dlueg

the competition created between competing music venues in the city is one thing, and a worthwhile discussion....but having just moved out of the Newport's East Row, after living there for ~7years, I can tell you that i could stand in my back yard and hear bunbury, and the macy's music festival. Those things were tolerable because they are one-off type of events and it was kind-of cool, halfway between a perk and a consequence of living in the city. An outdoor concert venue surrounded by what amounts to a largely single family residential type urban settings seem to be a fairly precarious proposition, and is going to have to wrestle with the implications of that. Promowest's developments in columbus and pittsburgh are urban, but are not situated in the type of setting as this one will be in Newport. should be interesting to watch.

people tear stuff down all the time - i give you that it would seem like a huge waste of money, given that it was literally just spent - but its not that tremendously much money in the grand scheme of things, and it is just a parking structure. right next door riverfront stadium cost a bunch of money when it was built (45m) and we tore it down to build something else.

with all the talk of the fcc stadium - could they just do something like this? i mean, i know you'd have to demo the garage you just built - but... it seems to work, and then you've got all your stadiums in one spot and all the infrastructure right there.

architecture is one of the most profound anthropologic tools we have. you can learn so much about times in which people live by the things they build.

you, as the city of cincinnati, would have to ask yourself - why do i want any of these places to be part of my city? is there some tax base (existing or potential)- businesses, property, population that would be beneficial to you, the city? most of these places might make geographic sense to be a part of the city, but would likely do nothing but be a drag on the city's resources.

glad to see the above answer - parking garages will tend to be demolished due to functional obsolescence or lack of financial viability before they have (with proper maintenance) deteriorated to the point that they would raise safety concerns. a concrete building in Arizona could last a thousand years... Unfortunately, a given with concrete is that it cracks- and cracks allow water a place to hang out and freeze and expand and make more cracks... So - here, the name of the game is keeping water away, or getting it away quickly. garages with overbuilds, as are becoming more common in Cincinnati hopefully provide an incentive for building owners to keep up with regular maintenance. Unfortunately, as i'm sure has been discussed in other threads, parking structures are usually unable to be converted to other uses (unless they are intentionally planned to do so - speed ramps)... due to the high cost to construct/the return they generate, they are engineered to only support cars and people, which is considered to be a lower live load than an office, and i'm pretty sure the live load for residential is higher too... + because of the cost the floor to floor heights are usually too low to be retrofitted anyway... a more interesting question to me, revolves around the role of the car in 50+ years.

^pete rose way/riverside drive is a pretty busy street, but this is literally on the riverfront park, it couldnt be more pedestrian friendly. that overpass isnt bad, i walk under it almost every day going to/from work. i dont think anyone envisions this area turning into an entertainment destination, but, instead, a more residential area. so the library? its a half mile away no matter how you cut it. the overpass doesnt hinder you there - theres a sidewalk that connects pete rose way and E. 3rd if your goal is to get to the core of downtown... but the taft museum, the new lytle park, the entire riverfront park being within a couple hundred yards, this place is actually pretty connected. topographically it is isolated, and will continue to be so, but that actually creates an opportunity for a more distinct, quieter, residential condo district.

this would certainly cause less parking structures to be built... or at the very least, would cause what is built to be much more carefully considered - while i'm sure causing some temper tantrums from developers. parking structures as built now are engineered structurally to be as bare bones and minimal as possible (read : cost less) the floor to floor heights are lower. structurally they actually have less stringent requirements for live load, so their slabs are thinner or contain less reinforcement than office slabs, the column spacing is wider and the beams are shallower. dead load and deflection may have stricter reqs for office or residential as well, but i dont know that (a little counter-intuitive i thought at first - but imagine those garage slabs and the potential amount of people they could hold vs the amount of cars they are designed to hold + plus office furniture storage etc, and that weight adds up quickly) all of this to say that the more structural requirements imposed on parking structures, the higher the cost. i dont necessarily see this as a bad thing as it would discourage the building of parkign structures, but you will get significant pushback from developers if they see the price of parking go up from 15-16k/car, on an amenity that they believe is essential to securing tennants. In a lot of instances, these structures are what make or break a devleopment from a cost/benefit standpoint. ramps are one thing, but if i have to spend a lot more money on concrete or steel just in case it wants to be converted to office space some day when i might not own the structure - i might be a lot more hesitant to take that risk.

