The latest issue of Urban Land magazine profiled a townhouse development that already won a Green Builder Home of the Year award in 2009: a demonstration net zero energy, zero lot line, prefab, live/work townhouse that is LEED platinum certified. Designed and developed by ZETA, its program includes a ground floor work studio, two bedrooms, and a one-car parking garage. Order some for your city today!
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Guide to Penang Shophouse Styles
Via Local Ecologist: a website on the shophouses of Penang, Malaysia, whose George Town district is a UNESCO world heritage site. The website includes a definition of "shophouse", a presentation on the city's shophouse styles (including a handy color chart), historic preservation guidelines, a directory of preservation experts, and tips (and more tips) for renovation.
First Brownstone on TV?
From NabeWise: "The gals of 'Sex and the City' may be trendsetters in fashion, but when it comes to brownstone living, the Huxtables were there first. Bill Cosby and his television family lived in a classic Brooklyn brownstone long before Carrie Bradshaw nabbed her apartment on the Upper East Side." The article continues with a gloss on the history of the brownstone, pausing to note that "The iconic stoop was originally intended to keep horse droppings, slush and mud out of the home." That's entertainment. Full article here.
Townhouse Construction History
From Philly Brownstoner, an article on historical construction methods: "The construction of a rowhouse began with a surveyor, who measured and marked the boundaries of a property. A cellar was then excavated and the stone foundation walls laid by masons. Carpenters then laid floor joists for the first floor, embedding the ends into the foundation. Scaffold boards laid across the joists were used for work platforms while bricklayers built up the façade and party walls to floor of the second level, roughing in lintels for windows and doors. Carpenters then roughed in the structure of the partitions with wood planks or stud framing, fastening them by nails to the heavy framing joists and beams of the building. Lath was then nailed to the substructure, over which a brown coat of plaster was applied by plasterers. The structure and design of Philadelphia’s early vernacular buildings were essentially carried out by contractors and artisans without the direction of an architect." Full article here.
Shophouse Photo Exhibit
From CNN: "German photographer Peter Nitsch’s upcoming exhibition, Shophouses, takes us to the flip side, exploring Bangkok's often over-shadowed second dimension of urbanism to provide an intimate look at these traditional retail businesses, which are found all over Thailand. [The exhibit will run] from August 8 to September 26 at Bangkok’s Kathmandu Gallery -- an art space that is, suitably, a restored pre-war shophouse." Full article with images here.
Not-So-Slim Townhouse
From the Wall Street Journal yesterday, Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim bought the last remaining townhouse on 5th Avenue in NYC for $44M. The Beaux Arts townhouse is located at 1009 5th Ave on the corner with 82nd St, across from the Met. It is known as the Duke-Semans mansion because it was built by tobacco magnate Benjamin Duke in 1901. Surprisingly, the price was only the fourth highest ever paid for a townhouse in NYC. The highest was $53M for a townhouse on 75th St just off 5th Ave. Full article here. Just goes to show the endless variety of townhouses, which are the fundamental building blocks of cities.
Infill Under Glass
The first new small, attached building in downtown Miami in decades is...a culinary school! Miami Dade College is building an 8-story Hospitality Management and Culinary Arts building on a narrow lot between two existing buildings. PBSJ designed the building to meet LEED Silver requirements.
Mighty Baltimore
From Old House Online writers James C. Massey & Shirley Maxwell, another reminder that Baltimore can't be left off the list of great townhouse cities of the world. From brick to Formstone, from Queen Annes to Cantons to these "sunlight parlors". Full article here.
Dwell Energy Issue
It's no coincidence that the last issue of Dwell, which was called "the energy issue", could have been called "the townhouse issue". It featured three articles on townhouses: the residence of "typography guru" Erik Spiekermann and his wife Susanna Dulkinys in Berlin, a 7-townhouse development in LA that started construction in 2007 and was sold out before completion in 2009, and a townhouse in Brussels by Gon Zifroni that has no ground floor and floats between its neighbors (and sadly did not make it onto the Dwell website but is featured on other websites, such as dailytonic.com). The LEED-est detached house in the suburbs requires more energy that a regular urban townhouse.
Slow Home Townhouses
The Slow Home folks, advocates of more convenient and sustainable floorplans (key to successful townhouse design), recently spent a week evaluating the floorplans of existing townhouses in Vancouver, and posting about it on their website. The highlight of the week was posting a townhouse floorplan and inviting readers to send in improved designs. Another post during the week discussed the important topic of bathroom location and layout in the constrained townhouse setting. The series of posts from July 12 to 16, 2010, with images and videos, can be found on the Slow Home website.
London House in Philly
From Philly Brownstoner: "Dubbed the London House, indicating a popular plan found at the time in England’s capital...these rowhouses were constructed for speculative housing as the city’s population grew and a real estate was a chief investment opportunity. Not only were these houses suitable for residential use, many of the colonial and federal city’s artisan shopkeepers operated their businesses out of the first floors of this rowhouse form. The London House is generally 15–18 feet wide, 3 ½ stories high and constructed of brick with a gable or gambrel roof and a single dormer. The front façade has two bays of sash windows with limestone lintels and sills. The first floor entrance was again raised a few steps from street level, often only adorned with simple woodwork, paneling and a transom window. Entrance into the interior leads either to a side hallway, as in the townhouse or to a front room the full width of the house, as in a trinity." Full article here.
Finland Townhouse Competition
From Finland: "Architectural student Heikki Muntola has won first prize in the Helsinki Townhouse competition with his proposal titled tabula casa by a unanimous vote of the jury. According to the jury, the special merits of tabula casa are its high variability according to tenant wishes and ease of application in pre-fabricated housing production." Article here, competition site here, gallery of entries here (translated from Finnish by Google).
Townhouse Ghosts
From Philly Brownstoner: "When a rowhouse is demolished, and the heaps of collapsed building materials are carted away, a telling trace of the building is left on the walls of neighboring rowhouses. Studied with an observant eye, the images are a good lesson in historic building technology, providing a glimpse of rowhouse framework and joinery." Full article here.
DC Metro Townhouses Postponed
From the DC Metro website: "In keeping with the District of Columbia’s Takoma Central District Plan, townhouse development is planned for this station. The plan provides a Village Green of approximately .95 acres, new pedestrian paths, increased bike storage, and more bus bays/layover spaces for Metrobus and Ride-On operations." Unfortunately, the "Project currently delayed due to unfavorable market conditions." Project website.