Chas Wiederhold

Mount Saint Joseph and CVG on the same exit from 275! Let's build this bridge and make Kentucky pay for it! ;)

Good thing it's not a competition, haha.

I think this I want to push back a little bit on this take. I think another way of framing it is that A LOT of different types of artists were able to be billed as being a part of Blink, and that should be seen as a huge success for the event. Expanding local participation, and participation to artists that aren't going to Burning Man every year is a win in my eyes.

I really don't think the concourse over Ezzard Charles would fly. 1) Eliminates a landmark view of Music Hall 2) The city is demoing skywalks, not building them 3) Pedestrianization of Central Parkway could expand to Ezzard Charles making the street level experience more pleasant and functional.

Very uncommon to see a project like this; 27 different floor plans! Super intrigued, and glad to see something like it being built.

I would imagine the kayak access will be used more as a stop and pick up or a turn around point for a more skilled kayaker. 11 miles from Armleder, 4 miles from Schmidt, <1 from Licking, 5 miles to Riverside, >5 miles to Villa Hills, 7 milles to Anderson Ferry. Hard disagree. Most kayaking trips are through wilderness or protected areas. It is so uncommon to kayak through the center of a city. It's an exciting vantage point to engage with the city.

Walnut Hills and East Walnut Hills are just a couple blocks short of their walkable business districts merging. Streetcar connecting uptown when?

+12 minutes seems like a pretty significant change for someone making a transfer. This change wouldn't really have a major effect for anyone on a north/south route because you could ostensibly still get on and off at 5th Street in a scenario where the hub moves to the Riverfront Transit Center. I'm in total agreement that the Riverfront Transit Center should be more utilized. As a former love-drunk biweekly Greyhound bus commuter between Cin-Col, I really believe the RTC would be great for regional bus connections; far and away better than Galbraith Rd or wherever Greyhound, GoBus, etc is now.

An underrated part of the stadium renovation is the alignment with the east gate and Freedom Way. Much better. I would expect more curb cuts and crosswalks, but feel like we are seeing a final product at this point. Does anyone else want to nudge the signage over 1.5 structural bays?

The Westin porte cochere and the 5th Street entry to the 84.51 Garage are really the only two egregious car oriented uses along 5th. I do think this is pie in the sky thinking, but that's pretty much my favorite way to think!

This was the quickest of studies, and probably doesn't account for a ton of issues, but a super block could be created between Central, Broadway, 4th, and 6th with limited vehicular traffic coming from 4th and 6th to a pedestrianized 5th Street without closing off access to parking garages. With 4th Street losing its access to I-75, I think it might be a good idea to pedestrianize 4th between Central and Home Alley. Transit access and emergency access would of course be preserved.

The North Building is in great shape and should be reused, not replaced. I'd love to experience and AR/VR version of the old main library, for sure.

Totally. A district's branding needs to extend to the streetscape. You should know as soon as you enter the district, not just because of flags and banners, but because of a hyper-pedestrianized pace created with safe street infrastructure, outdoor dining parklets, etc. I think they should push it harder than window clings on leasable buildings, for sure!

For the times when these buildings were built, I think North and South are both very handsome buildings. I don't even mind the skywalk 1) because it is well detailed and 2) because it spans North to South, not blocking the extended view to Kentucky. I would like to imagine there would be a great many potential uses for the space. As a new parent, I would love to take my kid to some place like The Rabbit Hole in Kansas City. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/01/books/rabbit-hole-kansas-city.html Its a literature themed indoor playground and museum that has gotten a lot of coverage recently. Would make for a great adjacency to the Main Library. I also think about The Columbus Commons in Columbus, Indiana. The CAC is already doing this in the Unmuseum, but this would be a much larger scale. Maybe I'm imagining 3CDC making an indoor Washington Park.

I wouldn't call myself a part of the anti-change crowd, but I do not like a public space being turned over to private development in this situation. Redevelop it as something just as public as the library if the library really does not need the space. I'm looking forward to visiting. The plazas feel nice, open, and airy. The south building appears more open too on the west side. My initial thought from the photos is this should have been more of a preservation project - mostly just because I loved the brick interior. It feels very academic to me.

I noticed on my commute home the window coverings at the Garfield Suites have been replaced with the branding.

https://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2024/07/02/hamilton-county-may-sell-downtown-building-others.html I'd be interested to hear from people in Bond Hill what this means to the neighborhood. Would be great to see Reading Road from Andina to Rose to get the reinvestment it deserves but the Mercy building is so isolated and suburban. Maybe good if you are a food truck.

Defining a heyday is a bit troubling to me. Just as fashion, technology, cuisine, language, etc changes over time, so too does architecture. No reason to know learn from, be aware of, influenced by historic architecture... but I see very little strong objective reasoning to completely mimic or resurrect a style outside the purpose of costume. Other architectural scholars might concur or disagree, but I was taught that there were two primary branches of Art Deco; one that used organic motifs in its ornamentation and one that used technological advances in its ornamental motifs. The Guardian Building in Detroit representing corn and Cincinnati's Union Terminal resembling a radio express this pretty well. I think the latter illustrates my discomfort with imposing or promoting a specific style (or rather this specific style) because the style was so linked to celebrating the processual advancement of technology (as are most architectural styles, that is, products of a way of building with an available material with the technology available at the time). It seems ironic to promote a 100 year old style that itself promoted cutting edge technology at the time and a departure from styles of the past. Personally, as a "young" architect, I really have no interest in designing architecture in a historic or historicized style. 1) Tradespeople don't build using 100 year old tech. 2) using modern materials and methods is more sustainable and efficient. 3) Historic details do not address contemporary issues I love Art Deco buildings and design for real though.

