Glass half full in Silver Spring
By Silver Springer • Mar 3rd, 2008 • Category: Real Estate
There are several buildings along Georgia Ave going for the glass look that’s much needed in Silver Spring. This is a start but we still need a lot more glass buildings to balance out all the concrete, brick masonry and “commie block from Russia†looking buildings from the 60’s and 70s as well as one notable recent completion. There are some well designed buildings in Silver Spring but very few.
I’m always baffled as to why architects selected to design a building in downtown Silver Spring will always look to Silver Spring for inspiration. If the architecture in Silver Spring is so bad according to one architect, then why would you “look around†to reference design cues? Can’t you think outside the box or CBD rather? This is bad practice for architects anyways, what is so creative about emulating the building across the street?
And the planning staff/board should automatically fine, ban and disapprove any developer who has the audacity to submit a project that includes horizontal stripes for windows or any stripes at all. The 80’s ended almost 20 years ago! It’s not cool any more so please just stop! If architects wanted to go the distance they could design a building with four entirely blank concrete white walls and then paint in black stripes. There is actually a building very similar to that description submitted to replace the Perpetual building on Georgia Ave. Word on the street is that the planning dept kindly told the developer to shove it back up the ass it came out of. And this is why I don’t understand why several recent projects got the blessing of the planning board. I know they don’t have an architectural review system but I know they do influence architectural decisions. So what’s the deal?
Honestly, it’s really monotonous in Silver Spring, sometimes you feel like you’re standing amongst a herd of Zebras at the metro station. If it wasn’t for the latter half of the NOAA buildings it (which architecturally are one of best designed buildings in Silver Spring) it would be worst. Even the building in the picture above does the stripes thing on the side. It would be much better having a glass curtain wall on all four sides.
The planned private portion of the transit center would be another excellent opportunity to show the region that Silver Spring has arrived to the 21st century. Can you imagine a glass tower or two at that site with a pointed crown instead of another flat top? Unfortunately the thing is planned to be so cheap they would build the towers out of tooth picks if they could.
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I’m with you that glass is better than these concrete blocks… anything is. But in general… I don’t find that new sleak glass and steal look that great either. I mean, for a few buildings maybe. But there hasn’t existed true architectural detail in ANYTHING in this country since well before the world war II… it’s all about cheap… whether that’s glass and steel or concrete or the cookie cutter brick block suburban houses of the babyboom or the cookie cutter suburban mansions of the last decade. None of it has any detail, because details require human beings and human beings cost too much money…
I agree, anything post WWII is pretty much junk and I personally prefer Pre-WWII designs over even the glass designs but on a relative basis anything is better than what was shoved down our throats during the 70’s. I don’t think it’s too arguable that being the worst design period in architectural history.
Sadly the late 80’s early 90s was a time period that went too soon.
All in all, Silver Spring has too many non-descript concrete/brick buildings.
Is there a website with all the details of Lee’s future plans?
[quote comment="3979"]Is there a website with all the details of Lee’s future plans?[/quote]
It’s pretty preliminary right now.
I don’t know about glass buildings. I do know that if you visit the plazas of European cities you’ll see wonderful architecture of buildings which are hundreds of years old. Two things: is it too cost prohibitive to build buildings like that, and, will these glass buildings still be around even 100 years from now?
The building above is very similar to one recently completed in midtown D.C. The glass look is fine, much better than the concrete blocks of the 70s but fall short of the pre WWII/Art Deco days.
Look at the quality of buildings going up in Downtown Bethesda and NoBe, Royce Hanson and the Planning Board are sticking it to Silver Spring. Maybe Hanson is too full of himself walking in to his office each morning passing by a park named after him. The Planning Board is falling for the Jerry McCoy/SSHS preservation garbage. Only a dozen or so buildings in Silver Spring are worthy of any historic designation. All others are just ugly, outdated, crumbling pieces of junk from an era where Silver Spring was not the cosmopolitan upscale urban environment that it is today.