The moment you've all been waiting for...

… designs!  And, not to mention, we have some awesome construction photos of the renovation of the church roof (we know you’re as excited as we are)!!

We have been quite busy the past couple of weeks, charretting and designing away, sending numerous pieces of trace paper flying.  In our last post we told you about our Friday charrette, where we got our creative juices flowing about the church and the infill site to the north, which we fondly call “NorthSite.” 

Since then, we have been developing and pushing those ideas even further towards a reality.  Regarding NorthSite, we explored ideas ranging from a mixed use development, elderly housing and assisted living, to an urban farm for the community, an anchor site for a Walgreens or market rate townhouses catering to young professionals.  Taking into consideration the ideas presented, and what was essential to the neighborhood and what it needed most, we have decided to pursue elderly housing and assisted living.  Collectively, we feel this is the most needed for the neighborhood and what the neighborhood would benefit the most from. 

Below are a few of the elderly housing and assisted living schemes we have come up with thus far:

And as promised, here are the pictures of the church (below).  As I am sure you are all aware, there has been major construction going on with the church.  The stabilization of the roof has begun, however, we hear the roof was in complete failure, so the big gaps you see are where the stabilization efforts are being made.  And no, that is not a wrecking ball you see, it is a balance weight for the crane.  We are excited to see what will happen in the near future.  

Week 5

Well, we're already on week 5; the time is flying by. 

Tom Dutton has taken to hijacking Miami speakers as they arrive at the Cincinnati airport, and bringing them to speak at the Center for Community Engagement.  Thanks to this, we had a discussion with columnist Leonard Pitts Jr., bright and early Monday morning.  There were representatives from the Atlier, Miami, OTRCH, and the Homeless Coalition.  We talked to him about the effects of the internet and free news sources on the field of newspaper journalism.  He spoke about what the decline in Newspaper journalism has done to the reliability and scope of local newspapers. It brought attention to how things like that can effect the Over the Rhine area.  He also commended the efforts of smaller papers, such as Street Vibes, and discussed the importance of having more than one news source.   After the meeting,  the Atelier group stuck around and worked on tying up some loose ends at Buddy's Place.  We worked in the 4th floor social work office: sanding, hanging blinds, fixing window aprons, and some creative plumbing.  On Tuesday, we had to pretty much hit the ground running to be ready for our charette on Friday with some of our CR associates.   We've pretty much been working on developing our own design ideas.  Most of them relate to the bubble diagram in the last post.  So far, we have a lot of cool ideas for the church, and some kind of vague ideas about what to do with that big North lot.  Graham came over mid-day Wednesday to give us some direction on how to lead a charette.  We spent the rest of the time making some plan and section sets of the church building, and some site diagrams to hang up at the charette.
On Thursday night, there was a CANstruction fundraising event hosted by CR and Quandel Construction.  It was a laid back event where we got a chance to talk to some CR people, as well as a few outside contractors and related professionals.  

Church on Freeman and Findlay

Another church that has recently been adopted through OTR ADOPT is first German Reform Church on Freeman Avenue.  The church was adopted by a group, who have plans to convert it into a restaurant and music venue. Nathaniel Hammitt, a UC student with an interest in Over-the-Rhine, meet the owners and offered to help them with measuring the church out.  I had introduced him to our project, so he took me to the church and we walked around the church.  This church is in much better condition then our church.  It was interesting to see how different each church is, which make reuse a struggle.  If you are interested in participating in helping with the church Sunday, February 13 · 1:00pm - 5:00pm they are asking people to help clean it out. There is a facebook group (http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=138570759540552)  if you are interested or contact us for more information.  I know for sure I will be there and some other Atelier members might join as well.

Week Four

This week was a short week due to weather.  We only worked in the office for a day in a half.  We are starting on schematic designs for the church and the north lot.  We have been thinking about turning the church into a bar, a hotel, apartments, and even a pool.  The challenge with the north site is parking.  We have two existing buildings, but the most efficient parking lot is a 120x180 foot.  There has been a lot of discussion on how do we get the parking to fit, do we get the parking to fit, etc.

Below is the diagram of the ideas we have been thinking about.

