From Greater Greater Washington writer Cavan Wilk: "The Leesborough townhouse and condominium development in Wheaton exhibits excellent urban planning and creates a sense of place on the human scale. Well-designed infill can increase density without decreasing amenities and quality of life. In Leesborough, the Wheaton Metro Station is a 10-minute walk south on Georgia Avenue. Rather than having wide streets with long driveways, the townhouses and condominiums in Leesborough address the street, which has parallel parking, while the garages around back open up to an alley, much like older row house neighborhoods in DC. The rear placement of garages eliminates curb cuts from the primary streetscape. Leesborough is not perfect, obviously. It is a single-use housing development. There is no neighborhood-serving retail like a convenience store or a dry cleaner." Full post here.
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Contemporary Bangkok Shophouse Renovation
From 5osa.tistory.com, a gallery of photos of a shophouse renovation in Bangkok, Thailand that was designed by (and is the new offices of) the architecture firm all(zone). The all(zone) website elaborates on the contemporary yet vernacular project: "Our observations are always captured by contemporary vernacular design solutions. We, therefore, try to learn from them in order to create alternative built environments where all could feel 'at home' in the world." Full gallery here, and all(zone) blog post with design studies here. (Photo credit Piyawut Srisakul.)
Philly Rowhouse Diversity in Photos
From a blog called PRETTYUGLY., some Philly rowhouse appreciation: "The city is awash in rowhouses, and they can be found throughout the city’s North, Northeast, and South sides. And there are numerous eclectic variations on the rowhouse, including Queen Anne, Victorian, Romanesque, German, and Italianate, even Dutch-influenced ones with gable roofs. The lone exception is much of West Philadelphia, a place where various Victorian styles – sometimes detached, and usually intricately decorated – are the norm. Fishtown, along with neighboring NoLibs, appeared to be the crux of Philadelphia’s infill rowhouse construction, which was a deciding factor in me visiting the city. The rich quality and limit-pushing of the designs built by local talent Onion Flats instantly made me a fan." Full post with photos here.
Slow Home Awards: Best & Worst Townhouses
The fine folks at the Slow Home Studio evaluate hundreds, maybe thousands of floorplans each year against their criteria for efficient, convenient design, and have chosen the best and worst of 2010. Best townhouse: Rock Row by Heyday Partnership in Los Angeles, California. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6Qb9shBFvE]
Worst townhouse: anonymous in Toronto, Canada.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCtcbEfczyM]
ULI Small-Scale Development Council Speaks Out
From uli.com, members of ULI’s Small-Scale Development council speak about the advantages small-scale developers have and the challenges and opportunities they face in the current economy. Highlights:
- David Chandler of Faison in Charlotte, North Carolina: "Small-scale developers know the markets and the municipalities better, and they can probably see trends faster than someone from outside their area."
- Mac Chandler of Regency Centers in Los Angeles, California: "In this economy, you have to go really small, and small projects aren’t easy because you have to do a lot of them. But small-scale developers can navigate approvals easier because they are not perceived as an open checkbook. In the retail sector, tenants are expanding in the infill markets, and they are actually having trouble filling the pipeline because they sense a lack of quality product."
- Bob Lalanne of the Lalanne Group in San Francisco, California: "There are many more small and medium-size buildings and infill sites than large, and therefore many more opportunities. The Federal Reserve doesn’t seem as interested to protect the smaller lenders, so we are finding opportunities where smaller lenders and smaller borrowers have finally cried uncle and need to get all-cash deals and close within weeks."
- John McNellis of McNellis Partners, Palo Alto, California: "We’re not competing with institutional players that often pay significantly more than an individual using his own money would. Just in the last six months, we’ve started seeing a number of projects in the $1 million to $5 million range that one can purchase, add value, and create a fair profit. In other words, they are accurately priced."
- Dan Petrocchi of the Evergreen Company in Sacramento, California: "Small mom-and-pop retail franchises are the group of tenants most in danger in this economy. I have seen municipalities become kinder to tenants, so to the extent that the tenant and the developer interact, they are kinder to the developer."
- Keith Ulstad of United Properties in Bloomington, Minnesota."Municipalities don’t have the capabilities to extend sewer lines or public transportation routes, so they have turned their focus toward redevelopment and infill. That’s where small-scale development shines."
Full article here, requires ULI membership.
New Washington Litmus Test: Townhouses
From Greater Greater Washington: same area, different patterns of streets and lots, i.e. neighborhood streets and townhouses in 1949 vs. highway, towers, and what looks like a master-planned campus in 1979. What are the benefits of each? Which is more dense? Which includes more jobs? Which includes more amenities? Which would you rather walk in? Which allows the community to incrementally evolve? Is "fragmentation of ownership" a sign of blight, as some states define it? Full post here with images from HistoricAerials.com.
