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The Architect's Newspaper - 07.09.2008
By Jeff Byles
Rudolph Remanded
School board nixes plan to save embattled Riverview High School
Another pioneering Paul Rudolph building took a turn toward oblivion on June 17, when the Sarasota County School Board vetoed plans to preserve Riverview High School, hastening its demolition to make way for a 961-space parking lot sometime next year.
The board's 3-to-2 vote was the latest move in a long-running battle over the 1958 school, Rudolph's largest Florida commission and a widely admired work by the well-known modern architect.
School authorities, who are spending $135 million to build a new high school on the 40-acre campus, argue that the structure sits on land that is principally needed to fulfill parking and storm water requirements. And amid an outpouring of sympathy from Rudolph fans-including the building's citation on the 2008 World Monuments Fund watch list-county officials had called for the preservationist camp to put its money where its mouth is.
"We have hundreds of letters of support, but what we really need is money," said Lenore Suttle, a member of the Riverview committee of the Sarasota Architectural Foundation, just before the vote.
The foundation is still seeking about $200,000 to cover legal and professional fees associated with an alternative plan that Rudolph advocates have put forward for the site. That plan, created by New York architect Diane Lewis in association with RMJM Hillier, Beckelman + Capalino, Peter Brown of the School Collaborative, and Atelier Ten, would incorporate the school into the Riverview Music Quadrangle, a multi-purpose space with a shaded concert yard that has received support from Sarasota's large musical arts community. Advocates say their site plan would not affect the new high school's construction, and provides both the required parking and a dynamic new use for a venerable work of architecture.
Some school board members praised the plan's merits. "The vision was amazing," Kathy Kleinlein, the board chair and one of two members to support the plan, told AN. Yet others felt that after 15 months of work toward saving the structure-beginning in March 2007, when the board agreed to consider preservation proposals-too little progress had been made. "Every month we wait, we pay more for concrete and more for steel and more for everything else," Kleinlein said. "Time ran out."
All parties agree that the Rudolph building, long marred by alterations, makes no sense as a modern school for 2,900 students. Still, Rudolph advocates said, their plan would strip away the structure's crust of additions and adapt its pioneering sustainable features, which included a natural ventilation system and cantilevered shading elements. "The building was ahead of its time," said Daniel Meridor, the project architect with Diane Lewis Architect. "All of the discussion was focused on parking spaces. No one was looking at the vision of what could happen with the building."
While Rudolph has seen something of a revival in recent years-including his 1963 Art & Architecture Building on the Yale campus, now undergoing a renovation and addition by Gwathmey Siegel & Associates ("Rudolph Revisited," AN 10_06.11.2008) the nation's building boom has put his lesser-known projects in peril, said Theodore Prudon, president of DOCOMOMO US, the modern-movement preservation group. "We very strongly support the preservation of the building," he added. "We've all written letters to the superintendent. But it's something of an endgame."
Since students will remain in Rudolph's building until the summer of 2009, that game could still result in a compromise. Preservationists have collected $100,000 in pledges, and are continuing to raise funds and explore their options. "This was the first time we presented the project to the whole school board," Meridor noted, adding that it was impossible to resolve the project's complexities in one 15-minute presentation. "We do not feel it's over," he said. "We think it's the beginning of a process."