It's not that this is the wrong place for design criticism-- This is EXACTLY the place for it. But saying 'the tower is awful" and "this is a bad building" "decent but derivative"-- okay, why are they so bad, exactly? And grading on every building on "urbanism" as defined by apparently how much retail it has is similarly not useful commentary. What about the quality of materials? What about how the building meets the street? What about how it changed the block/neighborhood?
Grant Park is awful because it is a historicist building that is completely disconnected from modern ideas and technology that were the very genesis of "towers" in the first place. Steel, reinforced concrete, advances in footing and foundation technology that allow a building to stand tall should be indicated in the architecture of a tower built circa 2000+. Looking around at the neighborhood form (3 story turn of the 20th century housing) and simply extruding that form for 20 stories is vacuous and lazy in the extreme. Taking neighborhood materials (brick and stone ) and cladding said tower with cheaper, less detailed versions of those materials exacerbates an already bad idea and the culmination of terrible form and empty materials is indeed "awful." You are welcome to criticize my taste but I am certainly not alone in the feeling that architecture, and specifically towers, should be indicative of technological progress and modern design ideas instead of shallow, vapid, regressive, historicism. I have now given my support for why this is an awful building. I'd be very interested to hear a defense of this building that is rooted in architectural ideas.
While none of these developments are perfect, they all use quality materials.
Allow me to interject here. I don't know what your background is or what your threshold for "quality" is but Hardi panels, "cultured stone" (concrete made to LOOK like stone - a falsehood), and large swaths of unbroken, undetailed, corrugated metal panel (not ribbed metal that might express a thoughtful profile), and off-the-shelf aluminum balconies are NOT "quality materials." There is a mountain of architectural opinion regarding the "true" nature of materials and using falsehoods in architecture - I'll let them speak for themselves. And, just as a preemptive measure, you need only go one block to see a building that made a choice to use REAL limestone instead of cast concrete made to LOOK like stone. Feel free to take issue with other material/color choices in Velo (and other projects around town) but other developers/architecture firms have made choices to use real materials here and there.
222 and Grant Park dramatically improve the blocks on which they were built.
I did try to make a distinction between the effect that these buildings have from an urbanism standpoint as separate from the architecture. I'm sorry I didn't support the arguments more fully.
From a strictly urban standpoint, Grant Park is an improvement over a building that doesn't exist. More people/density is generally a good thing. If it isn't clear that this is "damning with faint praise" let me be clear that that is exactly as intended. 222 Hennepin is also better than a run-down car dealership for the aforementioned reasons. Considering its location, 222 Hennepin should have been two to four times as dense (minimum). I applaud the introduction of Whole Foods to downtown but they were in negotiations to enter this site going back to original condo proposals in the mid aughts - this is business, they didn't do Minneapolis a "solid" by creating a store here.
For goodness sake, 222 won Mpls/StP Business Journal's "Best Overall Mixed Use" development last year!!!!!!!!
As others have pointed out, most of these awards are real estate driven and that is to say that they celebrate/laud "the deal." Let me be clear, this isn't a shot at your profession and real estate should certainly be allowed to have awards but these awards have little or nothing to do with architecture and urbanism. Building a 6 story "texas doughnut" housing project around an EXISTING parking structure with one commercial tenant at a very prominent corner in a booming mid-major metropolitan area isn't a jaw-dropping real estate achievement.
Getting back to the design of 222 Hennepin for a second, do you have any argument for why a truncated metal pyramid is an appropriate way to "meet the sky?" Can you point toward ANY existing architectural precedent in the area for such an expression? This building is across the street from a post-modern gem (ING building), a nearby beautiful moderne/art deco historic post office, a mid-century modern housing tower project that truly expresses its vintage and has aged very well (Towers), a nearby very contemporary library and truly historic "brick and mortar" towards the north loop. These pyramids are yet another example of Humphreys penchant for design that is completely devoid of context and thus, “awful.”
You criticize the Carlyle for not having public amenities (and then walk it back?) but they've got retail space, which is saying something because (and you admit) it's a bad location for retail. Can't please everyone.
Others have commented on "derivative design" so I'd like to address this idea as it relates to the Carlyle. I would argue that "derivative" in the Carlyle is less vacuous and lazy than Grant Park but not by much and I encourage you to do some googling because the "board has reached the attachment quota" or I'd include some images that illustrate my point.
Designing a building to be “like” another building is bad architecture because it diminishes the original and exposes itself as making no effort to express an architectural idea of its own. Cribbing the form, materials, lighting scheme and accoutrements of a great building and just “putting it over there” is cynical in the extreme, lazy and not good architecture. I can cite numerous examples of architecture that strives to heighten the relationship to the existing context/history at hand without replicating it (poorly) and thereby being derivative if you are interested.
Which brings me to Houston.
Apologies, I was mistaken. Humphreys is headquartered in Dallas - not Houston. My comment was relative to Humphreys not being a local firm with local relationships and investment in the future of a great city. They are a corporate widget factory squatting out their bland, cheap, contextually ignorant brand of architecture in whatever city they get hired to work in.
Houston development (broadly speaking) is characterized by bland towers, cheap, fortress-like, inward focused development, and parking lots. How are these examples Houston-like?
Speaking of bland, cheap, fortress-like, inward focus, and parking (structures) - giant columns with a porte cochere isn’t exactly welcoming to pedestrians and thus, not “meeting the street” very well. As for the unrented retail space, I was attempting to give them the benefit of the doubt based on where the building is located, I wasn’t trying to “walk back” my opinion that it isn’t good space. See the cheap off-the-shelf green canvas awnings with the fauxstoric parking podium above for evidence that this space is at the very best, an after-thought.
The accumulated evidence shows that Humphreys does architecture on a scale from fair to awful and I will leave the last word to you if you wish to make arguments to the contrary.