Yes, St. Louis has the Gateway Arch, Climatron, McDonnell Planetarium and other cool modern structures; but with cool contemporary/modern major residential and office towers being planned in cities like Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Kansas City......is St. Louis keeping up with its peer cities when it comes to modern design?
Granted St. Louis (Chesterfield) just added RGA's awesomely designed HQs and SLCOP is adding contemporary-designed buildings to its campus, can St. Louis overall push the boundaries even more?
Although traditional red brick is St. Louis' dominant aesthetic, immediately recognized by visitors, does St. Louis need to push the boundaries in order to demonstrate it's cutting edge?
No, we are NOT keeping up with our peer cities in terms of design. Far from it.
There are a few encouraging signs, such as RGA and STCOP, but they are few and far between. Developers here just seem to take the easy way out. Hopefully the few bright spots, including (hopefully) the KPF-designed Koplar Tower on Kingshighway will open a few eyes and push the envelope. I'm also counting on CORTEX to showcase a whole slew of cutting-edge designs; we'll see.
This is another example of the lack of leadership in St. Louis. We do have plenty of design talent here (we're the home of HOK, one of the worlds largest architecture firms, for crying out loud), but we just don't have anyone really standing up and insisting on better design.
framer wrote:No, we are NOT keeping up with our peer cities in terms of design. Far from it.
There are a few encouraging signs, such as RGA and STCOP, but they are few and far between. Developers here just seem to take the easy way out. Hopefully the few bright spots, including (hopefully) the KPF-designed Koplar Tower on Kingshighway will open a few eyes and push the envelope. I'm also counting on CORTEX to showcase a whole slew of cutting-edge designs; we'll see.
This is another example of the lack of leadership in St. Louis. We do have plenty of design talent here (we're the home of HOK, one of the worlds largest architecture firms, for crying out loud), but we just don't have anyone really standing up and insisting on better design.
I greatly appreciate your response, you make some great points - especially the one about HOK.
Looking for solutions as to how St. Louis developers/architects/corporations can be encouraged to push beyond the usual conservative design.
Will it take a consortium to be formed to advocate for more cutting-edge designs by firms (corporate, architectural, developers)?
What are the existing architectural groups such as the American Institute of Architects St. Louis doing to encourage/foster contemporary cutting-edge design in St. Louis?
I just don't want to turn this into a bash thread.
just MHO but i wouldn't say that the PNC Tower in Pitt is pushing any boundaries. it looks like pretty standard naught-era office to me. i'd say the Roberts Tower (although smaller) pushes boundaries farther than PNC.
urban_dilettante wrote:just MHO but i wouldn't say that the PNC Tower in Pitt is pushing any boundaries. it looks like pretty standard naught-era office to me. i'd say the Roberts Tower (although smaller) pushes boundaries farther than PNC.
Just an FYI.......
The Tower at PNC will be the world's "greenest" skyscraper.
Roberts Tower has a great exterior design, but it's a far cry from the green features of The Tower at PNC.
The tower will be the greenest Skyrise ever built and will exceed the current criteria for a LEED Platinum certified building. The Tower will feature numerous sustainable attributes such as an operable double skin facade, an onsite blue water reuse system, locally sourced building materials, fixtures and furniture made from recycled materials, and numerous other green strategies to substantially reduce the environmental impact of the building. Some of these features will enable the Tower's heating and cooling systems to operate in a "net-zero-energy state" up to 30% of the year.
Italian architect David Fisher designs first rotating skyscraper, the Dynamic Tower. The Dynamic Tower offers infinite design possibilities, as each floor rotates independently at different speeds, resulting in a unique and ever evolving shape that introduces a fourth dimension to architecture, Time.
An AIA annual "homes by architects" tour, paid admission, would be a start. The public here is woefully out of touch with or completely unaware of state of the art design. I think that is the main reason we don't see anything better. People just don't know.
The idea is simple. Every year, a jury or architects would select the top 20 residential projects of the year - ideally a nice mix of rehabs, restorations/conversions, new construction, both single family and multi family residences. But the goal would be "this is the best work of the year." For $15 or thereabouts, anyone in the metro interested in architecture could get a wristband and gain entry for a day into the top 20 homes designed by architects that year.
What does this do? 1) It makes it competitive. You've got the cash, and the vision, and you felt let down by this year's tour? So you hire an architect, and make something awesome, and it's on next year's tour. 2) By being open to the public, and being formatted like a realtor's tour, it isn't exclusive or condescending for the general public. And in so doing, it raises the general public's consciousness about design. Baby steps, sure. But important if you want to excape the red brick, faux-historical, unaware ghetto we currently live in.