South Carolina Townhouses and Prototypes
Loyal reader Eric Brown of Brown Design Studio in Beaufort, South Carolina emailed me some photos of their work at Habersham, which I added to the Flickr pool. Eric also mentioned that they have "semi-stock plans that people can purchase", which I checked on their website and yes, folks, do include townhouses of 14-, 18-, and 30-feet widths. I also read a few posts on the firm's blog, and found an excellent presentation from CNU17 about urban frontage elements relevant to any townhouse: forecourt, terrace/ lightwell, stoop, shopfront, awning, gallery, arcade, and balcony.
Philly: Welcome to the Year of Small
From the Philadelphia Inquirer writer Inga Saffron, via urbanist Randall Robinson: "Welcome to the year of small - small parks, small houses, small improvements, small plans, but not necessarily small thinking. The smart places are investing their limited disposable income in low-cost, high-impact projects that improve the quality of life for people who actually live in them. After the rapid-fire boom decade, the slowdown is giving Philadelphia a chance to catch its breath and think about what kind of city it wants to be.
"The rowhouse boomlets taking place in certain Philadelphia neighborhoods belong in the category of incremental improvements that make urban life better. And these infill projects remind us that progress continues even in hard times. How can there be so much rowhouse construction when bankrupt developers are frantically auctioning off unsold condo units? Despite the city's 11.5 percent unemployment rate, there is still a contingent of people who need housing and are casting their lot with the city.
"Rowhouses can be built incrementally, a couple at a time, making them a relatively low-risk enterprise for developers, who can sell them as they go. At relatively larger projects, such as Brown Hill Development's The Nine, the pace of work is scaled to the market. So while the first three houses there have been sold, the developer is just starting to frame out the next trio. Condo towers, in contrast, have to be built all at once, and then the developer has to hunt down a hundred or more buyers. With rowhouses, the main challenge is finding land in the right place at the right price." Full article here.
Blank Walls on 3 Sides? Problem Solved
From New York Observer write Matt Chaban: "The 19th Century brownstone at 132 East 38th Street looks normal enough from the outside, a more than generous 20-foot-wide Manhattan home. But inside, the quirkiness becomes clear, as the building's dimensions are revealed to be almost square. To solve this challenged layout, the owners have created one of the more distinct houses in the city. Enter the home and be greeted by the kitchen and dining room, the living room the floor above that, then the master bedroom topped by the second bedroom." Full article with slideshow of photos and floorplans here.
Narrow Townhouses: Undervalued in NYC?
From New York Magazine: "Jed Garfield, whose firm exclusively sells brownstones and townhouses, says he has 'never had anyone say to me, "I want a smaller house." People almost always end up there by default.' That may explain why, according to an analysis by appraiser Jonathan Miller, narrower houses are rapidly losing market share. Five years ago, houses sixteen feet wide or less accounted for 25.9 percent of townhouse sales; in 2010 (as of December 15), they constituted just 16.2 percent. 'The challenges are, really, 100 percent a mental thing,' says Garfield. House-hunters expect to feel squeezed in narrow buildings, but 'quite frankly, narrower townhouses tend to be better laid out,' he says. Skeptics who negate on size alone may be overlooking a good buy. 'These are the houses that are affordable,' says Corcoran’s Anne Snee. In 2010, the average price per square foot for sixteen-footers and less was $1,013; seventeen-to-nineteen-footers, $1,105; 20-to-24-footers, $1,375; and 25-plus-footers, $1,997." Full article here.
Landmark Brownstone Retrofit to Passiv Haus
I have linked to a couple of articles about new construction Passive House townhouses in apparently "funky" places like Amsterdam or Williamsburg, but now this news from Mother Nature Network: "The Passive House BKLYN Residence, a retrofit project and not a new build, is located in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn. Park Slope, if you’re not familiar with it, is the heart of 'Brownstone Brooklyn,' an area with little room for architectural funkiness of any sort. The Passive House BKLYN Residence — expected to be the first townhouse retrofit in the nation to achieve Passive House certification when it’s put to the test in January — is being overseen by Jeremy Shannon, principal at Prospect Architecture and organizer of the NY Passive House meet-up group." Full article here.
Brownstones Enable Value of Modern Cities?
From the New York Times: "It’s when Geoffrey West switches the conversation from infrastructure to people that he brings up the work of Jane Jacobs, who was a fierce advocate for the preservation of small-scale neighborhoods, like Greenwich Village and the North End in Boston.
"The challenge for West and colleagues was finding a way to quantify urban interactions. According to the data, whenever a city doubles in size, every measure of economic activity, from construction spending to the amount of bank deposits, increases by approximately 15 percent per capita. 'What Jacobs was clever enough to anticipate is that when people come together, they become much more productive.'
"Of course, these interpersonal collisions — the human friction of a crowded space — can also feel unpleasant. West describes the purpose of urban planning as finding a way to minimize our distress while maximizing our interactions. As Jacobs pointed out, the layout of her Manhattan neighborhood — the short blocks, the mixed-use zoning, the density of brownstones — made it easier to cope with the strain of the metropolis." Full article here. (Photo credit: Flickr user jurvetson.)
