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Cotuit Megalopolis

Cotuit

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Wasnt the future site of One Ten Westminster as of a few months ago going to be an expanded parking lot???

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Yup.

This is so much better and I'm not really that concerned anymore about the loss of the historic (100 Westminster?) brick building.

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The Buck-aBook Building and the current 110 Westminster are going. There's a couple buildings going on Weybosset too, I'm not clear exactly which one is staying (well it's facade is staying.

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CtownMikey Burg

CtownMikey

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:blush: I know we have been shown a rendering of the"One Ten Westminster" 32 story tower... which also showed a good bit of downtown. Is it possible tha someone can use a similar photo, pull back a little to show more of the city, and add in new projects such as parcel 2, Gtech, the Westin addition, I think you get the idea..Hilton, Powerblock..etc. BTW this is my first posting (I've been reading for quite a while) I am from cranston (5 minutes south of Prov) and I have great pride for Providence and hope all of these projects do get completed. I would love in about 4 years, after all the current projects are completed for Providence to be recognized on National news or something ;) And I also have a question about ex-mayor cianci's "New Cities" idea.. I just wanna know if that is still in talks...for any generation?? :):D sorry if I have any typos..my hands are frozen. http://www.pbn.com/stuff/contentmgr/files/...stration/1d.jpg

that is the image-- and there is a bigger one that shows much more of providence but i cant find the link...but i mean can we have an even wider spectrum of all of the new projects?

~Mike

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Cotuit Megalopolis

Cotuit

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Something like this?

OneTenAerial001.jpg

Check out the Arcade Tower thread for more on OneTen Westminster.

I would love it if someone could tackle a mega-rendering of all the projects. I don't have the programs needed to do it myself, but was thinking of maybe taking a crack at doing some placeholder renderings. Anyone else more qualified, please jump in!

Welcome to the forum, even if you do live in Cranston. :P

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eltron Hamlet

eltron

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Something like this?

OneTenAerial001.jpg

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I really love this photo...you really get a great sense of the urban fabric of that area from a photo like this...I also like seeing the roof of the mall - its MASSIVE! Like a whole 'nother city and streetscape up there! They should plant some grass and trees and have it be a nice extension of Waterplace Park...

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Cotuit Megalopolis

Cotuit

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EXACTLY..use that photo..just try to get a broader view...and add in gtech, parcel 2, westin addition, hilton, and whatever else :P

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I cropped that photo a bit to make it smaller so I could host it online, but the original doesn't extend to the Holiday Inn, I don't think the Westin is even on it. If someone wanted to tackle some renderings of multiple proposals, I'm not sure they could find one photo to fit them.

Which when you think of it, is wicked pissah! There's so many proposals in Providence right now, thay can't all fit in one picture!

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provid Hamlet

provid

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Here are some pictures of Pell Chafee Performance Center form Durkeebrown:

http://www.durkeebrown.com/images/Pell-Rake.jpg

http://www.durkeebrown.com/images/Pell-Stagewall.jpg

http://www.durkeebrown.com/images/Pell-Exterior.jpg

Owner: Trinity Repertory Theater

Theater

size: 23,000 s.f.

budget: $4-5 million

Rehabilitation of a 1927 banking hall to create a flexible, 300-500 seat theater and support spaces.

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Mij Whistle-Stop

Mij

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You guys are awsome!!! After searching the web for about twenty mins ( well it seemed like forever) i found this board. After reading the post and seeing the images i knew i had to sign up. With the ammount projects going on in the city i could not follow it all. Thank you all so much for amazing amount of information. I read some were about the JWU project. That project is mainly in cranston, be that as it may, I'm sure by wen. at the lastest i could have a rendering of the overall image of that project. I look forward to learning more and seeing more as the city rises.

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Cotuit Megalopolis

Cotuit

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You guys are awsome!!!  After searching the web for about twenty mins ( well it seemed like forever) i found this board. After reading the post and seeing the images i knew i had to sign up. With the ammount projects going on in the city i could not follow it all. Thank you all so much for amazing amount of information. I read some were about the JWU project. That project is mainly in cranston, be that as it may, I'm sure by wen. at the lastest i could have a rendering of the overall image of that project. I look forward to learning more and seeing more as the city rises.

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Glad you found your way here Mij.

There is a thread about J&W Harborside Campus here. It'd be awesome if you could get us some renderings to look at. I've heard that J&W has some big plans for Harborside, and after a lot of work to get their Charlotte campus off the ground, they are refocusing on Providence in the coming years.

This is the 'Providence' forum, but discussion is open to topics across Rhode Island, there's some Pawtucket and Woonsocket stuff floating around here, as well as other areas of the state. It is 'the city-state' after-all. :)

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pdxstreetcar Whistle-Stop

pdxstreetcar

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David Brussat: Up the balconies! Irk the modernists!

