Buffalo Rising Online

this fits an area like santa monica perfectly, yet would not fit an area like buffalo unfortunately.

There'so way palm trees would survive a winter here!

The renewable energy focus is great, as is the first floor retail; but the lights such? It seems to me that promoting this parking garage will lead a developer or current garage owner to slap a bunch of neon lights and colored plastic panels onto what is otherwise still just a parking ramp.

Buffalo should take a page from Ithaca and build something like this: 450 spaces, first floor retail, brick that blends into the cityscape as much as possible.

Great ideas, but it looks straight out of the late 60's. Nothing modern about it.

Doesn't the city ramp next to the Erie County Family Court Building have first floow retail space? I seem to recall it facing Franklin? Never seen it used for anything.....but it is there. (maybe ;)

it definitely suffers from being too over the top.(at least down the stretch). I like how it calls attention to the street by being iconic. Some of the color is real nice for a parking garage and i think that it might even look better if built for the 4 seasons. I have been puzzled for a long time about the modern architecture here. Since we can't be a big city, there has to be ways to challenge the appeal of our climate.

They should be using asian plaza roofs(not design but concept) in the empty cobblestone district. Im not sure what they are called, but basicly it combines buisness with charismatic over hangs. Similar to what we do with loading docks(except with detail). These would be built around square shops and connect like a Mondrian. Each small plaza would have a large square of sunlight or whatever weather we happen to deal with, similar to the idea of the pantheon but as a much different form of containment and minus the religious architecture, and dome expense.

It would not be very energy efficient during the winter from all of the in and out travel. But if your talking about changing the image of this city. Just go right ahead and move some of the street grid as if it was for the movie the village. When people walk together in and out of places, you want some confusion and this would be the proper form of anti mall because it respects the classic tradition. Things are not made in America anyway, why not get some kind of fusion that supports the weather and gives our city the respect it is designed for.

then furthur down the road we have the iner harbor vision which will be more geared towards stop and go then explore. I love the canal plan though because it is a description of our citys labor towards this country during that time. Im just saying if the inner harbor project brings interest, the combination of both worlds would be electric.

maybe i have to make a drawing or something.

woops i intended to state that the inner harbor might be successful enough to challenge the city for future growth. No crazy advertising just individual signs and you would step down into the cobble stone square's.

I appreciated Steel's article earlier this year about some flamingly modern architecture being sported by Toronto, but this building really doesn't do it for me. Honest impressions? Public works are bonded for a projected life span, and I suspect that it will seem barely a tick in that life span before the architecture which screams trendy now begins to say "tacky" or worse to most who see it or try to maintain a retail business in it.

Style aside, from these pictures the street-level retail just does not seem on proper, prominent display as it is in most of the buildings we value in walkable commercial districts - it was only the description, and not a first look, that told me the first level is retail space (it still appears that only part of the first level is). Truth be told, the way it looks to me is that the first level is designed so that if and when the structure proves unable to retain retail (who wouldn't want to visit shops in a structure with such a dizzying look?), officials can throw up their hands and say "well, we tried" and convert the space to parking. In my view, for this kind of mix to really work, structures need a design which focuses on the retail component - utilizing all the features and cues which make an attractive, walkable commercial retail street work - with the garage role much more understated.

It's not always easy to strike the right balance in urban settings where various needs and uses compete, and not a new issue. Earlier in the century, as city centers in the U.S. were given over almost entirely to commercial and civic purposes, many religious congregations found themselves unable to afford to buy downtown property for church building. So there are many examples of congregations having commercial buildings built with the lower levels devoted to church uses. In designing these buildings the challenge was to strike a balance between giving the lower levels a strong enough religious identity for the needs of the congregation, and the appearance and features needed to attract and keep the commercial tenants who would pay the bills.

All is not lost - at least here's a structure which makes the Pompidou seem a bit easier on the eye...

I think that brick ramp shown by Living Forge looks dumpy, almost like an abandoned building with the windows blown out. Buildings don't need to "blend" together. They need to work together and that does not mean that they have to be brick or fakey historic.