Architects & the City
Any walking tour of a great or historic city shows how much impact architects, past and present, can have on a place. Just that sort of walking tour of downtown Birmingham, researched and photographed by local architects, helped a new generation rediscover the city. It also set the stage for the architecture profession to play a leading role in its revitalization.
Birmingham Historical Society’s “Downtown Birmingham: Architectural and Historical Walking Tour Guide” (1980) was published just as the new program of federal tax credits for historic preservation came into play. Architects were soon finding clients willing, and even eager, to invest in adaptive-use. At the same time, the profession began paying more attention to how new buildings worked with the existing urban fabric. Several local firms were among the first to return to downtown.
Fast forward to today, and you will find architects, as well as landscape architects and others, at the forefront of a continuing rediscovery and reinvention of Birmingham’s city center – a geography of nearly 4 square miles that includes the historic downtown along with many other districts and neighborhoods.
“Architects & the City” will take you from those first steps right up to the minute. The architects featured have their offices in the city center, and a number of them their residences as well. They have shown how to transform even ordinary warehouses into the realm of ‘cool’. And they are bringing vigorous new life to once marginal industrial zones nobody would have touched only a few years ago.
Let the tour begin.
