photo: Mary Ann Sullivan
The Sarasota Architectural Foundation has issued a statement strongly criticizing the Sarasota County School District's plans to renovate Paul Rudolph's iconic 1958 addition to its high school. Their plans call for enclosing in glass Rudolph’s characteristic open-air passageways, designed for natural ventilation before the widespread use of air-conditioning, and demolishing the gymnasium and support spaces. The SAF also noted that Rudolph’s authorship of the gymnasium was omitted in Board Chief Operating Officer Scott Lempe’s presentation, misleading those voting on the scheme. It all bears an eerie reminder of the ill-fated Riverview High School, which was torn down in 2009 amid controversy. Its breezeways were also enclosed, eventually causing the mold that would lead to its demolition.
In April 2012, the Paul Rudolph Foundation wrote to the editors of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune that the school also forms an important link between the rigorous houses of Rudolph’s early career to the more sculptural concrete work of the Sixties. Enclosing the breezeways would dramatically alter its design and potentially create the same problems that plagued Riverview. Hopefully the School Board will reconsider its plans.
This post was edited by the author on 2/21/2013.
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3 comments:
PLEASE NOTE that Scott Lempe is NOT the Sarasota County School Board President. His title is "Chief Operating Officer" - he is an employee of the Board - a "member of staff." Lempe has been playing a game of "running the clock" and has been "filtering" and "misrepresenting" information to ALL the stakeholders involved. As the Sarasota Architectural
Foundation has pointed out in their February 19, 2013 memo to the Sarasota County School Board, "if this charade continues, it will once again [after the Riverview High School demolition] demonstrate to our students and to the world that the bully can still win in Sarasota schoolyards."
To read the entire response by SAF to the School Board click on this link and open the right column article:
http://www.sarasotaarchitecturalfoundation.org/shs
First, the breezeways are not going to be glassed in. that was the original plan, but it met such opposition that it was dropped, as was the tearing down of the gym (Bldg. 5).
Second, they are now supposedly gutting the interior, but have not made plans available to the public, so we have no idea what form that is going to take. This, of course, is all part of the bullying technique by the school board. They didn't get their way before, so now they are trying other stuff. People who care about the iconic building need to keep holding their feet to the fire on this.
Al Schlaf
SHS, 1967
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