Plaza Architect Disregards Historic Context
— by Jeffrey Wisniewski — 21 December 2009 — 4 comments below »
When I labeled the cafe building, or mercado, as uninspired in a recent post, that wasn’t entirely true. The architect did, in fact, have inspiration for his modern design: himself.
The cafe building is meant to carry the architect’s modern interpretation of a train shed forward through the transit plaza, engulfing the civic space that it creates, however with an added twist: the abstract roof line, which neither matches the station nor draws from historic buildings; it is completely modern.
The mercado will clearly dominate the plaza space, and is located at a very prominent location. It is the front door for the historic transit plaza, and will be the first building experienced by pedestrians, like you and me. (Please note that the 85-foot tower will be unmistakably visible by those in search of the station.)
The architect, Richard Thompson, so adored his station design — the original design of which was so abhorred by the community, it resulted in a series of public workshops with the purpose of preventing it from being realized — he just had to mimic it. But with an added twist. The building must be distinct by being abstract (for the sake of being abstract if nothing else). That is correct: where the architect’s station design was an abstract interpretation of an historic train shed, his mercado building is an abstraction of that abstraction, by forcing another modern, abstract roof line to what could have been an historic neighborhood. Oh, how we love post-modernism in the historic Waterfront district.
At earlier workshops, the design team presented an option for an historic building to serve as the mercado, however maintaining the transparent, glass and modern feel (a mix of new and old), and a recalling of the historic buildings that once stood on the grounds of the neighborhood (most notably the generator building that was recently torn down on the Point), or a train depot…
This design was abandoned without public input. Where residents were told the cafe building would be considered later, the design team had decided, behind closed doors, that the mercado must match the train station. Any substantive reasons, however, for that significant decision were decidedly lacking at last week’s workshop.
While not an overly bad design, it does not seem to be that good either.
Residents were told that the design of the cafe was independent of the train station, and now it looks just like it? In some ways, this building is more important than the station, so this is very disappointing. This design does not at all mix with the more traditional buildings around it.
The generator building was torn down only a year or two ago because, despite its historic significance, it was unbearably ugly. I view the cafe building mimicking the generator building, as shown above, as similarly ugly, or even worse by the mismatch it would have to the adjacent train station. I don’t understand how the community developed an enthusiasm for the glass-and-steel train station (AKA Plan 1) over the more traditional brick structure presented as Plan 4, but that’s the way it went in a public forum last summer. Now that that is established as the train station plan, not all that different from Safeway Station, in my view, but the community has spoken, I don’t see how we can reasonably object to the design of the much smaller cafe being of matching style. In my view, we should have voted for Plan 4, but now we’re stuck with this.
@Jeff Boore – The public forum resulted in a 50-50 split vote between Alternatives 1 and 4. The tiebreaker went to the design team’s preference.
I think the cafe building looks just like a shrunken version of the train station, and distracts from the station because of this. I’m all for the train station design but I would prefer to see a more traditional design for the cafe building.
Also, I don’t appreciate the design team telling us one thing and then giving us something different, as seen in the video that Jeff posted. Mr. Anderson clearly states that this building will be more traditional than the train station, but the design looks exactly like the train station. What happened?