ArchiCritic: Tiber Island
20 05 2009Everyone has an opinion on architecture, what’s yours?
By Spencer Lepler
I have lived in the DC Metro area for the past 4 years, and it wasn’t until this past sunday that I made my first trip to what I affectionally call “the forgotten quarter”, South West. I had worked in South East for a year and driven on South Capitol street before, but I never had a reason to head into the mostly residential and not very tourist focused southwest water district. I was pleasantly surprised when I went to pick a friend up from the Tiber Island Community on 4th and N Streets SW (pictured) and suddenly found myself transported out of the three DC’s I had known into a completely new and, although foreign, wonderful town.
For me, DC has always spanned three different cities. It is a city of brick townhouses where both the wealthy and poor live, sometimes on the same block, a city of glass and steel towers that would love to scrape the sky, but are hamstrung by the width of their avenues, and a city of concrete and stone neo-classical monuments and buildings always evoking the grandeur of our government. What I found on the other side of M street blew me away. This was a thoroughly “Modern” city, direct from the drawings of Le Corbusier, and unlike most other urban renewal projects of the 1960s which tore out low rise housing to put in tower blocks, this development seemed to be not only working, but thriving.
The Tiber Island community is not unique in the DC area, there are mid-century mid-rise towers all over the district and Northern Virginia, but none that seem to create a sense of a neighborhood. Many of these tower blocks are objects in a field, they are surrounded by their parking lots and fountains manicured lawns. They They avoid the strategy that makes Tiber Island so successfull architeturally, they eschew changes in scale so that the towers will not become part of the city fabric. This is where the TIber Island community strength lies, in its embrace of the urban mode: its lack of available above grade parking and density of development.
The Tiber Island community did not feel alien and cold because it was architecturally planned to have multiple levels of scale. First there are the tall towers situated on a series of paired columns. These tall blocks are such a start contrast to the rest of the city’s housing forms that they could be off putting, but the glass lobbies are inviting. The second level, which is one of the things that definetly makes the whole community work is the low rise townhouses. These provide an infill between the towers both vertically and horizontally. They help brdige the scale between the human and the Modernist. Lastly, and probably most important is the trees, they soften the modernist hard angles and provide shade in a way that street engaged buildings would have. I find it interesting that my read of the neighborhood is so influenced by the tall tree canopy which has grown in over the past 40 years, but which was not originally a part of the architectural vision. The area that works the least for me is the plaza between the towers. This concrete paved courtyard is devoid of plants and and changes in scale, and ironically is probably the most “architecturally pure” and consistent with the original architectural vision.
Too often I fall into the trap of criticizing all urban renewal projects as being failed mistakes. Most of them were, but it is the exception that proves the rule. Tiber Island is that exception and as a case study it shows how Urban Renewal could have changed the American City. But instead of Tower communities of multiple scales and urban density, we ended up with disparate High Rise Tower and Low Rise projects all based around automobile transportation. The space that this required prevented the urban mesh that makes Tiber Island successful.
[Photo: Charburkbos]
Spencer Lepler is an architectural designer nearing the end of the architecture licensing process. He has lived in the DC metro area since 2005. He posts on a semi-regular basis to his blog – selophane.com. In addition to blogging he is currently engaged in pursuing freelance design work.
That my neighborhood! I live across the street, though the buildings look exactly the same…
I have to agree with everything you said Spencer, but that vast expanse of a plaza is so barren, I think it takes so much more away from the rest of the project. I find it so disturbing every time I see it. I wish they had put some art or something to fill the space up. I know they have a Christmas tree in Dec but the rest of the year it is so sad looking.
We spent a long time looking at places to purchase in SW. I don’t know that you can say, though, that it is “thriving.” I believe the modernist superblocks destroyed much of the vitality of the area and only in the last 10-15 years has there been some efforts at revival.
One of the biggest revival projects is putting the streets back in.
What to say? There is more potential in Southwest than nearly any other part of DC. We have several projects planned, a few under way, and, once financing becomes easier again, some pretty much ready to start. A nearly 2 billion dollar waterfront renewal is in the design phase right now. Several major remodels are being completed, and others planned. New buildings are going up around the metro station. Our neighbors in Near Southeast are enjoying a build up of new structures, also.
The big question is whether or not new development can blend with the modernist superblocks, or if the result is going to be an unimaginable hodge-podge of radical architecture.
Other questions include “can the quadrant be properly connected to the rest of the city at points like L’Enfant Plaza and the Tital Basin?” “will the rentals and condos attract new residents, or will they sit empty?” “what is the right balance of services/retail in a predominantly residential area?” “are we willing to be a tourist stop with a ‘world class’ waterfront, and still maintain the residential identity?”
The board of directors and community at Tiber Island realize what potential there is in creating a welcoming, attractive and human scale place which can be an added amenity for our residents. Be on the lookout for some exciting changes to be occuring at Tiber Island’s Suggs Plaza in the near future.
I never knew this neighborhodd existed…I’ll have to check it out.
I like your description of the “3 DCs”…I’ve never thought of it that way before but you’re totally right!
A lot of people beat up on Southwest, but there are some very nice places that are largely unknown to people who don’t live there.
Come across the street to 4th and N and visit us at Harbour Square. Our complex was built at about the same time and is equally modernist but has a completely different feel from Tiber. We have beautiful gardens and a huge reflecting pool with multiple levels and excellent views of the Channel. Stop by sometime!
Now that Southwest is fleshed out with people and a mature landscape I agree that it’s become a pleasant, peaceful place to reside and comes close to what the urban planners first imagined.
But it took decades of torture to get to this point.
As quick as I can, Southwest was always isolated from the rest of the city by the Mall, the railroad, the canal, social norms. Enough so that residents referred to Southwest as “The Island.”
It was a neighborhood of late 19th-century rowhouses, mostly black and Jewish. The neighborhood was mostly working class and very down and out when it was all seized by the government in the late 1940s, cleared, and built up with urban renewal.
The original residents were supposed to return, but that notion was one of the first casualties as plans went through a series of revisions.
I think the architecture ultimately is quite successful. What doomed urban renewal in the minds of most Washingtonians wasn’t the architecture of the buildings, but the social policy of displacement. Other urban renewal projects were planned for Shaw, North Capitol Street, Adams Morgan, but politically all the displaced Southwesteners rallied the citizens of DC against more urban renewal. They warned the residents of those other neighborhoods not to be fooled by promises, and to fight tooth and nail. They told their elected leaders that if you build more urban renewal, we’ll vote you out of office. The backlash from the electorate over the displacement was swift and blunt. That’s why eminent domain and big urban renewal projects are still legal, but never undertaken because people want to stay in office.
For years people lost sight of what actually happened and chalked up urban renewal failures to architecture. Not so, it failed because people don’t like getting kicked out of their homes so someone richer can move in. Southwest and urban renewal weren’t failures of architecture, they were failures of social policy.