Paul Mortensen

Design Makes a Difference: Good Hope Neighborhood Recreation Center – Silver Spring

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This is the fifth and final in a series of Third Place blogs taking a closer look at the winners of Montgomery Planning’s 2023 Design Excellence Awards.

Great and complete neighborhoods are focused on parks and public spaces, which foster health, recreation, and socialization. Civic buildings are often associated with these public spaces to encourage greater use of both. When we build connections through our civic facilities on public parks, we dramatically strengthen community. It is an investment in community that fosters tremendous social returns. The Design, Arts and Culture chapter of the Thrive Montgomery 2050 General Plan update speaks to the importance of these qualities incorporated into our civic buildings and all architecture. Our civic buildings should promote … Continue reading

Design Makes a Difference: Pike and Rose

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This is part of a series of Third Place blogs taking a closer look at the winners of Montgomery Planning’s 2023 Design Excellence Awards.

As stated in the Thrive Montgomery 2050 General Plan, communities should be compact, mixed-use and pedestrian-friendly to allow independence for those who do not drive, especially the elderly and the young. Transit, pedestrian, and bike systems should link communities to maximize mobility throughout the region and to further reduce vehicle dependence. The primary task of the architecture and landscape in these communities is physically defining streets and public spaces that people share. These spaces are the public realm, which we often pay a lot of money to visit on vacations around the world.

People of … Continue reading

Design Makes a Difference: Marriott International Headquarters and Hotel

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This is part of a series of Third Place blogs taking a closer look at the winners of Montgomery Planning’s 2023 Design Excellence Awards.

In the book “Urbanism in the Age of Climate Change,” one of the founders of  Congress for The New Urbanism, Peter Calthorpe, defines urbanism in one of the best ways I have read:

Urbanism is a broad term defined by qualities, not quantities; by intensity, not density; by connectivity, not just location. Urbanism is always made from places that are mixed in uses, walkable, human-scaled, and diverse in population; that balance cars with transit; that reinforce local history; that are adaptable; and that support a rich public life. Urbanism can come in many forms, scales, … Continue reading

Design Makes a Difference: Artspace – Silver Spring

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This is the second in a series of Third Place blogs taking a closer look at the winners of Montgomery Planning’s 2023 Design Excellence Awards.

Many of the concepts described in Montgomery County’s updated General Plan – Thrive Montgomery 2050 – were created to help support the belief that our physical environment has a direct impact on our chances for happy, prosperous lives. It proposes that within the county, well-designed cities, towns, neighborhoods, and public places are necessary to create complete communities where people and businesses can thrive and prosper.

Thrive 2050 builds on our past successes and proposes modifications to prevailing development patterns of the past 60 years, which focused more on building dispersed, isolated housing far … Continue reading

Design Makes a Difference: The Wilson and The Elm

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This is the first in a series of Third Place blogs taking a closer look at the winners of Montgomery Planning’s 2023 Design Excellence Awards.

The best urban places in our region are those that are compact, pedestrian friendly, mixed-use, and supported by transit. The transit, pedestrian, and bicycle systems help to maximize access and mobility while reducing dependence on the automobile. In these places, and in the best neighborhoods in our region, architecture and landscape design defines streets and public spaces as places of shared use. These walkable and visually interesting neighborhoods linked to our natural corridors, parks and preserves are accomplishing many of the goals of Montgomery County’s new General Plan, Thrive Montgomery 2050, and its … Continue reading

Distinguished jury to choose 2023 Design Excellence Award Winners

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Distinguished jury to choose 2023 Design Excellence Award Winners

Design excellence in architecture requires balancing the functional goals and artistic vision of a building or landscape to inspire people and support a great community—and, at every scale, it offers the power to help sustain our environmental, social, and economic vitality well into the future.

Montgomery County’s Design Excellence initiatives celebrate architecture and landscapes that make everyday life more beautiful and create spaces that enhance social interaction as well as fulfill specific functions. The annual Design Excellence Awards spotlight our county’s very best designs, and submissions are now open through July 17, 2023. Submit contenders for the two select Awards, one for outstanding Architectural, Urban Design and Landscape design, and … Continue reading

Thrive Montgomery 2050: Less driving with concentrated growth will lead to a more sustainable environment

Posted by & filed under Places, Planning, Public spaces.

Lessons learned from Portugal

This past May, I had the pleasure of traveling through Portugal on a greatly anticipated summer, post-COVID trip. What a beautiful country and what a perfect example of concentrated, walkable mixed-use communities, which are found in all its small, medium and larger cities and towns. Portugal, as well as a large portion of Europe shows us impressive examples of how to save energy and resources through the concentration of buildings and then connects those communities with simple, easy to use transit systems consisting of trains, trams, buses, cars, bikes, carts and scooters. It is walkable concentrated development linked by multimodal transportation at its best! I strongly suggest you visit Portugal if you can. The urbanism, … Continue reading

2021 Design Excellence Awards Jury Announced

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In our most recent blog post “2021 Design Excellence – It’s Time to Celebrate!” we wrote about how excellent architectural design not only supports a great public realm, but that it also has the power to attract and inspire people in a way that can sustain our environmental, social and economic vitality well into the future. Architecture, urban, or landscape design at all scales of development has the power to make our world resilient, equitable and better. In Montgomery County, we celebrate architecture and landscape that make the mundane more interesting and creates and improves streetscapes and spaces that enhance human interaction.

Beginning June 21, the Montgomery County Planning Department opened our webpage to accept submissions for the … Continue reading

2021 Design Excellence – It’s Time to Celebrate!

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The creation of complete communities (a primary tenet of our new Thrive General Plan proposal) within our urban, suburban, and rural centers can only be achieved through quality, sustainable architectural and urban design that supports a strong and vibrant public realm.  Buildings frame and activate streets and parks, and their symbiotic relationship supports community building. Through quality design we can start to protect our health, safety, and welfare in a way that addresses the challenges of increasingly extreme climate conditions and social inequity. Excellent architectural design can not only support a great public realm, but it also has the power to attract and inspire all people.  Excellent architectural, urban, or landscape design, at all scales of development, has the … Continue reading

Setting the standard for Montgomery County’s sustainable development with the new M-NCPPC Wheaton Headquarters

Posted by & filed under Architecture, Design, Places, Planning, Public spaces.

On February 17, 2021, Maryland National Capital Parks and Planning Commission (M-NCPPC) received word that the new 14-story Wheaton Headquarters building at 2425 Reedie Drive had officially obtained a LEED Platinum certification, the highest environmental status available from the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC). It is the first LEED Platinum government office building in the state of Maryland and will set a very high bar for sustainable development and stewardship throughout Montgomery County.

This building is a manifestation of Montgomery Planning’s goal of promoting design excellence and transit-oriented development with the most efficient and well-designed mixed-use buildings. We did not want “just a glass office building” but one reflective of our goals of inclusive public planning, nature, and parks … Continue reading