When God said "Let there be light," he must have been thinking of American consumers. We drink "lite" beer, eat "lite" foods, smoke "lite" cigarettes and listen to "lite" music on the radio. Is it any wonder, then, that we're also beginning to surround ourselves with "lite" architecture?
Nowhere in Baltimore is this trend more evident than at Waterloo Place, the 196-unit apartment complex completed this fall in the Mount Vernon historic district. The $18.6 million project took shape in the block once occupied by architect Robert Mills' famous Waterloo Row town houses, which were razed in 1970, and the development team promised from the beginning to reflect the character of the historic neighborhood in its replacement.
At the same time the developers, David Tufaro and his associates at Summit Properties, needed to devise an economically viable project that would make full use of the two-acre site bounded by Calvert, Monument, St. Paul and Centre streets. The result was one of the few residential success stories of 1991 in Baltimore, with 60 percent of the apartments leased in the first eight months -- a surprisingly healthy figure during a recession.
The secret to the developers' success is that, like all clever merchandisers, they gave consumers a choice: the grand if somewhat dilapidated 19th century town houses already on Mount Vernon Place, or the new, improved 20th century facsimile, "Mount Vernon Lite." What they came up with is not so much a reflection of history as a Cliff's Notes version of it -- and renters are going for it.
Waterloo Place is worth more than a passing glance precisely because the approach has been so well received by the market. More than any other project completed this year, it demonstrates that it is possible to develop residential projects with limited resources during tough economic times. But it also shows how difficult it can be to construct good buildings in a bad economy, even when designers have the best of intentions.
Breaking the jinx
The most miraculous aspect of Waterloo Place is that it got built at all. This is the site that sat vacant (some would say jinxed) for nearly 20 years, foiling at least three previous developers. Summit's strategy was to cater not just to the top end of the market but the larger pool of middle-income renters as well. It also came up with an innovative way to arrange the apartments on the site. Instead of building garden apartments with parking all around, Summit put all the parking underground, creating a platform. Then it used that platform to support four levels of housing, clustered around a series of midblock courtyards. It was a new way to bring the comfort and convenience of suburban apartments right into the heart of the city.
The job of making it all fit into historic Mount Vernon fell to David Furman/Architecture of Charlotte, N.C., a multifamily housing specialist who worked with Gantt Huberman Architects of Charlotte. Mr. Furman's approach was to design the shell of the garage and apartments so they could be put up as cost efficiently as possible, using a combination of concrete, steel and timber construction methods. Then he clad it all with architectural garb tailored to evoke the past, without relying on the thick stone walls and old-fashioned craftsmanship that can be so expensive. The key was using lighter, thinner construction materials, such as precast ornamentation and synthetic stucco walls. As an approach to building "lite," it had
merit. But the execution left much to to be desired.
The first sign of trouble is on the outside facades. The St. Paul Street side has stepped gables, arches, a row of trees and a pleasingly repetitive pattern, evoking Baltimore's old row houses. But on the other three sides, that studied rhythm begins to fall apart. Facades are no longer mostly brick above a rusticated base, but a combination of brick and stucco walls. Brick-faced bays and balconies hang over white walls with no visible means of support. Columns pop up here and there, lacking any consistent logic. The Centre and Monument street sides in particular are riots of bumps and grinds and zigzags and circles, a staccato blending of mismatched elements and jarringly discordant bands of light and dark, all thrown together with an air of improvisation.
And that's not to mention the grand arched entrances that visitors can't get in without a key, the bathrooms with toilets right in front of large bay windows, the giant ornamental brackets above Calvert Street. It's a veritable theme park of instant history, including some really loopy stuff.
What's particularly vexing about a composition such as this is the blatant disparity between places where the developers clearly spent some money, and places where they didn't. The fancy brickwork is a sign that they wanted to do something special and in keeping with the historic district. But on the very same wall, there are exposed wood joists and floorboards -- a totally inappropriate treatment for this setting. The work is sloppy, too, with paint already peeling in spots, streaks in the concrete base, efflorescence in the brickwork, and crooked gutters, downspouts and chimney pipes.
