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Modern Phoenix’s Alison King Examines the City’s Architectural Future in the Cool Shadow of its Midcentury Past

Midcentury Modern design as a trend-de-force in pop culture and it's partnership with Madison Avenue may have peaked somewhere around last year, but for those serious about the era's legacy in Phoenix, things have only started warming up. Rehabilitation is hot. In brilliant contrast to Phoenix's recent dalliance in building more FauxTalian villas than can possibly be sold to a saturated market, adaptive re-use of the city's ample stock of mature buildings is - according to just about everyone I interviewed this season - the hottest trend for architects and designers right now.

Only here's the thing: adaptive re-use isn't just a trend, it's an imperative. And it's not just about aesthetics anymore, or getting on the greenwagon before consumption begins to look so, um ... conspicuous. It's about long-term survival.

Looking Back

To understand the possibilities Phoenix has as an architecturally rich city, it's important to understand where the Valley of the Sun has been. While I saw enough aqua-blue glass tiles on this year's home tours to armor a design intern, I still enjoy the direction things are going for design in Phoenix. In fact I'm mad about it.

For hunters of local design history, the flood of aqua tile was a refreshing throwback to Phoenix's iconic age of growth, when Al Beadle's Executive Towers high-rise featured similar aqua squares. A tour of Beadle's late '50s family home, unofficially named "White Gates" and also clad in aqua tile peppered with sparkling bubbles, was perhaps the ultimate geekgasm for many on this year's Modern Phoenix home tour. From the looks of the design pilgrims scrambling across the ruins of the home site, one would think White Gates was holy ground.

Reality Check

As temperatures hang around 110 this summer and the only brave souls left are the locals, the ideally-rendered images of a pedestrian culture and bike-friendly byways is given a reality check; the Valley locks into survival mode. All of our urban developments get put to the test on equal terms under equally brutal sun, because if they are virtually unbearable come August, they fail.

Conditions such as sun, heat, siting and now sustainability play a larger role than ever in the design of the Phoenix Metro area. Alarming reports on the "heat island effect" of Downtown Phoenix - and closer to home, gas-pump stickershock adding insult to July's air conditioning bill - are forcing even the most conspicuous consumers of good design to turn a critical eye on their lifestyle.

ASU's Phoenix Urban Research Laboratory is one of the organizations working on the problem. PURL Director Nancy Levinson weighs in on the effort: "Phoenix is a postwar city, shaped by the availability of cheap and abundant oil. But what was true 50 years ago is no longer true now. So for the city to survive, let alone thrive, we've got to adapt our urban forms and transit systems to the new realities of scarce and expensive petroleum," she explains. "Adaptive re-use is great at the scale of the individual building. But it is just as important at the larger urban scale, the scale of blocks and streets and districts. For instance, just as the streets were once widened to accommodate cars, they can be narrowed or reconfigured to reduce urban heat islands and to create wide shaded paths for pedestrians and for energy-efficient transit modes like bikes, scooters, smart cars, small buses, and the like."

Recycled Future

The most interesting arc of the design story in Phoenix this decade - and the ideas that I hope we'll be remembered for - work toward the greening-up of mature spaces to meet new demands for energy efficiency, better air quality and retrofitting spaces to meet the absurdity of contemporary living in the digital age. Much to the relief of design preservationists, the Phoenix City Council has recently appointed a task force to deal with the challenges of adaptive re-use in the city.

Choosing rehabilitation of an existing structure over new construction is perhaps one of the greenest moves a consumer can make. There have been many local businesses, builders and artisans going green with their business practices, manufacturing and design work; but from a design consumer's standpoint there is arguably little else greener than re-cycling what has already been manufactured - and after 60 years of good use might still have another 60 years left in its life cycle. This especially includes the unprotected architecture of what mid-century design historians call "The Recent Past."

Some of the most remarkable homes on this year's Central Arizona Arizona Institute of Architects (AIA) home tour were remodels of homes from decades not so distant. James Trahan, principal architect of 180 Degrees Design + Build, attributes this shift in the tour's focus from new building onto rehabilitation purely to economics. (Trahan knows that, like good ol' Uncle Eames said, design depends largely on constraints.)

"Limited access to home equity lines of credit and refinancing has led many people to put new builds on hold and redirect their focus into existing homes and businesses," Trahan says. "People are being more frugal, possibly not by choice, but by necessity. I'm not sure that being frugal will ever be glamorous, but being responsible will be."

The AIA 2008 Home of the Year, the Hoover House by [merz] project, also practiced the latest attitude in historic design preservation by adding on a new master wing that flexes deep through the back property of a historic home once impractical for high-tech family living. "I think [merz] project is showing great design restraint for a young firm," Trahan says. "They have a discipline in their work that allows them to edit and create simple, great spaces."

A Checkered Landscape

When discussing Phoenix's uncanny habit of reinventing itself, it is all too easy to focus on what is inadequate and needs to be changed. I think designers in Phoenix love the city precisely because it is so malleable. Change seems to be what we do best. The texture of the city's urban core is as beautifully crude as a calico quilt with holes still yet to be patched. Any attempt to design within those interstitial spaces must reckon with (and should react to) what has come before. This inherent quality cannot be ignored, so contrast needs to be accepted as part and parcel of urban living.

Sometimes it takes an outsider to notice what a native cannot. Robert Imber, who curates historic design tours in Palm Springs and is active in the preservation movement, traveled to experience the Modern Phoenix tour and explore design in the city this spring. "I've come away from my last few visits to Phoenix with this appreciative sense of growth and development being integrated with a reasonable respect for architectural preservation and the city's history," Imber says. "I've been very impressed seeing growth, development and vitality still laced with the charm and grace of history."

So how to satisfy the summer doldrums? First off, get out of the car and slow down, because all the good stuff can't be caught at 60 or even 40 miles an hour. Keep those eyes open and be curious; learn to read the stories of interstitial spaces between the landmark buildings we love. A refreshing browse through the archives at Modernphoenix.net every now and again never hurts, as we're unearthing the smaller stories of special places every day.

For the outsider who rarely leaves the freeway, our city may seem a disconnected patchwork of unrelated, sometimes dissonant design and urban planning. But for those of us who have lived here all along, this contrast is the charmingly rough and sometimes reckless texture of home.

Feel at home at www.modernphoenix.net

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