Idea // Off the Scrapheap

The Atlanta design community has been giving old auto garages the treatment recently, particularly in Decatur and other neighborhoods that aim to be more pedestrian-friendly.

Top Left: Menefee+Winer Office, Atlanta (Menefee+Winer Architects)

Top Right: Taqueria del Sol, Decatur (Unknown)

Bottom Left: Leon's Full Service, Decatur (Unknown)

Bottom Right: Fellini's Pizza, Avondale (Unknown)

Garages accommodate rewarding adaptive reuse projects for several reasons: first, their programmatic configuration is versatile and interchangable; second, they tend to be in areas with heavy traffic, pedestrian or otherwise; and third, they are a symbol of the early "modern" auto-centric American lifestyle that, in light of recent events, is coming more into question.

Idea // Surfaces in Color - Part 3

This project is not in North America, but was in the New York Times this weekend and I thought it expounds wonderfully on the theme from the previous posts. Color can not only attract clients but brighten spirits in a poor neighborhood, and provide a way of rehabilitating buildings that residents cannot afford to rebuild.

(Photo: New York Times Magazine, June 23, 2010).

Idea // Surfaces in Color - Part 2

Here are a couple of examples in Atlanta of the use of flat, painted-on graphics to convey a design intent.

Top: Silhouette Building, Midtown Atlanta. (Architect: REES Associates, Atlanta office)
Bottom: salonred kids, Decatur. (Architect: unknown)

These are two buildings of vastly different scales but both use similar, low-budget graphic techniques to draw the desired clientele; in the first case, cutting-edge businesses, and the second, parents who believe their children need chic coiffures.

Building // Decatur Fire Station No. 2

The first LEED-certified new construction (non-residential) in Decatur / Oakhurst.
Architect: LP3 Architecture (Amy Landesberg + Praxis 3)
USGBC Registration

Idea // Surfaces in Color

(First in a series of little design exercises and doodles, mostly impromptu, to test ideas and to gauge reactions)

I've had my eye on a building near my office for some time - the Sobu Flats apartment complex (map). I don't know much about it other than it was originally built in the 1950's by Julian LeCraw & Co. as a retirement home and recently converted to small apartments. Interestingly, the revamp was done by Hiro Isogai, the former head of the interiors department at my current firm. The building is one of the few Mid-Century Modern multi-family housing developments that I know of in Atlanta.

I really enjoy the classic ribbon window motif and clean horizontal geometries, but the building is missing something...color. White and dark grey on the exterior comprise a very sterile palette that reminds me of a hospital (especially since the building is organized in wings, similar to Aalto's Paimio Sanatorium, but even that has colored awnings). So over lunch I sketched up some potential color schemes, one warm and one cool. Interventions like this - simple additions of color or surface embellishment - will become important tools for architects as we reinvent the practice to fit the demands of the economy and society. Tell me what you think! One of the key questions is: does the addition of color/text add or detract from the inherent character of the building? Does it turn it from a elegantly composed Modernist building devoid of color into a colorful contemporary monstrosity, or is it now a more exciting building that brings energy to stuffy old Buckhead?