the third place

The Road to Hell…

Posted by & filed under Design.

…is paved with brick, “special” light poles, custom garbage cans,  and light pole banners. You don’t need to be a keen-eyed tracker to read the signs–planners have been here.

But are special materials necessary to create a good design or great architecture? Frank Gehry made his name with chain link and corrugated steel. Without a designer’s hand these are the materials of a shantytown. The Case Study Houses are icons of modernism, but they were originally built with off-the-shelf materials, intended to be accessible to the average Joe and Josephine.

The request or requirement for special materials is well-intentioned, but not necessary. With artistry, asphalt and concrete become unique reflections of place. 

 

 Are special materials really … Continue reading

Darker Skies = Brighter Future

Posted by & filed under Design.

In honor of the upcoming Earth Hour on March 27, we offer a random assortment of efforts to reduce light pollution, conserve energy, and protect migratory birds by minimizing wasted photons. Learn more at the International Dark-Sky Association.

Earth Hour’s website, sponsored by WWF, has a clock counting down the seconds until March 27 at 8:30pm when everyone partaking will shut off their lights, especially exterior lights. Check out these awesome examples from last year.

A good summary of recent (and not so recent) legislative efforts in Maryland has been provided by Dr. Harold Arlen Williams, director of the Montgomery College Planetarium. In DC, City Wildlife has spearheaded a campaign to help migratory birds.

On a side note, public … Continue reading

Strange Maps

Posted by & filed under Planning.

Here’s some inside baseball for you—planners love maps. Mention letraset and T-squares to older planners and they’ll start squirting tears for the good old days and bemoaning the cold computer line.

Maps, no matter how they’re made, have tremendous expressive potential and we planners argue long and hard about their content and style. Everyone has a different idea about land use colors, boundary lines, and north arrows.

Here’s someone else who cares about maps and I think two of them are of particular interest to planning in Montgomery County.

Entry 441 is a map of San Francisco’s privately-owned public open spaces (POPOS). Montgomery County has its share of these and master plans recommend more. Will these public amenities, negotiated … Continue reading

Edible Estates

Posted by & filed under Design, Planning.

We have a Greek cousin who tried to explain our front lawn to his friends.

“Do they park their cars there,” they asked?  “Do they grow food, do they sit there?”

“No, it’s just grass,” he said. “They don’t do anything with it.”

And when our Greek uncle built a little villitsa by the seashore, in true lord of the manor style, he fronted it with a lawn. But he couldn’t let the rectangular grass strip alone and planted shrubs right down the middle, a somewhat confused aesthetic.

In Edible Estates: An Attack on the Front Lawn , Fritz Haeg unpacks the front lawn—why are we mowing instead of growing?

In various essays, landscapers, designers, and gardeners point out … Continue reading

New CR Zones

Posted by & filed under Design.

Last week, the County Council approved a new kind of hybrid zoning — the Commercial Residential (CR) zones. Combining traditional zoning provisions, such as use and dimensional standards and form-based provisions, such as street façade requirements and angular plane setbacks, these zones have been created to ensure : • Better predictability of allowed use, density, and height • More integrated services, residential opportunities, and public amenities • More sustainable growth patterns concentrated in existing commercial areas

The CR zones are a family of zones based on a combination of use, density, mix, and height. A zone combines these factors and will be seen on the zoning map as, for example: CR2 C1 R1.5 H60. This sequence means that any … Continue reading

I’m too Cool for my House

Posted by & filed under Architecture.

The Building Museum’s current exhibit, Drawing Toward Home, begins with the spidery lines of a Samuel McIntire plan of a Federal style house to be built in Salem, Massachusetts in the late 1700s. The rooms aren’t labeled, but simply marked with their measurements. The single sheet is a design, a contract, and a builder’s directive.

Very quickly, the exhibit’s drawings of houses turn into drawings of home. Along with color and detail, they add emotion.

“The architect must keep his client’s enthusiasm alive and active by sending or submitting bright, jaunty little perspective sketches of his contemplate work,” wrote Benjamin Linfoot in Architectural Picture Making (1884).

The drawings are partially the ploy of an architect to keep his client engaged … Continue reading

Park-itecture

Posted by & filed under Design.

Parking garages aren’t always the most attractive members of built society. If a group of buildings got together for a social event, skyscrapers would be the leggy blonde at the center of attention while parking garages would play the overweight louse, disheveled and stinking of cheap cigars, that foils the attempts of potential suitors. (What, you don’t think about buildings talking to one another?)

Yes, far too often parking garages are the ugly brutes ruining all the fun, occupying whole city blocks, deadening street life, and filling the air with noxious fumes. It’s hardly a coincidence that they are featured most prominently in movies where the threat of evil looms in every shadowy crevice.

Parking structures have experienced a … Continue reading

Is This the Coolest Parking Garage Ever?

Posted by & filed under Design.

Well, at a cost of more than $100,000 per space, it had better be. High design–using Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron–costs and the New York Times takes a shot at figuring how the numbers work. But never mind the numbers, the structure is a location scout’s dream. Look for it soon on an episode of CSI Miami.

Miami Beach is actually developing a reputation for cool parking garages, using design than relies on more than just a tropical climate that can soften and structure with palm trees and cushions of impatiens.

Okay, this one is palmed and cushiony, but it also has a strong retail base, a car entrance that is as narrow as possible on the … Continue reading

End of the Week Links: February 26th

Posted by & filed under Design.

LOCAL

A Visit To Velatis Silver Spring Singular

SSS samples the caramels from Velatis, which recently opened on Georgia Avenue in a building previously occupied by trees. Mouth watering images included.

 

 

 

Lessons from a South American Bus Rapid Transit system Greater Greater Washington

Councilmember George Leventhal traveled to Curitiba, Brazil to test out their BRT system. He shares his thoughts with GGW.

 

 

 

 

It’s Worse Than You Thought… but maybe better too Friends of White Flint

An interesting recap of where Montgomery County is strong, and where it needs to improve relative to the Washington region.

 

 

 

 

How Silver Spring Park could be a good neighbor Greater Greater Washington / … Continue reading

Peter Calthorpe on Transit-Oriented Development

Posted by & filed under Design.

Via Fast Company

Portland has long been one of the most celebrated cities in terms of planning and sustainability. Peter Calthorpe is one of the original pioneers of transit-oriented development. In this video, Calthorpe does a nice job of succinctly laying out the principles of transit-oriented development, namely walkability and diversity of population and land use.