Posts about Urban Design

All other things being equal, a street with several narrow buildings is preferable to a street with a single long building of the same square footage. A streetscape with constantly-changing narrow buildings is more interesting to look at than one with a single long building. Small local property owners, instead of big development chains, are also more likely to own narrower buildings.

Yes, this property looks silly now. But think about the future. Assuming we can't (and don't want to) freeze the city in time, densifying infill on small properties is exactly the kind of development we want. If it's eventually going to be 5 stories anyway, it's better that this block redevelop property-by-property than all at once.

Pop-ups are the first step towards a street like this one in Amsterdam, which really isn't such a bad thing.

Amsterdam. Photo by Jim Nix / Nomadic Pursuits on Flickr.

Will this particular building look as good as that picture? It's hard to tell at this point. It might, but it could just as easily become the ugliest building in DC. Buildings that size aren't inherently pretty or ugly. There are lots of good ones, and lots of bad ones. What it looks like is not ultimately the same issue as its mass and scale.

The point is, narrow 5-story buildings are a great physical form for city streets. That's the form of some of the best parts of Paris, London, and New York. Although this will look weird with 2-story neighbors, it pushes the evolution of the block in a good direction.

Cross-posted at BeyondDC.

On Thursday, the developers will present a revised design (PDF) to the Montgomery County Planning Board, which is also holding a public hearing on the project. Neighbors, civic groups and even county councilmembers have written nearly 100 pages of letters to the board, mostly in opposition. They're mainly worried about the project's height and density, which one resident feels could turn Silver Spring into Crystal City.

While some good changes have been made since the summer, this project still isn't ready to go. It's not the height or density, both of which current zoning allows and which are in line with the rest of downtown Silver Spring. The real issue is with its design.

New design improves park, sort of improves building

Site plan showing phases 1 and 2 of Studio Plaza.

As before, Studio Plaza will be broken up into two phases. The first phase, which is going before the Planning Board now, is for one 11-story building with 415 apartments, including 61 Moderately Priced Dwelling Units and 10 Workforce Housing Units for low-income households, and 10,000 square feet of street-level retail space. A second phase, to be approved later, will could add up to 340 apartments, 26,000 square feet of retail, and a 78,000 square foot office building.

There's the aforementioned renovation and extension of Mayor's Promenade and a new street, which help break down a big block and will improve pedestrian connections between Georgia Avenue and Fenton Street. At the intersection of the two is a 13,000-square-foot park, which will be privately owned but open to the public. The park will sit atop a parking garage meant to replace the existing parking lot.

Designed by Alexandria-based landscape architecture firm ParkerRodriguez, the park is one of the plan's highlights. Before, it was just a bunch of blobs of lawn and pavement randomly thrown around. Now, there's a simple, rectangular lawn divided in half by Mayor's Promenade. It's big enough for picnics and playing catch, with room for some planters in a geometric pattern that provides visual interest.

Facing the park is retail space, which has a terrace for outdoor dining, a shaded "amenity terrace" for tenants of the apartment building, and 8 ground-floor apartments with "real doors" and porches. Local artist Dan Steinhilber will make 23 public art pieces out of tubular steel, including lampposts, bike racks and benches, that will be placed throughout Mayor's Promenade and the park.

Rendering of the building and the park.

The building, designed by WDG Architects of DC, is better as well. The old design used dark-colored brick and had narrow, relentlessly repetitive windows, which made the building feel large and heavy. That's been replaced with a mix of warm-colored bricks and bands of glass broken up with attractive teal accents. It's a more conservative design, but it helps the building feel less imposing.

Setbacks make the building now appear to be 9 floors tall on Thayer Avenue and 10 floors on Silver Spring Avenue. And on the new street, the building peels back ever so slightly at the intersection with Thayer Avenue, drawing visitors into the public park. Looking at the renderings of the building at night behind the low-rise storefronts on Georgia Avenue, I can start to imagine this building in real life.

Still a "very long building"

Rendering of Studio Plaza at night, with Mayor's Promenade lit up.

However, the biggest issue with the previous design remains: the first phase is still "a very tall, very long building," in the words of county planners, that bridges over Mayor's Promenade. Having a pedestrian passage that connects two streets and a park is probably the coolest part of the entire project, but this design choice turns it into an afterthought.

Rockville Town Square. Photo from Google Street View.

There are legitimate reasons for having one building instead of two, namely the ability to have one consolidated lobby, elevator core and service area for the entire complex. But as I've said before, breaking this building into two, or at least having a more delicate connection or bridge from one side to the other, would make the promenade a nicer space and assuage residents' concerns about the building's height and mass.

