred years from now?
iii. trees
c. Layers - Time creates layers and complexity in a city. One layer becomes obsolete and is overlapped by the new tenant. Property lines change.
i. SLIDE: Jewish Quarter in Cordoba, Spain
1. A 1000 year old fortress wall becomes the backdrop for 400 year old housing which becomes a backdrop for modern shopping and a two year old Vespa
ii. SLIDE: Mill Museum, Minneapolis
1. Even this flour mill that exploded in the 90’s has been renovated into super-modern offices, condominiums, and a museum.

II. People
a. A city needs people. A city needs to be a place where people want to be.
i. SLIDE: Las Ramblas, Barcelona
1. This is a beautiful street, packed with people, vendors, and performers. Tiny roads for auto traffic are on either side. The street is lined with shops.
b. People have to live there
i. SLIDE: Condos in Atlanta
1. You may be surprised by seeing so much housing construction in Raleigh. Housing is essential for a vibrant city. Our city is encouraging developers, and developers see a lot of opportunity.
c. Services have to be provided for the people that live there
i. SLIDE: Blank
1. This is a major problem for downtown Raleigh. With all our restaurants and coffee shops, we have almost no basic services like grocery stores, dry cleaners, bookstores, drugstores
d. Transportation
i. SLIDE: Irun Train
1. We don't have this yet either.
2. Trains connect cities.
3. We can’t rely on cars - cars prevent people from coming to the city: traffic, parking, pollution
e. Culture is local and perpetuating
i. SLIDE: Notre Dame
1. A city needs attractions. What will draw people downtown? What will draw people together?

III. Diversity
a. Economic / Professional / Racial
i. SLIDE: East Cabarrus Street in view of downtown
ii. Diversity is one of Raleigh’s major strengths. Communities of all classes are very close and accessible to each other.
b. Mix of Uses – this is how we keep our cities lively, drawing interest from many areas of people.
i. SLIDE: Madrid at night
1. Mixed-use developments are active during various hours of the day:
a. business = 9-5
b. retail/cafes = 10-6
c. bars/restaurants = 5-9
d. residential = 6pm-9am
c. Better use of resources – streets and parking
i. SLIDE: Paris street

IV. CONCLUSION: Raleigh is on the way to becoming a great city. It will take:
a. TIME - It’s the right time to do it, but it will continue to take time to get where we want to be.
b. PEOPLE - We’re creating destinations for people, but we need places for people to live, more services like grocery stores and transportation, and we need to support culture through city churches and public art.
c. DIVERSITY - And we need to maintain our diversity, welcoming all classes and races, providing resources for a variety of needs.


Cities – Founded:
New York 1609
San Francisco 1776
Atlanta 1837
Raleigh 1788
Moscow 1147
Paris 200BC
Rome 500BC
Tokyo 1457
Shanghai AD400
Berlin 1244
Rio de Janeiro 1568
Sydney 1788
Barcelona AD700
Chicago 1837
Washington DC 1738
London AD43
Cairo / Alexandria AD641
NewDelhi 1400BC
Jerusalem 1800BC
Baghdad AD762