The Planning Board meets tomorrow night at 6:00 p.m. On the agenda for the meeting is the Hudson Housing Authority's redevelopment plan. In advance of that meeting, materials to be presented at the meeting have been posted in the Planning Board Portal. Among those materials are elevation drawings--not renderings that show the buildings in the context of the surrounding neighborhood but two dimensional elevation drawings--of the buildings proposed for the Bliss Towers site and for the lot at corner of Second and Columbia streets, now a community garden.
This is the elevation drawing for the west facade of Building A1, which will be situated on the Bliss Towers site, behind the current building. (When the new buildings have been constructed and the current tenants relocated, the tower will be demolished.)
This is the elevation drawing for the street-facing facade of Building B, which will be located on State Street where the park and gazebo currently are.
In July, this drawing of the design being considered for the townhouses was shared.
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The design seems to have evolved since then. This is the elevation drawing for the street-facing facade of the townhouses.
Additional elevation drawings and floor plans for the townhouses can be found here.
When this project got started almost three years ago, Alexander Gorlin Architects was announced as the architectural firm that would be designing the buildings. Gorlin and his associates appeared at several meetings over the years. Curiously though, the plans and drawings submitted to the Planning Board today are not from Alexander Gorlin Architects but from a firm called Aufgang Architects, located in Suffern. One wonders exactly when and why Gorlin was replaced by Aufgang as the architects for the project.
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Throwback to when the high-brow and well intentioned Gorlin Architects (recent editor of the "book" Housing the Nation, known for making 18th century French urbanism references in their Q&A sessions with Bliss residents... proposed a _charrette_ for the entire Community™.
ReplyDeleteThe charrette was then requested multiple times... but caused confusion... and ultimately morphed into a "workshop".
The whole escapade could have been a New Yorker article.
At the time Gossips avoided, impressively so, a punny title involving the charade of the Bliss charrette.
Curious what Scott Turner ("HUD should be a trampoline not a hammock") will make of all this...
The townhouses aren't so bad, they should build more of those. The big buildings are grotesquely oversized. Why any sane person would voluntarily insert a gargantuan apartment complex into a grassy lot with trees in the middle of downtown Hudson is beyond me. This will have a very negative impact on the surrounding neighborhood.
ReplyDeleteThe persistent insistence on flat roofs is one of the main contributing factors that make these buildings appear so stark and institutional. Scan Hudson from a high viewpoint and see how the Hospital and Bliss Towers are the great outliers in our beautiful and picturesque skyline. It’s like wearing surgical scrubs to a party.
ReplyDeleteFlat roofs allow vast unbroken lines to define the edge where buildings meet the sky.They make any plan workable, since buildings are not bound to follow designs that conduct water to the edges-think “ fulfillment centers”. Those townhouses pictured in the latest elevations don’t have flat roofs. Instead, they have a full windowless story at the front that raises the roofs so they drain to the rear-not a good look in my opinion.
Of course flat roofs are perfect for containing all of the mechanical equipment, which just adds to the dreariness.
To those who say that flat roofs economical I say that the flat roof of Bliss Tower is the main culprit in the failure that has led to the need to demolish a perfectly sound structure that is now full of mold and rot.
Hudson! Put your foot down and insist that these new mega buildings be made to fit in to our townscape in a way that compliments what is already here. That means taking a break from the insipid blandness that screams “ public housing”.
Walter, yeah, flat roofs are ugly. But so is the crenelated roofline of the new "affordable luxury" apartment building with its myriad vents in whatever "district" that is. Frankly, I'll take a flat roof over the hideous institutional sight of that Galvan monstrosity all day, every day. Aren't you Galvan's architect, Walter?
DeleteVery uninspiring arcitecture - looks like a prison.
ReplyDeleteCould not possibly be uglier.
ReplyDeleteAre the mechanicals going to be on the roof? They should show them in the renderings and not hide them like Pocketbook did. And if so, will there be any noise mitigation.
ReplyDeleteThe Banality of ... Hudson
ReplyDeleteMaybe a sort of improvement but they look...kind of dreary.
ReplyDelete