The urban planning community is constantly touting the benefits of building dense communities around public transportation. But according to designers Chad Kellogg and Matt Bowles, few solutions have been ambitious enough to do the whole Transit-Oriented Development idea justice. So they came up with their own.
Behold the Urban Alloy Towers, a proposal to take over spaces immediately surrounding transportation infrastructure like elevated train lines and highways.
— theatlanticcities.com
7 Comments
so... air rights building over transportation infrastructure - a concept that has been around for decades. I guess it's a "radical new idea" because it looks like a space-frame amoeba?
btw - the reason you don't see too many air-rights buildings is because the structure is very expensive and maintenance often requires shutting down said transportation infrastructure. I'd like to see if they could get the numbers to work without some sort of government funding/tax-incentive combo. And I'm pretty sure you can't really go super high-density luxury in the outer-boroughs.
Build it and they will come. Get Zaha or Frank to design it and the overly-wealthy will flock to it like flies to shit. High cost just validates their purchase. Then again, the rich don't use public transportation, and the three rules of real estate are location, location, location. Queens? LOL
Development is not intended to be affordable simply because there is no profit in it. Maybe a hive for worker bees who would like to think they are rich?
There's no way the neighborhoods nearby would be okay with this. Anybody else think it kind of looks like a Darco Arcology from SimCity 2000 covered in a tent caterpillar nest?
@reddish - there's no way any low-rise neighborhood near transit would be ok with this.
this to me is an example of the sad state of architecture education....it's a looming and alien self-contained antiseptic glass box/shopping mall on top of "transit" (that supposedly whisks you to your "job" in some far-off place) - completely neglecting existing street context and any sort of connection to the neighborhood (or even just enhancing or reconnecting the existing street network). they could have painted it in any shade of stylistic rouge - but it's as if these "designers" read somewhere that people want to live near transit - but are too scared to set foot on the street where there might be garbage and poor people and dirty old buildings.
and how does one clean that glass? robots?
I love every comment on this article.
toasteroven x 1,000
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