‘SIMPLY OVERJOYED’
Frankly, I am simply overjoyed that there will at last be new buildings on the site of Stamford’s biggest urban eyesore. When I moved to Stamford in the mid-1980s, I was told by many of my colleagues that several high-rise buildings had been designed for this most prominent of locations and that they would form a focal point for downtown Stamford. Yet, years went by and the familiar fence greeted me every time I exited Interstate 95 on my way home after traveling out of town. Not that I will miss it.
I realize, of course, this complex will not be a special destination for visitors to Stamford, that it will not be an architectural masterpiece — and that it will not be a highrise, but a mid-rise. However, I see nothing wrong with mixing buildings of different scales within a city. I like contrast.
Downtown Stamford has several midrise apartment developments dating from the 1990s that reflect ideals of the thenpopular New Urbanism movement. These include the integration of new construction into existing city fabric, location within walking distance of popular destinations, moderate scale, first-floor retail space, and common areas for residents.
A considerable, but not always successful, effort was made to emulate regional New England architecture. We see facades contrasting horizontal siding with red brick. We see a proliferation of gables and towers, which are sometimes well-proportioned and sometimes not. My personal,
least-favorite feature: small double-hung windows with plastic grilles simulating genuine muntins.
Judging from the renderings, some of the good features of New Urbanism are present in the proposed Greyrock and Tresser development. There is a nice courtyard with a pool, retail space at the corner and a discreet parking structure. I am glad that the buildings will not be dressed with “Colonial” facades. The structures are modern, they step away from the street to create landscaped areas and an open corner, facade materials are varied and the windows are large, so the interiors will have lots of light and the spaces will look much more welcoming.
Among the features I am not crazy about are the decorative elements shown on one of the renderings: the large yellow pipe with a clock face on top of the building, and the flimsy orange gate at the corner. These elements seem arbitrary and not germane to the rest of the architectural language. I am not against a touch of lighthearted decoration — it just has to be more original and in harmony with the rest of the design.
I like how the trees on the street and in the courtyard work to soften the square buildings. They look great on the renderings — but it will be 20 years or more before they look like that in actuality. Hopefully, some large specimens will be planted right away.
Kalman, AIA, a Stamford independent architect who established her own designoriented firm in 1988, is a public artist and a member of the Historic Preservation Advisory Committee.
‘A SELF-SUFFICIENT BUBBLE’
This is a mega-block development disguised as 10 midsized apartment blocks, each a distinct size, with a distinct facade and material palette. Economically, building 500 units is more lucrative for a company the size of Ironstate, a corporate developer with projects in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. The 10 connected buildings sit on a massive subgrade parking structure and surround a shared “gym pavilion” at the center of the block; internally this will feel like a single development.
Culturally, though, the target market for this project would prefer to be part of a smaller, more intimate community, or at least live in a building whose appearance suggests a small-scale neighborhood. This is the sensibility Urby caters to. To some degree, it’s an outgrowth of the Hipster aesthetic, which idealizes small-scale ownership and individuality through DIY initiative and nostalgia. The architecture is designed to look more like a group of buildings that evolved organically over time than the single, massive real estate asset it is.
In addition to breaking down the building into 10 separate blocks, the architects have made several other gestures toward the Urby sensibility. The facades vary from block to block but are all loft-like with full-story frames and large areas of glass. The facades have deep openings for windows, suggesting massive materials stacked up block-by-block, perhaps to avoid the slick corporate smoothness of many large office buildings and residential towers. Finally, the buildings have enough variation in the patterns of windows, frames, ventilation grills and other elements to allow residents to identify their specific apartments from the exterior, making them feel a bit more unique.
There are two ways to look at all of this architectural sleight-of-hand. Viewed critically, it’s an attempt to hide the processes and scale at which real-estate development happens today in the United States. It masks the way our cities are built behind a facade (or 10) of neighborliness. On the other hand, it is a trick that could at least conceivably sponsor the type of community and identity it attempts to mimic.
This is the fourth Urby development in addition to projects on Staten Island, N.Y., and in Harrison and Jersey City, N.J. They are typically located on the outskirts of cities and appeal by creating an urban atmosphere at a miniature scale. Each complex reportedly employs a cultural director to curate events, and common spaces are designed to sponsor interaction between residents. Because it is located in the city, the Stamford iteration has a chance to play a role in a larger, truly urban neighborhood rather than create a self-sufficient bubble of urban atmosphere. The ways that it resembles a community could help produce one. Sometimes smiling makes you happy.
Buck is a critic at the Yale School of Architecture. He is partner at New York City- and Los Angeles-based FreelandBuck.
‘WELL DESIGNED’
Finally! After some 40 years, new construction is filling the “hole” in the heart of Stamford — those blank acres at the corner of Tresser Boulevard and Greyrock Place. A residential complex is rising there, and filling that void is in itself a gift to the design of the city.
That “hole” was one of the last gaps in the urban renewal project that replaced a broad swath of downtown Stamford in the 1960s and 1970s with some notably futuristic structures. For those who may not recall, Urban Renewal was a federal redevelopment program to revitalize America’s cities when families and businesses that could were fleeing to the burgeoning suburbs. This redevelopment included numerous office buildings, apartment towers, the Marriott hotel and the Town Center shopping complex. But until last year, the “hole” remained conspicuously vacant.
The gap-filling project, known as Urby Stamford, is bringing a distinctive and timely type of residential development to the area’s mix of uses. While much of the new apartment construction, downtown and in the Harbor Point area, has been aimed at young working professionals, the great majority of the 672 units here will be of a tightly dimensioned studio type that have been tested for that market in Urby developments in such places as Jersey City and Staten Island. Within their narrow confines, these units offer reasonably adequate sleeping alcoves, closets, kitchen facilities, washer-dryers, and broad expanses of window. There will as well be a smaller number of modestly dimensioned one- and two-bedroom apartments.
The complex as a whole will offer underground parking covering virtually the entire site and a large central open space of about 1 acre, with plantings and terraces around a central swimming pool. It will also include an expansive lobby, a fitness center and a full-service cafe. Plans on file with the city show that individual units will be reached via long — potentially tiresome — corridors reaching out from a few widely spaced elevators.
Urby Stamford has been designed by architects Minno & Wasko, of Newark and Lambertville, N.J., (who also designed the clubhouse at the Palmer Hill development along Stamford’s western border). For this complex, they collaborated with the architectural office of Concrete in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Online images of other Urby developments by the Minno-Wasko firm suggest the design of apartments and common spaces will be crisply modern, without being stark. (Those long corridors are not illustrated on the website.).
From the outside, the complex is designed to look like 10 linked buildings, ranging in height from four to seven stories and distinguished by a variety of surface and window patterns. But it also appears that most units’ residents and guests will enter either through the garage or via the main lobby at the corner of Tresser and Greyrock. That will generate little sidewalk traffic along the site’s long street fronts. Especially on the lower floors, units facing the central court will have more appealing outlooks than those fronting the busy roadways.
The design obviously demanded a lot of ingenuity. It seems especially well designed for the market of young professionals. And it is sensitively scaled as a relatively laid-back residential environment among larger-scaled neighbors. Urby Stamford won’t become a notable landmark of architecture design, but is nicely mending that gaping “hole.”
Dixon is an architecture journalist and editor who edited trade journals from Stamford offices for decades.