Daily digest: SOM’s imperiled Terrace Plaza Hotel in Cincinnati, work commences on cougar crossing over L.A. freeway, and more

Happy Tuesday! It seems like every time we tune into the architecture news there’s another modernist building in danger of being wiped off the face of the Earth.

So on that lovely note, here’s what you need to kn0w today:

The Architecture Lobby announces Architecture Beyond Capitalism Summer School 2022

Architecture advocacy organization The Architecture Lobby has announced signups for this year’s edition of its Architecture Beyond Capitalism Summer School. The planned virtual workshop will center on reimagining education in the studio.

The program launched last summer as “a platform for interrogating the structures and systems of power that have made change difficult within design professions and institutions, as well as from a belief that architecture schools do not teach what and how they could,” according to an email from organization.

The message continued: “The Architecture Beyond Capitalism (ABC) 2022 Workshop will take place from July 18 to July 23 via Zoom as an open platform to discuss ideas, share resources and build a cohort interested in studio educational practices that better prepare architectural workers for activism and socio-economic relevance.”

Registration and more information can be found here.

New York preservationists honor historic “Sip-In” at city’s oldest gay bar

Village Preservation and the NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project have dedicated a plaque to a historic New York City gay bar in recognition of its role in the LGBTQ rights movement. 

Julius’, a bar on West 10th Street and Waverly Place in the West Village, was the site of a “Sip-In,” a protest where gay rights activists descended on the bar en masse, announced their orientation, and asked to be served. (At the time it was illegal for bars to serve openly LGBT customers, per New York State Liquor Authority rules.)

The plaque that commemorates the event reads:

“On April 21, 1966, members of the Mattachine Society, a pioneering gay rights organization, challenged a regulation that prohibited bars from serving LGBT people by staging a ‘Sip-In’ at Julius’, a bar with a large gay clientele.

With reporters and a photographer in tow, the activists announced they were homosexuals, asked to be served, and were refused. This early gay rights action and the attendant publicity helped to raise awareness of widespread anti-LGBT discrimination and harassment.”

H/t to 6sqft

Cincy City planners say SOM’s Terrace Plaza Hotel shouldn’t be landmarked

Cincinnati’s National Register of Historic Places–listed modernist Terrace Plaza Hotel isn’t local landmark-worthy, according to a Friday decision from the city’s planning commission. 

The commission voted 6-1 against declaring the 18-story hotel a local landmark, though the Cincinnati City Council will make the final decision on the building’s fate. A report on the building advocated for the idea that windows would need to be punched into the solid brick facade in order for the project to be attractive for developers. The structure has been vacant since 2008, and in 2020 it was included on the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s annual 11 Most Endangered Historic Places list. 

When it opened in 1948, the SOM-designed hotel was a “sensation,” as former AN editor Sidney Franklin wrote for the Cincinnati Enquirer. It “included two restaurants and a hotel tower and boasted a number of architectural and technological firsts. It was among the first high-rise buildings constructed after World War II in the United States. It was also the first modernist hotel project in the country, and the first hotel commission” for SOM.

H/t to Cincinnati Enquirer

Work kicks off on wildlife crossing over L.A. freeway

Politicians were on hand for the groundbreaking of a long-in-the-works wildlife bridge that will keep cougars off the freeway in metro Los Angeles.

The Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing will span the 101 in Angoura Hills, about 35 miles from Downtown Los Angeles. Mountain lions roam over a 150 to 200-mile area, but human encroachment onto their habitat has considerably constricted their movement. A smaller habitat results in all kinds of problems for the felines:

“You’re hemmed in to the point where all you can do is date your cousins,” area Congressman Brad Sherman told CNN. “[We’re] putting the mountain lions back on Tinder.”

Other politicians came with the jokes, too: “I’m shocked to hear of a lack of food or sex in Hollywood, but for mountain lions, it’s true,” said Congressman Adam Schiff. 

The heavily landscaped, $87 million crossing will help these imperiled inbred cats–as well as other fauna–traverse larger areas while staying safe from traffic.  The crossing is the result of a collaboration between the National Wildlife Federation and the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy. CalTrans will be responsible for construction on the project, which is slated for completion in 2025. 

H/t to CNN