Downtown Redevelopment Plans Unanimously Approved In Berkeley
Downtown redevelopment plans that will bring a hotel and retail complex and create a transit-oriented pedestrian-only plaza have been unanimously approved in Berkeley, California.
"The $150 million hotel and conference center, tentatively dubbed the Berkeley Charles Hotel, would include more than 210 hotel rooms, 50 market-rate condominiums, an extensive conference center, jazz club, restaurant and underground parking.
Despite its size, the high-rise has generated almost no opposition, a miracle in a city that bickers over everything from vacant lots to old-growth eucalyptus. Berkeley's usual warring factions -- preservationists, City Hall staff, developers and zoning wonks -- have joined, at least temporarily, in support of the project."
"The downtown committee recently voted to close Center Street between Shattuck and Oxford for a pedestrian plaza."
"About 10,000 people a day walk the one-block stretch between BART and the UC Berkeley campus. The committee decided to create an open space with benches, artwork, outdoor cafes and possibly a daylighted stretch of Strawberry Creek, which goes underground after leaving the campus."
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Someone needs to learn the difference between brutal and frank
Yeah gods, the previous poster clearly has never seen a truly brutalist building. Granted this is only a line-drawing, but the whole structure seems to echo more ofJulia Morgan's California A&C approach to architecture (filtered by FLW, the frank of the subject line). And does anyone else appreciate the irony of someone invoking 'traditional' in the context of the always 'untraditional' Berkeley.
Traditionalism in Berkeley??
I don't think anyone will take your cheap shot seriously, but just in case, I will mention that Berkeley's school of Architecture building is an archetypal brutalist building that I have seen many times.
Judging from the line drawing, this convention center building uses big, brutal blocks of concrete as the "ornamentation" of its facade. They are not frank in the sense of expressing structure; there is no structural reason to have those oversized concrete blocks mixed in with the others; they are just someone's idea of ornament, and they are clearly influenced by brutalism.
Anyone who knows anything about Berkeley politics knows that there is strong support for traditional architecture. Eg, when an architect proposed a modernist design for the Public Safety Building, there was such a strong outcry that the city redesigned it with a traditional facade (shown in a blurry picture in http://www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/departments/SERVICES/publicsafety.htm)
There is no irony involved. Modernist architecture expresses today's status quo, and the criticism of it fits right into Berkeley's spirit.
I would say there is irony involved when modernist architects claim their esthetic gestures are radical, though they are actually building in the contemporary corporate style. This seems to be the old cliche that the previous poster buys into by talking about being "frank" and rejecting the "traditional."
Note that Berkeley's most famous architectural theorist is Christopher Alexander, who talks about a timeless way of building that incorporates essential features that are common to all traditional architecture and that have been lost in modern architecture. I am sure he would say that this glass and concrete high-rise lacks the human scale that he admires.
Charles Siegel
Ugly Brutalist Design For Berkeley Hotel
I certainly back the general concept of putting a hotel/convention center of this size on this site - but:
The tower should be made 20% lower and 20% wider, so the building has the same height as two existing buildings on this corner. The proposed height is taller than any other building in downtown and would mar John Galen Howard's design for Berkeley's skyline, one of the few traditional skylines in any American city.
The ugly brutalist facade, featuring big blocks of concrete, should be replaced by a design with finer detailing that is compatible with the historical architecture of downtown.
I think it is likely that the facade will be improved and possible that the height will be reduced a bit.
Charles Siegel