Architect Listing In Eurasia

Selling heritage to China

Ruan, director of the National Research Centre of Historical Cities at Tongji University in Shanghai, is China's leading heritage expert. He is engaged in the herculean task of trying to protect history from the maw of the concrete dragon: the frenzy of development engulfing China.

At his presentation in Brisbane he showed images of the South Yangtze water towns: willow-pattern Venices of canals, humped bridges and carved wood. There were 300; only six remain in anything like their original form. Canals have been filled in to create roads, houses demolished. He showed the perfect medieval walled city of Pingyao: a square of pagodas, temples and tiled roofs with tipped-up eaves. It is a World Heritage site he managed to save from plans for total demolition.

He visited dozens of towns similar to Pingyao before the 1980s and China's open-door economic reforms led to their redevelopment. There are now just three cities similar to Pingyao left in the country.

The "destruction of historic objects under the Cultural Revolution was very much hated" by ordinary people, Ruan says, but conserving historic architecture was not necessarily a Chinese tradition. Ruling dynasties deliberately erased the buildings of their predecessors and elements of historic timber buildings were routinely replaced.

"Nobody saw demolition as unusual," Ruan says. "China was in poverty for such a long time that the open-door policy felt like an opportunity to create something new without realising what they were doing."

In Brisbane during the 70s and 80s, important architectural sites were destroyed, including the Bellevue Hotel and the Cloudland Ballroom. Now the Queensland government, through its HEAT program, is selling the state's heritage credentials to the world by promoting the work of local firms.

Brisbane heritage architects Riddel Architecture and Conrad Gargett showed the Chinese visitors examples of adaptive re-use: among them, the Brisbane Powerhouse (a power station converted to an arts centre) and a water tank and warehouse converted to apartments.

These buildings survived, whereas other historic sites in the city were demolished.

"They were very impressed with how we look at the options not just for retaining but for using a building," Robert Riddel says. "They preserve something but they don't use it, they just look at it. We have the expertise and China is such a huge market," he adds. "There are a lot of architecture firms from across the world [in China] but very few who are involved in adaptive re-use and conservation.

Scarlet Witch | Comic Crazy

History

Empire State Building

U.S. National Register of Historic Places

U.S. National Historic Landmark

NYC Landmark

Location:

350 Fifth Avenue

New York, New York 10118

 United States

Coordinates:

404454.36 735908.36 / 40.7484333N 73.9856556W / 40.7484333; -73.9856556Coordinates: 404454.36 735908.36 / 40.7484333N 73.9856556W / 40.7484333; -73.9856556

Architect:

Shreve, Lamb and Harmon

Architectural style(s):

Art Deco

Added to NRHP:

November 17, 1982

Designated NHL:

June 24, 1986

Designated NYCL:

May 19, 1981

NRHP Reference#:

82001192

The site of the Empire State Building was first developed as the John Thomson Farm in the late 18th century. At the time, a stream ran across the site, emptying into Sunfish Pond, located a block away. Beginning in the late 19th century the block was occupied by the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, frequented by The Four Hundred, the social elite of New York.

Design and construction

The Empire State Building was designed by William F. Lamb from the architectural firm Shreve, Lamb and Harmon, which produced the building drawings in just two weeks, using its earlier designs for the Reynolds Building in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and the Carew Tower in Cincinnati, Ohio (designed by the architectural firm W.W. Ahlschlager & Associates) as a basis. Every year the staff of the Empire State Building sends a Father’s Day card to the staff at the Reynolds Building in Winston-Salem to pay homage to its role as predecessor to the Empire State Building. The building was designed from the top down. The general contractors were The Starrett Brothers and Eken, and the project was financed primarily by John J. Raskob and Pierre S. du Pont. The construction company was chaired by Alfred E. Smith, a former Governor of New York and James Farley’s General Builders Supply Corporation supplied the building materials. John W. Bowser was project construction superintendant. A worker bolts beams during construction; the Chrysler Building can be seen in the background.

Excavation of the site began on January 22, 1930, and construction on the building itself started symbolically on March 17t.Patrick’s Dayer Al Smith’s influence as Empire State, Inc. president. The project involved 3,400 workers, mostly immigrants from Europe, along with hundreds of Mohawk iron workers, many from the Kahnawake reserve near Montreal. According to official accounts, five workers died during the construction. Governor Smith’s grandchildren cut the ribbon on May 1, 1931. Lewis Wickes Hine’s photography of the construction provides not only invaluable documentation of the construction, but also a glimpse into common day life of workers in that era. In particular the photo of a worker climbing a stay cable is talismanic of the era and the building itself.

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