Buffalorising has been redesigned.

I love this development. Along with the City Center in Lockport it gives hope for the future of urban in-fill development.

This is really great. There are a couple more gaps in the streetscape to the south. Wouldn't it be nice to incorporate the animal hospital and just keep right on going?

I love the location, the view, and the entire look of these lofts. They appear to have everything my fiancee and I have been looking to do to upgrade our house (i.e the bathroom sink, the bamboo floors, the granite countertops).

On a wet blanket note: I recently read an article on the best way to fix up your house prior to selling it. I think it was in the Buffalo Snooze. These exact features noted above were the three things they said NOT to do, as they are now (already) falling out of favor with homeowners. However, considering units are renting before they are even built, I don't see that as a problem. And, I'm sure Rocco and his gang did extensive market research to see what features potential tenants WOULD want.

Bravo, Rocco!

Granite countertops going out of style would just show poor taste on the part of the "trendy" and demonstrate just how worthless most things that are in style are as whatever could replace them would not be as attractive (run-on sentence so sue me). People need to realize that it is possible to get something "right" that can't be improved on so that we don't have to change everything every 5 years and waste resources. I have no idea why it was so important for me to actually post this... ummmm great project!

Please please find out who the architects are. They deserve credit by name.

I would like to know what STEEL's opinion of this design is. Of course I think the overall project is a good thing and I like the height and relationship to the street but I am just disturbed by the fake historical facade. It is not really fooling anyone. It seems to say that we don't care that architecure(or perhaps anything) has progressed--a monument to an anti-intellectual city in economic and cultural decline trying to turn back time--- or maybe its an architectural Jurassic Park.

I agree with david. for all the economic merits associated with this project, the architecture is terribly uninspired. Looks about as dull as Benderson's "historicey" facades on their newer strip plazas.

This essentially sends the message that, as a culture we're incapable of innovation and we must adorn building facades with nothing beyond a cheap imitation of the past. This cartoonish row of buildings would be better suited for Disneyworld's "Main St. USA" attraction.

This faux-historic architecture sends the message that Buffalo is stodgy, conservative, and utterly incapable of innovation and forward-thinking.

Fortunately there are a few architects out there who "get it," and can design buildings which are fresh and modern yet respect the scale and dimensions of what made our cities of the past function so well on a human scale.

Try this:
www (dot) dfarch (dot) com (slash) main.htm

I have yet to see any exciting new small-scale infill in the city yet..

David, people like you, Steel, Eric, and all the other armchair architects without a nickel in their pockets are never happy. Modern isnt to your taste, classical is FAKE? I mean come on, get over it already and be thankful anyone is investing a cent in this hellhole.

don't be so harsh on david, he does have a point. While i think these buildings look nice and fit in well with the neighborhood... i also appreciate the desire to see buildings built that actually look like they were built in 2007. but then again, with the overall asthetics, maybe this isnt the street for modern.

If you don't like the way these look, don't move there.

Zeitgeist baby, zeitgeist. It looks like Disney World if you ask me. But what really matters is that it's a GREAT project. This neo-historical bland design is what most people find attractive. If it were a more significant public building like a courthouse or something than there would be a stronger argument for a contemporary design. It's an infill project, I won't lose any sleep over the vanilla facades.

Teal, "hellhole"? Nice positive attitude. I guess all those nickles can't buy happiness.

Who really wants a big glass wall everywhere?

I think some of the allure of historical facades is that the details are on a human scale. Even though it may just be the out come of everything being built by hand back then.

I can only walk past a couple glass walls before I am oblivious to them. But send me down a street of old buildings and I can study and find interest in each one's details. Why are big flat (sometimes curved!) glass walls progress? Thier novelty wore off the second one was made. Engineering breakthroughs? Yes. But give me a pen and paper and I can conceptually "design" you a city's worth before lunch is over. To me they are equivelant to the two brush stokes on a modern art painting conpared to Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel work. Clean design? Yes. Interesting? Not for more than a second. Though we could use a few I guess to show "progress" and to reflect the architecture which is actually detailed enough to want to look at for more than a second.

