Architect

WASHINGTON -- The acting architect of the U.S. Capitol cleared the way yesterday for the certificates that accompany flags flown over the building to include the word "God," reversing policy on an issue that was becoming the latest touchstone in the nation's culture wars. "When one of our services or policies doesn't effectively serve members of Congress or the American public, it needs to be changed immediately," architect Stephen T. Ayers said in a statement. "I appreciate the Congress bringing this important issue to my attention."

John M. Johansen has painful memories of a time when TV personalities Phil Donahue and Marlo Thomas paid $6.8 million to purchase a house he designed in Connecticut, only to tear it down. "It was like a death in the family," he laments. Now the retired architect wants to avert another death - this time a theater he designed for downtown Baltimore. Parking lot operators have purchased the dormant Morris A. Mechanic Theatre in Charles Center for $6 million and teamed with a developer who wants to build housing, stores and maybe a hotel on the site.

A "hardhat tour" of an old brewery that's coming back to life, art exhibits, talks on preservation and waterfront design, and a costume ball in a former department store are among the highlights of Baltimore Architecture Week, which starts Thursday. The Baltimore chapter of the American Institute of Architects sponsors the event each year to call attention to the built environment and what architects are doing to improve it. This year's event spans 11 days, making it Architecture Week and a Half.

LOS ANGELES -- Richard Rogers, an Italian-born Englishman who wields political influence as a liberal member of Britain's House of Lords and the unpaid chief of the London city government's Architecture and Urbanism Unit, was named the winner yesterday of the 2007 Pritzker Architecture Prize, the profession's leading award. Rogers' signature buildings over the past 30 years include heralded temples to art (the Pompidou Center museum in Paris, co-designed with Renzo Piano), commerce (the Lloyd's of London insurance tower)

In a booth at the Sip 'n' Bite, Gabriel Kroiz talks omelets and Formica with manager Tony Vasiliades. It's the mid-afternoon lull and a few patrons dawdle in the Canton fixture. Keenly aware of the waterfront neighborhood's new wave of residents and their healthy eating habits, Vasiliades serves omelets made with egg whites and has banished cooking oil laden with trans fats. Now it's time to update the diner, faded from wear and tear, as well. But after consulting with local customer Kroiz, the architect who will design the renovations, Vasiliades has nixed other "yupdates," including -- gasp!

Sarah Susanka, a Minnesota-based architect who co-wrote "The Not So Big House" and whose firm designed Life Magazine's 1999 "Dream House," will discuss her view of residential design during a lecture that starts at 6 p.m. Wednesday at the Baltimore Museum of Art, on Art Museum Drive.Susanka is the lead-off speaker in the spring lecture series sponsored by the Baltimore chapter of the American Institute of Architects. Nationally, she has gained attention as a young architect who believes that bigger is not necessarily better.

Richard M. Foose Jr., a retired architect who designed several notable local buildings, died Wednesday of cancer at the Gilchrist Center for Hospice Care. He was 69 and lived in Timonium.An award-winning designer, he helped create the 1969 Loyola-Notre Dame college library, a 1973 addition to the Harford County Courthouse and the 1971 renovation of the University of Baltimore's academic center at Charles Street and Mount Royal Avenue.Before his retirement in 1993, he designed buildings for two Baltimore firms -- Fisher, Nes and Campbell, and Meyer Ayers Saint.

Members of the State Architectural Review Board suggested changes yesterday to a preliminary design for Carroll County's new District Court building and told HLM Design of Bethesda to return for the board's regular meeting next month.The county's $6.7 million multipurpose courthouse will house two district courtrooms, public defenders, court commissioners, juvenile justice, parole and probation, clerks and other offices -- with room to double in size and add two courtrooms, said Tom Massey, architect, senior principal and project manager for HLM.The courthouse will be at Court Street and Greenwood Avenue -- a tight 1.5-acre site that put constraints on the design when coupled with specific rooms required inside, he said.

Norman L. Dresden, 72, trucking company executiveNorman L. Dresden, a retired trucking company executive who lived in White Marsh, died Monday from complications of diabetes at Sinai Hospital. He was 72.Mr. Dresden retired in August from ABF Freight Lines in Baltimore, where he had been director of government sales for more than 22 years.Earlier, Mr. Dresden, who began his trucking career in Chicago, worked for the Transcon and Pacific Intermountain Express trucking companies in sales.Born and raised in Chicago, where he graduated from high school, he served in the Navy during World War II in the Pacific.

These companies were honored at the 22nd annual awards ceremony of the Sales and Marketing Council of the Home Builders Association of Maryland at the Mechanic Theatre Wednesday.AWARD OF EXCELLENCESingle-family detached$150,000-$189,999: The Bedford, Ryan Homes, Lohr's Orchard, Joppatowne. Architect: Ryan Architectural Group.$190,000-$209,999: The Albany, Gemcraft Homes, Beacon Point, Perryville. Architect: Architecture Collaborative.$210,000-$269,999: The Anthony Wayne, Patriot Homes, Russett, Laurel.