If the people going on the tour are interested in architecture, then how could they be woefully out of touch with art design? If there is that big of a disconnect between St. Louisans interested in architecture and what is "out there" as a possibility, then what good would a local tour provide when that is the environment which produced the ignorance? And if there are a top 20, which means more than that were worthy, again, wouldn't the group who is interested in architecture already have some knowledge of them in a city this size with an apparent paucity of strong examples? Aren't those people hopping online for inspiration from around the entire globe? Anyone that cares about their home being on a tour probably knows how to get exposure to design.
That idea sounds like a cool event, one I'd love to attend, and may even provide a means to up the ante for personal residencies, but that doesn't solve our region developing projects like the ones above. I don't think it's a knowledge problem. Every architect in the city dreams of building edgy, modern projects. Wash U's Architecture School is full of enveloping pushing projects and the models are still likely collecting dust somewhere. You don't think that nearly every architecture firm in town has drawing, schematics and models of awesome buildings? Of course they do. Some of them even get in front of developers and the developers love them. "Oh yes, we want this, and this, and that, and these funky corners and these crazy angles, and these edgy materials".............then they see the bill. "Well actually, it turns out we want this, this, these not so funky corners, and maybe these more traditional angles because we found out that all that crazy stuff isn't in our budget." Not to mention that the inside of these crazy exteriors usually have to have an equally impressive interior design which doesn't help the cost-control.
Once the developer signs off on the already down-scaled version it then gets red-lined to death by project managers, engineers and city codes. This is then subject to even more scrutiny during construction. Long story short, the lofty dreams of talented architects often get severely adjusted when cost is an issue. And it's almost always an issue.
Review boards can encourage and recommend all sorts of stuff, but someone has to pay for it. Part of the solution is expanding our appeal and branding ourselves as worthwhile for more diversified and deep-pocketed developers. Obviously that goes back to the nuts and bolts of our civic health such as population attraction and retention as well as a stronger corporate presence.
Bradley said Asprient’s project is “following the trend for some contemporary design in the Central West End.” She added that the look and quality of fiber cement siding has improved in recent years.
“It’s becoming an acceptable contemporary building material,” Bradley said.
Drove by this house in South St. Louis the other day with a contemporary design that still fits within the context of the neighborhood. More of this please...
^^ thanks.... I like it. Records show there was a two-family lot on that parcel that was demolished in 1996 and this home was constructed in 2008. $300,00 permit.
edit: as for the home in the Gate District, I nominate that neighborhood for the weirdest mix of homes in the City.
If there is that big of a disconnect between St. Louisans interested in architecture and what is "out there" as a possibility, then what good would a local tour provide when that is the environment which produced the ignorance? And if there are a top 20, which means more than that were worthy, again, wouldn't the group who is interested in architecture already have some knowledge of them in a city this size with an apparent paucity of strong examples?
You'd get to go inside each building on the tour and experience the spaces, which you can't do by "knowing about" a building. Hence a tour. And the interiors are just as big a part of the show as the exteriors. You're making the assumption that this is only an event for insiders. It is not. The reason you charge admission is to pay for the PR budget to market the event to the wider public to ensure that it isn't only attended by architecture nerds. People are always looking for stuff to do. Lots of regular folks like going to open houses. For $10 or $15, they could experience a little bit of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous in their own city through this architecture open house. On the flip side, people like to show off. Maybe a tour like this is the incentive some need to hire an architect. It's a win all around. People get to see cool houses. People with cool houses get to show them off and win some notoriety. The city's architecture benefits. Bam.
Is this idea perfect? Is it the master solution? The silver bullet? I don't know, and who cares? It's a cool idea, and it would be one of many collective steps that should be taken to raise the bar. Baby steps.
Oooh, fancy. Very cavelike. Why do developers hate windows so much? Any decent prewar house is virtually a greenhouse by comparison. And architecutural detailing. Just because something is "modern" does not mean it must totally lack even the most basic attempt at using proportion and texture to create visual interest. The sticker price is comedy gold.
Proportion - One of the words/practices that seem to have gone out of style in architecture.
That house in the Gate District is bad on a couple different levels, but if the windows just felt like they were scaled correctly it would help it out a bit. It looks like someone opened CAD and just started drawing rectangles and boxes.
I agree with onecity, modern doesn't = devoid of detail & proper proportions.
