Attempting to look like craftsman houses? Ok, your gonna need to dumb that down a little for some of us. I am familiar with and like the Craftsman style but I only see one or two traits in that big pile of poo that would make me claim that the principle problem is attempting to replicate the predominant style of single-family homes.

Be bold! Make an eight story pirate ship with crows nest studios and penthouse level turrets!

the problem with 8 story buildings is that they usually look like 8 story buildings, and not, say, places where people live.

this looks like a place where people live. I like it.

@2: I'd be all about that. This just looks like generic ass.

I like the pirate ship idea. Or perhaps a medieval castle?

So Dominic, please sketch something for us and post it here. I'd love to see your vision of what that would look like. It doesn't have to be fancy, just distinguish it from the current concept.
Thanks.

It looks like it's trying to stretch itself into every nook and cranny of it's lot like every other ill conceived publicaly obnoxious piece of crap thrown up without any serious regulation or oversight in the name of density. Density = money money money money. It's an excuse for filling the sky with private property gifted to develoeprs by a civicly retarded citizenry.

Every one of these posts sounds like it comes from a bitter, failed architect.

Dominic, maybe you should lament the fact that people actually purchase or rent out these places in spite of their appearance. Have close are you to coming to terms with the idea that outward appearance isn't very important to the vast majority of people. Or that you have a the least popular aesthetic preference in the area?

This is unimaginative and awkward but it's way better than the Denny's it is replacing.

i don't know - i don't think it's that bad.

what would be an example of big and bold?

I agree with @2, but not every building has to be bold.

After all, Ballard won't ever be Fremont, no matter how much you dress it up ...

I like the bit linked in the linked bit from MyBallard that the developer can't get financing to actually, you know, build anything. They say they'll follow through with the permitting, though. That will put them in position, if worse comes to worst, to dump the whole deal off on somebody with deeper pockets. Don't see that improving the cityscape, though.

we interrupt this comment thread to bring you a special bulletin:

http://bit.ly/s5dP

Are you ever happy with any new buildings? Name them.

I'm with #2. I don't like its design (or its scale), but it's still better than anything that was ever within' a block of that intersection.

The roofs are annoying, but the rest of the design doesn't look half bad.

Hey, there's a severe shortage of perfect pancakes in this world, and we need to do something to preserve them!

Yes, @ 15: Off the top of my head, I like the Brix, Agnes Lofts, the building two doors down from the Agnes Lofts, the Pearl, Alley24, Olive 8, and a bunch of others.

Fugly!


Fugly!


Fugly!


Three times for emphasis and for every gawdawful building that hasn't been blessed with this, one of my favorite terms.

I like the pirate ship idea. And I would require all residents to wear eyepatches; folks with peglegs should get a discount. Parrots aren't pets for the purposes of damage deposits.

Also they would be required to throw sweet parties, and invite me.

i am forced to keep on loving you so i am going to take out my rage on my own body, we're going to denny's

Hmm, looking at the original design before the changes I think they made it worse. The only improvement is the corner facing the intersection instead of each street, something that's nice to see on any corner building. But that improvement is nearly ruined by the prison-style tower that caps it.

I'm not picky, but I just want buildings that invite me to live, eat, or shop in them.

So, what's a good example of the "go big. Be bold" ethos that you speak of? Can you point to a local example? I'm just trying to figure out your frame of reference.

Honestly, my first thought was, "well, at least it's not more shitty townhouses."

the reason that people who care about design, architecture and urban planning are seldom happy with the designs for proposed buildings is that 95% of the time they suck...

and in mid Ballard there arose from the debris of the previous structure a universal marvel of a building ... lauded at every table in the fair city of Sealth ... and the sci fi continues ...