01:00 AM EST on Thursday, March 17, 2005

TOM WOLFE, in From Bauhaus to Our House, had fun with the Seagram Building, designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe -- among the first Manhattan office buildings sheathed in glass curtain wall. Built in 1958, the Seagram Building was followed by many "glass boxes" designed by followers of Mies, known as Mieslings. Wolfe wrote:

"In the great corporate towers, the office workers shoved filing cabinets, desks, wastepaper baskets, potted plants up against the floor-to-ceiling sheets of glass, anything to build a barrier against the panicked feeling that they were about to pitch headlong into the streets below. Above these jerry-built walls they strung up makeshift curtains that looked like laundry lines from the slums of Naples, anything to keep out that brain-boiling, poached-eye sunlight that came blazing in every afternoon. And by night, the custodial staff, the Miesling police, under strictest orders, invaded and pulled down these pathetic barricades thrown up against the pure vision of the white gods and the Silver Prince." (Wolfe here alludes to the early European modernists of the Bauhaus.)

The passage came to mind during Tuesday morning's meeting of the Capital Center Commission's design panel. The subject was balconies.

Under consideration were the two residential towers in the first phase of the project on Parcel 2, east of Waterplace (featured on the front page of the March 9 Journal). Although the project was approved last year, and is expected to break ground in April or May, its developer had returned to say they were going condo. Instead of 275 rental units, there would be 193 condominiums. People spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on an apartment tend to want as much square footage as they can get. And so the two sleek modernist buildings, designed by Jon Cardello, of ADD Inc., in Cambridge, are now to be festooned with balconies.

This will improve the project's appearance: The buildings' straight, spare, unadorned (some might say boring) lines will be animated by the rectangular shape of balconies jutting out from the walls in patterns either orderly or irregular, as dictated by their location. Good! Not the most elegant of ornament, but a definite improvement.

Just as I thought that I could not possibly feel any more kindly toward a modernist project in Providence, Derek Bradford, the panel's uber-modernist, spoke up. He expressed a worry that fit right into my stereotype of his modernist orthodoxy: What if residents put stuff out on their balconies? Things like potted plants, furniture, even awnings -- might they not undermine the purity of the design?

Here the Tom Wolfe passage came to mind, with Professor Bradford as the "Miesling police."

My internal movie screen imagined Bradford going up and down the halls, trying each door, finding them all locked, and glowering in frustration at his inability to remove the "pathetic barricades thrown up against the pure vision of the white gods."

To Bradford's rescue comes the developer himself, who holds up the sacred condo documents and announces that his "instinct is to resist personalization." Residents would of course be restricted in what they could put on their balconies.

The panel's design consultant, David Spillane, of Goody Clancy, in Boston, enters from stage left to agree, declaring ominously that "such personalization . . . can trend toward chaos."

At last, panelist Jay Goodman rises to deny that balconies equal chaos. Balconies and the human activity they put on display, he insists, "are more about connecting to the environment, as you call it in your profession." Alas, the curtain then drops on Goodman, whose term on the panel has expired. His good sense, so rare on the panel, will be missed.

These condo towers of, respectively, 19 and 17 stories, 235 and 213 feet, may, however, end up looking rather attractive for modern architecture, especially compared with a neighbor now in construction. For one thing, they won't be sheathed in glass curtain wall like the . . . Seagram Building. Their windows will be anchored in masonry, however bland. Residents will not feel as if they might "pitch headlong into the streets below." True, their view of the streets below might be less than perfect -- but they can return the favor by storing their bicycles out on their balconies -- condo docs be damned.

Even from within, strategies of urban resistance can be employed to defend against the modernist insurgency threatening the beauty of Providence.

Up the balconies! Irk the modernists!

David Brussat is a member of The Journal's editorial board. His e-mail is: dbrussat [at] projo.com

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Soren Whistle-Stop

Soren

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Despite not sharing the goal of pissing off modernists, I do agree that minimizing people's use of their balconies for purely aesthetic reasons seems a bit off-putting.

I'm not sure how I'd feel if everyone plopped a barcalounger on their terrace, but somehow I don't think that is a likely scenario.

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Cotuit Megalopolis

Cotuit

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It's a condo, condos have restrictions on everything. There need to be rules that say that people can't build walls around their balcony to create a new room (as is often seen in high rise projects) or decide to paint the wall outside the balcony bright fuscia or what-not. And people really shouldn't be storing all their worldly possessions on their balconies. It has nothing to do with modernism, it has to do with asthetics and safety. It's the same thing when suburban communities force people with unkempt property to fix it up, they don't want a mess dragging down their property values. Keep your bike out there, fine, but don't put a spare fridge out there, or a discarded mattress.

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Jenkins Whistle-Stop

Jenkins

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It's the same thing when suburban communities force people with unkempt property to fix it up, they don't want a mess dragging down their property values.

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Speaking of which, did anyone see the channel 12 late news last night, and the story about the run-down house full of wild cats, that neighbors were complaining about. The "area man" interviewed for the story was me :whistling: The part they didn't mention in the story is that the house has been like that for over 10 years now!

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Garris Town

Garris

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Very interesting development with the balconies on Parcel 2, and likely a good thing.

Never underestimate the power of condo restrictions. Those suckers are backed up by law. The NYT did a great article series several years ago about the ultra restrictive condo and residential development rules out in some Western and Southwestern states (where as much as 70-80% of new housing is built carrying such condo association restrictions!!). People can, and have, been evicted from their homes for refusing to do things as simple as hide their garbage cans correctly. Amazing stuff.

Some of it is a power trip among assocation presidents, but often, this rules serve useful purposes that do increase the value of property. Left to their own devices, people do some pretty funky stuff to their houses!

- Garris

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