The sputtering economy and markets might mean more than a shrinking 401(K) and a mortgage at odds with reality.

This Foster design is planned for Moscow

I’m not talking about hunger, job losses or increased poverty: I’m talking about plans to build crazy skyscrapers coming to a halt. Architect David Chipperfield told Bloomberg this week that the global financial crisis will take the wind out of the sails of the “wow” building industry.

Chipperfield said “wow” buildings are a result of an excess that just can’t be counted on to fund such projects anymore. I’m not sure if we’ve really reached that point in places like Dubai and the former Soviet Union where announcements for new record-setting buildings still seem to come in at a pretty good clop.

I do wonder what kind of architecture will spring from the coming decade. Will it be borne of necessity, hinged on frugality, or greased by lots of public dough? What will it look like if it’s all of the above? Will it at least stop getting taller and taller and taller?

What about here? We all know about the staggering number of public projects built in the U.S. during the Great Depression. Some are still “wows,” others might best be categorized as “hows?” Construction on Seattle’s own Viaduct and seawall started in 1934.

The Northwest Chapter of the Congress of Residential Architects (CORA) has been presenting proposed revisions to Seattle’s multifamily code to neighborhood councils. I just attended their presentation at the Sunset Hill Community Association sponsored by the Crown Hill Business Association.

David Neiman of CORA gives an outstanding presentation about how most of the things single family neighborhoods hate about townhouses, are, ironically, driven by the effort to make them more like single family homes; a yard, set back from the street and a place to park a car.

In many respects the puzzle of how to fit four houses on a lot, with private open space, setbacks and parking was never meant to be solved.

But the off the shelf four-pack plans emerged as the solution, making these kinds of town homes profitable. Parking requirements make townhouses parking solutions, not housing solutions. Could we just remove parking and set back requirements from L-3 and L-4 zones and go from there?

CORA’s proposal focuses on addressing the biggest complaints about townhouses. If design is the biggest part of why neighborhoods object to town homes, then why not use design review to free the townhouse from the single family corset so they can be responsive to the needs of the end user, neighborhoods and the region’s need to accommodate growth.

Craig Benjamin from the Cascade Agenda spoke just before the CORA presentation about 1.7 million reasons why we need more density.

CORA’s proposal is trying to get more density through better design. The question is, will single family neighborhoods relent in their opposition to density in exchange for better design of townhouses?

Will the administrative process that is run entirely by DPD satisfy their need to get the outcomes they want? The proposal is likely to come before Council early next year.

On my walk to the Community Center, I stumbled upon these little gems called the 60th Street Cottages. I don’t know how they were received by the neighborhood, but they look like what we were talking about.

Portland, you make it look so easy

As I rode the elevator up to my room there last year, the doorman noticed me admiring the Brazilian rosewood paneling. “We have to be careful with it,” he said. “It’s endangered so we can’t replace it.”

So how does the historic luxury hotel in downtown Portland keep its cache in the midst of a changing world? It goes green, of course. Green Building Elements has a story today on the undertaking.

USA Today also got smitten with the Rose City. A story in today’s paper marvels at how carefree and car-free you can be in our compact little cousin.

Portland rocks, and many of us here have long known it. But an even better descriptor found in the piece: “studiously hip.” So true.

My DJC colleague Lynn Porter reported today that the Carroll’s Fine Jewelry clock that has been on Fourth Avenue near Pike Street since 1913 could make a move to MOHAI.

Carrolls Clock photo courtesy of MOHAI

Carroll’s closed this Spring. The Carroll family has donated the two-ton freestanding cast iron timepiece to the Museum of History & Industry.

The Seattle Landmarks Preservation board will weigh in on the landmark’s move at its Aug. 6 meeting.

Eight other Seattle street clocks are also designated city landmarks. They include the Ben Bridge jewelry store clock at the Fourth and Pike Building and the Greenwood Jewelers clock on North 85th Street.

Read more at DJC.com

Transfers of Development Rights are not new. In 1916, New York City planners zoned the city and included a provision letting owners sell their building rights to neighboring lots. In the 1960s, they changed the law so lots didn’t have to be next to each other to TDR-swap.

Thanks for the development rights

In downtown Seattle, the owners of older, landmarked buildings get money for selling their development rights, and downtown developers buy those rights to build bigger on other sites.

King County also has a TDR program that lets developers in areas targeted for growth buy development rights from rural landowners. Vulcan took advantage of that program in 2005, purchasing 19 private TDRs to build 40,000 more square feet at Westlake/Terry. The county’s TDR program sunsets this month.

Now, the Seattle City Council is considering expanding Seattle’s program to other areas of the city. Proponents like former council aide Roger Valdez say other neighborhoods like Capitol Hill and First Hill are also seeing rapid growth and the TDR program will help the city hold on to some of the older buildings that might otherwise get razed.