Dominic, your taste is shit, and that is the biggest problem, looks fine, hope the rents are cheap, handy location

Coming soon to your neighborhood the Stranger Taj ... you bet

No. If you're building big, you're building ugly, period. And bold is ALWAYS uglier than generic. Bold will look laughable in just a few years, while generic, you won't even notice it's there -- just like the zillions of generic ones they put up in the 70s and 80s.

and this design sucks because it's fugly, blobby, bland and confused...there's about 25 things going on there, and none of them are good.

and the scariest thing of all, is that the majority of these kinds of buildings are not built to last...they start to deteriorate very quickly due to design flaws, shoddy construction and cheap ass materials...and if you want proof, just talk to anyone who lives, or has lived in a recently constructed condo or townhouse...the majority of them, are already starting to have problems.

I think it will be really beautiful after the next big earthquake.

Maybe it should be an upside-down ziggurat, like Schmitz Hall? That's bold.

and most of the new condo buyers are so stupid they do not know that all houses have problems, require constant attention to something, and no landlord to solve the problems

c'est la vie

codes today are the best ever, FYI

Have (sic) close are you to coming to terms with the idea that outward appearance isn't very important to the vast majority of people. Or that you have a the least popular aesthetic preference in the area?

Oh please. There's a reason why landlords of 1920s buildings can charge a premium on rent. People don't move into these pieces of shit because they want to, they do it because that's what's available.

@31,

Well, apparently codes aren't everything. I've lived in old buildings and new buildings. The old buildings rarely had problems, and what few problems they had (leaky faucets from worn-out washers, for example) were completely legitimate maintenance issues. New buildings are a major headache.

In both the condo and townhouse situation, there is no customer feedback loop. Buyers choose from what's available, not from what they want.

What is available is universally crap because developers goals (cheap construction costs, glitzy details but at the expense of quality materials, maximized square foot coverage of the lot with sellable space, etc) are not inline with the buyers goals.

The "market" isn't functioning, so don't try and bring in arguments about "they sell, so that is proof it is what buyers want."

It's ugly, but it's fine for Ballard.

Clearly the building is trying to do too many things at once, just like most recent construction in Seattle. This has a lot to do with the city's design guidelines requiring that large facades be broken up into smaller bits which are supposedly more pedestrian friendly. This often results in a mish-mash of materials and languages and a lack of order. It's not really hard to accomplish breaking a large building into smaller, more accessible pieces. The Waterfall building in Vancouver does this while maintaining a simple palette of glass, concrete, and steel and a single language.

better view of Waterfall building
http://www.arthurerickson.com/B_wate.htm…

Here's the problem:
Most large buildings from a classier era show their personality through small details and ornamentation. You can only see them up close, and they give life to what would otherwise be a big plain box. But all those things take some real takes real talent to design, craft, and install. And it's more expensive than throwing up a few walls and attaching windows.

Now it's all about saving the last dollar in design and construction, so architects try to express personality through the large features, like angled walls, bullshit roof lines, and a haphazard multitude of colors. But you put all that together and it just looks like a jumbled mess, both up close and at a distance.

Fine detailing was once the standard because they were only slightly more expensive than the rest of the building. It took a lot of effort and cost to lay bricks on site, do the carpentry, pound rivets into steel, etc. Doing the brick in an interesting pattern didn't increase that by very much.

But now everything is pre-built and delivered to the site with the goal of minimizing on-site labor costs and minimizing the requirement for actual tradesmen. It's easy enough that you can hire some unskilled labor from mexico to throw all the pieces together without any trouble. And since that part is now so relatively quick and easy, the cost to add some real personality through detailing becomes very expensive. Even finding people who have the skills to do it is almost impossible, since construction is largely a low-skill, artless job.

Remember how you said all the same things about the planned apartment buildings at the former site of the Red Door, and now it's a landmark people travel around the world to see?

I think adding a pirate crows nest and other items might help, but we're just Seattle, and it's no uglier than pretty much anything else in Ballard.

Besides, where do you expect Trader Joe's to relocate to?

If more people stuck up for the old Denny's building, we could have been spared this.