What is the benefit of limiting or promoting a specific architectural style that is connected with a specific time in history?

It's giving Trump's Make Federal Buildings Beautiful Again act.

This is the JW Marriot in Charlotte; just trying to think of precedents folks at the top might be looking at if a hotel is a potential for the site's future. The tower portion is about 13,000sf per floor. The corner of 5th and Broadway could hold ~11,000sf. A horrendous parking garage accompanies. Given the comment "if we can get parking" I think that would mean that they have "got" parking and that parking is probably a block or so away. Will certainly be interesting to see the future of this corner of downtown if there are two new shiny towers in the relatively near future.

I love seeing Dayton's momentum picking up. I'm up there every other week checking on the Ronald McDonald House project. I need to walk around downtown a bit the next time I am up there. Here are some Ronald McDonald House views from Valley Street.

We absolutely need to fight for as much capping and complete street bridges as we possibly can. This is a once-in-a-century chance to change the city. All people in power need to be pulling every resource they can to integrate this behemoth to the city, increasing the city's livability. I'm working on a sketch. It is close to being sharable, but I think that in the screenshot that you captured, we need to be fighting for two complete street bridges at Linn and 9th, a land bridge cap between 7th and 8th, and a retail/restaurant saddled bridge along 5th Street. I think that those 4 bridges, which will be bridges, need to be some of the most substantial, architecturally significant bridges along the entire length of I-75 and they will need to communicate Cincinnati's identity and culture. Linn and 9th Street Bridges look and function: Long Street Bridge in Columbus 7th and 8th Street Alternative 1: Lytle Park Cap 7th and 8th Street Alternative 2: Robert L.B. Tobin Land Bridge in San Antonio 5th Street look and function: High Street Bridge in Columbus ^Using styrofoam and plexiglass to render timeless, romantic, architecture is so dorky to me. I think it came at a time when Columbus was really leaning into its Italian roots. Anyways, I would expect Cincinnati to have a contemporary, culturally connected response to this type of building. It will be curious to see what happens as a result of a more connected interchange there west of I-75. I tend to think that the area along 5th Street will redevelop before the area along 8th Street, but I don't really base that on much other than intuition.

No. Yes. 1938 source: JSTOR (The collections in JSTOR include peer-reviewed scholarly journals, respected literary journals, academic monographs, research reports, and primary sources from libraries' special collections and archives.) https://library.artstor.org/#/public/35170870 "When the original building opened in 1878, it housed the largest department store in the country. George Marshall Martin and George Roth updated the facade of the building in 1938. The Art Deco styling is seen in the horizontal interplay of granite, marble and limestone. The motifs seen on the facade are influenced by Mayan art. In 1982 Shillito's merged to become Shillito Rikes and in 1986 the department store came to be known as Lazarus. The original interior design, created by Cincinnati architect James W. McLaughlin, was modeled after Le Bon Marche in Paris. It consisted of an arcaded atrium, 120 feet high, capped by a glass dome 60 feet across. This feature has been restored with the opening of the residential Lofts at Shillito Place." anything yet?

There are books about architecture? Nah, I don't believe that. I'm joking. I'm not sure where our conversation went down this path and I apologize for my contributions that got us here, less because I don't enjoy talking about architecture and more so because conversations about style are circular, unending, and lead nowhere. @RJohnson's original sketch and comment confused me, partially due to lack of capitalization and punctuation, and also maybe a few missing words (what was that about banes of generations?). From the illustrator's perspective, I thought the sketch was attempting to give a brutalist building an upgrade for the 21st Century. I didn't see it. My comment in response was alluding to a popular meme; "Sir (or Ma'am) this is a Wendy's." This is used by people (of certain generations) "to deflect overbearing or subjectively tiresome statements or questions, as well as comments that are bizarre." 1) the comment was bizarre because neither the existing building or my perception of the sketch are Brutalist. 2) the caption was subjectively tiresome to me because from the standpoint of someone with two architecture degrees, I am exhausted by folks equating Brutalism with ugliness. Replacing "Wendy's" with "Art Deco" was my attempt at appropriating the meme with my educated determination of the style of the building. After reading an article (such a hallmark of my generation) about the future of this specific building and the report that @JYP kindly posted, I can see that while there is plenty of cited examples of the building's Art Deco characteristics and like-buildings (and none of its brutalist characteristics, of which it does not have) the authors of the report ultimately determined that the building was and is an example of the International Style. Interestingly enough, I think this building's style would be more difficult to determine if it had been built as it was originally rendered, with limestone in place of the brick. In that case, I do think that the building would be indistinguishable, stylistically, from the updated Shillito façade which is markedly Art Deco. Would it still be considered an International Style building or would scholars put it in the Art Deco camp as they do the Shillito façade? In any case, I am ashamed that I took the bait and performed architecture snobbery here. I don't really like to do that, but it is a slow day for me. This is exactly what happened. You can still see the original façade on the south side of the building.