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Good article, but these buildings are very different from one another. Some form a street productively, some don't. Their formal languages and the way they use materials are different. Some are urban, others aren't. Architects still haven't cracked the code for 5 over 1, though. https://twitter.com/BW/status/1149773223384535041
Here’s a 5 over 1 mixed use apartment building (with garage in back) under construction along my regular running route. This is the best this building will ever look, partly because the tectonics are so legible. Look at that podium!
One of the problems—that the article doesn't mention but it's visible here—is that requirements for high-performance insulation effectively block any direct communication between the frame and the cladding. Interior expression means thermal bridging, unless you do a Mies trick.
Meis van der Rohe's trick to get around the frame/skin expression problem was to make the curtainwall mullions out of mini-I-beams, effectively expressing the actual structural column buried in reinforced concrete. Figure this out for 5/1, architects!
*Mies, dammit! (I'm leaving it)
Update on the 5 over 1 going up near my house. Excited about what appears to be a Clyfford Still mural on the parking garage stair tower.
Recent progress on the five over one along my running route. All distinction between the Type 1 concrete plinth and the wood framed Type 5 construction above is erased by the insulation panels.
This is being built along a stroad in North Baltimore, it will be called “The Woodberry,” the name of the neighborhood where I live, which is over a mile away.
As architecture, to me, this is Basically Fine, I'm more fascinated by the marketing. They're pitching it as this breakthrough urban experience in the woods, when it's just an apartment building on a highway surrounded by parking lots. https://www.thewoodberry.com/
https://twitter.com/jg_bollard/status/1198662257581924355 5/1 vernacular is a perfect illustration of what happens when the atectonics of Eisenman's House series meets contemporary form-based code & material requirements. Cover House X with lick-n-stick brick & Hardipanel & go home for the day.