 On top of pre-design we meet with Jennifer Walke, from Model Group.  Jennifer worked with the City of Cincinnati and was in charge of the Over-the-Rhine area.  She gave us some insight into the building, as she had been inside many times.  It was nice to hear someone perspective who had been involved in the area for an extended time. She was involved in the clean up from the storm that took the clock tower down.  She has seen many proposals for the building over the years.  She has worked with the city and know the type of funding we could look into for the project.  The most important thing we got from the meeting with her was the desire to save the church.  It is a corner stone in that area and has been a marker for the residents for years.

The site visit to the Banks was interesting to see new development within the city. The Banks is a large development project right next to the Reds Stadium.  It is a mixed use project with retail, offices, and multi-range economic apartments.   We have been focusing on re-use that seeing the potential our infill project on the north site could have.  We walked through a normal apartment, a feature apartment, the retail space, and the parking garage. It was a great experience to see the new proposed city center in the building and design stages. 

 Apartment Views                               The Banks from a distance                Retail Space

Week Three

This week our work was mainly divided into finalizing the submission for the NCARB Competition and continuing to develop our preliminary drawings for the church on 1429 Race Street. After another meeting with CR architecture + design’s marketing group, a few more proofs, and many more tweaks, by Friday, our NCARB submittal boards were finally looking polished enough to be turned in. Now we can begin to devote all of our attention to the Atelier Project.

We were surprised to hear at the beginning of the week that we were in fact going to be able to do a site visit of the 1429 Race St. church on Friday with Brad Rodgers, the structural engineer. We wanted to have our existing conditions drawings of the church as developed as we could for our meeting with Brad. Our tape measures could only reach so high, so we had to rely on counting bricks to draft up the exterior elevations. The interior, however, was still a mystery. Despite getting a hold of more photos showing what has happening inside the church, the lack of information has made it very hard to draft up plan and section drawings, leaving us guessing about many aspects of the building. We were very excited to get to go inside the church and see what was really going on in there. Unfortunately, wisdom prevailed and it was decided that we wouldn’t get access until after the stabilization. Instead, we were able to meet with Brad on Friday at CR architecture + design. He was able to clarify a lot of our questions regarding the layout of the church as well as inform us about the structural condition of the church.

Update: Bridging Broadway Charrette

On Saturday, January 22 Bridging Broadway hosted a community dialogue to examine the impact of the area around the new 20-acre casino site, north of E Court St., between Gilbert Ave. and Reading Rd. This was a sold out event that gathered architects, urban planners, students, and community members, including city council member, Laure Quinlivan.  Stephen Samuels, the president of Bridging Broadway, led us by first introducing the surrounding neighborhood and an assortment of inspirational images. The purpose of this meeting was to come up with a vision or 125 different visions for how the casino will affect the historic neighborhood of Over the Rhine. We had to envision an Over the Rhine that was a home to the casino, the jail, and also residents. After dividing into groups led by an architect and an urban planner, we created collages from cut out magazine images that portrayed how we wanted the site and the surrounding areas to mold together. 

Week Two

NCARB is hosting a competition for Creative Integration of Practice and Education.  We are currently working on submitting boards and a write-up of the 2010 Atelier: The Republic Street Initiative. We have been working on two layout boards and meeting with the marking group at CR architecture+design to help convey the message of the project and to best represent it.  We have been focusing on the hierarchy of the board, the color scheme, and the tag line.  We are trying to get this submittal completed in order to dive into the 2011 Atelier Project. 

This year we are working on an adaptive re-use of 1427/1429 Race Street and an infill on 1505 Race Street Corner.  We have been researching the building and the surrounding area to get an overview of the site.  The building is an 1850’s German Protestant Church located in Over-the-Rhine. It is one block from our apartment building. The main struggle with the project is the lack of information.  We are not permitted to enter the build, therefore we have a limited amount of measurements and images of the inside of the buildings.  We have been contacting local people mainly through twitter and other blogs to help gain as much information about the former church as possible. Architects from CR architecture+design joined us on a site visit to get a feel for the site and to help generate ideas.  The building is in much better condition for being abandoned.  

 

The lack of information as proposed an interesting problem, but one thing we have been working on is taking as many measurements as possible, we have the site plan and a third of the each elevation measured.  We are going to be estimating the rest of the elevations from pictures and using brick heights to fill in the missing information.  The CAGIS has been helpful in getting an idea of the basic site and surrounding information.