changingskyline

I really hope that this is NOT the final design. I think Richmond deserves much better than this. First, look at the way it meets the street. The Devon Energy Tower in Oklahoma City, with its winter garden and public amenities like restaurants functions as a civic gathering space. This appears to (at least on one side) to rise off a fortresslike parking garage podium. Gateway Plaza offers the same blank wall. As was mentioned above, street life is an issue with such spaces. A building of this size, height, and importance should do so much more for the city at ground level. I don't see a civic space here on the level of Devon. Look at the bulk of this building. You might be hard pressed to call it a "skyscraper" because it doesn't soar. It seems as if it might make the smaller high-rises in the surrounding blocks look overshadowed and out of scale. At the same time, it seems designed to look as small as possible, with the break in the middle, which visually separates it into two stubby structures piled on top of each other (Pickard Chilton's Houston tower has the break much farther up, by contrast). In fact, it almost looks like a banal suburban development plopped down in the center of Richmond. It looks like someone gave the Gateway Plaza a shot of steroids and we ended up with a large version of "Gateway Plaza." I know there must be challenges in dealing with such large floor plates, but we should expect so much more than this from what will become an important structure in the city. This is neither an elegant, beautiful form nor an exciting civic space at street level. I hope this is the beginning and not the end of the design process!