GroundBreaking: City Center DC
4 04 2011You may want to start avoiding the area between 9th and 11th street NW for the foreseeable future because today marks the ground breaking of the massive City Center DC on the site of the old convention center. Developer Hines-Archstone has officially taken control of the 10 acre super block to get started on the long awaited multimillion sq-ft mixed use development.
This project has some serious potential to be an amazing gathering central pedestrian plaza to define the downtown, so we are excited to see the progress!
[Renderings: Shalom Baranes]
With Shalom Baranes at the helm, let’s hope at least the layout will save us from his worn out visions.
Looks like another big super block to me!
Alexa, it’s divided into 6 blocks (as opposed to the current 1 (one) block that currently occupies the space as a true superblock. Tenth Street are Eye Street are being reconnected through the site creating three distinct vehicular blocks, while two other pedestrian streets will run through the different sites. If it works, we may have our first truly urban pedestrian sanctuary in downtown DC!
Forgot to add the end parenthesis to the end of my first sentence!
As you can see in this aerial rendering, the blocks are smaller than many, if not most, of the surrounding blocks.
Will project accommodate a department store?
The blocks are small, but the buildings all look the same, K-Street neo-modernism, again!
Thayer-D
What do you want from same ole same ole Baranes?
you do realize this is a Foster, not a SB project right?
Sorry, but I still don’t know how this could be a “pedestrian gathering place”. Maybe for those ho work/live on that block, but none of the supposed “gathering space” faces the street. That will not invite people in. People will walk/bike/drive by and see nothing.
Just my 2 cents!
Post Post:
From the Citycenterdc website:
Master Plan Architects
Foster and Partners
Shalom Baranes Associates
Gustafson Guthrie Nichol Ltd.
TRG Consulting
And all the renderings we have seen so far are from Baranes, and they look like it.
Glen,
You’re right, I don’t expect much from Shalom, but if one dosen’t try, the bar will always be set way too low. Enough of the sheer glass walls already! They make for sexy dusk photo shoots, but bad for urban architecture. To say nothing of the sustainable issues when living in a glass house in an era of global warming.
Shalom Baranes is the Architect of Record. Meaning they most likely had very little to do with how the project actually looks.
Foster and Partners was the design Architect on this project.
So no, this isn’t another Baranes same ol’. This is from the guy that designed the Kogod Courtyard at the Portrait Gallery. I have high hopes.
p.s. Shalom Baranes is one of the best architecture firms in this town. They design excellent, well detailed, contemporary architecture that is contextually sensitive. There’s plenty of DC ‘tects we should bash first before we bash that firm.
So this well detailed banal glass curtain wall is from a British knight rather than our own modernist royalty? Also, how is a shear glass curtain wall ever contextual besides in a hall of mirrors like K street or 6th Ave (NYC)? Again, with standards like these it’s no wonder starchitects can drop thier canned work anywhere around the world and have people defend it as contextual and well detailed.
You really expect to judge the
Do you really expect to judge the quality of this development by these three vague renderings? The most I can gather from them is that these 6 buildings provide much more open space than would be expected if 6 adjacent parcels were being developed separately.
And to the point of being contextual – The nicest building bordering this entire site is 1099 New York Avenue by Thomas Phifer. Everything else is pitiful, poorly detailed and lacking any sort of stylistic merit.
Wake up it’s 2011! Glass isn’t going anywhere. Especially in spec. office buildings. It’s what the people who will be occupying these buildings want. That being said, developers (not architects) usually cheap out on curtain wall systems. An architect can layer a building to infinity but who’s going to pay for that?
Long story short, let’s wait until this is built before we criticize. And if we’re going to criticize norman foster and shalom baranes for what they’re adding to our cityscape let’s give other local architects and developers their (much larger) share of the blame.
p.s. Apologies for the previous post fail.
Not buying it. Everyone’s entitled to their opinion, and if all glass facades is your thing, more power to you. There are many glass facades I quite like, Newseum, 1111 Penn. Ave, etc. Difference is, those facades are articulated (designed), while these are the same old unarticulated grid.
As for ‘waking up” to the reality that 2011 means we MUST have glass buildings is to both not be informed about public opinion and have missed the whole point of global warming.
Modernist architecture loses against traditionalist architecture on every poll I’ve seen. But don’t believe the polls, or any other empirical data on heat loss transmission through glass walls, just look at the real estate values of our historic districts.
Short story long, everyone should civily criticize these drawings should they feel like it because the developer released them as representative of what they intend to build. That’s kind of the point with presentation drawings, to be able to asess the design BEFORE it gets built.
Foster and Shalome crank out the exact same schtick for every site and every country. We’ve been told this is the modern world we must live in since modernists took over architectural schools after WWII. If we are truly modern people, we would think for ourselves, which if peoples’ choices for their own housing was a barrometer, it wouldn’t be living in a glass box. Unfortunatley, developers use the architectural establishments’ penchant for cool and slick to cheapen our city streets with more glass grids, and we end up with a hall of mirrors downtown. Soulless and cold.
There are many buildings in DC that we can point to for innovation and good design. SB does not happen to have any, in my opinion.
The Newseum is a great example of a concrete object brought to life in architecture.
700 6th Street continues to wow me at how it draws influence from other new and old structures around it into a cohesive and interesting use of a difficult space.
What was done with the roof lines of The American Geophysical Union building on Fl. Ave and 20th NW is pure genius.
I am with Thayer-D 100% on this one. There is no reason to put up with mediocrity or poor taste under any name.
Now, take a look:
http://www.agu.org/about/history/building.shtml
Shalom Baranes designed The AGU building. So why can’t he give something like that to downtown D.C. NOW?
From Glenn’s first posting:
There are many buildings in DC that we can point to for innovation and good design. SB does not happen to have any, in my opinion.
What was done with the roof lines of The American Geophysical Union building on Fl. Ave and 20th NW is pure genius.
Why do the best designed projects bring out the weirdest comments ?
Clearly the point of my comment was missed which is that developers (the people with the money), not architects (the people working for the money) dictate what is being designed. Cost is a HUGE factor here. But yes, we’re all entitled to our opinions. I think that the ritz carlton in georgetown and 22 West condos are beautiful projects that are beautifully articulated and use traditional materials other than glass beautifully both designed by Shalom Baranes’ office and both command some of the highest prices per sq ft. in the city.
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