Trendy architecture, as one local developer recently learned, has no place on the overhauled Old Town waterfront.
EYA, with its architect Shalom Baranes Associates PC, will return to the Board of Architectural Review-Old and Historic on Wednesday with a revised design for the Robinson Terminal South project at 2 Duke St. Its experience with the BAR to this point should be a useful guide for other developers seeking to tackle Old Town under Alexandria’s now two-year-old Waterfront Master Plan.
The Robinson Terminal South redesign follows the review board’s objection to EYA’s original scheme, which planning staff described as “very contemporary, organic and almost disordered structures that drew their inspiration from contemporary global architecture.”
According to Alexandria staff, in a report released ahead of the upcoming session, the board during its July 2 work session recommended EYA “do a restudy,” making clear “that the architectural design and character of the project should clearly read as being of Alexandria.”
What is “of Alexandria?” It includes a “sense of formality and attention to human proportion,” locally-sourced materials, and a strong connection to Old Town and the street (pronounced and accessible entrances, well-articulated elevations and a “sense of architectural humility”).
“The Board states a clear preference for wanting buildings that were locally influenced and rooted and were not generic or trendy magazine-inspired designs that could be seen anywhere in the world,” per the staff report.
That’s not to say the new Robinson Terminal South should mimic Old Town’s historic warehouses. A contemporary design would work, “albeit connected to the historic architectural traditions of Alexandria.”
“A contemporary Alexandria building would further read as a 21st-century building that is contextual and specific to its location in Alexandria,” according to staff. “It would speak to a regional vernacular with respect to the local ecology, construction materials, and cultural taste.”
Let that be a lesson to architects everywhere.
EYA and Baranes have returned to the board with major revisions for the 3.5-acre Robinson Terminal South, a proposed collection of nine new buildings — six townhouse rows on the northwestern quadrant of the block, two mixed-use buildings fronting the Potomac River, and a third multifamily building at Wolfe and South Union streets. The historic warehouse at 2 Duke St. will be renovated and preserved.
The two waterfront-facing multifamily buildings are now designed to show a “contemporary interpretation of the historic view of the waterfront,” with a “much more appropriate scale,” curving waterfront elements reflective of the curve of a sail, and a “rhythmic, repetitive and articulated design that recalls the seafaring past of the Alexandria waterfront.” The buildings will likely be accented in familiar red brick.
The planned, four-story townhouses fronting Duke and South Union streets, meanwhile, now read as smaller-scale warehouses (red brick and warm, yellow brick) as opposed to a collection of individual homes with various architectural styles — a no-go for the review board in this location.
The Robinson Terminal South project has at least three more dates with the BAR between October and January. The Planning Commission and City Council should get their hands on it in early 2015, with final approval slated for as soon as March.