The Baltimore Sun is committed to providing fair and accurate coverage. Readers who have concerns or comments are encouraged to call us at 888-539-1280. A recent story about a therapy garden at the Kennedy Krieger Institute did not note the project's landscape architect, Mahan Rykiel Associates.

Ferdinand P. Kelly, a retired Baltimore architect who was known for the churches, banks and schools he designed during a three-decade career, died of heart disease May 1 at Morningside House of Ellicott City. He was 90. Mr. Kelly, the son of a Baltimore Gas & Electric Co. foreman and a homemaker, was born in Baltimore and raised on Preston Street. After graduating from Polytechnic Institute in 1936, he enlisted in the Army and served in a cavalry unit at Fort Riley, Kan. With the outbreak of World War II, he attended officers candidate school in ordnance at Aberdeen Proving Ground and was commissioned.

The proposed design for a redeveloped Morris A. Mechanic Theatre in downtown Baltimore includes an inviting outdoor plaza and preserves much of the shuttered theater's architectural significance, but it falls short in its concept for a new 32-story hotel and residential tower, members of a city design panel said yesterday. Members of the Urban Design and Architecture Review Panel weighed in on the design proposed by Washington architect Shalom Baranes for redevelopment of the theater at Baltimore and Charles streets, built in 1967 as the centerpiece of one of downtown's earliest urban renewal efforts.

J. MAX BOND JR., 73 Sept. 11 memorial museum architect J. Max Bond Jr., the architect who designed the Sept. 11 memorial museum in Manhattan and the site of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s tomb, died of cancer Wednesday in New York, said a partner at his firm, Davis Brody Bond Aedas. Mr. Bond, one of the nation's leading black architects, was an associate architect for the memorial to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and principal designer of the below-grade museum under construction at Ground Zero.

George Spear Salabes, an architect, died Dec. 1 of complications from surgery at Sinai Hospital. The Pikesville resident was 68. Born in Baltimore and raised near Druid Hill Park and in Mount Washington, he attended the Park School and was a 1958 City College graduate. He earned an architectural degree from Cornell University and served in the Army. Mr. Salabes was a co-founder of Nelson-Salabes Architects in Towson. Among his projects were Heather Ridge, the Owings Mills Jewish Community Center, midrise apartments at the Village of Cross Keys, the RCMD Building in Towson and the Cove apartments in Columbia.

Standing in the exposed-brick lobby of Howard County's government offices, Peter Z. Garver points out the building's many environmental offenses. The place wastes bucket-loads of water. The windows, the lighting, the restroom fixtures are all so wrong. So is the maintenance crew's cleaning solution, for that matter. It will be Garver's job to change all that. Helping aging buildings go green is not a flashy undertaking. Garver, a contractor leading the county renovation project, has just emerged from a meeting about keeping debris out of ductwork and achieving efficient flushing in the bathrooms.

Israeli-born architect Moshe Safdie hasn't designed a project for Baltimore since he designed Coldspring Newtown in the 1970s, but he's apparently interested in working on the $107 million law school planned by the University of Baltimore. So is the Canadian firm of Diamond + Schmitt, author of the new Shakespeare Theatre in Washington. And the Scottish-owned firm known as RMJM Hillier. And Dutch-owned (but Baltimore-based) RTKL. They're among a Who's Who of architectural and engineering firms - including more than a few with international reputations - that sent representatives to the University of Baltimore campus last week to learn how to be considered to design the law center.

No public monument defines a city any better than a distinctive bridge. Think of the Brooklyn Bridge in New York or the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. Then there are bridges that go largely unnoticed because they're just not visually memorable, such as the Key Bridge, which serves without fanfare to move Beltway traffic 1,200 feet across the Baltimore Harbor. When a beloved bridge comes up for replacement, local residents experience a fierce sense of ownership based on their collective memories, said Frederick Gottemoeller of Columbia.

Laurence Hall Fowler was one of Maryland's most admired and influential residential architects during the first half of the 20th century. This spring, a landmark on which Fowler worked for more than 20 years, the building now known as Evergreen Museum & Library at 4545 N. Charles St., is being modified to pay homage to Fowler and his architectural legacy even more than it does today. James Archer Abbott, curator of the Evergreen Museum & Library, is leading an effort to turn a space there that was formerly occupied by a gift shop into the Laurence Hall Fowler Study Room.

When it comes to building a house, architect Mark L. Giarraputo knows his stuff. Homes his firm has built in Maryland, Washington and Virginia have won many recent awards, including seven this year for custom homes from the Maryland National Capital Building Industry Association. The interesting issue for Giarraputo and others in his business is the constant ebb and flow of American attitudes toward the places where we live -- our ultimate lifestyle statement and refuge. For more than 200 years we have been redefining our homes as we work to impress our neighbors, live better lives and take advantage of technological innovations to make life easier.