I have been exceptionally moved by the passing of John H. Beyer - "The last surviving founder of Beyer Blinder Belle, [who] helped safeguard New York City's past even as developers raced to push the city into the future" - as noted in the obituary published in the NY Times: John H. Beyer, 92, Dies; Architect Championed Historic Preservation - The New York Times . It encapsulates the extraordinary career of a man whom I met briefly while I was a graduate student at Columbia in the 1980's, and whose historic preservation work I admired greatly. The thing that made me pause and reflect while reading was a quote from a letter he wrote to the NY Times, and his definition of planning: Here is the full quote in context:
"Just months after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, the body charged with rebuilding at the World Trade Center site, hired Beyer Blinder Belle to develop a set of site plans. All three partners were attached to the project, but Mr. Beyer was the lead designer. He had been just a block away from the Twin Towers when the first plane struck, and he often spoke of the task of rebuilding as the most important thing his firm had ever done. The effort, resulting in six schemes, brought international scrutiny to a firm used to having a low profile. Although the architects had been asked to provide what amounted to technical guidance, critics attacked them as incapable of meeting the moment with an awe-inspiring design. In interviews and public statements, Mr. Beyer tried to explain the nuances of the firm's assignment, even as he maintained that the partners were open to critique.
'We ask only that the public understand what 'planning' means: the relationships among terrain, infrastructure, building mass, building use and open space," he and Mr. Belle wrote in a letter to The Times. "The six initial proposals were not architectural designs per se, but rather studies of these basic issues. Their value lay in prompting a lively discussion.'
The development corporation announced a new competition, drawing up a short list of world-renowned architects who submitted a brace of bold, if sometimes impractical, proposals. In 2003, Studio Daniel Libeskind was chosen as the winner. But Beyer Blinder Belle had the last laugh. As the development progressed during the 2000s, it became increasingly clear that whatever gloss Mr. Libeskind had brought to the site, the plan's basic form and functions followed the firm's guiding principles, as critics conceded."
Many of us work for public institutions and are well aware of the difficulties of making capital project decisions, and what it means to run through the gauntlet of political pressure, public scrutiny, and financial challenges that accompany public projects from early planning through financing, design, construction, and the long-term battle to maintain public facilities for generations to come. As an architect and campus planner, John Beyer's career and legacy offer me - and public architects everywhere - a high bar to follow.
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Ludmilla Pavlova-Gillham FAIA
University of Massachusetts
Amherst MA
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