pretty big news, both for how the final form of the kenwood collection plays out and (potentially) the future of downtown retail. http://www.cincinnati.com/story/money/business/2014/08/19/saks-kenwood-collection/14286865/

the term is a bit misleading. its not an ocean. but yeah... saltwater pools are gaining in popularity. less maintenance, less chemicals, softer on skin and eyes etc, similar antimicrobial properties

was out there to watch the derby... can confirm, has some nice points but on the whole (completely subjectively) not a nicer interior space than horseshoe.. and difficult to express, but the exteriof eifs somehow manages to appear less nice than the horseshoe as well. individual spaces (bars, restaurants, main axes of the gaming floor do have some high quality finishes, on par with or possibly surpassing horseshoe. but large swathes of the gaming floor are just open ceiling - a la hollywood casino - that at least to me doesnt feel as "nice"

i'm not sure mike brown has much/any control over the hotel site planned for "the banks" phase 1(c or d?) directly adjacent to gabp - be it height or anything else. and i do believe there was a 10+ story hotel supposed to be built on that site should an operator ever be found. now were they to attempt to put a hotel closer to pbs - i think he does have air rights over there, and would probably let his opinion be known.

i may have misrepresented my position when speaking about contextual quality. when it comes to the siting of the building i'm not normally too concerned with the directly adjacent buildings, but more how its particular siting merits architectural response A) built context in this sense (disregarding for the moment solar and other site issues) is just the collective result of decisions made by other architects in the past, under normal conditions i wouldn't show them any extraordinary amount of respect.. B)i dont consider contextual appropriateness stylistic mimicry, rhythmic mimicry or anything of the sort, unless it fits into the concept for a particular project. i more think of context in terms of a buildings position in time relative to available technological, methodological capacities as well as construction trends and abilities of a local environment. context for me is working within the time the project is made, a reflection of the collective "zeitgeist" in which case this project may be contextually appropriate. relative to how this building responds to its adjacent built environment though. i hardly see a convincing argument to be made for a response to any of it, superficially, sure it might work as an argument. but its a relatively chunky, squatty building perched atop a chunk-ier parking garage... the original proposal might not have been so bad, were it to have been incorporated as planned. but the addition of more levels of parking, i think merit a total rethinking of the project conceptually. the perceived vertical emphasis, again is just too chunky for me, too much a result of simply cladding a floorplan. for the buildings length to its height, especially if it is largely disregarding its parking base, you'd expect greater and more pronounced emphasis on something... the vertical or (and especially) if you are trying to separate yourself from the garage, a total distancing from the design and instead maybe emphasizing the horizontal, i dont know. yay for more units downtown, but i disagree totally with the apparent desire to partially intergrate this new building with its base. i would have hoped the move would be to even more profoundly disregard the base it and instead create an intervention that responds like you would hope a new structure being added to an old one would. in that, even though the project appears to attempt to distance itself from its its existing lower levels somewhat, the project as a whole becomes to regular - too kinda-sorta of the old one, and not enough of a statement on its own. it appears to lack a stance.

the one rendering we do have absolutely says those things... and i would have a hard time imagining any self respecting architect standing smiling next to that image. i know how to read (and ignore) an elevation, and how to interpret a rendering, and i get the design intent, and understand that theyre working within an established column grid. my comment is that its mostly uninspired garbage, and they could afford better with the same money. finishes will match (in quality) existing exterior, interior i'm not as concerned with at this point, because the first hurdle is getting people to want to live somwhere based on what it looks like from the outside. i'm very familiar with JSA and they do fine work. they do excellent single family residential work, in fact... still that still doesnt inspire much confidence. worst project to ever grace our downtown? maybe not... still waiting to see banks phase 2 built.... this city has a massive educational problem when it comes to our collective expectations regarding high end contemporary design.

god that is ugly. straight up, it will be hideous. i'm not talking oh the banks is a terrible attempt at urbanism ugly. no, this will be an eyesore, the likes of which this city has never seen.... proportionally, contextually, materially, its just really going to be bad. if one good thing were to come of it, i hope it will provide a case study of poor design making poor business sense, long run... my biggest fear (other than the gash on our city's face, is that when the units don't sell/rent that it will be taken as a lack of desire on the part of the market to support continued investment in downtown housing. unfortunately i stare directly out of my office window right at the current parking garage, so i'm really looking forward to my view being improved over the next year or so...(read sarcasm) i never thought i'd be excited to get that hotel built. edit - spelling.