Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Survey Says . . .

Best architecture downtown (and downtown-near) of the last twenty-five years.

Top 6 answers on the board . . .

1. Paul Brown Stadium (2000) by NBBJ
No. 101 on AIA’s list of America’s favorite 150 buildings and structures. I don’t think I’d give it that much praise however. Its setting, along with that of the Freedom Center and Great American Ballpark, will improve when the Banks is complete.

2. Lipson Alport Glass & Associates (2000) by Cooper Carry, Inc.

An AIA Atlanta Award of Excellence winner in 2001. It has to be a pain to keep heated but I love the design.

3. Theodore M. Berry International Friendship Park (2003) by Human Nature, Inc. with EDAW
An AIA Cincinnati Honor Award winner in 2003. Kind of tucked away, I think it has a lot of nice elements.

4. Lois & Richard Rosenthal Contemporary Arts Center (2003) by Zaha Hadid with KZF
An AIA Cincinnati Honor Award winner in 2003. I appreciate the building as a break from the conventional this City is used to but I do not think it is "the most important American building to be completed since the end of the cold war" as described by the New York Times.

5. Proctor & Gamble World Headquarters (1985) by Kohn Peterson & Fox
There is much I like about this post-modern building but I wish one could actually use the formal gardens. And I wonder if there was a way they could have incorporated the original Wesley Chapel on 5th Street as an element within the gardens.

6. Scripps Center (1990) by Architects Glaser & Meyers with Hoover & Furr
Part of the reason why I like this building is its prominence on 3rd Street and the impact within the whole downtown cityscape.

Honorable mentions for me include the Chemed Center (1991) by Skidmore Owings & Merrill and the Freedom Center (2004) by Blackburn Architects & BOORA Architects.
I focus a lot on our older and historic buildings so I thought I’d pay attention to some contemporary architecture. A couple of points . . . I really looked at only new work and not renovations. And I generally looked at only projects downtown. There is a lot of new work throughout this city from large projects at the University of Cincinnati to private homes in Mt. Adams and I just didn’t think I had the knowledge to adequately cover it all. One could do a whole post alone on "The Best New Buildings at UC".

2 comments:

thewcblog said...

Very interesting.

Kathy Koops
http://thecincyblog.com

5chw4r7z said...

Scripts is hands down my favorite building. I love how it looks completely different depending on the time of day and what the weather is.

Next is the Lyric Piano building on Race. My daydream is to convert it to condos. But it might be old than 25 yrs, not sure.