In her monthly “Letter from Baltimore,” Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson writes about architecture, culture, and urbanism in a city more often associated with violent crime than with good design. Click here to read her previous posts. For more by Dickinson, visit her blog, Urban Palimpsest.

Photo: Chrissy Nesbitt (detail) from A Public Space: Hopkins Plaza

It begins with six photographs. Paul Druecke asks six people to snap photos of the same urban public space. Those individuals then invite one person to do the same, and so on until 24 people have photographed the setting.

The Milwaukee-based artist began his project, A Public Space, in 2003, while living in Chicago. “Going into it, it was very experiential,” Druecke says. “I like to do a lot of walking and am fascinated with public spaces and the sense of self in relationship to the city. I wanted to create a system that gets other people to experience the place as well.” Read more…

In her monthly “Letter from Baltimore,” Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson writes about architecture, culture, and urbanism in a city more often associated with violent crime than with good design. Click here to read her previous posts. For more by Dickinson, visit her blog, Urban Palimpsest.

John Ruppert’s Orb, on the grounds of the Baltimore Museum of Art. Ruppert’s sculpture helped earn him a prestigious Mary Sawyer’s Baker Prize this spring. All photos by Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson unless otherwise noted.

When you see John Ruppert’s Orb from a distance, it looks as though a large soap bubble has floated to a landing. Draw closer and you realize that the seemingly delicate sphere is, in fact, fabricated from industrial chain link. Read more…

The Member’s Club at Pimlico Race track in the 1950s

Moments ago, it was announced  that Kentucky Derby winner Mine That Bird will, in fact, run the Preakness Stakes in Baltimore on May 16. Thus the stage is set for another dramatic race and potential upset by this Canadian gelding. Pimlico Race Track, home of the Preakness, has witnessed many a great showdown since it first opened in 1870, not the least of which was the famous 1938 standoff between Seabiscuit and War Admiral. The event in two weeks may well go down in history, but not just for the horses that take to the dirt track. On the eve of its 140th anniversary, the historic Pimlico may be razed to make way for a shopping mall. Read more…

Rendering of the proposed John and Frances Angelos Law Center at the University at Baltimore designed by Behnisch Architekten. Image courtesy of UB.

The University of Baltimore’s current School of Law building sits on the edge of the city’s bustling Mount Vernon neighborhood and at the heart of the school’s campus. Built in the 1980’s, the squat structure looks its age. “The building is set up in an old way,” says Steve Cassard, UB’s vice president for Facilities Management and Capital Planning. Classrooms are small, there is limited public space, and the law library is bursting at the seams. “The pedagogy of legal education is changing. Fostering interaction is important.”

This year, UB—now the 6th largest public law school in the country—launched an international design competition for a new $107 million law school, with funding for the competition provided by Baltimore-based Abell Foundation.The site of the future 190,000-square-foot law school is a coveted corner lot on a highly visible corridor; it can be seen from the city’s busy Pennsylvania Station, home to Amtrak, and from a major north-south highway. “It’s an opportunity for progressive architecture that reflects forward thinking,” Cassard says.

On November 17, the school awarded the design to Behnisch Architekten of Stuttgart, Germany, in partnership with Baltimore’s Ayers/Saint/Gross, Inc. As writer Stephen Zacks reports in this month’s issue of Metropolis, Stefan Behnisch is known for creating unique, high-performance structures, and it was his reputation for smart, sustainable design that helped edge him out over a very competitive field. (Behnisch beat out five finalists: Foster + Partners of London in association with Cho Benn Holback + Associates, Inc. of Baltimore; Dominique Perrault Architecture of Paris in association with Ziger/Snead Architects of Baltimore; Moshe Safdie and Associates, Inc. of Somerset, Mass., in association with Hord/Coplan/Macht of Baltimore; and SmithGroup Companies, Inc. of Washington, D.C.). “Stefan’s ideas about sustainable design and his creativity in responding to the evolving needs of higher education place him in the forefront of 21st-century architecture,” said UB President Robert L. Bogomolny.

Behnisch’s proposal for the law school includes classrooms, moot courts, a new law library, and other public areas for students. Now comes the hard part: turning rendering into reality. The design phase is scheduled to begin in the early months of 2009, with a construction start date of June 2010. The aim is to have the building open for the fall class of 2012.

An aerial view of a row house block in Baltimore plagued by the “broken tooth syndrome:” Lots of vacant land where housing once stood.

In last week’s New Yorker, writer Nick Paumgarten pointed out the damaging effects of the economic downturn on the urban landscape. “Putting aside the long-discussed public projects that are endangered or doomed… dozens of private undertakings have stalled or died. The calls go out to the architects: pencils down.” Read more…