urbanMSP

Is there enough room on this site for a parking podium surrounded by apartments? Or does this include Surdyks or some other property as well?

Well there was in the last iteration

Do any mods want to change the name of this thread to "Mortenson 34-story tower" ?

Holy cow the interrobang works in this font.

So do we think that there will be a revised tower illustration and announcement for this project this week?

Looks like the next NIEBNA board meeting is April 20th, so....maybe NEXT week?

Eric Best on Twitter with new renderings: https://twitter.com/ericthebest/status/ ... 6725722113

Ouch. It's like an Ikea Riverwest.

Design packet:

http://www.niebna.com/docs/agendas/2017 ... gDRAFT.pdf

Ouch. It's like an Ikea Riverwest.

I know you didn't mean that literally, but Riverwest's "tower" looks to be around 365' long. The parcel for this proposal is only 229', and the tower portion will be something less than that, once you account for setbacks, the stepback from the podium portion, etc. We're probably looking at a building that is 200' long at most, or about 55% of Riverwest's length, albeit taller.

EDIT: I changed the thread title back to the original "28 stories". The preliminary drawing here appears to be about 25-26 (not 34), depending how you count (and really, nothing matters until they submit actual plans to the city, so let's not over-analyze )

I don't hate it... the colors and materials will make a big difference...


It lists YOLO as one of the potential names for the project... um...

So... not many balconies????

I don't hate it... the colors and materials will make a big difference...


It lists YOLO as one of the potential names for the project... um...

Maybe they misspelled "yoyo"...

That is far too bulky...dislike.

Very typical design for recent Minneapolis ... It's as if the architects on this one are competing to try and design the worst possible looking building.

YUP! Definitely the architects! They're trying to ruin the city everyone! It's not like design is dictated by the developer a lot of the time!

What's hurting this design most is now its uniformity. The previous iteration had a significant advantage in facade design in that the large "cut-out" sections utilized glazing to break up the monotony of the rest of the facade. The pattern of varied windows, while offering uniqueness, does little to detract from the continuous single volume of the building. While the cut-outs remain, the continuation of the wide/narrow window pattern adheres the cut-outs to the rest of the building, rendering their aesthetic purpose nearly useless. The benefit of the previous design was in its utilization of contrast to give an appearance of a sort of hybrid building (two buildings coexisting in space). (The placement of the seams/intersections at corners further reinforced this visually as a breaking of the visual skeleton of the building [corners have more visual structural strength than walls]. The new design is also lesser in this regard, placing the components of the "second" structure merely at the extremities, rather than the core of the "first" structure.)

This, I think, is more significantly detrimental than the reduction in height and increase in width. Those changes could have been visually overcome by an enhancement of the previous design's visual philosophy. If this massing is to work visually, the architects need to rethink the fenestrations of each of the two facades and hold them in contrast as the previous iteration did. I also think that a building of this size and proportion could benefit from a single variance in its current singular massing.

In praise, the latest iteration is superior in its continuity with the podium/base of the building. In my opinion, it is always preferred to bring the weight of the structure to the ground, rather than having it sit atop a separate entity. This gives the tower it's own strength in a foundation upon the ground and helps to enhance the proportions of the building by drawing the eye upward from the lowest point. The new design also, I think, utilizes a more ideal "seam" design in that it is an incision rather than a protrusion as in the previous design. This conveys a separation between the "first" and "second" structures, rather than a more haphazard joining of the two by some arbitrary trim piece.

Either way, this would still be a great benefit to the area, and would compliment NordHaus and 200 Central, as well as continue to bring downtown across the river, something I am a fan of. I think Minneapolis should strive for more unordinary design, and I think this area is perfect for it.

tl;dr: This iteration is overall inferior, but with a few reapplications of the previous design philosophy, could work well here.

CPC CoW plans for this... thing. 49% precast concrete on the exterior. This project went from weird (in its initial form) to pretty hideous.
http://www.minneapolismn.gov/www/groups ... 197730.pdf

Yeah. I liked the original proposal. This one... not as much. I guess I could live with unscreened parking on the interior of the block, on the theory that Surdyk's may eventually be redeveloped, but there's no excuse for it on 4th St.

It wouldn't be so bad if it weren't so wide along the north-south direction, and so uniform. There's absolutely no articulation in height or plan to break up the huge mass above the parking platform. The giant windowless service core running along the east elevation...yikes.