As for it being fake, it'll be a long time before anyone has the extra money to build "real" ones. Which is why is it so important to save and reuse them in the first place.

Everyone travels to Europe and comes back marveling at the beauty of life on a human scale and how wonderful it is. Only to return home to thier asphalt/glass/cinder block environment built around cars and the lowest bidder without giving it a second thought to that could be thier environment too.

Didn't realize contemporary design = glass wall. Take some time to study contemporary architecture and you'll realize that there is more oppurtunity than ever to design w/ new materials, new construction methods, and new forms. I agree that scale is the most important factor when designing in an urban environment, however that does not mean brick, punched openings, and cornices. You can achieve appropriate scale and interesting detail with contemporary design. Replicating something that is 100 yrs old because it "works" and will fit in contextually is lazy.

Awesome post mj well said.

Gotta chime in about the rejection of "fake history" or false historicity, as I've said elsewhere on this site. If we can legitimately use words and phrases from Shakespeare's time and way before, why is it illegitimate to use architetural language from the past?

A wide vocabulary, whether is it a spoken or design one, is one of the great inheritances of our culture. To rule out entire forms of expression for being insufficiently novel reveals a real poverty of the mind and spirit.

It does seem like mj worthington's definition of modern architecture is pretty narrow. The range of architectural options at this point in history is very very wide. The School of Architecture and Planning has a great lecture series that brings some of the most talented architects in the world to explain their best work. I hope mj worthington and others will come to these lectures.

"as for it being fake, it'll be a long time before anyone has the extra money to build "real" ones. Which is why is it so important to save and reuse them in the first place."

I completely agree. The Webb building is really beautiful and authentic. The facade on the Ellicott commons is very weak. That is the problem I have with it.

Regina Urbis,
The range of architectural options is not adequately represented in Buffalo. I am a preservationist and I am against tearing wonderful old buildings down--however, if there is going to be new money spent on new construction I hope that we can bring the Frank Lloyd Wrights, Fredrick Law Olmsteds and Louis Sullivans of 2007 to Buffalo.

Ghery and I.M Pei are two of the worlds greatest architects, and they do mostly modern forward thinking designs...is their architecture fals because they are modernists?

I don't want to say it fails. Just like maybe the few brush strokes on canvas don't "fail". They just aren't very interesting for more than 10 secs. Its just "simple" and not on a human scale.

I am at work, but just seached some Pei designs quick. I just saw more glass or plain walls with some angles to them. I'll draw you those all day long. The engineering in building some of them is very interesting, but the sight is not. As an engineer I am fascinated with how some of them are put together, but thats about it.

Maybe you could link me to a Pei design that you would think to be a better fit for this in-fill?

And yes these above are not as of high quality, but I'd guess right now recovering the investment of carved stone/tiles, etc would be rather difficult. I still rather see these than a glass/blank wall.

http://www.officeda.com/

Check out the website for Office Da. They lectured here in Buffalo this past fall. I'm not sure they show any in-fill projects on the site but they include alot of drawings, video and images to illustrate their design process. These projects are much more than "a few brush strokes".

Check out the website for Office Da. They lectured here in Buffalo this past fall. I'm not sure they show any in-fill projects on the site but they include alot of drawings, video and images to illustrate their design process. These projects are much more than "a few brush strokes".

http://www.officeda.com/

the cornices on the new buildings are much to small and mild than their period cornices would have been but other than that I like the buildings.

Furthermore, I dont buy into the contemporary and modernists slams that we cannot build new period buildings. Its very common in Canada, Europe and elsewhere in the world to rebuild period buildings.

It does not show that Buffalo is a stodgy backward looking city but a city that respects what it was....and a city that celebrates its classic and period architectural history provides an even greater canvas for modern and contemporary architecture that would otherwise look cheap, plain, un-imaginative....and un-integrated.

We can respect this city’s history by preserving existing buildings. There are many many historic buildings that should be preserved or reused. This Ellicott commons facade does not say anything about what this city was(this building has no history--it intentionally denies history), it speaks volumes about what we are right now.