I like the concept of Jolie-Laide: Beauty and the Beast. While Montgomery County undoubtedly has a burdensome share of beastly buildings, some so crystallize the product of their time that they rise above. Taken head-on it is not much to look at, but obliquely the minimally monikered (sorry) Silver Spring’s “Garage 2”, at the intersection of Fenton Street and Cameron Street, is a civic building with moments of majesty that reminds me of Peter Behrens 1909 Tubinenfabrik in Berlin.
For your delectation:
Woodsider
From some angles this garage isn’t “horrible” looking. Unfortunately from the Cameron it’s awful.
I sure wish the county would redevelop the garage at Colesville & Spring…what a massive waste of space to have a three-story parking garage on this large lot. I’m guessing since the county is pumping a lot of cash into reparinging this garage now we won’t see this land at it’s highest and best use for a long, long time.
Thayer-D
If garage 2 crystallizes the product it’s time, what represents our time?
anthony pins
Woodsider: I couldn’t agree more.
Thayer-D: Underground parking, or better yet, none at all.
Dave Murphy
I’m not an architect, but I’m really not seeing the majesty here. Maybe without the elevator shaft fronting the street, perhaps if it had been placed on a corner of the building… But to me it’s just another parking garage, highly befitting its moniker.
Exercise Balls
Terrific work! This is the type of information that should be shared around the web. Shame on the search engines for not positioning this post higher!
Thayer-D
There’s a Diane Rhem show today (7/7/10) on parking garages at 11:00am. You can also find the show archived at WAMU.org