Highlighting the East Broad and East Grace Street corridors bounded by 1st and 6th Streets, There/Here is downtown Richmond’s first thorough inventory specific to dormant properties. Having consulted Richmond’s creative planning and design provocateurs, the inventory provides a succinct summary of each property. Along with that information, the project interprets the story embedded in these very buildings with historical narratives and photographic tours.
Though a web-based place to publicize pressure for change, There/Here is also an experimental placemaking strategy that views otherwise dormant properties as positive space within the larger composition of the city. There/Here is an advocacy group that began as an undergraduate research grant through VCU’s School of the Arts.
Come here to go there.
5.2.2012 This event, hosted by the Storefront for Community Design, merges Richmond's current downtown stakeholders with its future game-changers. On display will be works from both VCUarts students and Storefront volunteers, described by the Storefront as "kaleidoscopic."
4.27.2012 This study compared the vacant buildings in the There/Here scope to their respective footprints and total square footage. The scope shown in bright yellow, and is 1,014,000 ft² (23.3 acres).
4.27.2012 Three eccentric mid-century office buildings in Richmond's Willow Lawn readily serve as semaphores of a new preservation paradox (first image). The last entry discussed architect Haigh Jamgochian, his radical unbuilt work, and his acclaimed Markel Building (1965), which in 2008, was designated as a historic landmark for Henrico County. Adjacent to his crinkled ilk of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Museum (1959), two buildings designed by Richmond-based architect Edward Francis Sinnott, Jr. are seldom viewed tout ensemble with the Markel Building, even if they similarly exemplify the Modern Movement in its transition to postmodernity...
4.26.2012 In 1962, Lewis and Irvin Markel commissioned architect Haigh Jamgochian to design their insurance company's headquarters in a prairie of asphalt named Willow Lawn, just outside of Richmond's city limits. Locally, the Markel Building—a deliberate ilk of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Museum—has gained acclaim for its futuristic crinkled aluminum cladding. Jamgochian himself took a hammer to the building to summon the affect of a foil-wrapped baked potato served to him at a function for the Virginia Chapter of the American Institute of Architects...
2.4.2012 Without directing your feet downtown, perusing the There/Here inventory alone may present a complete dearth of activity on the East Broad and E Grace Street corridors. Though this project argues that the stories embedded in this mostly dormant corridor give it some form of life, that it lacks activity it is not entirely true...
All Historic Images Courtesy of Valentine Richmond Center