Does anyone remember Schoolhouse Rock? Those little cartoons in the late '70s that offered educational glimpses into topics like government and grammar, always to the accompaniment of a catchy tune? My favorite was
Conjunction Junction, what's your function?
-it pleased my tiny mind to ask, at some very basic level, just what's the point? What is it and why should I care?
So I've been trying to come up with a spiffy Schoolhouse Rock-style song to express my sense of the five proposed designs for our new convention center, but I can't quite find the right rhyme or focus:
Convention Vention, why are any of these designs worth a mention?
isn't quite right. For one, "vention" isn't a word. And two, though it touches on the theme all of the designs share, namely a mighty lack of inspiration and a smothering banality, it doesn't quite get to the heart of the matter.
I tried
Santa Fe Civic Cen-ter, if you're looking for boredom you have merely to en-ter!
but that didn't seem to hit the spot, either. For starters, most of these proposals are boring from across the street-there's no need to actually go inside if you're looking for a yawn.
But I'm being unfair, let's take a gander at each pony on its own merits. Every proposal is from a local firm working in tandem with an out-of-town office or architect with the chops to build big.
First, there's Lloyd and Associates working with Seattle-based LMN. Lloyd already has had its chance to make a mark on downtown-it's called the Eldorado Hotel. In my book, that's cause enough right there to smash this model to bits with my boot, but what's frustrating about the firm is that it has vision-it just doesn't use it. Lloyd's recently built Paseo de Peralta office is gorgeous, inviting, sensible and swollen with perfect details, effortlessly blending traditional craftsmanship with a thoughtful contemporary setting. Lloyd's work here offers nothing of the sort. So much effort has been put into melding elements de Santa Fe with a professional convention center facade that it reads as a parody of itself-you'd be forgiven for thinking it was the new face of Macy's. This design does convey outdoor public space in an attractive light, but you'd have to be willing to sit in proximity to the atrocious building in order to enjoy it.
The team of Conron Woods and Leo Daly couples its model with a stylized rendering of people filtering through the grounds. A sign proudly proclaims "Santa Fe Civic Center," but its the same proud used to letter an elementary school or a daycare program. Aside from an excellent elongated courtyard plan that encourages fluidity and the option to approach the building from the facade of Grant Avenue-relegated to ugly stepchild by most of the designs-the rest appears juvenile and distinctionless, most notable for a baffling number of canales and its utter blandness. The faces of the people in the Conron Woods/Daly rendering are most telling; they are blurred beyond the point of recognizable expression, unwilling to commit to personality or any sort of emotion at all, just like their everywhere/nowhere civic center.
Lorn Tryk Architects, working with San Francisco-based Gensler, are proposing what I expect to be the crowd favorite and, if I were going to linger around Camel Rock Casino offering odds on which design wins, I wouldn't offer much payout for betting on this one. It's soft and doughy, like your tia's house, showing off all the mud and sticks and pudgy plaster that says "La Villa Real de la Santa Fe de San Francisco de Assis." But that tune's been played before and this model actually brings nothing to mind so much as, well, the Camel Rock Casino. How do you say "pandering" in colorful, colloquial Spanglish?
The best attempt to push Santa Fe's taut style boundaries is offered by Spears Architects and Fentress Bradburn of Denver. Although the same emphasis on customary Santa Fe elements is found, the blend of soft puebloisms and modern angles is much more fluid and sensible than in the other designs. Spears also gives the most consideration to the archaeological dig likely to go on well past the initial center's construction and is the only design to openly suggest considerable mixed-use elements-including residential-making the center an authentic part of the streetscape rather than the transplanted Borg vessel-vibe most designs embrace. A public, rooftop garden adds value and plain old "use factor" that also escapes the other designs. However, it's the least convincing of all and it's easy to imagine each of the small elements that put this design in the lead being stripped away in succession for cost or feasibility reasons when actual construction rolls around. There's a pie-in-the-sky cloud lingering here that really should belong to a more courageous design. Because it's closer to something better, it's even more frustrating than the expected pseudo-adobe Santa fakery of the others.
Finally, DCSW working, oddly, with Canadian firm DSAI, lives up to its acronymical oomph by offering the most straightforward, practical design. Frills are understated and the actual layout is reasonable and versatile. A winner for functionality, but the problem-exaggerated here-and the fundamental flaw with each contender, is that Santa Fe is not about function over form. Surely we don't want to miss the opportunity for functionality; it is key in the convention business after all, but the convention business isn't what this building is about. This building is an opportunity to create a new Santa Fe landmark, a physical flagship that shows we can conceptually compete with the best communities around going into this new century instead of relying on last century's tourism scheme. Santa Fe is about bold instead of bland-it's chile and Zozobra and mountain ranges and international art. It's nuclear bombs and forest fires and genome mapping. It's global flavor in a package different, but we seem to have forgotten that.
Another thing I remember from growing up, this time in the '80s, is Hands Across America. Well, what we need now is Slaps Across Santa Fe: we'll line everyone up next to each other and then just slap each other silly. Maybe that'll wake us up. Maybe that'll make us remember that, for Santa Fe, not just any old building will do. Maybe that'll make us remember that "convention" is the last thing we need to convey.
