Design

It’s a Seaside World, We Just Live in It

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This year, Seaside is 30 years old and whatever you think of Andres Duany and the Congress for New Urbanism, any observer of urbanism must admit that Seaside has changed the vocabulary.

The pattern of main street, grid streets, mixed facades, and public space is part of every Federal Realty project and appears on our own Ellsworth Street.

Along Florida’s Gulf Coast, Seaside neighbors Rosemary Beach, Alys Beach, and the Watercolor resort have picked up the vocabulary and created a sense of place, community, and style along the coast road, 30A.

Duany etal have identified a fundamental human pleasure in strolling a certain type of built space, and have, most importantly, made that space marketable. From Seaside to Kentlands, … Continue reading

Beauty and the Eye of the Beholder

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Everyone has an opinion about the new fountain at what people consider the “town square” of Bethesda–the plaza in front of Barnes & Noble Bookstore.

As reported online in the Bethesda Patch most of the commenters think it was at best unecessary and at worst, a scheme to keep people from sitting out in front of the store. You can chime in as well by voting online. Unfortunately, out of 209 votes so far, 121 people (57%) don’t like it.

This is not a Bethesda phenomenon. In fact, just last week, the New York Times reported that Portland, Maine has removed a sculpture called Tracing the Fore. The article quotes Shawn McCarthy, who owns the bar across the street from … Continue reading

Albert Ledner and Organic Modern

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In an interview for the National Trust for Historic Preservation, Albert Ledner, a 2009 AIA Medal of Honor winner, discusses his fascination with Frank Lloyd Wright’s work, the influence of nature on his designs, and the approach of blending Organic design with Modern architecture. Ledner said, “If people can understand the principles and relate that to architectural design, maybe it will begin to open some doors to them appreciating these designs.” Opening doors for people so they can understand and appreciate the architecture of the recent past is exactly what we are trying to do with our Montgomery Modern initiative.

The Modernist Flag Building at White Oak Professional Center (1965), 11161 Lockwood Drive

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The White Oak Professional Center (1965), at 11161 Lockwood Drive, is a contemporary office building that features bannerlike vertical panels rising like flags above the roofline and dipping like pennants from the wall surfaces.

This Montgomery Modern building was designed by architect Vincent A. DeGutis of Silver Spring. The four-story structure is located near the SE corner of New Hampshire Avenue and Lockwood Drive.

The exterior panels are composed of aggregate stones with peach-brown tones.

The developer was Realty Investment Company, which built a headquarters building the sameyear at 11315 Lockwood Drive. The chairman of RIC was Stewart Bainum who lived nearby in Burnt Mills Hills.

Planners celebrate Park(ing) Day with park space

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Land in our urban areas is very valuable and much of it is currently used for parking. But what might places like Silver Spring be if they had more park space? Today, we are participating in National Park(ing) Day to find out.

Taking several spaces on Ellsworth Drive in Downtown Silver Spring, planners from the Montgomery County Planning Department and other organizations have claimed a few more square feet for parkland in the central business district.

The event is being held today on Ellsworth Drive from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Participating in the event are 5 organizations who support a greener future. In addition to the Planning Department (2 spaces), the DC chapter of the Congress for New … Continue reading

Is Walkability Worth as Much as a Walk-in Closet?

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It may be, according to a new report from CEOs for Cities that measures home value in walkable and less walkable communties.

The data in Walking the Walk is based on Walk Score, a website that measures the walkability of any given address by counting how many destinations (parks, library, stores) are within walking distance.

(I would quibble this approach only to note that my house is close to a hardware store, sushi shop (!), and a national park, but with few sidewalks leading to them, walkability is limited.)

Nonetheless, using data from ZipRealty in 15 major markets, they found home values were between $700 to $3,000 higher than is less walkable neighborhoods.

So it seems a sidewalk and a place to walk can increase not … Continue reading

High Line Part Two

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The second half of the High Line opened this summer and even though it’s a one-off, not likely to be funded in these straightened budget times or replicated in less dense environments, it’s still intersting to think about making parks out of places that are not traditionally green.

Enjoy the pictures.

 

Urban Planning at Silverdocs

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At one of America’s best theaters this week, the Silverdocs film festival is showing The Pruitt-Igoe Myth: An Urban History. Pruitt-Igoe was a St. Louis public housing project, notorious among Planning 101 students as athe worst example of urban planning/social engineering/redevelopment ever. The photo of its implosion–dusty and collapsing, is iconic.

This film “reclaims the mythology of Pruitt-Igoe by questioning and recontextualizing its demise.” The interviews with former residents should be interesting.

Also of interest to planning junkies–The Revenge of the Electric Car, and Surpriseville.

Eco -logy meets eco -nomy: it all comes down to home.

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Excerpts from David Korten’s “Living Buildings, Living Economies, and a Living Future” from Yes! online, May 18, 2011:

“Integrating multi-purpose buildings into a larger multi-building neighborhood or district system adds opportunities to develop public green spaces, community gardens, edible landscaping, and small-scale poultry and livestock production, as well as natural wetlands and living machine water purification to continuously recycle nutrients, water, and energy.

Integrative projects also create opportunities to balance the utility loads of businesses, which generally have greater energy needs during the day, and residences, which have greater needs during nonbusiness hours. Bringing residences, employment, shopping, and recreation together in close proximity minimizes transportation requirements and facilitates the sharing of autos, bicycles, appliances, and tools, and community connections … Continue reading

Dangerous by Design

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No, not the bad boys your mother warned you about, but the streets you may (try to) walk along everyday.

Transportation for America’s latest report has plenty of media-catching data:

between 2000 and 2009 more than 47,700 pedestrians were killed in the United States, the equivalent of a jumbo jet crash every month in that same time period, a pedestrian was struck by a car or truck every 7 minutes while motorist deaths have dropped 27 percent in the past decade, pedestrian fatalities have fallen at only half that rate, by just over 14 percent.

But you won’t be surprised to hear that a scant fraction of federal transportation funding distributed to states for local projects is dedicated to pedestrian safety. … Continue reading