Hey! I see Bartells! Do you? And next to it, a tanning salon! And probably a teriyaki joint or another Subway. Maybe Kinko's down the street will move into the NE corner. Welcome, Ballard, to the 21st century strip mall! Planned by the Borgs themselves and planted like a festering herpes sore in the heart of your beloved "neighborhood". The question is, will Ballard accept the ubiquitous PayDay Loan outfit, or is Ballard too judgmental for that sort of establishment?

why does it suck? the developer and their real estate consultants are fear-driven.

and frieheit & ho suck for giving them what they asked for.

the wilsonian in the udistrict, and the brick apartment building at the corner of broadway & john are both 8 stories tall, at least. flat facades, all 1 material, with tripartite division. there's simply no excuse for this shit.

if you'd like to see an apartment building that doesn't suck, look to europe:

http://www.alisonbrooksarchitects.com/al…

http://www.mvrdv.nl/#/projects/europe/41…

see what pussies we are?

i'm no developer, but my guess is that it comes down to $$, and these shitty looking generic exteriors are the cheapest to make. Or maybe hiring an architect to come up with something with even a hint of aesthetic taste and originality costs too much $$.

when, oh when, will we stop with the segmented, multi-colored exteriors, with various pieces jutting in and out at windows and balconies (which looks like it was built with various pieces from mismatching Lego sets).

And wtf are architects doing in this city? I feel like there are quite a few of them, but damned if i know what they are working on. they sure don't make it obvious.

Dominic, do better buildings necessarily cost more? And would you be a dear and post links to pictures of some of the finer residential unit structures around town (I know they exist somewhere, but i can't think of them).

@32

Bullshit. People don't pony up 60k down and 300k+ in financing to buy a brand new unit that you find ugly out of necessity. If old buildings really do command this mythic premium (you invented or think you observed through your own experience looking for an apartment on Capitol Hill or Queen Anne) then why would they be torn down for newer buildings? The only example that breaches this is condo conversions. Even then I could point out that the location of where these conversions happen is far more important than the age of the building.

And there is no statistical evidence to back up your notion either. A cursory comparison of price per square foot between several single bedroom apartments in the 98102 and 98122 area shows that newer buildings had a higher price per square foot cost than older buildings and that buildings with amenities in the unit had a higher price per square footage. Not surprisingly there are few modern buildings without amenities and few old buildings with. The numbers I worked out showed that it was almost a .40 cent on average difference between modern with amenities and old without.

Looking at the numbers I am lead to believe that the key difference is whether there are appliances in unit which commands different prices, not the age of the unit. Which would support the notion that people care more about the insides than the outsides of the unit, by and large.

@44,

The insides of those new buildings are as ugly as the outside. And, yes, new units are often more expensive to justify the cost of the construction, but those units sit empty for months as the landlords sit and wait for someone to pay $2k for a hideous one bedroom. Most of the "old" buildings I've seen torn down are either too small to justify converting to condos or were built post-war, in which case they're about as ugly and badly constructed as anything being built now.

And of course people put $60k down on a hideous $300k condo. It's called an investment, a bad investment but one that "experts" claim is good and necessary -- buying real estate at all costs.

If a price is too high to clear the market then the price must be reduced to fulfill the demand or it wont sell. The cost is irrelevant to the price if the unit can't be rented out at a higher price in a competitive market.

This doesn't support your idea that people pay a premium to live in older buildings because they appreciate the aesthetics and build of the place.

@46,

Your faith in supply and demand is very cute, but developers will do whatever it takes not to reduce prices on new rental apartments. They'll advertise more, they'll offer free TVs and gift cards, they'll sit on empty units for months.

Those Live Historic condo conversions are way more expensive than regular condos of the same size. Is that not paying a premium for nicer exteriors/interiors and for a home that will actually hold its value?

By your logic, people love new, shitty single family homes in the exurbs of Los Angeles because, as of a few years ago, they were selling for $400k. Get real.