Fairfield and Hillerson should look to the apartment buildings at Rockville Town Square, which WDG also designed, for a better solution. They also bridge over pedestrian passages that connect the square to surrounding streets, but the bridges step back from the street so they're not as deep as the rest of the building, which allows light and air into to the passage.

This project is as long if not longer than Studio Plaza, and it's only 5 or 6 stories tall. Why doesn't it make sense to do the same thing for an 11-story building?

Studio Plaza has its merits: it provides housing in an area where it's in high demand, and is close enough to transit, jobs and shopping that residents won't drive as much or at all. It'll improve connections in downtown Silver Spring with two new streets and give people a new park for hanging out in.

However, the Planning Board still shouldn't approve it. We can't do much about its height, nor should we. But we can improve the way this building looks and relates to its surroundings. There have been a lot of less-than-great buildings in downtown Silver Spring, but this is a substantial project in a very prominent location. It deserves the best design possible.

Check out this slideshow of Studio Plaza, including the 2012 and 2009 plans.

Denise Johnson said she was "not necessarily a fan of modern architecture," while John Vlach feels the style's "virtues are debatable," and Kathy Henderson is "not a fan of modernism." Anne Lewis explained how the building attempted to "address the urban planning goals of the time" like "lively pedestrian streets, pocket parks, mixed used zoning," but "whether [architect Araldo] Cossutta did or did not succeed in larger urban design principles is not relevant."

The historic preservation law simply requires that a building meet one of many criteria—in this case, "embody the distinguishing characteristics of architectural styles, building types, or methods of construction." This is extraordinarily broad, as some pointed out at the hearing, and many of the arguments had a circular nature to them: we built this bad building, but now it's part of our history, so we need to keep this bad building. Whether it does or does not meet the criteria, I believe it ought not to be preserved for reasons I've explained before.

While still voting to landmark the building, several of the HPRB members echoed aspects of my urban design concerns. Andrew Aurbach expressed his view that "historic preservation is about placemaking," and added, "This is not a place that makes, to me." Johnson compared this building to a Frank Lloyd Wright house which is striking in its austerity, but that creates an environment in which most people would be unable to actually live. She said, "You can say about some preservationists that they only care about the buildings and don't care about the people," and stressed that in future steps in this process, it is important to do the latter.

Still other commissioners gave truth to Johnson's warning. I was most disappointed by Kathy Henderson, who referenced one of the building's major failings, that light from a skylight often blinds the organist. She said, "What a perfect opportunity to wax poetically about the beauty of the Lord and the enormity of truth." The meeting contained plenty of poetic waxing, and just a bit too little consideration of people—not just the church congregation and its needs, but the people of DC.

Unlike the architectural historians who wrote in to the board urging landmarking, those people don't just sample DC through the AIA Guide to the Architecture of Washington, D.C. or whizzing down 16th Street in a car, to be "surprised" by the "striking" form as praised by Commissioner Gail Lowe. They need a streetscape that engages, not just surprises, them, that makes places. The church does not, and the more buildings like that become landmarked, the less the city does as a whole. In a downtown already quite barren of humanity, that's a big loss.

But what preservationists are missing is that architecture is more than simply an art form. Each building does present an image and make a statement, but it also interacts with people and with the neighborhood, and forms a piece of an urban fabric to which it can either contribute or detract. This building does not damages the ability of the area to become a vibrant, active region. Its blank, forbidding walls are off-putting not only to people who come to see it as art, as some modern art may do to museum-goers, but makes the corner cold and uncomfortable, and prevents the existence of public space or a sidewalk cafe.

Should a percentage of drivers be forced to drive original Ford Model Ts because of their historic import? That car belongs in a museum, and perhaps so does the building, but both quite simply do not serve their needed function. It's not just that the building is ugly. As the Washington Post's Marc Fisher wrote, "What the preservationists don't get is that the Christian Science complex is a failure, a design flaw that begs to be blown to bits." We should preserve important architecture, but only when it also functions as a useful building and a part of a city.

At the recent ANC meeting, the committee spent over an hour on this topic with some strong emotions, mostly on the side opposing the landmark designation. While many people including church representatives and one ANC commissioner gave eloquent arguments against it, nobody from the preservation office or the Committee of 100 was willing to actually speak to the merits of landmarking the building, instead simply arguing that the process should be allowed to run its course. However, the HPRB is required to give weight to the position of the ANC, and Dupont's ANC voted unanimously to oppose the landmark application.

Tomorrow, HPRB will consider the matter in a special meeting. If the church is unsuccessful, they have several additional options available, including appealing directly to the Mayor, and RLUIPA. But hopefully reason—and the need for a usable building that engages the streetscape—will prevail.