The Seattle City Council’s Planning, Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee could discuss the idea at its meeting at 9:30 a.m. this Wednesday.

The committee will also talk about raising allowed building heights in Interbay and South Downtown, and about extending the developer incentive program, where developers get to build higher if they build or pay for affordable units.

Heather MacIntosh, president of D.C.-based lobbying group Preservation Action, will be back in her old stomping grounds tonight for a lecture on grassroots advocacy.

The lecture starts at 5:30 p.m. tonight (July 1) at the First United Methodist Church Sanctuary at 811 Fifth Ave. It’s free and open to the public. The event is sponsored by Daniels Development.

MacIntosh was a preservation advocate for Historic Seattle and was deputy director of Historylink. org, the online encyclopedia of Seattle and Washington history.

A master plan for London’s Battersea Power Station reads like a utopian post-industrialist fantasy and a developer’s dream: a power plant reborn as dense community center by 2020.

It’s a non-local story of adaptive reuse that should result in an interesting addition to London’s skyline.

Beyond Pink Floyd

The power plant itself (you may know it from Pink Floyd’s Animals album cover) will serve as more than art deco centerpiece, with a new biofuel-powered co-generation plant in its basement sending water vapor through the 1933 plant’s chimneys. Other buildings of the plant will be converted to offices.

A transparent solar canopy will cover some of its buildings and plazas and, combined with an “eco-chimney,” will reduce the need for air conditioning.

The master plan, conceived by Rafael Vinoly Architects and Real Estate Opportunities Ltd., also features luxury apartments, a waterpark and connections to the tube. (Rendering shown above is by Rafael Vinoly Architects)

The relics of industry can tell a very important story about a city’s past glory and gloom.

Seattle’s Gasworks Park was landmarked, letting us marvel at its grotesque beauty without condos or a waterpark ever competing for our interest (though free concerts there by local legends like Pearljam have offered some distraction).

It’s interesting to look at the different tools cities employ to keep these industrial beasts alive.

The Southwest Design Review Board will check in tonight on a strangely familiar West Seattle development.

As built in 1927

The project is at 3811 California Ave. W. The developer initially proposed tearing down the Charleston Court building to build an entirely new project. Then, partway through design review, Charleston Court was nominated for landmark status. The project went on hold for a year.

The landmark board voted in April against landmarking the 1927 building, designed by William Whiteley, clearing the way for demolition. (Original building shown above.)

But the developer is back with new plans that will give the neighbors deja vu.

What the developer wants

The rear portion of the old building would be torn down, but the developer wants to use that brick to create a new building front between the wings.

Steven Butler and Paul Cesmat bought the building in 2007. Project architect is Nicholson Kovalchick.

Crosscut’s Knute Berger wrote an interesting column today about the animosity between historic preservationists and green building proponents.

Too often, he says, green building techniques and density goals are used as justification for tearing down Seattle’s usable buildings and squandering their embodied energy and inherent greenness.

Meanwhile, historic preservationists get sidetracked by the historic and architectural significance of the buildings they are trying to protect. They don’t put that same effort into making a sustainability case for keeping those buildings.

Adaptive reuse in Portland's Pearl District

If Seattle really wants to be sustainable, Berger says, the two groups need to form an alliance. Both need to embrace the environmental value of the existing building and build from there.

I think things get complicated when density concerns are added into the mix.

But some cities, like Portland, have done a great job of encouraging adaptive reuse of historic building stock. These aren’t the landmarked buildings that allow only minimal changes, but the buildings that serve as mainstay to new floors of condos or offices above or around.

The federal government even offers a 10 percent tax credit for adaptive reuse of certain historic buildings. There are a few caveats, like making sure the addition can be removed and the historic building is left largely intact.

It could be painful for preservation purists to see some buildings getting such a drastic face-lift. It will likely be even harder for those greenies who like to start from scratch and leave their fingerprints.

No, this has nothing to do with that boarded up building with the unique swooping roofline that you won’t see much longer at the corner of 15th Avenue Northwest and Northwest Market Street.

Landmarking a living thing?

Exactly how to preserve a landmark comprised mainly of living plants could get complicated.

Landmark board members said the garden is an obvious landmark candidate because of its historical, cultural and architectural significance.

But they were concerned that the designation be worded in a way that means arboretum staff won’t need their approval every time a rotting tree is removed or new bulbs are planted. Landmark staff said they will work to come up with something.

The 3.5 acre garden is mainly the work of Juki Iida, a Japanese landscape architect who came over and worked with Seattle’s William Yorozu, a Japanese-American general contractor.

It was the first large-scale post WW-II Japanese Garden completed in the U.S.

On the garden’s opening day in 1959, everyone who wore a kimono got in free.