Architectural schizophrenia
One suspects that the architect tried to make these facades a )) "busy" as possible to hide the flaws and funny little conditions that he couldn't quite resolve and to counteract the grimmer surroundings to the east and south. But it only made the composition more frenetic -- Victorian with a vengeance. Because of the uneven quality of finishes, it's all vignettes and slices of buildings, rather than a seamless environment that really holds together.
Much of the jitteriness could be corrected over time, especially if terra cotta paint were used to tone down or otherwise "paint out" some elements that stand out now, such as the downspouts and superfluous trim. But in its present state the building has a serious case of architectural schizophrenia: Is it light or dark? Busy or calm? New or old? Owings Mills or Mount Vernon?
Even Mr. Furman is not totally satisfied with the end result. He blames the cost-cutting process for the loss of many details that would have helped keep the building together visually. "It's an ongoing battle," he said. "The economic way of doing things always shows itself. . . . If we had scrutinized our priorities more carefully, it wouldn't be so obvious where corners were cut."
Inside individual apartments, the developer dropped the pop history and concentrated on providing serviceable apartments with all the latest amenities one expects to find when the rent is $710 to $1,700 a month. There are 20 floor plans, from small studios to three-bedroom town houses, all overlooking common areas designed to encourage social interaction.
Indeed, from inside the courtyards, there is something upbeat and energetic and likeable about Mr. Furman's exotic little buildings and whimsical forms and vignettes, even if they don't hold up to close inspection. Part of what makes lite architecture lite, after all, is that it's not so heavy and ponderous.
If it's hard to dislike this building completely, it's also hard not to be concerned about the underlying implications of it.
From an urban design point of view, it represents the further suburbanization of Baltimore -- an already auto-oriented city that does not need to be further suburbanized. For the most part, it turns its back on the street and forms an enclave, facing into its own pool and patios, sharing little with the city beyond. Its high base may help keep the riff-raff out, but it's bad urbanism.
Another disturbing message that comes out of Waterloo Place is that, in a time of economic recession, corner cutting can be justified if it helps get the project under way. The danger is that developers can get so lightweight, in the name of cost savings, that they wind up with nothing at all. Will today's lite architecture become tomorrow's slums? Should we get rid of the design review boards and zoning code enforcement officers for the sake of economy, too?
For all of its imperfections, though, Waterloo Place is still better than the empty lot that was there before. To their credit, the developers were able to complete a project that suits the scale of the neighborhood, conforms to the terrain, brings people downtown to live, adds shoppers to Charles Street and has some character as well. That's far more than most can say.
Even if the result in this case was disappointing, Mr. Tufaro and Mr. Furman are clearly on to something. They saw which way society is heading and what it can afford, and used that as their starting point. The trick for them now is to figure out how to work with the new lite building technology and generate designs that are easier to implement, so the design is less likely to be compromised in the building stage.
Ironically, for all the effort Waterloo Place makes to look backward, its most significant contribution may be in the way it looks to the future. As Winston Churchill said, architecture always sums up the civilization it enshrines. Unfortunately, the need to do more with less won't go away anytime soon.
'Lite architecture' in Baltimore
Although Waterloo Place is one of the first examples of "lite architecture" in the Baltimore area, the list is growing steadily.
As first coined by New York Times architecture critic Paul Goldberger, the term refers to any new building that "looks, feels and often is, light in weight," frequently because of the use of new thin veneers, precast ornamentation and other synthetic building materials that are less expensive (and less heavy) than stone and masonry. Mr. Goldberger says they are often more like stage sets than traditional buildings -- "the built world's equivalent of easy-listening music."
Other local examples include:
*The new Morgan State University dormitory completed this fall on Argonne Drive, designed by Cochran, Stephenson and Donkervoet.
*The HarborView Yacht Club and Sales Center, off the 1200 block of Key Highway, by Columbia Design Collective.
*Commerce Place, the 30-story office tower rising at Baltimore and South streets, by RTKL Associates.
*Towson Commons, the office and retail complex rising at York Road and Pennsylvania Avenue in Towson, by RTKL Associates.
*Practically any recently redone shopping center, such as Westview Mall, redesigned by Brown & Craig.
--Edward Gunts
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