Rowhouse Headline Impossible to Improve
From the New York Times, an article entitled "Row Houses Gone Wild" by Christopher Gray: "Seventy-First Street from West End to Broadway rises steeply midblock and then, like a roller coaster — wheeee! — hurtles downhill. The architecture has a certain giddy touch, joyously untempered by the good taste of contextualism so often claimed as an urban ideal. Here modern sticks its elbow in the ribs of Victorian, red brick wrestles with white, lugubrious brownstone takes a poke at the lighter colors of the Renaissance, and, in one building, the early 20th and 21st centuries tussle. Across the street runs a string of houses built two at a time, or so it seems. In this case the developer James A. Frame, working with the architects Thom & Wilson, put up a row of 10, made to appear as five independent pairs. Designed in 1892, they came just as the funereal brownstone model was giving way to a lighter palette, and Frame hedged his bets: some pairs are brownstone, and some are light orange brick with cream-colored trim and Renaissance detailing." Full article here. (Photo credit Todd Heisler.)
When Residential Rowhouses Sold Out
From Philly Brownstoner and the inimitable Libby Hawes: "As neighborhoods developed, small commercial districts of rowhouses with first floor store fronts were common. The industrial revolution produced cheaper merchandise, causing a decline in goods made by artisan merchants, but increasing the number of retailers selling factory-made goods. Innovations in storefront designs in the 19th century were due largely to advancements in glass manufacture. Cylinders produced glass up to 4 feet by 6 feet, with fewer imperfections, requiring less framing members. Another revolution in the construction of storefronts was the manufacture of cast iron architectural elements as early as the 1840s." Full post here.
Shophouses Spread from Asia to the Balkans
From a blog called Historic Houses of Romania: "The building above is one of the innumerable end of c19th corner shop establishments (it could have been at one time or another during its existence a grocery, a pub or a restaurant or all of these functions together), provided with living quarters on the first floor. These building can easily find new uses in the today economy, especially in the tourism industry owning to their usually central location and architectural character reflecting the intricate economic and cultural history of this region of Europe, formerly part of the erstwhile Ottoman ream." Full post here.
Townhouse Architect of 2010: Rogers & Marvel?
Thanks to a loyal reader, I learned that the AIA bestowed one of its 2010 National Housing Awards on the State Street Townhouses project in Brooklyn, New York designed by Rogers & Marvel, which also designed its Third & Bond apartment project to look like townhouses. I had the chance to visit the State Street Townhouses several days ago, and added the photos to the Flickr pool. A new entry for the Hall of Fame!
Prototype Housing in St. Louis, Missouri
Joseph Heathcott, currently a Fulbright Distinguished Chair at University of the Arts London, Visiting Fellow at LSE, and Associate Professor of Urban Studies at the New School (and also my cousin), brought to my attention a prototype housing project that he and architect Jo Noero were involved with in the Soulard neighborhood of St. Louis, Missouri. Joe wrote: "The challenge was to produce a new housing style for south St. Louis that was neither a boring replicant of the old architecture nor an intrusive eyesore of new conceit. This design scheme came out of a fusion of preservation interests with those of contemporary architecture and real estate development for low/mod income housing." As usual, Joe was hip before I even knew how to try. (Photo credit: Joseph Heathcott.)
Slow Home Design Minute Videos for Townhouses
From the Slow Home Studio, a series of "Design Minute" videos in which founders John Brown and Matthew North discuss efficient design using John's attached house as the example. Video topics particularly relevant to townhouse design include managing overlooking neighbors, "clear" and "poor" floorplan design, staircase design (also above), and entry design.
Field Trip to Cincinnati, Ohio: Part 2
A few weeks ago, I visited Cincinnati and saw many remarkable townhouses in the Over-the-Rhine neighborhood. Some have been fixed up, and the mix of old and new has produced a vibrant community (mentioned in Part 1). As I understand it, redevelopment efforts are being sustained by the Cincinnati Center City Development Corp. ("3CDC"), which acts as both a developer and capital source; other developers like OTR Community Housing, Eber Development, and Urban Sites; and architects like Schickel Design, whose Martha Dorff graciously gave me a tour of the City Home project and showed me plans for future phases. The area is also promoted by organizations like Urban Living Gateway Quarter, OTR Gateway, OTR Foundation, and OTR Chamber. Check out all the websites for plenty of photos of what urban revitalization should look like.
Baltimore Townhouse Redevelopment: A Profile
From the Baltimore Sun: "[Lloyd] Williams, CEO of the Verde Group, a Baltimore development company, decided that he wanted to help turn around his old neighborhood [known as Oliver]. Williams has helped transform more than 20 vacant and rotting shells, mostly along a two-block stretch of North Bond Street, into energy-efficient homes with granite-appointed kitchens, exposed brick walls and, most important, new homeowners, he says. [Recently] Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake unveiled an initiative to...make it easier for officials to sell city-owned vacant homes, [and] also will include $1.5 million worth of incentives to attract homebuyers. [Williams says that] 'People should consider Oliver to come back home. You don't have to take flight anymore.'" Full article here.