8 Comments on The perfect city building? I think so.

Juliea on Mon, 1st Feb 2010 8:59 am


I could not agree more. Enough with the insular condo towers for a while. It’s hardly as if we’re lacking sufficient land.

I’d much rather have five of these 6-story buildings than one 30-story concrete tower. They are much more on the human scale, and you get vastly more street frontage for retail and restaurants. Tall buildings do not a city make.

Lain on Mon, 1st Feb 2010 10:26 am


Amen.

Additionally, it’s weird how so many newer developments in Atlanta (see: Spire at 7th and Peachtree, for example) are afraid building out to the corner at 90 degrees, as if that hasn’t worked for centuries prior to the 1980s.

Pocket parks, plazas, and Piedmont Park are all great, but they’re nothing without substantial and urban buildings adjacent to them.

Ken Edelstein on Mon, 1st Feb 2010 12:37 pm


Jeanne raises an excellent point about scale, but I do think Peachtree Street is built to handle taller buildings than the corner of Monroe and 10th Street are.

And I actually think that some of the taller new condo buildings achieve the dialogue with the street that Jeanne wrote about. While they lack the rich architectural detail of the older buildings, the Novare-built condo tower across from Spire, the Metropolitan and even Spire itself are more committed to making Midtown a better urban place than were the nondescript highrises, say, down around 4th and 5th and Peachtree, which were built in the 60s, 70s and 80s and don’t include much in the way of well-interated retail.

I do think that Lain raises a good point about Spire, however, and its bizarre decision to create a sort of open pentagon of concrete at the corner of Seventh and Peachtree. If you’re going to do that, at least design the open space you’re creating to be something more than just a vast concrete plain.

A new city ordinance forces builders to include retail at the street level. Still, I think Novare deserves credit for embracing a mixed-use view for its towers.

Jeanne Bonner on Mon, 1st Feb 2010 1:57 pm


I think a mix of building sizes in the core of the city — i.e., 5th and Peachtree — makes sense. Some tall buildings have been done well, others less so.

What I hate to see is one or two-story buildings.

I decided to devote a post to this particular building because I see no down side to it and because there is some opposition to taller buildings even in the heart of the city.

I think there are a zillion spots where we need infill development, specifically multi-story buildings, and this type of building could be successful in lots of places.

Darin on Mon, 1st Feb 2010 5:25 pm


This is a great post — I would love to see more human-scale, multi-use buildings like this all across the Midtown urban core from Peachtree on the east to Spring on the west. There are many surface parking lots and inappropriately small — meaning single-story — buildings in this area that could be redeveloped as buildings like the one you show here.

A mixture of skyscrapers, medium-scale buildings, pocket parks and transit lines is what I see in the best-case scenario for the ATL urban core. All uninterrupted by surface parking lots, of course. I long to see the day when I can walk down the sidewalks of this area on a Friday night and never see a dude with an orange flag waving people into a surface parking lot.

I read an article recently that suggested that, in Atlanta, it’s been difficult for several years to get a loan to build a medium-height building because of the low return on investment perceived by the market, compared to what could be gained by a successful (though much more speculative) skyscraper project. That’s why most of the human-scale buildings are leftovers from an earlier era with a different economic climate.

Jack Stenger on Tue, 2nd Feb 2010 5:20 pm


Appreciate your citing this building as wonderfully anomolous human-scale architecture. There’s one quibbling thought I have about this building, though. I could be wrong, but I bet it’s impossible to open those windows. All modern buildings — whether high or low — are sealed shut and the inhabitants are forced to exist in climate-controlled environments. In the energy-scarce future we’re going into, we’re going to have to return to something that’s been around since Roman times, namely a window that can be opened.

Susie B on Wed, 10th Feb 2010 2:10 pm


Actually, I live in Peachtree Lofts which is the second building showcased here on the corner of 7th and Peachtree Street and all 3 of my windows do indeed open!

Jeanne Bonner on Wed, 10th Feb 2010 3:31 pm


Hi Susie B! Thanks for chiming in and providing the expertise we needed.

Hey, what’s it like to live in that building? I just think the location rocks, rocks, rocks!!!

What do you like best about it? Is there anything you don’t like about it?

Thanks again!

Tell me what you're thinking...
and oh, if you want a pic to show with your comment, go get a gravatar!