Quote:
Originally Posted by Future Mayor
I'm in the same camp as several of you, that I don't like the overall base of 111, at least not in that rendering, but I hate the term many of you use, of 111 crashing into the PAC.
I think that the overlap over the PAC is a very smart move. It allows the PAC to have enough space for the lobby and the auditorium, while providing the tower with floor plates large enough to be an attractive tower for perspective tenants. Floor plates that are to narrow of to small are more difficult to lease out. That is why the Hotel Monaco is a Hotel, the floor plate for office space was to narrow and was very unattractive to perspective tenants. If 111 was as narrow the entire height of the building as it is on the base on the Main St side it would be a very skinny tower and then you'd all be bitching that it's to skinny, it looks stupid, and they should have figured out a way to make it wider.
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I made the mistake of posting that comment on this thread, but since we're on this thread for now, I'll reply on here.
Future Mayor,
I'm not complaining about the floor plate or how it shares a lobby with UPAC. I agree with you. I am not suggesting making the tower be skinny and avoid overlapping UPAC. I am suggesting that the design should be more sophisticated in its massing expression, similar to how 222 was sophisticated with its massing expression with its neighboring buildings. It's 111's exterior expression that looks terrible in how it meets with the UPAC and the ground, in my opinion. It looks like SOM began were pressed to spend as little time on this as possible, and so they plopped a design from a similar office tower design in San Fransisco, and tweaked it a little, but not enough. The tower, as how it is currently designed, is basically an extruded square, which would be fine if it stood alone. But, a portion of it comes down to the UPAC. They could have done something differently with the massing of the building. The way that the glass curtain wall skin terminates from the office floors above to the lower lobby volume is awful. I believe this is MHTN's doing and not SOM. SOM was the main designer in 222. I believe SOM and their designs were deemed too costly, and Hamilton backed out, and now CCRI and MHTN are taking it through. A good comparison of design excellence to design mediocrity is the original Salt Palace built in 1996 by TVS Design versus the less costly expansion to the south by MHTN.
More expensive design by national firm:
Less expensive design by local firm, MHTN:
Here's a suggestion I posted on the UPAC thread:
I am not suggesting making the tower skinny and avoid overlapping UPAC. I am suggesting that the design should be more sophisticated in its massing expression, similar to how 222 was sophisticated with its massing expression with its neighboring building. See how its base relates to older buildings on Main Street just to the south of it. Also, see how the upper floors bend away to allow for that base expression be more prominent, and that also allows for the Hotel Monaco to contrast better with 222?
Do you see how I am still overlapping the UPAC? I've just done some tweaking of the massing on the exterior to change its expression of how it relates to the UPAC. I placed some reveals where the tower hits the UPAC. And, then tweaked the look of the office tower above the UPAC to be slightly different from the massing not over the UPAC.
Here's another comparison:
SOM's similar tower in San Francisco:
versus the less costly design by local architect, MHTN (my assumption here):
see image from my previous post
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