urbanSTL

EssTeeEll wrote: ↑

Jul 06, 2022

Great work, Elek!  We should hope something near this good get built on such a prominent spot.  One question:  I don't mind it aesthetically, but what is the inspiration for the windowless/blank southern wall on the building to the west?  To play off the smaller building's roof to the south?  Maybe a mural?  Or maybe just because?

Keep the concepts flowing!

Ideally, it would be a giant mural, but there was no realistic way for me to portray what I was thinking in the final renders so I left it blank (me being lazy). I was thinking maybe something like the side of Council Tower in midtown to keep it simple. Something fun and colorful could work there too!

STLEnginerd wrote: ↑

Jul 13, 2022

I really like the design & I know this is all for fun but am curious where you stand on balancing the business side of building places versus the artistry of building places.  At a firm i assume there is a fair amount of balancing the two since ultimately a building is a revenue generator not a sculpture.  So these aren't so much design critiques as they are thoughts around what might be more financially attractive to a developer.

I suspect a developer would want to plaza level raised off the street to create a "private oasis" feel as opposed to a "public plaza".  A public plaza would create a lot of issues for the developer at that location including homelessness, and trash.  I suspect a developer would probably also want to build on a parking podium anyway to create an opportunity to get parking revenue and possibly street facing retail.  Also wonder how the (condo owners?) would think about there window facing I64/40 raised lanes  A parking podium would give alot of sightlines over the interstate lanes. toward Soulard and better views into stadium for some.  One negative to this (aside from aesthetic preferences) might be road noise and how in bounces around the plaza area and going with a parking podium might really drag down the aesthetics of the original concept.

Also not exactly high architecture but if the building was mirror imaged so the dead faces faced oncoming traffic on Broadway and 4th street those would be good places to integrate video board advertisements (think Time Square).  For a building at a location like this those could be significant revenue generators and they wouldn't really be noticeable for most residents.  Might mess up the imagined use for the glass box on top.

If these consideration aren't part of the fun for you feel free to ignore.  Keeping it at ground level probably makes it more aesthetically pleasing.

That's often something I toy with in my concepts and try to have a good balance between. This design trends towards something more realistic besides the lack of onsite parking in its design and function. Other concepts in the past, namely the one at I-64 and Grand, are purely for my imagination and do not consider profit and costs. 

The public plaza, in my eyes, is everything that Ballpark Village's "Better Together Plaza" is not. I also used inspiration from European pedestrian-only streets as a basis for the plaza. As for the homelessness issue, I would assume it would be similar to Ballpark Village. I believe the two buildings would primarily block the street noise, but the plaza's trees could also act as a sound dampener given time. 

For the blank façades, SP actually rendered what a cool baseball-themed mural would look like and sent it to me (he has better graphic abilities than me!). Attached is what that would look like, although a few tasteful billboards could give the area a time square vibe.

I appreciate the thorough thought put into my design; it really pushes my thinking and establishes a higher precedent for the next concept!

^ on which lot?

^^I'm tickled pink you like that. It's a pretty simple concept, really. The silhouette is the Stan the Man statue in front of the ballpark cut out and filled with a photo of the crowd in the stands at a ballgame.  And I just took that, which I had made for a previous project, and did a quick perspective transform to fit it on your wall. Seemed to speak well of our love of the game.

I'd like to see what you'd come up with for the lot at 10th and Market. Originally, there was to be a 31-story twin for the Bank of America building (they even drove piles for the unbuilt tower, and you can see it's outline on the roof of the low-rise portion of the existing building). It's a great site, right across from City Garden etc. I'm no engineer, but I'm sure you wouldn't be limited by the previously place piles. How would you integrate a new, modern building into the existing structure? How would you mingle the old concept with new urban thinking? 

The beginnings of my train staton concept. Does anyone have a better idea for a name? 

I think St. Louis Civic Center works for the name. 

I like the rendering and can't wait to see if there are future iterations. 

RockChalkSTL wrote: ↑

Jul 28, 2022

I'm not trying to add to your assignment, but I don't feel like it's necessary to have all of those giant surface lots right next to St. Louis' premier transportation depot. It would be really cool if this entire area could be urbanized a bit more. 

I do understand that some parking may be necessary, but can't it be in mixed-use buildings? 

I envision Amtrak riders departing their train and your shed to a mixed-use village on those lots that run all the way over to Union Station. I think downtown could probably handle a small food hall in that area right by the Civic Center. For one thing, Amtrak, Metrolink, and Greyhound riders all have one thing in common: they eat. But this is also right next to Enterprise Center, and it's a single blue/red line ride away from the Union Station and Stadium stations, which serve City SC and the Cardinals. 

I posted this in the State of Downtown thread, and it was swiftly dispatched. This is a better place for it anyways:

What if we had another major strip to the likes of Washington/ Delmar/ Euclid on Clark Avenue Between One Cardinal Way and Union Station? This street is accessible via three Metrolink stations, a Metrobus hub serviced by lines running all over, a couple of highway exits, and five parking garages to supplement it. A strip here would anchor our southern border and could make Downtown more active and fluid on the streets between Clark and Washington.

Here is the vision:
Firstly, high-quality infill to the likes of Citizen Park, 1014 Spruce, and The Orion on the parcels (and unused park space) directly fronting the street is needed to bring permanent residents to the area. Next, MODOT could remove the large exit ramps at 10th and 14th streets to free up more prime space in the heart of the strip. From there, Metrolink could make the sloped embankments leading onto their tracks retaining walls, freeing up space for wide sidewalks and plazas between 14th and 18th. Making the street one 10-foot wide lane in each direction with a tree-lined median and street parking on either side would boost the strip's walkability tenfold.

I think that this area could be among the most popular in the area with year-round activity from Busch, Enterprise, and eventually Centene Stadiums on top of the thousands of residents it would create. It would have a great nightlife between the sports bars and clubs (wheelhouse) and would have a great daytime feel too, with restaurants and retail a must. It would be cool to see someone buy the Justice Center garage and make it free to visitors on non-gamedays, similar to City Foundry or the Loop. 

There really is a lot of potential for this area, and I think developers have largely looked past it. Either end is already anchored by brand new developments (BPV and Union Station) and would have guaranteed activity by millions of local sports fans every year. Seems like a no-brainer considering the accessibility and stadiums built along the street.  These are just my initial thoughts after the idea sparked in my head. What would anyone else add?

My thinking was that this project is just the start of reimagining this whole area between Market and 40 (plus the surface lots pictured are just existing lots from the earth view). 

Played around with AI to create some future concepts for downtown, based on the discussion in the Railway Exchange thread about rebuilding parts of downtown in its historical scale and architectural style. Got some pretty fun results








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Yea, I do wish our downtown basically looked like Soulard with a little more density and scale

The second pic is exactly how I wish the “Jefferson Memorial” would have been planned. I always thought it would have been made more sense to build the arch rising out of the historic riverfront rather than the sprawling green space and separation from the built city. They definitely considered it to an extent because they kept the Old Cathedral and Old Rock House.

Unfortunately they cleared all that before they actually had a design, otherwise, I wonder if that is how it would have been constructed. Wed look much more like New Orleans on the riverfront with a modern marvel rising above…I think history would have been different in that case for our downtown

Yes yes and yes to more red brick medium density in downtown. That should be the proposals we seek out to infill in downtown and build out its core to fill the gaps to the surrounding neighborhoods


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