Post Blog - Jencks

I really enjoyed the PowerPoint presentation that we went over in Wednesday’s class of buildings all over the world. It really helped me to understand all of Jencks main points that he presented in his article. I am a visual person, so seeing examples of what he talked about really helped me comprehend the meaning of each of the concepts. One concept that really stood out to me was the idea of “urbane urbanism”; the idea of gentrification or creating new architecture that fits into the old feel of a town. I started thinking about examples of this in places I have lived and realized how much of this goes on today. For example, I live in Annapolis, Maryland, an old city that is rich in history and has lots of historical buildings. Many of the older buildings match the traditional colonial red-brick architecture of the Capital building which is also located downtown. However, lots of young people are starting to move downtown and apartments and row homes are being built everywhere. What is interesting though is they all look older, the style matches the older buildings and the town itself is not losing its older feel at all which many of the current residents like. Although the buildings are modern and new, they still represent the tradition and value of the city through their older looking façades. In this same area, gentrification is also occurring. Some of the streets right next to Main Street downtown used to be poorer, predominantly African American areas. Now, the new developments are making the cost of living for them too high so they are slowly leaving and the area is totally changing, and this is all pretty recent, like in the last 5 years. This is similar to the area of Winter Park we talked about in class near Hannibal Square. It’s interesting to see how quickly areas of a city can change due to new architecture and new living spaces. It’s neat how much architecture can define the Post-Modern era and how one building can hold so much character and meaning behind it.