@37, buildings from the 20s were thrown up quickly from interchangeable parts, too. Most "Craftsman" houses in Seattle were made from kits, delivered by Sears. The mythical era of the olde-worlde artisan builder never really existed. The best apartment houses in Seattle, the Anhalt buildings, were for the most part built in less than two weeks.

Keshmeshi, the reason 20s buildings on average are better than new ones is simple: they've had ninety years for the shitty ones to fall down. By definition, all of the ones that are left are the ones that were good enough to last. MANY, MANY shitty ones are no longer here, just as many, many shitty buildings from today will be gone in ninety years, leading people from 2100 saying "gosh, they sure knew how to build 'em back then".

@48,

Fair enough. But it still stands to reason that the older buildings are better investments, as they withstood the test of time. Which flies in the face of what Mr. Sad and Lonely keeps saying -- that people love these new buildings and just can't wait to throw $300k at something that could fall apart in a few decades.

Good urban planning + reducing our footprint + living close to the city and not driving our cars up and down I5 means big buildings to accommodate dense living. I don't see this building as particularly beautiful but it looks like many of the others that have gone up in the area ..

I want more housing stock like this so one day .. maybe, housing costs will come down to the level where more of us can be home/condo owners. If we require developers to go so far as to only design palatial albeit lovely large units that are a couple stories high you know that these are not for the working class. We will be living in Everett.

I agree with #50. I want more cheap shit so I can afford to live in the city.

Cheap buildings = old buildings. New buildings will never be cheap, big or small, period.

I'm sure I'm setting myself up for a good old-fashioned smackdown by the Seattle Good Taste Police, but do you folks actually think that mess looks better than the old Denny's?

Granted, the building didn't look its best in it's last days, but with a little *imagination* it could have been part of a unique and interesting development.

This proposal is just crap some developer bought from some architectural sweatshop. Designed to maximize square footage, and to look at home in Omaha or Seattle or Atlanta or whereever.

How creative.

Is that a lighthouse at the corner? Craftsman-style eaves over bay windows? Blue and baby-shit brown together? I just don't get what's going on with this building. It looks like a Safeway with cheap apartments sprouting from the top, with a design that's supposed to be giving a nod to Ballard's maritime heritage. Whatever it is, it's hideously ugly. Grade: F-

"Last night, developers unveiled plans for an eight-story building—Market Street Landing"

Ugh. I missed that awful little detail on the first reading. Who thinks up these stupd names, and who are they meant to appeal to?

Apathy and love shouldn't be confused. I don't think people love them so much as they don't care that much about the exterior of a condo or apartment. Most the world is apathetic as evidenced by what developers and landlords do to entice buyers. One that truly cares about the aesthetics can't be bribed. The sales and rental numbers as well as future development show the majorties apathy to aesthetics in architecture.

Geeeeerrrrrrrrosssssss! I will be sure to avert my eyes when I hurry by it. Definitely Craftsman on steroids AND crystal meth.

Who thinks up these stupid names? Traditionally, developers used a device called "Dial-A-Name." The innermost wheel has a bunch of words like "Landing," "Pointe," "Estates,"Glen," Towers," "Square," etc. The middle wheel will generally contain a word that evokes a former wildlife species present at the site or habitat signifier such as "Eagle," "Chinook," "Blue Heron," "Salix" or whatever. Sometimes they just skip the outermost wheel, but if not it can refer to a cardinal direction or a place like "University," "Bell" (short for Bellevue), "Woodinville," and so on, sometimes preceded by the word, "at."

Recently developers have been slacking off and calling their shit names like, "The Parc," "Olive 8," "The 400," "Gallery," etc. These are very lazy-ass names. I think they should go back to the wheel.

@28 for the win. It just looks like someone focused-grouped the question "What architectural features make you think of the word 'home?'" They then took the top five responses and created this Disneyfied monstrosity.

Density does not require bad design.

@48: Fnarf, I disagree that Anhalt's fake-Tudor buildings are Seattle's best.