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1818 Church Street | 6 stories | 142 units | Palm Trees


mirydi

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Since when did a 7-story building need a steel frame?

 

This is where ideology gets conflated with being 'correct' and gets in the way.

 

Too many of us throw around ¨stick frame¨ as if our enthusiasm for the built environment causes us to forget that there are no shortage of admired buildings with wooden frames---around the world---that have withstood centuries of use.

 

And, for the record, that's gonna be a good-looking, filled-to-capacity building when it's fully realized. I'm with Will: chasing all things tall is kinda silly (or cute). That was a previous era in which none of us lived. It's cute to wish/hope/pray for skyscrapers because our sense of ¨urban¨ still references the megacity model. Only, this ain't turn-of-the-century Cincinnati/New York/Chicago, nor do we live in China. 

 

Density---not height---is the name of the present game, the dream to be dreamt, the ethos of current urban development. 

 

Period.

 

When Nashville is, from the center outward, filled with block after block of peopled places (not empty lots or decayed spaces), it/we will have arrived. 

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Since when did a 7-story building need a steel frame?

 

This is where ideology gets conflated with being 'correct' and gets in the way.

 

Too many of us throw around ¨stick frame¨ as if our enthusiasm for the built environment causes us to forget that there are no shortage of admired buildings with wooden frames---around the world---that have withstood centuries of use.

 

And, for the record, that's gonna be a good-looking, filled-to-capacity building when it's fully realized. I'm with Will: chasing all things tall is kinda silly (or cute). That was a previous era in which none of us lived. It's cute to wish/hope/pray for skyscrapers because our sense of ¨urban¨ still references the megacity model. Only, this ain't turn-of-the-century Cincinnati/New York/Chicago, nor do we live in China. 

 

Density---not height---is the name of the present game, the dream to be dreamt, the ethos of current urban development. 

 

Period.

 

When Nashville is, from the center outward, filled with block after block of peopled places (not empty lots or decayed spaces), it/we will have arrived. 

Well said. Density creates the need for height. Height also doesn't necessarily promote density.

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Since when did a 7-story building need a steel frame?

This is where ideology gets conflated with being 'correct' and gets in the way.

Too many of us throw around ¨stick frame¨ as if our enthusiasm for the built environment causes us to forget that there are no shortage of admired buildings with wooden frames---around the world---that have withstood centuries of use.

And, for the record, that's gonna be a good-looking, filled-to-capacity building when it's fully realized. I'm with Will: chasing all things tall is kinda silly (or cute). That was a previous era in which none of us lived. It's cute to wish/hope/pray for skyscrapers because our sense of ¨urban¨ still references the megacity model. Only, this ain't turn-of-the-century Cincinnati/New York/Chicago, nor do we live in China.

Density---not height---is the name of the present game, the dream to be dreamt, the ethos of current urban development.

Period.

When Nashville is, from the center outward, filled with block after block of peopled places (not empty lots or decayed spaces), it/we will have arrived.

My arguments against stick-frame construction have nothing to do with height.

They are not using wood because the building was designed at 7-stories or less, the wood construction itself necessitates that limit. They are using wood because it's cheap.

Let's look at some more drawbacks for wood construction:

- It is significantly weaker than steel or concrete.

- It is highly combustible.

- It is highly susceptible to rot, mold, and parasitic infestations (termites).

- It is susceptible to structural shifts, settling, warping, etc. due to time/age and mass and thermal loading/unloading.

- It is significantly less thermally efficient than concrete, which much be compensated for with insulation (fiberglass, cellulose, spray-foam, etc.)--of which these developers are using the bare minimum.

- It is a one-time use material. Steel and concrete can be recycled/reused.

Wood does have a few advantages:

- It is (generally) cheaper. Much of that difference relates to the number of skilled tradesman that can work with one material or the other. There are plentiful cheap carpenter subcontractors.

- It is a renewable resource--although not recyclable/reusable like concrete and steel.

Yes, there are plenty of very old wood buildings in the world. But there are distinct differences between those and what we're seeing built today. For one, the old buildings you reference used much stronger and denser old-growth wood. Wood used in modern construction is farmed new-growth wood, wood that is lacking in the density and maturity of the old-growth wood--traits that are critical to its longevity. Look no further than the massive amounts of premature failure already being seen in homes built as late as the mid-1980's.

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My wife and I left a stick frame house in June 2012. Best move we ever made. I am now in concrete and steel and believe me there is a huge difference. Luckily I bought concrete and steel cheaper than what we sold the house  for and made a bit of money.

 

The wood they use today is quickly grown and often is warped and unusable. The amount of waste is absolutely ridiculous. If you get flooded. you might as well rebuild. When the Harpeth River overflowed and flooded my neighborhood in 2010, most of the houses had to be rebuilt. The houses that survived were the few that had concrete basements. Luckily mine was on a hill, but still accumulated a lot of water in the crawl space which took 6 months or more to completely dry out. I was damn lucky my house passed inspection for me to sell. Luckily I had a ton of concrete holding the house up, otherwise I would have had further damage due to the flood.

 

The older buildings you talk about that have wood, use what was called Fury wood and was at least 8" x 8" inches thick. They basically took a tree truck and squared it off back then out of 50-100 year old trees, not this cheaply grown and harvested pine junk we get from lumber yards today.

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That was one of the primary reasons we moved out of Vista Germantown after less than a year. You could hear everything from other units and the whole building was settling causing cracks in walls, doors to get stuck, plumbing issues.

I installed a lot of the appliances in that building, so was there for much of the construction. For the prices they were asking, I was very surprised as the building quality.
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My arguments against stick-frame construction have nothing to do with height.

They are using wood because it's cheap.

This important nuance (i.e. the reason for your contempt for 'stick frames') was not clear in your argument.

 

And I wonder about the old growth argument. Now that you mention it, there are other factors to consider---not the least of which is the Little Ice Age phenomenon and what that meant for wood densities at certain latitudes. So, I can definitely buy the cost of materials and quality of wood arguments.

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I don't mind this being 6 stories. Tall buildings need to be as close to downtown as possible. We don't need the Atlanta/Houston/Dallas model of skyscrapers way out in the country.

 

This is literally one mile from downtown.  If this is "way out in the country" then where you live in East Nashville is in Romania. 

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