Boring architecture? All the heritage buildings and facades are boring to you?
Parts of Stephen Avenue have really nice heritage architecture, ~2.5 blocks are very nice.
Obviously subjective, but these frontages in red are really nice architecture:
Yellow outline is the entire plan area for the E-W extent of the improvements. Over the full 12 blocks that are anticipated to improve, ~2.5 blocks are particularly nice.
These areas have very nice buildings and frontage:
This much less so:
I like the Stephen Avenue improvements, and i think a minimalist approach works particularly on the 2.5 really nice blocks. My only concern is the blocks that aren't that nice and have pretty uninteresting architecture and frontages, could end up looking pretty sterile, which a lot of redevelopment projects in Calgary have trended that way with bland, corporate designs (a great example being the before and after of Devonian Gardens).
Having a lot more minimalist design looks really good when it is surrounded by great architecture like:
Stroget in Copenhagen, mostly every block is nice.
Or Royal Mile in Edinburgh. all the buildings are nice, so simple public realm looks great.
When you have boring and uninteresting architecture, I just think landscaping and particularly street trees help a lot like they do on 16th Street in Denver:
Again, I like the Stephen Avenue design and I think it is going in the right direction. All I was saying is that Stroget in Copenhagen probably isn't the best apples to apples comparison for all the blocks on Stephen Ave as not all the blocks have really nice architecture like they do on Stroget. And for the Stephen Avenue blocks with a less nice frontage, which is a lot of them, the street trees and landscaping details are more critical and can help to have a less sterile feel that a lot of Calgary projects have fallen prey to. From the design package I think they have done a good job on it, it'll just come down to execution and not value engineering out the landscaping portion of the budget. My favourite part of the design which was very Copenhagen, is the Catenary Lights, those are a great idea to incorporate.
cochranenow.com
