^ I've heard versions of this as well, but does it bear out if you look at it more critically? Particularly at a scale that warrants the usual podium hand wringing that happens ritually?
There are a lot of contradictory examples out there
- Commercial buildings, still, regularly have large blocks of floors often uniformly lit. Like many parking floors in podiums you only notice this at night and they aren't especially lively outside of business hours either.
- If you look at say, 465 N Park, the active use units haven't turned out to be all that particularly livening. Their design is kind of a homogenous blob that doesn't differentiate from the tower in a way that makes the scale on the street any more pleasant. Never mind that the building completely ignores New St as if it's an alley. It's an OK but not particularly good urban design that seems to have gotten a pass just because it checked the 'active uses in the podium' box
I get the aesthetic argument, and generally agree for instances where, for lack of a better description, the podium looks like a parking garage. But for a lot of the more recent developments I think they have been somewhere between decent and interesting and occasionally even good. Generally, architects seem to have gotten better a dealing with podiums but a lot of folks here don't seem to have moved past previously acquired notions that may no longer be as regularly true.
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Sorry, I have probably steered this wildly off topic. Yes there is still a podium here. It is fine and probably would be just as fine if it was for the parking this development required.
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