Rating the Projects: The Best and the Worst
By Silver Springer • Aug 25th, 2006 • Category: Rating the Projects: The Best and the Worst
Here is number five best, Disclaimer.
Developer: Montgomery County\PFA Silver Spring, LLC
Architect: Machado & Silvetti Associates Inc of Boston
Property Address: Fenton Street, Silver Spring, MD 20910
Project Specifications:
Gross Floor Area: 48,000 sq\ft
Height: Approx 60′Feet
Like the transit center, the civic building is threatened by cost cutting. Are you starting to see a pattern? If not for the community backlash the plans would be much different from the original which includes public community rooms, Round House Theatre space, Silver Spring Regional Center offices, a great hall, atrium and a full service kitchen. The civic building is the required replacement for the demolition of the Silver Spring Armory and the center piece of the town center redevelopment.
According to the architects website, “The building is divided into three distinct zones: the great hall and its supporting program; the glass atrium space allowing entry from both sides of the building; and a three-story volume along Ellsworth Drive containing the Community Program Center, Round House Theater School, and Regional Service Center. The entrance to the Roundhouse Theater School, located at the lower level on the corner of Ellsworth Drive and Veterans Place, provides a degree of autonomy and accommodates off-hours access for these program spaces.
The building’s plan is highly flexible. Theatrical performances and activities of various scales and orientations are possible. The great hall, for example, can be subdivided into three spaces of different sizes. Upper-level balconies provide room for expansion as well as a variety of spectator experiences. The walls opposite the great hall’s stage open completely to the plaza. An exterior, upper-level, covered balcony allows the plaza to serve as an outdoor theater oriented toward a stage located below the canopies along Fenton Street. Further, the large proscenium-like elevation of the great hall’s building mass creates a civically scaled, flexible space meant to function as a memorable urban destination in the life of the Silver Spring community.â€
In my opinion the architecture has the noble mien of a civic hall but one that is four decades too late, it’s growing on me though. If this is what won the design competition I’m afraid to see what lost. The modernist design includes a paved area that will be named Veterans Plaza but I have a dislike for paved surfaces for more than personal taste. The Environmental damage of impervious surfaces causes an increase in water runoff and the chances of flash flooding as well as overwhelm the sewer system during a storm. I would prefer a Veterans Field or Garden. The lack of any form of sustainable design is out of character for an otherwise progressive county. So many public entity involved projects are being built with out any implementation of green design. They could have at least added a green roof.
The project is still threatened by cut backs and nothing has been finalized as far as reinstating the original plans but progress is being made. The civic building is stellar project because of the variety of rare public amenities proposed.
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You’re right, the design does look out of date, and I agree that Veterans’ Plaza shouldn’t be paved over. How do they expect a big gray box to look surrounded by all of these pseudo-traditional buildings? I mean, the civic center doesn’t have to look like it’s been there for a hundred years, but there could be at least some nod to the community’s past.
I like the new Rockville Library as an example of quality civic design.
You make a very good point, there was zero consideration for the old Armory design.
Where do they find these architects?
Yes. Why do they get a firm from Boston when we have a nationally acclaimed firm down the street? If I’m not mistaken they haven’t gotten a building built here since Georgian Towers.
What can I say about Torti Gallas, I can’t really find a flaw in any of their designs. They just know how do it right and embrace a community.
Something fishy is going on. Do developers not like them for some reason? They walk all over WDG, Zimmer, Gunsul and Frasca and this firm from Boston. Maybe they were not the lowest bidder?
The Rockville library looks too much like my high school, the architecture of which has become tiring. Besides, downtown SS still has its own library to be rebuilt, although that project is moving at a snail’s pace.
I have nothing against a paved surface in front of the civic center, although green, permeabe materials could have been chosen for it. At least there is something of a green buffer zone on the north side of the plaza to aid storm water management. Luckily, green roofs can be added later if so desired.
Well…in either case I think we can all agree that we’re looking for something a little more passionate.
Sometimes, and I think this is one of those cases, you just gotta take what they’re givin’.
This isn’t a building that is in addition to. The community gave up a lot to get this replacement. I just don’t know why they can’t get it right in the first place instead of us just settling all the time. No one had to settle for Strathmore.
Pennster: luckily green roofs can be added later.
This is sometimes, but not always the case as Green Roofs tend to require specific structural engineering…especially ones that provide public accesss, beyond simply storm water retention.
At this point, I have nothing against this Civic Center design, and I don’t feel like I’m settling. I do not feel like asking for more more more. We gave up “a lot” in the form of the Armory, and have gotten back so much more already.
I know when green roofs can and cannot be added (in fact, I was at a few today, as well as at the NRDC and USGBC). Of course, we won’t know unless someone contacts the architects designing it and the contractors building it. The good thing about them is that they really do not take much different structural engineering at all, and even if you can’t cover an entire roof, parts can suffice.
Yeah well…we will have to wait and see. Nothing really has been set in stone yet. They still may want to reduce the building size and I don’t think the full service kitchen will be there.
I don’t think it’s asking for more, If they found money for the $100 million Strathmore surely they can find it for a $14 million Civic center? Treat the east like the west is all I’m trying to say.
$300 million in public funds is what SS got; that’s nothing to sneeze at. I’m trying to up-play, so to speak, the importance of the civic center, which is why I would come out with my fists up (which thankfully the community did the first time) if the county decided it wanted to try to cut back again. Of course waiting 10 years to break ground on this thing is going to cost it more.
What I want to know is are they going to host baseball card and comic book conventions like they old armory used to? Also, bring back the Silver Spring flea market. That was great.
It depends if the green roof is Extensive or Intensive. If it is intensive then it would be in the form of a roof garden that patrons would use and it would need reinforcement to the roof.
No doubt the county has done a great job in revitalizing Silver Spring but this is only a recent phenomenon after years of neglect. Finally a well thought out interconnected plan with good publicity and a wide mix of uses was successful. In particular the private sector of high quality, white collar jobs abandoned the CBD and was virtually all large headquarters in the western side of the county in Bethesda, Gaithersburg and Rockville.